Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/cZ82suLes4w

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Life, actually…

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BROKEN NEWS AND TIME-TAKERS

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Sometimes I grow weary of BREAKING NEWS. At times like this I want to unplug all the external influencers and take a moment to ponder what is really, really important.

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Assuming the news is now officially BROKEN NEWS, I can do away with the idea of dancing to those constantly arrhythmic ALERTS and just try to listen to the quiet.

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Listen to the quiet.

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Gazing around this deep south village, I watch for the real souls who are otherwise ignored in my haste to Get There, my haste to be so busy Getting There that I can no longer recognize when I actually Arrive There.

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There’s one now. A real soul. Note that he is not part of the hive.

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He takes his time. He is a time-taker. He wins my day.

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Actually, he does not take time away from me. Instead, he nurtures and notices time. He does not hurry and squander. He rows slowly and closes in on what is really worthy of his time.

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He is now the official spokesperson for all wise and kindly people who take time to pat the roses, assist the infirm, bolster the melancholic, comfort the disoriented.

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Look, there’s another soul!

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She is another official spokesperson for all wise and kindly people who do not realize how wise they are, who do not take time to describe themselves as wise and kindly because they are too busy being wise and kind.

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I see them here and there as daily hours roll past.

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They are easy to miss, these special people.

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They are underappreciated because I am so busy basking in the goodness they exhale with every breath, the goodness that propels me to be better, to try harder. The goodness that refuses to fold under pressure of negativity and cynicism, power mongering and steamrolling.

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Their goodness endures because its roots are invisible. Defoliants can’t get to them.

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As I said, at this very moment, there is one of them walking toward me.

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I can sense a free child basting within her smile.

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And oh, what a smile

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/FWQ4WacKMug

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Life, actually…

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WEARING MY MEMORIES

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(Looking back some 35 years, just after I lost my one and only Father)

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It’s just a tweed jacket that’s old before its time, but I hate to let it go.

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I’ve been wearing it and wearing it and wearing it, and it feels as good as my skin. By now it’s about as baggy as my skin, and besides, who needs a new tweed jacket when you’ve got one that feels this nice?

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I usually wear it all during the cooler months, most of the time with jeans and tennis shoes or khaki pants and tennis shoes.

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Sometimes I vary my wardrobe and wear something besides a black shirt—my usual apparel. Get the shirts at a priest boutique—one of those stores selling religious paraphernalia. I like ‘em because they don’t have buttons showing and because nobody else (but priests and preachers) wears them.

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So, you’ll usually find me going to the post office and the pharmacy and the shop on a workday (every day) wearing that baggy tweed coat, the black or grey priest shirt, and those smudged old tennis shoes complete with clean underwear and an old leather belt and jeans or trousers of some kind.

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The closest I ever come to dressing up is to dredge out my previous-life dark suit, my current-life red bow tie and one of those priest shirts, along with the standard black dress shoes and socks that once were mired deeply in corporate intrigue, corporate sin.

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The tweed jacket belonged to my father. Since he died, I’ve taken him with me via the old jacket to such places as relatives’ homes;

Washington, DC; Radford, Virginia; Cuba, Alabama; Lookout Mountain, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; and home every day, to have him comfortably near the family as we go about our funny and furious routine of living.

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The old tweed jacket was nice and new-looking when I first tried it on after the funeral, and I’ll have to retire it to the closet after a time, since Dad wouldn’t have liked thinking his clothes ever looked shabby in public.

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The good memories of my father I can wear all the time, anyhow, so I’d best be about the business of weaning myself and remembering the times before I donned this nice old piece of cloth.

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The important things my father left me aren’t shabby at all

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube:

https://youtu.be/eNCj3qO-b6k

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Life, actually…

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THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE CHARITABLE DONATION SPREE

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Let’s say that you plan to donate fifteen minutes of time to me. Fifteen minutes that I may employ in any manner I please.

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Fifteen unconditional minutes of time.

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When you make this charitable donation to me, how will I spend it?

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Within the pages of my Red Clay Diary, here is a record of one fifteen-minute free space:

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I sit in my car, motor idling and AC humming. With every tick of the tock, I am honored with sights and sounds and thoughts that might otherwise evaporate unnoticed. But this time I am paying attention to the donation.

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I sit temporarily incarcerated before the double-padlocked whitewashed wood door of a solid barn-red building. A flea market resting quietly beside Highway 31, north of the village of Gardendale.

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The otherwise empty parking lot is all mine for a few moments. I stare at the rusty tin roof, scan the plastic flowers in a show window, flowers awaiting the next funereal funeral, the next obit.

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The elongated one-story structure archives thirty years of fond and curious memories, memories of hundreds of my visits made over the years, memories of trolling for all those artifacts that stand fragile and stoic.

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Each artifact is a time capsule awaiting examination. Each is nonverbal company, each fond memory re-discovered stimulates a fresh diary entry.

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Sounds silly, but this is a very real part of my Alabama life. So there.

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On the other side of the padlocked door, uneven floors covered with carpets and rugs absorb the deep humidity. On this side, small scraggly flowers and weeds intermingle with asphalt and concrete parking stops.

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I speak to my journal and my journal reciprocates as a marker pen scrawls these captive snapshots. Fifteen minutes. Feels like all the time in the world.

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Does anybody dust the plastic petals? Does anybody douse them with liquid plastic?

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A car pulls up next to mine. A familiar orange-sweatered manager fiddles with locks, carries a box of sinfully-decorated doughnuts and pastries…provisions for the upcoming workday.

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I sigh. My fifteen-minute gift is well-spent. The next fifteen minutes will be spent talking and signifying with the guardians of this rustic haven.

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Then I proceed to cruise and form silent friendships with each archived memory on display within this special den of antiquity

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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SOMEWHERE IN TIME IS WHERE WE ALL ARE

The time is a quarter of a century ago, when I am younger and enthusiastically touring the countryside spreading my joy of literature and writing and literary-type ideas.

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I’m seventy-five miles thataway, speaking to a civic group about shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—of cabbages—and kings—and why the sea is boiling hot—and whether pigs have wings.

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After attentive questions and a warm ovation, I step forth to greet anyone willing to approach me.

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There is one attractive young woman with closely cropped shiny black hair who wants to talk to me, and it turns out that she hopes I can find an out of print book for her, so I guess my time off from work isn’t wasted in terms of income.

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She also describes herself as someone who goes berserk over small things–tending to become obsessive over objects and ideas she becomes interested in, learning all about them, collecting them, hoarding them, ranting over them.

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She is irritated with another, older woman who comes up to shake my hand, because for this minute this young blackhaired woman is in possession of me and my three minutes.

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When they have both turned away, there’s a most pleasant surprise: An elderly woman, calm and elegant, comes forward and tells me she knew the turn-of-the-century actress Maude Adams when she was attending Stephens College many years ago.

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“You know, she was a tiny thing—that’s why she was able to play Peter Pan and other roles like that,” she smiles.

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I am amazed. I’ve never met anyone who knew who Maude Adams was, much less someone who knew her personally.

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“She no longer acted, but she was very active on the campus,” she muses.

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The whole subject had come up in my speech, when I was telling my audience about the reasons people collect things—it’s just plain fun, and it takes your mind off the world’s cares for a while.

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There are people throughout the country who study and view the film SOMEWHERE IN TIME, which was inspired by author Richard Matheson’s love for the actress Maude Adams. Jane Seymour played her, and Chris Reeve and Chris Plummer played characters based on people in Ms. Adams’ life.

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It’s a story of unrequited love—the kind of story you can’t get out of your mind.

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Years later, the book BID TIME RETURN and its offspring, the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME, can still make you cry and wonder and reminisce about impossible hankerings you’ve had in your life, thoughts about love and life and the hereafter.

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So here I am, somewhere in time, speaking at a small-town country club just days after I’ve located a 1906 copy of Burr McIntosh Monthly Magazine sporting a color cover photograph of Maude Adams dressed as Peter Pan, and I’m talking with a woman who knows all about Maude Adams from first hand experience—everything there is to know about her, except for one thing: this woman has never heard of the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME.

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It’s a fascinating world some days, especially when you aren’t planning for it to be a fascinating world

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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