more normal than not

 

The flea market should be like Las Vegas…what goes on there should stay there.

And it’s really not for me to make judgement calls about what anyone does there.

It’s not my place to suppose I understand what anybody’s up to.

I don’t think that the flea market is ground zero for light spirits and benevolence.

There are some dark hearts roaming the grounds….there is evil underfoot at the flea market.

I know that.

Still…it is kind of fun to go there occasionally.

Jenny and I were talking about cloth diapers this morning…and the forums that mothers use to sell them.

Then the conversation got a little deeper into people setting themselves up as dealers…then the conversation veered a little more and I mentioned how much I disliked the scavengers who buy up every bit of low cost baby items at the flea market to sell later at inflated prices…but who say something like:

“I’M BUYING THIS FOR MY GRANDCHILDREN…FOR MY NIECE….FOR MY DWARF LIVE-IN HISPANIC LOVER…”

(That last part isn’t true…it was just something weird that I threw in…)

You’d hear this line…this pile of stuff….these falsehoods coming out of these wrinkled mouths…and then you’d see them selling the same items later in the day at the other side of the market….concrete tables piled high with items that the grandchildren must not have liked.

Nobody tells it like it is….nobody says, “I’m a dealer…unless I rip you off and take advantage of your generous spirit, I can’t make a profit…and profit is what it’s all about. What would it take for you to keep my overhead as low as possible? A story about my fictitious…but SWEET!! LAWD, LAWD! AIN’T THEY SWEET!!!….GRANDCHILDREN?!!”

That’s not true…nobody knows big words like “overhead” at the flea market….nobody uses big words in the underground economy.

I don’t know that I could say that I’m incensed by all the lying.

I don’t care that much.

It’s just strange to see such a pool of the worst of human behavior.

There’s some low-rent activity that goes on at the flea market.

Bunch of freaking lying “grandmothers” roaming around.

We’ve sold stuff at the flea market occasionally.

Given it away, more likely…we sold stuff cheap to get rid of it…gave it away.

The dealers loved us.

When you pull into the market, you see all these flashlight beams coming quickly towards the “new meat” that just pulled into the parking lot.

Before you can get the tarp pulled off the stuff in the truck bed, these full timers are looking in, yelling, “How much?!! How much?!”.

It’s a weird environment.

It’s hard to make your 50.00 a day…I can see why they’d be aggressive…but I really hate the way these full-time dealers act.

Maybe that’s why we don’t go to the flea market very often.

It’s pretty gross.

But…all this talk about the flea market makes me think that it might be fun to go back sometime and check it out.

As a pure sociological experiment, it might be fun to go and “observe” the worst of the human spirit on display for all to see….buying more stuff for the grandchildren who already have it all.

Only a sociological experiment, of course…..

What do I still need that I might find cheap at the flea market, anyway?

If you listen very carefully…if you keep your ear on the tracks, feeling for the vibration of a train a hundred miles away…if you pay attention to the signs….sometimes you come up with a gem you can pluck out of the universe and carry with you the rest of your life.

That’s a simple truth.

Like this song….listen to it, wait for the ending…and Larry will take you home.

Larry knows what the score is.

Now….listen to it, all the way through.

Don’t clean your bathroom while you’re doing it, either.

You can’t multitask while the universe is dropping truth on your head.

Stay focused.

“float on” the floaters

OK….that’s a lot to digest.

What did you learn?

Did you hear Larry sing it to you right at the end of the song?

“Let me show you…how sweet it could be…sharing your love with Laaaarrrrrreeeeeeeee”

I couldn’t be any cooler than that if somebody held a gun to my head.

My name doesn’t end with an “eeeeeeeeeeeeeee” sound either.

I don’t know what I could rhyme with “Peter”.

I don’t think there’s any word that would encourage romance the way “Larry” does.

And that’s the luck of the draw.

That’s what allows some people to be “players”….and keeps others from being the same…something as simple as a name.

Something as simple as a name with an “e” sound at the end.

I think that if I really want to suck up to Jenny, though, I’m going to use Charles’ line about “a woman that’s quiet….a woman who carries herself like Miss Universe.”

I think that would score some points.

I think that ladies like a good line…and that “Miss Universe” thing is one of the great lines of all time.

“Lines”….

“Game”…..

“Moves”…..

There is a lot of weirdness that people have to wade through while they’re dating…or attempting to date…or just sharing their astrological information for no reason.

I never know who I’m going to wake up with.

Just this early morning, Jenny said, “Nate’s in bed with us…he keeps thrashing around.”

It was a good thing that I was already awake because Nate was in bed with us and thrashing around.

It would have been confusing if I’d been woken up out of a deep sleep with that kind of information.

I might have forgotten I was a parent in those late-night dreaming hours if Nate hadn’t woken me.

So I took him back to his bed where he fell asleep in about 5 minutes.

And now, at 4:33 in the morning,everyone else is asleep and  the house is quiet.

It’s nice to sit here with my coffee…quiet…peaceful…a cool breeze blowing through the screen door on the porch.

It’s worth getting up really early for that moment of quiet.

You know. though…if I didn’t know that in about an hour or so that the scene would change…and that everybody would be up, PBS would be on and educational cartoons would be playing and we’d be running around getting breakfast for Nate….getting ready for work, making my lunch…. making some more coffee….

If I didn’t know that everyone was here….there wouldn’t be as much pleasure in sitting by myself in the peace and quiet for a couple of minutes.

Charles and Larry and all the guys in the Floaters have their own deal going. They know the score in their own little chunk of space. They’ve got it going on…especially with the LADIES (!!!!).

I’ve got a good thing going on here, too.

Even without a good line, I’ve got a good thing going on.

 

Our oldest child turns 19 today.

I remember when we had her….after a big tiring day and night at the hospital in Asheville.

(Saying “we had her” is like saying that the Dr. “delivered her”…..I seem to remember that Jenny did all the real work…)

When Zoe finally arrived, the doctor held her up and said, “So…Daddy. What did you get?”

You would think that he’d have a lock on that information by that stage of the game, but I guess that he needed an expert to weigh in…

The umbilical cord was in the way of the “information center”…so I tentatively said, “Ummmmmm….a boy?”

When he shifted the cord a little, I could see that it was Zoe.

“Ahhhhh….A GIRL!!!”

I had two chances to get it right….and I nailed it on the second one.

(I do know what an umbilical cord looks like…it just obscured my vision, that’s all….)

I found this video to help her celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Zoe!!

I hope that you enjoy DoctorKC.

He has other videos on YouTube….so if you like this one, you’ll have more to choose from later.

Apparently, you can also hire him (for a fee) to come to your party and liven things up.

I hope I didn’t give away the surprise.

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEBIRTHDAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, ZOE!!!!

I’d sing “Happy Birthday” to you all day long….and unlike DoctorKC, I wouldn’t even charge you a single rupee.

 

 

 

 

 

One of the Junaids’ followers came to him with a purse containing five hundred gold pieces.

“Have you any more money than this?” asked the Sufi

“Yes, I have.”

“Do you desire more?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then you must keep it, for you are more in need than I; for I have nothing and desire nothing. You have a great deal and still want more.”

from “The Way of the Sufi” stories collected by Idries Shah

 

Geeeeshhhhhhhhh.

I must want it all.

Is that even possible?

Where would I put it?

“Storing up my treasures” on earth….storing them up.

Goofy.

Now, I could blame the media. I could blame all the images that I tend to pay attention to….the ones of wealth and abundance, fun and frivolity beneath the material world’s moon….I could blame what other people put in my path.

I couldn’t blame the pictures of need that I skim over.

They don’t inspire me in the same way.

I can’t look at all that suffering.

I know that it’s all me…I make my choice and go with the Cheez-Wiz popular culture…I pay attention to the flashy and affluent. It goes down easier than “want and need”. It’s all me….

It’s easier to watch Katy Perry spin in day-glo hair, singing something forgettable…with the rockets red glare in the background…for a crowd excited to be patting each other on the back….than it is to think about anyone else’s real needs.

What have I read? That you can’t receive if your fist is clenched around what you already have? Hah!! You can’t even GET MORE if you can’t learn to GIVE…

I don’t know…there must be a lot of bitter people in the world, watching what we have on some small, cast-off black and white television….seeing all this bounty and craziness, all the excitement and serious concentration over something that really shouldn’t matter as much.

No wonder they want to kill us sometimes….Katy Perry never sings for the Taliban…

I do need to be entertained, though….

NOW ISN’T THAT KIND OF A HIGH AND MIGHTY BUMMER?!! WHO AM I…UP ON THIS HIGH HORSE?!!

I don’t know….I don’t know….hey!!! I REALLY DON’T KNOW!! That’s kind of liberating to realize that.

I don’t carry the weight of the whole world on my shoulders….and sometimes….“I don’t know”.

I sure can still want, though.

I had the Billboard Music Awards on last night.

On the television set.

I love music.

I don’t know that the show I watched was only about music….or, really, even about music.

Too much hype…too many people trying too hard…too many explosions.

It gave me pause to realize that the harness that they used to fly Katy Perry around on (I must have been paying attention to the weirder moments) probably cost 10 times what our house cost….no, that’s too low a figure…..ah……I’ll go with that….no….maybe twice what it cost…arghhhhhh, who knows? That thing looked expensive….flying around. All this money spent trying to one-up the spectacle of the previous year….and I can’t remember a single bit of music from that show.

Not even John Legend almost making his model wife cry with a tender love song. Not even that.

I watched some of a documentary about Levon Helm, of the Band, on Netflix called “I Ain’t in it For My Health” that was a different sort of show.

That show was about music…and about life.

I liked that show.

I like Levon more than I like any of those guys on the other show.

He’s a real person…not some day-glo cartoon.

But…I still want.

I want a lot of things.

And watching these people…even though it’s sometimes entertaining…doesn’t help me “not to want”.

I am so impressionable.

“Give It To Me” J. Geils Band

One row of boxes on the mail route runs along a shallow ditch.

We had a heavy rain the night before, so the ditch was full of water…and when I pulled over to deliver the mail, I noticed two ducks swimming in the shallow water at the side of the road.

They were having a big and peaceful time swimming around down there.

Traffic blowing past…and these ducks were oblivious…happy in their personal bit of water.

I watched them for a while and then drove on…but it got me thinking.

It’s good to have something that gets me thinking.

I should be thinking while I’m doing something that’s become a rote activity.

I should be thinking while I’m on automatic pilot.

The ducks, down in the ditch, had so many options to swim around in. There were lakes, streams, other small ponds close by….all of them just a short flight away…but these ducks were down in the ditch and just as happy and contented as they could be.

Now, there were two or three angles I could attack this from.

I could tell myself that it was kind of sad that these ducks had “settled”…that with such a broad range of bigger and more exciting options out in the world, they’d flown down into something as mundane as a drainage ditch and fooled themselves into thinking that it was alright to be happy there.

Or, I could approach it from the “bloom where you’re planted”angle and celebrate that these ducks seemed so happy.

I suppose that I could just say something like, “GET AWAY FROM THE ROAD, YOU STUPID DUCKS!!!! YOU’RE CROWDING THE MAILMAN!!! YOU’RE TOO FREAKING CLOSE!!!”….but that would be a weird overreaction.

The reaction that I settled on…without a lot of thought or deliberation…was that it was a good thing to see these ducks so contented…and then I wondered if maybe they wouldn’t be contented wherever they ended up swimming?

It would be like us, sitting proudly by the edge of an infinity pool in some fine hotel somewhere, looking out at the ocean and the horizon beyond, enjoying the luxury of our surroundings….but….

maybe later, finding ourselves just as happy to be sitting in a lawn chair with our feet cooling in a fifteen dollar Wal-Mart wading pool.

These ducks! Maybe they were teaching me something!

Maybe happiness wasn’t a matter of hitting the “right situation”? Maybe it was a matter of hitting the situation “right”?

Maybe…and I’ve heard this before, but like a lot of things that I hear often, I discounted it…maybe…maybe, it’s what I bring to wherever I go that is going to determine what my life is like?

That’s easy to think about or say…harder to consistently put into practice.

My situation is a changeable thing….malleable and potentially disappointing.

I know that…I’ve seen that. Sadness comes from a lot of different and surprising angles…it can blow your legs out from under you before you can whistle “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

My attitude is the only thing that I have a snowball’s chance of having any control over.

My reactions are my own.

Those ducks were happy and swimming…having fun in that ditch.

I could learn a thing or two about having fun from them.

I should learn a thing or two…..