• Listen to Jim’s podcast below:
• turnstiledawggs.mp3
• or read his story:

Turnstile DAWGGs form a Posse and Go After Me

“You never remember who I am, no matter how many times we meet,” an unsmiling woman says to me at a social gathering last night. She does not make eye contact. She wanders off. I still do not know who she is.

“Oh, I follow your blogs and love your writing,” another woman says after my speech to a writer’s group last Thursday. She doesn’t seem to mind whether I know her, she just wants to let me know that she knows me.

“No, I don’t read books!” a dismissive customer snaps at the shop last Friday. She makes it clear she’s just along for the ride with a group of booklovers who are having so much fun roving the aisles. She does not want to engage with me, and she makes clear her disapproval of my existence.

“Oh, my God, this is so enchanting,” a tourist exclaims as she enters the store. “I think I want to live here!” She likes me just the way I am.

And so on.

In unguarded moments of rumination, when I least expect it, I seem to be under scrutiny by all the individuals who have happened to me, who are happening to me, in these many decades past and present.

I’m on the run most of the time, trying to make sense and order out of the progression of washed and unwashed masses who people my daily life, attempting to sort out and understand each of these sometimes peculiar, often attractive, mostly unleashed folks who invade my memory and my daily moment to moment progress.

I’m not sure that I can stay ahead of the posse.

Sometimes I’m happy to be the center of attention. Other times I’d like to run and hide. In almost all instances, I am not quite sure what to say to the DAWGGs (Damned Angry Wailing Guys and Gals), so I just smile or pretend to be distracted.

Lying abed in the early morning, these disparate folk queue up on their side of a turnstile, and I attempt to examine them one by one–but you know how turnstiles work. Sometimes someone will leap over and go for me, sometimes someone will not know how to work the turnstile and will stall the entire line, sometimes people will calmly pass through and allow me to converse and learn more.

The best thing about memory-time is that I have some control over the posse. I can shut it down at will. But, once in a while, as I am dozing off, the posse will re-activate and all the DAWGGs will battle all the Lovelies for my soul

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/obscurelocalauthor.mp3

or read his story below:

OBSCURE LOCAL AUTHOR TURNS OUT-OF-TOWN CELEBRITY

I will be addressing an annual writers’ gathering at the Huntsville Country Club Thursday night, and I can’t wait to hear what I’ll have to say.

Yep, it is an interesting phenomenon, this out-of-town expert thing. Here in Birmingham, I am your average obscure author, hardly known outside an erratic circle of acquaintances, readers and friends. But take me fifty miles out of town in any direction, and I suddenly become a small-time celebrity to unsuspecting audiences.

This is kind of nice, when I think about it. In the City, I can hide out behind the doors of Reed Books, plying my trade, engaging with customers, going home to my quiet life after hours, primarily unmolested, hopefully un-annoying to others.

But place me before an audience and I suddenly have license to pontificate on all kinds of ideas and subjects…and, unlike real day-to-life, I am actually listened to! People even take notes. Some folks approach me afterwards, asking my opinion and obtaining my autograph. And through it all, I always wonder, “What in the world makes me seem important to others for an hour? Why me?”

The wonderful thing about all this is that I truly enjoy my exchanges with audiences. For just a while, they become my students, I become their teacher or vizier. I learn from them, they take something of me with them, however fleeting.

So…what do I say to an unsuspecting audience?

Maybe I’ll explain my ideas on how a truly dedicated writer interacts with an inner voice. I might say something like, “A writer doesn’t say, ‘Oh, no, what terrible thing is about to happen?’ Instead, a writer doesn’t anticipate and instead says, ‘I wonder what will happen next?’ or ‘I wonder how that happened?’ or ‘I wonder what she is really like?’ or ‘I wonder what’s up?’ or ‘I wonder why I wonder?’ or ‘I wonder what it’s all about?’”

Pulling back from the subject at hand and allowing the story to tell itself is a grand experience. A story that is preordained is pretty much a leaden story. A tale that has the freedom to weave its own magic and simply dictate itself to the author is a tale as exciting as a roller coaster ride. Or at least a bumper car excursion.

So, unless something else occurs to me between now and Thursday night, perhaps this will be my approach to the audience of writers I will face.

Knowing my past behavior, though, something different may dictate itself to me on the drive to Huntsville and my own brain could surprise me by blurting out things I do not know that I know.

Can’t wait to hear what I have to say

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/everythinghasvalueexceptmoney.mp3

or read his story below:

Everything Has Value, Except Money

 My Red Clay Diary is safely hidden from harm within my Book of the Thousand and One Amazements, deep within a bank of red clay, covered over by kudzu.