Click here to catch Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/uPFE2IC20uU

or read the entire transcript below…

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Life, actually…

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THINGS I SAY TO NO-ONE IN PARTICULAR

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“Argh!”

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A full-throated scream echoes off the walls of grey-mortared buildings on Third Avenue North.

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“ARGH!”

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This time the scream is louder, the sound grittier.

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I hear lots of things outside the bookshop each day, so many that I tend to become only half-aware after all these years.

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“ARGH, AARRGGHH, AAARRRGGGHHH!” The voice is no longer ignorable. I have to verify that everyone is safe.

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With great protective reluctance I go to the door, open it, peer onto the street.

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“Argh!” is coming from the mouth of a rapidly-moving pedestrian who has already passed by. She rails at the invisible humid breeze.

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I am relieved that there seems to be no danger lurking. Customers and merchants are secure. Anguish resides only within the tortured walker.

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The arghs grow faint. My breathing reboots. The day goes on.

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I’ll never know what caused these particular arghs, but I do recognize them.

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They are merely amplified versions of the comments and asides with which I flavor each day.

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Little pangs that verbalize themselves as, “Besmirched! I wonder what it’s like, being smirched,” I mutter to no-one in particular. “Dang! why did that guy do that dangerous turn in the road?” Again, I’m talking to myself. Or maybe I’m hoping some eavesdropper will listen in and offer me explanation or comfort.

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My arghs may enter the world as complaints, enjoyments, critiques, cusses. But, even though I seldom commit an unadulterated scream of pain, I do shout quietly at the imperfect world. A world I would deem perfect if only it would re-form itself as some entity designed to exist solely to pamper me.

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Not going to happen.

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Thus, I just wander through life, wishfully hoping for fulfillment, realistically doing what I can to earn admission to an impossible heaven.

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Argh seems to be part of an international language. When someone ARGHs, I do get a sense of the possible meaning behind the utterance. And the utterer understands me for a split second also.

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Maybe this Cro-Magnon argh language is what we will eventually adopt in order to wade through the increasingly cluttered and disassembled showers of words and images thrown at us each day.

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Argh!

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There, I said it again.

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I feel better already

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 © 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed 

Catch Jim’s 4-minute podcast on Youtube:https://youtu.be/xCoMkieaa-Y

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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THE EYES OF A BILLION BEHOLDERS

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“There’s nothing on the back of this picture,” one bookshop browser comments. She is rummaging through stacks of old family snapshots adrift in a basket. She glances up dismissively and flips the image aside.

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“Who would want to keep pictures of people they don’t know?” she inquires of the world at large.

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Who indeed, I wonder. Who would want to enshrine images of random humans living random lifetimes? I hope to get a word in edgewise when she approaches check-out time.

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“Looky here,” her playmate for the day speaks up. She’s gazing at a proof sheet of wedding pictures. Black-and-white women dressed in one-day party garb. Uncomfortable men in rented tuxes. Punch bowls and clear glass cups and decorated cakes surround them.

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“Whose wedding is this? Why are they in the store?”

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I can’t help but answer, “We don’t know whose wedding this is. They are here because their family threw them away.” I let that soak in.

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“But why would somebody trash their own family?” she wonders.

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“Well, we adopt these thrown-away photographs, these unknown and un-identified folks because they ARE family.” I know this sounds corny but it’s true. “They are part of the World’s family.”

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The browser is still picking out old baby pictures, snaps of somebody’s grandmother, shaken prints of kids and dogs and pedal cars. None marked for posterity. All tossed.

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She muses, “I just threw away a lot of old family albums because I don’t know anybody in them.” She pauses half a beat and wonders, “Should I keep these things? Where would I put them…” her voice fades and she stands there, her arms full of imaginary lifetimes.

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Whenever I feel I’m preaching too much I simply say something like, “If you are ever on your way to a dumpster to get rid of scrapbooks, snapshots, postcards, letters, diaries, documents and so on, just drop them by the shop. We’ll make sure they get into proper hands.”

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She listens and decides to think about it later.

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People have all kinds of opinions about the things they discard.

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Your trash may be my treasure. And vice versa no doubt.

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Archivists preserve things you and I wouldn’t dream of retaining.

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You and I save stuff archivists might shun.

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It gets worse, it gets better, depending on what you do next.

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Combing through the lives of discarded people gives me a chance to appreciate them one more time—or for the very first time. A chance to tell them, perhaps posthumously, that they did matter. Mattered enough to become fond memory icons in obscure old bookshops and ephemera emporiums.

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A chance to return to life for at least a few moments. Historic markers of how important they once were to those who practiced the art of saving and cherishing small lovely memories

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Waiting and watching, watching and waiting. That’s what I spend much of my time doing these days. Waiting rooms, drive-through lines, queues of all kinds, seem to dominate the time allotted for living my life.

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If I weren’t a writer I’d let all this hurry-up-and-wait business get to me. But, once I realize that I must wait and wait and wait to obtain what I need, I just take a deep breath and scan my whereabouts to see what’s what, to see what I’m missing.

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Shifting from foot to foot at a barbecue counter, I patiently await tasty delights. I enjoy the fragrances, the avid carnivore diners, the slow-moving servers, the hickory smoke, the code-word shouts from the kitchen.

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One customer enters the eatery to pick up his order. The barkeep turns from the to-go window apologetically announcing that “We ran out of baked beans. Would you like other sides?”

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The customer emotes, explaining that he placed the order hours ago when they surely had plenty of baked beans. The server furrows his brow and tries to appease. No baked beans to be had.

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The fuming customer exchanges hand-wringing words by phone, apparently placating a demanding companion who insists that baked beans must be had, or else…

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“How long will it take to cook up some beans?” Now the customer transitions into a diplomat negotiator.

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“It would take at least 45 minutes.” The barkeep is being as patient and helpful as possible.

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Customer fumes a moment. “Naw, we have to make the game on time. Can’t wait…” he ponders. “What other sides you got?”

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“Banana pudding, potato salad, cole slaw, etc.”

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Fussy phone voice reluctantly decides on potato salad, making sure the world must know that this is a life-changing decision she is being forced to make against her will.

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Customer goes outside to await the new order. Barkeep brings my order plus condiments. We fist-bump and I’m on my way out.

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At the curb the pressured customer is waiting. I try to make small talk. “Those must be special baked beans. What are they like?” He is only interested in mouthing off about the outrageous service. “Well, restaurants are complicated places…I guess they have good moments and bad moments,” I chuckle.

The customer doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, but I put in the order hours ago. They just have lousy service.”

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I figure he’s going to repeat this rant, with sidebars, for the rest of the evening. I can imagine a swollen chorus once the phone voice adds her two bits.

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This story could be the most important family tale for weeks to come, in a land where other people’s transgressions are always bigger than our own

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

 CLICK HERE TO CATCH JIM’S RED CLAY DIARY

https://youtu.be/0-ztmUjgUYE

OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

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Life, actually…

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ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

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Down here in the Deep South, I am a witness to this day and age.

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In fact, you are also a witness to our times.

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Whether reluctant or not, you and I bear witness to what is going on, witness to what is not going on, witness to what should never go on, witness to what could go on if things were in place and functioning wholesomely.

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The following is unsolicited thoughty advice. Advice that may lie fallow, advice that may make sense, advice useless to you, advice maybe just maybe useful to you.

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Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:  https://youtu.be/1dpAnfSKodw

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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BORN WORTHWHILE WAY DOWN SOUTH

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A lean and lank shirtless wanderer walks purposely down Third Avenue North on an almost-hundred-degree afternoon. The sun presses down, the concrete radiates upward, the breeze secludes itself.

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Inside the bookshop a lean and lank fully-clothed browser scans shelves purposely beneath the pleasurable AC air, within earshot of a mellow jazz piano.

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Outside, the unbloused nomad stops at a corner trash receptacle and leans in to scrounge for edibles. Barring food, he is also alert for things pawnable. There is half a pack of fries. He fetches it quickly and gracefully, munching as the search continues.

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Within the bookshop a few feet away, the book enthusiast opens a volume and instantly reads,

“Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still…”

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The reader is surprised and mystified. He reads further. He will not allow this moment to fade.

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On the other side of the front wall, the shirtless man’s skin glistens as he twirls in the light and continues his strolling quest for nourishment. The wadded paper fry-pack is poetry in his hands.

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Inside, the half-smiling bookperson feels oddly nourished by the words of Sara Teasdale. Food is out of reach, out of mind.

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The lone bookshop proprietor peers over his counter, watching customer and poacher simultaneously, one within breathing distance, the other through the large plate glass window.

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For an instant, the shopkeeper feels like a peeping tom. Then, his writerly instincts remind him of his duty to permanently record these two lives, these two gestures in time.

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So that you and I can witness.

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So that we can attest to the significance of these otherwise invisible angels

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed