As I stood at the intersection where Garland opens up to the fields, I watched as a car inexplicably went down the wrong side of the median. Opposite the intersection are the beautiful homes that have been remodeled one by one. They are much more striking in the dark early hours of the morning. I turned in that direction out of curiosity, observing that the car made a left onto Sycamore. It’s undergoing what seems like a permanent closure due to reconstruction of the road. I carefully walked along the gravel temporarily placed on the roadbed. Not too far from the intersection where the street intersects with Leverett, the car was pulled over and whoever was driving it had the brake lights activated. Because I am either fearless or stupid, I approached the car from the driver side, taking a wide approach so that the potential occupant could see me. As I came within about feet from the driver door, the car roared away. I watched it bounce like a volleyball as it went over the juxtaposition of gravel at a lower height than the pavement. It was an auspicious start of the day for me wandering and wondering around in the dark. I suspect it was an inauspicious ending for the driver, one undoubtedly proceeded by questionable choices and liquid dopamine. I noted the irony that the next song that played on my headphones was a lyricless version of “Peace Of Mind” by Boston. I zoned out as I walked along the beautiful new sidewalks that were recently completed. Off in the distance, I had the privilege of watching the dark skies turn purple, pink,and rosé as the clouds broke on the horizon and the sun peeked through.
The next song on my playlist was a lyricless version of “Don’t Fear The Reaper.” I laughed and felt pity for the reaper. No one takes the time to consider that he’s never welcome. Or that he has to do his job in this humidity wearing a heavy cloak. I bet that sometimes the reaper wants to sit and have a good cup of bitter coffee in the morning and listen to the birds.
PS I prefer the word “lyricless” over “instrumental” because the latter usually denotes a different version than that to which we are accustomed.
Coincidences. They fascinate me. Last Monday, I had my car broken into for the first time because I parked somewhere I normally don’t. Of course, it was raining. Today I got up to discover that my car won’t start. While I don’t know for sure yet whether it’s the battery, it’s raining. And the idiot who broke out my window stole my tire inflator which also had an emergency jump feature on it. I bought a new tire inflator immediately upon discovering that it had been stolen. But it doesn’t have the emergency jump capability. I should have known better when I didn’t spend the extra money for the fancier emergency kit. I’m laughing because I’m the “don’t talk to me about odds” guy. I’m also remembering precovid, when stores were open at this hour. .
Even though the phrase “como agua para chocolate” (like water for chocolate) has a culinary meaning, I adopted and adapted it to my own meaning when I read the book in Spanish for the first time. Regardless of its intended meaning, which I understood, it anchored my frustration with the way we tend to accept poor substitutes for authentic living.
If we’re stressed or feeling floorless or unanchored, we distract ourselves. We fill our minutes with things that don’t satisfy us. It’s a series of late-night snacks with the door fridge held open. We know we’re not satisfying our cravings, yet we continue to eat pieces of cheese or anything visible. Ten pieces of cheese and a cold hot dog won’t satisfy us. But neither will another glass of wine or three seasons of our favorite binge show.
If we’re craving intimacy and connection, we accept poor substitutes that probably cause us more discomfort than simply being alone. We open bottles or cans and down the numbing contents. We light fires in our faces that flood our bodies with false dopamine. We focus our attention on tiny screens and large, hoping that the content gives us relief.
All of these things are distractions – and we know it when we’re doing it. But what’s the viable alternative? The gurus in life tell us to avoid anything that creates distance between us and the people and the world around us. It’s too much, though. And though days fly by, the individual minutes scream at us to be filled.
Chocolate itself was originally considered to be a gift from the gods. Now? We love it but also look at it as a mundane treat. We tend to devalue what’s readily available. Often, I catch myself thinking that we do the same thing with the people, places, and things around us.
It doesn’t matter how full your garage is. The things in it won’t add further happiness to your life, even though you continue to acquire, upgrade, or store the previous things that you obtained to be more satisfied.
When people wax nostalgic, most of the memories are comprised of moments with people from their past: eating, doing things together, and usually without distraction. For a brief moment, the focus is mindless and simply enjoying the experience.
If you’re making an authentic chocolate drink, you must be mindful of the boiling point of the water you’re using.
If you’re looking for peace and satisfaction, you have to enjoy the process and bother of taking the time to enjoy the things you’re doing.
The joy of a brand-new seventy-inch TV will fade. The foods you love will soon enough oversaturate you and fade into the background.
What am I trying to say?
You tell me.
I’m just another among billions, secretly wondering why I can’t avoid the false dopamine and poor substitutes for what matters.
I followed this bird upstream for a long time. It was aware of me. As long as I stayed in the middle of the stream, it would let me go past it slightly. It would then take flight and perch a few yards from me. We repeated this cycle for 20 minutes. Just me, the bird, and the cool water. It was the most Zen match of tag. X .
Regarding my vehicle vandalism, because I can’t open my trunk without the key, it didn’t occur to me that the miscreant who broke out my window had accessed it. They stole my air pump and a few other things that were in the trunk. But more importantly, they stole my box of chalk. To be without an ample supply of car chalk is akin to waking up naked in church. The several hundred dollars it will take to replace the window is bad enough. But to face a missed opportunity of chalk shenanigans is one step too far. I haven’t forgot about my sentimental plastic dinosaur that was stolen either. Even my cat Güino is bummed on my behalf.
“Cicadas are gross,” she said. That’s because she didn’t experience the magical connection of hearing them out in the wide fields of Monroe County during her formative years. The insects of that area are already formidable and should be considered true citizens, counting in the billions. Anyone who has driven on the county roads in the evening knows the folly of attempting to use windshield wipers to remove them. I don’t recall which year I happened to be with my Grandpa and Grandma to experience the cicadas. It was deafening at night because we slept with the windows open, surrounded by fields filled with them. Hearing the cicadas now evokes buried memories, all tied to wonder and childhood experiences.
I have the same reaction upon smelling creosote, especially when it heats up. It reminds me of things I can’t quite remember. Diesel and gas are inextricably tied to my dad’s attempts at operating a gas station on Highway 49. Or my Grandpa, who insisted that the smell warded off the torrent of mosquitoes. The trains humming in the distance. The area of my early childhood owed its existence to railroads. Brinkley was once called Lick Skillet, a name that should have been preserved. The topography conspires to have the train horns and rattling metal echo for miles. Those who’ve not lived in the flatlands don’t understand why people refer to it as haunting. Grandma’s house in Brinkley on Shumard Street was close to the railroad. My apartment is less than 50 yards from one, too.
Years ago, I drove in the late evening on Highway 70 from Little Rock to Brinkley. There were millions of small frogs. They coated the road and the low Geo Prism, so much so that the uneven road became slick and hazardous. My deceased wife, a native South Dakotan, was initially horrified but soon fell quiet in awe of the spectacle. She later told the story to her family. They were convinced she was exaggerating. Had we chosen the quicker route of the parallel interstate, we wouldn’t have had the moment.
Since I’m being nostalgic, yesterday I got out of one of my bottles of burned seasoning. It’s a delicious mix I make myself, but that’s another story for another day. Dabbing it on my tongue, I felt like I was tasting Grandma’s salt pork again. Salt pork is the antithesis of what I normally would prefer to eat. Because of my upbringing, I tended to avoid eating most meat. My dad’s proclivity toward forcing me to eat vile things almost at gunpoint soured me considerably. But if time travel were possible, it is what I would like to return to first. Opening the screen door of Grandma’s house and smell the aroma of her cooking bacon and salt pork. A wall of memory.
Since this post is titled, “All Over The Place,” something that I’ve mentioned before seems much more significant now. I never concealed that I wet the bed much too often when I was younger. When I started therapy, I did a workbook online. I didn’t know that most people barely write a page. I wrote at least fifty pages. I rarely wet the bed at Grandma’s. Of course, I now know that it wasn’t because laundry was much more of a chore for her. It was because I felt safe. Don’t get me wrong. Grandma could be stern. But she never once arbitrarily shouted at me or threatened to box my jaws off unless I wasn’t listening. While not actually boxing my jaws, I knew better than to tempt her. I did not, in fact, ever want for her to follow through on her promise to snatch me bald-headed, either.
Sometimes, Grandpa would tell me not to fear things in the dark or glinting eyes through the screens on the windows. He told me often that the only real danger was things walking on two legs. As mean as he was when he was younger, by the time he had me to call him Grandpa, he protected me. Quite often those who needed a reminder were the two people who came to pick me up at the end of the summer.
In a few short minutes, the train will speed by me on the other side of the road. I’ll be on the landing, cicadas buzzing. And if I were so inclined, I could walk over and touch my hand to the rails. They are connected, reaching the fields of Monroe County.
I undoubtedly awoke with all this on my mind because before going to sleep last night, I stood at my kitchen window, listening to the roar of the cicadas. I dreamed of fields and imaginary stories. Waking, I recalled none of them. Just the tendrils of fading geography and bygones.
I went tree climbing a little bit earlier. I’m not perched high above the creek with my phone in my hand. I am standing in the middle of the creek in the cold water though. I saw that one side of the walkway dam had a couple dozen Osage oranges. The last time I looked them up for trivia, I was amused to see that Pennsylvania residents refer to them as ‘monkey balls.’
What still fascinates me about these and the trees that produce them is that only female trees produce the fruit. These are the largest fruits derived from trees in the United States. Thousands of years ago, these trees proliferated because mammoths would eat them and then spread the seeds as they traveled. I’ve still not tried the stinky process of roasting the seeds from these. It can’t be much different than watching my dad “cook” suspicious and unidentified meat, or looking at my mom’s famous Winston cigarette ash-speckled mashed potatoes.
I did climb the tree in the background of the photo. While I was up there, I practiced a few fake bird calls, hoping passersby might question their sanity or wonder if a small pig was being forced to listen to excerpts of Donald Trump’s book of poetry.
Watching the night sky’s illumination across the clouds in the early morning.
We think we want to see beyond the horizon or what’s around the corner.
That it will give us peace or stability.
It wouldn’t.
We don’t know the details of what is to come.
I sometimes say that the reason the world works is that each of us is an idiot on different days. And that most of the time we get a reprieve because all of the bad things don’t happen simultaneously.
The world is an overthinker’s nightmare because we want to know what’s around the corner so that we can fool ourselves into thinking we can control it.
We can’t even open a produce bag most of the time. We get irritated at the bag, as if we can’t collectively tell the people who make them to stop with the nonsense.
Looking at the night sky, enjoying it, but also nodding in acknowledgment that some days we have to just shake our heads at the decisions we make.
If we can just find the right meme to mock someone, everything might be okay.
If you’re waiting on life to be simpler or less distracted to do something, you’ll turn gray waiting for your fingers to stop tapping. Doubly true Is the folly of waiting for someone else to appropriate time. Time is the currency we use to pay for our decisions.
Someone smart told me that they couldn’t stand the phrase, “Stop and smell the roses.” Take the time to grow them. Or go outside where they grow and meet them on their own terms. We’re all too busy making money in order to buy the flowers, something that’s available in abundance all around us.
You can go to Disneyland and bring back the memories. You’re still going to have to find a way to enjoy washing the dishes that stack up on the counter, in the sink, or in the unloaded dishwasher.
I made it clear that jumping out of an airplane wasn’t to test my fear. I never felt a moment of apprehension because it’s an entirely safe act. Yet these things spray gray across things that should be as colorful as a prism’s rainbow. You don’t get a taste of the diverging universe that’s out there for you without thinking about the million mundane ways that you focus on ridiculous nonsense.
I say these things as a hypocrite in the truest sense of the word. I also say them as a tourist, visiting places but staying at the airport.
There are some intangible pleasures in life that go beyond explanation. For some, it’s watching their children become independent and creative people. Others sit by a campfire and watch the tendrils of smoke ascend to the night sky. A cup of pungent coffee, one that triggers the strength to help you avoid using a skillet on your coworkers.
Whatever your fjrudje might be, find a way to give it priority. Finite time and a limited reservoir of energy compel you to put in the time and effort for the things that matter to you. It’s hard enough living in a modern world and pushing away the distractions.
Fjrudje is a word I created, one based on an imaginary European language. It is supposed to be almost unpronounceable. Much like the alchemy and complexity of the feelings and thoughts you deal with during a normal day. I often refer to the lemon moments, the moments between the Kodak moments that most of us associate with a good life. 98% of your life fills the margins between the bookmarks that are worthy of qualifying as great memories.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 