Turnstile DAWGGs form a Posse and Go After Me

Turnstile DAWGGs form a Posse and Go After Me

“You never remember who I am, no matter how many times we meet,” an unsmiling woman says to me at a social gathering last night. She does not make eye contact. She wanders off. I still do not know who she is.

“Oh, I follow your blogs and love your writing,” another woman says after my speech to a writer’s group last Thursday. She doesn’t seem to mind whether I know her, she just wants to let me know that she knows me.

“No, I don’t read books!” a dismissive customer snaps at the shop last Friday. She makes it clear she’s just along for the ride with a group of booklovers who are having so much fun roving the aisles. She does not want to engage with me, and she makes clear her disapproval of my existence.

“Oh, my God, this is so enchanting,” a tourist exclaims as she enters the store. “I think I want to live here!” She likes me just the way I am.

And so on.

In unguarded moments of rumination, when I least expect it, I seem to be under scrutiny by all the individuals who have happened to me, who are happening to me, in these many decades past and present.

I’m on the run most of the time, trying to make sense and order out of the progression of washed and unwashed masses who people my daily life, attempting to sort out and understand each of these sometimes peculiar, often attractive, mostly unleashed folks who invade my memory and my daily moment to moment progress.

I’m not sure that I can stay ahead of the posse.

Sometimes I’m happy to be the center of attention. Other times I’d like to run and hide. In almost all instances, I am not quite sure what to say to the DAWGGs (Damned Angry Wailing Guys and Gals), so I just smile or pretend to be distracted.

Lying abed in the early morning, these disparate folk queue up on their side of a turnstile, and I attempt to examine them one by one–but you know how turnstiles work. Sometimes someone will leap over and go for me, sometimes someone will not know how to work the turnstile and will stall the entire line, sometimes people will calmly pass through and allow me to converse and learn more.

The best thing about memory-time is that I have some control over the posse. I can shut it down at will. But, once in a while, as I am dozing off, the posse will re-activate and all the DAWGGs will battle all the Lovelies for my soul

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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OBSCURE LOCAL AUTHOR TURNS OUT-OF-TOWN CELEBRITY

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http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/obscurelocalauthor.mp3

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OBSCURE LOCAL AUTHOR TURNS OUT-OF-TOWN CELEBRITY

I will be addressing an annual writers’ gathering at the Huntsville Country Club Thursday night, and I can’t wait to hear what I’ll have to say.

Yep, it is an interesting phenomenon, this out-of-town expert thing. Here in Birmingham, I am your average obscure author, hardly known outside an erratic circle of acquaintances, readers and friends. But take me fifty miles out of town in any direction, and I suddenly become a small-time celebrity to unsuspecting audiences.

This is kind of nice, when I think about it. In the City, I can hide out behind the doors of Reed Books, plying my trade, engaging with customers, going home to my quiet life after hours, primarily unmolested, hopefully un-annoying to others.

But place me before an audience and I suddenly have license to pontificate on all kinds of ideas and subjects…and, unlike real day-to-life, I am actually listened to! People even take notes. Some folks approach me afterwards, asking my opinion and obtaining my autograph. And through it all, I always wonder, “What in the world makes me seem important to others for an hour? Why me?”

The wonderful thing about all this is that I truly enjoy my exchanges with audiences. For just a while, they become my students, I become their teacher or vizier. I learn from them, they take something of me with them, however fleeting.

So…what do I say to an unsuspecting audience?

Maybe I’ll explain my ideas on how a truly dedicated writer interacts with an inner voice. I might say something like, “A writer doesn’t say, ‘Oh, no, what terrible thing is about to happen?’ Instead, a writer doesn’t anticipate and instead says, ‘I wonder what will happen next?’ or ‘I wonder how that happened?’ or ‘I wonder what she is really like?’ or ‘I wonder what’s up?’ or ‘I wonder why I wonder?’ or ‘I wonder what it’s all about?’”

Pulling back from the subject at hand and allowing the story to tell itself is a grand experience. A story that is preordained is pretty much a leaden story. A tale that has the freedom to weave its own magic and simply dictate itself to the author is a tale as exciting as a roller coaster ride. Or at least a bumper car excursion.

So, unless something else occurs to me between now and Thursday night, perhaps this will be my approach to the audience of writers I will face.

Knowing my past behavior, though, something different may dictate itself to me on the drive to Huntsville and my own brain could surprise me by blurting out things I do not know that I know.

Can’t wait to hear what I have to say

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow. No Humor Intended.

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 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/hairtodaygonetomorrow.mp3

or read his story below:

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW. NO HUMOR INTENDED.

I miss my hair.

I don’t miss barbers.

Yep, one day many, many moons ago, I had a full head of hair. Now, though, I still have lots of hair, it’s just that it’s everywhere but atop my head.

I have alarmingly fast-growing hair in my ears, my nose, on my face, on my back, on my chest, and, well, just about all over. And its rate of growth is not full-moon dependent.

Nature has a sense of humor–most of us start out bald and toothless, and we end up…dead.

Now, I know lots of guys who still go to the barbershop, or even the hair stylist, long after their heads are virtually bald. Guys with a little fallen halo of hair rimming half the head from ear to ear, still go and get it trimmed. I guess they’re holding on to every shred of dignity they can.

I don’t blame men who have enormous comb-overs. Others laugh at them, but I laugh at the laughers, who will begin losing hair long before they’re prepared to. I don’t even mind guys with ridiculously obvious toupees, since they, too, are living in the same fantasy world occupied by large-beehived women.

So, does not having any hair mean you’ll never again go into a barbershop or hair salon? I asked one hair stylist in the Big City that question and gave her the challenge.

We brainstormed together.

If you are baldheaded, what can you get at a hair styling place?

1.  You can get your beard shaped and styled.

2.  If your baldness extends to the face, you can ask for a trim–of your nose hairs and eyebrows and ear hairs and that weird hair growing out of the top of your beauty mark.

3.  You can get a therapeutic massage and stop worrying about baldness for a few minutes. The best massages include: deep tissue, Swedish, neuromuscular. HEAL, you baldheaded man!

4.  You can just have your bald pate buffed and shined or powdered. Flaunt it! Move from Captain Kirk to Captain Picard and get some class!

5.  Maybe the most fun you as a baldheaded man can have is to bring family–kids, grandkids, cousins and spouse or friend–to the hair place and sit there and thumb through the pages of beautifully coiffed models in the magazines, and just watch and enjoy the banter  and fun.

Full-head-of-hair guys, beware: an experience like this could make you want to shave your head and join the rest of us sexy devils.

Incidentally, I haven’t been to a barber since 1985, nor have I had a professional hair cut since then. But if I do start going to hair stylists/designers, I’ll let you know. Well, actually, you’ll know because I’ll smell funny for a few hours. What I really like about hair salon places is that, unlike barbers in my day, they don’t discuss politics and sports and hunting and fishing and a thousand other things I have no interest in. They DO gossip, but it’s more like entertainment–more interesting that watching television, funnier than facebooking, less effort than texting,  and much more visual.

By the time you leave the joint, you look better than you are.

What more could anybody ask?

Just asking

© Jim Reed 2016 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Everything Has Value, Except Money: The Immutable Rules of Real Life

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http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/everythinghasvalueexceptmoney.mp3

or read his story below:

Everything Has Value, Except Money

 My Red Clay Diary is safely hidden from harm within my Book of the Thousand and One Amazements, deep within a bank of red clay, covered over by kudzu.

 Each day, new amazements occur. I tend to   notice them.
IMMUTABLE RULES OF REAL LIFE
1.    Things don’t sell for what they are worth, they sell for what they go for.
2.    An outgoing smile is no indication whether there will be an incoming smile.
3.    Smile only if it makes you feel good…don’t expect it to be returned. Appreciate it if it is.
4.    A fake smile is almost always detectable.
 5.    If you find it hard to smile, just think about what is worth smiling about in your life and go with that.
6.    A smile may not be your umbrella on a rainy rainy day, but it can help you have fun getting soaked. Imagine Gene Kelly, who was running a fever the day he filmed the famous rain scene in Singin’ in the Rain.
7.    If you’re afraid you’ll lose face, trying to smile when you don’t feel like it, just sneer and turn it upside down. Post this sign in front of you at all times: SNILE!
8.    First-rate people associate themselves with first-rate people. Second-rate people associate themselves with third-rate people.
9.    Do nice unto others as you would have them do nice unto you. But if they continue not doing nice unto you, drop them and associate only with those who do.
10.  Smile a lot, at nothing at all. It will make people think you know something they don’t. It will drive your enemies crazy. It will draw nice people to you and help you identify people who are not.
11.  Those who are tardy do not get fruit cup.
12.  Those who do not find their mittens do not get pie. Even if they do find their mittens, they still may not get pie.
13.  Sometimes, the sky really is falling.
14.  Every good idea eventually backfires.
15.  Everything has value, except money
16. Even if it cannot possibly go wrong, it might.
Want to hear more?
Stay tuned

Gentle Insurrectionists Who Surprise Us with Sudden Wisdom

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Gentle Insurrectionists Who Surprise Us with Sudden Wisdom

 The elderly man with slight stoop, dancing Bernie hair and plastic bag filled with newspapers and notes and odds and ends, walks into the shop and, not looking right left up or down, focuses on one small row of books that has captured his vision, intensely examines several titles and picks up a couple.

  

Entering just behind him are two young people inhabiting their creative Charles Addams costumes and tattoos and piercings, their quiet demeanor both gentle and sweet, their intelligent book selections telling me more than their appearance.

  

The Bernie-haired customer speaks loudly and intelligently and insistently and feels he’s the only person in the room, as he inquires about titles he would like to order.

  

Then, it being a busy Saturday, other carnies begin to pour in, creating an instant social event, a cocktail-less party of disparate personalities who ordinarily would not associate one with the other in a backyard barbeque.

  

Some are lonely, alone and wanting to be noticed at whatever price, others are suburban loft tourists checking out the city life they consider to be curious but fascinating, trailed by couples, cross-dressers, trans everybodies, quiet insurrectionists…all here to instruct us how to be  better people, how to treat each other with respect, regardless of size, shape, color, fragrance, attire, attitude, beliefs, limitations.

  

These Solitudes are acting out their off-duty personas, being or pretending to be who they are or who they would like to be, forgetting for a few whiles their restricting but necessary day duties, expressing their cultural and counter-cultural uniqueness in the safe environment of an old book store.

  

No-accounts who, within these walls, do count, do matter.

  

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

 © Jim Reed 2016 A.D.