Author: thegraymaniac

Much of what I write is written to me.

I write of love and being positive and hopeful.  I am speaking to myself, because most days it is hard to be that type of person.  So, I preach to myself about the things I need to do and how I need to interact with other human beings.

But, it is so very hard.  It’s becoming harder every day.  It’s difficult to care.  But the sun will come up tomorrow and the sun will set.

We have all seen them.  Those beautiful Sunrises.  If you’ve been a friend of mine on  social media for any amount of time you’ve seen plenty of pictures of sunrises which I thought were beautiful.

Those mornings when the light turns dozens of colors behind a scant screen of clouds.  Everything from muted purples to magenta, to bright blood red.  How does a beautiful Sunrise make you feel?

For me the beginning of the day, which is signified by that marvelous sunrise, symbolizes a daily rebirth.  A new beginning, a time when everything is new again and all options for doing things wonderful, useful, loving, and kind are open.  It renews my soul.  It tells me in no uncertain terms that I am alive, and that I have been treated to the sight of some of the most beautiful colors on in nature.  I so appreciate life and the chance to live it.  To experience other people, people who I love and who love me.  To touch another person, even to simply shake hands, or to brush back the hair of my daughter or sons, my grandchildren, or my wife from their foreheads is an experience that I will only get to enjoy once.  Just once, that I will remember in any case.  The moments we have will never happen again, just like the moments in the pictures I take.  Those photos are a frozen moment in time which will never happen again.

I can taste food for another day and hear music.  I don’t really even care what kind most of the time…I generally like it all.   I get the privilege of talking and interacting with other people, most of the time in a positive manner.  All of this starts with the beautiful Sunrise that I saw when I drove down the road today.

Then there are the stupendous Sunsets.  I look out my back door at them often, and take photos that do not do any justice towards how beautiful they really look.

How does a gentle sunset make you feel?

The colors are a similar palette as was the Sunrise, but the feelings are different.  Day is leaving.  I feel peaceful.  I feel content.  My tasks for the day are done and I am heading towards the house to rest.  I hear the word to “taps” in my head frequently:

“Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.”
Many times in the past I was headed towards my home from work, to my familiar place, my territory.   I had accomplished all I could during the day and I was satisfied.  Maybe I should have tried to do more, I feel that way practically every day still.  But in the awesome light of the Sunset I felt happy…. tired but happy.  I knew I would be glad to get home, and see the ones that I love.  My tasks that others would have me do were over.  I would eventually lay down that night, and rest my weary body, happy to have seen another day on this Earth.

Life and Death are like the sunrise and sunset.  Both are beautiful in their own way, similar, yet vastly different.  It’s what happens in between, what we….make happen in between, that forms the legacy of our lives.   It’s the appreciation mixed with sorrow, of getting to see the sunrises and sunsets of other peoples lives that hopefully will make us appreciate our own and be less afraid of the final sunset that we all must come to one day.  Not melancholy, but happy to have shined and to have enjoyed being in the light.  I know I am.  I’m glad I have cared.

We all fear the unknown, and not knowing what’s on the other side of that last Sunset is scary.  Even to those who are secure in their beliefs and solid in their convictions.   I experience that fear, we all probably do when we think about it.  But I believe the spark within us that makes us what we are goes on and on, and we are meant to all be together again.  I’m not exactly sure how.  I’ll never know exactly how until it’s too late to write it down on a page, or take a photo of it.

So, here I have again, added to those many soliloquies I have written to myself but shared with others.

 

I had the record player on a table in my bedroom. Just a square boxy old thing, which had a latch on the front, and a handle on the other end. Portable record player they called it. It was a beige brown color and had one speaker across the front with this mesh looking stuff on the outside. You could stack about 5 of the 33’s on the spindle and you had to have a “converter” to play a goodly stack of 45’s.

There was nothing more exciting than bringing home a new record album. You went to the store…Redford’s 5 & 10 most of the time for me, and you would stand over the bin where the albums were stored and flip through them. Once, twice, three times. Only enough money for one, but which would it be? It was mid to late 60’s…perhaps 1967, and a cool cover of guys dressed in the Blue and Grey of the civil war caught my eye. It was a group called “The Buckinghams” and featured a song called Susan. I liked it, and bought it and took it back home. There was always a ritual of removing the clear cellophane and easing the white “dust jacket” out. Most of the time there were graphics and other photos on these too…and I always enjoyed just pouring over the pictures, looking at the names of all the songs, the credits, who wrote the songs. It took time, and if was fun.
I’d put it on the bottom of the stack and add a couple of my favorites on top…most of the time it was late afternoon in the Summer time. The most gorgeous of times, with the sun coming in from my West facing window, and shining in filtered rays through the shafts of fine dust I had kicked up from my activity. I’d lay down on the rug in my room right next to the record player and for the next hour or two I would listen to the music, feel the music, and live the music. Right there in a three square foot space, I transcended the normality of the moment and exceeded any expectations I had for the future. Then the music stopped.

I got up and stretched and carefully took my albums off the portable record player, and carefully held them, carefully put them back in the dust jackets and stored them back in the cardboard covers. I put them in a box carefully and lovingly, knowing I would listen to them again in a day or two. Never longer than a day or two.

Those were tactile days. Days when music came in an enjoyable, hold able, seeable packages. Wonderful iconic images came from those days. Wonderful memorable music which I remember to this day and can still sing all the words.

Today, I just pick a song off of iTunes and it’s downloaded on my phone. I really don’t get nearly as much pleasure from music as I used to…….and it’s hard to remember the words.

I don’t know how many miles I have driven in an automobile over my working years. Starting back in 1978 up until 2011, a period of thirty three years, I have worked “out of town” from where I lived in good ol’ Trion, Georgia. I have worked and commuted to Rome, Calhoun, Dalton, LaFayette, and all over Northwest Georgia for five years during the 1980’s as a Sales Rep for a Medical/First Aid company. I have logged a lot of miles in a vehicle. I may try and figure out just how many one of these days when I have a lot more time to work it out.

During the 80’s while I was driving, I listened to WSB radio out of Atlanta most of the time. At least I had it on anyway. I laughed and cried at Ludlow Porch many days. I cussed Neal Boortz and agree with him…about 75-25…you can figure out in which direction. A lot of times I just rode with the radio turned off. I sang the lead to most of the Broadway musical records I had listened to so often as a kid. My “Impossible Dream” rendition from the “Man of La Mancha” is still ringing loudly somewhere in the hills near Jasper, Georgia. I went through every song I every knew and then started writing my own. Back then there was no way to record anything while you were driving, so if I got a good melody in my head I would have to hum it all day long until I got home to my guitar and cassette tape recorder. I know I lost a lot of hit songs due to the fact that I had to get out of the car and work in between bouts of creativity.

I preached many a great sermon back in those days…quoting from every bible verse I had every learned…which was a lot of them. None of them ever saw print or the light of day, but some of them were pretty good.

I taught classes on history and anthropology while I was driving. I had conversations with myself about the meaning of life. I never solved that one.

I imagined myself winning the World series with a last minute home run, or dropping a putt on the 18th of the Masters to win the tournament.

But many times I would just ride along looking at the mountain scenery and think. Just think about things.

I guess I was just a poor man’s Walter Mitty, really.

I once won an all expense paid trip to Athens Greece for Paula and I on a radio contest based on one of the many “question and answer” games that were going around in the early 80’s. I heard the question while I was driving down the road: “Who was Ms. Hungary in 1957” We had just played the game the night before, and I knew the answer was Zsa-Zsa Gabor, so I hurriedly pulled into a service station which had a pay phone (yes there were pay phones back then) and called into WSB. I got through, was the correct caller, and they put my name in the “pot” for the grand prize drawing the next week. As I was driving home the day of the drawing, I had WSB tuned in and when they actually called my name, I just about ran off the road. I had been kidding Paula about where we should go when we won (it was one of ten cities in Europe) so when I pulled into ANOTHER pay phone and called her, she thought I was being goofy. It took a lot of convincing, but she finally believed me. We chose Greece. It was our second choice to Vienna, Austria…but we couldn’t go there because the only time we had to go was in October, and everything there was booked up for Octoberfest. We had a great time in Greece though…

And so I drove on……through the 80’s and into the 90’s. Paula and I got a job at the same place, and for almost ten years we rode out and back together to Calhoun. It was a great era. We took our lunch breaks at the same hour and ate out in Calhoun at all the fast food joints there, many multiple times. We worked with a lot of cool, friendly and iconic people…and a few asses. We got paid decent, and the benefits were super.

We had an hour’s drive home in the afternoons to “cool down” from the day’s work. We did a lot of talking, and it kept us close. Thinking back now, the place we were working was a great place.

They were bought out by a bigger company in 1999, and I had to start commuting to a different place again. So, there was 12 more years of driving out and back. First to Rome again….then to Dalton, Lafayette and Calhoun in that order.

The last couple of years, the drives were late at night, ending at home after midnight most of the time. Mom and Dad were sick in those two years…dying. I remember the night before Daddy died I was at work in Calhoun and he called me. He was bad sick. I couldn’t get off early because the third shift supervisor wouldn’t come in to let me go. He was an ass. When I did get off, I drove the back road from Calhoun to LaFayette at 80 to 90 miles an hour. Dad was resting by then, and weak. He knew I was tired, so he told me to go home and rest. I stayed there until nearly 2 a.m., but then I relented and went home. My Dad was a tough old man. Many times in his life he had stared death down and come through it still breathing, all the way from World War II, through two heart attacks, heart bypass surgery, botched appendix surgery which left an infection which would have killed many people. So many times he had toughed it out. But I got a call about 7 a.m. the next morning from my Dad. He told me his chest was hurting and to come quickly. Then the phone fell out of his hand and hit the floor.

Of all the miles I had driven over the years, all the many thousands of mundane miles, the near miss days, the three coffee afternoons to stay awake…out of all of these miles, the twelve miles from my house to Lafayette were the longest I had ever driven. I went fast…but even then, I didn’t make it in time. My tough old man had left sometime while I was in transit. The top of his head was still warm when I touched him and said goodbye.

No matter how many times I go back over that drive…the hurried one the night before and the more hurried one the next morning, I can find no solace in anything I did. Guilt haunts and haunts, and keeps on haunting some more. People can tell you that you couldn’t have done anything more, but you’ll never believe them. I never do and never will.

Shoulda, coulda and woulda….you put them in the furnace just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego…and they just won’t burn….they’ll always come out right back at ya’.

I drove more miles after that. Seven more month’s worth of thirty miles over and thirty miles back, after midnight. My Mom faded away early in December that same year, but we were all at least there and surrounding her at the last. The anxiety, and the years of bad eating, and no exercise, and bad genetics caught up with me near Christmas of 2010 and my years of rolling up mileage came to a halt for a while. They cut me from Adam’s apple to belly button and put four new vessels in while a machine was pumping my blood. At one point in the first few days, I hurt so badly I thought about just letting go. But…my youngest son was in the room with me right then, and I didn’t want him to be a witness to it, so I decided I’d live.

I have made a come back over the past few years though. With Eli and Rue to care for, I moved back into the main stream of life a few steps at a time. Those babies and Paula brought me through the next year after my heart surgery, although my memory is sure spotty. They helped keep me busy and moving. It was a really good thing.

Now, for the last year or so, I’ve been riding up to Woodstation and picking up baby Evie and bringing her back down. I started to listen to NPR again, and many times playing tunes that Evie likes. And I think. I think a lot. Sort of like Forrest Gump did when he was running. But, unlike Forrest, I’ve started walking and doing a lot of thinking, instead of running. While I’m walking…and driving I notice the beauty around me.

The sunrises and sunsets, the animals, the kids and grandchildren, all sorts of buildings, and beaches, clouds and rocks….pretty much everything.

If you’ve seen my posts, you have seen the pictures! I take them to freeze that one moment in time for eternity. For others to see the things I consider beautiful and worthwhile. I write of things I hope will inspire, and I am trying oh so hard to steer clear of turmoil….although nobody’s perfect.

I’ve made a physical, and mostly emotional return to living.

I appreciate my life. Do you appreciate yours?

I know one day my walking….and driving days will be over, and while I have some regrets, the joys I have, and have had far outweigh the sorrows. The people I share my life with, who I call my family, give me purpose and love.

I am one of the lucky ones. Very lucky.

Call me blessed if you wish….I don’t care.

Up again this morning early.   Actually, I was awake most of the night just laying there watching the clock.  These miserable night shift hours I have are hell.  Don’t mind the job too badly, but your body can never get in sync, in rhythm as it was.  It don’t know whether it’s supposed to be up working or home sleeping.  Later today I will have to take a nap.

That’s life though.  At least I have a job, and didn’t join all those other thousands of people in the ranks of the unemployed last month.  New numbers out every month.  Unemployment up, the dollar down, the housing market is sunk, spending money on the war that we borrow from China, they are pulling our yo-yo strings on gas, lower interest rates:  great for the market, terrible for people on fixed incomes who depend on interest to live.  Great economy.  Really strong according to President Bushman.  He certainly don’t have to fret since he and Cheney have their oil and blood money waiting on them after they leave office.  Wish they both had to come down and work 12 hour night shifts for a while.  Better yet, give them both an Army uniform and an M-1, and put them out on the streets of Bagdad after dark.  Serve them right.

And then what choices do we have coming up this year?  The Manchurian candidate, Malcolm X-man (yes Rev. Wright, anything you say Rev. Wright) and Hillary Dillary.  I don’t know what to call Hillary.  At this point, she looks like a shoo-in to lose.  Don’t you just know she is mad as hell about Obama sticking his nose in this year, in HER year?  At his age he could have waited.  If she loses, he has the wrath of the Clintons to deal with for years.  Ah politics, don’t you love it?

Yesterday was Good Friday, and I thought about how Jesus was nailed to the cross and died, because his politics were not correct.  All of the Jews welcomed him in to Jerusalem because they thought he had come to run the Romans out of town.  Then when they found out he wasn’t a Four Star General, they killed him.  Good thing for us, he knew the plan better than they did.

Rambling right along now, I was also thinking about how hard things are going to be 40 or 50 years into the future.  Coping is going to be hard.  Living is probably going to be hard.  I am glad I am 57 I guess, although I wish I felt like I did when I was 27, still had all my teeth and didn’t have arthritis creeping up on me.  Besides that, I am fine Thank You!  But, seriously I think my generation has been the “golden generation” even though we have seen some wars, and some other bad historical glitches we have also probably seen the best years that the world will ever have to offer.  I hope to God I am wrong, but things look like they are going to be tough from here on out, without some wisdom.  I foresee crises in water and in fuel that are going to wrack the world.

We are already feeling the pinch on water in this country.  Last year’s drought in the South drove home the point that you cannot take water for granted.  We have wasted that precious resource for decades and more now without giving it a second thought.  I guess we though Nature would clean up our messes.  Boy, were we wrong.  I think about that every time I drink a bottle of Dasani, or Propel.  I look at work every night when I am there and I am appalled at all the water my Industry dirties up, and wastes.  We had better get ahead of this coming crisis in water, young ones.  Get into the game because in 50 years, fresh water is going to be worth more than gold!

As for the fuel, well that’s just mathematics.  More people need more fuel.  More people making things (read China, India, Viet Nam, etc., etc.,) the more fuel that is needed to make them.  And believe me, right now those prenamed countries don’t give a rat’s rear how much they dirty the water or the atmosphere.  Have you seen the latest pictures of the Ganges?  Corpses floating down it and everything else and there’s still people out there washing their clothes in it and bathing in it.  And how about the clouds of smog and dangerous clouds over Chinese cities.  I would hate to be running a marathon there this summer.  They better have plenty of O2 ready, cause they are going to need it.  Probably some guy from Tibet with a bunch of Chinese soldiers after him will come running through and win the thing.  Why can’t they just turn that back over to the Dali Lama?  Beats me why they want to kill a bunch of monks.

Oh well, enough for rambling this morning I guess.  Hope I can stay back in touch with everyone.  I always say that, and then can hardly find the time to do anything but try and make money to make ends meet.  I am trying to simplify, as I have said earlier and it’s going to get more and more that way through the rest of the year.  Just cleaned out a lot of stuff yesterday and the rest is coming soon.  I mean, why in the heck do I need 47 shirts in my closet?!  I probably won’t wear some of them anymore the rest of my life.  I think I am going to do like Simon Cowell, and just start wearing gray t-shirts and gray pants.  That would make it simple.

It’s funny how when you are little, you never think that when you grow up you are going to be “ordinary”

Because I am a child of the 50’s and 60’s, most of the hero’s which I had to look up to, and want to grow up to be like were of an unattainable nature.  I tied a towel around my neck when I was four and imagined I could fly like my hero “Superman” on TV.  I ended up with a badly sprained ankle from jumping off the front porch.

Then there was the time, I got a Hoppalong Cassidy outfit, guns and all for Christmas.  I ended up burning my thumb on the caps that went into the cap guns.  Later on, one of them popped wrong, and flew up onto my eyebrow and burned it.  Right up until today I still have a little scar on that eyebrow.

Once after watching Dragnet, I got on my tricycle and pretended  I was chasing some bad guys and ended up riding down the front brick steps on the porch (dang that porch and me….why did my Mom let me play out there by myself?) and busted open my forehead.  10 or 12 stitches and I still have that scar too.

All those hero’s were not ordinary though.

Lately I wonder if I shouldn’t have tried to be like Flash Gordon.  It might have been fun to be an astronaut.  Of course I am deathly afraid of flying, but I think that being in a rocket and then being in outer space wouldn’t be as scary as going up in a jet.

I just get tired of being ordinary.  I am so ordinary that people who are shorter then I still look over me.  When I am in line at Wally World the check out girl looks at me and then tells the person behind me “next!”  I know how Rodney Dangerfield feels, when he says he don’t get “no respect”  As a matter of fact, I tried to call him once and tell him that I really respected his act and his secretary told me he didn’t take calls from nobodies.  What about that!

At this stage in life, it would take winning the BIG lottery to keep from being ordinary.  I am certain that if I won 260 million dollars I would have lots of new friends, and plenty of relatives I never met.  I think I would tell them to bug off.  Maybe not though….maybe I could be just a teeny bit generous.  That phrase just doesn’t fit does it?  If you’re generous, it’s not teeny…not to the person you are giving to.  That five bucks you gave the guy who was down on his luck one time a long time ago, may have entirely changed his life.  It does happen occasionally.

How does a person change from being ordinary to being something special?  Write an award wining novel?  Save the life of some kid who fell down a well somewhere?  Find a cure for cancer, or at least invent a safe cigarette.  Hmm….I don’t know about that one.

 

I guess the world is really just filled with ordinary people though isn’t it?  Even the ones who think they are extraordinary have it wrong sometimes.  They put their underwear on the same way everyone else does, and it still gets in a wad sometimes like everyone else’s does.

Why, I bet even the President of the USA has to do ordinary things sometimes.  Like go to the bathroom and stuff.  I bet even the prettiest actress in Hollywood still has boogers from time to time.    So, in a way even special people are ordinary, aren’t they? And sometimes on a magical day every great now and then, ordinary people do extraordinary things.  They don’t make a big fuss about it, they just do it.  And it does make a difference in some persons life.  It just does.

Even when you’re ordinary, most of the time you still have people who love you.   That makes you special.  I’d rather be ordinary and have people who love me….then be Superman and be alone.

I’m not tying a towel around my neck and jumping off the porch again though.

 

 

 

It’s the graveyard shift.  You know.  The middle of the night.  3:30 in the morning, and not a soul in sight, like it says in the Garth Brook’s song “The Thunder rolls.”  Except…there are lots of souls in sight here.  Lot’s of other Zombie like creatures crawling around over and under steaming a puffing machines, like human maggots, gnawing on food they can’t digest.

I tell you, this strange little work place sometimes seems like a depiction of Hell itself.  I was standing at the top of a stairway that leads to another part of the building, and looked out over all these infernal machines, these machines of man.  There were puffs of steam and water vapor coming from a thousand different places.  Places that they are and are not supposed to be coming from.  All of this fills the air with an eerie sense of unreality, and of dread.

All of the people look small and insignificant from this viewpoint, sort of like automatons, sentenced to do this hard work in this hot and desolate place forever, and forever.  The top of the steps was about 160 degrees, since it’s near the ceiling where all of the hot air rises.  I felt faint, like I was in a Stephen King nightmarescape and couldn’t get out.  It was like that horrible dream we all have where you know you are awake and you want to move, but you can’t.  You try to make a sound to wake yourself up from the terrible state, but you scream and it only comes out as a whimper.

Terrible.

More and more I am coming to believe that we are living our Hells here on Earth.  I am often not sure of what comes hereafter.  I wish I could say I was 100% sure.  God, I wish it.  How many people can say that?  Those of you that can congratulations.  I envy your faith.  I just can’t say that yet.  Does that mean I am not saved?  What is saved?

I believe in all of what Jesus taught.  I believe that existence is a product of creation….therefore I believe in a “creator”.

It’s just so hard in this current state to say I totally know what’s going to happen today or tomorrow, if I find myself no longer here.

I often wonder about some of the things the faithful believe.  People who have had near death experiences tell about going to meet friends and family as they move “towards the light” I wonder though, is there any sense of time after we die?  If, when we die we morph to immortality, then there would be no time, right?  So therefore, our loved ones who are waiting there “beyond the light” for us in the great beyond would feel like they no more had even got there and had time to turn around when BOOM, there stands everyone else they ever loved following right along behind them.  It blows my mind.

No sense of time in the hereafter so BANG, there everyone is!  In the meantime, back here on Earth, we go on living the laws of Physics to the utmost, which means time passes normally for us.  Gosh, it really makes me wonder about things when I think about stuff like that.  My head starts to swim and clog up like a sewer.  I can’t comprehend it at all.

I wish I could have a vision which would make all these things clear.  After all, it’s predicted that young men will dream dreams, and old men will see visions about the things which are going to happen.  I haven’t had my vision yet though.  I am still waiting on it.  I am waiting on it here tonight at 3:30 a.m.   COME ON VISION!….well…that didn’t work well.  Perhaps if I get up there in that 160 degree heat for a while longer?  Nah….not going to happen.

Maybe tomorrow night, or perhaps tomorrow during the day when I am trying to sleep it will come.  While the sun is shining it will all come to me in a flash, and I will understand the nature of the Universe!

I am NOT holding my breath though.

 

For some reason today I thought about the line from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka tells his group of guests in his factory about the Oompa Loompas and their country and how they came to his factory: “Oh, well, then you know all about it and what a terrible country it is. Nothing but desolate wastes and fierce beasts. And the poor little Oompa Loompas were so small and helpless, they would get gobbled up right and left. A Wangdoodle would eat ten of them for breakfast and think nothing of it. And so, I said, “Come and live with me in peace and safety, away from all the Wangdoodles, and Hornswogglers, and Snozzwangers, and rotten, Vermicious Knids.”

I sometimes wish that a place like the Chocolate Factory existed, and that those of us who wanted to, could go there. “

Well there’s Heaven” some people will say: “It’s a lot better than a Chocolate Factory” But, I’m not ready to go there quite yet. As the country song says: “Everybody Wants to go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die” That’s how I feel about it. (ok, that’s my limit for clichés and quotes for this post!)

The kind of place I am thinking about doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever did. As the days grow more and more dangerous during this age and in this time, there is very little a person can do to get away from the world that wants to harm them, unless you want to move to one of the islands that the “Survivor” cast have abandoned, and start using their stuff and living like them.  That might be an option.

A lot of people have tried to create their own “safe haven”

Jim Jones, and his followers did. David Koresh tried.

A lot of people try to start their own Valhalla, and somehow it always seems to fail. I wonder why? Is humanity and human nature so geared to be combative and hateful to other humans who don’t “fit in” that no matter what we do here on this earth, we are doomed to fail when it comes to loving and protecting those who are different? You would like to think that wasn’t so, but tell me a time and a place where there has ever been a “Chocolate Factory” for the Oompa Loompas?

Sadly, I can’t think of any.  I know that all religions promise us a place like that, of one kind or another. Heaven, Nirvana, Paradise, you name it. We have been promised the reward of these places from them all. But that’s ONLY due to us after we die, and only if we have followed the rules of the religion we have been following.

I sometimes think long and hard about the theory which some preachers and philosophers espouse, that people are living their “hell” while they are here on earth.

Some people do I think,… of their own accord.

I know there are many, many joyful things that we have while we are here. Most of the time, we don’t really see them or appreciate them while we are experiencing them, and it’s only through the backwards mirror of “nostalgia” and memory that we look back and think about what we should have done, or might have done to make things better, or to enjoy things more. That’s probably why I reach back into the past so much through my writing.  It’s frustrating to not be able to just “live in the day” every day, and I know it’s often frustrating for those around me.  It’s just the way I’m constructed I guess.

Maybe I didn’t get it right the first time! Damn I sometimes wish that I had another chance! But…I suppose it is what it was.  There are no time machines, and no second chances.  There should only be looking forward and using the past as a guideline of what not to do.  Using the past as a textbook to make us wise in our old age with “experience”

I am growing more content with the things I have actually done as I get older.  I still wax nostalgic and I suppose I always will, but there’s no use in beating yourself up…because I believe everything happens for a reason and that the things which DO happen are what is supposed to have happened.  Does that make sense?

Forrest Gump may have had it right when he was talking to Jenny at her graveside, and said:  Jenny, I don’t know if Momma was right or if it’s Lieutenant Dan. I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it’s both.

Maybe both is happening at the same time.

Yet sometimes when really bad and horrific things happen to good people you HAVE to wonder why. Senseless murders, children molested, wars and killings of innocents. Good people having to suffer with horrible, painful diseases. Where was THEIR safe haven? Life just never ceases to puzzle me when it comes to things like that. Why do these things happen? What can the purpose of this possibly be?

I guess it’s all in what you seek while you are here. I think none of us, from the Pope to the Dali Llama really knows, with absolute certainty what is waiting for us.

I kind of hope I open my eyes and I am walking into this big Chocolate Factory where everything is made of candy and……there are little purple guys walking around with smiles on their faces!

 

I was thinking the other day about the New Year, and wrote a short blog about 2007.  I started trying to recall the first New Year’s celebration that is logged away somewhere on the hard drive of my brain.  I can’t really remember a specific one.  Isn’t that strange?

I remember early Christmases.  Oh how well I remember that Red Wagon that Santa brought me back in 1954 when I was only 4 years old.  We lived in a little old Mill house up on Sixth Street in the proverbial “Mill” town of Trion, Georgia.  It was the last Christmas in that house before we moved to a new house that my Dad was having built in another part of town.  I guess things were not too bad that year.  If we could afford that wagon, and the set of Hopalong Cassidy guns and the outfit that I also got AND move later on to a new house then things were going pretty good.  We lived in that new house for eight years until Dad could no longer afford the payments due to extreme slowdowns at the cotton mill, and we had to move out, back to “Hot Town” just two streets over from where we were celebrating in 1954.

There were a lot of good Christmas memories at the “new” house.  My brother was born while we were there.  There were “cut down” cedar trees every year in front of the big “picture” window that my Mom was so fond of.  There was the year of the Lionel train; there was a year in which I got a telescope to view the Universe and its vastness.  I never appreciated the years there as I should have.  There was the one wonderful Christmas back in 1962 I believe it was, when it snowed.  One of the VERY few times that “heat miser” let it snow in Soutland!  How beautiful it was to come out and look through that big window that morning and see the snow falling in huge feathery flakes, and the snow already piled up high in wind drifts against the trees.  God Santa that was the year you were supposed to bring a sled, but we had to make do with cardboard boxes cut up into home made flexible flyers!  And oh we did.  We slid down the hill at the cemetery across the road from my house until the dead people there must have thought Jesus was coming back, what with all the commotion.  I don’t even have a clue what I got that year for Christmas.  I got a WHITE Christmas.  That was enough.  That was sufficient in itself to provide memories to last the rest of my life.  Surely any toy would never have been impressive enough to do the same.

Oh yes, Christmas memories are not hard to come by.  But New Years?  That’s another thing altogether.  My folks never made such a big deal about it.  Some of the time we were at my Grandparent’s house and went to be with the chickens even on New Year’s Eve.  Even when we were at our own house, I can’t remember any New Year’s parties, or any celebrations that were held in anticipation of a New Year.  It just came.  The years just stacked up, and you greeted them with the same anticipation that you did any other day.

NEW BEGINNINGS

After my wife and I married in 1969, we started marking the New Year.   We had a couple of parties while still at college.  There was one infamous New Year’s party where I made a total ass of myself by getting drunk as sailor on leave in Hong Kong.  I want to forget that one, but the irony of life is that I remember it all to well.  (And so does my wife, but she forgives me…I think)  For some unknown reason instead of being like most human beings, who when they imbibe too many spirits have a total period of amnesia, I unfortunately have total clarity and remember all the stupid, insane things which I did, but did not care I was doing at the time.  Fortunately, I was given enough intelligence to realize that drinking was NOT one of my best talents, and certainly not one that I wanted my kids to witness.  So, I stopped that one many, many years ago.  My children are all grown and out on their own now, and have probably witnessed their Dad doing tons of things he shouldn’t have, but being drunk is not one of them.

I think that every year now since we have been married, my wife and I have done something to mark the New Year.  We let the kids sit up and watch Dick Clark blather on, and watch the big ball drop at Time’s Square and the “Peach” drop in Atlanta.  I can’t remember if there were any years that we were not together, or not many really that the whole family hasn’t been around.  Just the last few years, I think we have gone our separate ways to some extent.  Most of the time now, we go to my daughter’s house and play board games and then do the count down.  Backwards from ten to zero and ZOOM, in comes another year.

It’s all pretty humbling when you step back and think about it though.  This year we are marking as 2007 A.D. (At least those of us who use the Julian calendar.  The Chinese and the Muslims both have a different “New Year” then we do.  This year the Chinese New Year starting on February 18 will be the year of the Dog.very appropriate.  The Muslims use the Hijah Calendar which was expounded by Mohammed)  Most people make the mistake of thinking that A.D. stands for “After Death”  when it’s Anno Domini or “In the Year of our Lord”  It was “invented” if you will in/about the year 525 by Dionysius Exiguus to figure out when Easter was.  But, I digress.  Think of 2000 and 7 of those babies!  Just think of all the monumental things that have happened in those 2007 years.  Break out your history books sometime and thumb through them.  There are some Earth Shaking years wrapped up there.   Some years that changed human history forever.  Some of them are ones that are a no brainer.  1945, the year that the first Atomic bomb was used.  That one changed the world forever didn’t it?  There are some that are more obscure, but nonetheless just as important.  How about when Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis on the door of Wittenberg Church on October 31, 1517?  Although Luther didn’t know it at the time, that year broke the hold of the Catholic Church on Christianity.  Just think how much that change our world.

How about September 11, 2001 as a recent year that changed history?  It definitely has, and will continue to, as we move through all of the ramifications and repercussions of moving through this Brave New World we are now entering into.

BRAVE NEW WORLD!!

Think about all the new technology that has developed since World War II.  For some reason, that particular War more than any other has seemed to be a catalyst for the development of Science in leaps and bounds.  It’s amazing what has taken place, but it’s scary at the same time.  I just heard a man talking on the Radio not more than a week ago saying how one day soon all humans would have special chips inserted into their hands so that they would not have to have cards, or even any other forms of identification in order to buy things, or go places.  No more credit cards, or passports just that little non-removable chip to tell the world who you are.  I am glad I am about past the point where I might be around when they institute THAT little bit of Science one of these New Years.  I am afraid that they would just have to skip me on that one.

I have also heard where more and more people are now using biotechnology which identifies human embryos outside of the human body for things such as disease, genetic malformations, and most prevalently for the sex of the baby.  Pretty soon it’s going to get down to the parents being able to say:  “I want a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes, who has an I.Q. of at least 150, and we are going to want him to be a pianist”   The new Eugenics, and yes it will probably get to that point one day if whoever decides on this type of thing (and who will that be?) decides to let it get that far.  If it’s our Federal Government, then God help us, it will certainly be a mess.  It could already be in use as far as we know in some countries out there.  Think about it.  There are a lot of countries who don’t even have the constraints of Ethics which we have in the U.S.  (And that’s saying something right there, buddy)

Now there is also word of a new Computer program being developed which can store everything which is on a human beings brain on the hard drive of the computer.  It can’t store the emotion, or the spirit of the person.  Just what they knew or know.  Think about the uses for that, when a program can be bought which you can store Grandma or Grandpa’s knowledge on.  Maybe they will fix it up where you can put a 3-D likeness of the person on there, and actually program it where it can seem like you are communicating with them.  “Hey Grandma, do you remember back when I was 13, and fell down your steps and broke my arm?”  “Of course I do Honey” it answers back.  “That was really a bad day”

Scary.

They say what the mind of man can conceive can be turned into reality.  And to think I have been reading Stephen King for years.  Oh boy.

That’s all pessimism though, and maybe things will actually turn out for the good in some of the upcoming New Years.  They are coming up with treatments and cures for more diseases every day, and doing things to relieve the suffering of humanity.  Yes, believe it or not there ARE still some humans out there who work on things to benefit others without the thoughts of greed or manipulation guiding them.  (Not enough of them though!)

I heard where there are Cancer treatments being developed through genetic research, where people’s own cells (I believe stem cells if I am not mistaken) can be used to attach a killer “trigger” to, which only affects cancer cells, so that when the cells are introduced into the body they kill ONLY the Cancer and leave everything else healthy.  What a good year it will be when they can use that one.

That type of genetic research, where genes are modified to take care of human problems and suffering can be a good outcome.  What if they could eliminate suffering of all kinds?   Some people would think that a world without suffering would be wonderful.  But I wonder.  I wonder if ALL suffering should be eliminated.  Seems like that would take away a little bit of what it means to be human, but that’s just my opinion.

Then there are those that will tell you that all of this must be leading up to the “end of time” Yes, that’s right, the end of all the “New Years.”   In Christian beliefs Christ himself is going to return again in one of these New Years for those who are his children.  According to many Christians, the signs are out there for all to see.  The diverse Earthquakes and disasters (remember two years ago on the day after Christmas?) the continuing problems in the Middle East, especially between Jews and Arabs.   The widespread advent of disease such as AIDS.  The famine which affects more of the world every day.  The lack of Love in people for other people.  Matthew chapter 24 chronicles what Jesus had to say about it.  Read it and decide for yourself.  A lot of people already have.

I am not sure of everything that is happening, I will tell you that for certain.  At my age, a lot of the new technology is fascinating, but it’s like a double edged sword.  My religious upbringing says the signs are out there, but the scientist in me is in conflict with the theologian.  The reader of the written word in me, the seeker of knowledge, wants to keep abreast of everything that’s going on in the world, but sometimes over analyzes or doesn’t understand the significance of what is being input and processed by my teeny brain.  The realist in me knows that things can’t stay the same, but the dreamer wants things to stay like they are, or go back to the way they were!

Remembering New Years?  Do you see know why it’s hard to do.  When you get stuff like this in your head, then it sometimes just starts to run together like syrup across pancakes.

I am glad it’s almost 2007, and I am super glad I have made it this far and if nothing happens I will be watching the ball drop in times square at midnight December 31, and I will be hoping that this year may just be THE year when everything starts to come together for the good of everyone in the world.  Happy New Year to everyone in The Year of Our Lord 2007.