Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast here: https://youtu.be/q3keoh8eUFc

or read his transcript below:

Life, actually…

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FIREWORKS GO BOOM BOOM

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In the muggy summer twilight heat of our Deep South village, you can feel excitement and anticipation rising in the heavy air.

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It’s another Fourth of July here. Like so many other Fourths of July, we are all peering out doors and windows to see who will join us in the streets for the annual fireworks display.

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Just above us on a ridge called Red Mountain, the world’s largest cast iron statue hovers on its pedestal, anvil and spear in place, ever prepared for whatever the Village offers.

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Visiting strangers mingle with locals, glancing and re-glancing at the sculpture as if the big show might be missed in a blink. Soon, above the head of this icon, there will be bursts and outbursts, booming loudness and applause, as the sky is illuminated one  second at a time.

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But right now, all is quiet except for gurgling babies and yippy dogs and laughing gossipers and nervous run-amok children.

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The impending show is free to all, so the price of admission is just right, for paupers and millionaires alike.

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As if the war-level volume isn’t enough, radios are turned up full blast with patriotic music, and expensive amateur explosives polka-dot the lawns.

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While all this is going on, I prepare myself for watching and observing all the goings-on. Once the crackling and earth-shaking begins, I will walk among the throngs and watch the watchers. Fireworks I have seen before. What I enjoy most is the expressions on people’s faces as they thrill to the show.

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All gaze upward from blankets spread and lawn chairs unfolded, from hoods of cars and open windows, from strollers and porches and truck beds and fence posts, from tree limbs and stalled scooters and frozen skateboards.

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Here it comes. The boom-boom crack-crack bang-bang swish-swish heaven-painting display of wartime munitions converted into jolly, peacetime entertainment.

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And here I go, watching confused babes and hunkered-down birds and camouflaged cats and hands-over-ears fretters, each a party to this strange and wonderful and dangerously enjoyable twenty-minute outburst.

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For these all-too-few moments, everybody forgets politics and tribe and beliefs and animosities. Everybody suddenly merges as one tribe to gaze in awe at the volcanic fire and smoke above.

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I watch as faces are transported into a never-for-long land of simple joy, simple enjoyment. I marvel at how we all get along during times like this. I marvel always at the fact that this feeling is not sustainable all the time.

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And, of course, I marvel at how in the not-too-distant, not-soon-enough future we will again find a way to harmoniously focus side-by-side on the simple act of being excited and satisfied with life as it is, life as it could be

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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

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WEBSITE

*.*.*.

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/aX6NQL-ZBu0

or read the transcript below:

Life, actually…

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ALIVE AND WELL IN NO MA’AM’S LAND

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I got two things from my Deep South upbringing: I learned to show respect for others, and I learned that, even when I did not feel respect, my manners would never allow that disrespect to show.

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This duality of behavior turned out to be pretty danged important as I wove my way through life. It still makes life more livable.

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When interacting with humans, it turns out that treating them with respect is usually pretty helpful. I’m at my best when I keep my mouth shut—it’s way too easy to make a snarky remark or a judgmental retort.

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So, at my best, on a good day when the clouds are primping and the birds are chortling,  I act gentlemanly.

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The first time I met attorney Brian Stevenson he had just said something that sounded Southern Manners-like, even though he is not from the South, “Each man is more than the worst thing he ever did.”

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I worked this around in my head and wondered why I could not stop pondering this statement—re-worked nowadays as “Each of us is more than the worst thing we ever did.”

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I walked up to him after his speech and asked, “That thing you said, is it original with you?” He said Yes. I asked whether I could quote him in the future and he smiled and said Yes again.

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So, for years I have applied Brian Stevenson’s statement to many aspects of my life. I use it to remind myself that people who behave badly, people with whom I disagree, must be more than that one thing that ticks me off.

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As I say, on a good day when dogs aren’t yapping and traffic drivers aren’t screaming and manipulators aren’t scheming, I can take one extra moment—maybe two extra moments—and examine the goodness that must be hiding within. The dog is happy when petted, the enraged driver is an otherwise kind parent, the schemer does volunteer work for the poor.

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Brian’s remark fits right in down here in the Deep South, where we are raised to say Yes Ma’am and No Ma’am, and Thank You, and Please, and After You, Sir.

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The funny thing about manners—if manners is what this story is all about—is that once you behave in a kindly fashion on a regular basis, you actually begin to Be more kindly. I don’t know why, but there is a kind of “Acting yourself into a new way of Being” thing going on here.

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There’s nothing magic about manners and diplomacy. They simply make for a more peaceful and cooperative environment.

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After all, when we get along better, Tums sales go down and celebratory toasts arise.

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Here’s to twenty-four hours filled with Thank You and Please and How Nice You Look Today

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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

*.*.*.

WEBSITE

*.*.*.

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/ywzfzxq_5wg

*.*.*.

or read the transcript below…

*.*.*.

Life, actually…

*.*.*.

DANCING AND DODGING IN VILLAGE STREETS

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I am an untrained dancer navigating the choreography of village streets.

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Just look around. There is movement and energy everywhere. Here’s what it feels like in the middle of the day in my own downtown neighborhood.

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A lunchtime employee hugs close her to-go carton.

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A disoriented visitor treads the sidewalk, trying to find out what’s where.

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One sidewalk leafblower-worker blasts leaves and trash over to other neighbors’ storefronts

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One large plane descends toward the airport, causing the earth to vibrate.

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An emergency helicopter heads for the medical center.

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A firetruck roars past and shakes the windows.

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Another dogwalker polices poop.

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Security guards change shifts and chat.

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A panhandler trolls for someone to listen.

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Pedestrian and child wait for the right light.

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Motorist after motorist turns the wrong way on one-way streets…free entertainment for street-level employees stationed in picture windows

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Dead-battery victim hopes for a jumpstart.

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Coat-hanger borrower attempts to unlock a car door.

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Choreographed drivers dodge and weave: motorcyclists, scooterists, bicyclists, muscle car-ers, mufflerless joyriders…

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High climbers swing through the air: lightbulb-changers, tower repairers, roofers, AC maintainers, pruners, sign installers, awning cleaners.

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Parking-meter police flash yellow signals and punish at random.

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A trash collector snaps open a fresh plastic bag.

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One homeless person picks for food through a garbage container.

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A lone server retrieves used napkins and cutlery from a sidewalk table.

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A mysterious manhole worker peeks out from beneath the asphalt.

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A letter carrier rushes to stay on time.

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Food deliverers white-rabbit from door to door.

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A freelance window cleaner looks for more work.

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A seasonal window slogan painter totes bucket and supplies.

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A meter to meter quarter collector trudges slowly, each coin increasing the pushcart weight.

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High-lamp installers/replacers lean forward atop cherry pickers.

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Orange cone distributors distribute orange cones, seemingly at random.

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Scooter and bike monitors station rental scooters and bikes here and there.

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A strutting tailored-suit-with-briefcase executive dodges his way through this fine mess.

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One police officer in the center lane directs drivers past bent fenders.

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A blue-shirted worker scrubs away the overnight graffiti.

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Delivery trucks block lanes everywhere, accelerating the dynamics of all this manic movement.

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And so on and so forth.

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You see what I mean? We are all pawns of an invisible choreographer, each dancing small steps of life, each attempting to do what needs to be done, each unaware of what the final performance will look like seen from afar.

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We just go on dancing the dance. The longer we do this the better the chance we have of producing a moment of gracefulness that hopefully will please the gods and entertain the pigeons

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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

*.*.*.

WEBSITE

*.*.*.

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/A_BSHsIs4-M

 *.*.*.

or read his transcript below…

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Life, Actually…

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THE INVISIBLE SKY

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Lying on my back in a rickety pinchy folding deck chair, I can observe the nighttime sky and the twinkling heavens.

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There is nothing like this experience. I am face up gazing into the void and imagining what it would be like to stare skyward from atop a rotating planet mere light years from here. What it would be like to gaze at somebody like me from afar. Gazers gazing at one another.

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Back here in the 1950s I wonder whether in the future the skies will remain  so clear, so unobstructed. I imagine encroaching industry and indiscreet lights slowly occluding this cosmic view.

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Many decades from now I will be writing about this wonderful experience, hoping that you and I can compare notes about stargazing. Hoping that someone else besides me actually notices what’s going on Up There.

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By the 1990s I again have the privilege of looking up at the darkened skies and seeing a long-tailed comet hovering in clear view. The comet remains there night after night. Each day I ask most people I meet whether they are awed by this floating diamond. Each person admits to forgetting to look up. Each  promises to catch a glimpse of this imposing phenomenon.

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Next day after next day each person snaps fingers and confesses to once again missing the opportunity.

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Am I the only one making note of this remarkable visitor to our solar realms?

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I want to share and compare, but a million-mile comet does not seem to inspire the people I talk with.

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Back again to the 1950s I am recalling: I note and absorb this glorious moment, just me and the firmament, and hope against hope that I will never grow so old, so distracted, so pummeled by life, that I will forget a special time and place when I realized the skies and the skies realized me

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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

 *.*.*.

WEBSITE

*.*.*.

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim’s podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/NAUAVQICKUE

or read the transcript below:

Life, actually…

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A CHIP OFF THE OLD CROCK

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I’m standing at the kitchen sink munching a freshly-washed carrot.

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Directly before me at eye level is an old thick-glassed milk bottle someone tossed  a century-ago. Now it is retrieved, cleansed, shining at me. It is unchipped.

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Some of the wonderful old dishes and cups around here are chipped or cracked. They invite inspection and meditation.

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Each chip reveals something about itself if I will only do the research.

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A countertop blue and white patterned plate complete with quarter-inch notch belonged to my mother. I cannot discard it because it is part of family history. My family breakfasted, snacked, lunched, dined a thousand times on its surface.

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Back to childhood, where I stand before the primal kitchen sink some carefully-counted decades ago. Next to me Sister Barbara accepts a plate I just cleared from the dinner table, scrubs it, rinses off the suds, hands it over to Brother Ronny. Ronny dries and stacks it, preparing for the next dripping dish.

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We kids clear the dinnerware, wash and dry it, later put everything in its assigned place. It’s what we do after Dad has spent the day earning enough income to afford groceries, after Mother has prepared a very special meal of corn on the cob, cornbread, carrot sticks and other nibbles, and the best meat loaf ever consumed thus far in my brief life.

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If I accidentally chip a plate, Mother groans in pain, but nothing more is said. The plate is now a family member complete with boo-boo. No family member would be discarded because of such an imperfection, so the plate resumes its place until the next meal.

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Should a dish fall apart, its shards will be used later as part of garden decorations or pieced together to become an outdoor plant container. The family remains intact even after transfiguration.

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Many years later, as in Right Now, I look around.

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This is a chip day.

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Chip day is when I count and sort and examine chips and cracks. Each is a memory, each a lesson, each a representation of something that must be noted, must be noticed, must be notated.

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These chips remind me of special times when all the world around me felt exciting and secure and hopeful. Each flaw brings out the beauty of an object previously taken for granted.

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I find myself through the years feeling the urgency of life, the urgent need to notice, notice, notice, the compulsion to respect and draw meaning and wisdom from the flaws of a world I cannot control.

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As a child drinking hot chocolate from a chipped cup, I gaze into the fluid, amazed by its swirl, its remaining ring, its heft in my small hands. I rub my finger over the chip, memorizing the feeling. I examine the imprint on the skin after pressing the crack. I want this and every good moment to last forever.

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And at last, as a fully grown and mellow-aged adult, I feel so grateful that all the happenings in my life can be called forth at will, to be examined and cherished as beautiful cracks in an amazing firmament

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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

 *.*.*.

WEBSITE

*.*.*.

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim’s podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/

or read the transcript below:

BIRMINGHAM GHOST GOES BUMP IN THE NIGHT

Three disheveled young musicians wander down a century-old hall and through doorless rooms. They are giving me a guided tour of my own bookshop, some twenty years ago when I am located down on 20th Street, just a few blocks away.

“This is where I slept,” one rocker says, staring at the heavily-laden bookcases.

“Yeah, I was across the hall where those old newspapers are,” says another.

“Man, we froze to death some nights in this place,” the third man smiles.

“But we had great parties when we could afford the fixin’s,” the first recalls.

Way back then Reed Books occupied the second floor of this run-down former hotel, once across the street from the location of a vaudeville theatre.

Before I moved the shop into this building, the young performers had crashed in the unheated unaired structure and made it a temporary shelter.

Whizzing through town on their way to a distant gig, they decide to stop by and see where fond memories were once made.

“I wonder if the ghost still lives here,” one muses.

Now they have my attention.

“What ghost?”

“Oh, well, there was a ghost here, and some nights we could all hear it bouncing down the hall,” he says matter-of-factly.

“And we never actually saw it. It just came to visit now and then.”

I ask whether the ghost ever scared them.

“Oh, no, we just let it be.”

Hmm.

After the merry wanderers take their leave, I am left alone in the shop, the shop that suddenly takes on another personality once I learn about the ghost.

Through the years other visitors occasionally mention the same ghost they notice in previous contacts with the building.

My then-employee Craig verifies that he, too, has felt a “presence” when alone among the books.

Today, recalling the ghost of a bookstore long ago flattened and covered over by an apartment building, I wonder a couple of things.

Whatever happens to ghosts when their hauntings disappear? Do they re-locate? Do they remain and roam about, waiting to be noticed?

And why do I never experience the presence of ghosts? Maybe I’m just too skeptical for my own good. It might be fun to encounter such a harmless apparition.

Cruising the aisles of books upon books in today’s bookshop location, I realize that I actually live among thousands of ghosts and ghostly stories and page-turner apparitions. These are ghosts enough for me.

So long, Birmingham ghost. I hope you find places to go bump in the night when you grow weary of lolling about

Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

WEBSITE

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/mTjjrULI7K8

or read the transcript (below)

WAVING FOR PEAS ON A DEEP SOUTH SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Way back when…

My brother Ronny makes me laugh so hard at Sunday lunch that the English peas in my spoon suddenly fly through the air and scatter onto the dining room floor.

Just to keep the insanity going, I suddenly proclaim, “Peas on Earth!” which of course escalates the merry chaos.

Mother remains calm and stares at us till we retrieve all the spilled goods and resume our meal. Dad pretends he hasn’t noticed.

Later this afternoon, back here in the 1950s, Dad takes Mom and us kids on an afternoon drive through the backwoods of Alabama. On the red dirt roads and blue highways, we take delight in counting cows, reading road signs aloud, and waving. And smiling at imagined friends.

Waving and waving back is an important pastime here in the rural countryside. Trading smiles with strangers is a ritual that somehow makes us feel more secure, more at home, more at peace in an otherwise troubled land.

We even wave at pets and farm animals and feral beasts.

We pass front porches filled with smiling wavers, waving smilers. We feel special. For one split second after another, our presence is noted. For one split second after another, we pay attention to the living and the lives that are taking place in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

This is our rolled-down-window view of the real world, not the make-believe world of movies and radio and television and books and church sermons and droning teachers.

Sure, we learn a lot of abstract things by paying attention to media and preachers and instructors, but the real visceral learning comes from reaching out. Waving and smiling never fail to bring spontaneous comradeship and connection.

But this golden Sabbath road trip after family breaking of bread becomes an indelible memory that carries through the years till right now.

I still wave and smile at strangers. Those who pay attention always respond in kind. Those whose eyes are glued to their palms miss the moment, the moment that will never repeat itself.

So, I salute all you smilers and wavers. Without your passing presence I don’t know how I would get through the day in one piece, living in peace, and enjoying occasional spasms of peas on earth

Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

WEBSITE

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/xNEl1aIznMQ

or read the transcript below:

THE DOMINO MATCH THEORY GOES UP IN SMOKE

Jimmy Three lives and breathes in a 1950s Deep South village. Lower your eyelids for a moment and travel back in time with me. Let’s take a look at this young boy named Jimmy Three. He actually exists, both back then and, seventy years later, right now.

There he sits behind the itchy bushes of his front yard on Eastwood Avenue, the stub of a pencil held tight in his teeth. There is a scraggly notebook in his lap. A fizzed-out Pepsi Cola bottle leans against his leg on the uneven red dirt. A box of wooden kitchen matches is at his side, next to two filched cigarettes.

Jimmy Three is a daydreamer who writes down his dreams and ideas and fleeting thoughts and oblique notions. He writes them with his  penknife-sharpened pencil. He hides his papered outpourings in a special place inside the house.

Jimmy Three is looking around to make sure nobody can see him from the street. His Mom is downtown paying bills in person, his siblings are away adventuring. For this moment, Jimmy Three is alone and loving it.

This is his first time to attempt to smoke a real cigarette. Up till now his playtime fantasies consist of unlit pretend smokes—twig cigars, whittled pipes, rabbit tobacco scraps, pantomimed Bogart gestures. Smoking looks so cool to Jimmy Three.

He picks up a Lucky Strike, pokes it into his mouth, pushes open the cardboard drawer and selects one hardwood Phosphorous-tipped stick. He recalls his Mom cautioning him to close the box prior to striking a match, lest the whole shebang lights up.

Now he has met his match and is about to rub it quickly against the sandpapered strip affixed to the Domino label. How will this work? he wonders. Do I take the cigarette out of my mouth to light it or do I risk singeing my eyebrows?

He tries to remove the cigarette from his mouth but OUCH! finds that his moistened lips are stuck to the thin paper. Another lesson learned: Dry your lips before smoking.

The soggy end of the cigarette isn’t fit to use, so Jimmy Three reverses it, placing the untouched part between dry lips. He strikes the match, reassured by the acrid smell, and holds its lighted end to the cigarette.

What to do next? He blows through the Lucky Strike but the tobacco goes cold. Why won’t it remain lit? By now he’s yelling OUCH! Number Two because the match has burned down to his fingertips.

He stomps on the embers. Taking a deep breath, once again scanning his whereabouts to make sure no-one is there to observe his humiliation, he picks up the second cigarette. The first one is a mess shredded useless on the red clay. Here is my final chance to get this thing going, he mutters.

What other way do you smoke a cigarette? Well, maybe I can light up, suck in instead of blowing out, and see what happens. What if I suck the flaming tip into my mouth. Third OUCH!?

Lucky Strike between dry lips, flaming match held to the cigarette tip, he sucks powerfully.

It works. It works so well his lungs suddenly fill with unaccustomed smoke, his coughing spasms seem endless, his tearing-up eyes are blinding, and his entire project is doomed.

Jimmy Three extinguishes the match, shreds the cigarettes, buries all the evidence, returns the Domino Matches to the kitchen and hopes nobody will ever suspect what happened.

Saving the empty Pepsi bottle for deposit return, Jimmy Three goes to his room and nurses the upset stomach he will have the rest of the day…an upset stomach created from the inhalation of Phosphorous fumes and wood smoke and smoldering tobacco and a dash of guilt.

Jimmy Three retrieves his notebook and pencil stub and makes some notes.

And he resolves to move on to less risky experiments, a resolution he sometimes keeps and sometimes breaks. Like the time he climbs the old smokestack near the neighborhood and nearly gets into a whole passel of trouble.

But that story comes later

Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

WEBSITE

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

Catch Jim’s podcast at https://youtu.be/Y2XKE2QqfMk

or read the transcript below:

HOW TO BECOME YOUR OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHER

In the Fall, I will resume my speaking appearances here and there, spreading the gospel of words and writing and reading. Sowing the seeds of realization—realization that you are just as important in the scheme of things as you were when a mere child.

I will go on about my belief in Childhood’s certain knowledge that all things in the heavens and on earth are connected,

My powerful belief that the center of the universe is right here, behind my eyes, right here, wherever I am

I gaze at life through my own eyes. Since I cannot see through anyone else’s eyes, I can only imagine what everything looks like from others’ points of view.

But imagine I can. I can imagine what your world is like. That intuitive burst of inspiration turns me into an artist, a writer, a performer, an evangelistic purveyor of thoughts and ideas. The fun of sharing my own point of view with you comes from your feedback.

“Why, you write about me, did you know that?” a fan tells me. “How do you know how I feel?”

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I know it comes up repeatedly in my time on earth.

If I am to have any satisfaction at all, I learn to adopt this thought that you, the reader, have given me.

Instead of trying to report what I think you are feeling, in place of imagining your life, I have to remind myself that that will never happen. I’ll never be you.

What I can do, though, is write about my deepest, purest feelings, allowing you and your imagination to identify with me where you can, here and there.

You get the impression that I understand you through my writings, but the truth is, I am a mere conduit. I write about my life. From reading my work, you draw your own conclusions about yourself.

That makes me a mirror or an echo chamber, doesn’t it?

My message to you is always the same: Write your life. Takes notes. Record what you see, what you experience. The more you do this, the more you realize how important  you are.

The tiniest observation, the most minuscule thought, the least noticeable jolt of insight—each is an enormity. Each is universal.

As you take note of your life, your past, your present, your imagined future, you will begin to appreciate yourself more. You will begin to see that others are just as important as you. You will begin to see that you are just as important as others.

Don’t take my word for it.

You don’t have to dig deeply to find profound thoughts. Don’t strain yourself seeking heavy-ladened insights. All these will come to you when least expected.

My mission, in these little notes and talks and performances and readings and appearances, is to show you how connected we all are. I do that by telling brief stories about actual life, actual day to day  existence.

As I say, don’t take my word for it.

My satisfaction will come when you no longer need to see my words, hear my words. I will be happier once you become so involved with telling your own stories, that you don’t have time to read or hear mine.

But for now, that is enough. I’ll be quiet while you get busy taking notes. Tell me your life now. You already know enough about mine.

At least for today

Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

WEBSITE

Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY