Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary on youtube: https://youtu.be/SvXqgomWH88
or read the correct transcript below:
THE RANTS OF THE LANKY DEEP FROWN MAN
The mouth of the lanky Deep Frown Man is barely moving as his words issue forth from between clinched teeth. He’s pecking around within my bookshop, looking for things to rant about, his rantings deeply concretized and often repeated, rants he is clinging to in order to make some sense of his minuscule world.
My mind deflects the Deep Frown Man’s utterances, since I really do not know how to treat his pain.
He sends out probes to my blissful bubble, hoping to get a predictable response, a response that will allow him entry to my political depths, my tribal beliefs. He wants so much to show me how right he is and how wrong I am and how much of an ally I could become if only I would subscribe to his tract.
I quietly and rather merrily go about the business of assisting customers and shelving books, confident that this man will eventually leave and that peace will salve the atmosphere, and that nearby browsers can breathe a sign of relief and continue their gentle cruise.
The Deep Frown Man and others like him add an edge to the shop, but the fights they attempt to initiate are simply not there. It is not within me to punch back. It is not within me to counter his rants with facts or counterintelligence. Would not have any effect anyhow, don’t you know?
In a world of my own making, people like the Deep Frown Man would have a way to congregate and hear each other out. They would not have to go forth into the random world and try to force-feed folks who have no inclination to be force-fed.
Yes, I know that the Internet is the enormous palette upon which ranters can meet and greet…but this in no way affects the generation of Deep Frowners who have not embraced the Internet age, who don’t own a computer, who are not willing to learn more than they already know. So they are left to wander the earth, bringing their angry sadnesses to the rest of us through their non-virtual presence.
The Deep Frown People are fascinating, worth writing about, worthy of our examination in writings such as the one you are now reading.
I just wish they could find some peace and hope in listening to the rants of people who feel and believe differently. Wish they could embrace us, hear us out, allow us to hear them out minus the proselytizing, minus the intolerance they carry against anything opposed to their views.
Oh, well, I was raised to really look at people and try to appreciate the eternal children they carry inside themselves.
After all, what good is a day in which I, too, turn into a Deep Frown Man?
What good is any day if it is not predominantly a period of time in which I can seek to love unconditionally someone who is not at all lovable
© by Jim Reed 2020 A.D.