Two Hundred Thirty-Six

Posted on August 24, 2015 by John Swinburn

I read that “meditation is a conscious effort to change the way the mind works.” At this very moment, I am sure that is what is required.

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Make Me One with Everything

Posted on August 23, 2015 by John Swinburn

Before today, the last time I attended a church service was on June 1, 2014. We visited the Unitarian Universalist Village Church (UUVC) on that day to hear “Being Good Without God: Coming Out as a Humanist.” I enjoyed the program. I thought about going back to the UUVC. But most of the programs subsequently announced in the local paper did not hold the same draw as that topic did. Until today. Today’s program was promoted as “A Buddha for Everyone,” and was a conversation about Buddhism led by Eileen Oldag and Tom Neale, a married couple who participate in the Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock. We read about the program and decided to attend. It was interesting and (pardon the pun) enlightening.

Both of them grew up Catholic. Both of them left the Catholic Church when they could no longer buy the supernatural aspects of the religion and could not accept the fundamental premise (according to them) that Catholicism requires one to believe that people are fundamentally evil and must be “redeemed.” And both of them had been involved in Unitarian Universalism before migrating further away, to Buddhism.

Their description of the Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock suggests to me that it’s the sort of place I could find a “spiritual” home, though I don’t know that I require a spiritual home. Practices of Buddhism, though, might well find a home in me. Meditation. Exploration of the four noble truths and eightfold path holds a great deal of interest. Their assurances that belief in reincarnation need not be an element of Buddhism, depending on which approach one might decide to follow, appealed to me. The simple fact that the Buddha is not revered as a god but, instead, as a man who discovered fundamental truths of human nature through thought and observation, appeals to me.

Next step: I want to get my hands on a copy of Buddhism for Dummies, which I gather is  a well-written book that explains, clearly, what Buddhism is, what it is not, and what components each path within Buddhism follows.

We noticed again today, our second visit fourteen months, that several members of the Village Writers’ Club attend the UUVC; we saw Myra, Marlene, Larry, Brenda, and Elizabeth today, a significant percentage of the club’s members.  Intriguing.

And I liked the way today’s program was introduced, with this joke:

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza joint and says, “Make me one with everything.”

After the pie is delivered to him, he hands the cashier a $50 bill and waits to receive his change. The cashier just looks at him, without making any attempt to return any money to the Dalai Lama. Finally, he says, “Oh. The change comes from within.”

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Bald-Headed Assessment

Posted on August 23, 2015 by John Swinburn

I awoke quite early this morning, long before the sun would begin to nudge the darkness aside, replacing it with smudges of grey fog-laden daylight.

I made a cup of coffee and held it in my hands. Too warm, I thought to myself, for a day like this.  As I passed a mirror in the hallway, I glanced at the image of an old man; wrinkled, fleshy face, uncombed long grey hair suggestive of neglect and disdain, and a body clearly ignored and unpracticed in exercise.

Something had to change, I decided, something then and there. I couldn’t do much about my face, nor about the shape of my body, at least not immediately, but I could rid myself of that ridiculous fur atop my head.

Beginning with a pair of scissors, I cut away as much of that fibrous bristle as I could, only patches of the mane remaining.  Next, I drenched the remaining hair on my head with hot water, dried it slightly, and smeared shaving cream all over my scalp.

I stood for a moment, staring at the stranger in the mirror. The old wrinkled face wouldn’t be changed by this, I thought, but at least I’ll get to see what my head looks like with no hair to conceal it.

Pulling the razor across my scalp in repetitive motions, I could feel the blade skirt the skin, the way it feels when I’m beginning to shave my face; the hairs on my face catch on the razor for a fraction of a second before the blade slices them off at skin level.

I found that, just like I have to approach the whiskers on my face and neck from different directions, I had to drag the razor across my scalp in perpendicular paths to assure a smooth shave.  The hardest part was the lower part of the back of my head and upper neck; I had a hard time reaching.  But I got it done.  And then I rinsed my naked scalp and dried it with  a thick towel and stood to look in the mirror again.

I didn’t like what I saw. A pasty grey and beige cap seemed to have been sewn onto my head, concealing the skull and brain. That was not my skin, was it? That expanse of bumps and ridges and ugly pallor; was that me?

The deed was done, though, wasn’t it? What were my options? I could either learn from my snap decision that snap decisions sometimes go horribly wrong or I could spin time backwards to a point before this horrible experience in self-mutilation took place.

I chose the latter.

I awoke quite early this morning, long before the sun would begin to nudge the darkness aside, replacing it with smudges of grey fog-laden daylight.

I made a cup of coffee and held it in my hands. Too warm, I thought to myself, for a day like this.  As I passed a mirror in the hallway, I glanced at the image of an old man; wrinkled, fleshy face, uncombed long grey hair suggestive of neglect and disdain, and a body clearly ignored and unpracticed in exercise.

I have to do something about my appearance, I said to myself. I have to fix this. This bastard needs some repair and refurbishment. The question remains as to what repair and refurbishment I will pursue.  Perhaps I’ll shave my head; see what that looks like.

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Two Hundred Thirty-Five

Posted on August 23, 2015 by John Swinburn

If you cry when others don’t, over things that don’t matter to the world around you, look in the mirror and thank the sun and the stars you are not of the world around you.

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Mermaidery

Posted on August 22, 2015 by John Swinburn

Almost a year ago, I sketched out the beginnings of a story involving a young mermaid who, ignoring her mother’s warning, got involved with a two-legged land creature. The story was vague and without distinctive features, aside from the mermaid and her indiscretions. Like most of my stories, it was (or would have been) easy to follow. The reader would not need to think hard about the actions taking place; they would be clear and unambiguous. That’s one of the differences between my mermaid story and one I read recently.

Do Not Save the Ferocious, Save the Tender, is a gripping tale (written by Ramona Ausubel and published by Oxford American, a literary magazine and its sponsoring organization based in Little Rock). From the outset, I found it difficult to follow, but I became enmeshed in the story in short order and could not put it down. The piece requires thought—a great deal of thought—to get through and then it requires more to process the thoughts that took place while reading it.  I like stories that challenge me. This one did. And that’s what led me to write this post.

Much of what I have written and, indeed, much of what I am writing now, is plot-driven. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think I could improve my writing by focusing, instead, on deciding the message I want to deliver to the reader and, then, determine how to layer the plot in such a way as to require the reader to strip the plot  back, layer by layer, to fully comprehend the message. It’s a challenge to the writer, for sure, and it would be a challenge for the reader. The danger in writing in this way is that the plot must engage the reader and stand on its own, even if the reader does not want to, or cannot, comprehend the deeper message.

I now wonder whether a mermaid story is the right way to go about this. Ah, what the hell! I’ll continue to write straightforward mermaid stories because I rather enjoy straightforward mermaids.

Posted in Writing | 2 Comments

Two Hundred Thirty-Four

Posted on August 22, 2015 by John Swinburn

I stumbled across a Facebook post recently by a woman from Tibet, a woman who grew up in the Buddhist tradition. In the post, she recalled that her grandmother prayed for all sentient beings. I wish I could ask her, or her grandmother, about the prayer. I suspect it was not praying in the same sense that we hear about prayers in the Christian realm.

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Longing

Posted on August 21, 2015 by John Swinburn

It happens more frequently now than it did ten years ago. Ten years ago, it would occur every three or four months and last for, maybe, two or three days. Then, I could return to “normal” for another few months.

I don’t know whether I have changed or the world to which I am responding has changed. Maybe both. Whatever the cause, it happens more often now. “It” is a deep longing shed all connections with society and its ills. I’m not referring to society in the generic sense here; I’m referring to everyone outside my microscopic sphere. I want to be alone with my tiny tribe, cut off from the macabre world in which every topic foments debate among rabid people foaming at the mouth to attack their adversaries. I want to cut the ties that bind me to people (like me) who rage and rail against perceived injustices that, examined closely without political or personal self-interest in the mix, should matter to no one. I want, or need, to sever the connections that allow me to feed myself a steady diet of trivial and not-so-trivial information that turns my brain into a pressure cooker filled with steam and nails.

Ten years ago, the instances of feeling the desire to detach from the world seemed to be less critical. They seemed mostly desires, rather than needs. Today, they’re not only more frequent, they’re more important, at least they feel more important, as if failing to disconnect with the world might have the effect of blowing a circuit.

Fortunately, my personal forms of meditation, if that’s what they are, enable me to withdraw for just a while. Ideally, though, I’d take a few days—maybe a week—in a remote place, a place with cool nights and clear, dark skies where I could see the Milky Way, to relax and decompress. No phone, no internet, no television, no radio. A place without the world as I know it intruding on my thoughts.

I don’t want to know which presidential candidate said what. I have no need to know that a mother’s breakdown led her to kill her children. I don’t want to know how a drug lord escaped or was allowed to walk away from a prison. I don’t want to hear or participate in arguments about whether humankind will perish when the ice caps melt or when terrorists launch nuclear attacks.

Peace. I just want to think about and talk about and participate in peace and peacefulness. I want to think about and hear about and feel love, to let the concept roll around in my head enough, to give thoughts about it enough time, to actually understand and appreciate it.

I miss my youth. I miss being overwhelmed at the beauty of sunrise after fishing all night long from a pier on Corpus Christi Bay. I miss wading and shrimping and fishing in those waters, when the odors of salt water and fish and petroleum distillates from nearby refineries all seemed natural. Those memories flood my brain when I feel the need to escape the crush of the world I live in. I get homesick for a home that’s long since gone, a place I can’t visit because it’s not the place I need, it’s the time I spent there, the experiences I felt there.

I’m afraid a road trip to the Texas coast would just add to the sense of loss and longing I feel when I am overwhelmed by the world around me and want to get away.  A night in the desert might do it, or maybe a lifetime on an island.

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Two Hundred Thirty-Three

Posted on August 21, 2015 by John Swinburn

Dignity is more about helping others cope with tragedy than it is about coping with tragedy oneself. I learned that from President Jimmy Carter.

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¿Son Otras Inquisiciones?

Posted on August 20, 2015 by John Swinburn

A year or so ago, I revived an old idea of mine, one I had conceived years ago. I had not acted upon the idea because the cost to do so was beyond my financial means at the time. But the advent of social media and its stunning successes in business development and marketing success suggested the time was right last August to give it a try. I believed the idea, which no one else had latched onto, had legs.

I had conceived of, and a year ago decided to establish, a series of magazines dedicated to an expansive enterprise which had not received serious support from the publishing world.

This series of magazines were to be modeled after other, highly successful, publications that examined current trends in specific fields of endeavor such as psychology, medicine, adoption, cancer treatment, sailing, and so forth. The commonality among those magazines was that each contained the word “today” in their titles.

All of these real-world periodicals explored new developments in their respective disciplines.  Inasmuch as a number of respectable publishing houses and their marketing experts had seen the value in such magazines, I felt confident that my idea would be successful if I followed their proven strategies.

Hence, I decided to form a holding company that would dedicate itself to the advancement of specialists in a market that was, at least, under-served and might even be considered un-served by the publishing world: crime.

I reasoned that practitioners of various forms of crime might find similar resources to be valuable to their endeavors.  I decided my holding company would be called Criminality Today, and would begin by publishing a quarterly conspectus of advances in the following fields of endeavor:

  • auto theft;
  • home invasion;
  • mugging;
  • bank robbery;
  • white collar crime; and
  • identity theft

As you might imagine, though, my ideas generated nothing but ridicule. Entrepreneurs often find their brilliant ideas encounter cool receptions. My experience was even worse; the reception was frigid! One of my friends, a man I had expected would wholeheartedly support my new enterprise, said this to me:

“It’s not that your plan is so utterly amoral—I mean, I understand the reality that business and morality are mutually exclusive—it’s that you’re so damn upfront about it! Nobody is going to advertise in those magazines. Nobody is going to subscribe. At least pretend you’re helping the common guy by alerting the public how criminals succeed in doing their dirty deeds. That way, you’ll look like you’re doing a good deed, but in fact you’ll be passing ‘how-to information along to your target demographic.”

This was from a guy who reconditioned flood damaged cars and sold them as new.  Well, he did know his stuff.

That notwithstanding, though, and the other taunts I heard from everyone I told, I decided to forge ahead, beginning with online journals:

Auto Theft Today, targeted toward the professional who finds it increasingly difficult to keep pace with technological developments in automotive theft deterrent systems;
Home Invasion Today, a magazine for the discerning criminal who needs to know the latest tips and tricks for avoiding occupied dwellings during his or her professional undertakings;
Mugging Today, aimed at the more violent offender who wishes to keep abreast of current practices in illicit crimes against persons;
Bank Robbery Today, a hard-hitting practical how-to guide that features monthly interviews with professionals who have retired from their careers (they got caught) and with some of the more astute players who continue to astonish the critics;
White Collar Crime Today, a must-read periodical for white collar criminals confronting a topsy-turvy world in which successful white collar criminals must also be politicians, and vice-versa, WCCT features interviews with well-known white collar criminals whose political connections spared them the indignities of prison;
Identity Theft Today, designed for the sophisticated identity theft professional who understands the need to keep abreast of fast-developing new deterrent and facilitation technologies.

The success of the endeavor speaks for itself. To date, each of the now one-year-old publications has a paid circulation of more than one million.

To date, I have taken on the role of editor, publisher, director of advertising sales, director of circulation, and chief financial officer. As one might imagine, those multiple roles are taking their toll on me, so I have decided to  engage a staff to assist me.

I am now seeking experienced editors for each of the publications. Applicants should have impeccable editorial credentials, a strong work ethic, and experience in the fields of endeavor appropriate to the publication for which they are seeking to serve. I am seeking advertising sales people, as well; they will be paid on commission and must be willing to sign a code of standards and ethics.

To apply, send a PDF file of a series of pages that show your name, Social Security number, full address, credit card numbers and corresponding expiration dates and PINs, and a signed blank bank check to, info@criminalitytoday.com.

I was going to continue writing this, getting into describing the advertisers, but I’ve grown tired. Plus, some of the advertisers I was considering might not find it amusing to find their ads described in this piece. 😉

Posted in Fiction, Humor, Writing | 1 Comment

Two Hundred Thirty-Two

Posted on August 20, 2015 by John Swinburn

Above me, the skies turned grey and turbulent, roiling clouds drinking in moisture from the surrounding air, behaving like an inveterate alcoholic, sucking in atmospheric humidity as if it were liquor.

Suddenly, the visible turbulence of the clouds turned to a solid mass of dull dark grey. Growling claps of thunder, bone-jarring in their power, ripped the concentrated sound from the sky, smashing it against the earth below. Eardrums burst, windows shattered, wolves howled, and the moon overhead cracked into a million pieces  and fell to earth like confetti.

The core of the earth bubbled ferociously, unleashing volcanic eruptions as powerful as the sun, shredding the earth’s mantle and ripping tectonic plates apart like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

That, my friends, is purple prose.

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Kayakery

Posted on August 19, 2015 by John Swinburn

My sister-in-law bought a kayak the other day. She has a new friend—who lives on a lake nearby—who kayaks. The friend invited my sister-in-law to go kayaking with her recently. Next thing I know, my sister-in-law is crazy for kayaking.

I think I’d love kayaking. I’ve never been, but I’ve wanted to for years.  Our next door neighbors have kayaks, too (in addition to a very nice pontoon boat). They take their kayaks to a nearby lake and put in at the boat ramp.  Now, if I had a kayak, and a kayak-correct-paddle, and a kayak carrier for the car, and another car so my wife (who I gather has no interest in kayaking) would have transportation while I was off kayaking, I’d probably do a bit of kayaking the way my neighbors do it. Ideally, I’d have a friend with whom I could go kayaking, but I’m not a particularly sociable guy, so that might be more of an issue than the kayak. You can buy a kayak.

The season for kayaking, I think, is summer. And maybe into fall. And late spring. Inasmuch as we’re into late summer, I think it might be best for me to wait to seriously explore, certainly to indulge, my interest in kayakery. A delay will give me the opportunity to shed much of my body weight before late spring next year so I will not be in as great a danger of sinking a kayak, were I to get in it.

Posted in Just Thinking | 2 Comments

Two Hundred Thirty-One

Posted on August 19, 2015 by John Swinburn

For reasons I do not understand, but probably could if I engaged in sufficient self-reflection, I often think of some of the lyrics to a 1968 Jefferson Airplane tune written by Grace Slick:

Lather was thirty years old today,
And Lather came foam from his tongue.
He looked at me eyes wide and plainly said,
Is it true that I’m no longer young?

But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do,
To lie about nude in the sand,
Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps,
And thrashing the air with his hands.

I do know this. The age at which one wonders whether any given birthday milestone “is still young” increases annually up to, and including, sixty-one. I suspect it continues forever.

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Follow Your Dream, Dingo

Posted on August 18, 2015 by John Swinburn

People who are quick to condemn, quick to attack, quick to blame, quick to demand redress for grievances, real or imagined, should be quick to apologize when circumstances turn out to be different from what their paranoia initially suggested.

But “should” is not a commandment.

Our fabulous neighbors invited us to join them last night for the last Hot Springs Concert Band outdoor concert for the season. We had a very nice time, listening to good music, people-watching, and chatting. I really enjoy casual outings with no subsequent obligations. Maybe I’m not very social. “Maybe?”

Back to the issue at hand.  Before enjoying our neighbors’ generosity, I spent time reading and responding to emails that suggested I (or someone) had insinuated a volunteer was incapable of performing he volunteer role. I devoted more time to the issue than it warranted. Then, later this evening, I remembered what I told my wife: “I am tired of offering myself and my talents, hearing joyous responses suggesting unwavering support, then encountering huge swaths of nothing.”

I need to remember. Don’t let yourself get snared again. Write. Explore options for getting audiences. Ignore politics and the attendant BS. Let them wallow in their juices if that’s what they want to do. Follow your dream, dingo.

Posted in Gullibility, Lies/disinformation, Writing | 2 Comments

Two Hundred Thirty

Posted on August 18, 2015 by John Swinburn

The man’s words came from my brain.

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

~ Stephen King

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Abstractions

Posted on August 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

All of us are abstractions, cast in an impermeable mixture of sand and cement of our own making.

We’re parodies of ourselves, fabricated partly out of pieces of the way we look in the mirror and partly from scraps of others’ perceptions of who we are. We construct images from oddments and orts, fashion a glue from wishes and tears and memories, and then, finally, we step gingerly into the mold that fits the form we built and allow ourselves to harden.

How odd that our abstractions become concrete-hard. Isn’t abstract the opposite of concrete? Or is an abstraction a distortion of reality?

Looking inward, we see the definitions depend on who’s doing the looking.

 

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Recollections of Writing

Posted on August 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

I spent the better part of the day yesterday reading posts from an old blog I had been able to restore from a backup file. Either I’d forgotten I’d created the backup or had tried to restore it unsuccessfully in the past and had given up. Yesterday, though, I was able to recover it.

I started the blog in July 2005 and abandoned it in August 2008, writing 1,152 posts during that time.  Almost no one read the blog, which is what led me, at least in part, to give it up. Returning to it yesterday, I am glad it didn’t have much of an audience. I wrote a large percentage of the posts as political diatribes, my abundant loathing of George Bush in full view and my nascent conclusion that only revolution could cure the ills he wrought informing many of my rants.  Much of the unvarnished rage I wrote was awash with vulgarities flung at whatever was the subject of my discontent. I regularly excoriated politics, religion, materialism, and myself. I’d like to think the rage has cooled considerably since then, though the molten heat of my emotions still gets the better of me from time to time. Some of what I wrote deserves to be expunged from the historical record; I was guilty of some pretty lousy writing when I let my temper control the keyboard.

Yet, I discovered yesterday, there are plenty of pearls hidden among the swine. I enjoyed reading about trips my wife and I took during those years. Tears welled up as I experienced, again, emotions I could write about then when they were so raw.

I discovered, too, that some of my writing was pretty damn good, though all of it would need a good, hard edit to make it worthy of publication.  I also found that some of what I wrote during those three years has found its way into things I’ve written since. Apparently, I had saved Word files of some of my posts and used them, subsequently, to write posts for this and a couple of my other blogs that are still viewable. I rarely visit the others and I post to them even less frequently.

The best part of successfully restoring the old blog, though, is that it gives me plenty of material to work with in creating a compilation of stories and essays that I might combine with more recent writing to compile a publishable “mass.” It’s going to be a lot of work, but may be worth it, at least to me. I find it easier to thumb through a book than to dig through old blog posts.

Posted in Memories, Politics, Rant, Writing | 2 Comments

Two Hundred Twenty-Nine

Posted on August 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

At some point, your rage will simply boomerang and you will have wasted all your energy on a brutal attack on yourself.

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Eye-Opening Memory

Posted on August 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

Today, I was able to restore an old blog I once deleted. It’s a long story, not worth re-telling, but what is worth telling is that I found a post I treasured from the day I wrote it. I hated that I had lost it; I deleted the blog in a fit of self -loathing rage.  But, today, I found it.

Here it is, a post from July 16, 2006. 

An Eye-Opening Experience

We are the proud owners of two hopelessly damaged and tired old windows, one that miraculously still has all its panes of glass, the other which is missing not only all its glass, but some of its structure. They’re precisely what I had in mind. Old wooden windows that, with a bit of paint & whimsy, can be made into points of interest for what I hope will evolve into a funky & inviting backyard.

I could have spent days and enormous sums of money at the Orr-Reed Wrecking Company salvage yard, if I had time and money to spend.

Orr-Reed Wrecking Company is in the dark-side of Dallas, a part of the city that the people in city hall and the folks who foster tourism avoid talking about. It is an area gripped by horrendous poverty. People in that part of Dallas eke out a living by selling scrap metal and found items or working for people who do. In that dark-side of Dallas, homeless and almost-homeless people make do with what they can scrape from the streets. There’s no doubt a fair amount of drug dealing down there, as well, but I think that it’s populated primarily by people who are just deeply down on their luck or who never had a chance. They’re people who have learning disabilities, alcohol dependencies, or drug addictions. Or, they’re people who didn’t have the chance to get an education or who decided, after looking at their options, they would rather not mold themselves around the expectations of a society that discounts large segments of its population. This part of Dallas is home to people who I can’t understand because I’ve never experienced what they have experienced. I’d like to understand what their lives are like, but I’m not willing to voluntarily go through what they go through to experience it. Understanding is important to me, but I guess it’s not important enough for me to make the kind of sacrifice I would need to make to achieve it.

Most people I know would be uncomfortable wandering through Orr-Reed Wrecking Company. I have to admit that I was uncomfortable the first time I went there, and maybe still am to some extent. The people who work there define diversity.

Aside from the black men in dirty white t-shirts who stream back and forth across the street in front of the building and the Mexican workers who scurry around like ants from building to building, the first person I see who is connected to the business is a middle-aged white guy, smoking a cigarette and smiling behind the front desk. He’s there as you enter the front door of the decrepit, m old building that looks for all the world like it is about to collapse around you.

The next person is a black man, probably in his twenties or thirties, smiling widely to reveal only a few teeth, his arms bent and small, victims of a birth defect. The birth defect notwithstanding, he has an amazing prowess at thumbing through a pad of paper to find whatever it is the customer to whom he is talking wanted. He’s pleasant and seems completely oblivious to the fact that his appearance might be jolting to people like me, people who don’t often see the crustier side of our nice, comfortable worlds.

As we wander out back, in the open-air behind the building, we encounter several more Mexican men, Spanish speakers all, who are busily engaged in jobs like pulling nails from old boards and stacking the boards neatly into shelves that I can only describe as the sort I used to see in old lumber yards when I would travel around with my father. These are not the Home Depot metal mega-shelves; these are shelves that are made of the very lumber they are meant to hold and they are solid as a rock. Beneath the stacks of boards, on the face of the shelves, the nominal sizes of the boards are marked in dark permanent markers.

There are more black men, each of whom seems to have a job to do, scurrying all around the salvage yard. Everyone seems to have responsibilities in specific sections…a vast area of doors of every type, size, and description has its group, the windows section, full of wooden, metal, plastic, and combination windows in every size and condition has its group, and so on.

I remember from visiting the place years ago that open-toed shoes are inappropriate here. There’s too much broken glass and sharp metal protuberances and too many nails and other sharp objects laying around to risk walking in open-toed shoes. Before going to the place, I advised my wife to put on something beside sandals.

We wandered through the place and found some windows I wanted, but I did not recall what to do with them; they were not priced. I did not recall how to get them priced or who to ask. I set them aside and we wandered through the rest of the place, taking it all in. Then, I went back inside where the nice white guy was smoking and he asked if I had seen Alberto; not knowing who Alberto was, I said I did not know. He said Alberto was a Mexican guy in a white cowboy hat; the white guy led me outside, where he quickly found Alberto and told Alberto that I needed some windows priced. I led Alberto to the windows and he offered a price almost as a question, but I considered it fair and did not attempt to negotiate, I just said “that’s fair, I’ll buy them” and he picked them up and walked out the front gate and asked, in a very heavy accent, whether the truck he was standing in front of was mine. I explained that I only had my car, but I thought they would fit in the trunk. After some adjustments, they did, and I thanked Alberto, who walked back through the gate where I had first seen him. I then went back in the front door of the place and explained to nice white guy that Alberto gave me a price on the windows and that I was buying them, but first wanted to know the price of some bird houses we had seen while wandering the salvage yard.

Earlier, as we were wandering through the yard, after having selected our windows and setting them aside, we came across a bunch of birdhouses, all similar in shape and size but each of which had unique characteristics. They were all made of scraps of various sorts and were decorated with numbers, fasteners of various types, bits & pieces of hardware attached to them, etc. They were very interesting and attractive and my wife was very interested. I asked nice white guy the price and he said they were all sold. They are made for Wisteria magazine, he said, which buys all they can make. If there are any available, he said, they would be ones with black roofs and they would be $75 each, he said; the magazine doesn’t buy the ones with black roofs. He said Wisteria magazine sells them for $229. Nice white guy showed us an article from the Dallas Morning News (I think) about the old black guy who makes these bird houses and has been doing so for years. He also showed us a copy, in a plastic protector, of Wisteria magazine, with photos of bird houses that showed the price at $229 each. We went back to where we had seen them and found a couple with black roofs. My wife selected one and said she wanted to buy it. Nice white guy was happy to accommodate us and offered us a certificate of authenticity, which reinforced what he had already told us: that Mr. N.L. Jones, the old black guy who builds them for Orr-Reed, had been making them for years and that he has worked for Orr-Reed for more than 30 years. The certificate goes on to say that custom models of the bird houses sit in front of some Razoos Restaurants (a Cajun-styled restaurant, I assume a chain, with several in the D/FW area), and that Mr. Jones and his birdhouses were featured on a segment of Texas Tales on Dallas Channel 8. Nice white guy handed me an article, from the Dallas Morning News about Mr. Jones, that I found interesting. The article says the writer asked him how old he was and he replied “about 60.” It goes on to say that, later, he “stopped counting at 75.” Another piece says he was 85 at the time the article was written. Nice white guy said we would normally have been able to meet Mr. Jones, but his wife just died and her funeral was being held today (yesterday, Saturday). “You should come by to meet him sometime,” nice white guy says, “he’d appreciate meeting someone who likes his birdhouses.”

As we were paying the birdhouse and old windows and chatting with nice white guy, a woman came in behind us and nice white guy asked if he could help her. “You’ve got to, yes. I have some things here that I need to get rid of.” I started to move aside so she could move up closer, but nice white guy said no, don’t, take as much time as you like, and he moved around the counter behind us and talked to her. I wasn’t paying close attention, but picked up enough to realize that this lady was in need of money and she had some odds & ends to sell. Nice white guy went behind the counter to the cash register and pulled out some bills; not sure of the denominations or number, and gave them to her. She thanked him profusely and left. As soon as she was out of earshot, he said, “Now what am I going to do with this? I don’t even know what it is.” He held up a piece of very pretty, very decorated cloth, to which was attached descriptive information. A closer inspection revealed that she had brought in upholstery fabric samples from a fine custom furniture showroom in Dallas. I commented that someone could make some pretty decorative accent pieces with the stuff and he said to my wife, “if you like any of them, take them, take as many as you like, no charge.” My wife thanked him and picked up two rich Burgundy samples.

It occurred to me while we were wandering around the place that, while I made a point of saying “hello” to everyone I encountered, most of them seemed to divert their eyes when they responded. The black guys, in particular, would say “how ya doing?” to me, but didn’t look at me. Their demeanors were not subservient, by any means. Rather, they seemed almost like they wanted to make clear that they were not to be messed with, but were willing to acknowledge my presence. I’m not sure whether there’s anything there, but it was interesting.

After we left, I commented to my wife that I imagine much of the economy in that part of Dallas is a cash economy and no small part of it must involve transactions such as that we had just seen, where someone is paid a small amount of money for something that is, for all intents and purposes, worthless. I don’t know the guy’s motives, but I appreciated his actions. The lady needed money, the guy gave her some. She ‘sold’ him the samples and left with her dignity intact. He had, of course, just made $75 on selling a birdhouse that had been made entirely with scrap, so he may have been in a jolly mood, but I suspect that he was participating in an economy that requires such acts of kindness.

As we were leaving, I spied a barbecue grill across the street. A black guy was turning meat on it as smoke billowed up around him. My first thought was to buy lunch there. There was no sign we could see, though, and my wife said it was probably lunch for the workers and it probably wasn’t ready yet. That signaled to me that she was not interested. And, she was probably right. But it made me think of the NPR series, Hidden Kitchens, and I was tempted to try to learn more about who was cooking and for whom. Not then, though; it was apparent I would need to do that on my own. But it was getting to be time for lunch, albeit a somewhat early lunch, and so my wife and I talked about where to go. We were in an area of town we rarely get to; we immediately agreed it would be an opportunity lost if we failed to try a place in the neighborhood. My wife, who is always prepared, had brought along a copy of an article about the best hamburgers in Dallas. The winner of a series of head-to-head competitions was a place we had never heard of, Wingfield’s, and it just so happened it is located in this part of Dallas. We decided to go for it. So that’s where we went. I’ll write about it later, maybe today. But for now, I need to finish my rapidly-cooling coffee and rest my fingers.

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The Road

Posted on August 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

I drive that same damn road, that dusty stretch of
decayed asphalt my father drove when he was the age
I am now. But he had a twelve-year-old son back then.
The road is in a different place, a different state,
but I drive it every day, looking for the same cross street
he tried to find, the side road that might take me someplace
else, someplace the pavement isn’t so full of mistakes,
somewhere fewer shards of sharp and unyielding
memories are embedded in the roadway.  A place where
the sidewalks aren’t just broken and brittle scabs,
unhealed wounds hiding worn footpaths leading nowhere.
He was looking for a place where the car’s tires,
spinning like the face of an unfriendly clock,
could take him back to twists and turns in the road
that didn’t feel as final as the deadman’s curve ahead.

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Two Hundred Twenty-Eight

Posted on August 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

I recently skimmed an article that described a room (or was it simply a device?) in which all external noise was filtered out. The only sounds a person inside could hear were the sounds of his own body; heart beating, blood flowing through his veins, air rushing through his lungs, and so forth. The experience was said to be maddening; no one could last more than fifteen minutes listening to nothing but the sound of one’s own life taking place. I sit here, in the middle of the night, and I wonder how different that experience is from my experience at this very moment, this very quiet moment.

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Feel Forward

Posted on August 15, 2015 by John Swinburn

“Pay it forward” has become a popular feel-good endeavor of late. Not a day goes by that I don’t read or hear a news story or view a Facebook post about someone buying coffee for the next person in line or paying the balance at a grocery store for someone who’s a little short on cash. The hardened skeptic in me wants to look at the motives of the “do-gooder” as self-serving, but I can’t quite bring myself to get there.

I see the joy in the face of the person who’s just shelled out a few dollars and can’t find it in me to condemn the act as self-congratulatory evidence that a person has just attempted to atone for his or her selfishness. The beneficiary in these scenarios seems to feel equal joy, but not so much in the gift as in the fact that it’s given.

My wife would probably say I am too prone to want to give too much to people of questionable deservedness. I turn away from plenty of people seeking a handout, but sometimes I just can’t turn away from a person who seems genuinely destitute and in need. That attitude can have a negative effect on limited personal resources, I’ll admit.

I’ve probably been swindled dozens of times by people who choose to sacrifice their dignity for money, rather than turn to hard work to earn it. But I think I’d rather that be the case than to think I regularly ignore people asking for, or simply needing, a helping hand. But sometimes I do.  Maybe the practice of tithing allows people to get around, or to feel they have gotten around, that dilemma?  I dunno, I’m just thinking.

 

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Two Hundred Twenty-Seven

Posted on August 15, 2015 by John Swinburn

Damn near everything I write is allegorical. I wonder whether that’s an indication I don’t have the fortitude to be forthright?

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Scruples

Posted on August 14, 2015 by John Swinburn

Some lost their scruples in the war, some misplaced them in a bar.

Others left them while smoking crack and now they’ll never get them back.

She once had an ounce of them, but expelled it when she coughed up phlegm.

He never had them and never will; he’s cheerful, see, to hurt and kill.

Should you have scruples, keep them well, else life become a living hell.

If you don’t like poems that rhyme, let’s speak on scruples another time.

===========================

I know. It’s pretty bad, but sometime I just like writing bad poetry. Sometime, it’s all I can do.

 

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Who’s the Bad Guy?

Posted on August 14, 2015 by John Swinburn

My dream last night was frustrating and upsetting and hopeless. Asked to make a presentation on association marketing to an organization in Chicago, I had prepared an hour-long presentation. Thinking I had plenty of time before the presentation, I took a train to the outskirts for a look around. When I reached the final station, I discovered mine was the last train; no other trains would return to the city from that station for hours.

I asked someone how to get to a station that would take me back to the city. I was directed to go to a station two blocks away, but after I walked one block, the street ended at a below-grade freeway, so I had to walk two more blocks alongside the freeway to a street that crossed over. Once over, I was confused as to the direction I should take. I entered what appeared to be an open-air pavilion that looked like it might have a pathway to the next station, but once inside it appeared labyrinthine, so I asked a man who appeared to be a waiter if I could ask him a quick question. He said, “no, I don’t have time,” and rushed away.

Somehow I managed to get on a train and just barely made it back to an underground mall station in downtown Chicago, adjacent to the theater in which I would give my speech, in time for my presentation. My shirt was soaked in sweat, so I popped in to a mall shop to buy a new shirt. After I paid for the shirt (which I was by then wearing), I looked through a plate-glass window between the mall and the theater and saw a woman who had been a good friend years ago.

I rushed out to the entrance to the theater and, just as I was to be ushered in, the woman appeared again and approached me. She was much,  much thinner than she had been when I knew her and she was deeply tanned, the sort of splotched tan one gets from too much time playing golf or sitting too long on the beach. When I knew her, she was a little plump and quite pale. She spoke to me as if there had not been years since we had seen one another, holding out her arm and pointing to two huge raised red lumps on one of her arms, saying, “These aren’t any fun, are they?”

Next, I was inside, beginning my presentation. Just minutes after I started, though, the man who had introduced me stepped back to the lectern and said, “Thank you, John,” and launched into his own presentation. Baffled, I slouched back to a chair. I turned to someone nearby and said “I have an hour’s worth of presentation; I’d only just started.” He looked at me and said, “You must have misunderstood. This is a five-person program; you were supposed to complete your presentation, but it sounded like you didn’t know what you wanted to say, so Eric stepped back in.”

The presentations had ended, somehow, and a group of us were waiting at an elevator to go upstairs. The elevator opened and people poured out. Three people in front of me stepped through a glass door into the elevator but as I started to enter, someone said, “she can only have three visitors at a time, and you’re not family, so you can’t come in.” The doors closed and I was left standing in a crowd of people who seemed to know what was going on, but I was utterly confused.

I turned away from the elevator and saw my former friend with two other women, some distance away. All of them were holding bags like they had just been on a shopping spree; they were walking away from me. My friend looked back at me for just a moment; she made a point of looking right at me, then turned away as if she did not recognize me.

I wrote all of this down the moment I awoke this morning, trying to get everything down before it disappeared. I know I failed to capture it all. Somewhere along the line, I complained I hadn’t been adequately informed about expectations; I turned around and saw the person who had invited me. He said, “You know what I don’t understand? I don’t understand how some people can treat others like crap and get away with it!” I don’t know just where this fit into the dream, but it’s a segment that I know belongs somewhere in the convoluted swarm of thoughts that rushed through my head while I was sleeping.

That last piece, the one that I can’t place chronologically, is one about which gave me the most questions after I woke up. Was he talking about me treating people like crap? Was he deflecting blame for failing to give me sufficient details about the presentation? Was my old friend’s weathered and unattractive appearance a suggestion that I judged her too harshly, and simply by appearances? I seem to have a vague recollection that, in the dream, I finally concluded, at some point, that I may have simply failed to pay attention to what I had been asked to do. I also seem to recall, albeit just barely (to the extent that it may be post-dream interpretation) that I wanted to have time to ask my old friend questions, but couldn’t bring myself to do it for some reason. Who’s the bad guy in all this, I wondered as I reflected on the dream.

All in all, the dream was an exercise in frustration and mental anguish. I do not enjoy dreams that, upon awakening, make me feel like I’ve been through an emotional wood-chipper.

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Two Hundred Twenty-Six

Posted on August 14, 2015 by John Swinburn

Dreams unmask fears and hopes and desires. They unleash the heartless monster and the loving humanitarian buried under countless layers of time and tears.

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