Listen to Jim’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/themorningafterthemorningbefore.mp3

or ready his story below:

THE MORNING AFTER THE MORNING BEFORE

Solstice celebrations are packing December, and O what fun they are.

But the day after the joy, the day after the close of this wacky year, what will the world be like?

After overstaying my mortal welcome and journeying forth into the netherlands of geezerhood, l can speculate all I want. Because who’s to stop me?

My hunch is that Earth will continue spinning a few billion times, Old Sol will fume and glisten for a trillion or so, humanoids will come and go and come again and go again, mice and mosquitoes will prevail to the inconsequential end, and the darkness of space will keep on sparkling with stars and other glowy objects, and large rocks will orbit and collide right on random schedule.

Now that the science lesson is concluded, what is left upon which to focus our attentions?

It’s always the same. As long as we are bumbling about, birthing and suspiring, we might as well do something worthwhile…something bigger and better than acquiring wealth and power and status and property. We might as well take care of each other.

Each other is all we’ve got.

In my case, I can only do what I can only do. Hug my family. Hug a friend. Hug someone in need. Hug someone who simply could use a hug.

What else could I do? Listen instead of blabbering and bragging. Look someone in the eye instead of avoiding them altogether. Imagine what it would be like to be that other person. Slap myself each time I throw out an entertaining but hurtful remark. Remember what it is like to be on the other end of that remark.

If I behave according to these precepts, will I become inert, wimpy, useless…or will I morph into someone better, someone wiser, someone worth respecting, someone to be trusted?

It would be a brave new world, the world that would allow all of us to behave, to embrace, to acknowledge, to share, to support, to assist.

Sometimes I want to grab a large canvas bag and stuff it with all the useless ideas that rattle around me. This bag would be filled with negativity, pessimism, criticism, violence, careless remarks, snobbishness, condescension, smirking, and all I’m-better-than-you-isms. Perhaps NASA could gather all these bags and launch them toward the Sun, where they would evaporate and for a moment illuminate our better selves.

Just another idea. What you do with it is all on you, my fellow traveller

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

 jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tallyingthesweetmoments.mp3

or read his story below:

TALLYING THE SWEET MOMENTS LEST THEY GO AWRY

“Wow! Look at all the shoe boxes!” Sweetness exclaims as she opens the rear passenger door of my bookmobile to retrieve two heavy bags from the seat.

The bags are filled with clothing and multi-textured cloth products ready to be laundered.

It is Tuesday morning. I’ve just pulled up to the front of the laundromat and Sweetness has popped out of the entrance to grab the bags as an extra service to me, the regular customer. What she sees are two re-purposed shoe boxes filled with Christmas goodies packed and headed for the postal service. Shoe boxes deserve an afterlife, and this is it.

I call Sweetness Sweetness because I don’t know her real name, and because she’s always chipper and smiling, a friendly flower child. She makes my Tuesdays a little sweeter.

I wish her a great day, she reciprocates, and I’m off to my next adventure–getting those packages mailed at the UAB postal station where, again, my morning is flavored with the good will of my favorite postmistress. We exchange pleasantries and gossip, she processes everything like clockwork, wishes me a great day and smiles when I wish her right back. I know her real name, but I label her Postmistress in honor of my late Aunt Gladys McGee, who was postmistress of Peterson, Alabama, when I was a child.

I pull up to a pump at the convenience station, obey robotic instructions, fill the tank, retrieve my credit card, and enter the store. I take one Diet Coke and a sin-filled calorie-loaded pastry to checkout, where Ms. Convenient grins and makes change. We banter, I grab my goodies, I head for the door. I don’t know her name, either. But she is so nicely convenient to my routine that the improvised title seems just right.

The bookmobile then pushes workward, but first I stop at Family Dollar to pick up store supplies and chat with another clerk who always seems happy to see me. She is Family Lady. We are three-minute friends every few days.

Then, I wend my way to the commercial parking lot where the bookmobile will slumber all day. I trade friendly and newsworthy remarks with the lot attendant, who, like me, is always grateful for our dialogues. He is Park Man, my mini super-hero.

Then, I tread the short block to the bookshop, forever waving to the bank clerks on the corner, sharing a smile or a puzzled look, depending on who’s on duty.

I grapple with the shop keys, dive into the store, and meet my daytime buddies, the books, the books, the books. They, too, add sweetness to my day and prepare me for the diversity of customers and clients I will face. They all have names.

By the time I’m ready to lower the drawbridge and welcome visitors, I’ve completed a full cycle of pre-work activities.

I am now ready for my second shift

© 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/awholeslewofpondering.mp3

or read his story below:

A WHOLE SLEW OF PONDERING HAPPENING HERE

Can’t stop those beautiful thoughts from creeping in between the ghastly ones, the ghostly ones.

Lots of reasons to think grimly these days, but eventually something interrupts the flow and spoils my morose prattlings.

For instance, something like a Beautiful Thought.

Yep, the beautiful thoughts just well up and take over now and then when they find an opening. I usually have to insert myself into an in-between moment in order to give those beautiful thoughts a chance to creep in.

Before I know it, though, the Uglies sneak around and start chomping at the Beauties and the war is on, the war between Ugly and Beautiful.

The good news is that, given time–that is, you can’t “give” time, you have to stop, back up a pace, and observe the fact that time goes on with or without your permission–given time, the war seesaws. No matter how much ugliness chomps away, beauty will most likely sneak back in when you least expect it.

It’s those beautiful thoughts, those beautiful minutes, that seem to make things worthwhile again. If you’re lucky, you’ll live long enough to experience a whole slew of these beautiful thoughts, enough of a whole slew to make you almost believe that it’s all worth it–whatever It is and whatever Worth It means

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

 jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

(For all concerned grammarians–the word “slew” as used above simply means “multitude.” From old Gaelic. Just so you know that, as an idiot, I am still incomplete.)

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/heretherebetombstonemonikers.mp3

or read his story below:

HERE THERE BE TOMBSTONE MONIKERS 

“My mama named me after a dead baby on a tombstone.”

This is one grand entrance I won’t soon forget.

I’m at the shop, plying the book trade, when this rather feisty first-time customer throws open the front door and makes her pronouncement. Her name is Olivia, which she explains is not a common moniker. Her mother did not want her to carry a family name–something unique was in order.

So, while tiptoeing through the tombstones one day, she spied a child’s grave with the name Olivia chiseled thereon. It resonated. It stuck. And right here right now, the second Olivia stands, obviously confused and a little angry about knowing her roots.

“Yep, I’m named after a dead baby.” She manages to grin and frown simultaneously.

All of us humanoids have names. Most of these names are stamped upon us and stick there for a lifetime. Some of these names are deleted by those of us who want to pick our own.

As Pearl Bailey once said, “You can taste a word.”

I like the taste of my name as it escapes my lips. I don’t mind hearing it being tossed back to me. I would not dream of changing it, out of respect for my father and grandfather, who carried the same name.

I don’t mind being Jimmy Three. It sounds a little like a small-time con man’s name. Jimmy Three.

Well, you can call me Jim. My schoolmates always called me James. My friends and family call me Jim. I wouldn’t even mind being called my full name, James Thomas Reed, III, except that it sounds pretentious and too multisyllabic.

And some day, somebody might get cute and carve my name onto a granite tombstone. Then, generations later, when the name Jim isn’t so common anymore, some jokester parent might decide to pluck Jim from the stone and plop it into the lineage of their latest offspring.

Then, thirty years after that, a smiling frowning Jim could be caught telling all within hearing that his folks named him after a dead guy in a cemetery.

Maybe I’ll get to roll over laughing in my six-foot resting place

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

 jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook