Funny stuff. Some naughty stuff. Of course. I was reminiscing about hospital situations I have been in. At the same time, I was realizing that I have been in hospital a number of times in my life. I suppose the same is true of others? Yeah, I guess so. My first episode, other than the original and long forgotten awakening, was to have my tonsils removed so that I would have fewer infections. In those ancient days, that was a primary reason for tonsillectomy. I suppose (by checking with Dr. Google) that it is still a primary reason. In any event, there I was in the days of an ether drip for anesthetic. I remember a great deal about it. The ether leaves a strange flavour in your mouth and gives you a delightful experience of being ‘away’ for a while. It is not unlike sniffing glue. When I was being returned from my little blue heaven, my first awareness was of sitting on the edge of the bed with a nurse giving me ice cream for my throat scratchiness. My mom and dad wondered if there was a special diet requirement and the doctor assured them that I could have anything I wanted. On the way home, I asked for potato chips and my parents were horrified. Haha.

My more recent hospital visits are less well chronologically remembered but no less amusing. When my gall stones shifted and knocked me off my feet, I rode via ambulance to our local hospital. The ambulance attendants were so good looking and so very friendly. One fellow was a bit touchy feely and very kind, very handsome in his little ambulance outfit. He patted me on the shoulder and was very interested in how I was feeling. I had a nice ride. After arrival at the emergency room, I was placed on a gurney and the fellows were interviewing me for hospital triage. My handsome saviour was ticking off the boxes on a sheet and came to the ‘relationship status’ box. “Are you married?” “Yes.” “Where shall we contact your spouse?” “He is at work, right now…”. My last statement caused the handsome young fella to blanch, visibly. I could almost hear his inner voice saying, “Oh, my God! I touched a homosexual in an intimate sort of way!” Haha. He became distant, a bit detached.

During that same E.R. visit, while I lay on my bed with the privacy curtain drawn and the morphine drip in, a fellow was brought in and placed in the next cubicle. “Ow, ow, wow..” he repeated, over and over ad nauseum. He just got louder and louder, with the nurses in attendance. They pleaded with him, trying to make him understand that his tension in reaction to the pain was causing his pain to be greater. One nurse cautioned that it wasn’t possible to give him anything for relief until they knew what was causing the problem. He settled a bit, then returned to the loud complaining. His spouse was urging him not to upset the other patients, “..please, they are going to take care of you. You are going in immediately for ultra sound testing. Try not to upset the other folks in here, you are really howling!” Within minutes or less, he was whisked away for his test and returned almost as quickly. The doctor marched right in to give the result. “owwwww…ow..wow!” “Please, try to be quiet… you have an aortic aneurism and we will have to do surgery as soon as possible.” The fellow quieted a bit and said, “So, what? I have to come back in a week or something?” The doctor replied, “Oh, no..it has to be done right now. We don’t have a surgery available here, so the ambulance is being readied. You are going to Detroit and will be having surgery in twenty minutes time!” The fellow became extremely quiet, then said, “Oh.” I didn’t hear another sound from him after that.

On the day of my surgery to remove the gall stones, my brother came to assist. It was a day surgery and I was to be released as soon as the anesthetic wore off. Good! While lying in a stupor in recovery, I peacefully checked out my surroundings. I could see I was lying in a row with several other persons. One older fellow next to me on the right, a young and very attractive guy in the bed to my left. The attractive guy was out cold, having probably only recently been wheeled there. I was in a groggy haze and the fellow to my right was a bit better. One nurse came to check on our progress and was quite pleased. “Oh, here you are back again, you two!” She said. The older fellow started chatting with her and asked, “So how long have you been a nurse, forty years or so?” I started to laugh and the nurse came back with, “Okay, I can see that you two are going to be trouble! Here, I thought it was going to be an easy day…”

When my mother in law was descending into dementia, she became quite entertaining. I loved the time I spent caring for her, taking her to doctor appointments, etc. She had many small strokes over a few years time and was being treated at the Transient Ischemic Attack clinic at hospital. TIA was on the left side of the outpatient room and the orthopaedic clinic on the right side. We sat waiting to be seen and she marveled at the folks and their cast arrangements. Each person headed in to orthopaedics with a more and more elaborate device. One woman had an arm fixed at a funny position, almost above her head. She also walked with the aid of a crutch, hobbling all the way. Mum looked at this in amazement and said to me, “She is in BAD shape!”

Ah, the good ol’ days.

Slip slidin’ through and past the ‘dog days’ of summer. The days named so because of the position of Sirius, the Dog Star. Isn’t that interesting? I used to think that it meant the days when the dogs get so hot and tired that they just lie in and be lazy in whatever shade there is. Both explications of ‘the dog days of summer’ work, don’t they? They are equally telling but mine is a bit more colourful? Ha. I am in my ‘dog days’. I have work to do that I am avoiding with just a tad of procrastination. I have a serious talent in the area of procrastination. This fact was pointed out in the ‘teacher remarks’ area of my kindergarten report card. I have kept the trait alive, these many years.

These many years, I am a procrastinator and a perfectionist. The simplest things to learn and know of yourself are the hardest to own. I am trying to own them, at this late point in life, in order that I may move forward and accomplish something I can value.

These two simple faults are the most pressing at times, they create the most anxiety. These two simple faults are the easiest to misunderstand as well. Procrastination is not laziness. Perfectionism is not elitism. Procrastination, at the root, is fear. I think most of us believe it is an act of laziness but fear is the driver. Laziness is a dog in the shade. Laziness is willfully walking through the flower bed instead of around it. Laziness is tossing a paper cup on the ground instead of in the trash can, three feet away. Laziness is leaving the lights on when you go to another room and know you aren’t coming back. Procrastination is avoiding and surrendering to, fear in a thousand forms. Fear of finishing a project and then maybe not having anything to do? Fear of finishing a project incorrectly? Procrastination is more like throwing up backstage while the conductor and audience are waiting for your arrival in the spotlight. It isn’t being lazy and careless about other’s time. Procrastination is keeping the money in the bank out of fear you will need it for something important, when something important needs to be paid for.

Perfectionism is something other that it seems, too. Perfectionism is not holding yourself above others, it’s the opposite. A perfectionist is not one who demands things to be a certain way and is very vocal about it. That isn’t perfectionism, that is arrogance. Arrogance is another problem, yes but has only a small element to do with perfectionism. Real perfectionism is a much deeper, more personal fault. Perfectionism is the soul believing it and everything it touches, is not good enough. Not good enough.

So, I procrastinate and I hold myself to very high standards. That is a sort of double whammy, most of the time. I am afraid to finish or to start something because it won’t be good enough or I won’t get enough done or… or… This is a cycle, a circle, a roundabout from which it is very difficult to emerge. Sometimes, I can just do and be and it is okay. Most often, not. I have a feeling that you know the feeling, yourself. Sometimes, what I am doing or want to do, I know to be so imperfect that I cannot move myself to do it. Those are the only truly wasted days, the days when I stare out the window and my heart races.

There are days to get up, and do something. Days, like today, when doing something other than what you fully intended, wanted to do is also being forward moving, making progress. Ah. No, I am not being lazy about working on my little shed project. I am procrastinating because it won’t be perfect when I am done. It won’t be flawlessly level and square, the way Stefan would have done it. I won’t have finished as much as Yvan would have finished. It will take me all summer. Sigh.

The writing jumped in today to take over the slack time. I am typing in order not to be idle. Well, the typing is also less than Margaret Atwood would have done. The words, meaning, intent are less exact than my brother Peter might have done if he were doing it. Thing is, he isn’t doing it. Peter is not writing this, Stefan is not building my shed, Yvan is not working like crazy getting everything done at once. I am doing this and it is ok. What I am doing is good enough. What I am doing is exercising my own abilities.

Ha. The measuring ruler is on in my word processor. That is a double meaning for certain. It is measuring me as I write. The ruler is there, staring back at me. I don’t have to be eight and one half by eleven with a one inch margin around. I can type or build or sing or play at odd angles and sizes and it is good enough. Good enough to accomplish the goal. That goal is to feel whole and fell alive and be just ordinary, just good enough. Sigh. Okay, I had better get busy on the little lop-sided shed, now that I have completed the lop-sided blog. Hahahahahahah.

I haven’t had much to say the last little bit, have I? Been mighty quiet. I realize it is because I don’t believe I should speak, I don’t really know anything. I got into an interesting discussion with a friend about the word ‘regime’ and how the connotation changes, depending on how it is pronounced. Well, I was kinda wrong and I was kinda right. Yes, correct and incorrect both. In my historical environment, I have used and heard used this word two ways. When pronounced a’ la mode Francaise, as the Americans pronounce it (incorrectly, reh-ji-may’) it means in English only ‘a regular method’ or ‘daily habit’, as in the correct word ‘regimen’. When pronounced reh-zjeem, it indicates more – example, a government or system of government. Regime DOES also mean regimen, so, I am sorta correct and sorta incorrect.

This is my point about not believing I should speak. I don’t have the sort of education in English that I need to feel confident. I am a fraud. My breasts come from the silicone factory, my hair from the Alpaca farm? haha. I go through a series of doubt potholes at times and realize that Margaret Atwood isn’t interested in listening to my drivel. My poetry sings like flatulence, my prose leads nowhere. Someone, inevitably will call me out on my rough edges. I sit and stew in the juice of the lower class. Oooops. “Don’t git above yer raisn” resounds loud and clear at times and I recuse myself from the world of literature, even from the world of internet blogging. (Are the two related at all? …hard to say.)

I had a very painful exchange with my younger brother once that has kept itself at the edges of my conscious mind. I haven’t let go of it these many years since. We were discussing a poem and I was pontificating on it’s meaning, it’s intent. After things got a little heated and he became frustrated in the attempt to repair my opinion, he shouted, “But I HAVE BEEN TO COLLEGE! I KNOW!” Well, then. Shut me down. I have not been to college…

When the light shines, as it so rarely does, I awake to my poetry/singing/musicianship as after a ten-week drinking and cocaine binge. I wake up, look around the trashed apartment, notice two dead bodies and an empty cheque-book. It’s then that I usually say, “What the hell have I done!” and retreat from the creative world.

That’s my situation at the moment. I have become alert, however briefly it may be and I read through what was recently put to paper (pixel). Oops. My bad. Sorry. No, I didn’t finish college. My critical thinking, planning, execution are all out of whack. So, I rest. In a day or week or so, I will return with fresh illusions. My blinders will be on and I can continue. Today? Well, today I will go have a glass of wine with friends and forget about being useless for a while…maybe, I can repair the kitchen lights for someone. Hm.

Already launched into August? Not. With no singing season in sight, the summer has felt endless. I can imagine that the schoolchildren feel the same way though their situation is less certain. “Will we be going back to school, will we not?” I know we, as a chorus, will not be singing until after January at best and not until next September at the least. That is a personal tragedy. Someone once very rudely, very much behind my back, suggested that the singing kept me stable. Sadly, that is partly true. Wow. If my stability were called into question these days, I could retort, “No, it isn’t the singing that keeps me on an even keel…it’s the prescription drugs!” Haha.

I came to depend on the weekly choir events for camaraderie and exercise. At one point, I was in three choirs – one rehearsal Monday, one Wednesday and one Thursday. It made for a daunting amount of material to learn. I grew into the task by realizing that we always had our scores with us in performance for reference. The rest of the work is simply learning the intervals and the expressions. The intervals are the same no matter what you are singing. There is a fourth, a fifth, a minor fall, a major lift. Haha. Seriously, in simplest terms all you need do is keep learning how to sing C, then G, then F, E, D, C and how loud, soft, what rhythm. Of course, that isn’t easy, that’s why we have to keep learning it. Rehearsing three times a week is a great way to learn ‘Do Re Mi’.

Thinking of solfege and how hard it is to learn, I am reminded now of a fellow I used to work with. I was warned by my colleagues not to attend a tavern with him, under any circumstances. “You never know if you will be going to jail or not.” I took heed. He was a bit rough and tumble and sparky. Standing at the boring mill, he always kept a shoulder-width foot position with one foot slightly back. Since he was short and thick, not fat, it gave the impression of some sort of pit bull dog who was ready to pounce! While he worked, he always sang or whistled. Music bubbled out of him along with a quick wit and I had two occasions to witness and remember the rest of my life. Since he was operating the small boring mill, just as another employee had before him, I got a smart-ass urge and asked him if I could call him, “Al”. (The other guy’s name.) Without missing a beat he said, “Sure, if I can call you Betty, ha-ha!” One day as I walked past, he was whistling what sounded like the overture to Swan Lake. “..daaa, da-da-da-da-daaaa-ta-da, da daaa da, da da da, ta da…”. I complimented him on his choice of material by name and he looked at me, stunned. “I was whistling, ‘Doe, a deer’!” he said. I excused my ignorance and went back to my area. You see? ‘Do-Re-Mi’ isn’t easy to do.

Living with Covid-19 is not going to be easy. The locked down spring, summer and hesitant season to come have our world upside down. Folks are marching in the streets in a number of locales. Governments are sending mixed messages, confused orders and economies are in peril. There is an edge to every word that emanates from the capitals. We are in a jam. What is particularly dangerous, we have only rudimentary community. Singing, concerts, sports, picnics, parades are all in the past for the present. We are gettin’ antsy, boys and girls. That ain’t a good thing. “…daaa, da-da-da-da-daaa, ta-da….”

Well how do you like that? Today turns out full with promise of a lovely day. We really didn’t have a lot of rain but the green growing things have been refreshed. The maple outside my window is smiling, dancing in light breeze and the sweltering air has been blown elsewhere. We, too can begin breathing again. Perhaps it won’t get so hot today? That would be nice.

I never pay attention to the weather reports so I don’t know what’s coming. My style is not to know or prepare in advance. I don’t study for exams, I don’t take the turkey out of the freezer, I don’t practice piano. If I were pregnant, I wouldn’t want to know the sex of the coming child. I never shake the box for clues to what my gift is.

Today is a gift, even though I am loathe to say something so trite. It is wrapped tightly in a bold colour print paper, or it is bound with a magnificent string. I can take the end of the string and start unwinding. I can take a corner of the paper and start tearing. I can take my time. Patience. Anticipation, not dread. Let’s see where this leads.

I write in the same way, I don’t prepare. I start typing and wander about looking for an end of thread to begin pulling. Where I end up, what is revealed will be left to chance. If I planned, I could do something better? Maybe, like William Faulkner, I should draft the plot and characters in advance and place sheets of paper about the study walls as a map? Then, I might know where to go and how to get there, what to wear, what colour to paint the nursery, which notes are coming. I would be a pro.

Sigh. I am not a pro. I unravel the day, I unwind the muse. I wait for the surprise. Take today for example. Let’s see where today goes…so far, I am having fun. It is also payday today. Perhaps I will be drunk later, lying under the maple tree and singing. Perhaps I will accomplish nothing at all. That has to be ok.

I have to change up the chair I am sitting in. I worry that the amount of time I am spending in the chair will collapse the stuffing and flatten it’s curve. Excuse me for a moment.

I just changed and I was right, the stuffing needs a break. The different chair has it’s seat firm yet. So, I guess it will be musical chairs around the table for a while. There are six chairs and no one but me to sit in them, so I guess I can extend their useful lives by six-fold? Yeah. I am doing the Covid shuffle.

Today is a random thought day and this blog entry may become just a journal entry. That may happen partly because of raw thoughts that some of my relatives object to. For example: I noticed that if you drink a lot of English Breakfast tea, your poop smells quite strong. It is a barnyard-ish kind of smell and I think that is worth remarking about but my aunt will not agree. She will be angry with me for sharing the thought to a public platform. It isn’t necessarily a bad smell. I quite like it. Of course, it is my poop. I bet Buster, the dog would like it, too. That’s two of us. Maybe the pussycats would? Nah. They are too busy looking out the window.

I am casting around for the interesting, humorous thoughts but not finding much these days. The constant parade of disaster from south of 42 is on my mind. I am sure it is on yours as well? I am deeply worried. At times, I think I am being swayed, directed by media of all sorts toward a quite negative view of the future. When I settle down and stand back, I realize that it was ever thus. There has, in human time, always been a war or a bent out of shape person, or someone whose panties weren’t fitting just so. There has always been a wacky leader, intent on destroying the cherished present. Funny, you never really cherish a thing until it looks like it’s going to be taken away. Well, you DO cherish it but you DON’T realize that until it looks like too late.

I know one thing I cherished that is gone. The daily attendance at Starbucks was a thing I dearly adored. I could sit there, typing away furiously and watching it’s particular scene unfold. The women would dress to the 9’s or the minus 5’s. The millennial, bearded boys with important jobs that can be done on a computer at a coffee shop would linger. I would look up with lust in my heart. (Sorry, Jimmy Carter) The cops came in. Of course, now the cops are out of a job and working for the OPP instead and OPP don’t attend the small business or franchise coffee shops. They are busy with the graft and misuse of police power business. They are probably parked outside a pretty good restaurant, having had a delicious frittata with the mayor and a couple of Toronto businessmen. (Bay streeters) I miss the cute young hydro workers who would come in, swaggering in their Car-Hart work overalls and order girly coffees. I mean, a husky man and a ‘latte’? Oh, do I miss that.

Times change, unfortunately or fortunately. It is the best of and the worst of, the most hopeful time and the most defeated, it always will be and it will always disappear. The days move constantly. We came from somewhere, learned a little bit about how to squeeze the most life out of where we were and had to move again. We are always running out of rent money and moving on, unwilling. This is our state of being. We exist and are in flux until the heat is removed, at which point we still. Our little atoms grow cold as the universe at some point. Even Charles Dickens died, eventually. Ha. Since my work doesn’t compare to Dickens, am I immune to death? Good point, eh?

I got a good start on today in spite of myself. The bathroom scale screamed at me but I set that aside and got busy with a day’s work. First and most important, a chat with a friend, then a basic breakfast and a sit down in front of my new form of typewriter. I put the introduction to a poem together that feels sort of good. While writing, I realized something about style in creative work.

As I was writing my poem (which means mainly moving words around as if they were puzzle pieces), I saw patterns in what I was doing. The patterns are not necessarily new nor are they exactly along the lines of what education in the writing of poetry would produce. What I saw in my pattern was my voice? I understand now that learning the technique of someone (for example – a painter, say Pablo Picasso) will never produce art. Yes, you can copy movements, structure, elements of rhythm but it won’t be art. What gets produced will simulate art and won’t be art until it gets absorbed and released in some other way. It won’t be art until it is as unique as the individual producing it. It won’t be art until the hand of the artist takes the same line he learned from the master in a direction that appeals to the artist.

Yeah, yeah… I know that my revelations are largely things that ‘just everybody’ already knows. They are new to me. I am basking in the light that was always there. Shine on. Ha. It’s an ok day and that’s good enough.

Are we going to have a fabulous day today, or what? I jumped out of bed after an hour of listening to the radio, then overwatered the Sahara dry plant, got a towel, cleaned up the mess, put on my clothes to take out the garbage… and… I was too late. The truck had come and gone. Darrrrnnnnit! Wrong side of the damn bed again! All of that was the icing on the day previous, a ‘falling off’ day. The wagon’s wheels went soft and I fell off. None of the projects I had carefully lined up marched anywhere but to the couch. The TV overheated as the refrigerator emptied itself onto the bathroom scale and I refuse to look. OMG! This cannot keep happening!

I recognize the pattern I am ravelling now. This has happened before. All of my threads are making complexity come to life. There are too many things to think about at one time and nowhere to go first so I sit here, frozen in front of the mirror. My self is reflecting back to me. The mirror is not kind, not a supplicant like the evil Queen’s mirror, nor the sort of mirror that just gives up one day and tells the truth. The mirror in my hand always tells the truth. The truth about what a con man human being I am, what an unmotivated fool. But is that really so? Am I really more a conniver than any other soul? Do I really do less meaningful work? What is the truth? There could be other sides to this story. The old Libra scale has it’s balance intact yet and there are tomorrows to live through.

I am surrounded by half completed projects or I am surrounded by works in progress. I am old and fat and sloppy or I am healthy, with all of my medical test results in the very positive range. I am poor and scrambling to survive or I have plenty enough to live and a few luxuries to enjoy. No one wants to fall in love with me or I am too busy restarting my life and unable to commit anyway. The marriage and life I had has evaporated or I am on my way as an author, musician and poet, surrounded by new friends. The lovely woman I grew to deeply care for, whose company I enjoyed, has gone or I helped make her last years pleasant and cheerful. The parents I never felt close to have died or I am orphaned and alone at 70. Interesting.

Every day, the same quandary. Inertia of living tells me that a person probably should get out of bed, eventually. There are two sides of the bed to choose between. There is a wrong side and a right side exit to the same little warm, safe place. I wonder. When you do roll out, is it choice or chance that determines which exit you take? In my mind of superstitious nature, I take chance to be the work of God and choice to be the work of me, of you. It is chance that powers the day and choice turns it the right way. Chance blows in with a dark cloud or two and a bit of rain. Choice closes the window so I don’t get wet. Chance overflows the clay pot and spills onto the good wood table what choice brought too much of from the kitchen sink. Chance turns your head at a crucial moment and choice keeps you from shouting out when the door frame cracks your skull.

This, friends is how I see God: as chance. as chaos. as opportunity offered. It isn’t really a plan. There is no grand design. There is no right or wrong or good or bad — it is all good — it is all right — IT, is perfect. Chance spins the day as if it were a roulette wheel. Wherever the ball stops is the right place. That is God. God is what affords us opportunity to see, to do, to gain, to turn the story around. We win, we lose, we try, we fail. God didn’t plan any of that. He isn’t punishing us. He doesn’t reward. He or, more accurately, It offers us opportunity. On any one of those given days where a series of upside down events occurs, I am forced to stop. I am forced to pause and take a breath. I am led to reflect. That’s what God offers us, a moment of choice, an opportunity to change our view, a thing to reflect on. If we choose badly, that’s our result. If we choose well, that’s our result. Any glass is half a glass and the direction is what choice sees. Full? Empty?

Who picks the side of the bed you rise from? Haha. Like most people, I get up on the same side every day. It’s habit. ‘Getting up on the wrong side of the bed’ is a way to describe whether a day is going in a positive or negative direction but I actually always get up on the same side. I get up on the right side of the bed. All of us do, we get up on our own right side of the bed. Even in China, all that way toward the opposite end of earth from me, they get up on the right side of the bed. In Australia, the drain whirlpool flows in the opposite direction but the folks get up on the right side of the bed. You can’t get out of a bed any way except from the right side. How the day goes, is how the day goes. It’s our choice to laugh or to curse. Up to us. It isn’t more serious than that. God offers the day, the life-force, the chance encounter, the flow, the spin. It’s my choice to see how perfect it is and be content or my choice to grieve. Either way, “The main thing is: to not get too ex-cited.”

Worry

Rip Van Plumber’s Crack (Winkle) was out today.  That is a certain sign of spring. He wears very little clothing so cannot long endure the cold weather.  I don’t know where he goes during the dark months.  Maybe he has a little house somewhere, similar to the little house I built for Msr. P. Catt.  Rip is a man of about 70 years, long grey beard, long hair, very thin body.  He walks leaning forward and very gingerly, as though his feet were hurting.  Of course, he wears a sort of slipper that reminds of a ballet slipper. That might be why he walks so gingerly.  The tight shorts may be a contributing factor.  I know, as a male, that shorts so tight affect the external bits in negative ways.  They would certainly cause me to walk gingerly. Spandex bicycle shorts are his favourite.  He seems to like black ones.  Today’s pair were ultra tight and not the right size, revealing a fine butt crack and clear skinned cheeks.  The finishing touch was a white, skin tight, midrift revealing t-shirt and a Tim Horton’s cup in hand.  Wonder where he is going? Perhaps an important meeting with his lawyer?

I wonder some times where I am going.  Don’t you?  Are we just slogging carefully down the street, leaning forward in anticipation of our next move?  Are we tightly gripping a five year plan?  Are we adrift?  Well, adrift has other connotations than negative ones.  Adrift can mean free, as well as rudderless – out of control.  I used the word adrift in a poem and I meant free when I said it.  I have felt adrift as rudderless and I felt adrift as free.  I am free, today. I have just returned from a nice vacation spent with good friends.  It was lovely and a changing sort of experience.   I was  forced to relax because I was several thousand miles away from me, my world.  There was no option but to sit on the beach and watch the sea. I slipped to another cog on the mandela?  Yeah, kinda. I told a friend this morning that I don’t feel time pressure today.  That is true.  I am just doing what I do in the time it takes to do it and not worrying about what is yet undone or needs attention in some way.  What a strange feeling, this relaxed thing.  Wonder how long it will last? It better not last too long because I have some serious worrying to do, don’t you?

Rip Van Plumber’s Crack does not seem to be worrying.  He is just walking to and fro, gingerly,  with damaged genitalia and not a care?  Who knows.  I think he might be worrying about the Tim Horton’s cup being less than half full or maybe he is worrying about the locusts coming this year.  He isn’t letting the worry affect his half-naked travels though.  I won’t let the worry affect my half-baked writing,  I am determined.  Ha.  Don’t you let it affect you, either.  Donald Trump will die someday…just like the rest of us.  He doesn’t worry, so why should we.

Changes

I dropped by the bulk food store to get some supplies for baking.  I have cut back on spending and needed bread supplies, bread being much cheaper to make yourself than to buy.  I can do about four loaves for the price of one.  A deal.  Against the wishes of Shell oil and others, I  have cut back on the use of plastic bags and paper, too.  That is my gift to the future, since the world is nearly afloat on plastic and other rubbish.  We can’t go on, no matter what the creepy people in government and business tell us.  The poor little creatures are stretched out half dead on the beach, trying to breathe.  Without them, what would we do?  Eat money?  The bushes and trees and other green things are gasping as well.

Save, save, save is the mantra and I chant it every day, now.  Save the earth, save time running around, save money. Funny, the money saving is more so that I can burn up fossil fuel carrying my carcass down south again next year.  I am altruistic to a point, at which I am not selfless anymore.  I want to fly to Mexico, I can fly to Mexico, so I will.  I am complicated.  We are complicated, all of us.   We want to save and we want to do the right thing but I am not certain we can save ourselves.  Saving ourselves will take a lot of changing around and we are busy living.

There is a guy here at the office who is really not saving.  He is using up his voice by talking very loudly about personal business things.  He is not saving the important stuff for a later, private time.  He will end up like Harry Belafonte or Julie Andrews and not be able to sing someday. He is using electricity and magnetic waves along with high level sound waves to do nothing important.  I am using electricity as well.  His work is transient and so is mine.  It means nothing and costs our island home an awful lot.  I can change myself and do the right thing if I try super hard.  I can do it if I choose.  The thing I cannot do, is to tell someone else to save, to make them save.  I can’t tell that guy to shut up and turn off his devices.  That won’t work.  Choosing the right thing for someone else is not an option.  Even in religion.  Most specifically, in religion. In fact, religion proves my point.  The right wing sects, factions, divisions all try hard to MAKE people do what THE GOOD BOOKS say.
Does that help?  No.  People just do what they can do and want to do.  They might feel a twinge of guilty but they do what they choose to do.  We have inertia.  We have the way things are done working against us and we have to choose.  Will we?  Will we choose for ourselves the better way? 

Maybe, maybe not.  I am not hopeful when I see egregious behaviour that is, or was at one time, acceptable in society, in the world.  Pete Seeger said something about being hopeful for the world but  doubtful at the same time.  Sigh.  He was a smart, strong, righteous person.  I respect him always.  He probably had a Wendy’s hamburger once or twice. He drove a car, used a gas powered chain saw and flew to the gigs.  I forgive him.  I forgive Greta for flying about the world, crying out loud and pointing fingers.  Somebody needs to remind us.    We are complicated but forgiven and we should try.  Try for your own sake…do your best.

It is possible that we are locked into being human and foolish.  Maybe, as all the great human societies have done, we are facing our extinction.   Maybe we are predestined to that. Who knows?  I drove to the office, had a bagel and tea because I wanted it today.  Uhoh.

Jesus, my bad!