In The Meantime

The ball went over the fence of the schoolyard and there was no way for the little boy to retrieve it — the gates were locked for safety just for such as that — cars were passing by on the street beyond the fence and gates.
A man stopped and got out of his car to fetch the ball and toss it back just as she got to her own gate with her keys to try to do the same for the young boy looking, grieving, hoping someone would come along and send it back.
She yelled across her fence to praise the man for stopping. The man lit up with a giant smile and got back in his car and rode away.
The bigger scheme of things.
Human blips and blobs that last for fractions of seconds thinking that we matter some. We do. We matter for fetching balls and holding someone crying’s hand and for the help we give to make a smile.
Oh, the teacher may have gone to get the ball in the long run, but why not one of us on the other side? If we can. If we see. While we can.
She just so happened to have been sitting near the window when the ball met her peripheral vision and she bounced, not unlike the ball, to try to rescue it since she could — since she was still able to stand up and walk and move in a little bit of a hurry. It might not be for long. It feels good to do good. It seems to make a day count as more.
They’re going by so quickly.
No one will remember that a bouncing ball was captured by a stranger.
Minute by minute. Second by second.
In billions of years what do they matter?
It would seem less lonely if something took us all out at the same exact time — we could all go away together — a meteor maybe.
As much as we seem to be trying to kill ourselves, it may not come in time for someone’s lonely exit.
It helps to do a good thing in the meantime.

Image credit: Fly Anakin

To Let Go

There is a history in old things. Some people don’t like them for that reason and buy only new to avoid having to deal with any feelings old, used things evoke.

My own home has hardly anything new in it.

Because Mom liked to save things, we had furniture stacked on furniture with few voids — every space became consumed eventually — as we all grew and nothing seemed to leave. It may be that because of that, empty space leaves me feeling uncomfortable even now. It was also likely because of that aspect of childhood that I ended up in a career arranging things. It became my job as a child to organize because, after awhile, everyone could see that I had a knack for it and so, as with all things someone does well, it becomes expected of them.

Lucky for me that I loved to do it.

When the old farm house my mother was living in changed owners and the caretaker was given all the old antiques that had been it it since its beginning, Mom and I went traipsing through a string of used shops all lined up in a row in one section of a nearby town and found replacements for everything that went missing with the caretaker. We had so much fun and ended up becoming friends with one of the shop owner because she got so much from them that it took a few trips to decide on things and each trip we spent time visiting. They delivered the entire lot once everything was picked out.

It may even have been the stories that they told that helped her pick the things she did.

In those days, old things hadn’t started fetching the kinds of prices they do now days — so we were able to refurnish her rented house with her measly money. Most all of those things ended up in one or another of her kids’ or their kids’ homes after she “conked out”, as she always called it — “I’m dibsing this to you for when I conk out,” — would be what she’d say and that person’s name would go on it or on a list.

Some of those things I had to let go of when I left California to move to Arizona. I corralled any friends who needed things and let them pick and choose for free and anything left was offered to another friend I had who rented a space in an antique shop who did special effects on things and then resold them. I loved her work. She picked the things she wanted, we decided on a price and after she gave me the money, I gave her all the rest of the stuff — whatever she still wanted — for free because, well, just because and I wasn’t going to move it so what else was there to do with it but make both of us happy.

There is always a bittersweet feeling letting history go but if it gets a good home, all the better and not so bitter.

There was one table, an oval one, that I had purchased used and made a faux marble effect on its top and painted the legs purple. It had pride of place in my big California house. I hated to part with it but it was really big and I had no idea what I would be living in once I got to Arizona, (I like to take a lot of risk. At least I used to.) I only took small things that could serve multiple purposes and were easy enough to carry around by one person.

That table, a dear friend took and it ended up as the table in the space her husband liked to be in and as his sprawling work station with papers and clutter all over it — little patches of the faux finish peeking through. That was his space and it kept clutter and stuff from all over other spaces she didn’t want it and it was tucked back in a corner where it wasn’t easy to see. I have an image of him friendly-flipping me the bird while sitting at it one time that I visited. So, the history of that table lives on and on. They aren’t together anymore but I think he took the table with him.

Right before my mother died, she asked me if I thought about renting her old house — she loved it so much and wanted to think of me in it. I said, “Mom, I would never be able to get over you if I did that.” She looked up at me and said, “I know.” So many times I almost wish I had — 20/20 hindsight. But, I would not have had the life I’ve had, good and bad and God only knows what I would not have been able to rise above if I’d stayed. California will always be home though and I very often miss it and especially my mother’s old home and the little wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling used-furnished abode we spent a lot of time in too before we all moved up the street to the big old farmhouse where all the space got filled as well.

Filling empty space has been a thing my family excelled at and I was, am, no exception. But while my mother, on the one hand, would stick new pictures on the wall wherever there was an empty space, I would learn to try to make them make more sense and have a rhyme and reason to where they did get placed. And I would eventually learn a little bit more about editing and letting go of things so that there could be a few empty spaces for a place the eyes could land to find a little peace from utter chaos.

All the things that come and go are touched and leave a fingerprint while in the person’s custody. Finger prints can be erased. What the touching does is anybody’s guess but I think that might be why I like old things — history travels with them, perhaps. And I love that very continuity and the sense that life just might go on. I know I sense my mother in the things she left and that is such a bonus and a comfort after all is said and done — any nuisance of clutter or the burden of the baggage of old dolls aside. I’m glad to have my mother still with me, one way or another.

One Little Thing

News to me, primary colors have been redefined. Is it a debate or simply that more about color is known?
At any rate, it turns out that the original color wheel is still used when mixing colors for painting in oils or acrylics.
Wavelengths and spectrum aside, early in my career of planning rooms and spaces for stores and clients, what I knew was red, yellow and blue and that if you mixed those in different proportions and with each other in various assorted ways, you could get any color in the world — at least I thought.
I loved everything about trying to understand color and couldn’t wait for any chance to have another try at mixing and coordinating things in ways that would please someone enough to inspire them to spend some of their hard-earned money so that a commission would result.
For a month or so on my first job designing vignettes for a showroom, I followed someone else around getting used to things. She had a lot of confidence, which, by the way, I did not — at least not right away.
I was nervous and unsure of my skills. I had no real formal training. I had started a home study course (yes,that was a thing way back then), after coming back from a summer scholarship trip to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and those two things were enough to get that job.
A little talent in drawing and painting and a passion for it all was enough to buoy confidence for giving a decent interview. The manager was impressed with those credentials and gave me a shot.
I buckled a little under the weight of my anxiety but managed to pull through with a little more practice and watching others more confident than I for the time that it took to get better at it.
Practice, practice, practice.
That was in the 70s and at that time there was a very wide array of styles to choose from — one of them was Modern.
The store I worked for had a set of modular pieces that could be arranged almost any way you could imagine them and they were the brightest shade of yellow textured vinyl. They were low slung and not something an older person could easily get out of. They had somewhat carved out seats and almost fit like a glove when sitting in them.
The young woman I was following around learning from was working on changing some things out in that vignette when I first fell in love with red, blue and yellow together as an interior decorating color scheme.
What she did that seemed like magic to me then was that, to top it all off, she hung a translucent acrylic screen, (called a room divider at the time — a big one — four or five feet by five or six), from chains hung on movable sliding brackets fixed to dropped acoustic ceiling panel rails. It was an aqua color. Everything else in the vignette was pure primary — as far as I knew primaries at the time.
That additional color changed things in a way I never would forget. One little thing made all the difference. The fact that it was see-through was of value too — it made things sparkle.
No doubt there were other bits and bobs placed all around to pull it all together — but I don’t remember anything except the solid red, blue and yellow and that translucent aqua. I went back to stare at it every chance I got and just loved how it made me feel.
So funny the things we choose to remember.
What was so special about that?
I think now that it was because it simply helped me to realize that something so slight can have such a big, dynamic impact.
I didn’t know how that young woman knew to do that and that impressed me too. To me it spoke of bravery and confidence — and, possibly, subliminally, the value of more education — which she likely had. At that point, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. That simple little thing made it clear that there was learning in every nook and cranny to be discovered turning any corner and that watching others do a thing could reveal those things I didn’t know I didn’t know.
And, there is always a chance that you can be amazed.
I find it funny that all these years later, I still gravitate and have been making my way back to those simple primary colors with little twitches that result in pleasing eye movement. The more I pare things in my own home, the more I see red, blue and yellow coming to the surface — they’ve been hiding in plain sight from that love affair so long ago.
The things we’ve built our live around, seem to stay with us all the way.
That’s a very comforting thought.
To say the least.

About Wild Things

The poor black, woolly, massive cat came around the corner and jumped up on a pile of sticks and leaves that are making a crescent mound around a tree to keep whatever rain falls from rolling too far away from it. The sticks will eventually decompose and feed the tree. The cat settled high on the sticks and then turned his head enough to reveal a flaming-hot pink patch around his ear.

There’d been a fight and it wasn’t clear who had won because neither cat came back for quite a while after that. The other cat has been around again too but keeps a very close eye out while traversing about the yards — especially while he’s eating. It’s still unclear who won. It’s too bad they just can’t get along.

Does the other cat have as much empathy for the big, black, woolly cat as the one feeding the cats does? Would he take him to a doctor? Should the person feeding cats get a trap? Will it heal on it’s own? Will he die alone? If the vet fixed him would he recover and do it all again?

It’s so hard being a human — to know what to do about wild things.

The big black cat is soaking in the sun, feeling his pain like a trooper. Why can’t all cats just get along because the lady feeding cats would feed them all. If they only knew or she could speak cat so that she could tell them all to behave.

The lady that feeds the cats can’t help but feel the pain of all the animals in Australia fleeing fire if they are lucky enough not to first go up in smoke. She can’t help wanting to ask all the people crying and posting images of koala, kangaroos and wombats being rescued if they still eat meat. She wants to ask them to rescue pigs too and cows before they reach their plates.

How much does meat eating relate to fires? It would be nice to know.

It’s odd how political correctness waffles depending on the trauma. No one seems to be posting pictures of a grilled kangaroo or one with a proud hunter by its side these fiery days. So much empathy suddenly for kangaroos being rescued now. Wasn’t it just yesterday that they were promoting selling hunting licenses to keep their populations down since they have become such a nuisance for humans.

Good guys, bad guys.

A meme stream was filled with haters of someone who dared to imply that the fire-cleared land can be scarfed up on the cheap now by special interests. “How dare you have no empathy for all the people fleeing.”

How dare you is popular now.

Truth is truth. How dare you not normally care about cows.

What is the truth?

“The fire was believed to have started from a sparking electrical transformer.”

Seems the same thing happened in California.

“Rather than spend the money it obtains from customers for infrastructure maintenance and safety, PG&E funnels this funding to boost its own corporate profits and compensation,” according to the complaint.”

Yes, what is the truth?

Cats fighting over territory have it out and one might leave with a bloodied ear. They might both come back and find a way to get along so they can each or both continue to eat.

Humans who fight do sneaky things. It doesn’t seem impossible to imagine how all the sneaky things that people do can add up to fires.

It would be a lot easier if it was a bloody ear.

 

 

Delightful Rabbit Hole

The difficulty of writing isn’t that there is a lack of ideas. There are currently 161 drafts in the queue on Writing Spool that are starts that haven’t appealed to further development or have been deemed unworthy of publishing for one reason or another — self censoring.

More is the trouble of having too much of interest.

Malcolm Gladwell is a new obsession and, of course, listening to his lectures always has me opening numerous tabs to investigate what he is saying even further. I have yet to read one of his books but do intend to read them all.

He has his critics, but that just causes further incentive for investigation — who in their right mind wouldn’t love him. It does expose wider ways of thinking to look into his ‘haters’. It’s a delightful rabbit hole to fall into.

Jonathan Haidt was someone he had in a panel discussing the Coddling of the American Mind, where Malcolm was the moderator. Fascinating discussion that lead to another obsession with Johnathan Haidt and then to Jonathan’s, wife who is an artist/photographer.

One thing just keeps leading to another and another and I find myself wishing I could go to college or be a fly on the wall at a party where these people live — except that Malcolm seems to not attend parties.

To say the least, it makes me want to be so much more than what I am even though, as Alain de Botton said today, (So often self-confidence is dependent on the basic, but for good people, elusive premise): I’m fine as I am.

Robert Sapolsky was the first one whose videos got me trapped after finally getting a device that would play videos. I’m still listening to his lectures, interviews and speeches.

There is no end of wonderful things to learn and then try to make sense of or incorporate into my own exposed thinking in the writing that is done on Writing Spool.

Today, one of my virtual friends disclosed that he intends to quit writing since hard copy publishing has gone so out of fashion and blogging, he says, only lasts for minutes or for as long as the readers don’t get distracted by the myriad other venues available for discovery. He claims that writing is pointless. Albeit, he is writing about hard things to think about and then do and he is hoping that his writing will inspire people to do what he is hoping his writing will inspire — radical voluntary simplicity — and, as far as he can tell, they aren’t.

I found him because of the very fact that I was seeking others who were choosing to live the way he is and I am trying so hard to as well — with the least of things. So, today I made a point of commenting on his post to let him know that I was sad to hear that he is leaving our few numbers without his good leadership.

It did get me thinking about what the point is for me to continue to write online. Initially, I just wanted to make myself accountable so that the commitment to write something every day for one year would be more compelling. Truth is, numbers matter even if they are only used to gauge whether or not to bother to keep trying. But, the question still remains, why am I trying to write? Initially it’s been stated that it was because of feeling compelled to. That is still true, but who that writes wouldn’t like to eventually be really published? And, what are the chances of that? Almost none.

I’ve always believed in things growing organically. I hate being sold and don’t like to feel myself being in any way coercive. Even Patreon apps trouble me. It’s still an ad and it’s asking for money like begging. The responsibility to add incentives and extra benefits for subscribers and all the work that that implies is daunting.

I’m not afraid of work, mind. It’s just that, like my friend, it seems pointless. It’s a huge gamble.

What I am loving about this exercise in discipline is that everyday I show up, I am forced to look up words (and grammar), look into ideas, study and congeal thoughts. There are so many wonderful things to learn and ever day that this device is opened to try to write, there is more exposure to all the great things out there to think about and see.

The hardest part about it all is to not spend all day doing it — even though Malcolm Gladwell would likely advise that if anyone did want to be published, at this late stage in life, it would probably be the only hope — to spend all day doing it.

Voluntary radical simplicity means trying to grow your own food and there is a whole other world in doing that and there are holes in walls to patch as well so writing is a luxury.

For now, Writing Spool will keep on spooling for whatever merit it might have for anyone.

Shadows And Sheen

“Writing was a dream I had when I was a kid, but then I grew up.” Tim Allen’s character in Joe Somebody said that.
I don’t remember wanting to be a writer when I was a ‘kid’. I dreamed of being an artist. That was all I wanted out of life — to be an artist. All.
My parents both had talent and dabbled. My mother drew us the most wonderful paper dolls and images to embroider. My father sat with me one time to show me how to draw in perspective.
My mother recognized the passion I had and purchased a used Jon Gnagy drawing kit from a thrift store one year as a Christmas present. She couldn’t have gotten me anything that would delight me more.
Jon Gnagy was a television personality — an artist who taught — when I was a young girl and all we had was black and white TV. He was mostly just teaching how to do perspective and make shadows and sheen — so black and white was enough.
Years later, when I was in the beginning of 20s, I had a date with a handsome young man who took me up into the mountains and we stopped at the very venue where Jon Gnagy was practicing a new color concept in front of an audience there and we sat in. He was hoping to eventually broadcast it on color TV, which was prominent by that time.
I was excited to death that I was meeting one of my heroes. He was trying to overcome having become a has-been but I didn’t register it then.
Throughout his whole presentation, I was jumpy and couldn’t concentrate because I had, just before we arrived there, found a tick on my chest and kept thinking there were more — so I was fidgety in my seat.
The handsome young man and I had just been out trekking in the shrubs and my long hair had caught one, me unawares, and I had also slid down a steep hill on my butt and had rocks and sand in my pants. After finding the one tick and being aghast, I couldn’t help but think, from then on, that every little bump was a tick.
Most of what I remember about that presentations was ticks — and shaking Jon Gnagy’s hand. I was very fascinated with the concept he was trying to accomplish though and had a feeling of great admiration as I sat there worrying about ticks.
I was still wanting to be an artist. I was probably just back from a summer art school scholarship and still thinking I could be.
Being young and wanting to be an artist, I wasn’t quite aware yet that art takes all kinds of forms — but I did know that I was dying to find a way to get something that was balled up inside of me outside of me and at that time it was through drawing and painting — though I gravitated to all things creative.
When I got too balled up, sometimes I wrote — or drove in a car — once I was old enough to drive. Before I could drive, I rode my bicycle to do what I called clear the cobwebs from my mind.
Writing was a go-to for the ultimate pressure release to try to escape overwhelming emotions — so, if bike riding or driving didn’t do the trick, I wrote. I never thought anything of it, I just simply had to do it. Things came pouring out.
I would read things over again from time to time through the years and as I got old enough, most of it went in the bin because it was pitiful. I could see though that it was definitely a way to congeal thoughts and, at the least, get them out of my head.
I would eventually take a creative writing class and begin to take it more seriously. There was still a nagging need. That was in the 80s.
The only reason we may have to give it up when we grow up is because earning a living gets in the way. I was lucky to find a way to make a living and practice art, (though many wouldn’t agree), by working in the field of interior design. It was basically selling stuff, but it still used my passion and artistic muscle throughout the practicing that was required to formulate the things I needed to sell.
As it turns out, everything is about selling — so that was good practice too.
Nothing in life is a waste.
It might be a hologram though or a computer interface. We may never know.
But in the meantime, the best we can do is to use this interface to try to make the most of what we are given.
A science fiction writer will use that interface curiosity to write a sci-fi novel. It’s way out of my league — though I am immensely curious. Curiosity is another one of the necessary ingredients to finding a way to make whatever this interface is make sense to enough of a degree to get by while we’re in it.
Jon Gnagy may never know how important he was to me when art was a dream I had when I was a kid. I tried to let him know a little the time that I met him. What an odd event that that chance encounter happened.
Not so odd if this is a game we’re in after all and we are at the controls. Now to learn better how to write the story line and draw my avatars.

“I Love Greta”

One man decided to let gorse grow and spent thirty years, against naysayers saying he was crazy — letting nature have its way — and now there is a forest of native vegetation where’s he’s trodden ever so lightly and where others said it would never happen.

He does as little intervention as he can and lets nature do what nature does best — fix the damage humans do — if it is left to its own devices.

He’s spent a great deal of his life doing it too and does it with fully-committed passion.

He walks or rides his bike because he believes we can’t keep using fossil fuel no matter how much more we try to sequester.

He clearly walks the talk and hasn’t spent a minute worrying about what others think or if any of them want to come along.

He just does it.

He wants all other living things to have what they need too and this is one of his main intentions.

He gets up and has a certain routine in the morning — the same thing every day and then takes off for work which is somewhere on the huge preserve. Sometimes he walks two hours just to get there and then two hours back and has another evening routine — the same thing every night — and then does all the paperwork and any writing after that.

He lives and breathes this.

Are all the ones that are saying “I love Greta” doing what they could be?

 

Mother May I

“Whatever can we do about it”, she asked as if someone might have an answer. Everyone was offering alarm but no one seemed to have a solution to the problem they were displaying.

“The sky is falling,” again, they were saying. “Duck and cover and run for your life. Leave your freedom far behind you because it won’t be of any value once you get to where you are going and be sure to go where you won’t have any enemies but be sure to take a gun in case some bad guys follow.”

They might want your food or toilet paper.

It was a somewhat rhetorical question in that she also was aware that alarm is a tool for herding and asking the question was a method of her own to use as a way of redirecting and an attempt to encourage critical thinking in lieu of flight or fighting.

Watch a herd of yaks respond to the suspicion of human presence and the value of such a tool can be made evident. Some other animals might not be afraid of humans, yet, because they haven’t gotten to know of said’s capacity for destruction and only want to ferret things out and get to know — and maybe have someone to have some fun with and play.

Humans used to be like that, able to enjoin and enjoy simple getting along and gaming.

Mother May I?

Now games are mostly digital and about escaping or running away from a reality that seems too imposing.

The herd of yak found out that running to the desert was where they were the safest because their predators wouldn’t follow that far or to those extremes of living.

She thinks, “Maybe I’ll just stay put in this nice little desert where not very many humans think it a good place for living or trying to secure what they’re eating.”

But that was fearful thinking and another place might be cooler and more conventional kinds of plants for eating could be grown.

“It does look awfully dry there. Don’t you think more ground cover would be advisable? Wouldn’t a few trees help with shading? Why won’t you bring in any outside inputs like wood chips or animal excrement? Do you think you could give up that one small issue?” her friend was asking gently, trying not to ruffle her feathers.

“Trees? Of course they would if they would grow, but I haven’t had much luck with growing them anymore than anything else and besides which, the best advice that I can find says that shade should not be depended on and plants that don’t need it are the ones that are found in the desert mostly and should be the ones that are sought out.”

Of course she was aware of the nursing strategy the desert fully engages and how some plants specifically grow under other ones but for the most part, experts in the field of desert dwelling say that trying to grow foods that otherwise can’t take the heat and dryness need to be left to area that don’t have heat and dryness — cucumbers aren’t the kind of plants that nursing kinds of desert plants are interested in to mother.

She looks out the living room window and sees several birds hopping around finding their food and hopes the stray cat misses seeing them.

Bugs.

The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles. Just as the inefficiency of a local taxi market can be “solved” with an app that bankrupts human drivers, the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade.

Humans do seem to be the problem but more because of how they think and what they think and that they don’t think very much at all it seems and if they do they think in herds.

Everyone seems to want to be rid of bugs but the birdies love to eat them. And the cat’s love to eat the birds and so on. But cats aren’t a native species — they’re another human invasion.

Are humans just bugs in the up and coming new and improved digital downloadable hologram-of-a future? Who really wants to live there and if they are a bug, couldn’t they be looked at like a good bug? As if there are good and bad ones.

“Elon Musk,” she thinks he wants to live there. “And he seems like a kind of bad bug.”

Most non-thinking kinds of people want to spray all bugs with pesticides — every kind of bug, good and bad ones — should Elon Musk be sprayed?

“September 11 is just around the corner and the herd will be throwing out meme after meme about how the herd should be thinking,” she thinks “so maybe I’ll throw this out there as a strategy to distract from conventional kinds of thinking – like trying to grow cucumbers in a desert.”

…and finally the illusion of a caring politician or a voting booth appear to now act as theatrical props like a corporate suggestion box. political actions in every country around the world after 911 attacking human rights and our ability to protect them speak for themselves…

“Mother may I, think another way?”

 

 

 

 

 

Inertia-Breaking Superhero

Nothing she was feeling about herself had any sense of congruence and things about that state of being might very well be what were causing the inertia that seemed impossible to be stopped of its tendency to keep her from changing. What outside force could come to save her?

Maybe a change in weather.

Aside from any sense of looking forward to adventures yet to come and fully knowing that she usually wouldn’t let much get in the way of proceeding henceforth, her bones and muscles weren’t behaving as they should and if she looked into a looking glass the person looking back didn’t match with the one she had in mind for being able and only seemed to serve as a reminder of all the things that lacked agreement.

Dreams have their own way of changing. The person housing them might not have much to say about the matter.

She had been dreaming of remodeling her bathroom herself — of taking out the tub and tiling all the walls so that cleaning the whole room could be arranged by spraying a hose and all the plumbing would be exposed outside the walls somehow so if they ever needed repairing again, it wouldn’t involve another complete undoing.

Some very high-end designers had designed it once in a magazine and she has been lusting after it ever since. Of course they had done it for a young and up and coming couple who had no end of money — but she had believed that with enough will and strength that she could do it for herself — someday. It would have been better to have done it sooner than this much later because uncooperative body parts were now impacting that scenario some — so the dream might have to change but only insomuch as to change how it gets done — earn enough money to pay someone else to do it. Maybe she can write a book because it doesn’t look to be like there are many other options left to make that kind of money — certainly not sewing and alterations and who would possibly consider hiring that gray lady in the mirror.

No one has to see you when you’re writing and you can be exactly who you want to in the pages of a novel.

Dreams have their own way of changing. At some points they just have to be given up completely.

There are millions and millions of people writing books or wanting to — are the odds of that success any better than winning the lotto — it doesn’t always seem to be a matter of talent. She was still “you can’t win if you don’t play” playing, so she might as well keep buying the idea of writing a novel. After all, she’d met him in a one-in-a-billion chance of meeting.

They’re all just numbers after all. Numbers that have as much chance of going this way as that.

And even though he’d come and gone like a monsoon flooding — sweeping in, pouring down, running over and leaving just as quickly as forming — and even though it was scarcely possible to remember how he had looked like the inertia-breaking superhero that he had ended up as being — nonetheless he had been.

So anything was possible — at least as possible as the changing of the weather. She might as well keep practicing — there was no way to know which way any of it would end up — if it would go this way or the other. Either way it might impact inertia and even put some or all of the other things in better or full agreement.

It was certainly better than doing nothing.

Honor Of Labor

What can only be said of something that is blue is nothing like what can be said of something that is purple or is that a lie? Purple can only be because of blue and so on through the spectrum. There are three primarily exclusive colors and if they are spun around on a wheel fast enough they make white light — that isn’t truly white. Seems that black is the only thing that can be trusted as it is the absence of any of the others when light goes missing. So the truth is there, it’s really a matter of seeing.

Wavelengths.

Isn’t it interesting that veins look blue until they are opened or pierced. As it turns out it’s a matter of how light travels through the skin. Blood is always some shade of red.

Did the submarine in the Fantastic Voyage float through red or blue blood?

What does it mean to be a blue blood? — People who stay out of the sun, people who don’t have to labor, people who set themselves apart by avoiding intermarrying Moors who had darker skin so their skin remained light and their poorly refracting red blood through their lighter skin made them look more blue in their whiteness — so they become more noble by extraction of the things that made other people lesser by their own and seemingly everyone else’s interpretation. It started in Spain.

So why does everyone want a tan or do they?

It might be a good thing to do in respect and honor of labor.