Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast:https://youtu.be/5hVQYJCcDMQ

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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ADRIFT IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMEWHERE

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I live in a Down South village filled with invisible delights.

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All around me, villagers young and ancient view the village through hand-held gadgets. They seldom glance up to see what the actual living three-dimensional village looks like.

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Images are stored for later evidence proving that they were actually present at the moment of snapshot.

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This is old hat nowadays. I have grown uncomfortably accustomed to strolling among beings who seldom make eye contact. I am invisible to them, they are husks partially present but hardly accounted for.

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Of course there are many exceptions to this bleak description I am sculpting. There are direct-contact people scattered everywhere. I enjoy our exchanges. We exist in a secret society parallel to the selfie tribes. We all get along mainly because we are in-person  communicators.

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So, what do selfies overlook? Surely the village is more than rectangular one-dimensional moments. And what do I miss when I am enjoying my day of experiencing real live people in real live life?

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Ah, the fragrances. That’s what we denizens of the open air miss when we record our surroundings. How do you selfie a fragrance, how do I describe to future villagers what an especially pleasant odor is like?

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Maybe that’s what we authors and diarists and poets are good at. Maybe there is a place for us. Maybe AI hasn’t yet taken over fragrances. If it does, don’t tell me.

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The same goes for touch (the warmth of a hug or a fist-bump or a high-whatever), for warmth and cold (describe freezing at a bus stop for 45 minutes). Can you snap a picture that makes you feel what inhaling and exhaling are like?

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Just a couple of randomly emerging thoughts that furrow my brow and excite my imagination. Send me a snapshot of your latest Aha! moment. It does require real-life thinking and sorting to work that out, doesn’t it?

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If I had my druthers I’d find a way to show you how much fun mind-trolling can be.

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At least I’m trying

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© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/QFjjDylcHO0

or read his diary below:

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Life, actually…

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DIARY OF A PLASTIC POTTED PLANT

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There it is, taking up eight percent of my view.

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I am sitting in a people-watching pew. Like other patients I fidget and find distractions to redact all the unknowable things I am about to experience, here in co-pay purgatory.

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This is just another roadside health haven and I am just one more person being quietly digested into the system.

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I notice two things.

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One, my idea of waiting is to gaze intensely at everything and everyone in the room, memorizing all for later contemplation, listening to moans and chuckles and sniffing the filtered air and feeling the texture of armrest and upholstery.

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Two, everyone else in the room is studiously staring palmward at their beloved ovoid devices, strumming past one image in search of the next image seeking yet another image…

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I notice the others not noticing me. This gives me full freedom to stare and examine at will. They will not know I was ever here.

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I vaguely recall days of yore when conversational exchange between contiguous people was everybody’s pastime. Dipping cautiously into the lives and stories of strangers gave me viewpoints I would never have imagined.

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It was fun and comforting.

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But I digress.

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My focus right now, in this distracted crowd, is on the plastic potted plant sutured into my view from the pew.

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The plastic potted plant is self-contained, its dependable fakery long-lasting. No watering required, no trimming, no fragrance emitted, no critters to inhabit or gnaw on it.

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All it receives is perhaps a bit of dusting every year or two. A live plant would shift or droop or bend toward the light. The plastic plant is frozen in time, somebody’s idea of elegant room design.

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It does seem to meld with the rest of the waiting room. Gray floor tiles and assembly-line art on the walls, insulation framed into the ceiling, cold white lights causing patients to look as ill as they might be.

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The plastic potted plant does not scream or laugh. Or does it? Is there a place such plants go at night to express their isolation?

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The plant is my only friend for a few minutes. It will be here when my next appointment rolls around, a new layer of dust on each stiff leaf begging for attention.

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I look forward to reuniting with this stolid creature. Seeing it again will at least remind me that I am still here, clutching my co-pay card and casting about for comfort and joy

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(c) 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s latest 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/1RNWbB9mFow

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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INSPECTING FISSURES IN THE FIRMAMENT

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Today, a bunch of decades ago, I am bouncing along in a patched seat midway down the aisle of a clattering city bus.

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I am once again in my Way Back When machine.

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The city bus is in the capable hands of a driver I see every day. I am facing front so that I can ply my favorite trade, the kid-business of Watching and Recalling. I scrutinize all the small things, the things that reside between the big things we are accustomed to seeing.

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I see the back and profile of the driver as he shifts large gears and spins a groaning steering wheel. One hand shifts, the other hand empties coins into a canvas bag, making room for the next round of nickels and dimes and quarters.

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As passengers board and exit through two separate doors I look at their feet and their cuffs. Worn leather, scuffed soles, loose strings, sagging socks and drooping nylons, all these coverings have their own histories, timelines I daydream about, scenarios I imagine.

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I not only notice, I wonder. Black passengers climb through the cranked front doors, deposit their fares, then walk the gauntlet past White passengers, then settle down in back seats reserved solely for them. They later exit through the rear doors, avoiding another walk-through.

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I notice that this division of color is handled in a mannerly fashion. Whites and Blacks exchange g’mornings and reciprocate polite nods. Smiles are transacted. Politeness reigns.

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I watch as riders pull bell cords, alerting the driver to stop at the next corner. Bones creak, paper bags rustle, body fragrances leave their traces as passengers descend to street level. Passengers-to-be stand calmly at the bus stop till the exiting exiters exit, then clamber up metal steps while pulling fare coins from pocket and purse.

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The rumbling bus strains to make it up a neighborhood hill, then sighs loudly as we go into freefall down the other side.

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I grin because the little old driver is lively and quick. He must be connected to Christmas in some mysterious way, else why would this thought occur?

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The bus reminds me of a diner. In a family diner, people generally behave. Though separated by tribe and clan and misplaced tradition, they find ways to accommodate to rules and mores and regulations and cautions, most of which seem to exist without kind purpose.

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I have to grow up before I can process all of this, before I can resolve the fact that reality and poetic imagination can indeed co-exist. But mainly through the eyes of us, a handful of silent Watchers and Wonderers.

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Of course at the time I don’t have all these puzzles sorted out. Right now I am just a kid enjoying an enjoyable bus ride on a Down South day so very long ago

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(c) 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/URNWMVjmn78

or read his transcript below…

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Life, actually…

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SALUTES AND SALUTATIONS TO A NEW OLD WORLD

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It is suddenly a new year. This is something that keeps happening. New years emerge, blanket the earth for a time, are later replaced with yet other new years.

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Deja damn vu all over again.

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Pushing aside all wisecracks and cutesy remarks, I occasionally drift back into a trove of childhood memories.

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When I was less than a handful of years on Earth my sister Barbara and I had the habit of gazing upwards and saluting each time an aircraft passed over our Down South neighborhood.

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Saluting flyovers was our way of paying tribute to World War II and the people we knew who lived through it and the people we knew about who did not live through it.

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Barbara and I were mere inklings while the war raged on, but we witnessed all familial things that were effected by this global battle.

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Our parents and relatives did what they could to do the right things. And they did something else remarkable. They allowed us to be children as if there were no atrocities outside our village. Like millions of other adults they wanted us to be as normal and healthy as possible if and when the war ended.

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So our generation of wartime and post-wartime kids grew up with visual memories of the results of war, with permanent images of collateral damage, with indelible ideas of how wars are waged and how wars are later glossed over while at the same time being carefully documented.

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If we wanted the relief of humor we responded to the laughter and goodwill that resulted from just getting on with life, just brushing aside the sadnesses if only for moments.

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If we wanted to show our respect for all the damage that people experienced, we delved into the anecdotes and documentation that journalists and historians recorded.

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We learned to laugh with our uncles who fought and gifted us with jokes and souvenirs, telling us only the ironies, holding back from us the terrors.

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When we grew up, we slowly learned the rest of the stories these veterans had to tell. By then we were informed enough to be able to absorb the downside of all the camaraderie and sacrifice and grimness that was wartime.

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So, back to Barbara and me. We stand in the front yard of our bungalow on Eastwood Avenue and salute the planes. We feel proud to let witnesses know that we are well-meaning kids who still remember. It is kind of like praying in public.

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Today, right now, I feel like saluting the new year as if my wishes for peace and kindness might actually be acknowledged.

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In reality, I know that the good and the flawed in us humans will alternate and rise and fall as time slips by. During the bad I salute ahead the goodness that might unexpectedly arise, if only in my dreams

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 (c) 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed