The Sky Again!!

On a downtown street, taking a photo(s) of the upper limbs of a tree bending in the wind, against the cloud darkening sky ..... People passing by, turning to see what my subject was, like they were expecting to see something a little more spectacular, like a swooping prehistoric winged creature or the sky falling. I felt the need to explain myself, but only for a second or two. I'm pretty sure that most wouldn't understand my fascination or what I was seeing.

For myself, it was a unique visual that will quite possibly never present itself in the same perspective again. I felt like I'd be missing something significant if I failed to capture this vision.

Listen Up

One thing that seems to have gotten lost is the ability to listen. I see it all the time. I say something to another person and when it becomes time to display that they were listening to the basic details, it becomes obvious that they were not. Or maybe it's that their mind can't process more than a few words at a time? Either way it becomes frustrating to be constantly repeating yourself.  

Shock and Awe and Another Record Store Day

Had an old guy .... old as in the same age as myself ..... tell me today that he went to a Snoop Dogg concert over the weekend. It was like a 'shock and awe' reaction that I had. I was stunned to being speechless. I had no idea what to say. I couldn't even ask him if he enjoyed it. Like I lost the ability to speak. So I'll have to ask tomorrow. I just couldn't believe what I heard, especially considering who was telling me this. I just never would have guessed. He even mentioned that he was crossing the experience off his bucket list. But besides the shock, I was also in awe. Talk about venturing outside one's comfort zone!!

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More Awe, and just for the record ..... I saw (on television) Gleyber Torres first major league base hit tonight. A little soft liner that made landfall where the dirt of the infield meets the grass of the outfield and then rolled a few more feet. I was hoping for a screaming liner double off the right-center field wall, which anyway is probably how I'll remember it twenty years from now. If he ends up with 3000-plus, which I hope I have enough years of remaining life to also see, I can tell my make believe grand children that I witnessed the beginning.

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Am I glad that I'm only a borderline insane type of vinyl record collector. (Though I sincerely envy the certified truly insane collectors.) I'm just not a stand in line in the wee hours of the morning, six or seven hours before the store opens type of collector. If I'm not the first in the door and able to fight off all the others around me for that one special release .... well I'm perfectly OK with that. In record collecting circles that's probably seen as a piss-poor attitude. I heard that there were 150 people in line when the local record store opened this past Saturday for the umpteenth annual Record Collector Day. (Actually I don't know that it's in double figures yet.) No thanks to all that I say! Myself, I prefer to shyly wander into the store around 4:30 in the afternoon. Even at that hour there's still plenty of fellow freaks browsing about to share treasured vinyl platter fellowship with. Though in reality I'm mostly a professional and accomplished eaves dropper. I'm not concerned with procuring that ultra rare limited edition release. I just want something new to listen to.

Hell I even told myself beforehand that my state and federal tax refunds just electronically appeared in my bank account and to feel free and unleashed to indulge in unrestrained and epic vinyl gluttony but still once I am there on location, attempting to make a purchasing decision, a certain fiscal conservatism seems to take over. It might be 'cool' to have some of those recordings in my collection but what's the odds that they could possibly go unlistened to?

All that being said, I did find the one record that I had my heart set on .... A Dave Van Ronk concert recording from 1967. So it was a good day!!!

Old Friend

Just looking back at old, lost friendships. One in particular that bothers me. There was never a moment where "See you later" was said and where we knew it wasn't true. Never a moment of disagreement between us that was left to boil and fester and cause an unresolved split and parting. Just a week without contact turned into a month and then several months into a year and before I realized it, several years. And now I often find myself wondering why?

Maybe on my end it had something to do with increased responsibilities and obligations at work and a self imposed feeling of always needing to be there? It's been years now since I've 'called in sick' or taken a day off on a sudden whim to do something enjoyable with an old friend. Maybe I just became tired and lazy? I know that he remarried, though I didn't know it until after-the-fact .... Maybe that had a role in how things worked out? Politically speaking, we would rarely speak about our beliefs but I realized one day that he was much more conservative than I. But as far as I recall that was always put aside and never caused difficulties.

Hell the only moment of difficulty between us that I can remember was an instance during an adult recreational basketball game where I was attempting to calm him down before he talked himself into getting a technical foul from the referee and he suddenly turned on me and told me to back off ....  That accounts for about fifteen minutes of mutual silence and avoidance from twenty-plus years of great friendship.

One thing that I've come to realize is true and it may sound overly simplistic but it's really not ..... Friendships of youth and college days often simply fade away as people grow older. Especially as they enter their forty's and fifties. What once drew you together often ends with fading physical abilities or changing interests.

But considering everything it's difficult to accept that any of the known history (or at least the recalled history) would cause a total parting of ways with not even a phone call or email contact since.

There was never an intent to part ways, it just happened. I now find that sad.

More Notes

• RE: That saying, "Tastes like chicken" ..... I can't help but think that one time that it's not good for something to taste like chicken is when it's supposed to taste like turkey. Makes for a hugely disappointing sandwich. 
• Easter Sunday falling on April Fools Day? Doesn't seem proper.
• Finally figured out what's wrong with these 2018 Donruss baseball cards ..... There's no team identifications/logos on the caps and uniforms on any of the cards. It must have been dictated by Topps who apparently has a monopoly on the baseball card market. What low lifes!! Good thing I didn't get any Yankee cards in the purchased pack. They've probably edited out the pinstripes as well.
• My favorite part of root beer is the foam!!
• One of my newly discovered "things" as I get older is that even knowing that I'm home alone, I don't like having the bathroom door open. It somehow subtracts from my interior decorating efforts.

The Near Fall

So it's the annual audit of inventory at work and I'm in a steel cage at the end of the forks of a lift truck, twenty feet off the ground ..... in the sub zero air of a freezer and I hear a loud pop. It means one thing ..... The hydraulic hose on the lift truck just burst and it's spewing fluid in all directions and the only thing holding us up (I wasn't alone in the cage) is the cardboard totes full of frozen whole beans that the cage was hovering over as we were attempting to count and verify the numbers ..... And we're stuck up there for ten minutes as the stacks of totes in the adjacent stack are pulled out of the way so another lift truck with another cage can be brought in and we can tip toe across the four-high stack of totes and climb into our rescue chamber ..... and I'm trying to act calm and cool all this time even though I have a long held fear of walking across even the most stable looking stack of four or six-high totes.

And the fact that I'm here documenting this incident means that nothing fell over under my extreme weight. But I did witness our crippled lift trucks forks and cage make a drastic freefall plunge to the frozen concrete floor below once we were all clear and the attempt was made to back out of the situation slowly. And I couldn't help but think: What if we had all still been in that cage when it made its plunge? And how we're always generally just a second or two away from some sort of possible injury or worse  be it at work or home or simply walking down the sidewalk.

No matter how cautious you are, you still never know what's up ahead.