Listen Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary 4-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/wlKwWahQkyc

or read his story below:

QUESTIONS NEVER ASKED NEVER ANSWERED

I am lying in the backyard playground of childhood right now, facing the skies.

Fond memory takes me back.

Back to a moment in time when a rickety wood-and-canvas lawn chair is the only thing restraining me from falling to the twilight firefly-scattered grass.

As the western horizon of Tuscaloosa glows and dims, stars begin twinkling one by one by dozens. Planets renew their steady colors. Sounds of the neighborhood are so familiar I don’t hear them right now.

The dew glistens a bit under a rising moon behind me to the east. At this moment I am alone. Family members are scattered elsewhere, attending little league games, the scent of mustard and hot dogs beckoning. Attending movie theatres with friends.

My imagination has time to unleash itself during these caressing solo moments.  Now I am free to ponder all the imponderables of a fertile mind.

Questions, questions, tumbling about and prodding me to ask more than I can answer.

For instance:

When I am no longer earthbound, will my shadow know I’m gone? Shadows seem real because I can see them. I never take them for granted, for they are as much of the landscape as I. But no-one can tell me where shadows go, what they do when we are not looking, what they sense about me. Are they as real as me? If shadows are real, perhaps I am the ethereal being, subject to being birthed, living a life, going away someday.

Leaving the shadows to fend for themselves.

Pondering is so much fun. It makes me think outside my knowledge. It causes me to massage the universe on my own terms.

I shift in the lawn chair as a meteor flashes itself into joy, then disappears.

Another question:

When I am gone, will mirrors miss me? As long as I am around I can see my reverse self living a separate life in every mirror I pass. Is that reverse country the real country, am I just a reflection?

These are questions I never ask teachers or parents whose philosophies cannot absorb them. Sometimes these questions make me laugh, but I laugh only because they are serious and real. I enjoy them because they are unanswerable.

A high-flying airplane blinks from north to south, barely audible. Critters sing their songs. A lone puppy yaps twice, then resumes sleep.

The stars are out in full force now. Back in these days, before electricity forces nighttime away, there are so many stars above that I feel I can reach just a little higher than usual and touch them.

Right now, floating above earth on canvas, floating beneath the untouchable heavens, I can think my thoughts, write my notes, squirrel them away for future reference.

Right now, I am building an index to my life. And later, as late as the 21st century, I can dig the notes out, arrange them at will, and share them with you, whoever you are, wherever you are.

And, sharing these memories and dreams and reflections, I can ponder whether you are real or whether I just made you up in order to imagine that there are other dreamers like me, cruising the galaxy with nothing holding them back, at least for this precious moment

 

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed