Writing for Sanity's Sake

My Easter Story….

I wonder if Spring is around the corner. As the calendar starts to near the end of March, I always start to look for it, start to feel it in my bones. Maybe it’s because the days start getting a little longer and maybe a little warmer. Maybe it’s because they start talking about the Baseball trades that are happening on the sports reports. Spring training’s just a few weeks away!

I tell you, spring and summer were the best back in the 50’s and 60s’. None of that year round school for us old timers! May 31 rolled around, and it’s see ya’ later to the teachers until the first week of September….Yahooo!!

I would go to the old wooden toy box back in my room, and starting digging down to the bottom, looking for my old worn out, smelly leather baseball glove with “Pee Wee” Reece’s name engraved in it. I don’t know how I ended up with Pee Wee, as I never played a lick of ball in the infield. I was always an outfielder.

I tried out for third base once, but after I had stopped the first four hard bouncer’s that came my way with my face instead of my glove, the coach thought it might be safer to put me in left field. I agree with his decision.

I liked left field. It was one of those positions where you could kind of day dream a little. Most everything that came out that way was either an easy pop fly, or a one bouncer. I was a cinch at catching those. None of that “hot corner” stuff for me.

I once was standing out in left field during a game and looking down at the ground trying to spot any four leaf clovers that might be growing there. I heard the loud crack of the bat, and looked up to see the baseball headed over my head. Way over my head. I didn’t want to look completely stupid, so I turned around and stuck my old glove out and ran as fast as I could towards the fence. The ball dropped right into the webbing of my glove. I never saw it until it did. I heard a cheer go up from the stands, and when we came in, I got more pats on the back, and attaboys then I had ever gotten before. I just said “I had it all the way” I could never bring myself to disappoint all those people by telling them it was just pure luck.

The other great thing about warm weather was spring lizard and craw dad hunting at Grandpa’s and Grandma’s house. When warm weather hit, we would go up there a lot more often. It was difficult during the winter time, because there were only two bedrooms downstairs at their house, which meant the remainder of the guests, had to sleep upstairs. During the winter time, sleeping upstairs was just like sleeping outside. There was NO heat. I spent many a winter night with 10 quilts piled on top of me, unable to turn over, but desperately trying to conserve what little body heat was emanating from me in order to be alive the next morning. I always managed to do it somehow.

So, besides at Christmas, I didn’t like Winter time visiting at the old folk’s house!

But with spring and warm weather coming, there was the promise of fishing, and in order to fish there had to be bait. This meant my favorite activities of digging in the dirt for worms, and turning over the rocks down in the little fast running creek in front of the folk’s house for Spring lizards and Crawdads.

The only draw back to trying to catch a bucket full of these water dwelling creatures was that they were also favorites of the snakes that prowled the banks of that same creek. I was never really too afraid of snakes when I was a kid until after my Grandpa’s Uncle “Lark” Davenport killed a rattlesnake one day that he stretched across the old dirt road leading up to Grandpa’s house. He stuck its head end in the bank on one side, and its tail end in the dirt bank on the other side. Now, that little old road was narrow, but I estimate it was at least 7 feet across, so my respect for the snakes in those parts increased tremendously after that. I asked Uncle “Lark” how he killed it, and told me he cut its head off with a hoe while he was out in his corn crib. Apparently the rattler was stocking up on some of the rats that always frequented that place. “If he hadn’t been a rattler I’d have let him be,” said Uncle Lark. I’d have let him be anyway, I think. He would have owned the corn crib after that. Rats and all.

Some of those spring lizards that we used to catch back then were as big as small snakes. Imagine turning over a big old rock, and seeing something black wiggling around that’s about a foot long. Would you stick your hand down in there and grab it? I sure did, and laughed about it the whole time. “If the bass don’t bite that,” I thought “then it might bite the bass!” Either way, we get the fish.

The crawdads were harder to catch then the spring lizards. Have you ever seen one of those little boogers take off? They are like a backwards rocket! I don’t know how they do it, but when they get scared they shoot water out their rear ends, start flapping their tails and away they go. You had to be good at estimating where they were GOING to be, not where they had been, in order to catch them. I never had the least idea that humans ate those things when I was a kid. The first time I went to Louisiana as an adult, and someone tried to serve me a dish made with Crawdads, I got kind of nauseated. After I tasted it though, it wasn’t half bad. I kind of like Etouffe’ now.

Yep, that’s how I felt today since there was a little warmth in the air. That little old creek is still there, but I don’t know what the new owners of the land would think about an old man tromping down the middle of their creek with a Styrofoam bucket and yelling yahoo every time he came up with a lizard. I wonder if there are even any left.

My Daddy once told me that unless a man had something useful to say, he should keep his mouth shut.  As most of you realize if you know me, or have read my writing it’s obvious that I should keep my mouth shut most of the time.  I just can’t help it though, useful or not I have to say what I think.

What I am opening my mouth (or keyboard literally) to talk about today is hope.  That’s right, hope.  I have to have it.  It has to be there, like a piece of driftwood in the vast ocean when you are drowning.  Something to grab hold of and stay afloat.  My hope is for the future.  The future in which I will be missing, but my children and grandchildren and whatever descendants that I may be blessed with (who will never know I existed,) will know.

Right now, it kind of looks bleak, and that is why I have to have hope.  I don’t think there is any way that the members of my generation, the baby boomers, can fix the mess that we are in now.  It’s not just one mess, but MANY different messes going on simultaneously which make things so complex.

There are the changing demographics of the entire world.  People of different races and cultures are traveling far and wide in this day and age and settling in places their ancestors would never have imagined.  As they do this, they become familiar with each other and one thing leads to another and you have relationships being built between these members of different races and cultures.  Some still try to stick with their own cultures, but inevitably I believe will fail.  The children of the future will all probably look like Tiger Woods and Mariah Carey.  I think at some point there won’t be any black, yellow, red and white anymore.  There will be one color and one international culture at some point.  I don’t know how far in the future that this may occur, and I don’t know if mankind can keep from destroying each other first with nuclear weapons but if they can then that’s one thing I think will happen.  It will be a huge challenge for our descendants who are at the “transitional” stage.  (Or maybe that’s where we ARE now?) It could well be that the future inhabitants of this planet will “ease” into this situation so gradually that no one will ever know it’s happening until it’s upon them.  I don’t think it will be a bad thing either.  One of things that continually breeds discontent, distrust and war is the difference between people’s race and culture.  If there IS not difference then they will have to find something else to fight about.  Maybe they won’t be able to.

There is the quickly changing face of technology.  I would have NEVER in my wildest dreams as a child imagined the world as it is today.  There have been so many advances in the last 50 years that it makes the 1950’s seem like the Stone Ages.  What we take for granted every day now, would have seemed like a trick of magic back then.  Computers will continue to advance and now that robotics IS actually taking off like Isaac Asimov thought it would, our descendants can look forward to a world where the physical part of living will become easier and easier.

There will be issues that come up, ethical issues, which will challenge the very core of the morals of our society.  What about a computer program that can store the “essence” of a person on a  program, and come up with a “virtual” person who is exactly like the person who is dying.  Anyone ever seen the movie “Freejack” with old Mick Jagger?  That’s science fiction still, BUT so was Jules Verne back in the late 19^th century.  It may not be that a person’s “essence” can be stored on a computer and then put back into another person’s body.  I am not sure it will ever get to that point.  BUT to create a “virtual” person with the knowledge and character of a real live person is but a few steps away from becoming a reality.  You can “store” Grandma or Grandpa on the handy dandy virtual person program, and pull them up to talk to any time you want.  How would you like that?  Kind of a spooky thought isn’t it?  Yet, right now people who play the high tech computer games that generate “characters” to play through (the avatar type games) are already interacting in a very close knit way with these “quasi-people.”  You can give them character traits, physical characteristics, and other things which make them “almost” seem human.  It’s only a few steps away until you can do the same thing with your dear Uncle Bob, believe me.   Soulless, yes.  Interaction there will be.   There could also be a use for this type of program to reduce overpopulation, in that people who are not allowed, or don’t want to have a “real” live child, can have a virtual child which they can “raise” from a baby all the way up through adulthood.  The cost would be quite a bit cheaper to raise this type of “child” too.

Medically speaking, the people who can make it 20 or 30 more years are likely to be able to live practically as long as they want.  With the research and discoveries in genetics that are now taking place, it won’t be long until the genes that cause “aging” as we know it, will be discovered and neutralized.  People who are well off enough financially will be able to benefit from this expensive technology and beat “the system” Dick Cheney may actually still be here in the year 2100!  Hmmm…?

I think that many diseases which afflict people such as cancer, heart disease, and all the big killers will be beaten.  People will have to be run over by a Fire Truck in order to die.  That’s about the only thing which will do it.  However, I am sure there will be a lot of volunteers to be “uploaded” into the computer program which I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  After all, who REALLY wants to live forever?  And you probably will still have the old aches and pains that won’t go away.  (Maybe not, they may have something for that too)  Besides, you might be able to do things on that computer program you could NEVER do in real life, like fight dragons, or fly.  That would be a hoot, right?

I wonder if people will still be able to go out and have a juicy steak or a lobster, or if everyone will have to eat those little pills like the one that Willy Wonka invented that turned Violet, well…purple I guess.  Hopefully, he will have perfected them by then and we won’t have to go somewhere and have the juice squeeze out of us.

I kind of wonder too if space travel will advance to the point where we will be actually sending people out on missions to other galaxies.  Will the episodes of Star Trek, The Next Generation be a reality or a near reality at least?  If we can tear enough money away from the government’s efforts at exterminating people in other countries, we may be able to give some of it back to the space program and find out.  ( Aw shoot, I don’t wanna’ hit a nerve about that)

 

 

One of my favorite movies of all times is “Forrest Gump”   Ok, I know…I know it’s hokey, and clichéd but it’s still one of my favorites!

One of the things that Forrest does, that I find myself wanting to do more and more often of late, is to just take off and run, and run, and keep running.  If I COULD run, (everyone who knows me personally knows what a ludicrous idea that is) I would do it just like Forrest did, going from coast to coast and just looking at the sights and thinking.   He was thinking mostly about Jenny, which he certainly did a LOT in the movie.  As for me personally, I am to the point where I just want to break out and RUN AWAY now, as fast as I can from things!  It just seems like everything seems to pile up at one time, and as it keeps piling I feel like if I don’t get out of the way I am going to get crushed.

But, I think we all get that way at times.  When “life” things overcome us, and we start to mull over our problems endlessly, thinking that there is NO solution out there for the things that are weighing us down.  I guess I forget, as we all do, that everyone has their limit, their point up to where they can take things, and once it gets past that point you just want to RUN!

Forrest just felt like going for a little run, and he did it for two years.  At this point, it might take me more time than that to figure out where I went wrong in life and how to straighten things out.  (If that’s possible) At my age, there’s not a whole lot of “straightening out” time left in which to unspoil the pot.

Some people will say that prayer works.  I have been praying every night and so far God has either not chose to answer me, or the answer ain’t coming yet.  Could be I have got to get through this “phase” in my life by myself.   It’s a tough one though.  I guess that growing up is never easy though.

Yes, that’s right, I said growing up.  No matter what age you are, you still are not too old to “grow up” a little.  Admitting you have been wrong about some things is a good start.  A lot of people could benefit from that, and then apologizing for what they have done wrong.  Apologizing really seems to be a sticking point for some people, especially politicians!  I personally have had a problem with it sometimes.  But not now.  I am going around and telling people who I don’t even know how sorry I am!

First I guess I really just need to analyze what it is I want.  I think we all need to do that.  Maybe not even what we WANT but what we actually NEED.  Most of the time those are two WILDLY diverse things.  I want to have enough money to pay my bills, and give my wife some security, enough time to enjoy my children and grandchildren, and enough wisdom to understand that almost every other human being on earth wants the same things.  Perhaps if I look around at what’s going on most other places on this little globe, I will realize that I don’t have it too awful bad.

Well, then I am going back to the bedroom now and see if I can find my Tennis shoes.  I don’t know if I can run, but if it’s warm enough outside I think I might just take a little walk.  Run Forrest Run!

Early morning. Yesterday was such a beautiful day…hope today will be the same. Venus and Jupiter were just spectacular last night. While there are so many things going on in our world that are concerning, it is comforting to know that things really ARE as they should be. The Universe goes on and we have life….life! We have a chance today to love someone else and express that love to them. We have a chance to ask for forgiveness if that is needed. We have a chance to change the direction of our lives if we want to. We have a chance to help other people…the most noble thing that any human being can do. We have a chance to have compassion and understanding for someone that we have never understood before. We have a chance to be positive instead of negative. We woke up to life thing morning….let’s live it, and love it, it’s the only life we have and will ever have. Let’s don’t waste time with things that don’t mean anything in the long run. And yes, I am trying to take my own advice.

When I walk and I remember those who are gone from this earth, I sometimes think…well I should visit the cemeteries where they lay more often than I do.

But then I consider…my Granny and Grandpa are buried 100 miles away, yet I think of them almost daily. Mom and Dad and Karrie Lynn are buried in the old Trion cemetery and I pass it almost every day, yet I don’t go in very often. But I think of them constantly.

All of the people I have loved, family and friends, still live in my heart. In my memory. In my love.

I don’t need to go to the place where their physical remains are residing. There’s nothing there. There will never be anything there…except the emptiness, pain and grief I felt the day we laid them in the ground.

I can do without that.

I’ll keep what lives inside me gladly over what’s been returned to the earth. Those memories light a candle for my soul every day.

I found out not long ago that “they” (the experts) estimate that as many as 107 Billion people may have lived and died on this earth. It immediately made me think back several years…maybe 10 years or so ago, when there was a night in which the astronomers predicted there would be a huge number of falling stars visible. I wondered, in this little old town where there are so many lights from houses, from street lights, where…where could I go that it would be dark enough to have a great view of the meteor shower.

I decided to go to the grave yard. In the middle of the night…at 2 a.m. It was dark enough there, and slightly eerie.

I suppose most people would think I was crazy. I’ve always considered that the people who are in that place are not the ones you have to worry about though…so it didn’t bother me. It was better than I could have imagined….a storm, a huge storm of meteors practically filled the sky. They started out slowly…and I started counted them…but then when they came so fast…so rapidly..I had no hope of keeping pace, of keeping count. I wondered, how many are there? How many were there?

Now, I have to say that I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. I dream of people who I have lost in my life, people who have been dear to me who are now far away…people who I grew up with. I have dreamed of the end of time, and I have dreamed of the world the way it will be in a thousand years. I have dreamed of the Resurrection. I guess “old men will dream dreams” but finally now, today I know for sure how many falling stars there were on that night ten years ago. 107 Billion shootin’ stars baby!! All coming back down to say “hello….once upon a time we stood where you are…”

When you look in the mirror, who do you see looking back at you? Of course, I see “myself” the person who is an amalgamate of my Parents, my Grandparents and all of my other ancestors who have come before me. Sometimes I see a glimpse of my Grandfather Stewart, sometimes a glimmer of my Dad. As I get older, this happens a little more frequently. I know that genetics has certainly played a part in what I see physically looking back at me. I also know genetics has also played a part in some of the personality traits which I have, some of the ways I act. I know that environment and external influences have also combined with these other factors in making me what I see. We are limited by our genetics to some extent, but able to overcome much through learning and the environment we put ourselves into. That being said, then only our souls are individually ours, aren’t they? Until we are able to love that creature we see in the mirror and embrace what he or she is, we will not fully be able to love others to any extent. If we are not satisfied with what we see, then only WE are able to affect a change for the better. It is no bad thing to love one’s self…warts and all, faults and all, sins and all. As a matter of fact, it is a good thing. Only by learning to love ourselves can we learn to love ALL others, and only by doing that can we prove that we are individuals worthy of the title “human”

There’s a few things I can still remember:

I remember catching my first fish. it was at Lake Wanda Reita.

I remember my first day in school. They had to tear Sandy Hammond away from her Mom, but she was ok from then on.

I remember every person who lived in every house in my neighborhood in 1958. Jake Woods family lived next door, then the Ardens, and across from them lived Van Buren Rice. Across the street was Frank Watts and family. Up on West Pine was Paul Rosser, Flossie Mae, Dale, Annette, and their older sister…Paulette? was it…?

And on the next street was my Uncle Curly, The Floyd family…Sloppy and Doris, Nancy Jim, Susan and Jimmy. The Barfield family, Jan and her sisters. Across from them, the Haygoods, with their boys…Mark was my age, then Randy, I think. Mrs. Rush and Marilyn. The Collettes, Joe and Ruth, Johnny and Jimmy and Marsha. Up on the hill to the North, The Caheelys, The Sprayberries, The Hawkins…with John and Jim. Just around the corner was Dennis and Don Durham and their folks…then the Langston family. I could go on and on. I know I left some out too. The Styles a little further down, and the Webb twins.

I reminisce as I walk that area. Then I walk West Hill, and a lot of those people are now there. Not more than a block from where they lived. Time goes by quickly.

Anybody who grew up in a little bittie town knows how I feel about walking these streets. It’s past and present all rolled up in a ball, and for people like me nostalgia just sometimes overcomes me, and stops me in my tracks. I’m 65, but I’m 6 sometimes too. But there is also still a future to live.

By the time I get back home, I’ve gotten it all pretty much out of my system. I’m back in the present and ready to press on. And I know why I stayed here. For the memories. To give my kids a chance at the same, not too bad small town raising. Its getting a lot different now, but I can’t complain too much. (although Paula might tell you different) Its still home, and that’s where the heart lies.

It is the ordinary things, the mundane moves…which make life…life. Day to day to day, what you have done is, in reality, the terrific.

I find an out of place blue pacifier on the shelf, and I think of all the pacifiers I have handled, stuck in baby mouths, wiped off and sterilized over the years. I still have the very first one I ever saw from 44 years or so ago…it was a baby bottle lid with tape across the bottom. They have definitely improved over the years.

The grass was cut yesterday and the smell of it, freshly slain and lying defeated in the yard was intoxicating and primal. It always takes me back to a time before I have memories, a time of just happy, smelly bliss.

I find I love a song by a group called “Casper Baby Pants”. Google them. They’re real. It’s a lullaby, kind of…and it makes me smile. It picks my soul up and transports it up, and up…into the sky above skies. I have always loved music, almost any kind of music. Music is my constant companion and soother of last resort. It doesn’t matter to me how silly the name of the group.

I work every day. Hard enough to make my heart beat hard and fast. Not because I love work that much, but because I want to know if it’s going to last another day. I raked brush and leaves today like a Tasmanian devil of yard nullification. Huge piles were left in my wake, and then I leaned on the rake and felt the thump…thump..thump…hard and fast. No pain. Good. Another day then.

I love being a human. I love doing the simple things that humans do. Every day doesn’t have to be a trip to Disney World or the beach….although that would nice. But, just to open a book and lose myself in another person’s wonderful imagination, to see a beautiful photograph, to watch the birds and squirrels in the yard, feeding. Just to see the stars at night, or even the lightning and hail of a few days past!

How spectacular is existence! How glorious is sensing all of this wonder surrounding us.

I waste way too many thoughts on things which are far beyond my ability to control, and I’m angered by actions which others take, which I have little ability to affect.

My appeal to you, my friends is to not let yourself fall into the traps and conditions which cause you to miss the beauty of life which is unfolding before you each and every day.

Witness the ordinary and think on the mundane, and be content.

Pick up a Rubik’s cube. Now put on a blindfold. Now solve the puzzle…quickly…quickly…

Now, call the Rubik’s cube terrorism. Now you get some small inkling of how complicated is the current situation in our world.

My eyes well up with tears as I see the pictures and video of the carnage, this time from Belgium…as before from Paris, as from San Bernadeno, California, and from a Russian plane with 224 people, as with multiple deaths at a peace rally in Turkey, and a beach shooting in Tunisia, a mosque bombing….yes a mosque bombing….in Yemen, and as “far” back as a newspaper office in Paris, for some cartoons they drew….and on and on and on we could go back. All the way back to 1983 when 241 United States Marines died in Beirut, Lebanon, and six months before that as 64 Americans died at the bombing of our embassy in Beirut.

We forget how long we have been turning the sides of the Rubik’s cube, and still have not solved the problem. As far back as 1095 A.D?

It is a fearful situation again, as with all those other times, and it’s not over, because we still have not solved the problem. We are still blindfolded.

But the entire point of terrorism is to make you afraid to go about your normal life. Afraid to take your vacations, afraid to go shopping at the mall.

Do we keep closing in our circle of activities and living life until we are closed up in our houses with security cameras all around and guns in hand?

Do we react with anger and death dealing of our own volition?

Perhaps instead a Rubik’s cube, we should be trying to put together the three separate pieces of a puzzle ring. One representing love, one representing compassion and one representing patience.

Then when we get those three pieces locked into a perfect circle which has no beginning and no end, we can perhaps begin to understand each other as human beings, and revenge for past atrocities against each other can stop.

I’m not sure if it’s even possible or not in this world, but I’d give anything to make it so.

So I turn and turn and turn the cube over and over. Then finally I figure out that long ago religion has taken the stickers off the cube and moved them and I will never be able to solve the puzzle. I believe in a creator and a creation, but I’m not sure if God chooses sides. I don’t think he does.

At that point the cube crumbles in my hands…….and I start to think, what can I do to make things better. What influence can my one little pitiful, senior citizen life exert.

All I can do is just write an opinion. Maybe go somewhere this weekend with the family, and refuse to be afraid no matter where it’s at.

I must buy another Rubik’s cube again though and start over.