LOOKING AHEAD TO THE PAST

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Life, actually…

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LOOKING AHEAD TO THE PAST

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This is a good day to gaze into my crystal ball, that archive that thrives within my memories.

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Yep, just like you, I have a head full of memories both good and bad, glad and sad, hopeful and iffy. This hidden crystal ball, this archive of Me, serves me well at times.

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There is always a more pleasurable time at the fingertip, ready to spring into wistful life and provide me with a positive charge when most needed.

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That reservoir of fond memories prods me with questions—what is a smile worth? What is the value of a secret laugh? What will be the final humorous thought that crosses my mind? If some day I gotta go, wouldn’t I prefer to be wearing a mysterious smirk to perplex the undertaker? Wouldn’t a puzzling grin cause friends and enemies to wonder whether I knew something they don’t?

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Gazing into my archive reminds me there were good times, good times that did not occur merely to lie fallow and fade. Those good times are at the ready, awaiting my command, my password.

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What was my past pleasure? Where did it happen? When? How did it feel, taste, sound?

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Was it simple—lying on my back in a childhood back yard, looking at clouds and trying to animate scenes and stories from them?

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Was it complicated—like acing an exam I thought I would never live through?

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Was it secret—something I saw that gave me great pleasure…my little secret between me and myself?

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Or was it a guilty pleasure, one I may share with an old friend someday, or was it something I’ve never really done but always enjoy thinking about doing?

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Whatever.

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Fond memory does not have to be complicated. I can recall what a carnival smells like, what a meadow feels like under bare feet, what a chrome trim looks like in the bright sun, what the first-ever kiss felt like from the first-ever love in my life, what the kiss of my mother felt like when I was three years old and accepting all loving gestures.

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I can utilize my archived fond memories any time. There are more than I can possibly call up on a lifetime. They are there to be replayed, freeze-framed, fast forwarded, slo-moed, cherished.

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And to heck with all those archived bad memories. They are not worth the effort—unless there was something nice and kind to remember or re-think in the midst of all that grimness

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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MY SOUTH THROUGH FUZZY LENSES

 Listen on youtube: https://youtu.be/v86VupDUTa4

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Life, actually…

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MY SOUTH THROUGH FUZZY LENSES

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Back when I was a kid, my eyesight was just about perfect. Being a kid, I took this fact for granted. I did not know that some kids could see better than other kids.

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Back then I could see anything anywhere, particularly things nobody thought I could see or, better still, things nobody wanted me to see. Some elders regarded kids as quirky ornaments, present and accounted for but clueless as to what was really happening. They were wrong. Kids notice everything, particularly when they nonchalantly appear to be otherwise engaged.

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Watch out what you do and say around kids. It will re-appear when least expected.

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Anyhow, during early teendom, it became obvious that I was trending toward nearsightedness. I was not seeing the world clearly. I was missing things.

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My father took me to have my first eye examination. I obtained my first pair of eyeglasses.

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Lo and behold—as we elders say when least expected—Lo and behold, on the way home from the eye doctor, I looked out the car window and suddenly realized that lawns were not hazy carpets of green. They actually consisted of individual, clearly distinguishable blades of grass!

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For a while I was seeing the world for the first time all over again!

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In later years when I saw Buckminster Fuller in person, he reported that he had been practically blind for the first few years of his life but didn’t know it and didn’t have eyeglasses till he had already learned to experience the world in patterns and designs rather than details like blades of grass.

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I felt better about my own vision when I heard this, for I don’t really know how long I’d been seeing the world through fuzzy Vaselined lenses.

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But, looking back, I do think that in many ways my childhood patterned world was a bit clearer than it ever has been since

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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THE NEVERENDING STORIES AWAIT THE SIDEWALK PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

Listen to Jim’s podcast:  http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/theneverendingstoriesawait.mp3

or read on…

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Life, actually…

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THE NEVERENDING STORIES AWAIT

THE SIDEWALK PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

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The old book shop is filled with charm and aroma and ambience and centuries of culture, all pressed together in comfortable intimacy and familiarity. This may be one of the few places you’ll ever visit where diversity is no longer an intellectual talking-point or an impossible dream.  This old book shop is a gathering place for all ideas, a place where diametrically opposing philosophies co-exist with a smug sense of humor, a smug sense that all philosophies are worth no more than a palm full of puns sifting through the fingers.

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Old paper scraps and chips and shards and cuttings and flakes cover the floor of the shop, reminders that paper is vulnerable to age and wear. Among the ironies of the confetti scatterings are the ancient books, the books with pages still intact and white and durable. Old-time paper endures, these-days paper often consumes itself in acidity.

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One more irony. Even the fragile paper survives if it is nurtured and kept safe from ultra violet rays, deep humidity and heated dryness.

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So, what do we have here in the shop? Everlasting books, crumbling books, archival paper, disregarded paper. It’s a merry mishmash.

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“Oh, I love the smell of books. Isn’t this great?” a customer extols the virtues of the time-travel vault I call a book shop. I hear this exclamation several times a week from wandering nomads who cherish the past and the preserved present and the predicted future.

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So, each day I place a bit of book fragrance behind each ear, don my bookie demeanor, and spend the hours receiving books, searching for books, sprucing up books, researching books, cataloging books, pricing books, shelving books, answering questions about books, selling books, collecting books…and, once home, reading books and writing books.

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And, should I dare to visit the darkened shop in the wee hours, I can listen to the books breathing and resting and committing the act of simply being available and open to examination by those whose mysterious quests will bring them to the sidewalk in front of the shop door just before opening time, anxious to continue the neverending tales

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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https://youtu.be/OQoOdsMOZI8

THE TALE OF THE FRITO THIEF

Hear the podcast on youtube:

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Life, actually…

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THE TALE OF THE FRITO THIEF

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The most thoughty thought I’ve had so far, on this beautiful Down South day:

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Be unafraid. Be very unafraid.

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A couple of sideways thoughts can’t hurt you. After all, thoughts encroach, then they dissipate if you don’t chase them.

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That’s what the “be unafraid” idea is all about. It just means that you—yes, You—are totally in charge of the Thoughty part of your mind.

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When a weird or disturbing or otherwise unwanted thought sneaks in and attempts an insurrection, I have choices. I can open myself up, accept on face value what is being tossed at me, and become a minion to this thought.

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Or I can make an unwanted thought diminish and eventually disappear.

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When I fear the thought will stick to the interior lining of my mind, when I fear I can’t rid myself of this nagging idea, I verge on panic. Usually I come to my senses and find a way around this obstacle and get on with life.

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You ask, “I don’t know how to get this thought out of my head. How do you do it?”

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In my case, I resort to the techniques I know best…the techniques that keep me going well beyond the many speedbumps rumpling my path.

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I recall how bullies operate. I recall how I deal with bullies over my considerably extended lifespan.

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I make ‘em laugh. My first deflection of any bully’s encroachment is to find something silly and laughable to say, something unexpected and distracting. This unwanted bully of a thought is laughable.

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Sometimes this does not work.

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If the bully’s rage is so ingrained that it cannot stop to listen or contemplate or laugh, I have to find another way to solve this dilemma.

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From my learned playground guerilla tactics handbook I think, SURVIVAL FIRST. I run and hide.

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This confuses the bully, who can’t confront me using heft or girth or furious energy. I’m not there, so bullybeing goes in search of me, while I spread the defensive measure I know best—I satirize and mock and playfully surround said bully with goofy ideas designed to make everybody take this unnecessary thought with a grain of salt. Nothing disarms a bully like not being taken seriously.

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Make that danged thought shrink and shrivel, my defense team screams.

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Make ‘em laugh at the laughable. It helps clear the sinuses and refresh your unafraidness mechanisms. Before you know it, this thought has slipped into obscurity and is now filed safely away.

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You can breathe now.

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Next thought needed to replace the bullythought: What actions should you take to make sure a Frito thief does not repeat this heinous crime? No-one, especially me, wants a Frito to be stolen. I need that Frito to make certain my sense of humor and well-being is fresh and salty and crunchy and basically harmless.

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See? Much more interesting to dwell on Frito theft than on those jackbooted sideways thoughts that constantly seek to overthrow and overtake our better selves

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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EXTERMINATING THOSE PESKY MARTIANS

Listen to Jim: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/exterminatingmartians.mp3

or read below…

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Life, actually…

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EXTERMINATING THOSE PESKY MARTIANS

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“…across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those beasts that perish, intellects vast and cold and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

–H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898

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The child I once was and now remain, always plunges into each encountered book as if it is an entirely new world in which to live out an alternate life. Can’t help it. It’s the way I popped into existence and the way I now exist.

Reading the above H.G. Wells passage was scary when first experienced many decades ago and is equally ominous now.

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The metaphor is clear: Not everybody likes everybody.

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Many earthlings find reasons to hate and disdain and conquer other everybodies, and many lack the empathy to feel the pain of others.

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Thus it was with the Martians. There was no “war of the worlds” in Wells’ novel—the title was a trick to get you to read it. The Martians did not come to earth to make war, they came to exterminate, much as a commercial exterminator comes to obliterate cockroaches in order to make a building habitable.

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Ol’ H.G. was trying to shock us into looking beyond ourselves in order to protect the honorable traits we do have. He was saying, even if you stop warring with each other, you must still band together to repel all the other endangerments to life that are out there—pestilences, meteors, earthquakes, tsunamis, Martians, warming, solar flares, major storms…the list does go on.

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Wars, be they political or virtual or actual, are mere distractions when it comes to pondering the future of humankind and animalkind.

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We have so much to do.

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Perhaps it will take a few more centuries to abolish war. Perhaps those then surviving will have the good sense to realize that the true obstacles to life on earth are bigger and more powerful than any standing or sitting army, any nuclear arsenal.

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So, maybe the next book I fall into will be about a future when we’re all done with squabbling and are ready to tackle the really important issue of surviving all that Nature can dole out.

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After all warring is spent, there will still be Martians and meteors to deal with. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could band together, forget boundaries and barriers, and start thinking about humanity itself?

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Oh, well, it was just an idea

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(c) 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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https://youtu.be/-IXPBNoAN0Q

REMEMBERING THE ROLLING BASKET LADY

 Catch Jim’s podcast at: https://youtu.be/px-hy0N6uiw

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Life, actually…

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REMEMBERING THE ROLLING BASKET LADY

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I remember the rolling basket lady as if thirty years ago equals yesterday.

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She lives rent-free in my fond memories. She is in crowded but friendly company.

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The first time I meet the rolling basket lady, she thanks me for opening the door for her at the Post Office…using a loud and husky voice, “Why, thank you…a real gentleman!”

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Her musical delivery makes my morning a little nicer. That is because I come from a generation often reminded that being a gentleman is a virtue…and that, furthermore, virtue is a wonderful thing to possess.

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The rolling basket lady is of a certain age, years ahead of me.

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She is dressed, as we say Down South, for Sunday school and her outfit includes lavishly applied makeup, hose and a frequent smile beneath her carefully arranged blonde hairdo.

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She walks slowly, pulling behind her a metal wheeled basket—the kind office assistants use to pick up the morning corporate mail. Long before email conquers all.

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I see her often, the basket woman, sometimes moving deliberately along 11th Avenue South, chatting merrily with herself.

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Once I enter F.W. Woolworth and find her eating breakfast at the counter, a bit of grits on her chin and a napkin poised while smiling across the way at a sullen server.

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At the same time I see other elderly diners at Woolworth’s, people who eat there just to recapture an old memory of what it felt like so many years ago when this was a thriving social center in each community, competing with S.H. Kress for the place of honor as bus stop and gathering place for everybody you knew who wanted a dime bag of popcorn that could last an hour.

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That was back when servers were polite even when you couldn’t tip much, back when you felt safe leaving your purse and bags on that little ledge beneath the lunch counter while shopping around for one more item.

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The rolling basket lady is the only person who calls me a gentleman, and I like it.

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Even though later generations don’t quite “get” it, I still hold the door open for women, as well as men, if I get there first—and I often smile and nod to strangers on the street in tribute to my father and his generation, who always tipped their ever-present hats to known and unknown strollers.

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Perhaps the memory of those gentler days is why the basket lady never forgets to smile for no reason at all at passers-by

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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RE-GIFTING A WORTHWHILE DAY

 Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/LcWPvteaK2g

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Life, actually…

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RE-GIFTING A WORTHWHILE DAY

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Today’s Deep Thought: Isn’t being reincarnated simply re-gifting life?

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Uh-oh, here goes that Red Clay guy, thinking above his pay grade again.

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I hereby leave the idea of re-gifting a life to the philosophers and self-appointed Big Thinkers. All I’m trying to do is let you know what I’m up to these days—thought-wise.

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Here’s what I’m supposing:

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Whenever I have a really good day, I want to share it. Unfortunately, a really good day only lasts 24 hours and will soon disappear along with all the other really good days.

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How can I preserve the good and ignore the bad?

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Here goes.

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Sometime during the day my far-away sister sends me a 1950s snapshot of me…me in my teenage world, wearing bathing trunks and sitting on a rock in the middle of Hurricane Creek in Tuscaloosa. Water is flowing and splashing all around me, and I seem to be happily clinging to the rock and having the time of my life.

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Here’s the funny part of that day. I am young, thin. I have a full head of hair. I even look a bit buff…like a young hunk. This surprises me no end, since I am now a balding, tubby octogenarian whose appearance causes young’uns to avert their eyes in horror.

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How is it that, for at least a day, I was a hunk? How is it that today, I’m a chunk?

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What happened in the ensuing years?

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Of course, I’ll not know the answer to these questions, but I do have to admit that I never considered myself to be good-looking. As the years go by it becomes evident that each of us has at least one moment in life during which we feel worthy of perusal.

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Maybe that one moment for me was the Hurricane Creek moment. All other moments slip and slide away—unless a thoughtful Big Sister takes time to remind me that every good moment in life is filed away, ready for revival, if somebody is willing to re-gift it

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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RIGAMAROLE YEARS, IN-THE-MOMENT JOYS

Hear Jim on Youtube: https://youtu.be/boAnWXsOCUE or read him:

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Life, actually…

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RIGAMAROLE YEARS, IN-THE-MOMENT JOYS

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One of the advantages of living a long time (yes, young’uns, there are a few perks that arrive with the encroachment of elderlyness)…as I was saying, one of the advantages of living a long life is, I just don’t have to go through all the rigamarole of no-see-um swatting.

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I recognize that I am now using decrepit words that you may or may not be used to, but then that’s another perk—my gift to you is the opportunity to look ‘em up and add archaic depth to your vocabulary.

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We are now officially in Malarkey Land.

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No-see-ums are all those annoyances we have to tap dance past in order  to make it from now till bedtime, things we do that we in no way have to do.

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Do I really need to hair-spray the few strands remaining on my pate? Been doing it so long—that is, ever since I had a thick head of hair—that I don’t even notice.

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Does it matter whether I suck in my stomach as the nurse practitioner enters the exam room? Who am I kidding?

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Do I really have to say to no one in particular, “Pardon me!” each time I sneeze? Actually, it’s the polite thing to do, so I’ll probably retain this antiquated notion of manners.

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Can I take time to lovingly enjoy my family’s eyeroll reaction to the hundredth time I make the same smart-aleck wisecrack? You bet I will. It means said family is still listening. It means they must love me, else they’d leave the room. It means I appreciate their idiosyncrasies as much as they tolerate mine.

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Yet another perk of elderlyness is that I am no longer required to join political conversations. These days, instead of arguing my opposing view, I just wander off—why feed the flames?

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And I love making you laugh or chuckle. Before you can dismiss my presence I’m going to toss an oblique and funny remark out of the air and surprise you. You could use a laugh or two.

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And eye contact is a pleasure. I keep trying to engage you in conversation till you look up from your palmed device and actually acknowledge my presence. If we exchange pleasantries we are at least acting more human, more humane, for just a moment.

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And here’s something you can look forward to as you span the years to become a village elder: There will come a time when people will no longer ask you to do heavy lifting…a time when you don’t get invited to that annual party you did not enjoy anyhow…a time when someone will open the door for you, as payback for all the doors you opened for others through the decades.

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There will come a time when people will register surprise when you, the ancient denizen, spout a witticism indicating you are still alert, still In There.

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My New Year’s hope is that you and I will occasionally take an extra second to really see each other. What unexpected eureka! moments we might share!

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There’s always the hope that the world will shift one inch toward goodness and mercy as it tumbles down the Universe

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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NEVERENDING STORIES BEGIN WHEREVER YOU ARE

Listen to Jim’s youtube storytelling:

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Life, actually…

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NEVERENDING STORIES BEGIN WHEREVER YOU ARE

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My beat-up old leather wallet bulges with everything but money.

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So why do I carry this musty time capsule around each day?

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I can’t let go of it because contained within are dozens of notes and notations…notes and notations I do not wish to toss. Notes and notations I never wish to forget.

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Here’s one folded sheet of browning paper. And I quote…

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Sometimes, great literature, inspiring literature, is literature that has never been read by anyone but its author.

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For instance, if you write in your diary or journal and no one else ever reads it, does it have any significance at all? It is that old tree-falling-in-the-forest question–does the falling tree make a noise if nobody is there to hear it?

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At last, that age-old question will be answered right here, right now! For some of the greatest passages in the history of storytelling will never be heard or read by you or me–and they will still be great passages.

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Here are three true and honest passages. Each was written long ago through the eyes of an eleven-year-old. Can you tell me which were composed by now-famous writers? Can you tell me which was written by a young girl in an unpublished—till now—un-read diary?

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Here goes:

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PASSAGE #1: “I lay in my bed and the town slept around me and the ravine was dark and the lake was moving quietly on its shore and everyone, my family, my friends, the old people and the young, slept on one street or another, in one house or another, or slept in the far country churchyards. I shut my eyes…”

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PASSAGE #2; “And then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

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PASSAGE #3: “I got up at 5:15, ate breakfast, then went to Philadelphia all day. We went with Rev. Ammons, but we were in Paul Dean’s machine. We saw some interesting sights, and we saw the zoo. I had an ice cream cone and some candy and a pin of Betsy Ross’s house, and a picture of Jesus. And then we came home and I went to bed.”

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These are excerpts from three paragraphs of great writing, all told through the eyes of children. One passage is taken from a discarded diary I found at a flea market. The others are from works by renowned writers.

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Perhaps they all were first conceived on scraps of wallet-paper, then later saved from perdition. Now all three are published and available to the world.

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Now it is time for you to issue forth your own diary entries. As you compose them, do not judge them. Simply hold on to them for a few years, then re-visit. You may be astonished at their simple beauty, their simple power.

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If curiosity keeps tapping on the windowpane of your imagination, just drop me a note and I will identify the three writers, the writers whose works remain timeless and forever pure

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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E EQUALS A QUIET AND KINDLY ELDER

Life, actually…

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E EQUALS A QUIET AND KINDLY ELDER

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Decades ago, when we were younger and mostly hopeful, when stars above were stoically pure, when we were on the verge of dismissing all the surrounding beauties, when we nevertheless continued our quest for perfection, our search for impossible perfections in all dusty pasts…

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Way back then, before Now seemed impossible…

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This actually happened:

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My since-childhood friend Pat, who now resides in Arlington, Virginia, keeps telling me she wants to take me to see Albert…I just have to see Albert, she keeps saying. So, petite granddaughter Jessica and petite spouse Liz and dumpty Me visit my lifelong pal and follow her.

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One night in the still and cold darkness near a famous boulevard next to the seat of human power in North America, we four make our way to see Albert.

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As we round old greenery, we come face to face with Albert.

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There, seated beneath the godly stars, atop a fabricated field of stars, sits Albert, ruminating upon the universe, a larger-than-life-itself presence who at once seems both dignified and cosmos-struck,

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The impressionistic and truly wonderful statue of Albert Einstein, star-molder whose thoughts have toyed with the heavens and thus begotten users and abusers—those who seek to re-form the world in peace and those who seek to control by fear the very solemn and gentle people like Einstein, who simply want to be left alone to live and eventually with grace dissipate into the ether once more.

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The statue is a magnificent tribute to the human gossamer spirit that brings us joy, and now and then gets us into trouble.

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Albert just sits there, gigantic, small, solitary…holding a writing pad in his lap with a few simple formulae jotted down, his sandals and sweater and flowing hair the very symbols that bring nonviolent power to a moment in time.

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The sculptor has done the right thing, for Albert’s statue is not your typical noble horse-astride general nor your toga’d god nor your brave-in-battle fighter. Albert’s statue is designed to be touched and hugged by humans. You can sit on his knee, gaze at The Formula. Stare along with him at the twinkly-scattered universe.

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He is hidden from direct view, so that he is not beckoning tourists.

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He is waiting to be quietly discovered in the middle of a quiet night, where he sits and contemplates the uncontemplatable and thinks the private thoughts we all have the right to think, too

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.