Summer of 23

 

This is sort of a half-year report. There has not been anything special. No new adventures, no to-do list accomplishments, no new relationships or even a phone call. No new taste experiments or feast prepared by another. Couple of silly items ordered online out of boredom with the surprise of delivery, like the weekly trash removal.

The end of winter was surprising by how pleasant the weather had been. No real cold days and only a morning powder of snow. Greenery grew and rains came as spring should be.

There was this strange tinge of dust in the air that was coming from Canadian wildfires, but not as bad as further north. Then the daily reports of heat in the southwest, but still the weather here was pleasant.

Being pleased not to be suffering under what is commonly called ‘climate change’, was still not inspired to make new artwork or music or even venture into the unknown. Except for.

I usually get fixed the things that annoy me. It takes a lot to annoy me, but my laptop had sticky keys. My solution was to plug another keyboard in and it worked swell, but it became annoying. So, I packed it up and went down to the location I thought could relieve me of this annoyance. It wasn’t the place I thought it was but they did fix the problem.

Unfortunately, I reached my limit. Knowing full well my solitary lifestyle and age are not the healthiest, my body gave me a message. Not that I changed my bad habits or asked the medical profession to examine an old man and prescribe some pills and potions to undo aging. Just a reminder that one day the wakeup call won’t be answered.

The daily reminders of the temperature going up only increased the stress, like the daily body count and the unbelievable trends ever forming in politics, pop culture, religion, education, etc. My daily goal is not to be stressed. Avoid disasters and other’s drama seems to keep my blood pressure down. Boring?

Contemplating each day got what to eat and what to listen to has become the norm. The four shirts are rotated depending on the stink, two shorts and socks are changed when they can stand on their own. No fashion police please.

Still, the past couple of days of ‘extreme’ heat has reminded me I have no control over the weather. Sure, I could afford installing a big box to suck the heat out so I could sleep in a refrigerator under a blanket and pay the electric bill, but I didn’t grow up with air conditioning. My parents barely had electricity and their parents only had heat relief in the shade of a porch. I went to school without air conditioning (including summer school), my first apartment on the top floor didn’t have air conditioning, I’ve worked in buildings without air conditioning and have slept with only a window fan. Not saying that air conditioning doesn’t make hot days more comfortable, it is a guilty pleasure (like a car).

I’m fortunate enough to live (so far) in a climate that is tolerable, so a few days of uncomfortable living can be admonished as an anomaly (sorry Arizona, Texas, Florida, etc.) Cold showers can bring down the body core but sitting in front of a fan blowing 105 airs, isn’t cooling. Just like that extra chilly day in the winter where you put on another layer, in the summer you get naked. A beach towel tops the bed to soak up the nightly sweat, but it is only for a couple of days. It is only for a couple of uncomfortable days. At least I’m not being bombed or fighting wildfires in this heat.

There also haven’t been any remarkable storms (knock on wood). If a big blow was to come through would my old trees stand tall? Will the upstairs hot water heater (that is delivering what couldn’t find in the winter) last? When was the furnace filter changed? How is the roof holding up? Will the dogs next door tunnel in under the fence? All those things that can keep you awake at night… in the heat.

For a few days, a wet rag on your head and naps in the afternoon can replace the possibility of being sick or worse during 110-degree weather. Don’t need to bring another person into partaking of my chosen lifestyle.

Also, would not hire another to do whatever chores I don’t believe I could do on a cooler day. I am still mentally relevant enough to know when the weather gets this hot, you do not perform to your peak abilities. Note: also, don’t hire someone before a holiday.

The end of July arrives, with all its memories and heat, and the unknown August and September awaits us. Bills are paid, evening meal arranged and ceiling fans turned on.

Stay cool.

Artifacts

An artifact is an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.

Museums are full of artifacts. Archeologist work diligently at finding and recording and displaying artifacts. A 500-year-old spoon or indigenous pottery or some ancient weapon or a scrap of clothing hold a fascination for us to review.

Our history is based on artifacts. It is evidence we existed before recordings. Merely everyday items discarded and left to historians to designated importance.

Ever explore an abandoned building? Places where people used to live and for whatever reason left, leaving behind memories no one else knew. Some have treasures like pianos too big to move or trinkets that were important at some point. Some appear crime scenes while others just a statement of human migration.

Antique shops are cluttered with items abandoned and given a price of wealth to add to your home collection. Displaying someone else’s hand-me-downs as family heirlooms is a habit to impress others. Tales of ancestry with an object to fill the story is always worthy of a conversation.

When items don’t sell at the antique market, they wander to the junk yard. This isn’t the trash heap for some of the items still have value for parts and pieces. These discarded pieces of history rust in the rain and sun, leaking their toxic liquids into the soil and ground water as the weeds give them shelter.

When you stop at the next yard sale, consider the items on display as the next generation’s artifacts. Bell bottoms and platform shoes or 8-track tapes and rabbit ear antennas will become a wonder to our grandchildren. 

COPE

 

How is the summer going? Hot enough for you? How are you coping?

Cranking up the AC and hoping the grid will hold? What if you don’t have AC? Sweat in the shade?

It is not as hot here as it is in some other places, but we should learn to adapt because we don’t want to give up our guilty pleasures. Maybe take a vacation?

Pack up your fossil fuel burning mobile machine and leave town for parts unknown. Now your home can sit empty without you around. Better get a service to cut the grass.

Traveling in a metal machine under the beating sun on a slab of highway will only make life more tense (windows rolled up or down). If you have to transfer to another carrier, park and unpack and try to see if your reservation is still vilate. Who is picking up your mail at home?

Once you meet your destination (whether a 5-star hotel or a cottage in the woods) do you stop and enjoy the view or take a nap from exhaustion? Did you leave the water running in the sink?

Unpacking is as strenuous as packing and whatever you are looking for you can’t find because (like moving) you put it in the other bag. Prepare yourself for your vacation!

The first prime directive is to eat. You’ve already stopped at every roadside junk food fine dining establishment, but do you continue with the established blain or experiment in the possibility of new taste and stomach upset. Who is checking on your dog back home?

Grab the kids, slather them with sunscreen, cover them with big hats and wander out on the hot sand or the tick infested wilderness. Either way you will become exhausted because you do not go to the gym enough. Now retreat to bug bites and sunburn to the AC? If you are at the beach and it rains…you have plenty of clothing that is made to get wet. If you in the forest with no wi-fi…you might as well go back home. Did you lock the back door?

Having a health emergency or an automotive break down just makes the vacation more memorable. Take lots of selfies and picts of the food you devoured so social media can share your experience. Haven’t seen any videos of people suffering from heat stroke, but maybe I’m on the wrong network?

The point is we all have to cope with our everyday existence. If the washer breaks down, we cope. If the roof leaks, we cope. If there is a stack of bills and $4 in the bank, we cope. If you daughter comes home and says she and her significant other are moving into the basement so she can have her baby, we cope. If we get fat, we cope. If our parents die (should be when), we cope. If we are kicked out of our home, we cope. If we are diagnosed with a stage 4 malady, we cope. If the election is upon us and the selections look disturbing, we cope. If there is a pothole in front of the house, we cope.

If it gets hotter than the hinges on the gates to hell, we cope.

No, this is no Ai or some bot, but just a human thought of what will be coming tomorrow.

No Name

 

We have a ‘name’ for everything. People have names. Places have names. The first thing you get when you arrive is a name. A movie or television show or book or a piece of music is identified by the writer or artist name. Small print at the end of the movie under contract give the names of everyone who isn’t a celebrity but turned on the lights, made the meals, costumes, soundtrack, cleaned the toilets but will not be recognized outside the industry.

A song has a name and the artist/band that plays it has a name, but who wrote it? The actors on stage giving the performance have names but someone else wrote the words. The small print in the back of the program will name the creators of the work.

What would happen if you didn’t know the name?

I went to the town, just up the road and ate a wonderful meal at that place on the river. I met a guy the other day. You know that guy who walks kind of loopy with a shaggy beard. Tall guy, kind of quiet. With that short blonde girl. You know who they are.

We climbed into a car and went out to that store that sells those communication devices. The guy got me on a call to the headquarters and I talked to some woman who set up my account with that company.

Then we went to that other place for a couple of drinks.

Without names, life can be vague or confusing. When someone says a ‘name’ the listener gets a visual picture of what a ‘tree’ is. Some might be pine trees or Christmas trees or giant redwood trees, but the name helps clarify the story. If you say the name ‘Jane’ the listener might remember the person from years ago or last week and will have an image of who she is. If you say the name ‘Mike’ there might be several Mike’s who know the speaker and the listener, so further details are needed.

If you walk into a room of strangers (bar, office, church, convention) you need a name tag. You might also need copies of job applications, birth certificates, resumes, family tree or passport to fill in the history of ‘who you are’. You could write a different name on the tag to avoid leaving a trail for future investigations.

What is that?

Faking-It Pt. II

 

While sitting around the heat just thinking, I remembered, faking it. We go through life just ‘faking-it’ because there are no instructions. We can be taught, instructed, regulated and applied certain requirements, but in the long run we are all just faking-it.

I get up in the morning and walk outside into the forest and tell myself it is a wonderful environment for critters to live, but I’m just ‘faking-it’. I’m too lazy to whack down the weeds.

I ride a bicycle to the grocery everyday avoiding the gym but still getting exercise, but I’m just ‘faking-it’. I coasting most of the time.

I bring home a bag of what is labeled ‘food’ that I will put into my mouth and wait for the refuge to come out, but I’m just ‘faking-it’. I don’t read the containers for I’m not an MIT engineer to understand the chemistry that now makes up our ‘fake food’. Unless you pulled the head off the chicken or scaled the fish, it is all processed. If it tastes good with salt and sugar and fills your gut, you continue to follow the process.

Getting a hair style or a fancy suit makes you think you appear good to passerby’s, you are ‘faking-it’. You don’t look any better than that person in the mirror in the morning. Apply all the cosmetics and up-date your style matching the magazines of ‘faking-it’ models. Whichever uniform you wear to conform with your surroundings, you are ‘faking-it’ to fit in. Doesn’t matter your individual thoughts, your ‘look’ presents your image.

While you pack up as much stuff you can carry and transport yourself to another land where you don’t know the language or any of the people but stay in a someone else’s bed and eating food you would never prepare in your own kitchen, you are ‘faking-it’. No matter how much you spend on the way or even relax from the ordinary world, a vacation will end and you have to go back. You were ‘faking-it’.

Going into a room full of strangers, you present yourself with whatever will start a conversation or get an attraction. You can tell your history embellishing where necessary or just flat out lie. You are just ‘faking-it’.

You may find someone who you would like to know romantically (that means fornication, copulation, or any of the other slang words for doing the hokey-pokey). When you believe you are the best love, you are just ‘faking-it’.

Making vows of foreverness to each other, under religious instructions or governmental requirements, cohabitation and children and property can be shared, but you are just ‘faking-it’. No matter the pure intention, there is always the wandering eye. Whether you act upon it is your decision.

 In the end, with all your accomplishments and accolades and monetary consumption, they only give you a slab with your name and date of birth and death.

You were only ‘faking-it’.

Disappeared?

 

Been hearing about people ‘disappearing’ and wonder? Are these people being beamed up? Are these people falling through a hole in the earth? Are these people getting lost in a crowd?

Disappeared means becoming ‘invisible’ or ‘vanish’ or ‘cease to be’. How do people disappear?

Most of the references are people who are kidnapped for whatever purpose. Maybe it is human trafficking or recruitment to militias or enslavement for labor?

Everyday there are amber alerts and missing person posters from local authorities describing people whose family and friends say they have disappeared. This makes us all detectives examining everyone who walks by until the news that they are found. Some are never found.

Others may have not ‘disappeared’ but changed their names and lost connections with previous associations. When your friends or family have moved and you don’t know the current address or phone and can’t find them online, they have disappeared. No more Christmas cards.

Childhood classmates or former job associates or even romantic partners have gotten lost to time or interest. Reunions might bring you back together for a moment, but will lose contact again.

Some who have disappeared will never reappear. That teacher who taught you trigonometry is no long around. Neither is the preacher who married you or your auntie who showed you how to shuck beans. You won’t find them in the lost and found except through photographic recordings and memories.

On this date, fourteen years ago, my wife disappeared.