Listen to Jim here: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/whyifihadmydictionary.mp3

or read on…

For once, I’d like to say something dramatically effective to win my argument with you.

“You dirty rotten scoundrel!”

“You’re just a…just a rapscallion, that’s what you are!”

“Why, you no-good son-of-a-son-of-a…”

“You terminological inexactitude!”

Mmm…I want to express my expletives in an original or surprising way, but I just can’t find the right word. Most current literary and journalistic and social mediaistic jargon is filled with a few key and unimaginative cuss words, most beginning with f and s and a and a handful of other worn-out exclamations.

I’d like to use a word that is either made up (that’s too easy) or resuscitated or reborn or hopefully funny.

What about You Simon Legree? Well, you’d have to be literary to know you don’t want to be called that.

Hmm…

What about “You slimy Ewok!” Well, only HGW would take umbrage.

Howz about “You dirty human!” But Pierre Boulle would just laugh.

“You scum-sucking pig!” Only an Amigo can get away with that.

See how hard it is for booknerds to come up with something powerful? There aren’t enough fellow booknerds around who would “get” these allusions.

I’ll just settle for, “You cad!” That way, you won’t even be offended, I won’t get punched, no profanities will have been employed, and, as Dylan Thomas would say, “Then, we can both sit down and have some tea.” Just one nerd and one cad and some goodwill to round out the day.

There, that wasn’t so tough, was it?

Meanwhile, be prepared—I’m still trolling through all those old dictionaries I keep around the house and the shop, to find just the right word to diminish you and make you jealous of my word skills. Problem is, not all words appear in dictionaries—said dictionaries seem to go out of date upon publication. This has been true for several centuries.

Listen to Jim here: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/standingonthecornerwatching.mp3

or read on…

“Oh, look at that poor man!” Mother says, as she and we kids wait on the corner, scanning the horizon for the next bus. Mother is referring to an elderly slow-trekking man with a wooden walking cane. He’s wending his way through the side-walkers who are in front of the Bama Theatre here in Tuscaloosa, circa 1950.

We’ve occasionally missed the bus because we like to spend our time observing people and critters as they wade through their private lives on the streets of Tuscaloosa. It’s more interesting than any downtown parade, more fascinating because you can select which of  several simultaneous parades to enjoy.

There is the sidewalk parade passing by us bystanders.

Pedestrians, pets, strays, wheelchair-drivers, drunks, a beggar or two, all brush by each other following their personal destinies. 

There is the wheeled and pedaled and hoofed parade on the paved street.

This day, In 1950, there are still mule-drawn carts now and then, weaving bicyclers, motor scooters and cars and trucks and buses and service vehicles and even an occasional leftover WWII jeep, pieced-together jalopies and hot rods and some hand-pushed food carts.

There are the indoor lookers gazing out at the bystanders and the dual parades.

Men sit lathered in barber shop chairs, women sit in shoe shops, watching wistfully through the window while bored clerks grapple with their feet, secretaries on lunch break look down from upper-story offices, roofers with metal pails lean over to watch the ants below, movie theatre ticket booth teens stare selectively at their strolling dream hunks and pin-ups, a smiling police officer greets everybody by name…

Then there are the watchers sitting in parked cars, observing us all through rolled down windows.

Two kids in a back seat count the number of passing ladies’ hats, a passenger-seat woman refreshes her lipstick and checks out the shoe styles of other sapiens, one sweating man turns his back to the sidewalk, his head under the hood of a steaming car, one teenager lounges on the roof of a pickup truck, waiting for his father to return from city hall. 

There are the surprise paraders you don’t expect.

A man pokes his head up from a manhole in the center of the street and begins to struggle out. Driving drivers and the occupants of their vehicles gaze at the sidewalk parade, the bystanders and window-shoppers, the shadows of office workers near windows, all noting the milling behaviors on display in busy little T’town.

“Oh, my, look at her—isn’t she beautiful?” Mother exclaims about a smartly-dressed young woman, causing us to appreciate loveliness wherever it appears and the instant that it appears, as if each sighting could be the final one.

Back here in my home, many decades later, I realize that Mother’s gift to us kids is the gift of observation—more than that, the gift of appreciation—and the ability to find something special about everybody, even those every-bodies who don’t seem to deserve it. There’s always something.

Whenever I’m in an audience, I have the impulse to turn about and face that audience. I’d prefer to watch them watching the event than to watch the event itself. Even when I’m the event itself, I get a kick out of standing on stage talking or performing while secretly viewing the audience viewing me. They always have more to say than I. 

Wish I could take you back to the streets of Tuscaloosa back in the day, just for an hour. I think we would have a ton of fun watching the watching watchers

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/beautyisintheheart.mp3

or read on…

A few words about the beauty within mirrors.

Most mirrors around the house are poor reflections on me.

That is, the harder and longer I gaze at myself in a mirror, the less I know exactly how I look to others, let alone to myself.

Just replacing a light fixture in the bathroom can make all romanticized images disappear—suddenly I see myself at high wattage, bereft of subdued shadings. Holy mackerel, where did all those blemishes come from, whence came the additional wrinkles and bags, how did I transmogrify overnight into a large prune with extra-long nose hair and unkempt blotches? When did I seriously begin to consider laving myself with pancake makeup, essentially to airbrush reality away from all undesirable features?

The mere act of cleaning the bathroom mirror can have the same effect.

Being a literary type, I search for solace among great works of literature:

“Am I beautiful? I think it must be the rose.

My hair–it only weighs me down.

My eyes–I only see with them.

My lips–they only help me to speak.

Of what use is it to be beautiful?”

–Spoken by the robot Helena in R.U.R. by Karel Capek

Helena must have looked into the wrong mirror the morning she spoke those words.

I know that I am not beautiful, but could it be that somebody, somewhere, under unusual circumstances, might consider someone like me to be beautiful? Again, what do my favorite authors say?

“Has any psychological experiment yielded

a more delightful suggestion than this one:

that there is a part of the mind without ambition

or information, which nonetheless is expert on what is beautiful?”
–Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I think I know what is beautiful, but how can I be sure that the red I see doesn’t come across as purple to you, that what I find repugnant might seem wonderful to you? I can’t see through your eyes.

As H.G. Wells once said, “Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.”

Karel, Kurt and H.G. are iconic literary figures, so, in the absence of any hard data concerning beauty, I must embrace their confusion and poetic ponderings. Must depend on the intrinsic and indefinable beauty that lurks here and there in great books…or in ornate mirrors…or in your heart

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Twitter and Facebook