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Life, actually…

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FLITTY PRISMS AND TWIRLY CHIMES

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The joyride celebrations of an Alabama family Thanksgiving are receding in memory fond.

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The looming prospect of family Christmas gatherings creates expectations most pleasant.

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As chaotic as life can sometimes be, celebrations both tiny and huge propel us into reluctantly thinking positive thoughts. Thoughts about what pleasures are still lurking if we stop long enough to pay attention.

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What makes me continue having hope here in this Down South town?

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Well, if I put aside all snarky and fearful and mean-spirited thoughts about the messy past and murky future, I can occasionally make room for small wisdoms, hidden comforts, unexpected joys.

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It doesn’t take more than a few seconds to startle myself alert. Alert to the goodness that endures if attention is paid.

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Fairy-like prismatic colors dance along the walls and ceiling of our ancient home. No kidding. Now and then these jittery twinkly lights force me to stop and find a small portal to the past.

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Daughter Margaret gifted us with this solar-powered spinning prism many years ago. It has been here so long we tend to forget its presence. But on a sunny day the dangling trinket comes to life and gently reminds us of the thousand and one pleasures caused by Margaret’s presence in our lives.

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And on cloudy, windy days we are startled into awareness of another family gift. Sprite-like tinkling music spreads itself throughout the house. Porch chimes once given us by daughter Jeannie reawaken our memories of loving good times, wise and healing laughter.

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Flitty prisms and twirly chimes have lives of their own, powered by absentees Margaret and Jeannie.

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Powered by the singular and persistent nurturing that can be generated by family bonds and family ties.

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Powered by our most human desire to place the tribulations of life on hold long enough to face the reality of unconditional love

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© 2022 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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THE THANKSGIVING DOGS OF VERBENA, ALABAMA

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Field of dogs.

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We’re in the deep countryside, walking in their domain,

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But they only welcome us

with tongues out and energetic pantings.

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These are fields any childhood would find a way to enjoy.

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Tall grass, fluffy dandelion wisps,

long cattails to use as gentle weapons.

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No alligators in sight.

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We trudge toward a drought-reduced pond

to see what was underwater, hidden for so long.

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The cool air matches the gray sky.

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The dried and crackling weeds match the cool air and the gray sky.

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We think about the century as if it holds some special

quality that previous and future centuries cannot hold.

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But the centuries are just made-up make-believe

centuries that change with each civilization’s editing.

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The crunch of dried plants under our invading soles

is the sound of the afternoon.

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The rustle of leaves brushing against the low-slung belly

of an amazingly short-legged dog is all we hear.

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The giggling of children waging wars with cattails is all we hear.

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No jets fly overhead,

or underfoot, for that matter.

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No interstate rumblings in the distance.

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Just giggles and crunchings and pitter patter of little dog paws and deep breaths taken down into tired citified lungs.

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We walk the feast off and live at the singular moment.

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The drive back to the city is a droning eventless monotone.

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Home free! is what we shout

when our feet touch our old wooden porch,

on the way to the safety of this particular century

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–Jim Reed © 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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LONG TIME AGO SEEMS LIKE YESTERDAY

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A mere 65 years ago, I am speeding West on 15th Street atop a thin-wheeled second-hand chipped-paint bicycle. My mission is to get to the Downtown county library and back in time for family supper on Eastwood Avenue.

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Let me back up here and caulk in a few missing details.

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“Speeding” means the bicycle wobbles along at maybe three miles per hour. But to the oh-so-young me, the breeze I’m making feels like racing the wind.

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Traveling West on 15th means jumping curbs. Squiggling over multiple railroad tracks. Bumping around sidewalk-less mounds of clay and grass and dust. Running red lights in order to maintain forward momentum.

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“Back in time for family supper” means arriving home just as my stomach starts to grumble. I don’t have a timepiece. And since I’m safely shrouded within my hometown, I don’t need directions in order to find library or bungalow. I don’t need a compass to tell me which way is West.

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These are things I know because of where I’ve lived on Earth the past dozen or so years.

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And the library. Up till now, the library is my cathedral of books. I know every inch of it.

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Finally I screech to a halt (at least I pretend to screech). Padlock my bike to a bush (as if anyone would ever steal such a creaky piece of machinery). Tuck my shirttail in (this is a library, you know). Race up the stairs of a re-purposed Victorian house where everything worth reading abounds.

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I silently tiptoe past the main desk. Past stern no-eye-contact guardians who stamp and process volumes and volumes of inert knowledge and facts.

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I don’t need no stinkin’ eye contact to enjoy myself in this wonderland. I just need my friends the books. My friends the maps. My friends the periodicals. My friend the Silence.

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I scan past titled spines, rows of beckoning subjects. Past the gaps between, where temporary adoptions have occurred.

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And suddenly it dawns upon me that I have just about completed my so-far-lifelong project: I have read and cherished every book that I care to read and cherish.

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There is nothing new on the shelves between the bookends.

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I still have time to re-visit old favorites. I brush fingers past them one more time. I inhale the unique fragrance of all future and past book cathedrals.

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I check out one last title to take home. To read flashlit under quilts tonight.

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I ponder future prospects.

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As I pedal eastward toward home for a round of corn-on-the-cob-and-cornbread vittles, I pass by the strip mall near Eastwood Park. Wait—the  drugstore has rotating metal racks filled with paperback books. Magazines abound nearby.

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Instead of borrowing and returning books, maybe I can purchase the books I desire! They are only 25 cents and 35 cents each. And the cover art is dynamic and compelling. And I can keep rather than sadly part with them.

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But I have no job. Maybe an occasional allowance. Where will I find the cash needed to start feeding my booklust?

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Hmmm…

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I know! Mother provides lunch money and bus fare most weeks.

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I think. Why eat cafeteria food when I can purchase Food for Thought? Why ride a bus to class when I can walk or bike?

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I hatch a devious plot

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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TRAWLING FOR DEEP-SOUTH DOPPELGANGERS

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I am playing hide-and-seek today, trawling a flea mall for obscure books to adopt in order to surprise my bookshop customers.

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The thrill of the search distracts me from the unsolvable challenges of daily life.

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The market’s scattered browsers are all looking for their special interests, their fond memories. Me, I look for books and their buddies—documents, periodicals, maps, globes and the like.

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Some books hide themselves in undusted stacks. Some call out to me, others cringe and keep silent.

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Anyhow, I am having fun seeking and adopting these paginated orphans. I  clean them up, inspect and shelve them, pass them on to proper foster homes.

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“Oh, look, Granddaddy used to have one of these in his store,” a musical voice chimes from one of the dealer cubicles.

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It is the voice of my sister. But I don’t see my sister anywhere nearby. I stop to listen and verify.

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“Oh, I had one of these in the third grade,” sister Barbara’s light chuckle accompanies her observation.

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Damn, it really is my sister. What is she doing in this flea bitten place? She lives far away and seldom drives long distances alone.

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Still can’t find her, though I am peeking around corners and through antique displays to see whether I can sneak up on her.

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Her pleasant patter continues but seems to move away from me as fast as I stalk her.

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That laughing voice again.

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I forget about books and strive to see her close up and in person.

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I spot the source of her laughter. A woman her size and shape has her back to me. She is with someone I don’t know. I freeze in place.

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What if she is secretly visiting an old friend and doesn’t wish to be discovered by her baby brother? Is this a relative? A covert lover? Is she living more than one life?

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Finally, my mind stops racing when I see her face. It’s not Barbara. It is merely someone who is identical to her, someone whose DNA has perhaps by chance turned up in a stranger she’ll never meet.

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No use going up to this person to share anecdotes about coincidence and lineage. She just might think I’m a weird little old man seeking conversation. Which I am.

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I slink away to another part of the mall and resume trawling for books, my net cast wide.

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But now and then I hear Barbara’s voice. Now and then I recall the wondrous lives we have led. Now and then I need to hear her voice.

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Guess I’ll give her a call tonight

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© 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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NEVER HAD ONE LESSON

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WHOOOO…WHOOO…

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The Birmingham-to-Tuscaloosa-to-New Orleans train whistle brings me out of a sweet 4 am dream. A dream in which I am Gene Kelly cruising effortlessly through drenching rain, not giving a dang about the discomfort of clinging wet clothing and squishy hard soled shoes. Gene Kelly, singing and smiling in perpetuity, his feet barely touching down as he floats, in love and in life.

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Someone asked me the other day, what my greatest wish is. I immediately said, “I would like to be Gene Kelly for just three minutes, just to see what it’s like to draw people out of their troubles and into a few moments of hope.”

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There, I said it. Wouldn’t it be nice to move like Gene Kelly?

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To dream the impossible dream.

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It looks so easy, doesn’t it?

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Fred Astaire once said, ”I just put my feet in the air and move them around.”

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That’s the secret. Fred and Gene want us to suspend disbelief for a moment and make us think it’s that easy to be elegant and inspiring.

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Maybe it is.

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The magician who wows me with unexpected trickery, the trapeze artist who makes me think for an instant, “Why, I could do that!”, the actor who causes me to laugh despite my comfortable gloominess, the self-confident police officer who waves me past without giving me a ticket, the caregiver who smiles while tending to a helpless patient,  the calming grandfather who transforms a child’s tears into laughter.

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These people are helpers, helping me to embrace, rather than contest, the time I have.

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We are all performers setting examples, whether we know it or not.

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Like most achievements in life, it might take years to perfect the gracefulness it takes to donate a transformative moment, a moment that someone might need desperately.

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I have many choices each day, but I feel best about myself and the world when I choose to help uplift hope rather than perpetuate fear.

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It can be as simple an act as watching Ferris Bueller playing his clarinet with horrifyingly tuneless results. The joy comes from his earnestness. He thinks he’s making beautiful music. He proudly looks straight at me and says, “Never had one lesson!” and continues his performance.

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I giggle each time this scene repeats itself. It proves that very often a giggle is exactly what is required to take seriously the next important moment of life.

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And imagining myself to be Gene Kelly for three minutes never seems to be a waste of time

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 © 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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DEEP SOUTH AIRPORT WAITING LOT

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I’m marking time in this Deep South village airport cellphone lot.

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This array of idling vehicles constitutes a sub-village of sorts. A place of temporary inhabitants.

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Those of us who are sitting and waiting do not rent space here. We just occupy space. We scratch our phone screens. We allow ear pods to overwhelm and expurgate our thoughts. We fidget. We await the call.

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The call will let us know whether there are delayed or on-time or early arrivals. The call will let us know that the arrivers have descended safely.

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The call will free us up to focus on the next challenge, then the next.

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There is little to do but stare forth through the windshield and note our surroundings. Green hills and one-way arrows and don’t-you-dare-park-here signs. A lone grey trash receptacle and several metallic light poles and some landscaped trees.

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And people. There are people. Nestled all snug in their bubbles. Linked but oblivious of their links.

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ACs and motors hum and grumble, closed windows and locked doors replace would-be side-by-side conversations between waiting-room strangers.

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We only guess at what lies racing through each others’ minds.

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Evidence of lives being lived abound. Car tags display coded and numbered and lettered mysteries. Stickers and slogans and keyed scratches and red mud and hitches hold clues.

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Other hard-to-read-in-the-dark signs and notices tell us we had better do something or not-do-something or face the unknown consequences. A chain link fence enslaves tall ungroomed weeds.

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Fifty shades of gray clouds loll about in the dark, layered skies. Aircraft materialize and descend and ascend. Remnants of once-present objects stand purposeless.

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The ring. The voice on the phone cheerfully announces a soft landing. Onward to luggage retrieval and loved-ones reception

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Soon the second act commences. Now, breathing resumes

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© 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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This happened long ago. But then, didn’t just about everything?

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COLD CASE GHOST RIDERS

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 What if the creator of the universe got claustrophobia and suddenly and inexplicably the universe simply wasn’t roomy enough?

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And what if said creator at once realized that by its very definition the universe was everything it could ever be and as big as it could ever get?

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And what if the creator had to really start thinking about whether infinite power and wisdom were infinite and powerful only within the universe’s own boundaries and rules?

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That’s the kind of thinking you do when you are hermetically sealed inside a cold case. A cold case containing you alone.

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A windowless unfriendly metallic air-conditioned coffin, a coffin so snug that your arms folded across your chest press against the sides of the coffin and allow you no wiggle room.

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The faceless people who placed you inside this cold and dry coffin have warned you not to move a muscle because if you move a muscle you must stay inside the coffin twice as long.

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Twice as long as eternity is about as perplexing as the idea of a creator getting claustrophobia and not being able to do anything about it without breaking finely tailored rules.

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In order to survive this icy coffin for eternity you have to figure out what to do with your mind because it is your mind that won’t leave you alone, it is your mind that keeps reminding you that you are unique among heavy-breathing animals only because you can imagine what is not and can rethink your own death a thousand times a minute before it ever occurs, thus making your own death potentially anti-climactic because of all that dress-rehearsing your mind has been doing for so long.

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And even that isn’t true because you somehow know that no matter how many times you die before dying you’ll find death as fresh and as annoying and as terrifying when it finally comes as it has been all those years you have been rehearsing for it.

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So you try to use your pesky brain against itself—that is, you try to get it to think about pleasant things you dream up, since your mind insists on thinking nonstop anyhow.

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For at least for 90 seconds you get some relief because you call up the anecdote your big sister related to you just the day before all this started happening.

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Sister Barbara was lying there some months back just like you are now, inside an air-conditioned coffin hermetically sealed against the staff members of the medical facility who were drinking paper-cupped Cokes and staring right through you when you walked toward the coffin just a while ago.

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In the city where she was receiving her MRI she was at least offered something I was not offered. She could have any kind of music she wanted to hear piped into the coffin as she lay there for a small eternity.

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She elected “her kind” of music and lo and behold, just as she was preparing herself for the thousand deaths of isolation, just as she was trying to adjust to the idea of being cut off from her entire outside life, the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” started playing and she started giggling and a stern disembodied voice told her through a cold speaker that she must try to contain herself.

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But she got through the experience.

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I could only pretend I was hearing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” since the people outside my particular coffin were making no noise at all and here I was with no ghost riders and trying mightily not to cough for fear of being punished with a longer stay inside the coldest case I’ve never imagined.

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And you know, I was kind of beginning to identify with a claustrophobic creator who just got too big for the universe…or did the universe get too small?

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The ending of this story is kind of pathetic since I never did get out of that coffin and the only comfort I have received from that experience is the knowledge that creators, too, can be trapped forever in a universe too small to contain all the kindnesses we can imagine, too small because in between the kindnesses is the detritus of the universe, the bad stuff.

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I just disregard the idea that all those left-over ghost riders are floating out there between the kindnesses.

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All this is just fine, so long as the kindnesses distract us from that other stuff

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© 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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SOMEDAY UPON A TIME I SHALL WRITE MY STORY 

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The laughing storyteller hovers over me in the bookshop, making it hard to ignore him while I go about daily duties of book commerce and customer relations.

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“That’s a funny story. Are you writing all these stories down?” I ask.

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“No, everybody says I should, but I haven’t gotten around to it,” he replies.

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Trying to be helpful, I throw in a few unsolicited suggestions, hoping one of them will find traction with this serial teller of tales.

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“Do you keep a diary or a journal?”

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“You know, I should. But that reminds me of the time I got stuck on Hurricane Creek with a rattlesnake…” He starts another story, wrapped up in the excitement of re-experiencing long-ago life.

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He brushes off suggestions like no-see-ums.

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“You know, one thing that works sometimes is just jotting down notes during the day as you recall these anecdotes…so you’ll have some reminders to guide you once you start writing.”

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He is distracted by a Lewis Grizzard book and sort of hears me.

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“Yes, I sure have some stories to tell…like the time my buddy and I got caught stealing watermelons in the middle of the night…”

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He goes on. He deflects any ideas about how to record these stories for future generations. They really are good, but I can see after a while that they will evaporate as soon as he does, leaving no record of a born minstrel’s life adventures.

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I love old books and old stories. I live in constant fear that both books and stories will one day simply not be there for you and me to access. I worry that all we will have as proof of life once lived is a plethora of streamed manufactured imaginings, recorded and monetized and available by subscription only.

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And they won’t even be true and actual stories—just some formulaic regurgitated plotline gibberish designed to pretend reality.

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Will we even know the difference? Will we be aware of what is missing?

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Am I a worrier, or what

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© 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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BEARDED LADY

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It’s kind of nice, being invited to write an introduction to another author’s book.

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I used to think that only famous writers who belonged to some kind of in-group did that kind of thing. But it’s good to be wrong at times.

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So, many years ago, author Helen Bunkin produced  a volume of essays, poems and photographs on one subject and one subject only: bearded men, men with beards.

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No kidding!

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Each picture depicts a randomly selected bearded man looking out from his bushy recesses into the world. The reader gets to make a decision about each picture, based on what’s hot and what’s not about the growth of facial multistubbles.

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Right before press time, Helen added my introduction and photograph. Here’s what I said, roughly:

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The first time I met Helen Bunkin, I asked her whether her collection of photographs included any women. She, having only known me for a half hour, looked puzzled and pleasant and replied, “No, they’re all men.”

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“No bearded ladies, then?” I queried. I think that by this time she was beginning to relax and enjoy my lame joke.

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“No bearded ladies,” she repeated.

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After all, I had not yet looked at her photographs. At last, she stopped teasing me and opened her portfolio. My amazement began.

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There were no bearded ladies. But in the place of bearded ladies, Helen showed me pictures of men with beards.

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All sorts of men.

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Big men, slender men, light pink men, black men, tanned men, pale men, sallow men, happy men, strained men, puzzled men, joyful men, brown men, bold-featured men, gossamer men…men who looked like they were enjoying the attention Helen was giving them.

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After all, when was the last time anybody had ever stopped them and paid attention just because they hadn’t been cleanshaven in a month of Sundays?

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Each of these men had made a conscious decision at some point, to ignore the electric-shaver ads, the razor-blade ads, the commercials urging them to look sleek and shiny.

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What made them do it? What made them decide to let the grass grow wild enough to trim later or not to trim later?

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To trim or not to trim, that is the daily challenge.

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In my own case, I woke up one morning after leaving the corporate world of bosses and bosses of bosses, and said to myself, “Self, who are you shaving for, every morning for thousands of mornings on end?” Self answered back, “You are shaving for bosses and bosses of bosses, and, Glory Be, you no longer suffer the presence of bosses and bosses of bosses.”

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The reason for shaving was far gone. It had disappeared into the wind just as soon as I leapt from the cold and humorless vehicle of boss-dom and fell parachuteless into the soft void of Being My Own Boss.

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I never had to worry about pleasing a boss again!

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One more thing had to be cleared away, though. What in the world would my wife think about newfound stubble when it appeared upon my chin? Only way to find out was to do it, so I picked a week when she would be away on business, and I stopped shaving. I figured that, if she did not approve of the beard, I would just remove it and get on with being the Familiar Me.

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Good grief, at the time I saved!

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Lordy, why in the world hadn’t I done this eons ago? I had more time to do things or not do things as I so pleased, and I didn’t have to worry about walking around with pieces of tissue stuck to my face, where the razor had misbehaved. After forty years of shaving, I still had not learned how not to cut myself.

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PS:  My wife loved it. I was cleared for landing my fingers in thick salt and pepper bristle whenever I pleased.

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So, where was I? I know this one thing well: each bearded stranger in Helen’s book has his own story to tell, his own spin about why he doesn’t show off his cheeks and jowls and pocks and double chins to the world at large.

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Helen’s pictures make you want to know these guys, hear their stories, know their woes and whimsies. Turn the pages. Get to know these half-hidden faces.

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Even though the book doesn’t have a bearded lady, it does have a Beard Lady. The late Helen Bunkin is hereby remembered as the Beard Lady who showed many mysterious half-faced men to a world that usually pays attention only to the obvious.

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Whenever I see a copy of Beards Beards Beards by Helen Bunkin I recall her fascination.

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Her book makes you pay attention to the hidden, the not-quite-obvious, in each of us bearded guys.

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Thanks for the memory, Helen, wherever you are

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© 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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