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 Thoughts destined to be washed away by the tides of life. |
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I've been studying my cover photo for a while now, and it seems to me that it is more than just a photo of what is there that can be seen, more than just three white rocks stacked on a beach. It contains an important question about the future, about what happens long after the photographer has gone. What will happen to our pile of stones when the tide comes in? Will it topple or has the architect built this structure at a safe distance? I don't know what will happen to these words that I stack here on the sand. They may prove safely distant, or they may be swallowed up by a rush of self-doubt. They may be here for a season. They may lose their balance and be scattered by the shoreline, or be hidden away under shifting sands. Perhaps someday, the tides of life will reclaim them. Or maybe that's just a bunch of poetic, romantic nonsense. After all, this is just a blog. |
| When I was young, I used to experience déjà-vu quite often. It was slightly disturbing to feel that I had lived through an exact moment before but not know where or when. Nowadays, they guess that déjà-vu is the result of a kind of hiccup in the hippocampus, confusing a present moment with a memory and causing a brief glitch in the memory matrix. They also say déjà-vu happens most frequently between the ages of 15 and 25. I realized the other day that I haven't had "déjà-vu" in years. I don't have "avant vu", either. That would be more useful, but whatever. I think mon déjà-vu a disparu. Je suis perdu. |
The older I get, the stranger and more convoluted are the paths my brain takes from subject A to subject B. The years add more and more trivia, more and more experiences, and every cultural reference can send my mind down a twisting path from which my original thought never returns. That’s my way of explaining how I got to this video. The Man was singing Winchester Cathedral which made me sing along because it’s quite catchy, you know? And of course, it was incumbent upon me to pretend I had a megaphone by forming one with my hands and altering the sound of my voice. I thought how funny it was that the style was once to sing into a megaphone. Why that must have been the 1920s. They were certainly the bees knees back then. Rudy Vallee made the whole megaphone thing popular. Odd to think of someone named “Rudolph” being a pop culture megastar. So, I had to find out when he died because the only movie I remembered Rudy Vallee being in was “The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer” (great movie btw) which was well before I was born. Google told me that he wasn’t named Rudolph at all, but Hubert. Hubert Prior Vallee. Suddenly, Rudy seemed a more reasonable alternative as a stage name. So, YouTube. YouTube for everything. YouTube for how to assemble that furniture from Walmart. YouTube for finding obscure performances from long-dead entertainers. So, YouTube for Rudy Vallee and of course, we get the great Ed Sullivan, showman extraordinaire! I know you don’t care but here’s Rudy Vallee. |
| When I say this song reminds me of my sister, it has nothing to do with her mental state. Growing up in the sixties, my musical tastes were highly influenced by older siblings. I remember the differences in the styles of music they preferred. Things were changing rapidly. For my eldest sister, there was Elvis and Tom Jones. The next sister was all about Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary. My brother was into Dylan, too, but the later Dylan with the electric guitar who wrote the mysterious songs and was no longer just a folk singer. I appreciate all of their contributions to my musical memory archives. This song added nothing to the richness of my musical experience. My sister had it on a 45. The reverse side was the song in reverse. If you know what a 45 is or had one, you are older than dirt like me. And you don't care that this record was no great musical achievement. You're just glad you can sing all the words. For me, it reminds me of my sister (who could say all the words - she couldn't sing a note). |
| I am always on the lookout for new and interesting television shows, however, most of the current fare are awful, badly written, badly acted and very disappointing shows. Even the writers don't seem to know where the plot is going. I generally end up just going back to the old shows from bygone days and re-watching favorites from my youth. But, as the "Cheers" TV show's theme song plays in the background, I realize that I have never wanted to go where "everybody knows my name". I wouldn't mind going someplace where no one knows my name... I guess that's the internet. |
| I am growing tired of these social media posts and internet articles about cat behavior. They all claim to decipher the actions of cats and tell owners what they "really mean". I've been watching my cat for a long time now and I can say for sure that I have no idea what half these behaviors "really mean". Heck, the poor cat probably has no clue why she does some of the things she does. Cats are imperfectly domesticated. They have adapted to a life of comfort indoors, but in their DNA runs a wild streak they neither understand nor can control. Even if you can momentarily convince a cat that you don't enjoy having your arm kicked and bitten and scratched, the cat won't remember not to do that. It's instinct. It's a technique for disemboweling prey. It's in the cat's nature to want to kill you, but it becomes a kind of aggressive play because you're far too big to conquer. No, it's not because you feed the cat or stroke it and let it sleep on your bed. The cat is incapable of weighing those benefits against the delicious idea of tearing you to shreds and throwing you around like a soft toy. If you were the size of a mouse, you'd be a saliva-coated rag doll. I don't say to the cat "oh you're such a good kitty". There's no such thing. Maybe an old, fat cat is quiet and passive, but this young and lithe creature of mine is no better than she ought to be. She behaves quite badly at times, but she can't help that. She's a cat. I try not expect too much from my cat. A more docile creature wouldn't be useful. She might occasionally bite me out of uncontainable excitement, but she keeps the mouse population under control and so we have agreed to make allowances for each other's strange behavior. |
The prompt over at "EXPRESS IT IN EIGHT "  today is Stardust. Honestly, I feel like I have written a lot of poems about stardust and nothing new has crossed my mind. But, if something stirs in your imagination, you should run over there and contribute. It's a fun activity. I did write this poem for Express it in Eight about a year ago: It is said we are made of star dust we are not just part of the universe but it is part of us the remains of ancient days intricately woven into our DNA and yet we look to the skies seeking meaning for our lives when we are the reason for it all And that is about all I have to say about star dust. But Hoagy Carmichael said many more elegant things in his song "Stardust" and so I offer this: The melody haunts my reverie... |
| 6:18 am Second cup of coffee Finally caught up on Promptly Poetry. Various other contributions made on other forums. Now blogging my morning. I feel very accomplished and there's still coffee in the pot. Have some happy music: |
| I’ve had some reviews recently. First, I will apologize for not responding. Soon, soon. Unless it’s been more than six months. Then it would be embarrassing to remind people that they've written a review on a piece that they don't remember having read. No need to point out how forgettable my writing is. So I just want to say that I will eventually get around to thanking all of you regardless of how enthusiastic you were (or were not ) when you read the piece that you reviewed. Many members belong to one or more of the encouraging reviewing groups here at WDC and some groups require suggestions as part of a review in order for it to qualify. Luckily, for the people who review my writing, I leave a lot to be suggested. The bulk of suggestions though, tend to refer to my lack of a line count or word count and definitely highlight my resistance to using drop down menus. I honestly do see the benefits of including word counts and line counts and even organizing notes about the prompt and the piece itself under a drop-down menu, but that still doesn't mean it's going to happen. Here's my process: I sit down. I drink some coffee. I write something, probably something I was supposed to write several days ago.. I drink more coffee. I post what I wrote and if there's no more coffee, then I run away and I don't come back for a very long time. Usually. I have a lot of other things I have to do. It's not as if I don't appreciate these suggestions, I do. They're actually very good suggestions. I'm just not sure I'm organized enough to be capable of following any of them - and I'm sure that I'm far too lazy. However, there is an upside to not taking these valuable suggestions: it gives the next reviewer something to remark on in his or her review since it's not going to get any better. I suppose it might also be a bit self-serving because it lessens the need to critique my actual writing. And if there's anything I dislike more than counting words in the lines of my drop-down menus, it's criticism. |
| I decided that there's no harm in writing a blog post that you really don't expect anyone to read. After all, people are busy with their own thoughts and probably not interested in the thoughts that go running through my mind, leaving their muddy footprints and making such noise that the real world is drowned out. No, there's no reason to burden others with those. But then again, maybe that is what social media is all about. I see many people on social media who discard their adulthood and become middle school mean girls, making up silly names for people they don't like and spreading wild theories. Paranoia reigns supreme but I have noticed that those who suffer from it are all still there and have not been imprisoned for thought crimes as they daily fret about. Essentially, social media could be something great and useful but usually isn't. It's why I get tired. I need to get back to work and get my ducks in a row. That's not easy. They prefer a slightly triangular formation some days. |
| It seems the UK government is investing £50 million in a scheme to dim the Sun. The stated goal is to combat global warming. Various methods have been proposed, but the main idea is to somehow reflect sunlight back and away from Earth to cool the planet. What could go wrong, you may ask? Well, all possible catastrophic scenarios aside (including the possibility of some affected country taking exception to some other country changing its weather or indeed, the weather of the whole Earth, without anyone’s permission), what about the future of solar energy? One in every twenty buildings in the UK has solar panels on it. That’s a pretty big investment already, especially for a country not known for having too many sunny days. Do they really want less sunshine? I don’t understand how we convert to solar energy to save the planet and also dim the Sun to save the planet. I guess I don’t understand the hubris of people who think they can “save” the planet. I recycle mainly because the town council says I must in order to get my trash taken away each week. They sell quite a lot of that recycling to China. And even with all of us recycling everything possible, only about 21% of what is collected actually gets recycled for reuse. Only 5% of plastic gets recycled. But we tell people to wash out their cans and plastic bottles (which wastes water) and then we fill the air with the exhaust of huge trucks that we send out to collect them, only to find that most of them end up in that floating island of garbage in the ocean. I'm not saying we shouldn't conserve. I'm not saying we shouldn't recycle. All I am saying is that this climate thing is a little more complicated than we might believe. Maybe we should think this through before doing something extreme without knowing all the consequences? |
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