You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Suppose I lost everything I had packed in a car fire.
My meds and dental retainer likely the biggest loss.
Didn’t bring my laptop, and my cell phone’s in my messenger bag.
Everything else could be readily replaced.
Well, including those. Even the phone numbers I had stored there.
Oh, my, so much has happened since the Common Ground Fair at the autumn equinox.
The week that followed, when I was out in the schooner, introduced so much, and two days after I returned, the big renovation project on our house finally began.
Many of those developments will be presented in weekly posts after the New Year. I do need time to digest the implications. Remember, I spent too much of my professional life as a journalist in the immediacy of daily chaos. I do value a longer view.
For now, there are other bits to catch up on as well.
Life is feeling very rich, indeed, if I don’t let it become overwhelming.
It’s been more than I decade since I retired from the newsroom and its relentless deadlines, but those still haunt my sleep. Typically, I’m called back again in an emergency. In reality, that would violate my pension.
A SATURDAY NIGHT SHIFT. I’m doing something like makeup except that they drop additional tasks on me. I’m supposed to do three letters-to-the-ed pages but can’t do it. Am no longer trained for the new procedures, tech changes, passwords, etc.
In one, I run into out-and-out sabotage.
In another, I’m in charge but the deadlines have really moved up. Of course, I’m having trouble getting set up and in gear, can’t find stuff, and run behind. About 10 a.m. the rest of the staff starts showing up, wanting to know what to do. I’m trying to get one editor going on the Back Page but I can’t find a sheet of paper of any kind in the entire newsroom to show her the quick-and-easy way to get it done.
No paper at the newspaper? I awaken rattled, more than once.
USUALLY, I’M TRYING TO PAGINATE but don’t know the new computer system at all or don’t have the right passwords or other access. Maybe there aren’t even enough computer terminals or chairs. Sometimes that even takes me back to the yellow carbon-paper layout pages we used long ago. Still, the approaching deadline leads to panic and my feeling obsolete and incompetent.
OR I’M FILLING IN ON OBITS. (I want to write that as “orbits.”) But the office is different and it’s a new computer system, so I’m putting all the obituaries on one computer file to cut and paste in later, which is where the trouble kicks in around deadline. Nothing’s working right. (As a category, this is also akin to the old trying to make a flight or trip or finals test.)
On top of everything, the time card issue comes up (paper cards, not the computerized one … which would have been another nightmare) and I realize I can’t accept pay for this shift because of my pension clause. I’ve resolved to compromise and have the pay sent to charity, this case the Santa Fund.
IN OTHER VERSIONS, I haven’t been filling out timecards and thus haven’t been getting paid … since it’s direct deposit rather than a check, there’s a delay in my discovery.
That leads to frantically trying to find timecards and wondering how I’ll ever tell the company much less tell my wife and face her wrath.
In reality, my last stretch there we’d gone to electronic timecards. Now those could be a real-life nightmare!
At some kind of outdoor affair. Summertime or so. I decide to leave and start to collect my papers and such from a table (picnic table?). Look up and see Ohio and some guy a hundred feet away or so … they haven’t noticed me, so I move frantically to escape undetected. Then I see that the vehicle I’m to take, which I’d previously seen only from the open back, is a black hearse – theirs.
Instead, I take a bus – a school bus, actually. Its route is more or less through Moraine and West Carrollton, and I wind up disembarking at a small, yellow-infused festival. (Spurred by memories of the Latin American restaurant my sister took me to?)
Somehow, I’m one of four (!) judges for a beauty contest. We’re given papers with the contestants’ names and info on one side and their photos on the other. Looking at the name I’m about to select, I see below it Ohio’s – only this time, there’s no married surname behind it. I flip the paper, see her photo in a skimpy bikini, and skewer the results so she wins. Afterward, she kisses me, tells me how desperate she’s become, which is why she entered the contest.
Do we ever escape the past?
At least we did it on a Friday, allowing for our being laid low over a weekend. It did involve a trip up to the Walmart in Calais, which was running way behind once we got there, but at least it’s one more thing we’ve crossed off our to-do list. These things add up as some kind of forward progress.
As for the condition of pharmacies in the USA? One more item ripe for a rant, from what I’m seeing. Fire away in the comments if you’re ready. At least we have a fine family version here in Eastport, except for getting that Covid booster or my insurance dealing with the flu vax. I’m not complaining. But they do refill prescriptions days faster than the Walgreens or Rite Aid another family member deals with down at the other end of the state.
I did plan for a “sick day” or two, perhaps reading if I was up for it. Don’t rule out the importance of such rebound days.
As it turned out, I did feel a whammy and slept through much of the next two days. Oh, home sweet home, even with a very sore arm. It was ultimately mild.
The break in my usual routine also gave me time to finally examine two movie distributors’ offerings and reflect on how they might apply to our local film society in its revival after Covid, now that I’m on the committee. Am guessing I’ll share those thoughts here at the Barn, too, for any of you so inclined.
We do have a lot of arcane material here at the Barn and in our lives, too, don’t we?
Onward, then!
THE EPISCOPAL VICAR decides to construct a Celtic burial ground on a rise / knoll near her parsonage. Somehow, the parts have fallen on her: incredible stone crosses and monoliths, etc.
She engages my Lady of Gardenias to help on the stonework.
Getting there. we keep coming upon the rotary in Kittery, although the Vicar’s house is suspiciously like a restaurant at a rotary in Manchester in size and placement. More than once, I miss the right exit (or nearly do) – again, the tension of responsibility.
I remember raising Tibetan prayer flags in that cemetery-garden, too.
Rotary, or traffic circle, I now hear as “rosary.”
WITH MY LADY, ARGUING ABOUT where the town of PHARES was – are we trying to get there, together. What state?
I awaken and search my U.S. atlas: it’s nowhere!
I HAVE TO PICK HER UP AT THE AIRPORT. (Hey! That element again.) Take her to a ranch house, someplace we’ve rented. Lots of other people are around, as in-laws or whatever.
Not sure now whether she had a tattoo – think it was a fake, to goof on me. Washed off.
She has two babies now, the newest a curly haired boy with brown/black hair, who PURRS as I’m stroking his head, “putting him down.”
I’m building a wood fire in the fireplace while the phone’s ringing. “Will somebody answer that?” but all too busy.
Chaos! Chaos of her!
Every time I get near her, she backs off. Eludes me in the social scene, whether party or family gathering. Yet shortly before she’s to leave – and shortly after I concluded it wasn’t worth my effort to continue – she confronts me, invites me, draws me into a small room – a closet with a window, actually (like my bedroom in the bungalow long before I met her!) – and opens her blouse, asking me to caress her.
AS I THEN SEE, we’re in her apartment, also shared with a newspaper office – overlooking the workspace, like the residence in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Shakers are trying to recruit me, but I turn them down because sex is too important to me.
Am marrying the Nazarene, the Texan who can’t cook or keep house. I feel happy to be having such a sexy woman, nice body, etc. but also feel concerned, forced into it somehow. Am full of grave doubts, justifiably, of course.
Later, the Assemblies of God or some such are encouraging me to run with them. I forget the details, only the feeling of being desirable and yet a bit leery.
Once, I drop in on an Assemblies, intending just on a brief pre-Meeting worship. Instead, to my side, what I notice is my car’s up on a lift, getting a free inspection and oil change. I’m somewhat peeved, then wonder how they got into it to drive it etc. See, in time, they have a kind of universal key. In gratitude, I stay for the whole service.
Martha Stuart is in a flying pickup (battered old red/white/green Chevy) dive-bombing it seems straight toward us. “Don’t worry, she knows what she’s doing.”
Sure ‘nuff, she pulls it out into a smooth landing.
Waiting for lunch, the roll call. Standing in line, by work task or whatever, in fields or a garden near the dining hall.
Am rolling hard-boiled eggs – then shooting them with a cue stick to the opposite end of a billiard table. After striking a number of regular pool balls, I shoot an egg that cracks open, oozing yolk on the green fabric.
Looking at the multitude of stars and pondering infinity.
The origin of God, even.
Diminutives, yes, but nothing like Sonny or Bunny.
I don’t know what that means, other than perhaps a lack of imagination.
~*~
Well, Dad was known as Sandy, but only at the office. Guess it was because of the time he was stationed in Florida during the Second World War.
Jnana's Red Barn 