Jim Reed's Blog, page 38
April 29, 2018
SECRETS REVEALED OF THE GARFIELD UNDERPANTS
Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:
http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/secretsofthegarfieldunderpants.mp3
or read his tale below…
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SECRETS REVEALED OF THE GARFIELD UNDERPANTS
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No-one knows what goes on behind closed doors. Or closed minds.
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Despite the fact that my–and your–profusely exposed inner and outer Activities of Daily Living are splattered all over the Internet by way of
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texting
blogging
blasting
podcasting
emailing
video-ing
snoopsurveilling
dronecamera-ing
TheTubing
radioing
streaming
hidden micing
loose lippitysplitting
snarky gossiping
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tweetingsnapchattingfacebookingmessengeringinstagraminggooglinglinkiningmyspacingpinterestingsmaartphoningwechatting….
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…despite having my heretofore secret life spreadeagled to the ethos for anybody-or nobody-to examine, there are still many cloistered corners of Me that are mine and mine alone-and you can’t access them without my permission.
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You can’t hack most of my private being. Just try and see what doesn’t happen.
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Take Garfield underpants, for example.
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Many moons and suns ago, my family birthday-gifted me with a pair of Garfield underpants, decorated with hearts and Garfields. Not President Garfield, just Garfield the cartoon cat.
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Life changed for me that day.
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From then on, at least one day a week, I donned my Garfield underpants, put on the rest of my clothes, and set forth into the workday playday world to conquer or be conquered by circumstance or collusion, by accident or by conspiracy.
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On my Garfield days, each time a crisis arose, I could handle it without losing it. If the chaos or confusion around me became extreme, I just looked inward, remembered the fact that out of sight of the wolves and bullies, my Garfield underwear could still make me smile.
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I always knew something the attackers and whiners could not know. Garfield and I could get through the day unscathed, simply because we shared a secret goofiness that repelled all attacks of logic, overriding and distraction by others.
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Some people were disturbed by my slight smile that could not be wiped away.
Some got more agitated the better I felt. Some took inspiration from my attitude and calmed down and began finding reasons to smile themselves.
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And if anybody ever asked what my secret was, I had the option to share or the option to hold back. No pop-up or spam or privacy search could break through and try to market me into purchasing six more pairs of Garfield underpants.
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If this worked, why am I revealing all this right now? I’m not telling, but here’s a hint-eventually, the Garfield underpants wore out and I had to find another secret way to fend off the hornets’ nests. Now I have a new tool for survival.
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And the thing that makes me smile today is the fact that I’m the only person in the universe who knows what that is.
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Time for you to go out and find some Garfield underpants for yourself. Keep a slight smile on your face and it’ll drive your enemies crazy while comforting your friends
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© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
April 21, 2018
HOW TO REMAIN IGNORANT WHILE SEEMING SMART
HOW TO REMAIN IGNORANT WHILE SEEMING SMART
There’s this little trick I taught myself eons ago. This little trick evolved into a technique, maybe into an art of sorts.
How do I explain it to you? Here goes…
I’ll call this little trick RETAINING MY IGNORANCE IN ORDER TO ENHANCE MY WISDOM, ALL THE WHILE AFFIRMING THE EXISTENCE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE PERSON WITH WHOM I AM CONVERSING.
Come to think of it, this little trick may have its roots in my early career as actor and interviewer.
When I was onstage I learned to freeze in place while other actors delivered their lines. Remaining immobile in effect turned the stage over to the actors so that the audience paid rapt attention to them, not me.
As I gained experience, I learned to do more than freeze while getting ready to say my next lines—I learned to relax and actually listen to what was being said, which added reactive depth and authenticity to what I then said.
Get it?
Later in life, when I interviewed people on air, I used this experience to add intensity to the dialogue. Instead of figuring out what to say next, I took a deep breath during the interviewee’s comments and really listened to what was being said. When I replied spontaneously with my next question or comment, I came across as natural and thoughtful—or something like that.
At least this is what happened in the best of times.
After abandoning acting and broadcasting for an extended and stressfully boring career as a Mad Man, I blocked all these techniques from my mind, believing them to lack relevance in my new life.
After I crashed and burned from the Mad Man life, I found hope and joy in doing what I do now—writing, operating a bookstore, performing and hosting, etc.
Then, I realized that everything I had learned as a very young thespian and announcer turned out to be useful in the shop.
When customers seek help or advice or feedback, I make sure they have my full if brief attention. I listen and react, then try my best to take them seriously and give them a hand in finding what they need.
This makes me feel better about what I do for a living, and it seems to bring great satisfaction to most customers, who seem grateful and even surprised that a shopkeeper is focused and attentive and friendly and helpful.
Results are a bit puzzling. For instance, my behavior in the shop gives people the impression that I am smarter and wiser than I really am. I am not necessarily smarter and wiser, I am just Paying Attention—something many folks are not used to, in this no-eye-contact texting virtual confusion of a world we’re in at the moment.
I guess all I am really doing is trying to treat people the way I wish to be treated. When I leave a shop or eatery or event, I feel really good or really bad, depending on how the people in charge deal with me. As long as I keep this in mind at the shop—asking myself, “How did I just now make this customer feel?”—I can find some small bit of pride in having done what I can do with the limited tools and experience I possess.
Ignorance, it turns out, is blissful. Helpful and attentive ignorance is even more fulfilling.
John Jacques Rousseau (you know, That Guy) once said, “To write a love letter we must begin without knowing what we intend to say, and end without knowing what we have written.”
I think I just did that. I spewed forth some unplanned thoughts about a deeply and lovingly felt subject and they turned into a love letter to my customers, a tutorial to anyone who wants to leave each of life’s encounters with the knowledge that perhaps, just perhaps, someone feels a bit better as a result.
And you and I, at our finest, will not even be certain of what we did to make this happen
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
April 15, 2018
TRAPPED IN A WINDOWLESS CELL WITH A HALF-DRESSED MAN
Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/trappedinawindowlesscell.mp3
or read his tale…
TRAPPED IN A WINDOWLESS CELL WITH A HALF-DRESSED MAN
Here I am on hold in a windowless room, a room aglow with stark light emanating from indifferent ceiling fixtures.
Next to me is an examination table covered in white butcher paper, an examination table that awaits me.
But I don’t give up so easily.
Instead of climbing atop the table I stand in the center of the room. I become the temporary examiner in the time I have left before the professional examiner enters.
Efficiently arranged implements stare back at me from a cabinet against one wall. Cotton and sterilizing compounds abound. Instructions and warnings are strewn, and on another wall hangs a rack of brochures that hawk or describe certain unguents and procedures that are available to all who dare.
A few minutes ago a medical assistant makes a few notes, asks some questions, and leaves the room after instructing me to remove my shirt and prepare ye for the doctor’s visit.
The room is chilly, so I keep my shirt on. Will they expel me because I dared not enact what seems to me to be a meaningless gesture? Why should I stand half-dressed in a cold, windowless room, long before I really need to be shirtless? I decide I can take my top off when the doctor herself lets me know it is time.
A small rebellion. But what other powers do I have today? What are my options?
I glance in the mirror and see a fully-clothed geezer who looks much older than I feel. Who took over my essence and stuffed me into a large bleached prune?
I sit in a nearby chair and make a few notes. I arise and read every brochure, most of which want me to look younger if I will just follow instructions and invest certain amounts of cash.
Not a bad idea, looking younger. But then, if I substantially alter my appearance will I still be Me? What would happen to Me, the me I’ve lived many decades being?
Most of my life is spent finding a way to get through each day as Me. It’s really all I have, this Me thing. I decide to continue being me.
Wouldn’t want to terrify or alienate my family and loved ones. They only know me as Me, so maybe I’m doing them a favor by being predictable, by being Present.
Thoughts atwirl fill the room as I wait a bit longer.
All I can think about is the punch line. What punch line will I use should the examiner ask me why I did not remove my shirt as instructed?
What about this retort:
“Well, I did not want to be left alone in a windowless room with a half-dressed man.”
That man being, of course, me.
Will the examiner and assistant get the joke, or will they stare past me and get on with their tasks?
What do you think happened next?
The door opens and in walks
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
April 8, 2018
TRAIPSING THROUGH THE LAND OF THE HELTER SKELTER MISINFORMED
Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/traipsingthroughtheland.mp3
or read on…
TRAIPSING THROUGH THE LAND OF THE HELTER SKELTER MISINFORMED
“Oh, look, they don’t even know how to spell READ.” Voices just outside the bookstore chuckle and point at the REED BOOKS sign.
When these visiting-the-South-for-the-first-time visitors actually enter the shop they are relieved to hear that my last name is REED and that I do, indeed, know how to spell READ.
Sometimes I feel I’ve just missed boarding the Literacy Train.
Things are overheard in an old bookstore. Amazing things. Delightful things. Sometimes disturbing things.
One wooden box of great quotations suitable for framing is being riffled through. There is a witty one that reads, “Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.”
A lanky customer looks over at me and says, “You know, this is not the correct quote. The actual quote is, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I am stymied and try to compose my reply. I actually cannot believe he misses the satirical jibe.
“Well, that’s another quote that is true. Two nearly identical statements can be true simultaneously, you know.” This pops out of me before I can guage whether I’m coming across sarcastically or whether the Nerd in me is just trying to educate without mocking.
The customer tries to concentrate, looks back at the placard, then says, “Oh, I see what you mean.”
I gently try to explain further. “It’s just a joke somebody made.”
He seems relieved but confused.
Maybe I should display the two quotes side by side. But chaos might ensue.
One day, a youngish browser hears me quoting Will Rogers, “Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.” He snaps back, “That’s not correct English, you know. Ain’t is a word…”
I stop listening. There are humor gaps everywhere I turn.
I realize that my sense of humor evolved from my parents’ generation. They always threw in terms like “ain’t” and “don’t do nothin’” as gag references picked up from comic strip and movie and radio heroes. Back then, everybody understood deliberate misuse of language as a kind of joke code. They enjoyed the very same gagmasters, Fibber McGee and Fred Allen and Red Skelton and Minnie Pearl and Lum and Abner and Bob and Ray and Jed Clampett and Groucho Marx and Li’l Abner and Snuffy Smith…
I probably should have thanked the correcter for educating me.
I envision a time when songs like “Ain’t Misbehavin’” will have to be corrected to “Am Certainly Not Guilty of Misbehavior” or “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” will morph to “I Fail to Achieve Appropriate Satisfaction,” etc.
Thank goodness I live in my own little bookie bubble. Thank goodness I can travel to the past and find solace in savvy sages such as Will Rogers, who said, “When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.”
As concerned as I am about the hit-and-miss gaps in education that abound these days, I can still get a laugh or two out of listening to occasional browsers, one of whom explained to his girlfriend, “You see this book, LORNA DOONE? It’s about that village in Scotland that comes to life one day every hundred years.” She is suitably impressed with his font of knowledge and I find myself wanting to re-read H. Allen Smith’s book, HOW TO WRITE WITHOUT KNOWING NOTHING.”
My version would be entitled, HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT LEARNING NOTHING.
All this makes me doubly thankful for all the visitors who lust after knowledge and good reading and creative learning and, and, and…truth, facts, wisdom, humor, empathy, kind thoughts…
Where would I be without them? I thank them all for the hope they bring into my dusty little shop on 3rd Avenue North at the center of the universe
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
April 1, 2018
SECRETS OF WRITING REVEALED AMID CLUELESS CLUTTER
SECRETS OF WRITING REVEALED AMID CLUELESS CLUTTER
Now that I have your attention, what would you like to know about being or becoming a writer?
There are two kinds of writers. Aspiring writers. Perspiring writers.
Aspiring writers have many explanations as to why they aspire. As an aspiring writer, you may say, “Well, I want to write someday,” or “I scribble a bit but haven’t really started yet,” or “When I complete my degree I want to learn to be a writer,” or “I’m thinking about writing fantasy/sci-fi books,” or “I don’t really have anything to say, but when I do I’ll start writing,” or simply, “I want to be a writer.”
Perspiring writers, on the other hand, don’t make any such comments. These are writers who have the passion it takes to ignore all hurdles and just get busy doing the work. These are writers who cannot live without writing. These are basically the writers who get things done.
Aspiring writers wish they could be great writers–someday. Some even feel that professional writers make it look so easy, surely all it takes is doing it. Kind of like jumping off the roof, fully caped, and flying–just because Superman makes it look so effortless.
Perspiring writers just write. They don’t procrastinate by sharpening pencils, arranging files, clearing off desks, adjusting the light, lining up favorite snacks, losing themselves in endless research, responding to all tweets & faceys…waiting for inspiration. Perspirers just get on with it.
Aspirers often wonder why the writing can’t just write itself, so that time can be spent autographing books, receiving literary awards, rubbing elbows with notables…
Perspirers tend to write out of joy or fear or expedience, knowing that the next word will always appear right after the previous word, that writing is endless–with occasional bathroom breaks or deadline closures.
Aspirers have not yet realized that writing is a habit, an addiction, writing requires practice and repetition. Just like any craft, any art.
Perspirers know that writing is so much fun. Perspirers also know that if it ain’t fun, if it ain’t fulfilling, you might just as well give it up and find something else to do with your time. Indeed, there are many other ways to find fulfillment.
Time for me to sum all this up, so that you can get on with your life.
To get started as a writer:
Begin writing. Don’t outline it. Don’t think about it. Let it come. Spew out what you have to feel and say. Put your fears and your joys and your concerns all down with no structure, no editing. Take notes so that tiny things observed will not be forgotten and will reveal their significance when rediscovered. Then, much later, when it comes time, take a quick look at your notes and begin allowing your fingers to move of their own accord. Don’t guess what happens. JUST SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
Perspirers know, and aspirers will soon learn, that good writing requires the mastering of two distinctly different skills. Writing is one skill. Editing is another skill. And sometimes writing and editing cannot exist within the same person. Every writer needs an editor. Without expert editing, a written work is just an undisciplined jumble of words.
Time for me to go write something now.
Are there any questions
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
March 24, 2018
REGARDING THE THOUSAND AND ONE MUST-DO UNREWARDED KINDNESSES
REGARDING THE THOUSAND AND ONE MUST-DO UNREWARDED KINDNESSES
I am walking gingerly, leaning into the gray wind of a gray day, dancing around gray asphalt cracks and humps to maintain balance long enough to enter the safety of the nearby store.
Everything seems like gray routine. The gray familiarity of this frequented trek is passing by so little noticed or noted that I could close my eyes and still find the door I seek.
Fluttering just behind and to the left of me is a gray figure navigating toward the same destination. Her clothing is parachuting about her small frame, disrupting her course and causing her to exert extra effort to reach the entrance.
I automatically reach out to open the door, step aside to motion her through ahead of me, only just now paying attention to her face and the strands of hair crisscrossing her vision.
She hesitates to enter and I bow to indicate I’m waiting for her to precede me.
She glances at me for the first time, popping out of her strained inner thoughts long enough to raise her eyebrows,widen her eyes, and stare through me as if to say, “Why would you do something so nice for me? For someone like me? Of all people?”
I smile reassurance, she accepts my old-fashioned gentlemanly act just long enough to enter.
I follow her into the store, but she is already rushing across the aisles as if to avoid having to confirm a stranger’s kindness that must surely be misguided. As if to say, “You may change your mind and decide I’m not worthy of this act. I don’t want to face that possibility.”
The moment is a mere wisp. The gray routine of the gray day bears down upon us and we go our permanent separate ways toward indefinable destinies
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
March 18, 2018
UNCLE ADRON AND THE TIT-HIGH TEMPORARY NO-TRAIN WATER-RESERVOIR RAILROAD RIDE
A special story from long ago, re-discovered within the pages of my Red Clay Diary:
UNCLE ADRON AND THE TIT-HIGH TEMPORARY
NO-TRAIN WATER-RESERVOIR RAILROAD RIDE
Uncle Adron is bouncing up and down, head nearly bopping the ceiling of his Model-A Ford automobile, each time he pops upward. He’s bouncing involuntarily about every second, so that you could set your watch by the sound of his bottom hitting the seat on the front driver’s side.
Uncle Adron is bouncing along because he’s driving one way across a railroad trestle in Lilita, Alabama. One way along a one-track traintrack, heading east.
The wheels of the Model-A don’t quite fit inside the parallel tracks, don’t quite fit onto the surfaces of the rails, and aren’t quite far enough apart to fit on the outer sides of the rails. So, the Model-A automobile is riding kind of side-saddle, the driver’s side wheels on the outer edge of the rails’ north side, the passenger-side wheels nudging the inner edge of the rails’ south side.
Below the trestle is water. No bridge. No road. No field. Just water. The water came from nowhere last night–at least, the water came from the sky in torrential rains and caused water to fill up the small valley under the train trestle. A lake appears where grazing grass lay yesterday, Saturday. A road had cut through that pasture on Saturday, the road that Adron and his three companions had travelled on westward early Saturday morning.
Right now, on Sunday, Adron is steering the Model-A to the east, trying to get home safely, hoping that the lumber mill behind him is closed on Sundays. It is the lumber company for which the railroad trestle exists, and trains usually go to and from the mill–when the mill is open for business.
At this moment, Adron is operating on his usual stock of blind faith and extra ounces of sheer gut and willpower. He’s hoping that the old tenant farmer who manages the hunting lodge nearby is right: “Nassuh, that sawmill don’t open on Sunday. Ain’t no train today!”
If the farmer is correct, Uncle Adron doesn’t have to worry about being hit by a train. All he has to worry about now is controlling the Model-A as it enters no-person’s land in the middle of the trestle, bumping over and intimately feeling each and every crosstie under the tracks. One moment of concentration broken could make those wheels slip beyond the trestle and the rails and the crossties.
Limping ahead of Uncle Adron, scouting to be sure there are no broken crossties or other surprises along the track, is Tommy Reed, my father. In the 1940′s, when Tommy and Adron are still young enough to have adventures such as this, Tommy is the cautious one, Adron the daring one.
Behind the Model-A, following like careful sheep, are Brandon McGee and Jack (Buddy) McGee, my uncles.
The four men have spent the weekend doing what they like best–travelling from Tuscaloosa past Epes, past Livingston, to go to the shack they call The Hunting Lodge in Lilita–a shack in the middle of nowhere (Lilita being almost nowhere, you see)–where they can have a few laughs, a few smokes, a chaw or two, without any visible signs of the heavy responsibilities they carry on their shoulders during the work week.
The Hunting Lodge is a place to listen to the silence, clean weapons, and talk without talking aloud, laugh now and then about the silliness of life and the predicaments they find themselves in now and then–and Now.
Earlier in the day, the four hunters weigh their possibilities, looking at that water below the trestle and wondering how deep it is, wondering whether they risk getting into even more trouble by trying to drive that Model-A Ford into and across the water. At last, help arrives. A large cow saunters to the edge of the lake that was on Friday its dinner buffet of mixed greens. The men stiffen and watch silently. If the cow walks across the water safely, they’ll take their chances in the Model-A. After another thoughtful pause–or thoughtless, as the case may be–the cow walks into the water and freezes.
“As soon as I seen that water go over the cow’s tits, I know’d it was too deep to drive across,” Uncle Adron tells me, a full fifty years later.
That’s when the four men–Tommy, Uncle Adron, Uncle Brandon and Uncle Buddy–put their heads together and come up with the Master Plan.
Now, here is Uncle Adron, bouncing up and down as the car lopes over the crossties one by one, looking down from the driver’s seat at nothing but a great expanse of uninvited and uninviting water, sticking his head out to see if he still has the feel of the car wheels hugging the train tracks.
And that’s the story.
Did Uncle Adron survive his adventure so that he could tell it to me fifty years later? I just told you that, didn’t I?
Did Uncle Buddy avoid having to jump into the lake to keep from being run over by a train, so that he could move to Harlingen, Texas, and raise a family and try to forget all the atrocities he’d seen as a paratrooper in World War II?
Did Uncle Brandon survive another day in order to work his father’s general store in Peterson, Alabama, for a few more decades, bringing laughter and fun to two generations of nieces and nephews and grand nieces and grand nephews?
Did Tommy Reed go back to being a carpenter on Monday morning, so that he could spend the next forty years raising kids and grandkids in Tuscaloosa?
Did I, the son of Tommy Reed, live long enough for Uncle Adron Herrin to finally tell me and my brother Tim the tale of the tit-high water reservoir and the one-way train trestle trip without a train in Lilita, Alabama
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
March 11, 2018
UNCLE ADRON AND THE 160-ACRE BEAVER POND RIDE
Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/uncleadronandthe160acredrive.mp3
or read his tale below…
Red Clay Diary entry
Long, long ago, my brother Ronny and I drove deep into Cottondale, Alabama,
to do some time traveling:
UNCLE ADRON AND THE 160-ACRE BEAVER POND RIDE
My brother Ronny and I are just about ready to give up trying to find Uncle Adron’s 160-acre property in the middle of which sits the home we know he and Aunt Annabelle live in.
“I remember some of the road, so I know it’s around here somewhere,” says Ronny, who was last a visitor here some forty years ago.
Truth is, we are almost lost and not quite found in our search for the old homestead in Tuscaloosa County. Dirt roads and narrow-laned asphalt roads and orange washboard roads run this way and that, and the car I’m driving enters a different time and place and era every few minutes. Mobile homes perch on concrete blocks near century-old breezeway houses, and a little further along there’s a 1950’s ranch-style house with dirt bikes and pickup trucks in front–in back of which an old out-house and shambled barn still struggle to defy the gravity that is soon to pull them down. As we turn from blue road to red clay road, a shack with a satellite dish smugly hides its mysteries.
We finally give in to the 21st Century and whip out a cell phone to get Uncle Adron or somebody to tell us how to find the homestead.
And there it is–deep in the forest, there’s my cousin Harold and some of his brood, and sitting on the front porch in laconic meditation is Uncle Adron, who greets us as though we are dropping by for the second time this week.
There are no strangers in Uncle Adron’s world of family and kin.
As we talk and tour the old wooden house, we feel as if we’ve never left. In some ways, visiting Uncle Adron and Aunt Annabelle is like coming home after a rough day at work and finding out that work and everything else that occurs away from this place are fleeting and paper-thin.
Ronny knows which room he spent the night in 45 years ago, I know where Aunt Annabelle served up chicken and dumplings 50 years ago. We both know that this place in the depth of the countryside is as vivid and timeless as a cool drink of water from an old wooden bucket.
I step outside to clear my head of all these memories that are so sweet and compelling that at any moment they might bring with them a sadness that can’t be swept aside like a spiderweb.
Harold shows us the enormous prefab building where he runs his RFD business, and we look down the lane to see where grandkids live nearby.
“Can you show us around the property?” I ask Harold, certain that a nice brief hike in the woods would be therapeutic.
“You want to see the land?” Harold asks, as if he can’t quite believe that a city slicker would condescend to tour his front and back yards, the yards he sees every day.
“Sure, I’m serious,” I say.
Harold says, “OK,” and I start walking toward the trees.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“Isn’t this the way?” I reply.
Harold starts getting into his large four-wheel vehicle. “You want a tour, don’t you?”
I have trouble believing that anybody would actually drive around their yard, rather than walk. Maybe it’s Harold’s bum leg. I get into the truck and yell for Ronny to join us.
Within seconds I understand why we’re trucking rather than walking. Uncle Adron’s property is enormous, and we’re about to see all of it.
Three country dogs appear out of nowhere and start running ahead of the vehicle, not behind it. They know the route, even though there is no visible road.
Harold takes us into deep brush, the car rocks side to side into and over century-old ruts. The limbs and leaves splat against the closed windows and we lose sight of the sun.
Looking behind us, I see no sign of where we’ve been. Ahead, only Harold and the dogs can tell where we’re going to wind up.
What if the truck goes dead? Will we survive out here in the compass-less land that nobody outside our family traverses?
We dive deep into small valleys, pop up into sunlight over brief hillocks, go through a scratchy meadow past natural-gas pumps, and wind up in the completely quiet forest near a beaver pond.
Harold turns off the motor and we roll down the windows.
To a city boy like me and a city boy like Ronny, there is silence. Our silence consists of hearing nothing we’re used to each day: airplanes, cars and trucks, horns, car alarms, shouted invectives, whirring air conditioners, boom boxes.
The silence of the forest takes over and overwhelms us. Insects communicating. Water lapping. Dry grass crunching under dog paws. Panting, wet dogs, frolicking in the pond.
The noisy silence of a million invisible insects going about their work-day, punching in, doing their shifts, living and protecting and procreating and dying in ways we cannot see.
“Sometimes, we come out here and just sit and watch the beavers and just be quiet,” Harold grins.
The dogs play in the water, swimming and snorting and acting like puppies.
And that’s where we remain for a long time, my brother Ronny and I…and that’s where we remain embedded in memory, long after we’ve made our respective treks back to Houston and Birmingham
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
March 4, 2018
THE SLOSHING UNNAMED GOLDFISH DANCES FOR ME AND ME ALONE
Listen to Jim’s podcast:
or read his story below:
THE SLOSHING UNNAMED GOLDFISH DANCES FOR ME AND ME ALONE
Something is sloshing around where things do not normally slosh around.
I am belted into the driver’s seat of an old car, an old car idling shakily in a line of traffic that is itself following rules of the road. We are all obediently waiting for a traffic light to morph from red to yellow to a third color destined to grant us permission to proceed.
As I said, something is wiggling around in my vision. At first I ascribe this to occasional hallucinogenic episodes caused by ocular migraines. But, no, migraine does not seem to be happening.
Then, I spot the source of sloshing.
The left lighted tail light of the car ahead is filled almost to the top with clear fluid. That fluid sloshes around in response to the car’s wobbling motor and the small jerky movements initiated by a fidgety brake foot.
The effect is that of a lava lamp operating at full speed. The only thing missing is goldfish.
I am momentarily mesmerized and entertained by this unexpected random act of art. I wish all tail lights nurtured goldfish and tiny turbulences such as this.
Suddenly the traffic light stops matching the color of the sloshing tail light and we lemmings are off and running toward vaguely manifested destinies.
My bookmobile knows by heart the route I travel so that my mind can wander off to spy upon the next installment of the upcoming thousand and one entertainments
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
February 25, 2018
LET SLIP THE RANDOM ACTS OF THINKING
LET SLIP THE RANDOM ACTS OF THINKING
The vehicle before me on the open road sports a sign, “Fueled by Compressed Natural Gas.”
Aren’t we all?
The imagined title of a book destined never to hit the New York Times bestseller list, “Eat All You Want and Gain Unlimited Weight.”
I don’t need to read it, I’ve lived it.
And one more: “When Good Things Happen to Bad People.” I hate when that happens.
So what’s the point of tossing these scrambled thoughts at you?
Well, this random act of thinking is meant to stimulate you, stimulate myself, into thinking outside The Dome, into revving up the imagination, into flushing out junk ideas in order to get way down into where all the good and great thoughts conceal themselves.
Phrases from books well read stay with me well beyond the pale. These phrases may mean something important if they remain floating about for an extended length of time.
Phrases like, “It reminded me of the irretrievable moment in childhood when we have not a care in the world.” That’s from author Jason Segal.
Here’s another, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” Juan Ramon Jimenez said that. It will swim about in my head until I absorb the metaphor and learn to apply it or live it.
Even graffiti can leave a lasting impression, “Soon we’ll all be older.”
You don’t have to be talented or a genius or even skilled to think a great thought. Here’s one: “My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated, but not signed.” I could have said that, only Christopher Morley beat me to it.
What started all this? I am scheduled to conduct a writing workshop for high school students at Trinity School in Montgomery. I’ve learned over the years that, when speaking with an audience, I must first determine whether they are alive and energized, whether they are in the moment or just coasting. One way to do this is to toss them thoughts both common and great, then encourage them to throw in their own inspirations and ideas. Once they become part of the creative process, my job will be easy. If the audience has no ownership of the subject at hand, the session will be a dud.
When a voice within screams, “They’re alive! They’re alive!” I will be prepped and ready to lead, ready to guide them toward some kind of appreciation of the written word. Ready to let slip the random acts of thinking in which they wade. Ready to show them how to teach a writing workshop to me, the student.
Wish me luck. Better still, wish me success
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
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