Another Month Gone

I'm what you might call a great student of time. Meaning, I think a lot about the passage of time. New Year, birthdays, anniversaries, all that.

Whether the subject is wasting time, killing time, spending time wisely, it's never far from my mind. The length of time it takes to do anything is always a concern, including listening to music, collecting music, and so forth.

Working out on my old exercise bike, walking, cooking, watching TV, writing a blog like this, reading Grandma bedtime stories; all of it takes time. I want to be on time, hit the pillow before the clock says 12:00, I consider all the ones in 11:11, and even have a pet name for 9:40, which is "Grain Belt." That looks weird in print, but there must have been a Grain Belt Beer truck that one time (or more often) went by me at 9:40 in the past. I'm sure I saw numerous Grain Belt trucks when I was a kid. So if I glance at the clock and it's 20 till 10 you know what I'm thinking of!

I know it's all arbitrary, the ticking of seconds being really an arbitrary measurement as well as the movement and placement of hands on a clock, but we're brought up on this stuff and so it seems natural. You look at the cats and they don't care about time, of course, but they're still creatures of habit, wanting their food on time.

Now we have July about to end, and August to begin. What do you feel about these months? July feels kind of sharp and August plump.

One last thing: We're coming up on 08-08-08, but, strangely, that doesn't mean much to me.

When Animas Attack

I'm feeling scatterbrained today -- at least my thoughts are diverted. I'm having a hard time concentrating. But that doesn't mean I haven't got my normal duties around here. Checking mousetraps, fixing meals, drinking coffee, watching the news, praying for Grandma's health, holding the bucket and Kleenex.

I'm aware of what's happening. It hasn't always been that way. I've had what I call "anima attacks" before, serious "falling in love" episodes that are all consuming and very painful. Someone says something about how some woman, as an example, moves her mouth in relation to a particular joke. And without warning the ascent and attack has happened! Or hair -- of course hair is a notorious anima trigger. But anything can touch those hidden connection points, so it's not exactly predictable.

Some of my recent thoughts -- such as of the girls driving by in the convertible with their hair blowing in the wind or my "Wild Thing" ordering whiskey at the soda shop -- are the stuff leading to the movement of anima ascent. Then various things are in a sense conspiring with and congealing around these disparate images until something puts one over the edge. Except my current state of being smitten has no actual target or potential partner -- it might just be frustration-based. And in all honesty I'm not over the edge, just near it, and it helps to be conscious of what's going on.

[Hang on a second, Grandma needs to spit.]

OK, I'm back, just let me wipe my arm... That was terrible. I guess the exercise she got when we went to the movie was a mixed blessing. It gave her the reviving but also seems to have worked up some phlegm that was apparently living at peace with its neighbors in a cul-de-sac somewhere in a forgotten part of her lungs. And it must have been all the moving around -- getting in and out of the car -- that got it all worked up and up in arms, so she's been hacking out their disgruntled citizens all day.

Getting back to my problem: The movie probably didn't help the situation with this incipient, though, I hope, avoidable, anima attack, the movie being "Mamma Mia!" [their exclamation point]. I've been thinking about it, which helps my ability to remain conscious of what's going on. Also, and this could be part of the danger, I've been listening to my ABBA "Gold" CD, so it's reinforcing the themes of the movie. I try to stay clinical; I keep thinking of its structure, man vs. himself, the anticlimax, the climactic twist, etc. Nothing wrong there. But the themes -- the love affairs, the wedding, the sailing away -- you can see the sorts of projections and transferences that are not just possible but likely for one as susceptible to it as I.

I'm kind of a fool, I guess. Why foolishly dally around with a chick flick? It's not like I don't know better! A passage in Man and His Symbols, edited, with an introduction by C. G. Jung, stands as a kind of stern sentinel to warn men away from chick flicks:

"The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irractional, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and -- last but not least -- his relation to the unconscious" (p. 186, Dell paperback).

So what is within is personified. No problem, you say? But M.-L. von Franz, writing there, begs to differ, giving a cautionary Siberian tale, that you perhaps forgot, illustrating a destructive anima. A hunter sees a beautiful woman on the other side of a river. She waves at him. He throws off his clothes and dives in, but she flies away in the form of an owl. Then as he swims back he drowns (pp. 187 and 190). In this case the anima symbolizes an unreal dream of love, happiness, and maternal warmth, and, I believe, importantly, reminds us to make sure the women we meet aren't secretly birds.

Well, enough of that. Yes, yes, there is a whole positive side as well. But I can't afford to sign up at Match.com, I don't like the whole bar scene, and, anyway, I'm fairly happy here on the half acre, you know, tending to Grandma in her golden years ... that never seem to end.

My strict resolution is this: What I need to do is not look at any cool women driving by or any with a "fairy-like" character (Ibid, 191). They're the absolute worst!

Gramma Mia!

You'll recall yesterday, I was concerned about Grandma's health, sort of. I was monitoring her breathing, which was very shallow. I looked it up at WebMD and it turns out three or four breaths a minute is not normal. I say I was "concerned," which might not be entirely accurate, for the simple fact that when you're 104 anything other than a death rattle is good news.

I've been doing my best around the place to look after her. It's getting to the point, though, where I'm experiencing cabin fever. I feel like I deserve a life, too, yet here I sit, night after night, while the rest of the world whoops it up. Sometimes I look out and see a car speeding by. There's someone out there living the fast life! And it's not too hard to imagine that maybe it's a mixed party, you know. Maybe a guy in a car with a few girls, a convertible, and their hair is flying loose in the wind. And the guy's laughing and glancing in the rear view mirror at one of them, knowing that he's cutting a fine figure for anyone who happens to see him speed by. It's debauched, of course, but not without a trace of desirability.

OK, enough sitting here stewing in our own juices! I've made a decision! I wake her up, "Grandma, Grandma..." And I suggest we go to the movies!

I've been wanting to see the new chick flick, "Mamma Mia!" And probably it'd be something she'd enjoy as well, being something of a chick. So I went to all the work of getting her up -- a labor of love -- getting her dressed, getting her and her walker and wheelchair to the car, and we went to the theater. We're right on time, and I know it's going to take some doing to get her in, but thankfully it's just the previews showing.

She being in a wheelchair we had no choice but to go all the way down front. I don't mind the front but I know it's going to be bad for her neck. But I shouldn't have worried, because right away she dozed off. Just as well because I'd hate to have her asking me all the time, "What'd they say?" Or worse, eating all the popcorn and spitting out the hulls...

So, how was the movie? Great! ABBA songs, some of the greatest songs of all time. I'm loving every minute of it! I'm tapping my toe. But I have to confess it had such a sense of abandon and of fulfilling your dreams -- an exotic locale, redeeming the past, true love winning out -- that I had the temptation to run away. I started thinking about my life and what else might be possible. (Spoiler alert:) When Sophie sails off with her boyfriend, I'm thinking, I need a boat and a chick like her or Meryl Streep. But, getting back to reality, I'm very very concerned because they didn't do the song "Waterloo," and the movie's obviously winding down. And then, a welcome surprise for me, the cast was out on stage (in the film) doing it as a closing number! Yea!

Pushing Grandma and her chair out to the ordinary world after that was a completely letdown. There's the car, there's the same old street, and then later, the same old house. But she was none the worse for the wear, and in fact it may have helped her. Maybe some of the lively tunes sank into her consciousness, her reverie. Once I got her back in bed her breathing had picked up and she was doing pretty well. Also it could've just been the movement, the exercise.

The Day So Far

Grandma's been in bed for a few days. She gets up for bathroom breaks, then goes back to bed. She hasn't had an appetite at all. I've been looking in on her once in a while to make sure she's breathing. And so far she usually is.

Today, though, she got up and came to the table and had some Grape Nuts and apricots. I hope whatever's kept her down is about over with. It's a drag getting my own meals.

Then -- a big surprise -- she wanted to go into the living room and sit on the couch. So we did that. I got out her walker, even rotated its tennis balls, which I try to do every 10 miles for a more even wear, and she made her way to the couch.

I sat in the corner chair and we sat in silence. After a while I started thumbing through some of her old "True Story" type of magazines, just glancing up a few times. She was just staring ahead. We sat there a while and then she indicated she wanted to go back to bed, so that's where she is now.

Her breathing is fine -- maybe three or four breaths a minute. So I think she'll be OK.

You Don't Need To Rush Off

Things out here at the half acre are very slow paced. The speed of life isn't the speed of light. It varies wherever you go, of course. In the city you have your fast women, fast cars, and rat race. Out here on the acre -- OK, half acre -- we have one slow woman, an old car, and an occasional rat. Mice, mostly, to tell the truth.

We are very plain folk, unassuming, not even slightly self-conscious of how plain and unassuming we are. The fact that I can even make the statement seems to contradict it, but only because your logic is too fast. Our logic out here is like everything else, slow, and willing to stretch with the circumstances.

We really are not in much of a hurry about anything. Whether it's cleaning out the garage, the shed, the basement, our crawl space attic, doing anything, if we can put it off till next year, so much the better. We drawl when we talk, not because it's exactly natural to us, but because we're not in a big hurry to say anything. We have entire visits with friends that consist of dozing off in our chairs.

This slow pace helps keep us in good health, they say. Grandma's 104 of course and she knows it. I've heard her say so many times, "I'm 104. I'm 104." We knew a lady -- used to live over at the community-living, senior place -- and she was 105. She did the same thing. The biggest activity of her life was this, having the ends of spoons cut off, then she'd bend them and make rings out of them. She'd say something on that subject once in a while. But mostly all she ever said to you was, "I'm 105. I'm 105. I'm 105." Now, I could listen to that all day, like the next guy, but in 105 years it seems like something would've happened to you that'd be a little more interesting!

I have to slow down. I got worked up there a bit. Because I'm like John Boy Walton in certain ways, except I talk with the same voice now that I'm old as I did when I was young. Like him I can do that whole bemused, detached thing of recounting what we used to do back on the Slump half acre. But unlike him I'm still there -- or, that is to say, I returned. Some of my worldly ways -- which were few -- are still at the surface, as I said above, leering at fast women, wanting a fast car, the rat race. O, for one of those fast women-- But I digress.

The slow pace affects the visits, dozing off, etc. And the slow pace also affects us when a visit has to end. We have a saying that I'd like to leave you with, which is, "You don't need to rush off." If you've visited 10 minutes, like on a delivery and an errand and have to hurry away, we don't say much about that. But if you've been here six hours, seven hours, that's when it comes out, "You don't need to rush off." I guess that's natural to slow people.

"If You Want Me To Eat..."

Yesterday I posted something here that upon re-reading sounds very brusque. It's a phrase that sounds funny to me, picturing a guy so mean to his wife that he could say, "You know where I am! If you want me to eat you'll bring it to me!" Just typing it again makes me laugh out loud. What a crumb!

I have a recording of it hooked on to the previous post -- and I guess I'll hook it on to this one, too, because it sounds funny.

It's absurd, though, because the natural response to the guy would be, "Eat if you want, don't eat if you don't. What's it to me? Are you so deluded that you think I am fulfilling my desires by fulfilling yours? If you're that mean, starve!"

Prince Charmless

I'm imagining myself in a serious relationship. I can picture myself being quite charming at first, to win over my lady fair, then clamping down after she's securely enamored by me and letting her know who's boss.

At first my strategy would have to be flowers and tours in a carriage around the half acre. We would spark and spoon in the dark of the moon. And for a year or so we would watch the fireworks from the hill, and make a few fireworks of our own, if you know what I mean. I can see myself gazing deeply into her eyes and uttering sweet nothings, said utterances commencing and finding their logical resolution, her being instantly won over. The next thing in this tender scene would have to be me saying the three most beautiful words a man can say to a woman, which are, "I love you."

I love you, my cherie amor. I love you, my darling, forever.

[Picture calendar pages flying off the wall here, indicating the passage of some amount of time.]

"This is the kitchen, these are the pots, these are the pans, time to make some noise. Dig right in, I'll take me a mean mess of polk salad, and maybe go down to the truck patch and get me some kohlrabi and other greens. I've starving!" See the transition?

Time goes on, and now I taking the old battle axe for granted. I keep a bottle of hootch down inside the loose board in the outhouse. I'm out there taking a leak, then looking out the moon hole. I don't see the old ball and chain coming, so this is a good time to wet my whistle and scratch my throat at the same time. The stuff's a powerful elixir! I'm refreshed but getting meaner by the second.



She's calling me to lunch, let's say, but by now I'm one for barking out orders. I figure by now she's here to serve me, no questions asked. So instead of me going to the dinner table, I sit in my easy chair, watching the fights, and hollering to her: "You know where I am! If you want me to eat you'll bring it to me!" And "It seems like any fool would know I need something to wash this slop down with!"

Of course we live happily ever after.

Grandpa Flinging Mice

I'm in kind of a wistful, sentimental mood. As you know, I had an on/off relationship with Grandpa Slump. He died in '78, so really whatever sourness there was is pretty much sweetened up a bit, and sentimentality is pretty common. My memories are much more streamlined, pressed in a mold, shaped and reshaped after all this time. I remember some things with gladness and sorrow both, like all the F bombs he used to drop when he was with us guys. It was good that he thought me mature enough and man enough to listen to him cuss a blue streak. But there's a little sorrow because I remember him as being overly angry.

I was walking around out in the driveway a while ago and looking out at the road there, now paved but it was a gravel road when Grandpa was here. That's the road -- the very road -- where he used to fling dead mice. We would get up in the morning and check the traps, and if we'd caught a mouse, it was fun to see him take it out, take it by the tail, open the door, step out, and fling it out in the road. It's not that far, but still, it would have to put a strain on the internal integrity and construction dynamics of that thin little tail, with all the mouse's body weight at one end and Grandpa's force at the other, combined, as it was flung. Yet I never saw one snap off.

I used to think of the mice out in the road, all day long being run over by cars, trucks, and tractors. Finally they would have to be ground down to nothing, just a oneness with the gravel and dirt. Or maybe a snake or bird would come along and carry them away. Who knows? One thing is for sure, they wouldn't be there forever. In fact it was very rare to go out there and find a dead mouse in the road at all. Right afterwards, sure, but hours later, not so much.

Sometimes I think about things I used to own, tricycles, cameras, other junk, stuff that's been sold or tossed out. And I wonder if it all still exists somewhere, not as the actual thing being used, usually, but maybe as a piece of metal twisted and buried 10 feet in the dirt somewhere. That's possible. Some of this stuff is never really gotten rid of. Could it be possible though, that, say, a tricycle I had 50 years ago, could still be a twisted piece of metal somewhere underground, somewhere still in this world? The red paint flaking or maybe all gone. It's an awesome thought piece, isn't it?

It's a lot different with mice. They're a living body. They rot, or they're eaten by hungry other things. Which has to be why you never see a dead mouse twice. I guess that's universally true: You never see a dead mouse twice.

The Circus Is Coming To Town - Part 2

OK, I actually did go to the circus!

I know, I said I wasn't going. But then as the minutes ticked by, virtually to the point of being almost too late, I picked up and dashed out to make it on time. And I did.

All along the way, of course I'm behind slow moving vehicles, people turning off to parks, taking forever to get turned. Then there's something of a minor traffic jam as we get closer and closer. Then the parking hassles, and there I am finally running across a field to get to the line of people at the ticket booth. Through all that, huff huff. Then to the next ticket booth, to get preferred seating for an extra fee. Slowpokes are ditzing along in this line, too, hemhawing over what precisely they need or could possibly want. I'm trying not to sigh or look impatient. Then after they get this otherwise-easy task finished, I zip right through. Then I find my place, a great seat virtually center stage. A fantastic seat for getting there near the last minute ... or as it turned out maybe 10 minutes before it actually started.

I was trying to soak in all the sights and sounds. I didn't have a proper camera, so I didn't have to take my time messing with that. This way I could feast my eyes on the various ones, such as all the fabulous circus women, which goes without saying. And a lot of South American men -- hotblooded and very talented, almost magical in their abilities to swing, climb, fly, and contort. Everything you'd want was there, clowns, elephants, and, as I said, all the fabulous circus women, looking quite fabulous, and probably all already spoken for by the hotblooded men...

I struck up a conversation with a guy next to me, which was a very lucky break, because he himself was an old circus performer, from 50 years ago. Now he is retired (84 years old) from everything, but still goes to circuses and seems to know quite a bit about them, about history and museums and trivia. His circus job was to be shot from a cannon over 200 feet into a net, which he got $160 a week for plus his keep. That was in the south, in the winter, and the circus was called Cole Brothers. The rest of the year he was a farmer. This circus was once a mighty show but slowly went downhill and is long since gone. I told him I'd heard of it, and asked if it was a circus around about 1904, too, but he didn't know. Here's an article from 1909 about the Cole Bros. circus. (Guess whose blog that article is from. That's where I heard of it!)

Sometimes I think about the interesting coincidences in life, almost like there really is some sort of force guiding these things. If I hadn't waited till the last minute, I never would've met this guy, which was a great highlight certainly worth remembering.

It was fun to clap for all the performers and to enjoy all their skills. Then I had to get in the car and drive home instead of running away to join the circus. I don't actually have any skills they would need, unless maybe the Sno Cone guy somehow just happened to mysteriously disappear. (Maniacal laugh, rubbing my hands...)

The Circus Is Coming To Town

The circus has come to town, and I'm not going to it. I wasted the days leading up to it, not buying advance tickets. Plus, I'd rather save a little money -- I've been wasting too much. Plus, I haven't got the energy, exactly, even though I'd love to see the circus.

I love all the South American acrobats, the ladies standing on horses, the various daredevil stuff, death defying tricks performed twice a day.

The Auctioneer - Part 2

"Hey, all right sir, open the $#@^!in' gate and let the *&%#@^ out, and what are you gonna @$!^@%in' give for 'em?"*

"Well -- there was a boy in Arkansas, who wouldn't listen to his Grandma, when she told him that he should go to school...."

Why in the world did I go to school? I should've dropped out at the earliest moment and gone "behind the barn" and "worked up an awful storm" and "practiced calling bids both night and day." But no, I went to school and got what out of it exactly?

Well, I suppose it's not school's fault, really. I mean, there have to be plenty of auctioneers who weren't drop outs. A few anyway. What does being a drop out and being a successful auctioneer have to do with one another? Probably nothing. It's like anything else, would be my guess. You can drop out and become great at anything. Just as you can drop out and be a miserable failure. The other extreme is you keep going to school and become something. Or you go to school and become a miserable failure.

As to being an auctioneer now, at this late stage in my life, my mouth has probably grown together too much to be supple enough to call bids. I've heard that, that jaws unused will harden, the sockets become gummy, sticky, and can barely move. That's why when you hear elderly people talk, they do a lot of this, "Yahhh, well, Ahh, Huh?" And I'm getting there.

*I threw in a few extra syllables there -- words -- to make the point that I can supplement the cadence and still keep it on beat. Plus it's my way of spitting fury at the fact that I went to school and never became an auctioneer.

My Terrible Rage

I'm going to tell you something about myself. I have lots of rage. Lots of rage.

It appears that being a middle-aged man, single with no prospects, living with his 104-year-old grandmother is not all it's cracked up to be. I've always had a pretty good rein on my moods, I've felt, but lately I've noticed that I've been losing it a lot more. It starts with just a little heat in my forehead. Then it circles around in my head, meeting itself coming and going. Next thing I know blood vessels are popping out, my blood is boiling, my head is on fire, and I could take off your hand with just a nibble.

Right this minute things are going OK. That is, I'm reflective, able to see things in pretty good perspective. But that's not the way it always is, unfortunately. Just today I had what could almost be described as kaleidoscopic rage. My head is on fire again, and it's like I'm lost in a fever. It's like I'm in the heart of darkness. It's like I'm in an endless swamp, feeling dizzy from the oppressive muck my feet are stuck in, and the low hanging vines are entangling me. And that's just when I'm miffed. It gets much worse as the anger, the fury, the rage builds and builds, replicates itself, then feeds on itself. If a frown is a 1, I'm in full Godzilla mode by the time I get to a 5. I don't know that I've ever seen a 10 yet, but I can imagine what it'd be: full Godzilla mode with a Terminator twist, peppered with a dash of McCain.

What triggers my rage? Well, of course there's road rage. That's a given. Grocery checkout line rage. I'm especially bad at the express lane; if I see someone with just one item over 10, I go ballistic. Gas station rage, not just the prices but how slow the pump goes or if the receipt printer jams. And since you all know that I tend to swing Democratic, I have Republican rage. Any nationally known Republican sets me off. I used to have Rumsfeld rage, but that goes without saying. If a dog poops in my yard, I'm enraged. Our neighbors, the Swishers, set me off, as I've said before. That's a family trait. Grandpa always had Swisher rage, manifesting itself in enough F bombs to take out Pakistan. And beyond that, I have TV rage. Grandma rage. Internet rage. Chatroom rage. If I see couples dating rage. Rage at Billy Mays. Printer cartridge rage. Pipes leaking rage. Freezer burn rage. Lake algae rage. Greasy pepperoni rage. Garage sale dickering rage. Dead batteries rage. Pimple rage. Body odor rage.

So what do I do when I feel this rage welling up and spilling over? It's tough, but I repeat the Golden Rule; you know, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I repeat it over and over, then I start calming down. But because my rage is so multidimensional, even universal, I need more than that, so I have memorized the Golden Rule of other cultures and religions.

These include the one from Nigeria: "One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts." I don't actually have bird rage; that's one I don't have, but obviously they have lots of bird rage in Nigeria. Shintoism has this: "The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form." The trouble with me is when I'm enraged, it's like looking at a badly broken mirror, and every cracked person I see just brings out more rage. And one more: From Hinduism, "This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." You know, the Hindus all have about 12 arms each, so they're able to cause a lot of pain, especially, let's say, if they had a knife in each hand! So that's great counsel for them!

I must have 18-20 different ones memorized. It takes a lot of effort to memorize things, and you know what that causes: Right! Memorization rage, what every kid in elementary school has! Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!

Bone Dry

The patch on the leak held like a charm. It's bone dry, dry as a bone. The black mold, which seemed to have a life of its own, once removed from its life source, is also dry as a bone, totally aired out, bone dry. Now all I need to do, really, is get some of the ceiling pieces -- larger chunks as well as smaller broken debris, sort of like 50s, 20s, and change -- out of here. Most of it hasn't had a chance to get totally dried out yet, although the smaller pieces are in fact bone dry.

I'm looking up at the copper pipes as we speak. This stuff is usually covered by the ceiling. It makes a real mess, that's for sure. And I'm sure I'll need someone to come fix it, or perhaps I could just pull the rest down and make it look hip, like one of those old warehouses they make into a fancy restaurant. Then when I'm eating my apricots I could lean back and look up and feel happy about how terrible my place looks.

Good News on the Leak

I finally decided that ignoring the problem probably wouldn't make it go away. There was some sagging of the ceiling and plenty of dripping around the duct tape. The tape was giving way, to tell the truth. There was nothing to do but call someone.

I called Cousin Roto, who knows something about inside plumbing. He was the first of the Slumps to have it. We used to go over to his house just to go. I can still picture the line of family members stretching down the hall, some with newspapers under their arm. And I'm thinking, if Roto has a toilet he'll probably supply the paper too.

Well, he was more than happy to come over. He had a saw and cut some holes in the ceiling and pulled it down, fighting through enough black mold to start our own plague. Then it was a matter of putting a patch around the pipe, and it seems to be holding. Thanks, Cousin. For his trouble I put three chickens in his car, which he was happy with.