Ten years ago, on another of my blogs that’s still visible but to which I no longer post, I wrote this:
Unlike me, my father was not a man who wore his emotions on his sleeve. But he had emotions and he appreciated the poetic expression thereof. It’s interesting to me that one of his favorite poems was this one, If, by Rudyard Kipling, which in my estimation offers accolades to the suppression of emotion:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
I have no idea why I felt compelled to seek out that ten-year-old post and to re-post it here. But I did. So there you are.
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The room in my house with the best “contemplative view” is the one with big, double-pane stationary windows in need of replacement. It’s the room off the master bedroom, the room whose participation in the house’s HVAC system is tangential, at best; the ducts running to the room are small and inadequate. The room with the best “contemplative view” is the one that would be my writing retreat if its climate were more congenial. But sunlight causes it to bake, even when outside temperatures are moderate. And the windows’ heat loss during the cooler seasons is so great the room is frigid and inhospitable. For seven years, I’ve complained about the room. A few times, I’ve explored what it would cost to replace the window panes and augment the HVAC system by way of adding a mini-split. Always too expensive. A conversation with one of my brothers yesterday afternoon prompted me to think again about rehabilitating that room. If I assume my life expectancy will be only half of what I’ve been banking on, I could pay for the room’s upgrade and still die with a few dollars in the bank. All other things being equal, of course. No hyper-inflation. No major illness or incapacitation for which Medicare and supplementary insurance would not pay. No other unplanned major expenditures; like the oldest HVAC unit cratering and requiring replacement. Hmm. It’s worth serious consideration. After I get all of my late wife’s IRAs, etc. straightened out. After the bureaucracy of death has been sliced into shreds. Hmmm.
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I drove into town yesterday to ship two small boxes to two friends. The contents per box were worth, maybe, four dollars. The cost to ship each one was roughly thirteen dollars. Something is awry with this situation. High volume shipping to low numbers of addresses may be the solution. I need to find a way to ship massive amounts of the same stuff to a single address for distribution. But I wonder whether truck shipping would actually be less costly? Who knows? Someone is bound to know. But will they reveal their secrets? Will they? And who are they?
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After my shipping surprise, I went to a local festival of sorts. It was one of several going on in and around Hot Springs Village. The one I visited included a booth for the Village Writers’ Club, which has attempted to self-immolate during the pandemic (the Club, not the booth). The Writers’ Club is the reason I went; actually, an invitation by a friend to drop by is why I went. I’ve lost most, if not all, of my interest in the Writers’ Club. I just don’t have much interest in engaging in communication with other writers. Well, not with most other writers. Locally, I mean. Only a few of them take writing sufficiently seriously to realize it’s not necessary to talk about writing all the time. And only a few of them realize taking themselves too seriously as writers is akin to unearned egotism. “Writing ain’t no special gift from god, dad-gummit!” Someone must have said that, because it’s about as true as anything I’ve read or heard said in a long time. But I digress. The little crafts festival was small but modestly interesting. I could have spent some money there, had I wanted to fill my house with tchotchkes that I would eventually discard. I have other, more intriguing means of throwing away money on material possessions that have no intrinsic or extrinsic value. Despite the fact that these little festivals are monuments to minor creativity and major avarice, they can be fun. I used to enjoy going with my wife, looking at everything and buying little or nothing. I’m glad somebody buys stuff, though; otherwise, we would have had nowhere to go and nothing to look at (in the way of festivals, anyway). Where the hell was I going with this paragraph? No telling. But it’s certain I took a wrong turn somewhere.
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Late in the day yesterday, I went to Clampit’s Country Kitchen , where I bought some hot and spicy beef jerky, a jalapeño sausage, and a one-pound New York strip steak. The steak will make two enormous meals for me one day. This morning, I’ll cut it in half and freeze one half. I’ll smoke and/or grill the other half within the next few days, treating myself to an increasingly rare opportunity to be fiercely carnivorous. I grilled the sausage last night, along with jalapeños and onions. A sliced tomato finished the meal. I did not need to buy food yesterday; I just felt like it. I haven’t have big steak in the house in what seems like a year or more. And that may be the case, though I won’t bet on it.
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This afternoon, I’ll visit my next door neighbors for wine and conversation. We’ve talked about having little gathering at one anothers’ houses for years. Only recently have we begun to execute our intents. They come here, then I go there, then they come here, etc. Today, it’s my turn to go there. Though when I spoke to her yesterday, she said I need not bring anything, I may take a bottle of wine. Or maybe not. Maybe, when we host, we should host: the place, the chairs, the wine, the munchies, the whole ball of wax. Yes, that’s it. That’s neighborly hostitude, isn’t it? It is, indeed.
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I am not even remotely interested in doing paperwork today, but I suspect I will do some, anyway. I have to get in the habit of keeping my financial paperwork up-to-date. And that includes documenting and organizing receipts. I will do that, if for no other reason, to honor my wife’s long-time practice of knowing where every single cent is spent and where every nickel’s worth of income comes from. After I do that, though (or maybe before), I will consider tackling some other projects:
- Vacuuming the car and making its interior more or less liveable
- Neatening the garage and discarding unnecessary “stuff”
- Sweeping the garage floor and cleaning up the “workspace” behind the garage
- Making the guest bed (I washed all the sheets and towels in the house yesterday; everything’s been finished except making the guest bed…I feel so productive!)
- Pressure-washing the deck, removing massive amounts of pollen
Who am I kidding? I’m not going to pressure-wash the deck today. I hope I get around to sweeping the garage. I may just loll about on the deck, inhaling pollen until my lungs can take no more.
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Later in the week, I’m going to have a dermatology APN burn or freeze or slice pieces of my flesh, leaving what’s remaining as smooth as possible. I’m afraid my geezer skin will not permit truly soft and smooth skin, but I hope for an improvement. My hands, my face, even my toes, need some work. A lot of work, I think. A friend’s blog tagline (attributed to Suzuki Roshi) on a blog to which my friend hasn’t posted for eight years, is “You are Perfect as you are and you could use a little help.” I like that. My skin is perfect as it is and could use a complete replacement.
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