Life, actually…

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WRITERS GOT ANTS IN THEIR SHAKERS

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Writers who use the shakers give me the shakes.

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I’m reading a submitted manuscript to see whether there’s something worthy of publishing, when suddenly I get the urge to brush all those little black ants off each page.

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Somebody has filled a salt shaker with commas and apostrophes and sprinkled them liberally throughout the piece…seemingly at random. The paragraphs are filled to the brim with improper tense and punctuation usage of their’s & theres’ and it’s and its’ and “the best city’s in the world…mens’ room…”I don’t do window’s”…package of Oreo’s…and on and on and on and on.

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We are having an ant infestation in the kitchen at home, and it’s fun to watch the little critters energetically going about their infesting. And, yes, they do look like apostrophes and commas out of control.

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Liz is an editor, too, and she finds the same plague in many documents. She passed the shaker analogy along to me, by the way.

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I find it difficult to teach the commanists and the apostrophiles how to make their work grammatical and readable with just a few simple rules. Folks who have come far enough in life to write manuscripts often feel they know all the rules and do not require instruction. Or they just don’t get it. Or they are used to depending on the editors to clean up their mess.

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Guess that has become a major codicil in the imaginary manual of editing these days—just correct the manuscript for the writer and get on with judging whether the piece has merit beyond the ants.

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And don’t get me started on social media usage. The electronic ants are beyond recall. Even the brightest, most educated and otherwise wise “friends” get it wrong every few minutes, day after day.

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Am I tilting at windmills? Should I just take E.O. Wilson’s advice and, instead of exterminating the ants in the kitchen, learn to observe and appreciate them?

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Nah. Shakers got to shake, editors got to edit

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/writersgotantsintheirshakers.mp3

Listen to Jim:

• newtreatmentforrestlessmindsymdrome.mp3

or read on…

New Treatment for Restless Mind Syndrome

I can’t stop my brain.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about.

Whether it is 3 a.m., when I am so full of ideas, thoughts, reflections, excitements and nutty dreams that I cannot remain aslumber…whether it is while driving along, dictating loose and rambling thoughts and considerations into my tiny recording device…whether it is during a long and boring conversation with a long and boring bureaucrat who just will not get to the point…no matter where or when I am, I cannot stop my brain.

Maybe we should term this Restless Mind Syndrome and find a cure for it.

Now…never again will Restless Mind Syndrome keep you awake at night. Just two doses of MINDTAMP and you can rest at ease and blithely go through life like the Pod Person you always wanted to be.

Some time ago, I found my own way to deal with Restless Mind Syndrome. I just write it out. I allow my fingers to do the therapy…but why not read what I wrote back then?

Here it is:

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HE WAS COMPLETELY OUT OF JUICE, COMPLETELY OUT OF THE force that fed his muse, completely out of the running for cosmic insight and understanding.

He sat limp, dumbly staring at the keyboard, hoping that words would come and rise up and take over his fingers and make syllables, then sentences, then paragraphs, then Great American Novels galore.

But nothing happened.

He sat limp, staring morosely at the blank computer screen, feeling the faint radiation seeping into his brain and attacking his enfeebled thoughts and sucking them dry of life.

And nothing happened.

He sat limp, hoping that profundities would stir inside him and dribble over onto the machinery and create beautiful thoughts that would cause little children to clap their hands and old grumpies to chuckle and hide their mouths.

Lots of nothing continued to come forth.

He sat limp, wondering why his mouth was dry, his palms damp, his ears ringing, his mind racing, his thoughts crusty and useless. With blankness on the screen screaming at him.

He sat limp, admiring those who could always express themselves in ringing tones and glowing words.

And at that moment, he realized that what was going on was his writing, what was going on was what he had to say, what was seeming to be void was exactly the right thing to put down on screen on paper for comrades in writer’s block hell to share and find comfort in.

His fingers started to move and move and move

–from DAD’S TWEED COAT:SMALL WISDOMS HIDDEN COMFORTS UNEXPECTED JOYS by Jim Reed

© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Twitter and Facebook

Life, actually…

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UP BEFORE DAYLIGHT

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Believe it or not, I was once an Alabama young’un.

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In those days my young’unhood attitudes change frequently, as un-young’unhood approaches ever so slowly but ever so surely.

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Sweet remembrance:

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I’m back in time. Today, as a kid, I can’t wait to rise with the Sun. The first  ray of daylight empowers me. I am ready to embrace the day. My Dad arises at five a.m. and is off to work. Mom is puttering about in the kitchen, preparing a second breakfast, this one for herself and us kids.

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I pull on pants and shirt, run barefoot to the open screened window, check to confirm the day. I can see sparkled dew on morning leaves, errant butterflies plying their trade, chattering birds scanning the dew for clueless worms.

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Another day begins in the paradise of young’unhood.

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Being young means my mind is lighter, not yet burdened with responsibilities beyond a few daily chores. Village elders and dedicated parents carry the load, so that I can experience a few years of carefree wonder.

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As teenagedom slowly approaches, I begin to feel the weight of life’s possibilities, life’s confusions, life’s upcoming pleasures.

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A few doubts and fears creep about. I have to start the process of taking on the world as it is slowly handed off to me by aging adults.

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I experiment with the idea of Denial. Just pretending everything is fine often makes everything fine.

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 As a teenager I am not as anxious to get up in the morning. Why does anyone want to rise at 6 a.m.? Getting up means facing teachers and bullies and acne and more chores.

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I pretty much dance around these adolescent attitudes until one summer when I go to work as a laborer on a housing construction project.

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This means getting up earlier than ever on Monday morning, riding in a pickup truck with other workers for two hours, then spending the week away from home sloughing about in blazing heat. I learn to take orders, do heavy lifting, navigate my way through the startling pathways of rough-and-tumble tough-guy culture.

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For a wimpy kid like me, all filled with writing and literature and scholarly intake and storytelling, this is quite a challenge. But, true to my nature, I absorb this educative experience and turn it all into stories. I hone my observation skills without even knowing it at the time.

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I survive the labor world and, just one year later, find the job I really want, far away from strain and heat stroke. I become a seventeen-year-old on-air radio personality.

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Imagine that.

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Within a few months, I turn into a semi-adult. Like my father, I rise before daylight—this time willingly, with enthusiasm—and rush to my job as sign-on announcer at a radio station, then later as television host. 

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I suddenly begin transitioning into the role of village elder.

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Does the heft of responsibility wear me down? Sometimes yes. But, like the kid I once was, I still check the morning dew, scope out the early birds, feel sorry for the early worms, embrace the beckoning sunshine.

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All this happens a long, long time ago. Many adventures and misadventures occur since then. A sign of encroaching maturity on my part is the fact that I won’t bore you with all those intervening stories.

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Not quite yet, anyhow.

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I was once an Alabama young’un. Maybe you, too, were once an Alabama young’un.

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Try to remember

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Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary: https://youtu.be/KENRqo7glmk

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Life, actually…

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HOW TO MURDER AN AUTHOR

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During my Down South lifetime, I’ve met many unofficial members of the Deceased Authors Society.

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These are people who long ago abandoned their hopes of becoming writers. People whose earliest bursts of inspiration were tamped down by well-meaning tutors.

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Here’s an example:

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Remember how great the feeling was in grammar school, when your teacher gave you your first writing assignment? 

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“Write an essay called ‘What I Did During My Summer Vacation.’”

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Remember how you were first a little scared about having to write a whole page all by yourself? This takes courage.

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Then, one night before the assignment is due, you begin to write the first sentence about how much fun you had last summer.

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As you labor with each word, Number Two pencil in hand, you begin to actually FEEL the story. You re-experience joy and pain as you write,

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“My dog Brownie fell in the lake and we saved him. I got bitten by three wasps. We got to eat ice cream three times on vacation.” And so on.

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 Then, because you can feel the emotions behind each word you laboriously block-letter on lined notebook paper, you are certain the reader will feel just as strongly as you.

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You just know that lucky reader will feel the pain of the sting, smell the wet dog Brownie, experience Brownie’s rapid heart beat as you hug him close and dry him off, re-live that ice cream headache.

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You at last finish the assignment, neatly re-copied, hoping that you spelled everything correctly, though you can’t figure out how to spell Kaopectate.

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Next morning you beam as you hand in your paper, knowing that this is going to be a great year, a year in which your thoughts and adventures will be recognized and appreciated.

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What actually happens is, you get the paper back next day with RED MARKS all over it. You misspelled Kaopectate. You forgot to put a period at the end of the second sentence. You failed to indent at the first paragraph. One sentence was missing a verb. And so on.

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After you read the red marks six or seven times, you go back over everything to see if your teacher wrote anything on the front or back of the paper about your experience.

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Did the teacher feel the wasp? Did the teacher laugh and sympathize with poor, wet Brownie? Did those wasp stings make teacher recall childhood?

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No sign of anything but RED MARKS.

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It takes years to sort your feelings out, to realize you’ll never be a real author.

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And back then, the next time your teacher is about to hand out an assignment, you get a funny feeling in your stomach, vertical lines appear between your eyebrows, and you began to dread opening yourself up by writing down your joys and sorrows, just to have them ignored and, instead, RED MARKED.

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You might have wound up like other adults I meet: “Well, I don’t keep a diary or write stories. I’m just not good at writing. I could never do that!”

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As members of the Deceased Authors Society, they will never share their stories, never view their own experiences as being worthwhile.

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This story, these stories, often have happier endings. Once grown and seasoned, many of us would-be writers develop a get-out-of-writers-block-FREE attitude. We awaken to the idea that there are no longer any teachers or RED MARK advocates hovering about.

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As members of the Deceased Authors Society cast away their shackles, some of them blossom into full-speed-ahead writers who, each day, work hard to make up for lost time.

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Next time you meet an author, ask about those RED MARK memories. See what hoops they had to jump through in order to get on with it.

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In my case, I can’t stop writing. When I look back at those perceived barriers, I think, “What barriers? I don’t have time for barriers.”

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Watch out—next story starts as soon as I sharpen my Number Two pencil

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Hear Jim tell his story: https://youtu.be/EgK0LFk-xvk

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Life, actually…

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MELMAC THE MAGICIAN ARISES!

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I am still a kid, just a kid, back here in the 1950s.

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During bumper car travels into the past, I can still peek at things that once were, things that once happened.

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This creates smiles and grimaces. Mainly smiles.

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I am holding in my hand a magician’s magic wand, freshly retrieved from a Christmas-gift illustrated cardboard suitcase of tricks and illusions, the Mandrake the Magician Kit.

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My first lesson as a magician is the sudden realization that merely waving this white-tipped black rod will not accomplish anything. In movies, the correct incantation and wand swoosh are all it takes to make something unscientific but wonderful happen.

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Not so in real life.

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First, I must spend hours reading the magic trick manual, then more hours practicing sleight-of-hand procedures, then–ghastly thought!–gathering bystanders to see whether I can fool them.

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In the long run these efforts diminish and I go on to other hobbies.

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But for this moment, I need to try a visual caper that will wow an audience.

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Melmac! That’s the answer! Melmac!

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Let me explain.

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One of the funniest tricks I’ve ever seen is the one in which a skillful prestidigitator manages to remove a tablecloth from a fancily-set dinner table without upsetting anything. In one fell swoop, he snatches the cloth so fast that the dishes and cutlery and glassery are not aware of the change from cotton to polished wood.

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That would be, like, crazy, man! (I obtain my enthusiastic lingo from show biz.)

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For years, one of my after-dinner chores at home is to clear the table and neatly deliver everything to the kitchen sink, where sister Barbara will do the washing.

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One night, when no-one is looking, I rehearse my act. I carefully stack every possible item up and down my outstretched arms and attempt to make just one trip from dining to washing. This requires a finely-tuned sense of balance, a lot of luck, and a lot of wobbling.

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When everything crashes to the floor in one embarrassing tumble, I get a lot of attention from the family. My only defense is that fact that I only try this caper when everything is unbreakable.

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I am saved by Melmac dishes, thick peanut-butter drinking glasses, detergent box premium stainless steel, and plastic containers.

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Everything survives but my self-esteem. This is something I won’t try again till I’m alone in the house.

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But I still dream of the tablecloth swoosh. Maybe one more attempt…

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You know the rest of the story.

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Once alone, I set the table and prepare to expertly and rapidly remove the cloth.

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I wave the wand. I flail my hands about like any good magician.

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I close my eyes, make a wish, and yank real hard

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/wherehaveallthewarmhandsgone.mp3

or read Jim’s column below:

WHERE HAVE ALL THE WARM HANDS GONE?

I am officially out of popcorn, right in the middle of the movie. I have also slurped enough Coca Cola from a wax-coated paper cup that the public restroom at the Bama Theatre is beckoning to me.

Right here, right now, it’s about 1950 A.D. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I have just held hands on purpose with an actual girl for the first time in my decade-long life. Up till now, holding hands with girls has only been a forced-march event. When being required to square dance in grammar school, I clasp all kinds of hands, some of which feel kind of nice, but the fact that I have to do it always kills the moment.

I don’t know how it happens, but Patricia White and I are sitting elbow to elbow in the dark, avidly watching a full-length movie, and suddenly we are holding hands. Holy cow! It feels funny, funny because I don’t know what to do next. Neither of us acknowledges the fact that we are holding hands. We stare straight ahead. I don’t know what she is thinking. I don’t know what she is feeling, mainly because I am too busy wondering what I am thinking and feeling.

Patricia’s hand is smaller than mine, warmer than mine, and sweat does occur. Can’t tell whether it’s my sweat or hers, but hand-holding definitely seems to involve temperature, softness and humidity.

Now I have to break the magic spell, let go of her hand, and dash to the men’s room upstairs. This is an excellent time to escape the movie, too, since there is smooching on the screen and I’d just as soon avoid watching that.

Oops! What if I am supposed to smooch with Patricia? Is this part of the hand-holding deal? I hesitate returning from the restroom, because I don’t know what is going to happen next. Up till today, I’ve spent my life attending Saturday movies with my buddy Elmo Riley or brother Ronny. Movies have almost always been about Guy Time. I’m already missing that.

Eventually, I return to my seat next to Patricia, but the magic spell has evaporated. There is no more hand-holding, but we do watch the remainder of the film and giggle unnaturally now and then. We head for the bus stop and go our separate ways, but we both know that a First-Time thing has happened in our lives. We just don’t know what to think of it.

It will be years before I learn how to smooch. I’ll get to smooching eventually, but right now, all I can do is reminisce about the Good Old Days when Bo Riley or Ronny and I would hop a bus, head for the Ritz Theatre, watch a double feature complete with two cartoons, a serial installment, and lots of action-filled previews, and eat all the popcorn and glug all the carbonated fluid we can hold.

And, now and then, I also reminisce about Patricia White’s left hand and how wonderfully perplexing it was to hold hands with a girl on purpose for the first time ever

© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Twitter and Facebook

Catch Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/_ZIyrtp8nwE

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Life, actually…

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CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

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“Your city is so beautiful.”

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This from a visitor who is Down South for the first time.

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When I first hear this oft-repeated statement, many years ago, I do a double-take. “Is he talking about my town?” I ask myself.

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I was so accustomed to activities of daily living that the essence of my surroundings had faded into oblivious routine. I failed to notice the loveliness that abounded.

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“There is so much greenery here. And the architecture is wonderful,” the stranger goes on.

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After decades of seeing my town through the eyes of pilgrims, I have become its biggest fan. I add, “Thanks for saying that. It makes me feel good that you see us at our best.”

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I do go on, “And the people here are so friendly—visitors are always remarking how safe they feel.”

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The visitor roams the store, a big smile and a look of surprise on his face.

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There are many first-timers in the shop each week. Layovers from the trains, the airlines, the interstate bus system. Layovers from people on their way to someplace else.

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Other first-timers are tourists, conventioneers, reunioneers, accidental drop-bys, lost wanderers looking for a bathroom a meal, directions.

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The most amazing first-timers are local people, people who have never ventured into the city, fearful of perceived dangers and traffic and one-way streets, forbidding parking decks, unspoken penalty-laden rules.

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Fear of becoming lost in a strange land.

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I look forward to welcoming these visitors and layovers and first-time locals. I make sure they see things through my eyes for a few seconds.

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Amazingly, the evangelizing often works. People re-visit the store to let me know their reactions.

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“You were right—the restaurants are great.”

“I love the museums. They are world-class.”

“I finally ate some grits and bar-b-q. Wow!”

“I heard some good jazz last night.”

“I want to come back and stay longer next time.”

“Got any souvenirs?”

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Yes, I focus on the good that is here. And, once visitors are given directions to the next great thing to do in the city, they are ready to see us as a really interesting region.

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Most of them will be back someday. I know, because they come to see us, to let us know that, despite all media data to the contrary, we are worth the time.

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If you look for the good in our living township, you will find it. If you look for the bad, it is there. You decide which way to go.

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Choose your own adventure.

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Y’all come

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Catch Jim’s Red Clay Diary on youtube: https://youtu.be/WcS4KFdT0vc

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Life, actually…

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A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

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Just because this is a chilly winter day doesn’t mean that every day for the rest of my life will be chilly.

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In just a few weeks, temperatures will top out thermometer tubes and I will once again dream of chilly days like this.

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Here’s an entry from the Red Clay Diary, from one of those hundred-degree days in a Down South village:

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Stepping into the morning, I hit a wall of astounding heat and humidity, SPLAT! just like Wile E. Coyote slamming into a brick wall. Wow!

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I catch my breath and wade into the scorching morass like a ghost seeping through a closed door.

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How will people behave on a day like this? I wonder. How will this affect their attitudes?

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I soon know the answers.

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BEEP! The Roadwarrior in the testosterone jeep behind me taps his horn in the split second it takes the light to change and my foot to switch from brake to accelerator. In olden days my reaction would be to remove foot from pedal and slow down a bit, a simple act of aggression caused by the heat of the day but eminently satisfying to me and doubly frustrating to the jeep guy.

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Nowadays I no longer test the patience of a souped-up stranger. Folks can be testy, even dangerous.

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I simply allow him to whiz past and get on with the journey.

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I take a deep breath, smile, and resume my forward trek.

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Now I am peering into a chest-high used-book bin at the thrift store to see what’s what, when a longsleeved arm curls around me from behind to grab a volume I’m examining. I turn to see who would do such a thing and just miss observing a different arm snatching a book from the other side of the bin.

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I sigh, count to eight and a half, and decide not to protest. These are just books and those are just locusts doing what they know how to do.

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I move on to a section of the store where nobody is hovering. My fun comes from silently–and alone–reading the titles and imagining the contents.

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Later on, the building I’m about to pass sports a long staircase upon which four orange-hard-hatted men wearing orange vests sit and chat next to four orange traffic cones. They don’t notice the heat of the morning because this is what they experience all day on every hot day. They aren’t whiners like you and me. They are enjoying each other’s company.

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Then, I am at the car radio store standing by while a perspiring clerk lies on his side on the passenger seat of my vehicle, surgically probing for the top of a Flair marker that has leapt into the bowels of my cassette player and clogged the works. He’s a good sport and doesn’t mind the challenge. I’m proud of the cassette player, ordered brand-new from Japan, where it is still manufactured. It gives me pleasure whenever I drive, because I can play all those wonderful old cassettes that have piled up over the years.

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EUREKA! he shouts as he displays the culprit just fished for and caught. He doesn’t want to charge me anything, but I feel it’s worth every cent of the twenty-dollar bill I slip him. He doesn’t know what a good Samaritan he is.

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This hot evening, we are dining at a favorite  restaurant, being served by a brusque but efficient waiter who clicks into Polite as he brings the tab, making a little joke and hoping to engage us. We show our appreciation and actually do leave a nice tip.

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At the bookshop earlier in the heat of the day, I assist a customer whose face is remarkable–expressive dark eyes, soft lips, soft smile, pleasant and easy to deal with. As she prepares to leave, a shadow flickers over her countenance for just a second and some distant pain reveals itself. By the time I react, she is gone, like so many others whose sequestered lives remain out of reach. But I remember her face.

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These are just a few of the pilgrims with whom I engage or disengage.

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There are so many, so many, all with secret lives, all with journeys mysterious. I appreciate them all, I wonder about them all.

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I feel like an archivist, writing down all these wispy lives. But at least I notice. At least I try to show some respect. At least I assign A-Plus grades to each and every soul. This could be the only attention they receive today.

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Maybe you can help me archive more of these lovely sad and happy people

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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