What do you call this?

Forget everything you know… or think you know, and follow, follow, follow…

Ideas from quotes found on “The Vale of Soul-Making” and other sources too numerous to enumerate.  Some of them could even have evolved from my own vale of imagining-making.

Choices, choices: I do not know what, or how, to decide my next move.  But am I asking you for help or direction?

Sometimes, out of the blue and for no particular reason, I smile.  Please do not interrupt me when I am thus so rarely occupied.

Out there, in the far distant distance,  a cow mooed.  Not just once, but many times.  No one answered.  I’m assuming that’s OK with the cow.  I’m assuming it didn’t expect any answer.  I didn’t answer: my bullshit analyzer and mooing translator was dead; I’d forgot to put it on the charger when last at the barn.  I also realized I wasn’t up to the embarrassment if I mooed the wrong message and called up a load of bullshit. 

This shady suburban area collects cats and squirrels.  Squirrels are destructive rodents, I do not like them.  Cats are rodent killers, but do I like that better?  Honestly?  Yes, I do.

The advantage of self-empowerment over self-delusion is, you don’t have to ponder rhetorical questions: they ponder themselves into senselessness.

There’s a giant box store just out of town.  It’s full of stuff it’s convinced people they can’t live without.  House sparrows make their homes in the rafters and girders.  I like that.  If the business of selling crap isn’t too loud (or noisy if you prefer), you can even hear them chirp in those heavenly highs.  Brave little guys.

They have a freeway out here.  It’s over fifty years old; obsolete – two lanes each way when three would barely accommodate commuter and long weekend traffic.  Doesn’t matter, weekenders have lemming brains.  Necessary or not, tell them it’s a long weekend and they have to be on that freeway with all the claptrap of an imploding middle class of two-day tourism to rented cabins and over-crowded campsites on unwashed lakes.  Do they care that they’ll be wasting ten or more hours of their lives commuting to those places and back?  Of course not.  Caring implies intelligence; please don’t spoil their weekend. 

Feel free to browse, she said with a commercial smile.  Was she telling me how I should feel?  How presumptuous.  I left the store, crossed the street, walked over the raised railway track and stared at the sea.  The fog was lifting.  I wondered what it would be like to feel free?

You can’t “feel” free said the scientist.  Freedom doesn’t exist; it’s a mental concept, and the mind only exists as brain, so you are mindless, he said.  And I thought, what does that make you, you insipid idiot? 

Here’s a short list of the types I don’t like.  My “like” or “don’t like” aren’t arbitrary.  I spent an entire lifetime (up to now, that is) deciding which professions I liked and didn’t like.  Here it is, in “don’t like” order: doctors, lawyers (liars), judges, every sort of academic, every sort of bureaucrat, psychiatrists (shrinks), counsellors, teachers (with few exceptions), preachers (in spades), economists, bankers, politicians (without exceptions), lobbyists, academicians (worth repeating), Darwinists, professional entertainers, sports figures, military types (any type), commentators, TV anchor people drones, CEO’s (disliking even those who don’t even know yet they’ll become one), gods and newspaper editors. 

As I said, it’s a short list, a very sort list.  Don’t feel bad if your profession is mentioned, I don’t know you and that means you remain redeemable, even if you are god.  People have been known to come back from the dead.  Even if they didn’t remember being dead that takes nothing from their accomplishment.  *I digress, I know, but I love digressing.

Imagine, if you will, a wide sandy beach.  The tide is out almost completely; the sea sparkles out there a half a mile and  shining it’s brightest. 

Imagine if you will a lone individual walking towards what is about to become a returning tide, purposefully striding away from the safety of the shore. 

Imagine if you will an individual of no discernible gender or vintage, walking naked and unafraid to the open sea, a silhouette of dreams. 

Watch carefully as the individual’s stature shrinks steadily with each naked footstep in the wet sands; as the distance separating the individual from the returning tide diminishes, as the water wraps itself hungrily around the feet, ankles, calves, thighs and finally wraps itself entirely around the body, picking it up and tossing it back towards the shore.

That’s digressing. 

I wrapped up the job, he said as he sat down beside me.  (“He” being Dave).  We were in a restaurant where we had planned to meet.  So far, so good.  I wondered, as I’m wont to do when I’m not digressing, what you do with a wrapped up job.  Do you put it on a shelf?  Do you mail it back to yourself, or send it to someone you like, or someone you dislike?  Is it like a birthday present?   A Christmas present?  I wondered what colour of ribbon he used and if he affixed a bow?    

Speaking of presents, would you like a job already wrapped?  If yes, I’ll need your address, of course.  How much does it cost to mail a job?  If no, then it doesn’t matter, does it.  Of course if you say yes, I’ll have to ask Dave what he did with the package. 

The waitress came to our table.  She looked harassed and haggard.  Both.  I wondered if she ate there and thought I’d ask Dave if we could go somewhere else to eat.  He was ogling the waitress, including her harassed and haggard looks just below her  exposed throat. Dave isn’t big on discernment, take that as an opinion backed by some serious observation.  She had on a short black skirt and heels, both well below the haggard and harassed looks. 

I sighed, long and deep, with much feeling involved on my part.  We were going to stay, order, and he was going to eat.  I  thought I would digress.  Digression isn’t fattening and I didn’t think it would make me harassed or give me haggard looks.  A good digression is very well behaved, and totally reliable.  Besides, I was wearing a turtleneck sweater and slacks.  I felt safe from both harassment and haggardness. 

And in case I come down with something and can’t answer when you ask, “Haggardness” is not a place in Scotland.  It was once, but they moved it to Australia, or so I’m told.  I don’t, of course, believe everything I’m told, but this particular telling is intriguing, with a light touch of possible romance, so I am partially believing it.

… and finally, as I return from plagiarizing my own mind… a reminder:  “The owners of this country know the truth: its called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” ~ George Carlin