Oh, dear me. I have complicated my life in ways that are not the least bit necessary. That realization started with my website experiment. I tried to make it cheaper because it seems silly to have one in the first place. WhY? I am not selling my writing there, just parking it somewhere that folks can access and bypass Facebook. Y’see, Facebook has some wicked fine print on ownership of your posts…I haven’t got a lawyer and haven’t been able to figure the legalese out. I am not satisfied that what I post on Facebook remains my intellectual property. So…I decided to keep the website, change it to a free one and then carry on as before. Turns out that it is more convoluted to change things up than I thought. I re-decided to keep the website as a personal website and pay the lower rate. Now, my domain name points to the wrong page? See what I mean? I have complicated things unnecessarily. All of this has happened because I am bored at home in lockdown? Sorta.

I discover that a lot of what else I am doing in my living is complicating the process of born-live-die in frustrating ways. Writing and music are other examples that further complicate the personal website debacle. As to writing. I did do it. I did write that full length novel. I did finish an entire book of poetry. I also spend every day whipping out at least a thousand words that fly up into my blog or get parked in my journal. Well and good. That works ok, no expectations of coherence or depth from the journal or blog. I can just write and leave it. The trouble comes when I start looking at my other writing, the poetry, the novel and realize how much work I have to do making it ring true, tell a meaningful story, entertain, edify…Shiza.

The music? Well now, it is almost comically bad. I sit at the piano and disgust myself, I sing and that damned E4 eludes me every time. I hit it high, I hit it low. Sigh. I am certainly a regular Mrs. Miller or a Florence Foster Jenkins. Lots of work needs to be done in the Bright Tunes department if I am to produce a recording or a performance of any value beyond, “Hey, Aunt Liz is going to play a little something she has been working on for the last ten years.” These things are complications because I want music, writing and creative things to have value as more than a personal exercise in keeping myself busy. This here Velveteen rabbit wants to be real and real is way hard work. I don’t have the time left for the work, I procrastinated and spent a heck of a lifetime trying to be someone other than the person I am.

Sigh. Here I am, now… A potential novel ahead of me yet, as some 70,000 words sit there and await redrafting. A potential album of music is sitting there, uncompleted, unrehearsed. From while to while, I pick the things up and thrash away at them again, energized to complete something useful but each renewed vigour day is a day to realize how sad the work is, yet. It is difficult to accept, what with believing that I don’t have value if I don’t succeed in the endeavors I chose. At seventy, I still labour to accept myself just as he is. I am a man of ambition but I am also, a common man. I have built a series of lop-sided birdhouses that are the kinds of things simply overlooked. When staring at my reflection and asking ‘who is fairest’, I still see that bloody Snow White! She is showing me how little I have accomplished, how much remains to do, how I still put the hard work of changing into what I would wish to be away to the side.

Actually, it may not be possible to ‘be anything you want to be, go anywhere you want to go, do anything you want to do — if you try hard enough.’ There are limits. Was Sonny Bono a good songwriter? No, not really. Did he try hard enough? um…Yeah, yeah he did. Did he achieve something? Well, yes. He became Aunt Liz at the piano and a lucky Aunt Liz. What he did not become was greater than he was. We have ourselves in our own way. Ourselves are formidable obstacles. Ourselves are our limits.

I am not suggesting that we should not bother to try, to make attempts at something we consider more than, better than. No. We need to get up off the couch. The thing is this: Expecting ourselves to be more, to be better — criticizing ourselves when we don’t succeed… Those aren’t useful motivators. All they do is measure you downward and take the joy of doing away from you. I think I understand now that dropping a negative objective view is the best way to get your job done. Don’t listen to the little coach voice screaming at you, “You can do better! You must do better!” You can still be realistic but the thing is to drop the self-consciousness and just do what you want, be who you like without expectations. I don’t guess that a thing is pure if doing it to perfection is the only focus. Expectation of perfection is what complicates your life. Remembering that you have weaknesses is not a bad thing but allowing the weaknesses to take away your joy of living is the foolish part. Funny thing is, I have the feeling that those who just accept themselves as they are — also accept others more readily as being who and what they are. “Mmm-hmmm”, I can hear somebody’s mama say.

I opened the New York Times today. No pictures of a guy in a red baseball cap golfing, no re-broadcast tweets, no Eric, no Donald J. Jr. … no Giuliani. Mike Pompeo has disappeared! No raucous rally photos! No effigy Democrats being burned… Not a word about Qanon. Kayleigh McEnany, gone. Lindsey Graham, quiet. No pictures of slack-jowl Mitch. (sorry, I slipped into the mode of the last four years for a second…)

‘…Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the
sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and
somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and
somewhere children shout,
but there is no joy in MUDVILLE — mighty
Casey has struck out!’

(Earnest Lawrence Thayer–Casey At The Bat)

Our long dark hour has passed. Now, we can get down to the other tragic dramas that have been playing in the background. The colour has almost returned. Maybe, it will be ok?

I am here, parked in my spot, enjoying an Everything Bagel and a cup of tea. Simon is still as gorgeous as ever, the young women are still kind, the tea is still too hot for drinking. The surface looks normal but remained so during this whole affair. Things may not be all good. In fact, I fear things are quite bad. That life is easier to endure, easier to enjoy without the boorish ex-president’s endless chatter is well on it’s way to being proven. It only took a few weeks for him to give up. Now, with a little air left in the room, a little air that hasn’t been consumed by The Donald, we have the petty bickering of Canada’s would-be rulers to deal with. It promises to be a lot easier, though they do share certain ideas with the foolish ones to our south.

How and why conservatism became a desperate position from which to angle, cheat, lie your way into government is for those who know things to discuss. I have my opinion but it is just opinion, not knowledge. I really should keep my mouth shut. I am dismayed that leadership, doing the right thing for the many, has drifted to the side. I am become cynical, more cynical than I have been.

Fueled by the machinations of the press, who have enormous self-interest to assuage, I lost trust. Donald sold newspapers, no question. In publicizing his every tantrum, his every filthy statement, the editorial boards are almost unethical as the actions of the man himself. Most of the tweets that were twitted would never have been on endless repeat had it not been for the needs of 24hour a day news platforms, had it not been for the struggling ‘legitimate’ press, had it not been for the trainwreck fascination. We couldn’t take our eyes away and were used by all of them.

Now, the hangover. There isn’t enough raw egg and clam juice for this. Not enough alka-seltzer. It won’t be a total nightmare, we do have some peace to look forward to with the disappearance of D and co. That alone will make the sobering up a lot easier but we still have some serious nausea on the horizon. Covid is gone rampant in the U.S. and not far behind here in Canada. There is, bluntly, no plan and no hope for ever catching up with the virus in those fifty states. A vaccine can’t appear soon enough. Here, we are marching toward who knows what? At long last, Jason Kinney has seen the light. It is probably too late for Alberta. His room is still spinning and his hangover yet on the horizon.

That folks have had enough of being separated, locked down is well apparent. A fellow blatantly advertised that his restaurant in Peel region was going to remain open. Hordes of folks, maskless, muscled past the gathered press and crowded in. The police eventually came to their senses and locked the place down. That’s bad. People have had enough. We don’t have common goals, community anymore. We have desperate self-interest. We need leaders who can bring us together, make us understand that it is in all of our best interests to make the attempt to slow this thing down a while. Those potential leaders who own the podium seem to have only their political futures in mind. Someone has to take initiative, make the hard choices, do the right thing. It won’t be pleasant but it has to be done and done with integrity, with one eye on the future and the other on the rights of all. What is best for all must be on the plate. Sadly, I doubt we are going to see anything like that.

So, the Donald hangover fades into a migraine headache of epic proportion. This is pretty ordinary. That is the way life and living are. We come to the mountaintop and our first view is of a higher mountain in the distance. sigh. Can’t give up though. There is always something wonderful coming our way, too. Perhaps a bright, green and lush valley between here and there? Best of all, we don’t have the damned tweets to disrupt us for the moment. Makes me want to roll over and have another 45 winks of restful sleep. mmmmmm No, wait… perhaps I will get up and have some chocolate cake instead! Yessssss…cake!

The sweeping view
is of mixed greys,
dirty whites.
A smaller view
is warm red,
deep black.
Unremarkably,
earth turns a cold shoulder
back
toward buzzing summer,
silences the birds with
one, raised, hand.
All
is focused on a roulette,
and a bouncing,
clattering,
captured,
cold, steel ball.

Never was the world I know more peculiar than now. I am at the office (where else?). With the surrounding tall windows, I feel that I am in a small vacuum jar. The jar contains my thoughts, my loves, my breathing. The world has become very small and very large at once. I have the great outside, the wide world, the immense swarming and twinkling universe in full view beyond the glass but true, intimate contact is very sparse here, within the bell jar. The oblique contact I do have is most often electronics-based or delivered with a layer of isolation. A snack is brought to me by a person masked and gloved. The snack is contained within a disposable vessel, the idea being to keep our germy selves from polluting each other but the vessel is, itself, a threat to the existence of the planet, wild life and me. I learned all of that on Television. In this situation, I am askew as any other of us may be. What happens now? Where does this lead? When can I get channel 7 back again? How do I get rid of the extra weight? How are you doing?

Once was a time that it would not be imagined for a U.S. President to resist handing over the keys after an election. It was unimaginable for him (a white him, because none else could be president, of course) to use power more for disruption of government than for control of government. Once was a time. Once was a time I could walk freely amongst the wild folk and breathe their exhalations. I feared not the intubation. Once was a time I could rise easily from a sitting or kneeling position and not grunt or be unsteady a whit. Once was a time. And…once was a time I could stand in a large body of folk, singing my lungs out. Maybe I was on pitch, maybe not. Maybe I was on tempo, maybe not. Maybe, maybe, but I was alive. I was in the moment of the manufacture of soundscape. I was creating. I was nearly fully human.

All of the rest of the current noise was here, way back then. It was more parcelled out and pigeon-holed. There was room. My guess is that there was more defined time for a this, a time for a that. Pete Seeger was alive. The Beatles had become artists and not just pop stars, working the room. Now, The Beatles are half dead. Pete Seeger is dead, art is on hold and we are left to figure out if it can ever be made again.

Once was a day that people seemed kind, a little. They used art to reveal love and balance. They spoke beyond the flash of sex appeal, smoothness. They often spoke without weapons, excepting the legendary facist-killing banjos. People got nasty to each other but then set that aside for thanksgiving dinner. I could watch ‘It’s a Wonderful LIfe’ and ‘Auntie Mame’ at Christmas time and not feel used by Pepsi-cola or Coke. You could almost trust the news to be more altruistic than narcissitic. The talking heads were earning their keep, certainly but they dealt in a modicum of veracity. The corporations were perhaps a bit less mendacious. Entertainment dealt less with the bare chest, the bare behind, the spectacular auto crash, the blood, the violence. Lord, how I miss The Beverly Hillbillies! (well…wait a minute, y’all – Donna Douglas was pretty titty!) There was a time for political battle, a time for release. I could pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV without a complete dread filling my heart.

In the background, during those good? old days, a long history of deprivation, slavery, human fault. There were folks badly used and genocide aplenty if you looked hard enough. The garbage floated in the river along with the shit. When a late 17th century or early 18th cruise boat overturned on the Thames, many died not by drowning but by ingestion of the water, exposure to disease. Sigh. Bad crap has always been with us. Cheap diamonds, too. And, the morally poor have always been with us. We have always been our own worst enemy. Hitler fades into Stalin fades into Quaddafy, into Hugo Chavez, into a remembrance of Genghis Khan, of Ulysses Grant… It has always been so. If we had an honestly written history of the time, my bet is that Neanderthal wasn’t exactly a kind, moral being. Maybe they couldn’t get channel seven, either.

Sigh. Sigh, I say. The past, good and bad? Gone. Gone for a while? Gone for a quick coffee, then to return? No. No and no. The Beatles? Gone for good. Jesus? Gone for good. Forget it, Mom…he won’t bring back a little pleasant gift. No roses at the end of living’s rainbow I am afraid. Hitler? Wellll…don’t know about that one for certain. He might come back, he might be here now.

Here is the great difference between what has been, gone and returned and our day. What’s peculiar about our world of the present day is this: Sure, the cool stuff and the bad stuff is here, will be, will come back, will go away forever. We have something different. We have a thing (not atom bombs) that fundamentally changes all. Our newest deadly problem is the widespread emission of electromagnetic radiation and the information/misinformation that is wedged onto it.

Yep. Captain Sees All, knows all. The television screen has attached itself to the mobile telephone which attached itself to our right hand and goes everywhere with us. It goes to the bathroom, the bedroom, the boardroom. On the screen is a constant flow of vulnerable noise. We have a room with a view. We have wide-screen and high definition. It’s easy to change the view and difficult to understand the difference between what is and what Photoshop or Paintbrush has done. The colours overwhelm, the sound is a fever pitch scream. Every note is Coloratura without colour. We have video from all corners, none of it honest. None of it is true. All of it runs 24 hours each day.

The world has always been exploding. The big bang was the first of many and great excitement continues. It has always been that we are speeding through the universe at enormous pace invisibly. The sun burning at vaporizing temperature is not felt, here. The wars on the currently dark side of our planet are not seen through my bell-jar window. That is how our lives have been until this day. Widespread, you might say omnipresent digital communication/miscommunication is a new wrinkle to the exploding inevitable. We can now see beyond the peaceful neighbourhood where we rest. The place over there where somebody’s Mom and Dad are carving up more than a turkey and shouting loudly about it? That place rises up out of the screen and infects our own living room. You can’t hear blue sky and birds for the missles landing on Azerbijan. You can’t see the honest politician who graciously accepts a win or a defeat for the hair pulling orange puff-ball fight in Washington.

The extremes catch the eye. A back-lit blue lighted screen plays on, giving no peace. Our blue skies and clean water are pretty darn peaceful but compared to what’s happening on-line, get boring. Peace doesn’t make easy sense. Peace is complicated. Peace doesn’t pump up the volume much. Peace pumps down the volume. I turn away. It is much more adrenalin driving to watch folks fall and seem to drown in the flowing blood. My blood pumps hard watching George Floyd be murdered by a policeman. That is an easy or a cheap thrill. I watch that instead of a blue sky, lazy day. The blue sky is harder to understand than a cheap thrill. By ‘clueing’ in to the world, I think I am opening myself and absorbing what’s the truth but no. It is real, the things I watch but It isn’t exactly the truth. Watching the circus events in Washington, I am better informed about the nature of political life? Nah. I am only stressing myself. The more stressed I am, the less well I can live my life. I should spend some time understanding that a blue sky is right in front of me. It is right outside my window. It is there to collect my thoughts, to balance me. The blue sky needs to settle into my heart enough to allow contemplative space. The blue sky is available to all the world and you don’t need electronics to see it (unless you are blind, but that’s another story I can talk about later).

I am unable to think clearly with nothing but murder to be aware of. By gluing myself to the show I am not learning how I might best be prepared, how to approach morals or ethics. What I should do and how I should feel get lost. I am gut-reacting, I am learning the wrong lessons. The shit hits the fan and I spend more time trying to clean up than learning where the toilet paper is. I can’t sleep. I am overdriven. I get addicted. Adrenalin is addictive, blue skies are too. Blue sky is another kind of high that gets run over by Beyonce’s lastest video or That Man’s latest exploits with his sleazy lawyer.

The truth is that we have blue skies, Beyonce and sleazy lawyers. The least important of the parts is the lawyer part. We don’t always need to know what the lawyers are up to. The blue sky is not all we need. Beyonce isn’t the only type of artist. We need the adrenalin awareness but we need relief. Constant on electronics don’t mimic blue sky very well. The colour is off and it’s too damn loud anyway. The mobile phone’s tone is largely an unbalanced ringing. The 24hour glowing news channel deafens a night sky. The fires of Beyonce’s latest near-nude busyness dim the bluest skies.

I am grateful there is an ‘off’ switch. Now, the task is to move my finger toward it once in a while. Mmmm. Yeah, today I will make a pie. I will know in my background mind that this is a luxury. Some folks don’t have enough to eat. I will know in my background mind that the blue sky of this morning is fading away. I will know in my background mind that D-Trump is feverishly golfing away while his sleazy lawyers destroy faith, democracy and a few dozen bottles of Dom Perignon. I will know a lot, I guess. I will also know that I have successfully enjoyed the time I have and forgotten for a blissful moment that a dark side is rolling it’s way toward me. The dark side is always amongst us. Meh.

Whoa, there… I slept pretty late today. It is after the ninth hour! Quick! I will miss the bus of the day if I don’t hurry it up a bit. When I woke, it was to a groggy sensation of dreams being wisps that are vacuumed up by the switched on fan of a new day. You can see the little buggers and the memory of them being whisked away, one little misty puff and gone… What were they? I know they were around, I felt them, I lived in them, they were real. I know I had been dreaming intense because I was relieved and relaxed by waking up. What happened? What did I just barely escape?

This is my theory about death. When you die, no matter the method, those around you in this world will see your last breath. They will cry and carry on something awful. Some of them will say, “Gone…too soon!” Some of the folks will secretly say, “…and good riddance – what a pest!” Some will say, “Dammit! He owes me money!” Some of the people will be worker people and they will be charged with carrying your remains off for disposal or draining your essential fluids and cleaning everything up. You will be oblivious to the cold steel table and will appear to be quite comfortable with no pillow and with steel things being jabbed into you. You won’t even flinch.

You won’t know all of that is happening. It will be in your old world. You will come to in the next world. Your last world will be wisps of dreams, being vacuumed up by the fan of the new day. Your next world will be waiting and you will be ready, believing that you are just waking up. Yawn, stretch…”wow, honey..I had the strangest dream!” you will say. “It was pretty creepy. All I can remember is, I was lying on a cold steel table! Whoo-hoo, I get a chill just thinking about it but I feel rested.”

Perhaps waking into the next world will be as one wakes in a hospital, with the realization that your left leg has disappeared to the bone saw. “We couldn’t save it,” the doctor says. “The PT folks will be in to visit and explain how you will be getting along now. Things are going to be very different for you but you have been one lucky guy!” The fact will be that you were BASE jumping in the life before and had thwacked into something very immovable. You will only have wisped memories of that. The little wisps will float up and away. You will carry on the best you can with your missing leg, not knowing how lucky you truly have been.

That is living and dying. Nothing more than waking up, going about your business, falling asleep, waking up in another world again. So, it is nothing to be afraid of. It continues forever, there is no end and was no beginning. We are locked into it but it won’t hurt us. It is true that we will be hurt in our waking life, sometimes so badly that it will send us into our sleeping life in a big hurry. This will happen from time to time. It is called a ‘day-mare’. In our sleeping lives we will be suddenly thrust into the waking life, sweating and fearful. That is called a ‘night-mare’. The day and night mares only happen once in a while. Sometimes, you actually remember them. Sometimes, you can’t forget. When that happens, it is called a ‘sign’. Like from God. It’s ok. It is only God saying, “See how the whole thing works?” You can see it, briefly, then. Since this is too much news, God won’t let you see it all the time. As they say, “God won’t give you anything you cannot handle.” It’s true.

If a thing is pretty darn bad, you will wake up or fall asleep, just in time. If a thing is pretty darn good, the same process occurs. This goes on forever. That is the way of it. Science and God are just ideas to explain the whole bit. I have felt enough ‘signs’ to understand this now. So. It gives me an idea. I shall dive into living like a fully awake BASE jumper. You should do that, too. Feel the wind, feel the speed, relish it. The thwacks are always there and will catch up with you one day. It won’t hurt very long before you end up in the next world. It’s cool. There is always another day’s jump ahead of us. One jump ahead for each one behind. We will be off and jumping while the world of yesterday’s lifeless body gets carted over to the heap.

The folks who say, “It’s all good.” are quite correct. I would go one step further and say, “It’s perfect.” I say that each day when they hand me my tea and bagel at Starbucks. That’s where I am headed now. MMMM

That is a somewhat repetitive number…20. 20/2020. It is smooth, though. Sounds smooth. I had a smooth event today. I got the lawn and garden waste put at the curb late yesterday and it was picked up by a truck today. The lawn and garden waste was smoothly gathered at the very end of the leaf blowing down cycle. No further work must be done until spring. The execution of raking, packing and shipping off the waste was smooth. Not a hitch. Satisfying.

I shaved today, to celebrate but the shaving was not smooth. I am looking like a crusty sort of Rip Van Winkle. I have covid hair, covid weight, covid attitude. Sigh. That’s enough, covid! Had it. You and Donald Trump can go fly a kite. When you go, tell Donald to let go of the White House or you won’t be able to take to the air!

My worst fears are realizing, coalescing, coming true. Nasty, dirty people are wandering loose all over the television screen. Rudy Giuliani is melting and making a mess. Congress (particularly the senate) is collapsing into sycophancy, lies, cheating. It’s bad, folks. There is nothing now to do but to shut off the news until after the fires are out. That is the only way to enjoy this spectacular, clear November day.

So. I turned off the news. As yet, no Zombie Covid Folk are staggering down the street, coughing and spreading germs. As yet, the border to the U.S. is closed and Trump is holed up in the White House. I have no doubt that he has broken up some of the antiques that Jackie Kennedy secured and is using the boards to nail shut the front door. (Ha. Ha. I should tell you a story about nailing shut the door. Remind me to do that sometime.) We have a week or so before the Zombies start dribbling down the street, so I am going to enjoy my tea.

Next week, I will take up position in the WalMart parking lot and watch the cheaters carry big-screen tv’s out instead of just groceries. People is what they is and they is bad news sometimes. If it weren’t for eating minks and breathing on other people afterword, then resisting mask wearing and marching in the streets waving guns and irrationality about, we would be ok. Sigh. I intend to be ok. Mask on, window rolled up outside WalMart, watching people squeal with the thrill of being ridiculous.

No office today. I am rethinking the gadding about. Yes, while there is no vaccine and no effective treatment, it’s best to stay in and tough it through. I can work from my kitchen table and go for walks to get out of the house. The walks are actually a brilliant thing, I am getting horrifically fat from the moping about, waiting for a brighter day. I am getting fat, I am ornery but I am ok. I sincerely wish that most of the rest of the world could be at least that, at least ok. Some are really not ok and that is sad.

There is an awful lot of sad news. The news media world is full of the stress. It’s hyper drive bad news. Every corner of our planet home appears to be fraying dangerously. It’s a bit much to digest. While I don’t think turning your back on the news is the best thing, there comes a time when you have to. There is only a bit that an individual can reasonably be expected to do about the mess of life. There is only a bit we can fix. We can try but we have to save ourselves and saving ourselves means to put on our own oxygen mask before we can help the person next to us.

What is your oxygen mask? Mine is in writing, singing, playing piano, reading, eating donuts, baking more food to eat…having a lil’ drinky poo. I can and should modify all that behaviour. I can do it but some times, not very well. I can do other things that are practical and useful but not so easy. I can do things around the house in a fix-up vein but it gets a bit too emotional for me to do a lot. When the pipe I just fixed looks crooked, has a rough or uneven appearance…I beat the heck out of myself. From time to time, I have had to call in a professional to finally get it right. That’s embarrassing. I am not terrible, just a little less precise than I would prefer. My plumbing doesn’t leak but it doesn’t look good. Sigh. Since I have unrealistically high standards, I worry when the pipe leans to the left instead of standing straight up. Some folk just carry on, though not exactly oblivious, necessarily. Some folk are more forgiving of their failings. That is their oxygen mask, the more easily satisfied approach, the more “well, we did what we could” approach. They is smart cookies.

I used to believe that being easily satisfied was taking the lazy approach. Maybe that isn’t true. Maybe, my thinking that in order to be satisfied, all things must be in order and smartly done is faulty. Can you imagine how delicious life would be if, for example, the car wheel fell off – you have no money or skill for repairs and you are able to get out of the vehicle, continue along your way and be grateful the thing didn’t roll over and kill you in the process. You could smile the whole time, finish telling the story, laugh and not even be upset next morning when you are late for work because you had to walk.

What a blissful time it would be with no worry, no fear of the unknown, no reticence toward the future. If you were able to really enjoy things just as they are, how lovely. Things will always be in disarray, the plumbing is always going to lean a little, politics will be scary, grandma will die, the cat won’t come home one day. That is just the way of it. No one, no matter how well they prepare or how hard they try, is immune to living.

Ha. Now I am thinking I should go to the office, have a high calorie snack and a tea, take reasonable precautions but do it anyway. I guess the idea is ‘reasonable precautions’… is that the trick of it? to understand what reasonable is? Ha. I am reasonalby fat, that much is certain and I will reasonably gain more weight, that, too is certain. I am fat and one day, I will be reasonable about my eating and exercise habits. I will repair the fatness. The plumbing is reasonably accomplished but I am going to do it over. It’s reasonable to expect that needs to be done. The stress about all this is what has to go.

That I should accept what is and work with it, not fuss about it…that much is not certain but is necessary. I need oxygen first, though.

I am, where else? at the office. I am excited because the book, Buster L’Orange – The Biography of an Ordinary Man, is nearing a final draft status. I’m not sure if I should release the chapters/sections as I finish them or maybe hold them back a bit. Maybe, I could finish a section ahead and have something in the bank each time I put a chapter out? That way, I can keep momentum rolling. Ha. Maybe.

It appears that the most successful way of putting out my art is on Facebook. That is a shame but so be it. I will then have to exlude some of my friends because I know they won’t understand or might find what I am doing objectionable. That is a shame but I don’t want to court controversy, it is just art. The same thing is true about my piano ramblings. The same thing is true about my guitar ramblings. I should just put them out there and try to tailor my audience so that people aren’t exposed to something that may embarrass them. What can I say? I am an ordinary Grandad. That’s all.

I have argued back and forth about Facebook, with myself and with others. Yes, it is a terrible, wild west kind of forum where people speak, misunderstand and willfully hate. That is too bad and I find myself too caught up in it. I end up being hurt by the lack of understanding and the far-right dismissal of civility. That’s my burden and I have to look away so that I can reap the rewards of having an audience. It is of particular use in the time of Covid, to have an audience. I am not a great artist but I am an artist. The point of art, the reason we do it , is to communicate. How well we communicate is always an issue but the attempt is always necessary.

So, I am back (until the next blow-up exchange of hat

Full nude,
he was found, butt down
and bleeding in the barberry.
Fearing he’d fallen,
maybe striking the flat part of the roof,
at hospital, they ordered x-rays
as proof of unbroken bone.
He lived alone
and ‘they’ were the cops.

Anonymous callers,
Saturday’s last hour,
each relayed the same odd tune,
“With his arms stretched out there,
some Asshole lies bare
on a balcony, welcoming moon!”

By Sunday, the whisper sound,
of pew gossip theory
made it’s way through town.
“How in the heck
did he land on the ground?”
and,
“Why was he up there, late,
fooling around?”

Monday, ‘X’ was unconscious still,
when Caretaker Bill
came to brief the police,
“You missed this-here torn paper piece,
while attending that concussion,
it just might illuminate further discussion.”

The captain, curious, read:

“When moon waxes gibbous,
lie face-up outside.
It’s gravity’s pull can tumesce us,
the same thing happens with tide.”

Young Lady, that skirt is mighty short! Ha. I believe the dress that my young neighbour wears today is called a ‘sheath’. It is a tube-like bit of apparel in knit fabric of red colour. The red is not fire-engine, not wine, it is moderate red. Just red. In combination with the over-dress or long-tailed open jacket of a medium black and the heavy leotards of the same, she looks elegant. It is ok that the skirt ends right about there. She is not vulgar. She is casually elegant, go-anywhere elegant. She is going somewhere.

I am not going anywhere. I am in my thin cotton housecoat, pyjamas and socks. I am plain. I am ordinary. I have no colour scheme, no contrasting textures. I am not elegant. Still, I am observing from the elegance of my ‘solid-wood’ dining-table and one of it’s padded and beautifully fabric-covered chairs. I’ve my bits and bytes at the ready, my back-lit screen is cautiously optimistic. My pyjamas are a sort of cover-all and very discreet. My robe is open, as her over-dress is open. Neither of us are vulgar. I notice my neighbour as she slips into her little red car and goes on about the business of her day. She, probably, does not notice me.

How much of what is around us deserves our attention? Are the comings and goings of my neighbours, imagination’s property? Should I/we spend energy noticing things that appear to have no import? Should we see and not note, go on about our focused lives? Is it a waste of time to stop and see the red of a moderate rose when we have work to do? (Ha. I should call my neighbour ‘Moderate Rose’. That is a good name for her.)

My dear Moderate Rose, I know you cannot hear but I ask you to forgive me. I have drifted into a short story about you and it is not your fault. I was sort of minding my own business until your world collided with mine so briefly. Our circles became tangent for a moment. I was avoiding my day and your, possibly more interesting day piqued me. In consideration of what I took to be my mundane day ahead, I was ready to drift. This is likely not the best thing. I am not getting anywhere, not getting anything done by conjecture about you. I have started with a discussion of your wardrobe and will probably continue to imagination of what your day will be, thoughts of where you might be going, consideration of your goals and relative accomplishments.

Your goals are none of my business, they will likely not affect mine. My imaginations about you are certainly pleasant but the inner voice that tries so hard to drive me toward my goals disallows all this distraction. We argue a bit but mostly… I agree that allowing distraction, imagination, day-dream to interfere with my business at hand will delay the process. A fella can’t get much done when a steaming teacup full of ideas drifts into reach. So. I stand up. I pick up the breakfast dishes, carry them to the waiting sink for a quick wash. Drop any leftover waste (not much these days) into the bin and head off to the shower. There is much to do today and Moderate Rose will have to wait if I am to get anything done at all.