Was It Something I said?

The crowd was closing in when I heard over the din, a ragged voice shouting, “Stop, I wanna get off!” The voice was mine and the ride I was on was life -fast and whirling, passing without even asking me if I take cream with my coffee. Twenty-first century living has become rude, mainly because manners take way too much time and energy, two items in painfully short supply. The irony of the whole phenomenon is that rudeness takes substantially more energy than a polite demeanor ever thought of using. Rushing to take the last chair, pressing the gas to swoop into a parking space that someone else was waiting for, voicing one’s opinion over a mouth full of food, all take an extra effort, a spurt of adrenalin that could otherwise be saved for laughing at the moon, or baking cookies with a five year old. It isn’t about being nice; it’s about bothering to acknowledge the worth of the human beings around us. And that does take time, more time than stomping through life with the proverbial chip on the shoulder, but it is time well spent because of the dignity it brings to everyday. Every day.

Dodge City Calls

Matt Dillon and the Crew

It is the transition day, the 24 hours suspended between last week and next, the day we face what got away from us over the past 6 days, and establish what the upcoming 6 days will accomplish. The list for the coming week will of course be extremely ambitious because for the most part we are slow learners. Though we only got through half the items on last week’s “to do” we will create a calendar for the coming week that includes all of the leftovers and a brand new collection of “musts”, many of which will get pushed to weeks in the future, so that by the end of the summer our lists will still contain a few items from June, several from July, and we will barely have started on August. I want to be Matt Dillon, the Marshall, not the actor. He didn’t make lists. He spent his days drinking coffee in the front office of the jail until there was a disturbance in the street, a frequent, almost chronic occurrence. He was never overwhelmed by the pace or the pressure. He wore the same outfit everyday, his horse was always in working order, the menu at the saloon was limited to steak at night and eggs in the morning, and he loved Miss Kitty but the idea of marriage never came up, because after all, he was Matt Dillon. And if someone shot at him, he never questioned what to do. He always shot back.

Lights Out

Since the government has decided to control everything, I would like to request a mandate that our homes be equipped with a full length mirror mounted at every exit so that people can actually see what they look like when they leave the house. What caused the thinking that says, “I have this massive roll of fat around my middle, so I believe I will pour it into a spandex tube that emphasizes the depth of each layer”? And why do men think that when their stomachs are covered with hair it is acceptable to allow us all a glimpse of the furry protrusion under their too small t-shirt? Why do engineers think that because they can build bridges they don’t need to iron their clothes, and cyclists believe that their lycra, fully definitive shorts, are a good alternative to actual pants? There are writers, no we’re not exempt, who clearly believe that because they are busy creating, the need for bathing and matching socks doesn’t exist and don’t get me started on accountants, the inventors of “saggy butt britches for the professional”. The general rule of thumb should be that unsightly gets covered, inappropriate finds its proper place, the right size is what fits your body-not what you want to fit your body, and getting dressed is an activity best done with the lights on.

Only When I Laugh

When I speak, I am often reminded of what is said about a prophet in his own country. It works both ways. I may be telling people something they have known for years, but when it comes from the mouth of a stranger with a microphone it suddenly takes on a level of validity that it had been missing, and on the flip side, when I am talking to a group who has known me for sometime I am compelled to come with an epiphany, because the gentle reminders are passé. What I find to be true in both cases is that when you get people to laugh at themselves their minds are suddenly open to any amount of teaching. Can we look at our lives and see that they perhaps aren’t as pathetically intense as we thought, but instead a daily comedic endeavor that really will be funny one day if not now? A poignant truth or a meaningful lesson is always more easily shared by the speaker and ingested by the listener when we have first established that life’s difficulties are more bearable when eased by an intentional search for the ridiculous.

Drinving Without a Map

I am often asked where I get my ideas when I am writing and my answer is always vague, not because I don’t want to share my secrets, but because I don’t have a definitive answer. Often when I am driving down the highway, thinking of anything but writing, I realize that I am looking at the perfect setting for a scene that has been brewing in my mind. I might be standing behind a woman in the check-out line at the grocers and between the shoes she is wearing and the magazine she is thumbing through, I know she will be a character in my book. Very often when I am writing towards a point in my planned plot a new idea drops into my mind and I change direction without ever looking back, because I know when it “drops” in like that, I am receiving a bit of assistance that I shouldn’t ignore. When I wrote String the Dark Pearl, the plot and characters were laid out before me, waiting to be typed onto the page. I knew the characters before I thought of them, and I knew what they would say before I even opened their mouths. I always wrote until I had no more to add, knowing that the next day I would wake up with the next pages waiting to be created. I can’t explain it, except to say that God had a path for my book, it never was mine. If you don’t like the book, tell Him

Snooze

The dog is lying at my feet with his back legs stretched to their most elegant length and his nose carefully wrapped in his front paws, and I suddenly realize that I have never learned to take a proper nap. A nap is something that happens after you have chased your ball around the yard, and sloshed water all over the kitchen floor, when you are suddenly overcome with sleepiness, so you throw yourself down right there where you stand and within seconds fall into a coma. It is an emotional comma in your day, free of rules, where drooling is allowed. It has nothing to do with power, or cats, and it isn’t relegated to Sunday afternoons. The right to choose to nap is part of controlling, if not your own destiny, your own daily routine. The dogs are way ahead of us.

Veggie Tales

When an adult says they don’t like vegetables, I attribute it to their lack of Farmer’s Market experience. If you haven’t eaten crinkly, disorderly spinach with long stems, or softball size, perfectly red, slightly misshapen tomatoes (I know they’re actually a fruit), or pencil thin asparagus, or green onions the size of a 60 watt bulb, then you haven’t actually eaten vegetables at all. You are judging an entire food group by the bags of frozen bits your mother used to cook on the stove in way too much water until they were mush. Real vegetables come from the earth, the same day they were harvested, carrying a bit of dirt and a few flaws. They haven’t been waxed or polished or genetically altered for better color. They are the way God made them – good for you and affordable, and with little preparation they are a meal unto themselves, and they are sold by the most interesting society of people. They’re called farmers. Imagine!

Dreams of the Big Chief

The last time everything worked as it was supposed to in the world of communication was when I was in first grade, making my letters with a fat, red pencil and a Big Chief tablet. The paper was a horrid, grainy texture and the pencil, which was a little like writing with a canoe paddle, didn’t even have an eraser, but when you applied the lead to the light gray lines on the page you ended up with words, every time, no sign-ins, no passwords, no problems. You weren’t connected to the world, just to yourself, which has become harder and harder to do, and of course there was the Big Chief. He sat on the front of your writing pad, ever guarding your written work, without benefit of a server or a firewall, and I never remember wanting to throw him through the nearest window.