The Daily {W}Rite 2o16 January WK o3

Evening creeping up on the late afternoon, a strangle hold around the dying light. Clouds crowding out the last bit of blue sky. In for the night the sparrow's song. I don't suppose the crows care at all. To them the world is always dark winged, they scratch and claw through the hollow scream the train whistle makes as it marks the territory for the oncoming freight. I wish for more summer on my breath, less frost on my leaves, my fingers carve shadows on the misted windowpanes. Coffee brewing, a rattlesnake rumble crawling from the space-heater, I sniffle a bit, my noses itches envy at those whose allergies have vacated their personal space . . . at least until spring.

I'm still aggravated by the stare down the other night. My hands are busy creating fists. Too busy executing their right to be hostile, they have a hard time typing out my pacifistic hums-and-drums, the beating of my heart slowing to a mild stroll, the blood smoothing to a gentle country brook . . . I wish the sparrows had not retreated for the night . . .I could lose myself in their cheerful chirps.

The last couple nights I've slept well. Hell, I even dreamed! I know! It's been awhile since I dreamt, or maybe its just that I when I woke up I couldn't remember that I had dreamed. Either way, it was pleasant to have dreamt and remembered dreaming. Even though the dream was a bit unpleasant. I was in a forest . . . no, an Eden with a group of loving Earth children when all of a sudden hot air balloons descended on us with Indians inside their baskets shooting arrows at us! The really sad thing about the dream? I knew why I had dreamt it! Damn you The Revenant!

Saturday, January 16, 2o16 A Facebook friend was wondering about what would constitute having lived a "full" life. I responded with a somewhat silly comment:

Well, a sort of unanswerable question, isn't it? If you survive the dream time and wake up NOT dead and continue that process day after day until you don't wake up anymore, that could be considered living life to its fullest. However, if living the full life involves accomplishing some great feat like curing cancer, ending world hunger, teaching Tom Hardy how to act, You may be disappointed. Maybe living a full life is only living it the best you can, treating each day as if it were an adventure, living each day as if it were the last day of your life. There's this scene from Oh, Coward! that I think may be relevant to the conversation:

Man and Woman dancing

Woman: I think life is for living, don't you?

Man: It's hard to tell what else you would do with it. -Noel Coward

Mmmmm, perhaps my "retort" was a bit sophomoric, but maybe we spend too much time worrying about whether an individual life is "full." I mean I have no idea what that means to live a full life.  A lot of people think it means that you love and are loved by other people. Some DO think that you must accomplish something worthwhile . . . AND . . . keep accomplishing until you die! Well, I've accomplished a few things in this life, but not sure anyone remembers any of it. I've lived in Norman a long time and artistically I've produced a few pieces that I felt  "was worth the effort." But I've also had my troubles too. Mostly dealing with other people. When I got back from New Mexico, all the things that I accomplished didn't mean much. In fact, most people had no idea who I was or what I had accomplished. However, the people that I offended in one way or the other? Boy, they remembered . . . not the accomplishments . . . but all the nasty things I did to them . . . and I remembered totally all the cruel moments that they laid on me! 

Is my life "full?" Yeah, it feels like it. Maybe it's full of mostly bullshit, but at the least it's full. I've lived a life, so to speak, and I will continue to live it for as long as whomever is in charge allows me to do so. {smiles}

Monday, January 18, 2o16
Yesterday

I've at appoint in my longevity that I no longer recognize age. I should have known by the shiny auburn ponytail, as thick and natural as winter wheat, that she wasn't much older than seventeen. Precisely seventeen she was, and she would graduate this year and go to college to

study neuropsychology. And that was enough to get me rambling on about the imagination. ME:  . . . "the imagination! Such an interesting thing . . . that doesn't exist . . . at least, that's what scientists say. But I say the imagination . . . is real . . . if there is such a thing as a soul, it dwells in our ability to imagine its existence!" She smiles pleasantly, raises her pen and booklet to right below her chin . . . "Are you ready to order." Walmart, an obstacle course yesterday. I think I'm drunk carting because I can't seem to maneuver through the isles with out bumping into every cart, every overwrought  mother bending over to pull her brat's greedy little hands away from the Cocoa Puffs before he rips the box opens and fills the already dirty floor with the brown, sugary guts of breakfast cereal specifically marketed to children under five.

Today

Every bit of dirty laundry that I've accumulated over the last . . . three years . . . may well be four! Four years of close stuffed inside a laundry hamper. Ants nested there for a while coming out only to sneak a sip of water from the leaky bathroom facet. They died, however, when the winter finally rolled in. Or maybe they just got bored with how filthy my hamper and bathroom had become. Anyway, a laundry basket full of pants and shirts--the laundry basket I bought yesterday at Walmart-- a giant red gym bag vomiting underwear and socks (some that hadn't seen the light of day for many years), more T-shirts and pajama bottoms which I always seem to get as presents during Christmas. Why is that? Is it my age? "He's 67 years old, for God's Sake!" Buy him a pair of pajama bottoms! Spider-Man pajama bottoms! Old men love that!" And off to the laundry where I spent approximately $25.00 on washing and drying and extra soap because I ran out of soap! Six washers full of clothes!  My God! Anyway, an hour and a half later everything is washed and dried . . . well not my t-shirts, of course! 100% cotton most of them. Dry them in a drier? No way. I'd be using them for handkerchiefs! Anyway, everything is done and David comes by and picks me up.

Thursday, January 21, 2o16

In freefall for the last three days and nights. I've finally fallen to the ground, like a rain drop falls to the ground. The clouds had been gathering for those last three days (and nights), rubbing up against each other, the larger clouds bullying the small, weaker clouds, the insignificant clouds, the ones that you pass daily on the sidewalk barely realizing that they are even there. Cold ice of the larger fluffs   smashing into the warmer drops of rain from the smaller clouds . . . and the inevitable lightning flashes that scream in tortured howls of thunder. All very natural, you see? Yes, nature is beautiful, but also very violent, uncaring, she takes no sides in this war of moisture. AND then come the rains, wet droplets bombing the shit out of what leaves are still alive on the trees (if there be any at all), smashing into windowpanes, committing kamikaze on the sidewalks that now bleed grayish wet from the mangled corpses of a million, a billion raindrops.  Again, and I can't stress this enough, it's all a very natural sort of thing. No malice on natures part,  no premeditation, no murdering of innocent raindrops, or ducks or old men who just unfortunate enough to be caught outside when the storm starts up.

Of Ducks and Old Men

The rain came in fast.
The old men covered their heads
with newspapers, hats, their hands
and began to run away from the natural
order of things, feeling lost, bewildered
by the sudden storm no one saw coming,
wondering why the weatherman had given
no warning not even a hint that the park
would soon turn into a lake.

The ducks were happy, though.

Floating about talking to each other
in that pleasant quacking sound they make.

"Son of the bitch!" Cried the old men

slipping and sliding their way to the parking
lot where their even older cars waited.

Sometimes it's better to be a duck than a man.

Sometimes it’s better to have feathers than hats,
newspapers or even hands. Sometimes it’s better
to enjoy the weather and forget that you’re wet,
forget that you’re old and not a duck, just... forget.
Woodie o8-18-12

8:43 P.M.

I think I'm finished for this week. Mush for brains lately. Thinking is like trying to run in lace-less combat boots through a Florida swamp. I don't know if the last metaphor works that well are not. To tell you the truth, I don't really care. I will in this last week of January . . . I'm hoping. But one never knows what one will or will not do.

Yesterday, David and I went to Walmart East, which isn't that much of a surprise. After buying our groceries, we started for the parking lot:
David: Do you remember where we parked?
Woodie: No.

David: Why not?

Woodie: (shrugs) Well, I didn't remember to remember to look at the row number we were parked in. So, I couldn't remember.

David: (pause) WHAT?! (pause) You need to put this conversation on your blog.Woodie: Why?
David: Because this makes you look like the idiot. Usually, I look like the idiot.

And he's right. My blog usually makes him look like the idiot. {smiles}