early morning

Posted on by January 10, 2013

i-wake-up-screaming-title-still

I wake up like clockwork.

I wake up like clockwork early in the morning.

Maybe it’s my subconscious telling my body, “you better wake up!  There isn’t much time left!”…I don’t really know.  I don’t know when you cross some invisible line in the sand with your own mortality…although it’s a comforting thought to claim “middle age” while in your 50’s…that should put me right at 104 if the middle part holds true.

It may be my subconscious only telling me that the window between 5 and 6 in the morning is a good shot at some true quiet time.

This morning my 3-year-old is up with me.

He has work to do, also.  He has a little robot that turns into a spaceship looking thing that must transform every 2 minutes.  So…in between the quiet time my window affords…he yells out every so often, “Put his legs on!!  Put his legs on!!”.

He is not a mood buster….he is a mood maker.

He is watching “The Banana Splits” on TV…and I am writing this.

Maybe reruns are the fountain of youth? Pour it all into the old cartoons like some hi-tech Picture of Dorian Grey…we’ll live forever as long as syndication and a satellite system holds out. Nobody told me that was true…but nobody told me it wasn’t, either.

We’ll see what happens.

There was a woman who thought that if she kept adding on to her house that she’d never die.  We used to visit her house sometimes when we lived in California.  It was close to where we lived and easy to get to…so we went a couple of times.

The “Winchester House” (that was what it’s called) gave a little guy an alternate worldview for sure.  You don’t have a really refined sense of mortality when you are 5 years old…so the concept of living forever seems plausible if you can hire enough contractors to keep the ball rolling.

She did eventually die.  The house is pretty big…but apparently not big enough.

I haven’t presented the “live forever, cartoon watching link” to my son yet.  Why muddy the water for him with some untested hypothesis?  You have to let a child grow up their own way…with some guidance and protection and a sense that they are in a safe place. Too many existential questions probably feel premature to a 3-year-old with a never-ending robot.

I don’t think that looking at the big picture with the end in mind does anybody any good.  We have this moment and it’s sometimes hard enough to just get through what’s at hand….why pile any “might happens” on our plate?

I have a pretty big appetite for angst…so my plate is full of nervous expectations…but my better nature tells me to just keep transforming the robot..and to have another cup of coffee.

 

 

 

woodshed

Posted on by January 10, 2013

IMG_1660-WoodShed

There are two things that I’ve noticed happen when you build and finish a new woodshed.

I don’t really understand physics but this doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me.

The first thing is this:  when you’re building the shed it feels really big.  A 10×12 shed is a manageable little shed, in reality…it’s not all that big….not that hard to build mostly by yourself.  Until you put up the rough sawn on the walls and close in three sides it feels pretty big, though…you can stand in the framework and think, “this is a pretty big shed!  This will do!“.

Then you finish it out…take a look around…and think, “this thing is pretty small….what was I thinking?”

There is a law of physics in there somewhere…”until the plan is a reality, you can let it be as big as you want it to be…and when you’re standing on the inside of the “little” reality, you have to readjust as needed”.

A scientist would probably phrase it differently.

Now here’s the second thing that confuses the issue even more:  when you start to stack the wood that has been in a huge split pile beside the shed, it turns into a small stack inside the shed.  Before the stacking, you’re sure that, “oh…I guess it must be a couple of cords easy…it’s a good-sized pile, you know..”.

In the middle of the stacking, you’re thinking that you just didn’t cut enough wood this year.

I don’t know what it is about that shed…maybe I should market it as a shrinking shed?

I know that when I spend too much time inside of it, I come away feeling diminished somehow….so maybe it is some kind of shrinking shed…or maybe I’m just thinking, “shoot …I really did build this thing too small”.

But…on the other hand…if I’d built it to be the cavernous warehouse of a shed I envision in my head now that I have my diminutive shed built, you can imagine how depressing it would be to me to see the small pile of split firewood tucked away in the far corner.

So the conclusion to the second result might be that accomplishments are only small in contrast to the size of the dream?  Don’t dream too big…and what you accomplish won’t seem too small?

“Yeah, sure you guys went to State…but did you ever win the Super Bowl?”

No real need to get too metaphysical about it all, I guess.  When your whacking away with a splitting maul, and the pieces are piling up, it’s not a metaphysical thing…why not just let it be what it is?

Woodsheds and dreams…it all falls together in the end, anyway.   Like I’ve mentioned before…”do something…even if it’s wrong“.

A woodshed that’s real keeps your firewood a whole lot dryer than the most beautiful plan that stays inside your head.

Even if it is too small.

last night i had the strangest…

Posted on by January 8, 2013

Dreaming-Worlds-daydreaming-26279470-1600-1200

Oh, man!! What a weird dream!

The dreams that I seem to remember the strongest seem to come around right before I wake up.

Last night’s was no exception…weird.  I remember that all the dogs I’d ever met on the mail route…and probably some more that I’d met along the way…were in my dream.  I was at a party…a big outdoor party full of people I’d never seen before…and the only ones I was familiar with were these dogs.

These dogs were running around and having fun…the people were “making” over them, complimenting them on their spirit and enthusiasm.  Next thing I knew, every one of the dogs was getting a bath…and they were all enjoying it!  Multiple tubs of soapy suds….every one of them full of one or two smiling, wet dogs.

What a party it was!  A wet and soapy dog is a real icebreaker…it seems like things were really kicking into high gear when the dog washing began.

It seemed like the only real thing that was going on at the party was the part with the dogs.  That part was pretty straightforward …just a bunch of folks having fun giving a bunch of happy dogs a bath.

The next part of the dream that I remember that was really strange was that every single guest that was attending the party had an “emotions interpreter”.  Every action, every thought, every feeling the guest had was run through this other person’s interpretation. Nobody knew what was going on with themselves until they ran it by the interpreter.

Maybe it was some weird subconscious thing trying to tell me to rely on my own intuitions and conclusions?  I don’t really know.

I remember in my dream that I wondered how these people made it through the day.  I didn’t have an interpreter…I was an emotional satellite, an untethered wallflower…I was just there to observe.  It seemed like everything was taking twice as long…it was a slow process to experience but then have to wait for someone else to tell you how you felt about it all.  Until the people got the lowdown on what they’d been up to, they were just confused and lost…baffled by their own spontaneity.  And the process itself seemed to be an experience killer….all these people seemed nervous, like they had some lengthy ordeal ahead of them filled with paperwork and administrative hassles every time they tried anything new.

It was a strange dream, to say the least.

The interpreters seemed to be pretty comfortable with the arrangement.  It was law that every citizen be subject to constant interpretation…and it was law that the conclusions were never challenged.  Because it was law, every interpretation was always correct…or, if not always correct, never questioned.

It was a good job to be an interpreter.

The regular people…the ones being interpreted…seemed pretty OK with it all.  It’s hard work to figure out why we do anything…it must have been a comfort to have someone else telling you what it all meant…even if the answers were wrong.

It’s pretty scary to stand on your own, sometimes.

A dream is just a dream…just a bunch of stuff rattling around in our heads waiting for the right morning for us to wake up and be remembered.  I don’t need anybody to interpret anything in my life….I don’t need any help in that regard.

I have enough of a problem just beating my own interpretation to death.

Now…does anyone have a nice big dog that I can adopt?

 

 

 

it’s relative

Posted on by January 7, 2013

It’s chilly here in North Carolina this morning.

I think that the computer program that tells me how to feel (temperature wise, at least) says that it’s 37 degrees outside this morning.

So I feel kind of chilly.

My relatives in the Pacific Northwest would laugh at me…or at least question whether or not I was serious in my whining.

I visited my cousin and his family in Idaho this summer and we were wearing sweatshirts at the end of June.  I suspect that they know what chilly means this time of year.

It does get quite a bit colder here in the NC mountains.  This temperature is pretty moderate for this time of year.  I like moderate…it’s a lot easier than being socked in with snow.

When friends from the beach would relay how cold the winter was…temperatures down into the FORTIES (!!!!), I’d secretly be laughing at them…”they don’t know what cold is…” I’d be thinking.

I guess that what I’m saying is that it’s all relative.

Anything less than what we’re used to can produce discomfort.

Genius.

It’s figuring out what we’re used to that’s the trick.

The weather is something that’s been fairly consistent through the years…it’s hot in the Summer, cold in the Winter…we know what to expect to the point of not paying a whole lot of attention to it.  In the Fall we split the wood we’ll burn in the Winter…in the Spring we start wearing shorts.  It’s not rocket science…it’s just the weather.

Now they say that there’s “climate change” in the air…that consistency might not be something we should count on anymore.  I’ve heard politically charged conversations that seemed to raise the temperature in the room a couple of degrees….both supporters and detractors of the theory of global warming can get pretty heated when discussing it.

To politicize an environmental issue is to be expected…there’s too much riding on what slowing or stopping the causes of global warming might affect.  It is sad to listen to conversations that seem locked in to an idea just because of the political party of choice, though.

It’s strange to think that we have to wait until it’s so late in the game that everyone agrees that “hey…that’s a pretty good idea!  We should do something about how the weather’s been screwing around!”.  I’ve seen ideas that were dismissed suddenly become adopted when something couldn’t be ignored anymore.  I’ve seen ideas get “re-framed” to make them more palatable…”no…this is what we’ve been talking about all along…”.

I guess that if we really want to debate and debunk when it feels like the temperature is climbing enough to foster “global warming” discussion, we should just turn up the air conditioner and go at it.

real letters

Posted on by January 6, 2013

hand-written-letterPeople don’t write real letters anymore.

I’ve mentioned before that I work at the Post Office.  Every day except Sunday, I carry the mail in our area…so I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming and going.

We get some letters still…handwritten notes and cards…but the level seems to be decreasing. The level of all the mail seems to be decreasing.  The magazines are getting thinner, a little less junk second class mail…the packages seem to be stable because they’re pushing parcels as a revenue stream…it feels like change is in the air.

I feel like a dusty cowboy astride his horse…looking out over the prairie…his mail bag slung over his saddle….wondering , “why don’t they send me out as often anymore?”

That’s the thing about this world…everything changes…always.  Even if you’re dead, you’re changing.  It’s inevitable.

The Post Office is so big…and has been a monopoly for so long that I wonder if they ever saw any need in being able to change? The attitude of “this is the way we do it…this is the way we’ve always done it…why should we have to change with the times?” is something that I see all the time at work.

It’s like they’ve lived in a house on fire for a couple of years and just noticed that it’s getting kind of hot.

So we try to compete with everybody who doesn’t really do what we do at the Post Office…like all we have to do is make more money delivering packages than UPS or FedEx and all our problems will be solved.  If we can only beat our competitors at their game, we’ll be the winners.

Why not hit it from the tradition angle…teach kids how meaningful it can be to write and receive a letter…how different it feels for the writer and the recipient to get something more solid than an emoticon filled text message?

The letter writers all seem to be the older folks, too…the young people have a different thing going on. What’s going to happen when the older folks are gone?  Who’s going to take their place as letter writers?  Not the young people…I don’t know that most of them even know how to address a letter, much less write one.

I’m a backseat driver.  I don’t have solutions to any of the Post Office’s woes…and it’s easy to pick at things and say, “Why don’t they do it like this?  It’d fix things…”.  I do think that they’re missing an opportunity in not educating a little on the tradition of getting and giving a real letter.

Sometimes I feel like a cooper…or a VCR repairman…it’s going away and I’m a witness to the changes.  Like I said before…what doesn’t change?  You go and do the job…and come home in the evening to your family and push through the other parts of your life.

It’s odd to see the changes in something that by design has been static for so long, though.

falling down and rising up

Posted on by September 12, 2013

flight movie posterMy father told me that he felt like realism killed literature.

He said that when he read a book, he did it for entertainment…and that when realism came into it the books stopped being as entertaining.

The new movie, Flight, with Denzel Washington is realistic.

A movie that is about a horrific plane crash would have to be realistic. A movie about substance abuse might be realistic.  This movie feels realistic on both counts.

It’s one of those movies that you watch hoping something good will happen.

There are two points in this movie where the main character rises to the challenge …one is obviously by circumstance…and the other by choice.

It would spoil the movie to give any clues to what the second opportunity is.

Denzel Washington’s character, Whip, is a talented pilot… and an alcoholic. Due to mechanical failure, the plane he is piloting (drunk and high on cocaine) goes into a dive.  He’s able to crash-land the plane after using unconventional and heroic efforts…and saves all but 6 of the people on board.  He is a hero.

Then…they start doing some investigating…and discover through toxicology reports and interviews with the rest of the crew that more might have been involved in the accident than “simple heroism”.

This is a dark movie.  It is hard to watch something so dark…but I stuck with it hoping for resolution of some kind. I wasn’t disappointed…the ending was a satisfying one.

I don’t know if I would call this movie entertaining, though.  Maybe this is what we call entertainment these days…if it confuses or terrifies or makes us sad…or moves us in any way…it’s getting a little closer to “art”…a little closer to entertainment.  I don’t really know.  I think that this movie was marketed as sort of an action picture…”Holy smokes!  Did you see what he did with that plane?!”….but it’s not really an action picture.  It’s a movie about falling until you can’t fall any farther…and the moment that we are able to stand again.  Maybe we don’t notice the light as much if it doesn’t shine through the darkest of situations.

Denzel does a great job.  There is a lot of depth to his character.  He plays a character who is unlikable but charming…who has taken himself down as far as he can…but it’s a character that you watch and hope that he can redeem himself somehow. Neither the movie or the lead actor holds back from showing the darkest side of his actions…and that’s hard to sit through.

I miss movies that were safe.  It’s hard to find a movie these days that is just entertaining…that doesn’t have something inserted to “contemporize” it…to bump it up to the most marketable rating.  We aren’t horrified by things like we used to be…between the news and “realistic” movies and all the other media we can blame…things don’t move us like they maybe used to…and when they do move us, it’s sometimes because the film makers pushed things just a little farther than what we’d grown used to.

There isn’t anything safe about this movie.  The plane goes down…Denzel goes down…nothing safe about either one. I think it’s a good movie, though…such a strong redemption that I’d have to call it a good movie.

I’m a sucker for a “happy” ending.

That’s reality.

 

exercise

Posted on by January 4, 2013

lo meinIt’s funny when you have to wonder if the only exercise you’re getting is when you wake up after a weird dream with your heart beating a little faster than usual.

I had a dream last night that two older Asian dudes were on our porch.  The power was out, so I shined a flashlight on them…the guy that was in the corner picked up our umbrella and tried to poke me before he ran out.  If that doesn’t get your heart racing, I don’t know what would.

I don’t usually have bad dreams…or at least I don’t remember the ones I may be having.  I remember I had a dream a long time ago that something had happened to my father…and woke up crying…but I really don’t have a lot of bad dreams.

I wake up early now all the time…probably a part of getting a little older…but I don’t have any trouble falling asleep…and when I do sleep it’s usually peacefully.

Those two old Asian guys kind of freaked me out a little, though.  It was the same kind of freak out I feel when there’s a skunk or a raccoon out there…not scared that they were going to hurt me, just surprised to see them.  I’m not comparing Asian people to skunks…nothing like that…but what the heck were they doing on my porch in the middle of the night?

I don’t think a bad dream is aerobic.  I didn’t feel like this one was anywhere near bad enough to be anaerobic….so maybe the exercise comparison doesn’t hold water.

You know…I did have some leftover Lo Mein and Hunan Style fried tofu for lunch yesterday.  Do you think there’s any connection to the dream?  I know there’s no connection to the exercise idea…I sat on the couch and watched Dark Knight Rises.

 

One of the nicest things…

Posted on by January 3, 2013

One of the nicest things about writing this blog is making new friends. It doesn’t happen very often…I don’t know if anybody is reading this…but it’s nice when it does.  One of my earliest posts was about a movie that I’ve had a long-term affection for called Sourdough.

I sent Rod Perry, the man who wrote and filmed the movie, a link to my post…and he responded with a nice letter about making the movie (which starred his father, Gil) and some encouraging words about my new blog.

One of his recent posts was a Christmas post that I thought was pretty great.  I was going to include only a link…but I think that I’ll include the whole post.  It’s a good one!

This is without permission…but here goes:

Ice Cream and Lemonade

My mother spent her last years here with us near the old Iditarod Trail. But she grew up in a sod house and half dugout on a land claim in New Mexico Territory. She was born at a time when Pancho Villa’s raiding was keeping things lively thereabouts, before the territory became our forty-seventh state.

Among the frontier folk who scratched out a bare living scattered about the arid, sparsely-grassed country were many that were hardly schooled. Once a good little wife and mother walked five rough miles across the plains (then five back home) to borrow from my grandmother some “ingredients.” When questioned what ingredients in particular she sought, the poor dear looked puzzled. She explained that she had flour, salt, baking powder, and everything else called for except the item, “ingredients” she saw mentioned in the recipe.

My mother happened to be in the general store when a little girl came in to pick up an order. “I came to get wipin’ paper. Ma said put it on our bill.” The store keeper, not recognizing which family the girl belonged to, asked, “Little Lady, who is this for?” To which she answered, “All of us.”

Parents on a distant claim sent word around that they would be holding a birthday party for their son. A social event of such rarity drew every kid within walking or riding distance. My mother went, as did three sisters who came as they did each day to school, astride Ol’ Silas, their mule. Upon arrival each guest paid respects to the birthday boy then joined in the festivities honoring him as the center of attention. That is, until a young chap, getting there late, burst through the door. With not so much as a look in the direction of the one whose birthday was the sole reason for the entire gathering, he loudly proclaimed, “I come for ice cream and lemonade!”

Now, looking around during the Christmas season, I see parties, celebrations, plays and performances, going home for the holidays, family, children and friends. I see Santa and traditions, gift giving and benevolence to the needy. Center Jesus in his rightful place and it’s all so rich. But those celebrants who leave out the Savior, never stopping to so much as acknowledge God’s greatest gift as the very reason for the season, well, they are as crudely off the mark as that boorish late-arriving boy at the party on the plains almost a century ago. Leave Jesus out and even the highest and best of the rest is only, “I come for ice cream and lemonade!”

A “Happy Holidays” kind of Christless Christmas season, one that ignores, circumvents, or purposely shuts out both the Christ and the mass (celebration of his birth) might best be summed up using words of the famous trailsman, gold rush dog driver, Old Ben Atwater. “Whagh! Why, it’s all worth no more than a cold half pinch of last years’ bear scat!”

If even that.

From Rod’s Blog    http://rodperry.com/blog/?p=715

Thanks for the Christmas post, Rod.  I suspect from what you wrote that you had a good one.

it’s Hobbit time

Posted on by January 2, 2013

the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey-movie-2560x1600-2048x1536I took my two oldest children to see the Hobbit in 3D on New Year’s Day.

I don’t know what to say.

That’s a bad sign when you’re trying to contribute another blog entry.  A movie should inspire…create a passionate response…make me feel enough that writing about it is like breathing.

I don’t remember this movie making me feel like that.

Maybe it was the two layer glasses thing…my own (bifocals!  I’ve graduated to bifocals) and the scratched up, communal 3D glasses that the theater provided.  Maybe it was the plot, or the writing…maybe it was just me turning into a tired, grumpy old man as we rocket into the New Year?  And about that scratched up glasses thing.  When you pay 8.50 for a matinée, don’t you think they could provide you with a fresh pair of .50 glasses?  I’m the farthest thing you’d find from a germaphobe…but whose head were these glasses sitting on at the last show?

This was a beautiful movie.  The scenery was amazing.  The characters were believable.

I fell asleep.

My daughter nudged me, “It was almost 10 dollars” she whispered. That got my adrenaline pumping.  “I paid a bunch of money for this….got to stay awake”….but it was hard.

Have you ever seen a movie that was so well done that you couldn’t put your finger on why you didn’t really enjoy it as much as you should have?

If you haven’t …you really should go see the Hobbit.

My wife said that she didn’t think she’d enjoy it if Viggo wasn’t in it.

I don’t know why he wasn’t.  Surely he could have made an appearance as a ghost…or a visitor from another realm…or maybe he could have been some weird consort for an elf queen or something.  It seemed like a lot of folks made a cursory appearance…why not Viggo, too?

This is the first part of a multiple part movie.

They are going to make a butt-load of money off this movie.

I think that the guys in Hollywood made a lot of money off the third Transformers movie, too.

Back to the Viggo thing.  Viggo was in a movie called “A Walk on the Moon”.  I’ve heard it called a “chick flick”….but I liked it a lot.  I didn’t like it as much as my wife…it gave her a new affection for waterfalls…I don’t know why.  This movie didn’t feature Viggo’s character.  Not even a “Hey, Viggo’s character…howzit goin’ down there in that terraced rice paddy looking shire thing?”  “yo…hobbit guy…it’s alright….howzit w’you?”  Nothing like that….although I’m sure that Viggo likes a paycheck as much as the next Hobbit.

When they give Frodo his own spin-off TV show…I’ll know that it’s time to give up on the series.  Until then, I’ll anxiously await the next episode of The Hobbit.

Maybe I’ll take a good nap before I go to the theater this time.

miles to go…

Posted on by January 1, 2013

New-Year-Resolution-quotes-...-day’s-resolutionsSo you’ve got this piece of sand that you’ve been sitting on…this piece of sand that you’re trying to decide whether it would be better to just let it rub you raw…or to figure out how to turn it  into a pearl.

On New Year’s Day, we are desperate to suddenly develop the ability to turn it into a pearl.

All the rest of the year-long, we’ll complain about the worn patch.  We could brush it off…move to a different chair…but it’s easy to say that something’s chafing us and just let it ride.  We are sitting on something we can hardly see and it’s driving us crazy.

In the beginning, it wasn’t like this.  In the beginning, we said “hmmmm…..scratchy”.  Later on it might have been, “What the heck?  What’s wrong with this chair?”.

By the time New Year’s rolls along we’re screaming in discomfort ( low pain threshold, you know)….yelling about how “some changes gonna be made!” even if we don’t really understand the problem.

If we’re either really brave…or really close to the person we are questioning….we might ask, “Do you see this raw place on my behind?  Do you think it’s a rash?  Where do you suppose it came from?”  They’ll try to look away, maybe….or burrow in and bring out the magnifying glass.  It’s easier to see the problem on someone else’s behind.

So maybe you get an answer to your question….”Oh…that’s bad…you should do something about that”. So you smear the creme…cry a little…back up to the mirror for a second self-obsessed look…and then go sit back down in your favorite chair to ponder how things are going to be different now that you’ve identified the result of the problem.

But in spite of the creme and the soothing words, that chair still just doesn’t feel right.

Now it’s New Year’s Eve…and you bandage and sooth your posterior and go out into the world to change it.

You tell yourself, “I resolve…I resolve….I resolve that in the coming year, I will work at feeling better.”

Mission accomplished…sooth your soul….you made the effort, stayed the course, you’re right on track…you made a RESOLUTION.

Now what?

It is a real bugger to find a piece of sand in an easy chair. It’s work to clean and vacuum up the irritation. It’s a lot easier to just keep smearing on the creme.

If the darn chair wasn’t my established favorite, I might just move to another one and solve the problem…even if I never understood the trouble, this might be a solution.  I suspect that sooner or later, though, I would be right back in it…it’s my favorite, after all.

We can’t understand the deeper issues.  We don’t look for the “sand in our chairs”.  Maybe it’s time to go to Costco and buy a barrel of creme.

Ring in the New Year.  All hail RESOLUTIONS!