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

Hear Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/657KXtLtHOs

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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SPACKLE SPACKLE EVERYWHERE

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(Random Ideas About Reality and Fantasy and In-Betweenness)

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Your unconscious beauty reveals you as you really are, in this split second between ego surges.

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Others secretly bask in your glow. They sense the unvarnished and deep-seated being you really are. The untainted version. Sensible, caring.

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All that spackle you apply only covers up your worth. The caring being is hidden, becomes mannequin-like, impresses facade-lovers everywhere. Your surface attracts only other surfaces. Pomp and primp dominate a masquerade ball, but the real stuff is also worthy of celebration.

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Where are you, this loving and loved soul disguised with hairpiece and lashes and half a pound of cover-up and fragrance enhancer and body exaggeration?

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Oh, it’s ok that this is the way you evade the confusions of real life. After all, we all dodge and weave and look the other way when reality bites.

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But once in a while why not gather together a handful of people who just want to be immersed in the act of being alive and together, just the way they are?

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Too much to ask of your comrades? Too personal?

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Should this special gathering of artifice-droppers decide to open up and baste themselves in reality, a supply of elaborate masks and shrouds will be on hand each time it becomes too much.

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Everybody has a laughing place, a briar patch, a cone of invisibility nearby in case of emergency.

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Before you duck out of sight, allow the world to enjoy a peek at your beautiful vulnerability. You have the right to peek right back.

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The other side of the looking glass awaits

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 (c) 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s 3-minute Christmas podcast: https://youtu.be/GGXDS5xV75w

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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A PATCHWORK CHRISTMAS

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Eighty Christmas Eves ago my four-years-older sister and my infant brother and my early-thirty-ish parents are all I know about Santa and his lively, loveable world.

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All the trappings and traditions of this season glaze themselves into fond memories, fond memories that will remain for handy retrieval all the remaining days of my life.

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As Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve slide past, each fragment of remembrance leaves its trace. Each cameo thought is its own teachable moment, whether it is pleasant or challenging.

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We are a patchwork species, we humans. We possess the ability to dream things that once were, dream things that cannot be, dream things that could possibly happen, dream things that are impossible but still imaginable.

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Each of us is a mixture of rude experience, happy recall, sassy thought, wishes and hopefulness, sadness and regret, incredible enthusiasm, gossamer tiptoeing, bravery and fear, anger and optimism.

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We patchwork people survive by wit and willpower. We slog through the toughest times, dance heartily to the tunes of transcendence and avoidance, caress our companions with full confidence that each good moment will last forever.

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In order to live lives worth living, we tend to use the tools we already have—whatever it takes to get through the next moment safely and securely. We are good at caring, we are skilled at sliding past obstacles, we are adept at holding fast our loved ones, we are clumsy at changing the thoughts and errant ways of other people.

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In other words, we are perfect one moment, imperfect the next, discombobulated at times, assured and sure of ourselves now and then.

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We imagine super heroes who accomplish what we cannot. We find scapegoats to make ourselves more competent by comparison. We feel guilt when we fall short of the lessons our parents and elders and teachers taught us. We are prideful when things turn out the way we planned.

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Santa is one of those dreams we created. In my times Santa stood for generosity, unconditional love, kindness personified, omniscience realized. Santa is still a righteous dude in my heart.

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As long as all the goodness in people remains a possible hope, Santa and his imaginary and real compatriots will stand by me and at the very least gently chide me when I stray

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(c) 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed  

Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast https://youtu.be/dFVNuGPwONw

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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SOONER OR LATER SOMETHING SUPER COULD HAPPEN

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Hear Jim’s podcast at https://youtu.be/LtczGvPRDw0

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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RUMINATIONS OF A DOWN SOUTH RUMINATOR

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Whenever I begin writing a love letter to my people—the Down Southers who surround me—I go kind of blank.

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This could be because I’m trying too hard to be understandable.

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In this love letter to my people I want to be both specific and eloquent at the same time, so that my words will stay around for a while.  We writers live with this impossible hope, the hope that something profound will issue forth from our innards as we ply our trade.

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Of course, this does not happen frequently.

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So, why is writing a love letter so difficult?

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As inwardly-focused as we authors are, it is amazing we ever see anything objectively. The poetry of life, the adventure of life, can get in the way of specificity. We are stuck in our own dreams.

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So how do I get this letter written?

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An answer hurls itself at me in a rumpled note I just retrieved from the floor of my writing room. This note contains a quote by one of those long ago thinkers we might have heard of but of course never voluntarily study, Jean Jacques Rousseau.

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Now what in the world would someone like Rousseau, who lived several hundred years ago, have to say that in any way would apply to an obscure writer ensconced in the Deep South?

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Well, here is this guy’s quote that stays with me and propels me forward:

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“To write a love letter we must begin without knowing what we intend to say, and end without knowing what we have written.”

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That’s it. That’s the thought that taunts and instructs me.

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If I’m to write a love letter to the Down South people I’ve lived among these many decades, I have to stop ruminating, stop over-thinking, stop examining…I have to plunge into the task like any young’un who is confused and motivated by the passion of the moment.

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I have to write that letter full-blast, straight-forwardly, unapologetically, forgetting the rules of etiquette and grammar. What good is love if it has to be fussed over, gussied up, lipsticked beyond recognition, self-consciously faked?

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So, I’ll get started. I will write my love letter in a burst of passion and joy. I will put it aside unread until I can catch my breath.

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Then, as Miles Davis once said about his music, I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

 Life, actually…

Life, actually…

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SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE WILD BLUE YONDER

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The planet-sized eyedrop is on its way from squeezed-rubber tube to human eyeball (mine).

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It isn’t always the size of my field of vision. It starts out as a small droplet, then gravity drops it through six inches of humid space all the way into my in-between blinks. By the time it splashes, by the time I involuntarily blink, this space traveler has done its duty. It is bigger than the universe, then disappears into my innards, then helps heal my momentary affliction. Then is no more.

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During the time I am this little kid lying abed, I receive many nurturing gifts not of my own choosing. These many years ago I simply go with the flow. Grownups manage my well-being, my health, my energy. From all this attention comes the free time needed to grow and develop, to become who I am, to become who I will be should all go well.

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Now, at the over-ripened age of eight score-plus, I feel the effect of those eyedropper years. I see how a thousand fold acts of kindness thrust me gently into the future I now inhabit.

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All those implements my elders employed to keep me viable were important, more instrumental in enabling my good and future life than I ever realized.

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The objects that kept me going were all larger than life when I was a tad: planet-sized wash cloths, diapers, syringes, thermometers, towels, bandages, ointments, unguents, sanitizers, protective clothing, clippers, shampoos, soaps, braces, crutches, supports, vitamins, polishes, buffers, tweezers, magnifiers…

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And, most importantly, planet-sized loving hands were always present to administer these tools.

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I think about all the dedication and drive it took for parents and family and friends and professionals to keep me going. They patched me up, encouraged me, pointed out the good opportunities, warned me of the bad, took me in when I became disoriented or sad. Cared for me without condition.

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Did I thank them enough? Did I fail to thank many others? Will I ever be able to reward these interplanetary-sized good-hearted Good Samaritans? No way.

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All I can do is become the Samaritan of Right Now. I can pay it forward by closely attending to those who need me, even to those who don’t know they need me.

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The kindest thing I can do is silently and invisibly lend a giant hand where needed. The most unselfish thing I can do is quietly help someone, then quietly fade away.

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Only then can I breathe easily, smile at life, watch out for potholes

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Jim Reed © 2025 A.D.