Tell Me A Story

Do you remember an elderly person opening a dusty book and reading you a bedtime story? With a small bedside light the story was at a slow pace full of sounds and voices and make-believe as you snuggled under piles of blankets. Sometimes the story was stopped and accented by remarkable tales not printed.

No book you sit down with to read can compare to being read to. Reading a story by yourself means you have to use your own experiences and imagination to visualize the characters, but the spoken voice inflections point your thoughts into new realms of wonder. Like an old radio series that held our breathless attention for hours, pirates have a certain voice and cowboys have a certain sound and you held on tight during a car chase.

When there is no book or reader we have several options. We can lose ourselves in the mass of the macabre called media or close our eyes to be engulfed in music that is just another form of reading black dots. Another option is to sit face-to-face with another human being and tell each other stories.

For telling stories is how we communicate. All the plays and books (even that technical stuff) and movies and television (even the commercials) are just stories. Tall tales or factual historical documentaries, everyone has a story.

Meeting a new person is to find out their story. Once you get passed the labels and become interested enough due to their presentation, you ask to hear their story. Each one is different and though maybe some cross referencing, like a fingerprint is unique to only one.

Some say the 10 best ways to ‘write’ a story is:

1.      Write In One Sitting

2.      Develop Your Protagonist

3.      Create Suspense and Drama

4.      Show, Don’t Tell

5.      Write Good Dialogue

6.      Write About Death

7.      Edit Like a Pro

8.      Know the Rules, Then Break Them

9.      Defeat Writer’s Block

10.   Share Your Work

This may be well to think of before you share your story is a bit of preparation. What do you want to achieve from telling your story? Do you intend to impress the other person with your accoutrements or prestige or knowledge or wealth? Do you wish to impart emotional baggage?

What do you hope to get in return? A sale? Employment? A laugh? A person who will follow you home to perform illicit acts of devious behavior until exhaustion sets in?

Remember you are the protagonist of your story so make it worth the listen. Get your details straight. Was it Rome or Paris? Was she a red head or a blonde? Add points that you think your listener might relate to. It keeps them interested.

If you are going to relay an overheard story, put your spin on it or it is just a boring carbon copy. Don’t use audio visual aids but include landmarks, seasons, locations and events that relate to the story. If you need pie charts and graphs you will probably need a fact check and footnotes.

A good story can make others laugh or cry or bond or ponder or find an idea to reply to. A bad story is just blowing out words filling up the air and wasting time so know when to draw the curtain.

So tell me a good story while I slip off to la-la-land. No Moonlight.

Contemplation

After a normal night of a few two-hour naps, the sun appears and the coffee pours the potion to start the morning. The daily ride turned from summer to fall after a hailstorm but the sun is out and another layer will tolerate the change. Feeding the yard and contemplating the next move, change to a different hydration.

Being alone, not lonely because that is a pathetic self-absorption, I study the next move like a chess player. Picking up piles of pine mulch? Moving more timber? Prying up 50lb. cement blocks? There will be no more cutting due to the fact that all trashcans are full even without the cassette racks and broken storage bins.

Contemplating the many options of a single project can take hours or days and then another version to deal with the problem can and will cause procrastination until you just strap on your gloves and get your hands dirty. A simple move of a bucket or piles of bricks can alter a critters landscape. That is not the object but hope they will adapt.

Having the time and space to ponder deep thoughts unfortunately doesn’t turn off. Every shadow, breeze, sound will offer possibilities that will give new thoughts, opinions and a redraw of plans. Repairing a gate can turn into replacing the fence. Nike had it right with ‘Just Do It’.

Contemplation can bring some interesting ideas from a simple word or sentence overheard on an entirely different topic. Recently I heard a story about two girls who were switched at birth. One of the statements made in the story was how their rooms differed. Try picturing the details of the room you grew up in. Then think how that room changed as you grew up. Broaden that picture to your family patterns. Where did you go on vacation? Did you parents watch you participate in athletics or other school activities? Did your siblings participate? How do your friends families compare to your upbringing?

Some decisions are made at the spur of the moment but some are analyzed, scrutinized, examined, studied, reflected upon and deliberated until it is too late. If you wait to ask that girl to dance she will get tired of waiting. If you wait to buy that pair of shoes they will go out of fashion or won’t have your size. If you wait to buy that toy whether it be the latest, greatest hit or your children’s most important cherished dream will become obsolete in a matter of minutes.

Contemplation has a place in pondering the unknown like all the stars in the sky but there are those who take it too fair and becoming scientist who conjure up hypothecs which is only making up an answer that cannot be proven; sort of like politics or religion. Instead of reading your trashy tabloids on the throne try some contemplation during your defecation.

As many nights of warmth that are available hopefully will give me the time and space to contemplate, I will ponder and wonder and feed my bizarre dreams. There are no plans on changing the world or even my simple life but it keeps the mind active.

Decision Maker

Who decides? What is right and what is wrong? What is good and what is bad?

Maybe it is the judge that has to mediate every action and reaction? Maybe it is the professional broker who is chosen to represent the people of the area to make new laws that all must abide by? Maybe it is the one who holds the scepter?

When we are young, we cannot make the decisions. The big people around us do that. They tell us what to wear, when to eat, where to sleep. They tell us when to play and what to learn. It is not our choice.

As we grow we are given more responsibility to make our own decisions whether or not we should and the real learning process starts. Still bombarded by outside influences individuals we start to decide what colors we prefer, what food taste the best, which ones will be our friends and when we make incorrect decisions we are punished.

There are consequences to our decisions.

Each day is filled with decisions. We decide to go down the hall to the potty knowing if we do not we will be carrying a stinky with us. We decide to start the day off with a pot of coffee, a cup of tea or a shot of bourbon. We decide what to wear either by what is pressed and arranged in our closet or which piece of clothing on the floor is the least repulsive. We even are able to decide which shoe to put on first.

After the decision of how we make enough to survive and where we can shelter and whom possibility would live with us, we can settle down to the real important stuff. We can surf through the channels to decide what to waste our time on.

Our educational decisions will determine our future career(s) and many will require others to make the decisions for us. Some are content to take the orders and complain about them later while some may want to move up to make those decisions that affect others.

Other life choices may be life changing. The person you agreed upon marrying and living your life with might turn out to have been a bad decision. The next decision will cost you emotional pain and money.

Soldiers go where told to point their weapons. The command might come from on high but each individual has to make the life or death decisions. There is no ‘time out’ to analyze the situation and ponder the results.

We can’t decide to die but we all know we will. Some have the decision made and others will ponder if there was an option, but ultimately there isn’t.

The decision to give birth is another matter. The decision to become pregnant is not always mutual but once the process has succeeded life alters. The cards are laid on the table and the deal has been made so the players must decide the next move.

Do they stay together and perhaps marry so the offspring will not be shunned? Will he decide to split and leave her alone with the next decision?

The Awards Show

Acknowledgement of an achievement; is this what life is all about?

Don’t know if it is the time of year or just a group of award shows on television but we sure like to pat our selves on the back.

Were we that good?

There are awards for best music, movies, television, sports, sales, driving, horses, sheep, looking, fashion…. The list goes on and on.

So after we have accomplished something special like a perfect attendance in school or prom king or most likely to get knocked up before graduation, we get a piece of paper or a badge or button or ribbon or a really nice hunk of wood with your name engraved on a piece of metal or a silver cup or chalice or a painting on the wall.

Then what?

Employers immediately forget last year and turn to the ‘what have you done for me lately?’ Even the movie stars fade away.

The highest most prodigious awards like the Olympics gold metal winners or record breakers will someday be passed by and forgotten.

Like many other high points in our lives, we forget the words to our favorite song or the names of our lost loves or why we hang onto all of this trash. That was then and this is now.

Having memorabilia around to remind us of when we were great is as phony to our hopes that old school mates will come by and put flowers on our graves for that long pass during homecoming game.

Still your name might wind up in the Wikipedia database so people can see how important you were with a footnote.

Winning could just be a simple act of kindness.

 

It may not get you to the finish line first or get you an award but will be remembered.

You choose.

The Gentlemen’s Club

My dad ran a ‘Gentlemen’s Club’. He wasn’t the owner or on the board of directors, but the manager. He just got hired to keep it all together.

The clubhouse was across the street from the austere capital building Thomas Jefferson designed that survived the civil war. Attached to a hotel, the club was ‘private’. Members only. Restricted to the male gender. No women allowed (except in the cooking staff, but they was colored).

I always thought of ‘the club’ as a place where prestigious movers and shakers of the power brokers went to relax in a secluded atmosphere where they could make deals and drink brandy. The Declaration of Independence was writ in places like this, fueled with emotions and alcohol and away from feminine distractions.

The surroundings were very posh. I know because our house was filled with their leftovers. Thanks dad.

The ‘club’ had a bar area and a lounge area with stuffed chairs and heavy tables and private meeting rooms. The walls were covered in paintings of horses and historical figures. The rooms were dark and almost foreboding. Soft muzak played while colored waiters in black slacks and white waistcoats brought trays of alcoholic refreshments (before liquor by the drink) and were subjected to servitude treatment not unfamiliar with the Jim Crow south.

My dad’s job was to keep each and every member who entered the private men’s-only haven well fed, well entertained, and well lubed with as much alcohol as the member’s bottle allowed the bartender to pour (unless there was a little something special the manager had to stoke the fire as it was). He would cover phone calls from worried wives and make sure the member got to the next destination in proper fashion.

Dad had the ear of the governor, assemblymen, bankers, lawyers, tobacco magnates, the media moguls, and even some rich and famous locals and nationwide celebrities. His ‘club’ was the first in the area other than the country clubs. It was the place for the high and mighty to go and revel in their personal wealth and power to flaunt.

Then the gals wanted to be part of the party. The women’s movement broke the code of silence and members started bringing their wives. My father always had a line like “I see you are here with your daughter” if the lady on the members arm was much younger and not familiar, or my dad would recognize the member’s wife and say, “It is so good to see you brought your bride, can I get you a drink?”

Then when the government declared that the people who could only work in the kitchen were allowed to join as members. The ‘private’ club started to fold.

Other establishments offered dining and wine and dancing as the youth moved away from the stuffy old-fashioned gentlemen’s club downtown to the suburbs. That is history.

But suddenly I wondered? Why was it a ‘Men’s Only Club’?

When I was introduced to members my father kept a pretty tight grip so I wouldn’t linger. I just figured we were not worthy to be in the member’s company any longer than the staff. My dad was only hired help.

Since LGBTXY&Z… was never talked about in the 50’s, I’d never thought that these drunk old white haired men stuffed into their vest and herringbone suits puffing on their cigars were just a bunch of screaming queens. Why would a bunch of guys want to just sit around drinking together if it doesn’t involve girls in tight outfits and football on the screen?

My father died before disco took off and the whole gay/straight movement evolved and it was probably a blessing.

I always thought of my dad as a John Wayne - Henry Fonda - James Arness (yes, I met him at ‘the club’) kind of guy but even now there are rumors. What is a guy to believe?

I still like the whip.

Don’t have time for that

A social relation or social interaction is any relationship between two or more individuals. Social relations derived from individuals’ interaction form the basis of a social structure.

Social philosophy is the study of questions about social behavior and interpretations of society and social institutions in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers place new emphasis on understanding the social contexts for political, legal, moral, and cultural questions, and to the development of novel theoretical frameworks, from social ontology to care ethics to cosmopolitan theories of democracy, human rights, gender equity and global justice.

There is often a considerable overlap between the questions addressed by social philosophy and ethics or value theory. Social philosophy includes political philosophy and jurisprudence, which are largely concerned with the societies of state and government and their functioning.

Social philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy all share intimate connections with the social sciences.

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one’s goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one’s own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism and more corporate social forms.

Individualism makes the individual its focus and so starts “with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation.” Classical liberalism, existentialism, and anarchism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism thus involves “the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization”.

Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.

Ideology is a collection of beliefs held by an individual, group or society. It can be described as a set of conscious and unconscious ideas that make up one’s beliefs, goals, expectations, and motivations. An ideology is a comprehensive normative vision that is followed by people, governments, or other groups that is considered the correct way by the majority of the population, as argued in several philosophical tendencies. It can also be a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of society such as the elite to all members of society as suggested in some Marxist and critical-theory accounts. While the concept of “ideology” describes a set of ideas broad in its normative reach, an ideology is less encompassing than the ideas expressed in concepts such as worldview, imaginary and ontology.

Ideology refers to the system of abstracted meaning applied to public matters, thus making this concept central to politics. Implicitly, in societies that distinguish between public and private life, every political or economic tendency entails ideology. Ideology is “the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence”.

With all that said (no, I did not include footnotes) there is much more to the conversation than just the weather, recent purchases, and health.

Social media and in some sense the established journalism have dumb-down the importance of what we, as human beings, really want to know from each other. Are we worth more than a drunken selfie, pet photos, captured quote from someone we might have respected like Martin Luther King or Mark Twain or Pee Wee Herman or worst yet, an angry and evil shout out based on nonsense and uneducated bias?

As friends we wish to hear similar yet variations of ideas to broaden your beliefs and ideology. Those with opposing views are worth the time to listen to if the message is coherent and based on actual facts. Otherwise, why do we bother?

What is most important between people?

That sunset you photographed with your phone and posted for all to see, did it make you feel better?

The solitude of watching that sunset with your own thoughts is what really captured that moment in time.

To share that particular moment is an experience connecting humans. It can be a silent pair sitting on a bench or a group celebrating the day passing; it is meaningful and bonding.

In our youth we tried so hard to become part of the overall social structure we bowed down to the requirements of water cooler talk about television shows or complaints about working hours or critiques of a disastrous movie we all witness but are ashamed of now or that tight sweater worn by the secretary in HR. With groups of ‘friends’ we continued the bland references to life with some sort of mental altering substance.

Those brief moments of honest inter-connections were few but memorable.

With political correctness restrictions it is difficult to speak your thoughts possibly offending another. If the bond is worth the effort, both will try to find the reason for the discourse and take appropriate actions to resolve the offense. Could we end war?

Or has society become so affluent to disregard anything ideas but what has been established in government and religion? Are we so jaded to our own selfish ideologies that we have forgotten how to learn from a different point-of-view. Have we stopped our social education? Have we stopped evolving?

Why do we wait until it is too late to say the things we really mean? Are we such posers that original thoughts established on readings and listening and experiences cannot be expressed? Can we take the conclusion of our intelligence creating an ideology that becomes our personality and thus our perceived persona?

How difficult is it to ask someone to dance with your? How easy is it to express the feeling of that sunset without saying a word?

Do we want to hear quotations from an ancient scripture or a repeated statement from some notable or a replay of a television show?

It is frustrating trying to find the truth in souls for they might not accept the challenge or maybe not worth the time?

Beatle Boots

I wore Beatle boots. I wore them for a couple of years. They hurt my feet.

After the Beatles hit Ed Sullivan in 1964 and watching the girls screaming, every boy wanted to be ‘a Beatle’.

The hair had to grow and put up with the parents and teachers. The collarless suits were too expensive for teenagers and unavailable in most cities department stores.

Then there were the boots.

The Spanish leather heeled black boots with the pointed toes. The first ones had zippers on the sides and later had expandable elastic to slide them on. They just came up over the ankle and slide under tight pants.

Living in a conservative southern town the normal stores for men’s wear only carried wingtips, loafers or tennis or sailing shoes. There were no mail order or online merchandising so creativity took over.

Crossing the main street in town that separated the two skin tones there were a series of shops that marketed to different taste. The same Jewish merchants who ran established department stores also owned little boutique shops and pawn broker establishments on the other side of the street.

For the adventurous one could pick up some colorful accessories and mingle with people you normally see in white aprons in the kitchen.

As the story goes I found a store that carried these Italian pointed boots. Not sure if they were even the right size, I bought them.

With my black socks I squeezed into the soft leather and stood up. The wooden heel pushed your toes down into a wedge but it didn’t matter. Just putting them on was to become a Beatle.

Walking across the room was the same as Paul or kicking up the heels was the same as John or a quick little slide was just like George in the movies. Didn’t have to worry about Ringo because you couldn’t see his feet behind the drums.

Not driving much and then none, I walked. As painful as those boots were they made me feel cool and felt so good when I took them off.

The plus side of looking cool was the leather soles were great for dancing. The down side was the soft leather wore out quick.

I bought at least two pair and they were part of my band uniform until the next fashion craze came along.