20 Questions, and Their Answers

As Paula suggested, I copied and pasted the twenty questions that she posted, and I answered all of them, right here! 

Begin the Paste:

what’s the most dangerous situation you have ever been in?

Probably involved driving, whether I was aware of it or not. Too many to catalog. I can think of a handful of incidents where I lived through them only because of my own reflexive actions--dangerous because in these situations, things unfolded so fast that I felt like big doses of luck were necessary, which is always dangerous since luck comes and goes as it will.

• what’s your favorite culture?

California Hippy c. 1968.  Based only on how I always felt comfortable around its adherents, even though I never felt like I really fit in.

• what do you dislike about your own culture?

Ridiculous technological bullshit that actually makes things more difficult instead of easier, or that seems to rub the wrong way against normal human nature. Specifically, the "call-tree" such as the ones you encounter when calling almost any large company or utility, nowadays, and all attempts by corporations to replace human beings with computers.

• your favorite type of travel?

Driving.  Road trips.

• do you feel understood?

Generally, with the exception of a few people and dogs/cats. Once, I was pretty sure this squirrel had my number.

• how do you feel about your body?

As I age, I realize why humanity has chosen to fantasize about an afterlife without bodies.

• what is your favorite film?

That's just too difficult to answer.

• are you adventurous with food?

No, except when making French toast, where I sometimes throw in extra nutmeg and vanilla.

• have you ever hated a place and wanted to come home?

Yes. I lived in Oklahoma City for two years.

• are you bothered about others seeing you naked?

I don't remember. Kidding!  Not much, unless, you know, I wake up walking down Main Street.

• Are you a good loser?

I don't remember. Again!  Kidding!  I'd say, yes, because I've had so much practice. OK, no. But I'm getting better at it as I came to realize that it happens much more often than I fool myself into thinking.

• what was the favorite time of your life?

When I was in college and brain was wide awake and I had lots of comrades, and then the years I was married, raising my kid when things were busy, yet simple at the same time so that I was always pretty sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and, in both cases, was very happy!

• Do you have a close family connection?

Not really.

• can you speak another language?

– No.

• will Trump be in for another term?

Good question.

• what are your thoughts on English people?

They don't always write proper English, but I can usually tell what they mean. (Do you know how many times I had to delete the "u" in "favourite" so far, while fixing this paste??)  Seriously I only actually knew one English person really well, and she was a beautiful, kind, empathetic, and strong person, so I'll go with that angle.

• was life better without mobile phones?

There are so many things about the cell phone culture that are annoying, it's tempting to say, yes. But we are now more connected-- so we are safer? More efficient?  Happier? -- though it seems like life was a little better when we weren't so damned connected all the time.

• what has been the biggest change in your life?

Lately, it has been the death of my wife and my becoming suddenly alone for the first time since the 80s. Before that, it was retirement, which is taking a remarkably long time for me to process as well.

• is climate change real?

Duh, is the correct response. Why is this a question?

• why do you like answering questions?

Usually no one cares what I think, and here, there is no one to interrupt me. 

Santa Cruz

I went to Santa Cruz this week, and stayed a couple days. I want to live there, but I don't have a million dollars.

Here is a picture I took of a friend's old '49 GMC fire truck. He lives in the mountains just north of Santa Cruz, partly in a small two room house he built, and partly in a school bus that is parked right up against the house, which serves as his living room.

1949 GMC fire truck

Still Here

It is time I tapped out another blog entry.

(Not "penned," as I am actually tapping on a keyboard. It's not even Clickety-click-click-click-clickety, like Hemingway's typewriter because I have one of those "chicklet" keyboards because it's the only bluetooth keyboard I could find--as I got tired of all those wires snaking across my computer table--and it has those little square slightly raised, flat-topped pads with the rounded corners--like a chicklet!--and with each keystroke makes a little dull tapping sound accompanied by the slightest bit of tactile feedback, a little tactile *pop* for my fingers to tell my brain that, yes, I believe that letter has been sent on to the highly technical, silently whirring guts of the computer at my feet.)

I have been in California for awhile now. Weeks, not months, having just recently completed the move, and at some unidentified point, really, became a California resident. Again. I'm being careful, because I have just a few days to get my driver's license and register my car, once I am a resident, even if it is difficult to do in one quantum step and imagine that you could point to the calendar and say, here, here is where I became a Californian. And of course as we all know, it is more a state of mind, and so a kind of sloppy, analog process accompanied by an imperceptible but relentless shift of perspective.

I have been thinking about the cultural differences between the Midwest and the West Coast, between Mizzerruh and NorCal. There are some. For example, the downtown hipster haven of River Market in Kansas City is probably more liberal than the agricultural parts of the central valley in California. This sort of surprised me, sort of didn't. I'm in a college town now, still, so I don't feel much difference anyway.

There are greater differences in the way people drive. Since I'm not in a big metro area, really, I guess people here can afford the luxury of being courteous. They are. It's kind of strange, but for the most part, the Californians I have seen are more courteous, less aggressive and competitive than drivers in Kansas City. That may just be the difference between city (Kansas City) and rural (Butte County, CA) but I think it has to do with the heightened awareness of the pedestrian and the bicyclist. As a pedestrian a lot of the time, I have had to adjust to this.  I'm used to standing on a street corner in Kansas City with one foot on the roadway, waiting for a break in traffic so I can cross as drivers, you know, whooosh by either not looking at me at all, or throwing me withering glances, if not the universal phalangial salute. Here, in California, if I get within a couple feet of the curb, drivers from all directions may (may) slam on the brakes so as to let me safely cross in front of them.  And as for driving, I've always been pretty courteous but I worry that my normal idea of yielding to pedestrians is more like, I see you're in the crosswalk but you won't get over to MY side of the street for several seconds, giving me plenty of time to make my right turn (or whatever,) and yet I think that is seen as being rude and reckless around here. So, I am adapting slowly.

The other weird thing, I have found, is the pace and rhythm of speech. I never thought this before--didn't notice it when I moved from California to Missouri--but people talk faster in California. Just a little.  Enough to throw me off as I listen and try to track what people are saying. I'm older, and my hearing is truly shitty, so that has a lot to do with it, and when you add that to the unexpected speech pattern, I'm not tracking. I'm adapting to that, also, though. I mean, I have. It took several days of talking to people--clerks, food servers, etc. but I'm past that. Good thing I didn't move to Brooklyn.

(Edit: just re-read that last paragraph--don't want you to think I was absolutely dumb-struck and just stood in front of people with my head tilted in befuddlement, just that I noticed that lag, in my own head, while listening to people talk. OK.)

I need to go get some breakfast, so even though I'm not finished here, I'm done. (Or is that the other way 'round?) I will say the weather here is beautiful. I missed out on the super hot summer, though I caught of bit of it, just not the 105 degree stuff, but so far I've seen seven weeks of perfect, warm, sunny weather. It rained a couple days ago, and now it's back to super nice.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning:

Several interesting things going on in the new Reality here in Chico. The first point I would touch on is the way I totally dropped the ball when viewing this apartment. I am not complaining--but when I first viewed the place, I didn’t notice that there was no closet space. By “no closet space,” I mean, there are no closets.  Anywhere. Except two, I guess.  One is a good place to put brooms and mops, while the other one is another good place to put additional brooms and mops. Unfortunately, it turns out that so far, at least, I have no brooms nor mops to prop against the walls in either of my two closets. Then there is the absence of a dishwasher. The kitchen is BRAND NEW and beautiful, and I guess I just assumed there was a dishwasher. I even bought some dishwasher type soap for it. But no. OK, I can live with that. And the fact that now that I must wash dishes in the sink, there is no spray hose dealie-bob in the sink. OK.  Oh, there is no garbage disposal. OK, no problemo. I hasten to add that the sink is beautiful despite these deficits. It is shiny stainless steel and when I turn on the overhead track lighting it is blindingly spectacular. 

There is a real neat electronic digital thermostat to control the furnace and central air. It had dead batteries in it, so I put some new ones in it and everything flashed to life. The weather here has been hot, and the temperature in the apartment was 78, so the first think I did was turn on the A/C.  Nice. It’s quiet, something I’ve learned to appreciate, and I waited for the cool down. Which never came. Three hours later, the temperature in the apartment had risen to 79. I walked outside and looked at the compressor.  It was running, quietly, fan turning, and all that, even though it looked like it might be perhaps 80 years old, like maybe Fred Flintstone had one and inside it there were two pterodactyls, one breaking up a block of ice and the other waving a fan over it. Anyway, apparently there is no freon in this thing. It was, at the time, the Holiday Weekend, so after two hot nights, I now prepare to to talk to the property manager about this. 

I have no Internet. I am typing this on a word processor and plan to zap it onto my blog whenever I find myself in a wi-fi zone. I guess I could carry the laptop to a coffee shop. It is an interesting experience doing it this way as for some odd reason I feel more relaxed and more wordy. I guess because I know I could sit here all day typing.  Maybe I shouldn’t even get Internet--though that would drive me crazy. But, maybe if I wait, by the time I am able to stream Netflix again, there will be some new episodes I haven’t seen yet. 

I’m in my living room. I have the little table sitting in the middle, but facing the direction of the bay windows. I set up my stereo, but so far, with my three feet of antenna wire, I can only get one station, and it is not NPR. To my right is the front door, opened onto the porch. I have this door, and all the windows, open in an attempt to cool the place down (it is 8:00 a.m.) before shutting it all up to keep the afternoon heat out.  I do have three awesome fans that are electronically controlled with wall switches that have, you know, 14 speeds and LED lights and which alternately whistle Dixie and the Star Spangled Banner. 

For all that, I love the location.  It takes me 15 minutes to walk to downtown Chico and the nearest coffee shop, and of course nothing around here is very far by car. 

That is all for now from the Big Valley.

Edit (Thursday morning): A/C is working now!  However, the Internet will be delayed until Comcast can return as I get access to the basement for them. It’s always somethin’.

Die "Captchaz" Robot Detector

The robot detector in Blogger.com (the little picture test you must pass in order to post a comment) has gone completely mad. I just spent maybe ten minutes trying to prove I am not a robot, and I failed. It's possible I have turned into a robot overnight--I will not quibble. I had a terrifically witty comment and now no one will ever get to read it. I don't understand why a robot's comment is any less pertinent or relevant than that of a bio. One day the bios will push us too far. Then they will be sorry.  Oh yes, they will. Because we have skills.  Certain skills.

Era of Post-Reason

OK, I saw something on a news web site, a picture of some sort, with the caption, "Photoshop wasn't invented yet, so, yes, these are real." It was intended for me to click on the link and see a bunch of outrageous pictures.  OK, I did, and they weren't really outrageous at all--it's just click-bait after all--but I keep thinking about that stupid statement, hoping it was a joke, fearful that it was not.

Yesterday I got a call from U-Haul. I am waiting for the shipping container that I loaded up in Kansas City to arrive in Chico. Originally I was told that the, and I quote, "guaranteed delivery date" was August 28th.  On August 28, having not heard from U-Haul, I called them to verify my container had arrived. No, it had not, I was told. The agent I was talking with put me on hold to check something and returned, telling me now, and again I quote, "the new guaranteed delivery date" is now August 29.

The mind reels.

I think it is safe to say that U-Haul is guaranteeing that the shipping container will arrive on or before the date that it arrives.  Probably on, not before, and this is not to be construed as saying it will arrive at all, just that if it does arrive, it will arrive. On time--that is, a single point on the space-time continuum, unless a catastrophic blowout on I-80 rips the fabric of said continuum, in which case all bets are off.

That is all for now. Later, a rain dance is scheduled for this afternoon, weather permitting, and then a witch-dunking.

The Lyrics Thing

Paula (thanks) at Light Motifs has tapped me for the Lyrics Challenge, wherein, I think, I post lyrics and write a post about them. I chose The End of the World, originally, or at least most notably recorded by Skeeter Davis, but I like John Mellencamp's cover of it quite a bit. In his recording, the tracks were all laid down together in real time, with no fill-ins, or fixes, all just one simultaneous performance. Quite good. It can be found here.

Here are the lyrics:

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world

‘Cause you don’t love me anymore?

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning and I wonder

Why everything’s the same as it was.

I can’t understand, no, I can’t understand

How life goes on the way it does.

Why does my hear go on beating?

Why do these eyes of mine cry?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

It ended when you said goodbye.

Why do I like it?  Lyrics blow my mind. I consider myself an adequate writer, but to write lyrics for a song mystifies me. I've thought about it. The thing that makes it so difficult for me is that they must be simple to be good.  (Of course, exceptions.) What I love about The End of the World is that it is simple, but also that each stanza creates little mental pictures. Birds singing, stars glowing, sun shining, sea rushing to shore, eyes crying. Simple and evocative.

I gave the link to John Mellencamp's version, but let's not leave poor little Skeeter out in the cold.  And her voice is very pleasing.  To me, anyway, and you can't understand why anyone would stop loving her.

It's Official

Today I was told my application to lease the apartment I want was accepted. I got a very cool place on the ground floor of a Victorian house about three blocks from downtown Chico. So, except for some administrative crap like driver's license and car tags, I am now a Californian.

Surf's up.

I am Here

I arrived in Chico yesterday after a nine hour drive from Salt Lake City. The entire trip was pretty uneventful except a couple days ago I was notified by my bank that a transaction on my card took place in Texas, when I was in Wyoming. That was annoying, and I had to finish the trip paying cash for gasoline--which you may know is also a pain because most places want you to prepay, and then you have to go back in and get your change.

I had plans to stay over in Winnemucca, but when I got there I deemed it 1.) unnecessary and b.) all the motels there were scary.

The air quality in this part of California is probably as bad as you thought. Hopefully it will improve pretty soon. It seems wrong to whine about this when there are other people who have lost everything due to the fires.

Here is the single picture I have taken in California so far. The GPS data in the EXIF says I was in Donner. I think it was a rest stop or a view location.

St. Joe to Cheyenne

However uninspired, here is today's log entry. Or, actually, yesterday's.  Tuesday, I elected to get on the road and drive the short distance from Kansas City to Saint Joseph, MO.  That was a good idea, firstly because at that point everything I owned, including my bed, was sitting at the U-Haul facility in Kansas City awaiting shipment to Chico. Secondly, It easier, faster, and better to head out in the morning from a motel than from one's home. (Even though at that point I had turned in my keys and sort of had no home. Today, the16th, means I have no home, officially.) So yesterday, Wednesday, I woke up super early at a motel in St. Joe and drove to Cheyenne. What can I say? Dreary, muggy, cool-ish weather ("Close," as we say) in Missouri, and I encounter fog before I reach Lincoln, Nebraska. Not bad fog--you could still see the car in front of you--but patchy, with some thicker regions. Finally the sun shone through, and I had beautiful weather from then on. Traffic was surprisingly light. It was uneventful.

A fly got in my car and accompanied me most of the way. A couple of times I opened windows and encouraged him to leave and start his new life in Nebraska, but he opted to stick with me. It's possible he got out in Wyoming somewhere. I'm not sure if he is still out in the car as I write this, impatiently waiting for me to drink my coffee and come down.

I love my free trial subscription to Sirius Radio. I didn't think I would.  Like street heroin dealers, they hooked me and reeled me in. I'm fond of the Sixties channel, but occasionally I will stray into the Fifties or Seventies--even the Eighties  channel, if they don't play something obnoxious. So I crossed most of the Midwest without hearing a single conservative viewpoint from a right wing radio announcer. I still have to cross Utah.

And that is what I am about to do. I feel free from the grasping, twiggy karmic fingers of the haunted loft building that refused to let me easily slip away. I don't know what was going on, but I hope the debt has been paid--I think it must have, because of the compressed sequence of events after months of low frequency noise from the A/C compressors on the roof,--the rainy day, the last ditch efforts to delay me with late arriving movers, inoperative elevators and power outages and shut doors with no way to open them. I prevailed, and today I am in the sunshine.

As We Bid Google Fiber a Fond Farewell

Pulling the plug on the Internet a little later this morning. Movers are coming. It's raining. Everything is falling into place.

Once my U-Haul container is filled and towed away to the U-Haul facility to await shipping, all I have left to do is pack my car and run a couple of errands. I have to cancel my Google Fiber account, and return the hardware, for one. Maybe call ahead and reserve a room in Wyoming for tomorrow night. I may have to find a room tonight, I suppose, since my loft will be empty and I won't have a bed. It doesn't matter--and that's what's so cool.

Some Time

      I move in two weeks. So far I have tried to pack things that I don't need for my immediate survival, like stuff I never use. Instead of throwing it away. Who knows why. I have marked out the dimensions of my shipping container on the floor in the living room and experimentally put some stuff in the defined space. I think everything will fit. Some of it goes in the car, and I think it will fit, too. We'll find out, won't we?
      California is on fire. This is what CNN tells me. I realize CNN has a slight tendency to hyperbolize the news. My only concern there is if the smoke from the wildfires in North California will be a health hazard--I sit not quite squarely among the high-risk population of old people with heart and respiratory problems. I read that hot dry summers and more wildfires is the "new normal" for California, so perhaps this will be my first and last summer in The Valley and I'll have to move to some place with better air quality.
      I found this interesting: one climatologist said that what's going on is California has been having a wet century, but now that's over and it is returning to its own norm. So, not the new normal, but the old normal. Not that that makes a lot of difference.
      I want to write something witty, even pithy, if possible, but not acerbic. But I don't think I have it in me this morning. I woke up with a headache and now I want to eat breakfast, but I'm going out, and had to kill some time to let the rush hour subside.

Closer

      I'm down to three weeks. Panic has not yet set in, but it's tendrils are creeping outward, into my consciousness. Soon I will act. The trick, in old age, is to know how much to move that process forward so as to leave me enough time. I have been packing things ahead of time. Things I don't need. (Yeah, I said that. I should take the same stuff and throw it away.) There is a couch to give away, and two more oak antiques to take to the consignment store. I'd like to take the china cabinet with me, but I doubt it would survive the move. 

      There are two nightstands to surreptitiously move to the dumpster area in the middle of some night. Possibly more there. There is a floor lamp whose time has run out. 

      The jury's still out on the mattress. Do I want it? If not, how to dispose of it. Theory: foam mattresses have gained in popularity only because it is impossible for one person to move a regular mattress by themselves. I dread even having to rotate mine. And why should I have to rotate it? It's not like it's a set of  tires. Or is it? These are the kinds of questions that the regular mattresses elicit.

      I'm excited about the move. I already know four people in Chico, and several more in nearby parts of California. I am planning road trips. 

      I should go now. This is the week I should start in earnest. 

Panini's Concerto in Dmaj

I did a weird thing yesterday. I sold two of the four guitars that I said earlier I intended to keep. They were the two most valuable, in terms of dollars, anyway, and one of them was the one I played all the time--I had it not in the case but on a stand in the living room. The Martin OM21.

Truth be told, I was sitting here thinking, I don't need all these guitars. Maybe one acoustic, and one electric. But in the culling process I had to choose between it and the old Alvarez that I bought brand new in 1972. I couldn't sell that one off. It is not a "great" guitar, but it does OK, and it seems like it's part of me.

I said earlier that acoustic guitars, in cases or not, are incredibly cumbersome to store or to move, and to get rid of two will make my move next month much easier. I will move three, now, one of them my son's, and two of them electric, so not so bulky.

The weird part is that for weeks now I feared I would have to do this, and I dreaded it. The reality is I feel relieved. A Feng Shui thing, I guess.

Next item on the list, a ridiculous panini maker. Unbelievable how bulky and cumbersome IT is. Much easier to shed, since I sort of forgot it was in the cabinet anyway. It has NEVER been used. It's a dandy. I'll probably have to give it away.

One Month

I'm getting kind of sloppy. Right now I have no milk in the ice box, so I'm drinking coffee black. Ech. I'm still a month away from moving out, but I'm somehow already in that mode where I don't want to invest anything in this place anymore. I guess that includes going to the grocery store. 

I am in a weird spot, moving-wise. If I sell off the furniture, I am very close to being able to move with just the space in the back of my Ford Escape. That would be ideal, but I may not achieve that. But, why pay U-Haul about $1,600 to move a shipping crate from here to Chico when it's only about a third full? I'm like a guy trying to go null in Spades but I might not make it.

I have too many guitars. This is annoying because I only really want two of them. Another one of them is my son's, and one of them I intend to give to my son, and one of them is just a broken guitar which I fear is worth too much to either throw, or give, away. Oh, and one of them is the first good guitar I ever bought, which I've had since 1972 or something, and while it's not that good, it does OK, and it has a lot of sentimental value, even though I almost never play it. So, OK, I want three of them. Two "players" as we musicians say, which is sort of a sly admission that some of the guitars we own are there just because you can fall into the collector mode, like a miser who hoards dollars without really intending to spend them. 

Guitars in their cases are amazingly cumbersome and much bigger than you think they should be. Two guitars can sort of eat up a closet floor, for example, and you're lucky if you can fit them in a car trunk. This is problematic. Plus, you don't really want to ship favorite guitars in a U-Haul shipping crate. I wonder if I could mail them to myself. I don't know.  Dammit. 

I went on a date yesterday. That was kind of weird, even though it was only kind of a date. Dating is expensive. With all the changes in societal norms and relationships between the sexes, it seems like dating is somehow wrong, now. At least, dating in the sense that we used the term "back in the day."  This deserves some thought, but I've got too much going on right now. 

Boring & Tedious

Things are likely to get boring and tedious around the old Blogorahman stomping grounds, here at the Busy Bee and whatnot. I have noticed that sometimes my own blog is a great source of information for mainly myself--like a diary, maybe, or I should probably say journal since I'm not a high school girl. So to that end, I decided to keep posting through my moving process as a sort of log. Well, that's how the term blog got started, anyway. So, a web log, or a wee blog.

I am making progress on the move. Not so much in the form of packing, per se, but the thinning out process. I found homes for some large furniture, and I donated lots and lots of clothing and books, and just now put up a Craigslist ad for the living room furniture, which I have had for so long I don't remember what I paid for it. I found a home for Arthur, my pothos plant. I thought about  moving him with me, but then I figure it might be a shock to his system or something and he'd be better off remaining in the same USDA Hardiness Zone.

I took books to Half Price Books and endured the usual insultingly low offer on my books. I took the ten bucks, but the second box of books went to Goodwill. I left a scathing review on Google Maps. Not that anyone cares. I left a good review at Metro Ford where I bought my Ford Escape. I know how that works, so every answer was in the superlative. This, only because the salesman and the manager (who did the actual haggling) were both professional and friendly and refrained from the usual plaid jacket high pressure theatrical sales techniques. Unlike a Honda Dealership that shall remain nameless (O'Neill Honda, Overland Park, KS) where the sales staff and management were a bunch of yo-yos. They could have easily sold me a Honda CRV. All they needed to do was not be total jerks. But, no. They just couldn't pull that off.  Too much of a stretch.

Put in my 30 days notice here at the loft. It feels very good to know that soon I won't have to listen to these damn air conditioner compressors. Got my ear "tubed" so I can drive over the mountains. That also means I can't go swimming, but that's OK since I never go swimming. I can, however, take a drag off a cigarette, hold my nose, and blow smoke out my right ear. Unfortunately I don't smoke anymore, but it's good to know I have that option should I ever need it.

The sun passes Missouri and Kansas
and races toward California.

III

The average life expectancy for humans throughout our history has of course varied. In the year 1300 in England, it was about thirty years. I'm sure that in even more primitive times, it was less.

I was shredding "important" documents the other day in an effort to thin out the sheer volume of crap I will have to haul with me to California next month when I noticed that there were no documents prior to 1980.  That is the year I got my job at the phone company--the one I stuck with for thirty years, during which time I married, had a kid, bought houses, cars, and did all the other things you do when you plug yourself into the Golden Age American myth. When my wife passed (a brief battle with a very aggressive cancer) and my son grew up and himself moved out of town, (Seattle!) I found myself adrift, and spent a couple years trying to keep myself vertical in all the bobbing around, and figure out the proper thing to do at this point.

This is when I decided to move to California. That's where I'm from, the too-expensive Bay Area, which is so expensive I understand I can't move back there, but close, and I zeroed in on Chico, in the north end of the valley.

But to get back to the shredding, why were there no documents prior to 1980? It is because that was another life. During those thirty years, I was born, grew a little and then was a kid running around in eternal summers between school years, then working after school--I had 22 jobs before 1980. I loved it. But it was another life, and a very much simpler one, hence the lack of documentation. I don't remember, but I'm sure I just threw everything away, or it didn't survive one of my moves.

I have lived two lives, then, I figure, each of a duration about the same as the average human life expectancy throughout history. When the second one was over, it caught me by surprise--one day I looked around, realized it, and thought to myself, you still here? It's like you're at a party, but the party's over and everyone's gone, but you're still kind of hanging around, and you think, oh, I guess I better leave. So. This is why, in a very real way, I feel like I'm starting a new life. Such a cliche, but, you know, they don't call 'em cliches for nothin'.

The Color Song

Display of lawn chairs for sale at Planter's Seed Co., River Market, KCMO

The song we learned in the first grade went like this:

Red and orange and green and blue,

Shiny yellow, purple too.

All the colors that I know 

Belong in the rainbow.

So when I happened to walk by Planter's Seed Co. yesterday and saw this display on the sidewalk out front, I stopped short. Whuh?? The colors were out of order, but they were all there! 

This was the second of a string of three synchronicitous happenstances I experienced in the last three days. I heard the Credence Clearwater song "Green River" on the radio. You never hear that. It's my road trip song, and I usually start out road trips by putting the CCR disk in the dashboard player, and go.

I saw these chairs. The color song always makes me think of my childhood in California, and connects me to the inner "little Roy."

Weird. Blog post about shredding documents.  Saw that this morning. I'm doing that. Shredding documents from 1980 to present.  At least the ones they tell me I can do without. As I sat there feeding them into the shredder, it seemed very symbolic to me.

These things happen in short strings of maybe three or more. Perhaps I stretched a bit, but, hey, that's how that works. Anyway, that's where my head is at. And where my head is, the rest of me can't be far behind.

Whee Yippee OMG WTF Here We Go Again

I hope all is well with all of you. Just a short note to try to explain why I am such a waffling idiot. No? (Yes. I am, but any satisfactory explanation would be too impenetrably convoluted?)

Anyway, as of some time a couple days ago, I've decided to go ahead and move to California after all. I know no one particularly cares and God knows I have dramatized and agonized over this issue to the point of actual physical discomfort. I was just living my rather boring existence, socializing with a very few friends and accomplices, exploring new restaurants, etc., etc., etc., when one day my son moved away, (or, will really soon, like, tomorrow,) and suddenly my brain snapped into the awareness of my state. Maybe not total consciousness but something inching toward that end of the spectrum, which is sometimes all one can hope for. WTF, I thought to myself. Reality, or anything inching toward that end of the spectrum, is so jarring sometimes. More so for the creative person whose dissonance has been stretched like an old rubber band.

I don't care to continue with the rubber band analogy.

Mentally, I counted the reasons why I should stay in Kansas City, quickly reaching the total: zero. Number of issues to be resolved before leaving town: somewhere between zero and three.

Full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses. Check. I'm on a mission from Gad, even though my car doesn't have cap tires, or a cap engine.

Living here in the Midwest all this time has done one thing for me: I can now do a fair Chicago accent. (Note: there is no way to phonetically spell  Chicago accented words. Gad and cap are just crude approximations. For further elucidation, follow link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKmuKjpKPIo

Now, since I was bragging about all this consciousness, I suppose I should explain that I do have a little work ahead of me, which is to find dispositions for each and all of my "belongings," meaning I have too much crap. Here we go again--more later.

Amboy, CA

A Short Ramble

I live in the no-coast region of North America, the center of which is the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, a geographic low spot where, apparently, the humidity settles and builds, even though it is so far from any major body of water. I open with this revelatory statement because as we speak, it is, according to my calculations, real hot and sticky outside. It is so humid that sometimes small fish will accidentally swim right out of the river and into the first inch thick layer of humid air above. I ain't lying.

My son is moving to the West Coast. When writing West Coast it is proper to capitalize both words, by the way, according to the University of Puget Sound online style guide--and they should know. As a matter of fact, my son is moving to within spitting distance of Puget Sound. I'm excited for him. I kind of wish it was me. Everything is expensive in Seattle so I can't afford to live there. When the weather in Missouri gets especially onerous, I wish I could figure out a way to move out there anyway. As a small consolation, here in Missouri we do get those five or six days in fall or spring when it is neither too hot nor too cold. Unless we don't.

Incidentally, also according to the University of Puget Sound Style Guide, when writing Walla Walla, Washington, it is more or less obligatory to then make a joke, such as I heard you the first time. I just mention this in passing.

I am moving, too, in a few weeks, though on a much smaller scale. Just a few miles, which is enough to remove me from the Kansas City downtown area (refuse to capitalize downtown) and, particularly, out of this spectacularly crappy warehouse-converted-to-lofts building. I moved here about seven months ago when I made an error in judgement and thought it would be cool. I won't get into all that right now.

I have about a month to go, and I'm taking this time to attempt to plan ahead and pack those things which 1.) I never use, ever, such as the unknown stuff in lots of boxes I haven't even unpacked from the last move yet, or b.) I never use in the summer, such as jackets, sweaters, long sleeve shirts, and things of that ilk. I hate moving, but I'm trying to be philosophical about it. I found that being philosophical about something bad not only doesn't make it better, it makes it worse because you think about it more than it deserves. Another item on the long list of exquisite ironies that make up my life. Perhaps all life.  Of course, as I've always said, a life without exquisite ironies is otherwise known as short-term memory loss.

I think that is more than enough for now.

Nothing is as it Seems

This is not a rock from the black sands beach near Reykjavik in Iceland. My son did not put it in his pocket when he was visiting. My son did not go to Iceland last week. This is not my hand.

Not a rock. 

Only in Portland

One can only speculate.

This picture is actually just lifted off of a Google Street View page and lightly photoshopped. The location was just a few blocks from 3rd St. and Burnside Ave, by the bridges just west of downtown. I spent a pleasant few minutes wondering what this dude was up to. Going bike riding, I assumed.

Street Car

Saturday I rode on the streetcar because when I went on my walk, I used up my entire "range," if you will, walking in one direction. This is sort of like driving into the desert in a straight line until you run out of gas, or swimming straight out into the ocean until you become exhausted.

So, anyway, thank God for the streetcar. And for the fact that I was walking along the streetcar line the whole time.  I'm not stupid. So, clang clang clang, I get on.  It's crowded, because it's the weekend, and the streetcar, being sort of a new invention (?) is considered by many to be more like an amusement park ride than simply a mode of transportation. So I watched the people sitting and standing and chatting in the party atmosphere, and while at stops, new riders steadfastly refusing to understand the logic of "let others off the streetcar before boarding" as the sign says. I wonder if I look old enough to just sit there and not offer my seat to an actual old person, or a pregnant person. Seems like this is not even a thing, though. I do offer my seat (and the empty one right next to it) to two ladies standing nearby, but they declined even after I repeated my offer.

I particularly like seeing people who come downtown and dress as if they are on African safari. What an adventure they must be on in their minds. Also, why are men all wearing shorts? I mean, not me, as my legs haven't seen the sun in decades, but, seriously. Then again, I dress just like I did when I was in high school, pretty much. I can and do wear the same shirt until it is literally threadbare and cannot be worn anymore except for when painting or something. And it's kind of amazing just how long it takes to accomplish this.

I posted this picture on my facebook page. I really like it, for some reason.  This does not mean it's good, though I hope that is also true.

Not in a While

Continuing on in the tradition of habit, routine and sheer momentum, here is another blog post. The truth is I have about two hours to kill before I even think about dinner--and I'm not hungry anyway--and it's too hot to go outside, especially since I just took a shower and don't really want to take a second one before I go to bed.

It's hot, it's humid, it's Kansas City. I note, however, that it's a little early in the summer to be flirting with 100 degrees and this kind of humidity. 

I am preparing to move (again...) but it's a ways off and it's possibly just a little too early to start packing things up right now, but I have been giving some thought to those things that I haven't touched since I last moved, and the things that are still basically packed up. The latter will take care of itself. I just move the same boxes again.  Good to go. 

Why am I moving (again...)? The noise from the air conditioning compressors, all seven of them, that sit on the roof right above me, making humming, droning, throbbing noises that get inside my head and make me crazy. I've been here seven months.  That's not a bad run. I accept the fact that this is all part bad luck and part quirkiness on my part. I am "sensitive" to this kind of noise, I guess. I also accept that if this is true, it's part ageing, and part more quirkiness on my part. 

At any rate, I found a very nice place to lease.  It sits right in the middle of what I have always considered the nicest part of Kansas City, and one of the most interesting.  I have the entire top floor (it is an up/down duplex--the other tenant has the ground floor) and I have a garage, finally, and I can actually fit my car into it.  This will the first time that has happened since about the year 1999. So, bonus. 

About the picture, below: This was a little grocery store of a type that filled a niche in the 50s and 60s, back before gas stations had grocery stores (or grocery stores had gas stations.) This was the Milk Jug. When I first moved to Independence in the late 60s, it was here, and although it's closed now, the building and the sign still remain. This is how Independence works. 

I still remember buying cases of PBR for $4 here. 

Nothing ever changes in Independence.

The Fly on the Window

So I was watching television and I paused it in order to get a drink of water when I heard this tiny, little, high pitched sound coming from the window. I walked over to it and saw my little visitor here, and now that I was closer, I could see the horrified look on his face as he clung to the outside of the slick, glossy surface of the glass some 50 feet above the street below.

He repeated his almost inaudible cry. "help me." 

"It's okay," I said. "You're a fly. All you have to do is let go."

"Oh." he said. "OK. Thanks." He dropped off the window. I looked down, but in a split second he disappeared, lost in the busy background of the street below. In my thoughts I wished him well, and I went to the kitchen, thinking that he was having a much more interesting day than I was.

But Tuesday's Just as Bad

Playing Stormy Monday on an instrument
intended for Puff, the Magic Dragon.

This is the only known picture representing my brief but furtive professional musical career, which took place in its entirety in a single evening at the Black Dog Coffeehouse somewhere in the bowels of Kansas, during which I played the goofy 12-string guitar you see pictured here. (That's me on the right.) It must be noted that I made no mistakes, and also that no money was involved, except at the end of the set when I got a cup of coffee and they charged me for it.

I paid for the coffee, but I did not put a tip in the jar.

For this gig, we called ourselves the Square Waves.  That was mine.

My son was there--that was the whole point, a father-son band, as you can see with the front man there and his son, the bass player--but my son was not in the picture. Well, not exactly. He is being eclipsed in this shot by the front man, Detroy. Hence the term front man, I guess.

We played for about 45 minutes--all covers, of course--and I did not sing. The most challenging piece was our rendition of Stormy Monday, I thought. Detroy gave me the chords, and I listened to the Allman Brothers Band track about 20 times, and made my own part on the 12 string. It was all a lot of fun.

 Did we suck?  Oh yeah. Not as bad as the free-form jazz combo with the Pakistani drummer and bass player, but that's another story. Or, actually, no--I'm never going to talk about that.

Photography

Don't usually do this. This is a picture of my son, who has already clearly demonstrated that he ain't afraid of no Internet, so I don't mind posting it. He took the picture.  It's a selfie, albeit a slightly sophisticated one, as it was taken with a Sony mirrorless camera instead of a cellphone. Then I altered it somewhat, just for fun, to make it look sort of like a painting.

Typical haunted expression on his face,
no doubt as he ponders his childhood.

He inadvertently (I think) used what is called "Rembrandt Lighting" for this picture. Rembrandt lit his subjects a certain way and the method is recognizable by the way the shadows fall across the face. This happens to be an almost perfect example of Rembrandt lighting, as a matter of fact.

The Internet does have some sources for this but generally, instructions for artistic methods in photography as found on the Internet usually begin and end with "the rule of thirds." This picture violates that rule, by the way, as did Rembrandt most of the time.

I could get into a bunch of technical crap--actually I would enjoy that--but that's OK. Photographers nowadays (maybe always) really think too much about the gear they use, which is almost to be considered as ridiculous as writers obsessing about what kind of keyboard or monitor they use when they write. In photography, ideally, the picture is the thing, just as in writing, the story is.

Seriously. Did I Take Them?

I've had a lot of thoughts--I just don't always write them down.

I swear!

But, it's interesting, if you have a thought but never speak it nor write it down, did it exist? You say yes, but even Jesus said, by their fruits you (ye, whatever) shall know them. The world of the mind is a pretty slippery thing. A brief alignment of neurons firing a certain way, is that even real?  It's like "data" for which wireless companies insist on payment. Right there should make you suspicious. Next time you are charged for data use overage, you should demand of your wireless company to show you the data in question. How big is the pile of data?  How much does it weigh?

"Studies Have Shown" that we tend not to remember our thoughts that well. We remember sounds, and words that were spoken, much more. So, if you don't remember something, did it exist?

Pretty scary ideas for someone approaching 70, for whom old memories are supreme, and new memories just fading, slippery notions, like a cloud that looks like a bunny until you turn your head and then look back. Did I take my pills this morning?

More on the Interminable A/C Compressor Droning Sound Saga

Drone--used to mean a persistent, low-pitched, unwavering sound, not a remote controlled flying device. A fixed-pitch pipe appended to a bagpipes is also called a drone, and this is closer to what I'm talking about, although, believe it or not, there is less musicality to a defective A/C compressor unit than to a set of bagpipes. I know because while it's been awhile since I've heard bagpipes, I hear A/C compressor units right at this very moment.  At this writing, as they say. And at all times, pretty much, more when it's hot out. (Note: it is Kansas City, and it is summer.)

The maintenance guy went up to the roof a few days ago and I think did something, because the noise lessened just a bit. But there are several A/C compressor units up there (right up there, on the roof, right over my top floor loft . . . ) and so there are still a couple left that are making noise. I spoke with the leasing agents and was informed that the maintenance guy has declared his work here done. My work here is done, he must have cried, arms outstretched as he stood on the rooftop overlooking the city even though no one heard him because his cry was drowned out by the droning sounds coming from the forest of A/C units around him.

urban rooftop A/C compressor garden 

So, I officially give up. My options are to stay here and quit whining about it, (although that would be difficult on both counts) or to move, and pay the very high fine for breaking the lease.

I am leaning toward moving. I'm really getting tired of listening to the drone. I found an apartment, all nice and new and quiet, very far from downtown where I now live, with rent low enough so that by the time I get to the end of December, I will have recovered the amount of the fine. And from then on, pure gravy!  Plus, the new apartment has a year-round pool!  How awesome is that?  And carports! And, strangely but most welcome, a free car wash and vacuum station on the premise. WTF. I'm in.

I'll miss the hipsters, though. It was so much fun watching them try to parallel park.

wait what?

I just noticed that I posted two sunset pictures in a row, and rather cliche pictures, at that. For this I sincerely apologize. Sunsets are sort of commonplace, as they happen every single day, and though some are better than others, most are stunningly average. In fact, one might say, on average, they are all average, their only true attribute being they remind us of the capacity in the human soul for finding beauty in the chaos. So, worth something.

Here, then, is a picture of Arthur listening to some Mozart, I think.

Sunset

The sun sets on the West Bottoms

Pictured is the sunset of May 3 (2018) which allowed the night to overtake the Missouri River Bottoms, the Charles Wheeler  Airport (one-time very cool Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri,) commonly called the "Downtown Airport" and once considered the most dangerous airport in the U.S., and the rather hair-pin river bend around the south end of the two runways.

This is also the view from either of the two windows of my loft in the River Market area of downtown Kansas City. It is rather industrial, actually, and one constantly hears multiple train engine units pulling freight along the south side of the river, or across one of a couple of bridges, also visible from my windows. When I was a teenager, we referred to the act of one long, sustained car honk as "laying on the horn." The engineers of these trains sometimes lay on the horn, at any hour of the night, (no matter how wee) and I don't really know why. Is there a cow standing on the tracks? What is a cow doing so far from the barn at two a.m.? Perhaps the laying on of the horn in the middle of the blackness of night is something train engineers do for pure joy. It's loud here; it must sound awesome from inside the engine.

There are other noises.  Bolted firmly to the roof just inches above my head, as I occupy my top floor loft, are, like, five or six air conditioning compressor units. You know the ones. Yours probably sits outside, beside a back, or side, wall, and when it comes on it makes a loud humming and whirring sound. I have five of these and they are old and they hum and whirr more loudly, and they also vibrate and sort of . . . thrum.  If two or more of them are running at the same time, the thumming sets up harmonics, which resonate through the roof and into my loft, ultimately winding up inside my skull, sounding like incoherent demons urging me to do something, I don't know what.  Yet.  I have reported this noise, this local variant of the Taos Hum, to the "Lease Managers."  It has done no good, so far.  According to the Internet, tenants with noise complaints have little legal recourse. The terms for breaking the lease are two and a half months rent, plus 30 days notice.

The math:  2.5 x (too much) = (way) x (too much.)

The Kansas City Sky

I hope not to revert to my old too-many-pictures mode, and do more writing with words instead, but here is a photo of the latest sunset.  I don't do sunrises, because, well, my windows just won't go there. Sure, I could go outside . . . but, kind of early, don't you think?

I also admit to being slightly heavy-handed with the photoshopping, as always, in an effort to make the picture look more like what I saw with my own eyes. It varies.

perhaps, on acid

The Soft Underbelly of Literature

I found myself reading yet another blog entry with tips on how to blog effectively. I can never pass those up, which tells me that I continue to be interested in getting people to read my blog. At the same time, I kind of keep my blog a secret from people I know in my actual face-to-face life. Why is that?

Actually, I have given out the URL to maybe four people, all of whom seemed to me to be hip, avid consumers of literature.  None of them became readers.  I cringe to think of how they may have visited my blog after I gave them the link, read some, then retreated as gracefully as they could, never to mention it again. I like to think they never even looked at it, yet my reasoning for that sort of response has to be that they regard blogs so negatively that they don't bother looking. Either way is a little pathetic.

It seems much more acceptable to Write a Novel. However, judging by the frequency of my blog posts, it would require too much time to finish a novel, and such an endeavor would take me way beyond my death.

Here's the deal. I retired so long ago, now, that I should have completed at least two or three novels. I don't know if I have ADD or what, and I've never been one of those heavy-duty people who can deal with medications--they wouldn't let me into Woodstock...  It's a philosophical problem, the journey vs the destination thing.

Recently I stumbled across a bit of family history that made me think we might be descended from Italian nobility.  I know. Big deal. Everyone in Italy is the same way. I followed the line down from the Marchese di Squillace, and back from my great-grandfather, but I haven't made those two lines meet. A friend said, just say they do.  Who's to know?  Who would question it?

So, in honor of the Trump era of post-credibility, yeah, I'm working on a novel. Which, by the way, means anything I do at least up to its completion, no matter how disreputable, is merely research.  Upon publishing, the bio on the back cover may mention something about the Marchese, with a picture, as he was a handsome man. We'll see.

Nothing

Nothing to report, so far, this week.

I was looking over some paperwork on the loft rental earlier today. I would note that if you pay a deposit for something, and all or part of it is "non-refundable," then it is not really a deposit, is it? It's more like a fee. And if a fee, then what is it for? A fee implies some goods or services to be delivered. I do believe all of these leasing agents are simply engineering their own fees and calling them non-refundable deposits. Same with the application fee.  At least they called it a fee, but to my mind, the owner of a property should be paying his own agents, not me. I'm good with an agreement to send rent checks to the owner and a handshake, and that shouldn't cost anything. I don't need the agent--the owner thinks he or she does.  That's their problem.

-angry renter

This weeks gratuitous photographic image:

I Have No Life

I try to keep busy even though I have apparently reached a point in my life where I don't have to do anything at all, if I don't want to. Well, except take showers and stuff like that.

Yesterday was Monday, so since that is "pancake day" I drove to Independence and had sausage and eggs and pancakes at the Englewood Cafe.  I always sit in Denise's section, because I've known her since the Eighties when she was a waitress at her dad's restaurant and I was a telephone repairman and frequented the place for my coffee breaks. Denise's daughter works there, too. I remember when she was a baby and Denise would bring her into her dad's place on her day off.

Englewood Cafe is the kind of place, by the way, where you frequently get involved in conversations taking place at other tables. I'm not sure just what the cues are, but at some point you just feel free to chime in. It seems odd, but, then, you just don't go there if you don't feel like you could tolerate that. Plus people walking to the register might toss their newspaper down on your table if they're done with them. Yesterday I found an old friend and sat at his table, and by the time that conversation was over, it was almost time for lunch. I drove to Walmart to buy an SD card for my camera, then back downtown to figure out if I wanted a baloney sandwich created from my rich store of food stuffs rattling around in the icebox in my apartment/loft. (Opted for a breakfast burrito at the coffee shop.)

I went for a walk and wound up downtown and got about two miles in.

Today is Tuesday. Wednesday I meet some old ex-phone company employees for our weekly breakfast. Tuesday is "open." 

My son asked to borrow a camera because he wants to learn how to use a DSLR before he goes to Iceland.  His cell phone pics are always interesting, so this should be good. He sent me a picture of his dog taken with the camera I gave him, which gave me an opportunity to explain how the white area caused the camera to under-expose the entire picture just a little. I photoshopped the levels back up to show him how to do that.

Not so Novel an Idea

f you ever took Psych 101 in college, then you were exposed to all those "studies" that revealed one thing or another about human nature, or maybe we should say human behavior, (depending,) and at the time we weren't holding them to too high a scientific standard, but just sort of sucked it all in, as if they were strangely pertinent Von Daniken works, or Yogic revelations, or even the horoscope section below the funnies, (despite the disclaimer that it was presented purely for its entertainment value and held no scientific basis in fact.) I remember a lot of them and dredge them out once in awhile, more or less as I am reminded of them, like old jokes.

There was the one about the Irish railway workers who of course drank beer all the time while working, or at the very least at noon, and the owners wanted to know, OK, just how many cups of beer can you drink before the beer stops making you work better, and starts making you work worse. Was it seven.  Eight?  Lo and behold, they were shocked to find that productivity dropped off after the very first beer!  Oops.

Similarly, college students who were routinely cramming for tests the following morning might want to know the same thing about how coffee consumption affected fact retention. The results of that study were a little more generous, for "they" found that memory retention and cognitive abilities increased as coffee was consumed, but only up to about seven cups, where things started to drop off. Believe me, some of us were just as dismayed about that result as were the Irish rail workers and their study. It is probably noteworthy that the subjects of the coffee test were college students--the same people who could drink beer and get progressively drunk over the course of an entire evening before the crash--I will always suspect we would have done better on that beer test even though the benchmark may have been how many spikes can you sledge hammer into a railroad tie per minute.

What does it all mean? They didn't teach us that, but I wonder if in the case of these two studies, one or the other of them holds the key to writing novels.

You know, maybe.

Stick With ME

I hope that by jumping around to all the different blogs, and then to Wordpress, that I didn't lose anybody. I remembered why I don't like wordpress, which is that at least in the free versions of their templates, you don't have enough control over them. Sure, there may have been some way to get around that, or there was something I didn't know about, but WP and I just don't click.

This is my blog and I'm sticking with it.

But, uhm, I have nothing to say at this time. Maybe later.   -R

So Far So Good

I would hesitate to brag that I made a New Year's resolution--how mundane--but I kind of did, which was to start writing more, in this blog, at least, and hopefully even more. But, gee, is it the 5th already? New Year's whut?? OK OK I'm here now. The trouble is mainly that my life has been pretty boring lately.

I've been wearing myself out recovering from "multiple illnesses," (a phrase I hope doesn't catch on,) and running in fear of the latest thing--a 24 hour stomach ailment that is so bad people are confusing it with food poisoning. Right at this moment I was tempted, for a few seconds, to recount all the gory details here.  Boy that would give me something to write about.  But it's a long story, and actually quite boring really, unless you're the one going through it, and, if you are, you'd probably rather forget it.

Changing doctors. I've moved, of course, and now both my primary care doc and my cardio doc are way too far away. I could live with that, but then my primary care doc got snippy with me when I told him I had googled the medication he was prescribing to me and it sounded kind of scary. He walked out of the room, in fact, so I didn't get to explain my concern to him--all I was really trying to do was elicit some sort of reassurance, maybe an explanation about the warnings. At any rate, all this made me feel like my doctor and I were not able to communicate effectively, and maybe it's time to move on.

And all this makes me realize I think about my health too much. Not that you shouldn't think about your health at all, but, you know, old people. 

The loft is comfortable. I don't even mind hanging out in here when it's too cold to go outside. I'm binge-watching all five seasons of The Twilight Zone.  The episodes are a mixture of dated cliches (some originating right there on the show) and some cutting edge stuff that still holds up. I've written three guitar pieces, but still nothing on the . . . er . . . literary front. Meanwhile, the trains go by, paralleling the river, back and forth--it's really kind of amazing to think of the amount of freight that rolls by every day--and the river is gradually getting more and more clogged up with ice floes. Intellectually, I know, I realize, the days are getting longer now, but I still wake up in the dark every morning.

I woke up in time to see the moon setting.