“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein
You know, I am always planning my next story, because, God forbid, if I got nothing, hell awaits. It gets really tiring to keep coming up with a tantalizing title or a weird picture, incentivizing the glancer to stay a while and become a techno-recipient of future stories.
It would be very cool if I was selling something. I would be single focused on the end game. Actually, I guess I would be the antithesis of that equation. I don’t want a single thing from any of you.
A bunch of years ago, I decided to start The Quixote Order of the Windmill. I brought together a couple of “knights”, who were fighting the good fight to protect this island from itself. For a brief time, our paths crossed with each other and it was wonderful to inhale this quiet affirmation. I’d like to think I’m still pointed in that direction, the one that thinks, embracing imperfection along the way.
My Friday drill is always the same. I get home in the afternoon and bring in my computer bag and dinner from the brewery. As quickly as I can, I get out of my clothes and put on a very scary bathrobe. It is dark blue with thin, white stripes around the sleeves, outlining the sides that come together. I slip on elastic socks, because I refuse allow my ankles to get used to swelling. Sorry, it’s a damn age thing.
I forgot to mention that the absolute, first thing I do when I walk through the door is yell, “Alexa, shuffle my Pandora stations.” Please don’t say it out loud! I know I can think without music to sail on, but why would I want to deprive my soul of its dance with heaven? It has always been a part of my writing. I often get stuck, like a treadless tire in the mud, but one, diamond second of a familiar sound and I am cruising into the landscape of imagination.
I thought of it, because I was listening to Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, an audio pyramid, a testament to the magic of jazz. Every now and then, the drums do their rhythmic rap interlude and everything stops for me. Music is all over my writing, because it is always there, It takes me away only for seconds. I somehow come back refreshed. It fills me, caressing all the spaces, feeling whole, once again.
I already had a title for this story. I was going to call it, “A First”, meaning it is really the first time I am doing this, sitting down with nothing to say. At this precise moment in the story, I decided to call it, “A Seinfeld.” You know, the idea that I have nothing in particular to say, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write to you anyway.
For a couple of minutes, you get to take a break from your world and hang out in mine, which is really the bottom line for anyone trying to craft some words in to a story. I have written this for you, so don’t let me down.
I gotta tell you one thing and I’m gonna use the age card, but not in an obnoxious way. I have never had more of a feeling that the world is coming apart. Let’s say, I can cover around seventy years of awareness, which is fairly long. I definitely have some recollection of the Army McCarthy hearings in the mid-fifties, which went along with red baiting. It was a dark and dangerous time.
Today, I find a level of hatred and violence everywhere I look that I have never seen before. At this moment, Ukraine is being pulverized and crucified and it’s OK. Global hunger is off the charts, catapulted by the climate crisis. The entire continent of Africa is suffering. Speaking of this climate calamity, I think it is so big, only global solutions will work and that will never happen.
When we should be coming together, we are being driven apart at our own hand. It has taken thousands and thousands of years to get us where we are today. It is a tsunami of our own history that has brought us to this time. We will respond with robot-like repetition once again. It is what we do forever.
This is where it gets incredibly tricky. I think about what to tell my young grandson and we have talked about it a little already. I’m gonna let somebody else candy coat what’s to come. As a kid, I could smell bull shit and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be one of those stinky people.
Christ, I don’t even know what to tell myself. I’m not sure who wants to talk about all this, because I don’t hear it anywhere. All I hear is noise, decibels taking prominence over substance. The louder the lie, the truer it is.
As time goes on, we will have to make substantial adjustments to how we live, where live and so on. Just in case, no one else is writing this way, at least I am. However, if I’ve lost you before that last line, I have failed miserably. Words are being used to drive a wedge between us all, fracturing our ability to embrace our frailties, the truth of our existence.
I want to know that my grandson is laughing and getting out of bed everyday, feeling pretty good about his life. Funny, I’m not sure things have ever been all that different. The landscape keeps changing, getting darker and darker, but the only map that matters is the one that shows us the way inside. It is in our pockets, if only we reach for it.
I am done. I have made a story out of absolutely nothing, but that’s the idea, isn’t it? Thank you.