Friday, April 30, 2010

Captivating Loss

Now look what I've gone and done. Totally lost my train of thought. Logged on to the internet to start my blog, detoured to another project, checked in on Facebook conversations, and now, well.... that captivating blog post has evaporated back into the creative ether.

And captivating it was going to be too. One of my best yet. A real white knuckle read guaranteed to have readers skipping ahead to the end to see how everything turned out.

Dozens of microwave packets of popcorn and multiple six packs of frosty beer would have been consumed by readers as they devoured every word.

It was all going to start on a dark and stormy night, and end with a broad shouldered hero riding in on a white stallion to rescue a fair skinned maiden from the clutches of a dark cloaked villain. - A truly unique approach to crafting a tale, you must admit.

Perhaps it will all come back to me in time for the next post.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Life, Death, and License Plates

I associated the automobile license plate with a life altering event - not my life, but the life of whoever owned the car.

I was crossing the parking lot of a hospital in Delaware when I noticed the North Carolina license plate.

Funny how the surroundings in which an object is viewed can color the way we react to the object.

Had I seen the same North Carolina license plate on a car parked in front of a restaurant or in the parking lot of a shopping mall, I would have assumed the owner of the vehicle to be on vacation. But here, in a hospital parking lot, I immediately speculated that something exceptionally traumatic or wonderful had occurred to make the owner of the car drive from North Carolina.

Perhaps a close friend or relative had just been diagnosed with a life threatening condition - or perhaps a daughter was giving birth to an older couple's first grandchild. I hoped it was the latter but somehow suspected not.

I don't know why my speculation leaned toward the unhappier of the two. I could try to turn intuition into an exercise in logic. There would be time to celebrate a birth at home, wishes for a quick recovery for something like a broken arm could come in the form of a card or phone call. But a critical, life threatening disease - that required jumping in a car and making a drive across several state lines.

I would rather have speculated on the sex of a newborn, but instead I imagined a father reaching the end of a battle with cancer. I imagined the phone ringing in the North Carolina home at 2 in the morning, a heavy hand patting the night stand in search of the phone, a groggy Hello. All followed by lights flaring to life, clothes hurriedly thrown into a suitcase, and a car backing too quickly out of a garage in the darkest hours of the night.

Hopefully I was wrong.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Farm Alien

An intergalactic traveler had taken a wrong turn and wound up on the local divided highway.

That was the only explanation for the monstrous vehicle straddling one and a half lanes of concrete roadway. With deadly claws tucked beneath its main body, the bionic interplanetary traveler seemed more imposing than threatening. Yet I was certain the lack of any other cars in sight was proof the massive pinchers could deploy lightning quick and snatch a two ton vehicle from the road with no more expenditure of energy than a person lifting a cat by the scruff of the neck.

With less than three quarters of a mile between my car and the alien I had little time to consider my options. I could slow to a crawl and hope to find an exit ramp around the next bend, or I could go back the way I had come by cutting across the median and hoping my car didn't bottom out.

I rejected both options after picturing the metallic transport discharging a swarm of misshapen warriors like a scene from Starship Troopers.

The element of surprise was on my side - though I was plenty surprised myself. Pushing the gas pedal of my car to the floor, my plan was to come up from the rear, slip right underneath, and speed off into the distance before the alien even knew I was there.

With less than fifty yards separating our vehicles I saw the sign. Caution: Insecticides.

It was in that same instant that the farmer turned his piece of heavy equipment into a field along the highway, deployed the "claws" and began an application of bug killer to the soy crop.

You gotta love traveling through farm country.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Broadcast Alert

With my new schedule, there's a couple nights a week where my internet access is a little iffy.
Efforts are underway to correct this.

My apologies in advance if the occasional lack of a new post disappoints any of my readers.

The Eye's Have It

It's one of those nights where my brain just refuses to function... or at least it was.

I was about to offer a short meditation when my mind somehow jumped back to 1976.

I was all of 20 years of age back then, had somehow acquired the nickname of Dr. Wise, and at parties (yes College Dude, there was actually a time when I willingly attended social gatherings) was frequently asked to offer words of wisdom.

It would go down like this: I would walk into a room filled with to capacity with people from a wide mix of backgrounds, someone would shout - Hey, Dr. Wise is here, Doctor give us today's words of wisdom. Whereupon the entire room would fall silent and several dozen heads would turn in my direction.

Kind of scary - and very weird- now that I think about it.

And now that I think about it, I guess that background of having to pull what could be plausibly accepted as deep insight out of my back pocket is what has led to the meditations I currently offer when my creative juices otherwise fail to flow.

So tonight's words of wisdom.

To thread the needle on the first try, one must believe the eye to be larger than perceived by the eye.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Bottle Walls

With all the talk about environmentally friendly or green products I couldn't help but notice the article about the man who had built a home using 6 million bottles.

The article brought to mind the two dozen empty tequila bottles that Motivated Mom made me get rid of back when we got married twenty-five years ago. I had plans for an awesome coffee table using those bottles. But love overrode my desires for Cuervo furniture so out the bottles went. Today having such a table would earn me kudos from around the world. Story of my life - a man before his time.

I interject the coffee table story to explain why I immediately pondered how many liquor and beer bottles might have been involved in the construction of the glass bottle house. I wondered if the man had consumed the contents of the bottles all by himself, or if he had lots of righteous house building parties.

I also got to wondering... What if someone were to build such a house using bottles that were still filled? It would give a whole new meaning to the song/chant 100 bottles of beer on the wall - take one down and pass it around.

Friday, April 23, 2010

To Iron or....

Lately I've been doing more ironing than I've done in a long time - and I remember why I''ve always hated it.

How is it that I can line up the seams on a pair of pants and still get wrinkles in the middle of only one side of a pant leg? Logic says that with X amount of fabric and opposing seams lined up, the amount of material on either side should be equal. Therefore if one side is crisp and smooth so should be the other. Obviously clothes manufacturers don't use logic.

And shirts? Forget about it. The person who designed the ironing board obviously wasn't familiar with the term user friendly. Oh sure, the board tapers - but not at the same angle as the cut of fabric between the shoulder and hem of the shirt. And just how does one manage to avoid creases in a shirt when the ironing board cover itself twists around the board every time the shirt is advanced? It's bad enough I have to keep straightening the shirt, but when I have to repeatedly do the same to the foam backed cover I get the urge to press the iron straight through to the metal board itself. In those moments I'm sure my face is twisted into a demonic snarl and should any family member ever be so unfortunate as to venture into the room just then I'm sure I would spew vegetable soup in their direction.

Dry cleaners obviously are keeping a well hidden secret. Think they can really manage to press hundreds of shirts and pants a day using something shaped like a traditional ironing board? Not a chance. Those ironing boards visible from the front of the shop are all for show. Somewhere in the back room is the gizmo that really gets the job done - and that's the gizmo I want.

Then again, I could just leave the clothes at the cleaners. I think I know where I'm allocating part of my next salary adjustment.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Nerves of Steel

In my daily commute, I pass an Air Force Base where jets known as C-5s can generally be seen.

The C-5 is roughly the size of a small town and is used to transport bulk cargo to battle zones. Reports on a 2009 test flight of the most recent model (C-5M) put the combined weight of plane and payload at 649,680 pounds (that's just under 325 tons) which makes me wonder how the thing ever got off the ground.

Today I was passing the Air Force base just as a C-5 was making a landing approach. My car was running parallel to the plane, which was still distant enough to look like an average size aircraft, and the relative speeds of my car and the C-5 were such that the plane seemed to be hanging motionless in mid air.

My eyes told me the plane was motionless but the logical part of my brain said anything that big would fall like a boulder if it wasn't moving somewhere near the speed of sound.

Which got me to thinking about what the first commercial airline flight must have been like. I thought about the few dozen passengers climbing on board a relatively new mode of transport. With no long term track record, there was no guarantee the plane wouldn't fall from the sky at some point in the flight.

Those first few passengers must have had nerves of steel. I wouldn't have gone anywhere near the new fangled flying machine.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Passing on the Car

I was about to get a new car - free of charge - but I didn't want it.

I was following one of those car carriers. You've seen them I'm sure. A tractor trailer pulling a double-decker contraption that looks like something put together from an erector set that the giant at the top of the beanstalk might have played with.

The car carrier, loaded with shiny new vehicles, was being buffeted by relatively strong cross winds. The rear most section of the top layer on the car carrier (the section that lowers so the upper cars can be loaded on and off) was swaying alarmingly from side to side.

Perched on that swaying rear rear panel was an SUV with its nose pointed straight down at me.

It was surely only a matter of time before that brand-spankin'-new SUV landed on the front hood of my own car.

Speed limit be danged, I punched the gas pedal, passed the carrier, and never looked back.

Some other unsuspecting driver was welcome to the new car.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

It's a Train; No it's...

Why a steam locomotive should be the first thing to come to my mind I have no idea. Perhaps it was because of the way the smoke billowed outward as well as up - the way steam from a locomotive would hiss out across the wheels while a column of grayish white rose from the smokestack.

There were no railroad tracks anywhere near that particular stretch of divided highway so my thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of smoke billowing from a building engulfed in flames or a dust devil on the verge of becoming a full fledged tornado.

Smoke, steam, dust, whatever it was, it effectively hid a hundred yard stretch of roadway.

Closing the car windows and adjusting the air control to recirculate the air in the car rather than draw in the contaminated air from outside, I braked as I entered the swirling shroud.

And there, off the far side of the divided highway, was a piece of farm equipment big enough for an entire infantry platoon to pile into.

The John Deere or International Harvester was turning up acres of farmland.

Never, with so much surrounding land still under standing water, would I have thought that any significant stretch of ground was dry enough to produce enough dust to mimic the Icelandic volcano.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Route 27 Grill

I had never noticed the sign before: Route 27 Grill

A very unpretentious name for a restaurant. The kind of name that suggests the proprietors know they offer a quality product and don't need a snazzy name for their place. I could envision the menu: fried chicken, meatloaf, spaghetti, and maybe roast beef or prime rib as the dinner special once a week. Simple fare but dependably familiar and probably dependably tasty.

All of this was going through my head at the same time I was pondering how it was that I had never noticed the sign before. The sign certainly wasn't bright and shiny - so it had been around for a while.

I was nearly two miles down the road before it hit me. The sign had been partially camouflaged by a tow truck, a 1950's pickup, and a scattering of cars.

Probably the missus ran the grill while her husband tuned up cars in the garage next door.

Which got me to wondering just exactly what went into the special sauce that the grill no doubt offered with steak sandwiches.

Route 27 Grill. Maybe the name wasn't intentionally understated after all. Maybe it was just the best they could come up with,

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Of Dogs and Daughters

It's not that I don't like dogs. It's just that this isn't the right time in my life for me to have one.

And yet that is exactly what has happened. I have a dog. Well, to be correct, Motivated Mom and I have a dog.

The current incarnation of man's best friend was supposed to have been Media Girl's best friend, but said daughter is never around these days.

So who ends up walking the dog? Yep, Motivated Mom and I.

Who feeds the dog? You guessed it.

At one point in the past our family had four dogs (we were just this side of certifiable back then) - and they all used to sleep on Motivated Mom's side of the bed. They knew that if they crossed the invisible line in the middle of the mattress they would be shuttled to the floor.

When Destiny arrived I was determined the animal would never experience sleeping on a bed.

Motivated Mom felt otherwise and... where does the dog sleep since Media Girl is never home?
Yep. On our bed.

And on whose side of the bed does the dog sleep? Mine.

And why do I not shuttle the dog to the floor?

Because the irritating thing can whine, whimper, grumble, and bark all at the same time for hours on end if she is relegated to a lower altitude.

Where IS that daughter of mine anyway?

Friday, April 16, 2010

Dueling Laptops

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.. tap.. tap, tap,tap
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.. tap.. tap, tap,tap

Tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap
Tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap

It was dueling laptops in our family room yesterday evening. Motivated Mom and I sitting on the couch and recliner respectively; each of us lost in our own data entry but still managing to share the companionship of being in the room together.

...And I got to wondering, how much longer will it be before we e-mail sweet nothings from opposite sides of the room rather than whispering those same endearments in each others ears.

Love you
Love you back

Like your new hairstyle
Ohhh, you noticed!

attached find picture of rose in full bloom
a picture is the best you can do?

Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

Television has always been considered the bane of a close relationship. I can't help but wonder if computers haven't moved television to second place.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Martha Blends

There's a new Home Depot ad running on the radio which refers to the Martha Stewart paint collection.

Apparently Martha has hand-selected two hundred and thirty-some colors to help folks brighten their home.

Two hundred and thirty colors? Hand selected?

I'd say Martha has just a little bit of ADHD going on wouldn't you?

How does one even get that many colors anyway? As I remember my studies from high school art class, there are only three primary colors. To come up with two hundred and thirty colors from the three primary colors would require such infinitesimal differences in blend that....

... Oh, I get it. Martha's been hitting the Red Bull a little hard. Shaky hands lead to lots of blending oops that become new colors.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Jimi is Back

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Jimi Hendrix.

Jimi was considered by many to be the greatest electric guitarist of all time, and I'm inclined to agree. Not that others haven't equaled Jimi's works but, had his genius not been lost to the world prematurely I'm all but certain he would have set standards that guitarists like Brian May, Jimmy Page, Robin Trower, and Eric Clapton would have been hard pressed to match.

(Right now College Dude is probably filling out the papers to disown me as a father but I have to call them as I see them.)

I couldn't begin to count the number of evenings I spent listening to the albums Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, and wishing that Jimi had not left the world before I had a chance to appreciate his artistic abilities in the setting of a live concert.

Every time I listened to one of those 33 1/3rds, I hoped for the impossible. I hoped for the news release announcing Jimi's death had been staged, that he had needed a break in order to recover from the hard life of touring, that he had needed to recharge the creative energies, and that he was now ready for a momentous return.

And in a way that return has occurred, some thirty-five years after I first started hoping, with the recent release of the Valleys of Neptune CD.

It's great to have you back Jimi.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Bottled Time

If I could save time in a bottle...

When that song was a hit back in the day I should have undertaken to do just that.

Save time in a bottle.

' Cause I could use some of it right now - time that is.

I was drafting an e-mail to the local literary community this evening - my monthly reminder that I was working on the next update of the Delmarva literary calendar. It struck me that it seemed no more than a week since I had sent out my last reminder. Was it really possible a full thirty days had passed?

All of which got me to remembering back to when I was in grade school and a month was the next closest thing to eternity. Eternity, of course, being a year.

If I had bottled some of those eternal summer days back then perhaps I could now periodically spill a little of the bottle's contents and buy myself an extra week here and there.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Tee Perspective

I was at a fundraiser dinner last night where, for some inexplicable reason, a flat screen TV roughly the size of my family room was tuned to a golf tournament.

Inexplicable to me because I would think the hosts of the fundraiser would want attention focused on their undertaking, not on the rankings of golfers following completion of the seventh hole.

By no means am I a golf fanatic, but a particular camera shot caught my attention. Hundreds of spectators were pressed up to either side of the fairway just where the golfers were teeing off (I think I have all the golf terminology right).

And I wondered... As a spectator, isn't being pressed up along the fairway at the tee a little like standing with your toes right on the first or third base line on a baseball field? And if so, doesn't that amount to a premeditated decision to put yourself in harms way?

If a golfer's powerhouse swing results in the ball being sliced (terminology?) to the immediate right or left, what chance does a fan at the very edge of the fairway have of avoiding the projectile heading toward his or her face? Absolutely none. Locked into position like a sardine squeezed into a can, said fan could do nothing but wait for the inevitable impact.

I realize a golf ball is but a fraction of the size of a baseball, but any object moving at a speed of Mach 5 has to hurt like hell when it hits the bridge of your nose.

My preferred vantage point would be perhaps the branches of the tree behind the tee.

Friday, April 9, 2010

New Fangled Face

So I discovered this new fangled thing called Facebook. I'm amazed at how quickly I've stepped into an ever expanding network. And more than a little concerned as well.

No, not by the Facebook thing - well, maybe - but concerned by the speed with which data spreads through the world of the internet.

If the my Facebook page can be linked with dozens of others in a matter of minutes, then in how many hundreds of places might records of on-line purchases or banking transactions reside?

I think I no longer believe in the concept of "secure" internet transactions.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Peace and Quiet

A hectic schedule today so here is a short meditation

The art of knowing peace is finding quiet in the noise.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Trash Collar

The bird was dressed to the nines.

Or so it appeared.

Closer examination of the winged critter pecking between blades of grass in search of a morning meal revealed a piece of discarded plastic plastic wrapped around its neck. In the low angle of morning sunlight, the plastic resembled the fluffy collar I associate with Renaissance era dress - something I would expect to see in a portrait of Sir Francis Drake.

Feeling sorry for the bird, I started off in its direction to relieve it of its unwelcome burden, then realized the bird would take flight long before I reached it.

Soon other birds gathered round and as I watched the collective pecking I realized that the bird with the artificial collar was in no way impeded by his draping.

In fact he seemed to be flaunting his accessory as a symbol of office, strutting to and fro to stake out his particular region of grass.

I continued on my way, slightly reassured by the bird's seeming acceptance of its accessory, but resolving to be ever vigilant on my handling of trash.

Valley B.A.

Internet problems at the old hacienda so I'm squeezing in a quick post during lunch break.

Last night, with no web access, I put the computer aside in favor of a jaunt around the countryside. Driving along back roads that I frequented in my teenage years I was literally driving down memory lane.

Or, as we used to refer to the activity of driving to no particular destination, I went out for a valley b.a.

Valley
referring to the rural area in northern Delaware known as Beaver Valley and b.a standing for bombing around.

In those days, three dollars worth of gas dispensed into the gas tank of an MG was good for an entire night of cruising.

It would seem to me that with three dollars now buying only a single gallon of gas, the teenage past time of aimless driving would have become obsolete. But late night traffic in my neck of the woods suggests otherwise. So I guess valley b.a. or equivalent is forever in the blood of those recently gifted with a drivers license.

Monday, April 5, 2010

I Can't Hear You Now

It's been convertible top down driving weather recently. Not that I own a convertible. I've just seen a lot of folks driving topless (as in no top on the convertible) recently.

I owned a MG Midget in my younger years (almost seems like a previous life now) and I really enjoyed top down cruising on warm, sunny days.

One thing I remember from those years is that you can't hear sh... er, ah, anything with the wind rushing over your head. Unless of course your car is equipped with a righteous sound system with a volume setting of somewhere around one hundred and eight five.

I was never into the loud music thing when the top was down though. It was all about the rushing wind and the tires struggling to keep a grip on the S curves along back roads.

Which brings me back to... you can't hear anything with the top down.

So I was very surprised to see a guy speeding along in at seventy miles an hour in a topless convertible with a cell phone pressed to his ear.

Surely he couldn't hear the voice on the other end. Surely his part of the conversation was simply, I can't hear you now, you'll have to call back later

Unless of course his phone was equipped with an upper volume setting of somewhere around one hundred and eighty-five.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Easter

Whatever your religious beliefs, may this season afford you the opportunity to view life through the eyes of a newborn child. May you find opportunities to be endless, hope to be constant, and love to be abundant.


HAPPY EASTER

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Pond Surprise

I was cleaning the fish pond this afternoon when it sprang out at me. A monstrous frog nearly six feet tall. Poisonous venom dripped from fangs that extended down past the frog's chin. A purple spotted tongue lashed out in my direction and stopped mere inches short of my face. The tip of the tongue flickered before my eyes like a maddened snake before the frog reeled the tongue back into its mouth. Before completely disappearing back between the dripping fangs, the purple tongue swept across the monster frog's bulbous eyes, cleaning a gluey opaque film from the protruding eyeballs.

Well, it could have happened.

The frog did scare me half to death after all.

I had just pulled a pile of matted leaves from the bottom of the pond and was about to put the decaying muck in a wheel barrow when the amphibian leapt out. It really was a big sucker. Okay, not six feet tall, but big enough to cover half a dinner plate.

See how you react when something the size of a Burger King Whopper unexpectedly leaps toward your face.

Once I had collected my wits, I went back to cleaning the pond. My arm was elbow deep in murky water when I remembered that three frogs had moved in last spring. I had named them Moe, Larry, and Curly.

It must have been Moe who had driven me to the verge of apoplexy. It was the sort of thing that Moe Howard would have done.

Wait. Three frogs. That meant.

Even as I thought it, I felt something squirm through my fingers. It must have been twelve feet long....

Thursday, April 1, 2010

A Different Perspective

I was on the fourth floor of a parking building in downtown Wilmington this evening. From that height I had a view extending about twenty five miles distant. The highway I would travel on my way home, the bridge I would cross, the nuclear power plant tower I would pass; they all seemed incredibly small. It was as though I was looking down on a community designed around a model train set.

On my journey home, had I been able to stop on the mile long bridge that seemed no bigger than a rubber band from my viewpoint in the parking building, that very same parking building would have appeared no bigger than a match book - if that.

A change in perspective has a huge impact on the way we view things.

We should remember to explore that alternate viewpoint when faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge.