ALL THAT JAZZ

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Jim

Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/allthatjazz.mp3

or read his transcript below:

The time of corona allows me a moment to dig deep into

old Red Clay Diary entries. Time to recall days and moments so beautiful.

Too beautiful to store away and forget.

So, here’s a fond memory from eons ago when Deep South

villagers clustered for an hour of a Sunday afternoon to hear sweet music.

ALL THAT JAZZ

Outside the large old windows of the large old church, the bright sunshine tries hard to get through the glass and closer to the sounds of jazz, sounds that gently stroke the ceiling the floor the pews the people and the sunbeams themselves with variations on a theme of love thy everything, love thy everyone.

The pews get harder the longer we sit but the music gets lovelier and the lazy afternoon will not loosen its hold on us.

In the pew behind us an infant snores peacefully against its mother’s breast. In front of us a little girl is so caught up in the music that her body vibrates with every chord. She plays among the sunbeams and the old dust and the almost visible musical notes. She is inside the music just as surely as the baby is inside his dreams, inside his mother’s arms.

We sit in this hard pew between this infant and this child and feel the music so intimately that it seems to be pulling our bliss into one organic joy, even though we sit still and polite and quiet.

Jazz variations on the lightness of being.

And the thing is, this baby and this little girl cannot decipher the meaning of all this joy.

And you know it really doesn’t matter, because their purity is so resounding in the Sunday afternoon dust

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USING SIGNAGE LANGUAGE TO COMMUNICATE WITH WALMARTIANS

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Jim

Catch Jim’s latest Red Clay Diary podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuLLy5ZkWgU&feature=youtu.be

or read the transcript below:

USING SIGNAGE LANGUAGE TO COMMUNICATE WITH WALMARTIANS

Let’s say for just a moment that I am a being not of this planet.

Let’s further suppose that I am just this moment beaming down and looking around.

I cruise through the aisles of a huge facility that dispenses food and all manner of objects Earthlings seem to require.

The posted signs are not easy to understand.

PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW CHILDREN TO PLAY WITH THE TOYS

In my research prior to descending to Planet Three, I am led to believe that toys are manufactured for the sole purpose of being played with by children. Is this some kind of reverse-psychology attempt at human humor? Are children no longer allowed to play with toys?

I must make note of this for later study.

On one of the enormous electronic image screens scattered about this emporium, I view what is generally referred to as News.

One oft-repeated phrase in reportage of interspecies violence is this:

THE GUNMAN WAS A LONER WHO LIVED WITH HIS MOTHER.

Another confusing characteristic of sapiens. It is my understanding that children are raised from birth in close proximity to at least one parent or guardian. Does that headline infer that there is something unacceptable and damning about a grown child residing with a parent?

My time is up for this particular visit. I’ll return another day to make more notes.

Goodbye, Earthies. I mean you no harm.

MEANWHILE, BACK TO THE REALITY OF EVERYDAY DEEP SOUTH LIFE:

Love in the time of Corona is quite challenging at the bookstore.

Distance between visitors and staff is monitored, surfaces are constantly cleansed. But otherwise, all is calm, all is bright.

Customers seek bliss among the shelves and displays, ask questions about price and availability and content, and generally enjoy themselves.

A first-time visitor to the shop announces his entrance with a big juicy hand-covered sneeze. He sees my expression, which must be one of confusion. I need my shoppers, but I need them to enter—then return—both healthy and non-contagious. I don’t say anything. He laughs, says, “I don’t have Corona!”

I reach for the Purell.

His partner rubs her eyes vigorously, then explores the shop.

At a safe distance, I lead them to sections of the stacks that they prefer. I warmly explain the layout. I hope that I am exuding friendliness, politeness, while remaining careful and attentive.

I disinfect before, after and during customer visits.

Since we are all encouraged to keep a safe physical distance from one another, I fill those empty spaces with calming music and a bit of patter.

Today, I am listening to Mozart arias by Cecilia Bartoli, blue tunes by Miles Davis, new tunes by Ahmad Jamal, longing and love by the Sons of the Pioneers, clever lyrics by Anthony Newley, robust stories by Big Joe Williams and Count Basie, jolly instrumentals via Gershwin piano rolls. And so on and so forth.

I am still planted on this planet. I still have to find ways to recall and refresh my humanity, your humanity.

Maintaining the bookstore at the center of the universe is my way. I’m here should you need me. I’m here even when you don’t need me.

The books will endure, as will Earthlings, as will you

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BEYOND THE GROVE OF THE DOLLS

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Jim

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/RVzcElHfeeA

or read the transcript below:

BEYOND THE GROVE OF THE DOLLS

Within the dusty attic of my mind reside Deep South Gothic memories that occasionally arise and remind me that regardless of how many times The Stories tell themselves to you, they are never quite finished. For every story told, there is always The Next Day, and what happened The Next Day.

Here’s a true story that will never be completed. Fortunately, the human imagination, each human imagination touched by this story, will unwillingly carry forth the tale and conjure up possible Next Day scenarios. That’s part of the fun of storytelling.

Here’s a true and actual tale hidden in my Red Clay Diary many years ago. It reappears in my dusty mind every decade or so.

ONCE UPON A TIME OR TWO…

Downtown Birmingham is the Tether.

You can enjoy being Downtown or you can enjoy returning to Downtown. Just take a trip 50 miles thataway or 50 miles the other way, then return to the City. This is about the time I went thataway…and was so glad to return safely—though altered.

The life-size mannequins inside the old tin shed are all tangled together in a silent and stifled orgy of lacquered intimacy.

There are mannequins fully dressed and carefully made up and there are mannequins old and weathered and strangely still youthful.

There are glowy-eyed mannequins staring into whatever comes before them but never changing the direction of the stare, prisoners frozen and sentenced to observe only that which presents itself to their direct gazes and steely peripheral visions.

There are male mannequins with sculpted hair and female mannequins with flared nostrils and delicate hands, there are mannequin heads and arms and legs and feet and torsos both dancing and as still as stones at rest in the countryside heat. And there are mannequins swinging from rafters and peeking from large pails, and next door there is another metal-roofed building with yet more mannequins and their neighbors.

The little town of Shady Grove, Alabama has no idea that these mannequins and body parts are living, never alive, in its midst. And no-one knows, either, that surrounding these mannequins are big reels of full-length movies and newsreels and ”shorts” and previews (trailers) and documentaries and cartoons, all in their original canisters, all in their original formats, 35-millimeter, 16-millimeter, 8-millimeter, and photographic slides and transparencies, and, should you yearn to see one of these features, there are dozens and dozens of movie projectors and screens from every era—silent-movie hand-cranked projectors before the time of universal electricity, wide-screen movies before the time of TV-eating-up-the-world, military projectors designed to withstand V-2 or Scud Missile attacks, and projectors that were once handled by teenagers in high school science classes, and projectors that once had been operated in real movie theatres by real union-member projectionists.

The man who has coveted, stored, squirreled away and gathered all this mass of inert motion picture paraphernalia and this city of mannequins has also taken care to hoard hundreds of belts, projector bulbs, gears and sprocket-repairers, film editors and cutters and splicers and tapers, just in case the end of all other repair sources occurs during his lifetime.

And now, he is showing me his lifetime stash—which also includes a live nightmarish dog who barks perpetually day and night, never stopping, each bark accompanied by a three-foot leap into the air in a vain attempt to escape his fenced confines and energize all those mannequins—a truly possessed dog whose owners haven’t a clue.

Next to the sheds and shacks in the buggy country air are ten-foot-high stacks of very old grey and weathered mahogany boards that their owner has gathered from companies no longer needing them, and there is an old automobile splayed open to the world with wires running from under its hood into goodness knows what.

Inside his home, the man complains about the paper-thin ceilings that someone has spray-covered and which are now falling in from boredom and weariness, and his wife hides somewhere behind all his collectible mania, never presenting herself—a Gothic world that really exists if you go a few miles outside where you live now. A world not to be made fun of, since our world is just as offbeat and inaccessible to them as theirs is to us.

Maybe I’ll go back and visit this village of non-living comrades who in a way seem more alive than you and I and who certainly get along with each other better than you and I and who unlike you and I are totally accepting of their keepers—the insane leaping dog and the movie-mahogany-mannequin collector who is beginning to worry about what will happen to all his adoptees when he has become as lifeless-yet-attentive as they

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THE RISE OF THE DRINK MACHINES AND OTHER DISREGARDABLES

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Jim

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/ZjdTaesAaeI

or read his transcript:

THE RISE OF THE DRINK MACHINES AND OTHER DISREGARDABLES

Regarding the disregarded is my job as a writer, my task as a teller of stories.

It’s easy to notice the obvious. There are plenty of other folks whose job that is.

But paying attention to the invisible, looking between the cracks, examining the interstices, walking backward in a forward-motion crowd, even describing things so obvious that they’ve become obscure…that’s my job.

1. The looming electronic soft-drink machine flashes its message: EXACT CHANGE ONLY. Only, what the exact change should be is not posted, leaving the caffeine addict no choice but to pour money in until something—or nothing—happens.

2. The parking meter asks for quarters, but nothing happens when a quarter is inserted, leaving the visitor no choice but to pour more quarters in, just in case this magically fixes the problem.

3. The flashing yellow light at a busy intersection totally confounds most motorists. Does yellow mean stop, does it mean speed up, does it act as a four-way stop, does the other driver know the same set of rules that you know? Most of us simply look both ways, make a wish and take the Acceleration of Faith, hoping that irresistible objects don’t suddenly meet and mess with the laws of physics. Either way, the light never stops communicating its uncommunicative message: YELLOWFLASH YELLOWFLASH YELLOWFLASH

4. The elevator light doesn’t come on when you punch it, leaving you no choice but to punch it again and again, just in case it didn’t get the message the first time. Then, another pedestrian arrives and starts punching, too. The elevator disregards us all and operates exactly as it is designed to. It’s the elevator’s world. We just live in it. And obey.

5. The fast-food clerk has done her job so many times, she no longer feels the need to speak. Her economy of movement dictates that she simply sit there staring at me, slightly raising an eyebrow as if to say, “Come on, speak up. I don’t have all day.” I am amused and decide to play the game. I stare silently at her and raise an eyebrow, too. She doesn’t respond. Finally, I say, “Welcome to FastFoodHeaven, may I take your order, please?” She snaps out of her contempt, acts confused, then decides to take my order. Afterward she returns to her stupor. She never knows what just happened.

6. The city employees I most admire are the trash and garbage collectors. They do their jobs like clockwork, exposing themselves to every manner of germ and fragrance and dangerous object, come rain, drought, storm or darkness. They cannot possibly be paid enough, and certainly should receive higher salaries than city leaders…maybe about as much as surgeons. The only thing I have to do as a citizen is mind their rules, which are sometimes obscure. I obey because I don’t want them to fail to pick up my detritus.

Regarding the disregardable is a gift and a curse. Disregarding the all-too-obvious is next best. Forgetting the unforgettable, always remembering the forgettable…that’s what we storytellers do. I hope we have your sympathy…even if we don’t, we still have one shared secret that keeps us going:

This kind of life is sooo entertaining.

Get yourself a pencil and you can live it, too

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THUD MACTHUD AND THE SEAT-YOURSELF BARROOM

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Jim

Hear Jim’s Red Clay diary podcast: https://youtu.be/eYJLRoTvV5c

or read the transcript below:

THUD MACTHUD AND THE SEAT-YOURSELF BARROOM