The passage of time is peculiar. You feel you will be taken seriously when you can say this or that event happened five or ten years ago. There’s an implied sageness that goes along with it, as if you are wiser and more worldly because you can point at a specific instant that gives you street credentials. But the moment you realize something took place fifteen or even twenty years ago, your internal dialog completely changes and you feel this uncontrollable urge to see how your IRA is performing.

On impulse, I picked up a community rag as I was leaving the diner. Maybe you know the kind, lots of ads, an advice column, reviews of local restaurants and the occasional gallery write up. At the least, it’s entertainment for a ten minute car ride home. I didn’t count on it’s potentially being a portkey to college days.

Velcro pygmies? Why is that familiar? Duh of course velcro, but pygmies? Oh wait a minute….there was that one time. Spring break, was it? Ok yeah..that was it. But how long ago was that? No seriously it couldn’t have been that long….

I’m not sure which disheartened me the most, the amount of time that past or the fact that a B level eighties cover band spent eighteen years clubbing. Wow. My internal dialog repeated that word a lot, wow. Until later when it switched to huh?

I pulled a few old photos out. There was the old polaroid of me and a girlfriend posing with five exotic dancers wearing assless chaps, and then random photos of the art I made as a college freshman.

I remember the club, I remember the beach, I remember the asshole my friend was trying to pick up, I remember kissing a random guy, and I remember getting up at five am to drive home in time for my part time job, but whatever judgements I had about the adventure evaporated. None of these events changed my life, but I’m sure they all shaped it in minor, if insignificant ways.They weren’t glory days. I suspect spring break in the party capital of the southeast was an attempt on my part to pass myself off as a typical college student, but I don’t believe I fooled anyone then. Or now.

worth a thousand words, does it matter if the words lack context?

Tilting my head toward the sky, catching words on my tongue, yet much like snowflakes they dissolve upon contact, leaving the fleeting feeling of “almost” in their place.

It can be easier to let people draw their own conclusions about what they see, or think they see. Because once they insert themselves into the picture plane, there is the the chore of convincing them they don’t see the things their eyes are focused on. I wonder if it is just an issue of right-brained communication versus left-brained. If so then who bares the burden of improving the dissemenation?

As much as I would like to continue this philosophical debate, it lacks context, and consequently credibility. Truth is simpler. I feel verbally lazy. The more I read the less I feel like talking. Somehow it seems unfair to have a mind wired in such a way that the use of one compromises the libido of the other. Or perhaps wiring is a crutch and nothing more than a polite guise to say communication makes brain hurt .

One feature of humanity is the uniqueness with which individuals interpret a shared experiences. One’s pleasure potentially equates with another’s utter distress. Multiple witnesses recount occasion with such conflicting details as to make the listener question whether or not these people were on the same planet, much less witnessed the same event.

My grandmother is ill and I have been relying upon two different family members for updates. I offered to drive south to give family a reprieve but was told to wait until I was requested, leaving me “on call” for the past three weeks. This is simply a fact and not a thinly veiled effort on my part to turn this into an issue about me. My part is easy. I wait until summoned, and call for information. The updates I’ve received leave much latitude for interpretation. Two messengers. One is blowing sunshine up my pant’s leg, and the other is defecating on my cornflakes.

These Jekyll and Hyde briefings are a source of great amusement, even if the reason I am receiving them is not. I think it can be easier to receive facts in an unfiltered manner so as to draw your own conclusion without being subjected to someone else’s emotional roller coaster or unflinching belief in their ability to pray a person into eternity. I’m not trying to belittle faith or hope, but few of us know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe it is better to appreciate the moment rather than forecast the future like an overconfident quack.

Regardless of all these diametrical interpretations, I believe it probable that all three of us want what is best for Grand. I just happen to feel as if I met someone, fell in love, had an affair, reconciled, broke up again, slept with his brother, flirted with his sister, got engaged, married and divorced. All within a three week window.

I postpone things I want. There is a nagging voice in my head that says, You haven’t earned it or You need to finish cutting the grass or painting the basement first. Most people procrastinate in the opposite direction. Me? I live with this deep seeded fear that I might actually enjoy myself, which apparently makes me uncomfortable.

I had a shelf of books waiting to be consumed, some mine and others recommended. I programmed myself into believing I should complete these before before getting a library card. Like on some level it was necessary to deprive myself so that I could later feel justified in indulging myself, as if one had anything to do with the other.

Some of these were obligation books. Someone else enjoyed them and thought I would. Only I didn’t. Most were technically good books, but I was unable to appreciate the characteristics that made them great books, just as the books I recommended to those people probably also fell flat, because they didn’t appeal to the reader’s taste. Liking a book, doesn’t make it a good book, nor does disliking a book make it a bad one, yet it is easier to focus on the subjective aspect of literature than the technical one.

So, I ask myself, “so, seriously what is with all this guilt over the library card, even when you had religion, it wasn’t one of the self-flogging shame ridden flavors?”

Why do this to myself? Guilt reading. Is it like the latent maternally programmed equivalent of not wanting to throw out food remaining on a child’s plate at the end of a meal? If you’re going to make the child eat it later. Fine. But eating half of a bologna sandwich because you feel guilty about throwing it in the trash because there are children starving in Africa won’t alleviate their stomach pangs, but it will raise your sodium intake and make you feel bloated. Just like reading a book you don’t like does little to improve world literacy.

Library card in hand, and martyrdom shed like a snake skin, I went to check out this selection only to find it unavailable. At first, I was disappointed, because two hours earlier the book was there, but secretly I’m pleased because a temporary void appears which will allow me to read other books until this one is returned, and it means the original book I was seeking was in demand….so maybe it’s a better than I anticipated.

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Guilty Pleasure
What or who do you enjoy reading, that you don’t mention to your peers because it is too cerebral, too outrageous, or too trashy? And why do you read it?

Rocky Coast, California
9.5″ X 7.75″ (Oil paint on composite wood panel)

When I meet a person and we lack a shared interest, I pay attention to their hobbies, anxieties, in short, their lives. I want to be aware enough to keep the conversation moving, but mostly I want the person to know I am interested in their character on more than a surface level. It shifts the emphasis on someone else to be stimulating so I don’t feel pressured to be or account for all the mundane ways I choose to pass time.

You get to know who people are by paying attention to what they do, not just what they say. Most of us are more than our last travel destination, our last prepared meal, or our last, “you won’t believe what I saw or did” story. But maybe that is just the difference between friendship and acquaintanceship.

I stood in the card aisle, fingering poetic missives on embossed papers, struck by the inappropriateness of many of the messages. Regretful words spouting synthetic wisdom disguised as empty platitudes. In the rawness of the moment it hardly seems adequate lacing bereavement with the pragmatism of things being meant to be.

I know the recipients, but not well enough to profess a relationship, unless tolerance has an expanded meaning of which I am unaware. Finally, I call the Better Half for insight. Is he religious? I know she is. Apparently, if he wasn’t, he is now. It makes finding the right message less of a minefield A sympathy card should accommodate the needs of the recipient, not the dogma, or lack thereof, of the sender.

Loss can inspire embracing religion, or the denouncing it. I’m judging merely observing. Peace is seldom found in a centralized location. The quest for reason is a recurring plight of the human condition; whether it be in the form of spiritual or scientific explanations. We feel more closure when we can identify the cause (or place blame) on what produced the effect. Even if the effect is an unintended consequence. But a loss is hardly a consequence. It is a name, a face, a missed opportunity, and a dark hole in an aching heart.

When my sister was a toddler, she would with a tissue box completely captivated by the notion, that once you removed one, another would take its place. She would discard tissue after tissue until my exasperated mother took the box away.

Living in a region with clearly defined seasons has the same effect on me. The dramatic transformation between winter and spring still holds my undivided attention.

Waiting too long to transcribe thoughts, is like preparing a complex soup. You combine ingredients, taste, consider, then adjust the seasoning. Taste again, reconsider and repeat. This leads to over-seasoning and transforms the soup into a hodgepodge of competing flavors, rather than a pleasure to the palate.

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Maggie mentioned this first. It’s been on my mind for weeks.

I detest censorship, even though freedom of speech guarantees the ignorant the same megaphone as the well-thought. It’s a risk this freedom, because opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.

I don’t advocate deficating rainbows for mass consumption, or as matriarchs in my family say, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” which is nothing more than code for if you do’t share my beliefs, keep your mouth closed.

Dissent challenges society to be innovative. If that weren’t the case I’d be chiseling this into a stone tablet and worrying predators rather than typing at my desk contemplating biscotti. Yet with all the arrogance of being evolved creatures, there will always be those who behave like adolescent asshats. I don’t know if their numbers are great enough to compose the rule, or merely the exception to it, but their voices are louder than those I prefer to hear.

I enjoy dark humor, irony, quick witted quips (say that ten times fast), and a dash of snark, but it seems to be morphing into a run-on sentence rather than the explanation point at the end.

I’ve no right to dictate etiquette or rules of engagement, but admittedly, online verbal fury gives me reason to consider my thoughts before responding impetuously. Vituperative language can have a place, but generally it’s more effective when used sparingly. Like excessive profanity, the message is eradicated by the shock.