Listen to Jim’s Podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/itismannerstoissueastatement.mp3

or read on…

IT IS MANNERS TO ISSUE A STATEMENT AS TO WHAT I GOT OUT OF IT ALL

Now that I have your attention, it seems appropriate to inform you as to why I called you here in the first place.

I just realized that I as a writer have this magical ability to look before and after.

Apparently, humans may be the only animals able to do this.

The curse of being human is that I can imagine things that are not, never were and never will be. I can magnify and endlessly repeat in my imagination events that happened or did not happen, to my heart’s content. I can conjure up soothing thoughts to carry myself through harsh times. I can toss and turn and fret over things that have no significance to anyone else.

You and I are the Dreaming Animals. And our species may be alone in this ability to dream up or magnify stuff.

As the Dreaming Animal, what have I learned from life that seems to be true and wise?

1. I am travelling forward through time and cannot go back for even one minute and re-live any of what has passed. As the Dreaming Animal, I can pretend to do this. And that can be fun. And useful.

2. I am hopelessly trapped inside a pink body bag—my skin—and will spend the rest of my time incarcerated therein. As the Dreaming Animal, I can play-like this is not the case.

3. I am not in control of my destiny, whatever that is. DNA will determine my limitations. Environment will take cold and uncalculated action whether I want it to or not.

4. I am the sum total of a thousand gaffs, errors, omissions, and impulsive acts. I cannot make corrections, though here and there, I can take the opportunity to apologize for offences enacted. I have reasons for all my mistakes, but I have no excuses worthy of entertaining.

5.  I have ingested countless joys and eureka moments, countless epiphanies and realizations, countless insights and discoveries. I am grateful for these happenings and cherish them mightily.

6. I have learned that, to survive knowledge of the world’s wrongs and horrors and calamities and monstrous injustices, I must do what I can, then distract myself just enough to maintain sanity and purpose. If I do not find some exhilaration each day to control the Negatives, I won’t find the energy to do what good I can do.

That’s about it for now. I’m so happy you responded to my call and gathered to listen.

Maybe you can filch a thought or two for your own purposes. Maybe you can share a thought or two to assist me in my journey.

Let’s be Dreaming Animals together and make the most of what good there is left to do in a crazed but beautiful world

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to today’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/waybackwhenweknewmore.mp3

or read Jim’s story below:

Way Back When We Knew More Than We Know Now

I go fishing for books now and then. I just rev up the old bookmobile, pop open what we down here call a Soft Drink, turn on the radio, and head Thataway, never knowing what adventures will impose themselves upon me.

My routine treks among the hilly byways of rural Alabama give me time to ponder and think and reminisce and wonder.

Sometimes, I have to switch the radio off to clear my head, especially when I hear just one too many grating grammar errors. The NPR announcer says, ”The price of cigarettes have gone up.”

Is she aware that she have made a grammatical error?

Another public radio announcer constantly refers to somebody called Utha Listener, never once explaining who Utha might be.

Yet another voice pontificates, “They have just showed up.”

She’s never been showed how to use shown correctly.

I go through a train crossing, noticing that some railroad cars do not have graffiti coating their sides. Somebody has fallen down on the job.

Howlin’ Wolf’s song pops into memory and makes me forget the errors and typos of the world around me and just feel some joy for a moment, “My baby she’s a good-looking thing you know…she’s the one who spins me round and round, one who turns me upside down” Now, that’s Love!

I pass town water towers that look somewhat like the steel-legged robots H.G. Wells imagined filled with invading Martians. I recall that I have actually seen one of these mechanisms, a tall shiny facsimile in the town square at Woking, England, near where the attackers landed.

Cruising past strip malls, I observe many women and men and children getting out of their cars, parents elaborately extracting squirming kids from car seats, lifting the ones who still like to be lifted and grumbling back at grumbling kids who like to grumble.

It’s fun to pay attention. So many people I see are not watching, not looking around to see what’s what. What thrills they are missing!

Every image, each person, seems to be about me, about my life. It’s impossible to close them out, difficult to forget them.

My fishing day is fruitful. I gather some special books here and there, hear sounds that make me cringe and smile, see faces and shadows that awaken my empathic senses, and get to look behind things to see what I might be missing.

There are probably worse ways to spend a morning in the gossipy and secretive hills of sweet Alabama

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/foreverydaythereisaseason.mp3

or read his words below:

For Every Day There is a Season…A Different Season Every Day!

I’m walking from home to car, preparing to go to work, when I notice that Winter has arrived in the middle of Spring. Yep, my short-sleeved shirt is hardly adequate for the 30-degree temperature that slams me. This day last year, it was 85 degrees and climbing.

If I lived in Alaska, I’d pretty much know what to pack in the trunk, just in case: coat, jacket, gloves, thermal something-or-others huddling together. Living in Alabama, I wisely pack an extra short-sleeved shirt in case mine goes dripping and fragrant with sweat.

That proverbial frog in a slowly-heating pan of water had best wise up and invest in long-term AC warranties, body shirts and flip-flops if he wants to extend his time on terra infirma.

Despite what all those naysayers and anti-science advocates issue forth, science seems to be correct—prepare ye for the shape-shifting world of the future. That is, if you choose to remain here alive and well.

On the positive side, I do enjoy the surprises that each day brings me. Last night, we unloaded groceries under a dark grey sky surrounded by humid breezes and thirsty plants. All was dry. When I stepped outside ten minutes later, rain had made the world soggy, as if it had been there all day. And on chilly mornings I go to work with that chill imprinted on my mind. Indoors for nine hours, thinking all the while that it’s a cold day outside, I leave work and find that it has been hot and humid all along.  I spent a cold day inside while everyone else soaked up heated UVs. Go figure.

Anyhow, I wrote these words down just to take sides with Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, both of whom said, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”

There—I’ve done my talking. Now to settle down with books by Warner and Twain and knock off the chill or cool down the heat wave for a few minutes, depending on what’s happening outdoors

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Twitter and Facebook