Life, actually…

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

https://youtu.be/pLVpV3AoNNw

or read Jim’s story below:

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THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF SAINT LEIBOWITZ

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“Ewww…”

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First word that comes to mind when I see what I see at Dollar Tree this morning.

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“Ewww…”

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I’m examining a small sealed cardboard box labeled “Brunswick Chicken Salad with Crackers,” which is “Ready to Eat.” Ready to eat? How could something sealed in a can, possibly for years, be Ready to Eat?

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The expiration date or “Best By” date is fourteen months away. What could possibly make this food product last so long? In my refrigerator at home, this would come to look like swamp residue in a week. The manufacturer must know something I don’t know—maybe that as a consumer I’ll probably eat anything if I’m hungry enough. And today I am hungry.

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OK. Let’s look at the package again. “Pre-mixed Chicken Salad (thank goodness they mixed it for me–I’m so weak from hunger and lack of willpower) Ready to Eat with Five Buttery Crackers (Ritz-like crackers…Ritzy crackers?) and Convenient Spoon.” Wow! They even thought to enclose a spoon, not realizing a truly hungry consumer will eat with fingers or even toes if desperate enough.

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Oh, and the small potted-meat-size can within the box “Now has an Easy-Peel Foil Lid.” Gosh, I don’t even have to carry around a can opener for my quick snacks.

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I fear reading the contents label, but I do note that the main ingredient is “Cooked Chicken.” I do hate it when the chicken is raw.

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So, here I am, wanting to eat something, anything, so I can meet my deadline and get on with the day. The Bumble Bee Seafoods company of San Diego has gone to all this trouble to rescue me.

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How could the contents of this can possibly taste good? Well, at least I can eat the crackers should the chicken smell funny. And, of course, I’m only wasting a dollar twenty-five if nothing turns out right. And also, I don’t ever have to eat this stuff again.

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I recall the large sealed Civil Defense can at my shop, retrieved unopened from a bomb shelter and manufactured to have indefinite shelf life contents. The container is more than sixty years old and the crackers within still edible, according to one of my customers who actually opened one recently.

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“Dear Family, in case you find me lying in shock beneath of pile of fast-food wrappers, allow me to document the adventures leading up to this possible outcome.” That’s the note I’ll leave on my body in case things don’t work out. This little story will suffice.

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Being a brave sort at times, I tear open the little box, unseal the crackers, peel back the lid and bid farewell to Saint Leibowitz, the patron saint of all post-apocalyptic sealed food containers

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© Jim Reed 2025 A.D.

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/r8lxtWu6aEg

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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FLYING MONKEYS R US

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Ages and ages ago, legacy author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote these words:

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“All speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.”

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What in the world did RLS mean?

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As a child back in days of yore, I understand this utterance in my own imaginative way.

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Running through unmown grass in humid summertime fields, I yell, “Watch out for flying monkeys!” causing my playmates to duck to the ground half-terrified and half-laughing. The idea of flying monkeys comes to life for a split second. Of course there are no flying monkeys but our designated leader makes us doubt this fact. Luckily, a kind of reality-based common sense prevails and we realize that flying monkeys are not going to happen. For now.

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So RLS knew we kids of earth live in two worlds simultaneously, a world where we can believe the unbelievable just for fun. And later, as adults, this honed skill means we can believe the unbelievable at our convenience.

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But somewhere in the caverns of our minds most of us do not lose sight of the fact that the idea of flying monkeys is merely a useful tool, employed to distract ourselves from realities we either don’t understand or don’t want to face.

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We humans are a playful species, alternating our time between things we wish were true but aren’t,  and things we know all too well to be truths that stolidly won’t go away.

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If I can’t deal with the idea of some awful truth I race to find the flying monkeys.

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Flying monkeys I can deal with

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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SOMEDAY I’LL GET AROUND TO READING A BOOK

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“I’m thinking about getting back into reading,” a customer says thoughtfully. He is slowly stretching his hand toward a provocatively-titled book. He never quite touches it, as if doing so would signal a commitment. He withdraws his hand and his thought.

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“I don’t have time to read yet,” explaining that work and school and media constantly get in the way of something extra-curricular and frivolous like taking time to read.

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I try to hide my nerdy dismay at the thought of never reading for pleasure. My disapproval will in no way be helpful.

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Each day at the bookshop words like these issue forth from the mouths of customers and patrons and browsers and tire-kickers and booklovers and bookdeniers.

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“Oh, man, I have read every book in that series. Now I’m re-reading it until the next sequel comes out.” This from an enthusiastic fan of bookworld. She lives for each page. She is excited about it.

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So, these are two of the extremes I encounter at my shop. There are gung-ho readers and there are impotent non-readers. That’s the world I live in.

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Now and then I attempt to inspire a nonreader. I’ll open a Robert Service title and read lustily, “There are strange things done in the midnight sun…That would make your blood run cold…But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.” Sometimes this does the trick. A true story about cremation that scares you and makes you laugh at the same time. Some great writing!

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If a nonreader is wavering with signs of curiosity I’ll hand him a Calvin and Hobbes collection, “In my opinion, we don’t devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks.” Calvin says that.

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Or, a page from Dylan Thomas will sometimes perk up a bored browser, “Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

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How can anyone deny the childhood wonder evoked from this passage?

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And there is always Ray Bradbury, thank goodness: ”Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hand away.”

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Best to quote Atticus Finch if all else fails: ”The one thing that doesn’t bide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

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Hey, these are cheap thrills. These passages and thoughts are sleeping between white pages, awaiting resuscitation.

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Once in a while, once in a blue moon, every now and then, just when the stars are in their proper places, I do manage to slip into someone else’s imagination a drop or two of inspiration. And even more rarely, the nonreader begins to show signs of curiosity, signs of interest. Most rarely, a reader is reborn.

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And my work is done for the day

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/Kd5t_U_qjKA

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, EXCEPT FOR

THE SMOG AND THE FOG AND THE BARKING DOG

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When I’m worried and I can’t sleep I count my blessings…but only in between each annoyance.

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If you don’t have a care in the world you won’t be interested in today’s thoughts.

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My groans are only for the ears of you fellow travelers who toss and turn, turn and toss through much of the night.

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I twist to the left to settle into just the right position for sweet sleep. Thinking about sweet sleep pops me wide awake and reminds me of the things I forgot to do today. Must pick up bug spray. Must gather laundry. Must purchase milk.

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I pull the pillow over my forehead and recall playing hide-and-seek with my eldest granddaughter so many years ago. Can’t help but smile.

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Then, warily peeking at the alarm clock reminds me of how many hours are left between now and bill-paying time. Must remember to pay that one annoying bill…zzzzzz…

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Again I am startled awake by fireworks on the nearby mountain, just as a cozy dream about marshmallows begins to enmesh me.

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I roll to the cool spot on the bed and pretend to sleep, but the unholy and disorganized pile of detritus in my writing room reminds me I have to spend some time sorting and straightening. This could happen any year now.

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Now I am recalling a pleasurable time when reciting a favorite poem before a rapt audience was all the thrill I required at that moment. My smile returns.

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Just in time for the red devil on my shoulder to jump and remind me about a special book order I forgot to complete at the shop yesterday. Dang! I’m awake again.

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Multiply all these worrisome factoids several score and you have a graphic profile of my latest semi-sleepless night.

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The good the bad and the meaningless magnify and prod. The pleasant ideas whiz by.

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The good news is that just as sunlight peeks through the curtains, everything seems to arrange itself, my worries slide into some kind of appropriate order, and the next second teases me with the prospect of having a hopeful day.

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Within minutes all insomnia is forgotten. A hot shower shocks me into my comfortable routine. And before I know it I actually toss all neuroses and start pretending myself into having a jolly attitude.

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Tonight’s bedtime is the least of my worries. Until it occurs

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed