Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story below:
THE ART OF FLOOR-TO-CEILING IMAGINEERING
Jimmy Three is lying flat on his back in the living room of his family home. He is staring at the hard-plaster ceiling and contemplating the cracks that zigzag here and there, going nowhere in particular. Jimmy Three is just a kid, back here in the 1950′s when this scene is taking place.
Alone in the asbestos-shingled bungalow he shares with two parents, two sisters, two brothers, he is enjoying the silence of the moment and doing what he does best: ruminating and cogitating and fantasizing and thinking real hard.
Right now, Jimmy Three is wondering where his inspirations are buried. Over the years, he has hidden things so that he or somebody might find these things and gleefully re-experience them someday. For instance, there is a note squirreled away between the insulation and roofing in the back of the house, and he can no longer get to the note. He has no idea what this message to himself says, because it has been so long since he hid it there during construction of the room.
In the back yard is another secreted treasure–a small box with important but now forgotten objects that he wants to dig up. However, he is unable to locate the spot because the secret map to this burial site is also missing.
Jimmy Three blinks and stares harder at the ceiling, massaging ideas and poems and stories in his head but not yet being brave enough to set them down on paper. These compositions will float and flourish for decades until the day comes when he will regurgitate them in the form of columns and books and blasts and blogs and podcasts. Some will remain hidden. Some will inspire others. Some will simply exist.
Finally, life intervenes and motivates Jimmy Three to arise from the floor, dust himself off, grab a snack, pocket a pad of writing paper and a pencil, and leave the house before any family members return. They might not understand the significance of his lying afloor and appearing to be doing not a thing in the world.
Another hidden note: Jimmy Three knows that these few minutes have been busy and activity-filled and reanimating for him. He knows, too, that those in the family who are not imagineers will think him idle.
But he also is aware that there are fellow dreamers among them who will someday blossom and expose their hidden treasures to appreciators, too.
Appreciators who will have not a clue as to how much floor-time goes into molding a work of art into something visible or audible
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast