After a couple of wrongly directed shares (by me) and some tweaking of my tech abilities, I have a new plan. I am here sending a link to my website. If you want to check it out, please do and help yourself to a like if you think you want to read more as it comes along. I will otherwise not be sending links or shares. We all need a little peace and freedom from the hard-sell. So, here y’are, do what you will or don’t what you will… I am doing some further tweaking of the website in the immediate future and no advertising will appear, no information will be collected. I need to coordinate the update with a July cycle date. From that point forward it will be just me, no Google, no Facebook, nada

robertontheair.com

April 25, 2022

A dreary, chilly rain day today. I got my groceries, produce, fruit and the like. The young feller at Carl’s Produce had an odd look today, his hair was like Don King’s. I can see he is a handsome cuss underneath that shock of hair. I like the way shock works in this sentence, it has two meanings. His hair (being like King’s) is a bit of a shock and it resembles corn shocks. He was in a chatty mood and made some fun small talk about me ‘not having too many wild parties’. My first instinct was to say, “Well, I am an old man and I have a limited number of orgasms left. I have to make sure each one counts. Do you want to have a wild party and share one with me?” I am almost of an age that I could get away with that but still a few years away. As I reflect on that, I am realizing that it would make a good line in something I was writing. Maybe I could work it into ‘Dead Batteries’ at some point?

Writing waits for me, the guitar waits for me, the piano waits for me. The instruments are lonely machines and long for human touch. I am a poor companion, having many more things to do than practice or play. My neurosis keep me from the typewriter keyboard, so writing and completed books are lonely for human touch as well. I am sure that other musician/writers feel as I do about their abilities and delay the exercise of same. There are some who have healthy egos and clear assessment skills. Those who do can accept their imperfections and promote the skill that they do have. We unhealthy ego kids just shrink back from the keys or the strings. Maybe the same goes for sports folk? I don’t know. I am wandering, lost, unfocused.

I am wandering from thought to thought like those who crossed the desert a few thousand years ago. Banished, lost in the desert, camel free? Nah. I bet they had camels for the journey—- I hear that their shoes did not wear out and neither did their clothing. They must have been riding camels, then. I guess their forty years were according to a variation on the calendar we use today. It was a lunar calendar, best I can determine and had 12 months but with an extra month thrown in every two or three years to sort of catch-up with the sun. The lunar calendar had months of approximately 29 and a half days so things went off a little from time to time. Hence, the ‘lunisolar’ calendar came into being but that wasn’t the one Moses and co. were using… it didn’t develop until a long time after the wandering. Anyway, they gave up the wandering on November 1, according to a bible study website I perused. Since November 1 could occur on different days, then when the hell did they come in outta the heat?” But, as I say, I am wandering a little.

Interesting.

I guess the wandering ones had some complaints to air whilst they were riding or walking. Mose-y probably had to listen to a lot of whining. I am whining today. It is a rainy day and I am not in the desert but I am whining anyway. I am whining because I had a chat with a city representative about the conditions next door. There is a rooming house being operated there and I am not happy. Folks come and go, cars block the laneway and there is a large trailer full of construction and other garbage that is just parked in front of the place. The guys don’t make a lot of noise, they don’t have record players or tvs, I guess. Thus far, no gunfire or unsavory women hanging around. Why am I complaining? I am complaining because it is illegal and I don’t like all the folks wandering out front or coming and going. That disturbs my peace. Too bad, I guess. The chat I had with the city guy was not encouraging. Basically, he said, “There is nothing we can do because when we knocked on the door or called the owner, no one responded”. So. There you have it. Rooming houses are illegal but it doesn’t matter, you can operate one as long as you don’t answer the door or the phone. I wish Moses were here to open his complaint department. He had connections. He could get things done.

It is a rainy day and stuff bothers me. The rain, I can deal with. There is nothing to do for rain but to carry an umbrella. No problem. The rooming house and garbage situations are insoluble, so I can ignore that. At least, I think I can. Maybe I can put up an illegal hedge that obscures the trailer? After all, it’s legal as long as I don’t answer the phone or the door. The wandering in the desert does trouble me though. I am off course and have been for a while. Divorce and getting fired from the church threw me a little. I lost my camel. My shoes are worn out and my clothes don’t fit anymore. Covid and the world’s governmental response to same have left me stranded, confused, lost. We were locked in, now we are unlocked but there was a heck of a lot of back and forth about how to proceed. No one wanted to commit to a plan and follow through because everyone was complaining. Even at this point I don’t have a clear idea what way is forward, what path is safe or if there even is a true safe.

and orgasms? Well, let me tell ya…

Music and Musing

Y’see, the problem about staying away from Facebook is: I don’t have a place to put my random thoughts about things. I miss that. Today, I am sitting, thinking, superficially drinking a cup of tea and musing about playing music. How nice it would be if someone tied some tech to the keyboards of an organ. If you could see your toe, heading for a pedal…wow. That would make the learning so much faster. If the music were somewhat animated on the sheet, for a more interactive reading? Wow. For example, if a convenient fingering showed up as you played, a bar ahead perhaps, or the chord was identified above or even on the staff? Wow. Learning and putting it all together would be much faster. Still have to learn, still have to practice but the connections would be so much faster.

I could invent this very thing, I suppose but that would mean learning a whole lot of stuff I have no interest in any more. At the very least, I believe I have no interest. The truth is, I do have the interest but don’t feel that there is time enough left in living to be doing more stuff. Time. There is not time to make a thing faster anymore. At 72, the 10 years it takes to learn most stuff is something I may or may not have. Isn’t there something else more important to gain from the 10 years than an ability? A thing there would be no time to use? My remaining years might better be spent just living, connecting with folks, eating dinner, sleeping comfortably, cleaning up. That is life. The stuff and nonsense part is for the young. It is up to them to invent, change, experiment. After a while, it behooves to just live —- the way a pussycat does.

Or not. Maybe, the just living part I speak of IS the wasting of time by inventing airplanes and automobiles and telephones and organ pedal monitors. It could be that the way a human being ‘just lives’ is to move from one ‘invention’ to another in our quest to re-shape the world. It is illusion that the cow and the pussycat have reached peace, stability? They only eat, drink, reproduce and rest comfortably. They play, yes. They feel, yes. They do the things humans do but they are satisfied? No need to develop language, they can communicate. It’s good enough. The cows of a millenium ago communicated the same way. Good enough. Cow and/or pussycat Nirvana. For humans, our Nirvana is not a present thing, ever? Our state of being at peace is or can be almost alien. It is a goal for some, some reach it. Swami Watchamacallim, he did. The most of us always find dissatisfaction with something and make goals of changing, attaining, moving. The damn living room should be blue, not taupe. Let’s get to it.

I wrote a short poem about birds but it wasn’t about birds.  The poem was about perspectives and points of view.  How does a bird feel about flying? I know how flying looks from my point of view but how about the bird’s?  Isn’t flying a work-a-day thing for birds?  Typical diary entry: Got up.  Went looking for food all morning, then went to Liz’s.  She was busy with some other guy.  He was acting all macho and we had a little fight. Liz was unimpressed.  Flew up onto the wire and watched humans for a little while.

Yes. 

There are other perspectives.  Suppose, you were Vladimir Putin?  What would that be like?  Typical diary entry:  Got up.  Realized yet again how great I am. I fairly glow! Tried to imagine there was anyone else for a few moments. Nope.  Went to the mirror, still beautiful. Prostate unruly.  This will not happen.  Prostate will die! Send prostate to Ukraine!

Yes.

Point of view.

I got into a facebook fight with some knucklehead. I use the word knucklehead because that is what this guy is. I take knucklehead to mean, ‘a person more familiar with violence than reason’. Every statement he makes is couched in terms of violence or negatives. He lives and breathes fear. He made a sweeping statement about living conditions in Chicago or Baltimore or New York. I took exception, because spreading such a biased statement tends to promote the very conditions he decried. If you tell people that Chicago ‘hums at night with the warm sound of scattered gunfire’, then folks believe that and only warily travel to Chicago. I have been in and out of Chicago many, many times. I never once heard a single shot. Yeah, the papers are full of southside killings and shootings but the truth is: Chicago is a city of three million or so and there are 400 or so shootings in a month there. Yeah that is bad. The shootings are bad but Chicago does not equate to a violent cesspool exactly. Perspective. In a given month, two million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand and six hundred people were not shot.

We are being force-fed a steady diet of, ‘A little bit of everything-all of the time’. (Bo Burnham) The diet is shaped in all forms of fear with an occasional croissant of something hopeful.  I am not sure that is healthy.  Perspective. Our ablity to process and distribute information is incredible and incredibly off-balance. Yes, some facts are not good.  Trouble stalks the living in all areas of the globe.  The rainforest is dying and burning.  The ice caps are melting.  Plastic chokes the ocean. Greta Thunberg cries out and Donald Trump looms and overshadows the 2024 landscape. The evil rich pollute the air, the water, the culture.  Some take all and there is little left for the many. Every day, as more truth leaks out, things look worse.

Yeah.

All manner of doom awaits, pokes its head out from some darkened alley. Yet, look around you.  Mostly normal.  Mostly things go as they go.  Mostly, the birds fly quickly this way, then that.  There is a bit of single-use plastic clutter.  The weather is changing, I can feel it, see it.  Folks are more brusque, perhaps?  my ex-husband’s aunt died. (She was a dear woman). My ears are severely damaged from an upper respiratory infection that took some weeks to clear, and?  My Social Security cheque cleared the bank.  I am moving forward on my semi-autobiographical hodge podge book.  My dear music friends are returning to the scene.  There is, maybe for the time being, enough to eat. I made brownies last night.

Perspective.

Does the bird even consider how majestic his ability to fly is? No. He is on the way to get something to eat. Does a man (old man in this case) even consider how majestic walking on two feet or considering the rainbow or birds is? No. He is on his way to get something to eat.

Yeah.

It looks bad, is bad out there. Thus was it ever, thus shall it ever be. I need to know but I need to live as well. Cowering before the television and fearing the illusion of an OK Corral Chicago or a rogue Vladimir Putin or a lying Trump or the savings-draining cost of everything? Gotta let it go at some point and do what I can, enjoy the life that is. I am not a bird, I can’t know what a bird feels. A bird is not me, can’t know how I feel. Putin is not me, I am not he. The earth is turning, orbiting the sun, flying off together with planets and stuff toward some unknown destiny. We can think about it but we can’t fear it, we can’t know it. I guess fear is a useless piece of floating plastic junk. The best thing to do is pick up the junk, toss it in the can and carry on.

My birds have been busy,

are resting now.

Earlier,

there was buzzing of roof tops

in a fast game played

before the day got too hot.

The birds play,

I have work

and do not.

I call these my birds

and watch but don’t feed them.

They seem to flow

past the window

on whim,

in patterns undisturbed

by drudgery’s rythym.

I finish work,

they do not.

To wear feathered freedom

must be lovely,

don’t you think,

by magic to catch air

and rise slow

then sink

or swoop to

some puddle for

a gifted drop to drink?

Well.

You might say the bird

is at work

his life long,

chirruping and singing that

‘wake up world!’

song.

If you ask,

“It’s a living,”

he’d say with a yawn.