12.20.2021 – memories so thick

memories so thick
like presents to be unwrapped
what gets remembered?

One of my brothers sent out this old photograph the other day.

The photograph had been around our house when I was a kid growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan as long as I can remember.

And since I am about 1 and a half years old in this photograph, that was longer ago than I can remember.

The story was that some neighbor lady worked for the Grand Rapids Press and thought that a family picture would be a nice addition to the paper at Christmas time.

The caption in the paper read, “GLAD TIDINGS – The nine children of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hoffman, Sligh Blvd. gather round …”

One of the oddities of this photo is that there were two more kids yet to come.

My Mom always said she thought 8 was a good number.

Being 8th, I really appreciated that.

I am sitting next to my Mom and how they kept me from sticking out my tongue I don’t know.

My sister Janet remembered that my Mom had to go out and buy Christmas Stockings for the photo shoot and didn’t get enough so my brother Paul had to use a gym sock.

But my sister Lisa responded, “Does anyone actually remember this? I must have been three years old at the time and have no memory of it.”

Of course you have to be old enough to have memories.

And Christmas memories are so thick that they have to be brushed away leaves in a fall windstorm.

But what makes a memory?

Here is a photograph from this Christmas.

Me and my grand daughters, Azaria, Ella and Lenox.

Lenox is a little older than I was in that black and white photograph.

I don’t remember that day.

Bothers me a little that Lenox might not remember this day though I understand.

Guess we keep the pictures around as clues or keys to the boxes where the memories are stored.

12.19.2021 – swaddling clothes on hay

swaddling clothes on hay
in a barn why the story
never does wear out?

Adapted from the poem, The Silver Star, by Carl Sandburg.

The complete poem reads:

The silver of one star
Plays cross-lights against pine green.

And the play of this silver
crosswise against the green
is an old story…..
thousands of years.

And sheep raisers on the hills by night
Watching the wooly four-footed ramblers,
Watching a single silver star—
Why does the story never wear out?

And a baby slung in a feed-box
Back in a barn in a Bethlehem slum,
A baby’s first cry mixing with the crunch
Of a mule’s teeth on Bethlehem Christmas corn,
Baby fists softer than snowflakes of Norway,

The vagabond Mother of Christ
And the vagabond men of wisdom,
All in a barn on a winter night,
And a baby there in swaddling clothes on hay—
Why does the story never wear out?

The sheen of it all
Is a star silver and a pine green
For the heart of a child asking a story,
The red and hungry, red and hankering heart
Calling for cross-lights of silver and green.

12.18.2021 – names, characters,

names, dates, characters,
places, product of dreamer’s
imagination

I like to tell people that they only exist in my dreams.

It’s all just my dream.

My blog, my dream, my rules.

This wasn’t an original idea.

There is an old Twilight Zone where this guy is being tried for murder.

Seems to my mind the guy is Dennis Weaver but then didn’t almost everyone who was anyone on TV show up at least once on the Twilight Zone?

In this episode, the man on trial claims he is dreaming and everyone in the courtroom is in his dream.

If the court finds him guilty and sentences him to death and executes him, the dream ends and everyone in the dream ends.

One guy believes him and works to set him free but without success.

Dennis Weaver is found guilty, executed and the dream world and all the people in it are gone.

It was all a dream.

Maybe this is all a dream.

In the book, The Caine Mutiny, Willie Keith lives through the whole book and in the end, while reading, underlines, “Life is a dream, a little more coherent than most.”

Big Bill writes, “We are such stuff … As dreams are made on.” (The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1)

Sam Spade looks at a lump of lead and says, “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

If this is a dream, its my dream.

I’ll own it.

Maybe Trump is a fragment of an underdone potato.

But if it is a dream.

If it is my dream then I offer this disclaimer.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, dates, characters, places, are a product of dreamer’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

I think I should get that on a T shirt.

names, dates, characters,
places, product of dreamer’s
imagination


12.17.2021 – real night of the soul

real night of the soul
it’s always three o’clock
on a dark morning

It was F. Scott Fitsgerald who penned the lines:

“ … and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. At that hour the tendency is to refuse to face things as long as possible by retiring into an infantile dream – but one is continually startled out of this by various contacts with the world.“

It is called covid fatigue.

One medical website states:

“It’s real and it’s strong. We’re tired of being cooped up, tired of being careful, tired of being scared.“

This same webpage says, “This is a real challenge. There are no easy solutions.“

The other morning on one of the TV news programs, the morning anchor interviewed a bunch of seven year old’s.

“What do you miss the most of the pre-covid days?”, she asked.

She was met with a lot blank stares.

For seven year old’s, this was normal.

That thought hit me in the real night of my soul.

Then I started to think about what I missed.

I was shocked when I realized that pre-covid was so far away.

My thoughts about pre-days seemed to be in the same folder as memories of growing up, summer times long ago and books I haven’t read in years.

I thought of something Alistair Cooke wrote about the American West.

Writing about the ghost town of Bodie, California, Mr. Cooke said, “[Founded in 1876] For four years the place was roaring with life and death: one killing a day, fifty-six saloons and gambling joints, twelve thousand people brimming with sap and mischief and vice. By 1883 it was mostly abandoned, and in 1932 a fire browned it off. Today, it is a graveyard up among the rolling cumulus clouds. It is as forgotten and forlorn as the Plains of Troy.“

Pre covid days, forgotten and forlorn as the Plains of Troy.

Maybe its best as, pre covid days, forgotten and forlorn.

3 o’clock on a dark morning.

At that hour the tendency is to refuse to face things as long as possible.

12.16.2021 – The history we tell

The history we tell
today lays the groundwork for
the future we make

Adapted from the text in the article, Why are US rightwingers so angry? Because they know social change is coming, by Rebecca Solnit.

Ms. Solnit writes, “While their fear and dismay is often regarded as rooted in delusion, rightwingers are correct that the world is metamorphosing into something new and, to them, abhorrent.”

I can picture a not too far off future when an aging body of today’s right wing voters march on Washington to demand attention to Social Security issues and increases in funding from a US Congress that has a majority of members being people of color and or Hispanic origin.

Bills will be introduced to increase social security funding and benefits for these old right wingers.

I think there will be much satisfaction for many members of that Congress in voting no.