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Life, actually…

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TO TELL THE TOOTH

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THSHTH! THSHTH!

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Let me get this as right as I can…it’s difficult to spell the sound that my father used to make whenever he was caught without a toothpick.

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You’ll just have to get me to make that sound for you next time we meet, because THSHTH! is as close as I can come to reproducing it. That sound occurs when you suck air between two adjacent teeth in your mouth, but only when that space between those teeth has a food particle that needs to be cleared away.

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When my father made the THSHTH! sound, we knew he was feeling satisfied, that he was sated from a good home-cooked meal. He’d be driving along on the way to visit my Uncle Pat McGee in Peterson, Alabama, and I’d be in the front seat. In the rear seat would be my brother Tim. Every time my father made the THSHTH! sound, Tim would loudly imitate it.

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To this day, I don’t know whether Dad was so used to making the sound that he didn’t know he was being mocked, or whether he was the most tolerant man in the universe. Any ordinary person might have pulled off the side of the road and popped Tim one, but Dad just refused to acknowledge Tim’s noises.

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This, of course, just egged Tim on. He’d do additional things in the back seat, such as imitate the expressions and comments that our neighbor Edgar Beatty would come out with. He mimicked phrases that Uncle Adron Herrin used—in exact imitation, by the way. I never was good at imitations, so to this day I marvel at Tim’s uncanny ability to create humor out of just about anything he finds funny or scary.

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All through the years, I stop short when anybody around me makes anything like that THSHTH! noise—and, of course, lots of people do.

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Everybody seems to have their little sounds and oral punctuations that unconsciously pop out. Hums, sighs, whistles, grunts, tooth-clicking, neck-cricking, tsking, snorting, groaning, hacking, swallowing loudly, lip-popping, gurgling, sneezing, throat-clearing, sinus-blowing, whispering, muttering, and on and on.

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Wouldn’t it be horribly wonderful if we could get a group of people together, willing to reproduce their own personally-developed sounds, and perform some sort of symphony? A noisy pantomime representing all the daily little ejections of delight and frustration that emanate from us, all the little and big wordless pronouncements…we could perform them in such a way that the listener will be able to hear and appreciate—and even understand—the import and usefulness of these silly tiny things we utter.

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Those THSHTH! sounds my father made had great meaning and significance in our little neighborhood, and we the family could no more have done without them than without food.

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We silently knew those sounds were the assurances we received each day that for a few ticks in time, the head of the family was satisfied and happy with the moment, and, thus, so were we

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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AN ARMORY OF HAND-MADE QUILTS

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A childhood memory…

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I am as safe and snug as any kid could ever be.

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I know I am safe and secure because my body weighs twice as much as normal at this moment.

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My body is so heavy because it is covered with massively layered hand-made quilts and coverlets and sheets and blankets. I am immobile beneath these sweet-smelling shields, lying atop a padded mattress in the small bedroom of youth.

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The night is icy cold, but I am safe. That’s about all that matters at the moment.

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I have been lovingly hugged and tucked in, a Woody Woodpecker night light secures the perimeter, a Treasure Island comic book hides beneath the mattress next to a camouflage-green Boy Scout flashlight. In case of insomnia, be prepared.

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I feel cozy and burrowed. I take for granted the care and nurturing of family. I assume tonight is going to spawn forever nights like this. I presume immortality.

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This cocooned moment makes me feel nothing bad can possibly happen. It’s as though the universe is wrapped around me, making its limits clear. There is no way I can fall out of bed, blow away in a storm, no way I can become untethered.

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Now and then, throughout life, I recall this momentary feeling. If only I could carry this assuredness, this bravery, with me. I could strut with confidence, brush aside doubts and demons, pass along this bluster to others, become some kind of kindly example.

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I hold fast to memories like this because sometimes they are the only grab bars I can depend on.

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I need to be prepared for days when I forget how safe I felt that night beneath the gentle armor of love and quilting

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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ONLY ONE PERCHANCE PER DREAM, PLEASE

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How would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar?

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Long, long ago we Down South village playmates used to dream about doing things like star-swinging and moonbeam-toting.

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Dreams were our main source of entertainment. We daydreamed, night dreamed, imagined the impossible, explored the corners of the universe without moving an inch.

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Grownups respected our outrageous imaginations. They couldn’t ground us for thinking and dreaming, so they let us run wild inside.

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After all, they were kids like us just a couple of decades earlier.

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Grownups even understood that dreams could become nightmares at times. They were there to comfort us in the feverish wee hours of the morning.

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One nightmare:

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Cold steel-blue flames are swooping over a field across the street from our home, the field we play in each day.

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But in this nervous dream the fire does not produce heat. I am in the field, running through those cold steel-blue flames, trying to escape. But escape from what? Escape to where? How will I know when I’m safe from the flames? Since the flames are harmless, why am I running from them? Should I stop and embrace the flames, respect the flames, learn to live within the flames?

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I am panicky. I scream.

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I awaken to the humid world into which I was delivered just a few years ago.

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Cool hands check my brow. Large loving adults soothe me and tuck me in.

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My unfettered imagination is once again safely anchored, allowing me time to recuperate and prepare for capturing future moonbeams in jars.

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The moonbeams become fireflies, so I release them back to their world after a while. After all, they were here long before me. They will be here long after I myself become a dream.

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Maybe by then I’ll learn how to swing on a star

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Listen:  https://youtu.be/pHvB7Wde1g8

Life, actually…

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TO BE YOUNG  AND SMALL AND SWEET

AND DANCING ON AIR ONCE MORE

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The petite bookstore visitor pauses and stares and vibrates before a tall stack of previous-century volumes that await shelving.

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She delicately touches textured spines, at the same time swaying slightly to the gentle jazz emanating from an old record player behind the books.

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She does not notice whether she’s keeping time with the books or the music. They both seem the same to her.

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She dances in-place, unnoticed by surrounding elsewhere-entranced browsers. She is noticed only by the shop owner who glances up from his work now and then to see whether she is remaining in the moment.

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A glimpse later and she’s gone, absorbed by the aisles of paginated lives once lived, lives now ambered within time capsules.

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Another customer leans against tall shelving, intensely examining each and every page of a title she is considering. Yet another peruser lies afloor on his side, closely thumbing through bottom rows of old brittle 78rpm recordings, recordings he must and will own before exiting onto sunny streets.

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Visitors arrive and wonder and leave, some alone, others in clusters, still others in a daze. Some know they’ve experienced a living distant past. Some are clueless but marveling at what they have experienced. Some are along for the ride, not sure what they just missed.

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The shop owner plies his trade with a silent smile, grateful for this small life among dreamers and their books. He wishes each purchase a long and respected existence, he wishes each purchaser a long and respected existence.

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And later, when he closes up for the day, he will retire to his ancient home to write down his memories, dreams, reflections…and will dare to share some of them with you

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Listen to podcast: https://youtu.be/G1lx86IxBpU

Life, actually…

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ALIENS AND EARTHLINGS FINALLY COMMUNICATE

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Wading through the crises of the world right now, it helps me find my balance when I remember there were other times, other crises…way, way back. Entries from my long-ago Red Clay Diary:

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The grey haired man and his wife wander attentively through the stacks of books and paper that are displayed in the Museum of Fond Memories.

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They’ve never been here before, but they are excited to find a quiet haven, surrounded by five centuries of artifacts and books, the kinds of artifacts and books that are lost to them forever in their storm—ravaged hometown, New Orleans.

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They are staying with friends in Alabama. They don’t know whether they have a home to return to.

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A rough-edged woman shows up at the shop, talking energetically about the old books and magazines she’s trying to sell to me. She’s getting rid of her possessions so she can trek southward to spend her life helping victims of Katrina. She’s had an epiphany but doesn’t know what an epiphany is.

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Larry at the local hotel tells me stories about refugees he’s housing, Teresa of the Downtown security force pleads for aid for all displaced evacuees sheltered at the nearby civic center. My friend Beth is lying in the neighborhood hospital, donating a kidney to her friend. Daughter Margaret sends a note that her church in Lower Alabama has turned itself into a soup kitchen, that thousands are being helped throughout her village. Suburban dwellers say they still don’t have electrical service, but they don’t seem to be complaining or whining.

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I recall the day after 9/11, when son-in-law Derek walked into his home near the coast with a funny look on his face. He told Margaret, “They didn’t turn the trashcans over this time. And they even replaced the lids,” referring to city workers who usually tossed things about in the rush to get things done. They, too, acted not quite as abruptly as usual, treating customers with respect and kindness.

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Every few minutes, I run into more anecdotes and stories about post-Katrina, post-9/11 times. Despite the horrors, many people are being respectful of one another, and respectfully quiet now and then.

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One of my favorite movie scenes drifts into full view in my mind. In the film STARMAN, an enthusiastic and frustrated scientist is desperately attempting to communicate with a superior-intelligenced alien. The scientist is trying to learn all he can before vivisectionists arrive to enslave and examine this stranger, just in case he presents a threat to Earthlings.

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And then, a great cinematic moment occurs.

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Scientist and alien are sitting face to face, just before all Bureaucracy  breaks loose.

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In reply to the scientist’s obvious question, “Why are you here?” the dying alien say, “We are interested in your species. You are a strange species…not like any other…and you would be surprised how many there are in the Universe…intelligent but savage.”

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The scientist is hanging on to every word during this first-ever conversation between planets.

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The alien asks, “Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you (Earthlings)?”

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The scientist can only nod.

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“You are at your very best when things are worst.”

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And that’s the scene.

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It’s the kind of thing you don’t think about too much on a conscious level, but by and by the significance begins to sink in. The metaphor applies. The soul takes a turn for the better.

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We are at our very best when things are worst.

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I look around me at the changed people, the changed lives, the refugees of 9/11 and Katrina and Hiroshima and Tsunami and a thousand other catastrophes human-made or human-preventable or human-unpreventable. I see the good that people do lives after them. The bad is interred with their bones.

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Sorry about paraphrasing you, Mark Antony, but you got it wrong. Most people are capable of great kindnesses, especially when they are not prepared to resist their gentle impulses.

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Look around you. You’ll see small kindnesses everywhere.

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Like the Starman, you will wonder at the mistakes and vanities, but you will think we’re all worth saving, once you see how we react when times are worst

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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LOOKING AHEAD TO THE PAST

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This is a good day to gaze into my crystal ball, that archive that thrives within my memories.

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Yep, just like you, I have a head full of memories both good and bad, glad and sad, hopeful and iffy. This hidden crystal ball, this archive of Me, serves me well at times.

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There is always a more pleasurable time at the fingertip, ready to spring into wistful life and provide me with a positive charge when most needed.

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That reservoir of fond memories prods me with questions—what is a smile worth? What is the value of a secret laugh? What will be the final humorous thought that crosses my mind? If some day I gotta go, wouldn’t I prefer to be wearing a mysterious smirk to perplex the undertaker? Wouldn’t a puzzling grin cause friends and enemies to wonder whether I knew something they don’t?

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Gazing into my archive reminds me there were good times, good times that did not occur merely to lie fallow and fade. Those good times are at the ready, awaiting my command, my password.

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What was my past pleasure? Where did it happen? When? How did it feel, taste, sound?

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Was it simple—lying on my back in a childhood back yard, looking at clouds and trying to animate scenes and stories from them?

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Was it complicated—like acing an exam I thought I would never live through?

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Was it secret—something I saw that gave me great pleasure…my little secret between me and myself?

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Or was it a guilty pleasure, one I may share with an old friend someday, or was it something I’ve never really done but always enjoy thinking about doing?

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Whatever.

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Fond memory does not have to be complicated. I can recall what a carnival smells like, what a meadow feels like under bare feet, what a chrome trim looks like in the bright sun, what the first-ever kiss felt like from the first-ever love in my life, what the kiss of my mother felt like when I was three years old and accepting all loving gestures.

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I can utilize my archived fond memories any time. There are more than I can possibly call up on a lifetime. They are there to be replayed, freeze-framed, fast forwarded, slo-moed, cherished.

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And to heck with all those archived bad memories. They are not worth the effort—unless there was something nice and kind to remember or re-think in the midst of all that grimness

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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MY SOUTH THROUGH FUZZY LENSES

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Back when I was a kid, my eyesight was just about perfect. Being a kid, I took this fact for granted. I did not know that some kids could see better than other kids.

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Back then I could see anything anywhere, particularly things nobody thought I could see or, better still, things nobody wanted me to see. Some elders regarded kids as quirky ornaments, present and accounted for but clueless as to what was really happening. They were wrong. Kids notice everything, particularly when they nonchalantly appear to be otherwise engaged.

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Watch out what you do and say around kids. It will re-appear when least expected.

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Anyhow, during early teendom, it became obvious that I was trending toward nearsightedness. I was not seeing the world clearly. I was missing things.

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My father took me to have my first eye examination. I obtained my first pair of eyeglasses.

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Lo and behold—as we elders say when least expected—Lo and behold, on the way home from the eye doctor, I looked out the car window and suddenly realized that lawns were not hazy carpets of green. They actually consisted of individual, clearly distinguishable blades of grass!

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For a while I was seeing the world for the first time all over again!

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In later years when I saw Buckminster Fuller in person, he reported that he had been practically blind for the first few years of his life but didn’t know it and didn’t have eyeglasses till he had already learned to experience the world in patterns and designs rather than details like blades of grass.

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I felt better about my own vision when I heard this, for I don’t really know how long I’d been seeing the world through fuzzy Vaselined lenses.

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But, looking back, I do think that in many ways my childhood patterned world was a bit clearer than it ever has been since

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:  http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/theneverendingstoriesawait.mp3

or read on…

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Life, actually…

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THE NEVERENDING STORIES AWAIT

THE SIDEWALK PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

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The old book shop is filled with charm and aroma and ambience and centuries of culture, all pressed together in comfortable intimacy and familiarity. This may be one of the few places you’ll ever visit where diversity is no longer an intellectual talking-point or an impossible dream.  This old book shop is a gathering place for all ideas, a place where diametrically opposing philosophies co-exist with a smug sense of humor, a smug sense that all philosophies are worth no more than a palm full of puns sifting through the fingers.

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Old paper scraps and chips and shards and cuttings and flakes cover the floor of the shop, reminders that paper is vulnerable to age and wear. Among the ironies of the confetti scatterings are the ancient books, the books with pages still intact and white and durable. Old-time paper endures, these-days paper often consumes itself in acidity.

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One more irony. Even the fragile paper survives if it is nurtured and kept safe from ultra violet rays, deep humidity and heated dryness.

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So, what do we have here in the shop? Everlasting books, crumbling books, archival paper, disregarded paper. It’s a merry mishmash.

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“Oh, I love the smell of books. Isn’t this great?” a customer extols the virtues of the time-travel vault I call a book shop. I hear this exclamation several times a week from wandering nomads who cherish the past and the preserved present and the predicted future.

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So, each day I place a bit of book fragrance behind each ear, don my bookie demeanor, and spend the hours receiving books, searching for books, sprucing up books, researching books, cataloging books, pricing books, shelving books, answering questions about books, selling books, collecting books…and, once home, reading books and writing books.

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And, should I dare to visit the darkened shop in the wee hours, I can listen to the books breathing and resting and committing the act of simply being available and open to examination by those whose mysterious quests will bring them to the sidewalk in front of the shop door just before opening time, anxious to continue the neverending tales

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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https://youtu.be/OQoOdsMOZI8

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Life, actually…

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THE TALE OF THE FRITO THIEF

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The most thoughty thought I’ve had so far, on this beautiful Down South day:

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Be unafraid. Be very unafraid.

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A couple of sideways thoughts can’t hurt you. After all, thoughts encroach, then they dissipate if you don’t chase them.

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That’s what the “be unafraid” idea is all about. It just means that you—yes, You—are totally in charge of the Thoughty part of your mind.

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When a weird or disturbing or otherwise unwanted thought sneaks in and attempts an insurrection, I have choices. I can open myself up, accept on face value what is being tossed at me, and become a minion to this thought.

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Or I can make an unwanted thought diminish and eventually disappear.

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When I fear the thought will stick to the interior lining of my mind, when I fear I can’t rid myself of this nagging idea, I verge on panic. Usually I come to my senses and find a way around this obstacle and get on with life.

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You ask, “I don’t know how to get this thought out of my head. How do you do it?”

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In my case, I resort to the techniques I know best…the techniques that keep me going well beyond the many speedbumps rumpling my path.

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I recall how bullies operate. I recall how I deal with bullies over my considerably extended lifespan.

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I make ‘em laugh. My first deflection of any bully’s encroachment is to find something silly and laughable to say, something unexpected and distracting. This unwanted bully of a thought is laughable.

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Sometimes this does not work.

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If the bully’s rage is so ingrained that it cannot stop to listen or contemplate or laugh, I have to find another way to solve this dilemma.

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From my learned playground guerilla tactics handbook I think, SURVIVAL FIRST. I run and hide.

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This confuses the bully, who can’t confront me using heft or girth or furious energy. I’m not there, so bullybeing goes in search of me, while I spread the defensive measure I know best—I satirize and mock and playfully surround said bully with goofy ideas designed to make everybody take this unnecessary thought with a grain of salt. Nothing disarms a bully like not being taken seriously.

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Make that danged thought shrink and shrivel, my defense team screams.

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Make ‘em laugh at the laughable. It helps clear the sinuses and refresh your unafraidness mechanisms. Before you know it, this thought has slipped into obscurity and is now filed safely away.

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You can breathe now.

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Next thought needed to replace the bullythought: What actions should you take to make sure a Frito thief does not repeat this heinous crime? No-one, especially me, wants a Frito to be stolen. I need that Frito to make certain my sense of humor and well-being is fresh and salty and crunchy and basically harmless.

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See? Much more interesting to dwell on Frito theft than on those jackbooted sideways thoughts that constantly seek to overthrow and overtake our better selves

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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