Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/k4ssCe91itA
or read his transcript below:
TRANSCRIBING THE TIME REMAINING
I am a quiet listener, a covert observer, a note-taker, a silent transcriptionist. All things interest and intrigue me.
As a writer, this is sometimes an affliction, sometimes a wondrous pleasure.
Today, I can’t help reflecting on the wispiness of life. Bear with me and perhaps we will discover our similarities…
“You know how it is you know how it is.” The rapid street-talker is a bit overheated. He’s got scraggly hair of different lengths floating about, just over his ears and on the back of his neck. No other hair apparent.
But there is enough hair wandering that you can’t really say he’s bald. “You know how it goes you know how it goes,” he keeps saying.
I listen more closely.
He’s talking about the value of one product at Dollar General and how—you know, you know—it’s better at Wal-mart and how some things at Wal-Mart are not as good as Dollar General. “You know how it goes you know how it goes.” Family Dollar and Dollar Tree will eventually enter the rant.
I grin. Somehow, I know exactly what he’s talking about. I hear similar monologues wherever I go. Hordes of comparers telling no-one in particular how their lives are progressing. Even if most of their time is spent comparison-shopping, it is something to do. Something to do.
I watch as younger people, filled with energy, brimful of directionlessness, beautiful in their remaining baby fat, begin to sculpt themselves into who they already are. They are now their adult versions. Their skin changes, their bone structure changes, their entire demeanor becomes something they did not quite expect.
Unfolded and examined, their inner lives consist of a lovely mishmash of hopes, dreams, reflections, expectations, disappointments…band-aids here and there attest to their coping abilities, their daily hopeful regenerations.
Meanwhile, way past the majority of doled-out years, I spend time distracting myself from life’s inevitableness. I live on hope and fond memory. I long to hug loved ones once more. I do not expect gratitude, so I love it even more when it is offered. I tally received gestures, received gifts.
I am my own nation. Young or old, I suppose you are, too.
It is a joyful, bumpy ride, this time I have. What a journey!
As my imaginary friend Pig-Pen once said, “I have affixed to me the dust of countless ages. Who am I to disturb history?”
Someday, someday…after my absence is no longer noted, my dreams and I will become nothing more than half a mist in an old echo of a sweet memory
© Jim Reed 2021 A.D.
Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY