I'm Not Mikey!!!

Guy at work …. youngish guy ….. calls me "Mikey." I think that I ought to know your name and you ought to at least be within a twenty year window, younger or older, then myself, before you can call me Mikey. This is like a four decade gap and it just doesn't feel proper. Well maybe it's proper because who am I to say what's proper or not, but I still don't like it. I think that by default I've earned a miniscule amount of respect in my life. Ask me if I have an issue with it. If your grandfathers name was Michael, would you like your friends to refer to him as "Mikey?" I draw the line at three or four of my closest friends. They have the green light.

Rain

3:00am. Rain outside getting harder and harder. Increasing in vocal steps and sequences, until you're expecting to hear the thunder next. Subsides for a moment then starts again. And you're sitting there, awake at this mid-point hour, between night and morning, suddenly thinking about Noah. Or the local flood of 1996. And then just as suddenly ..... silence. And this time, you think it has faded away. That it's over. A temporary calm takes place ..... But the storm's not over!!! It reinforces its stubborn dominance!! Refusing to let you relax or forget. Like you forgot its presence in this place. Like you forgot its name!

All which brings to mind the Jackson Browne song, "You Love the Thunder." ..... "and you love the rain."

And rain, thunder and silence each has their own unique varying degrees of intensity and beauty. And suggestions of renewal. Especially in the dark of night where it's mostly hidden. And in the shadows. But not if you close your eyes.

Closing

A little sad this weekend to make my final visit in one of my favorite out-of-town compact disc and record stores. It's closing in one day and I doubt that I'll get back to Beaverton before then. It's been a great source of music over the years, especially for someone seeking Jazz recordings, and a place where I enjoyed getting lost for an hour or two with each visit. I think a community is greatly lessened when places like bookstores and record stores go out of business.

For some odd reason I felt an urgency to get in and out on my final visit. Half of the store was already packed up and ready for the closing. The usual vibe inside the doors was missing. I didn't take my usual notice of the posters on the walls. They must have already been taken down. It didn't feel like a place where you could hang out and discover something new.

Appreciation

Appreciating simple pleasures …..

• The time immediately after a much anticipated release from work when you have the following day off. When you practically run out the door before they can call you back. Feels so liberating.
• Autumn rain showers ….. as opposed to plain old steady, relentless and dreary RAIN! There's HOPE and possibilities in rain showers.
• Late night music!!! Enhances the moment and the uncertainties found in the dark and quiet hours. 
• A hot and delicious meal prepared in one's pressure cooker. You too can feel like a chef. Like you've accomplished something significant. Significant to my standards anyway.
• Your college alma mater, in the midst of a losing season and when it looked like they had reached a seasonal low point that couldn't get much worse, coming back from a 31-3 third quarter deficit to win their football game. And proud to say that when they made it 31-10, I had a thought ….. "Maybe there's still time and a chance?"
• Feeling that you've made a comeback of sorts with your health!!! Feeling like you are only joking when talking about being an old man.

Changes

One thing that I readily admit to ….. Over the past year or two, I've been undergoing noticeable (by me) and fundamental changes in my outlook, attitudes and personality. There are long time feelings, rituals and routines that I no longer have interest in.

The process fascinates me. Though not to mistake fascination with thrilling me. It hasn't been a planned self improvement mission or contemplated in any way but just spun into motion and it feels like it's unstoppable or irreversible.

Though it causes me to chuckle a little, it occurs to me that just maybe it's the beginning stages of becoming a grouchy old man?

Who me?

One thing I do like is the gray facial (chin) stubble that I see in the mirror when I haven't shaved for three or four days.

Oldest Friend

You just never know ..... Just a few days ago my oldest friend told me that he went through a life threatening medical situation a couple of years ago. I had no idea. Shook me up a little. Your oldest friendships from childhood .... well even though I've begun to face and acknowledge my own health realities of late, I guess I just assumed that some things, like our friendship, would go on forever. But by the time one is into their sixty's, most people are dealing with some sort of health challenge. You stop taking life and tomorrow for granted. You're thankful just to wake up feeling good. You realize with each new day, that the odds are increasing that it could be your last day.

Random Stuff

It appears that our two weeks of Summer Part 2 have finally come to an end.

Oh and of course, since it's western Oregon, tonight's "Hunters Moon" was mostly obscured by clouds. Especially at the prime moonrise moments. It's like, give me a special photo op involving the moon and the probability of cloud cover is 98.9%.

So I woke up this morning and my first thought before I even looked out the window is: "Damn! It feels like freaking Winter." Turned out that it was just a little aging going on. Getting up and moving about usually puts that process on hold …. for today anyway. You don't notice so much, your life and the  new normal, updating itself each morning.

Isn't there an alternative definition of insanity that states: "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"? Well I guess I qualify. Why the hell do I keep attempting to drive into downtown Salem during the 5:00pm rush hour and thinking that just maybe the traffic at all points of entry won't be backed up for a mile with progress measured in inches? And I …. I have no patience for waiting in long lines. I ultimately end up demonstrating my creative spirit and exploring various bright ideas involving alternate routes and short cuts through side streets, narrow alleys and parking lots but each detour just leads to more gridlock. Any perceived success is likely due to traffic eventually thinning out as the clock spins forward and people slowly moving away from the downtown core while I search in vain for the magic opening.

Radio Story

One-thirty in the morning. Driving home from work. On the radio a man from South America speaking of this suitcase of old recordings on tape that had belonged to his grandfather that he came across and spending days going through all these tapes. And one song in particular that fascinated him ….. and it's not clear if he knew the song title or not ….. but then some time later going out and walking around his town and coming across a older, blind woman on the street playing that same song on an accordion. And how she knew the history of the song and the connection that he made with her in that place and moment. He had looked extensively for information about the song and finally stumbled across it "in the memory of a wonderful blind woman."

And I'm just fascinated by this stuff.

BBC Outlook

Get Away

More and more each day I am understanding why people sometimes sell everything and go off on their own into the great unknown, away from everything they've ever known, willing to accept whatever happens.

Crossing The Street At 62

Got caught in the middle of the crosswalk when the light changed. I tried to pick up the pace, tried to shift into a sudden jog but my knees would have none of that. "No freaking way!" they said. I attempted a step or two of hopeful acceleration and they just shut that shit down right there in the middle of the busy downtown intersection leaving me feeling extremely vulnerable. But I just resigned to fate right there and thought: "Screw this! I'm just going to accept whatever happens! You were dumb enough to get your aging ass in this position, now accept the consequences!" I mean, I didn't see my life flash before me or anything but it did startle me a bit in that moment.

Poetry?

I picked up a new release to check out in the poetry section of the bookstore.

Apparently it qualifies as poetry deserving a hardcover edition book release if you take an ordinary, mundane and boring sentence lacking any shroud of creativity and put three words on one line, three or four more words on a second and third line, skip a line and put a final word or two on the fourth line. Then repeat the process in order to compose additional verses and fill seventy pages ..... Oh that's something else. You don't really have to fill the pages with words. Just a few lines will do.

So let me get started on my prolific literary career!!

Am I too harsh in my assessment? Is there something that I'm failing to see? Am I the only one who thinks the glowing praise for the poets(?) work on the book sleeve is a bit too much?

I do enjoy words and poetry with a collection exceeding 500 books and definitely have opinions on what I appreciate and enjoy. Presentation matters to me. Initial reactions are usually reliable for me. Creativity is huge! Paint a visual! When it appears that you've just carelessly slapped something down, I don't dig any further into it.

More Hoop Dreams

I swear I am going to do this before Winter is in full bloom!!

One of these days soon, I'm going to take my basketball (Maybe have to inflate it first) and seek out a hidden from view, remote playground with a basketball hoop (a whole net on the basket is a requirement) and discover if I can still .....

• execute a reverse pivot while dribbling, 
• a behind the back dribble, 
• dribble between my legs, 
• drop step,
• jump shot, 
• left handed layin. 
• a jump hook, 
• dunk the ball ..... 

.... truth be told I only did that previously with a running start (and the wind behind me) on a nine foot, ten inch high rim and with an ultra springy floor to gain added elevation while wearing low top Adidas basketball shoes. If I can't do it today at age 62.7, I hopefully won't be too dejected. And who knows, maybe with added years and maturity, I can accomplish the ten foot rim dunk. I mean I really won't know beyond a doubt until I give it a try right?

Maybe jumping and touching the bottom of the net would be a more realistic goal?

A side-note on dunking. I may exaggerate at times regarding my basketball exploits and adventures. I don't expect that God is counting those kinds of lies in the big book of a persons sins. So what's the problem if I let people believe I could legitimately dunk at will.  

It took many years but just when I became comfortable with all those flash and dash skills, I suddenly went through ten lost years where I lost interest in playing the game. 

Now I want to play again. Even have a burning desire again but can't get my legs to cooperate .... The legs and knees can't find urgency when in the middle of a crosswalk facing speeding oncoming traffic, how can I expect them to go along with my silly hoop fantasies?

In my mind, I can still do all these things .... Even the dunking!!! But it seems that's not good enough for me.

My earliest memories of basketball is shooting at home, in my driveway, on a eight foot hoop with my mom rebounding for me and whipping the ball back out to me for the next shot. She was always of generous and gracious nature which is probably why she let me do most of the shooting. My dad built houses for a living but must have left his tape measure at the construction site on the day that he put up that basket.

A Lifetime of Journaling

I most likely have in the thousands, handwritten pages of journal entries. I was pretty active in writing things down in ink on paper before discovering that it was all so much easier and neater when composed on the computer. I started as a teenager and still journalize to this day. There was a few six month periods of inactivity along the way but other than that .....

Someone once said that the more you write, the better your writing becomes. In my case that's still open for debate.

I can't bring myself to part with these pages but fear the embarrassment of knowing someone will likely discover and read all this when I pass away. It would be just my luck that my thoughts would be judged as book worthy and become a best seller after I'm gone .... But I doubt it. Hopefully any reader will be bored to exhaustion early and toss them in the nearest recycle bin. 

Past Record Stores

Chatting with the owner of the only remaining 'real' record store in town about local record stores of our youthful past. He recalled one that was only in business for a few months but that for a even shorter while, stayed open twenty-four hours a day. I never knew of such a place. Though had I, I would have loved to drop in at 3:00am once or twice a month ….. The idea seems romantic and groovy to me. In those days (1978 he estimated) I was often still awake at that hour …. because why the hell did we ever need to sleep? And record stores have always been my favorite destination, even over the basketball court.

Problem - Solution

Kid (defined as a early-twenty-something) at work comes up with the most basic, elemental solution to a problem. An issue that several have complained about. The fix, so simple, so obvious that I'm embarrassed to even mention the specifics  ..... And I'm like: "I've been here forty-four years, why the hell didn't I think of that?"

Yankees

The (my) Yankees win one of their first two playoff games in boston and the articles in the New York Post suggest that suddenly the Yankees have some sort of edge and I'm thinking, "Yeah right" because I've watched enough playoff baseball and basketball in my life to know that in most cases these series swing back and forth with each game and one win in game two rarely decides anything and even more rarely has any bearing on the next game despite what all the people writing articles in newspapers and online and expressing opinions on television spout off. And sure enough, they turn around and get blasted in game three by the red sox (who I refuse now and always to capitalize), 16-1 or whatever the hell the score was.

And the only time that I've ever felt that one win changed everything was in 2004 …. same two teams and the Yanks had been up three games to none. And I'm laughing and feeling good. Then red sox win game four to make it 3-1. OK no problem, despite feeling a very small but nagging amount of trepidation. Then the sox win game five!!! Yankees were still up 3-2 at that point but it felt like the series was suddenly over with the red sox having won and moved on to the World Series and I might have even been ok if they had called it at that point and declared the sox American League champs because it just felt like something elemental had changed in the universe and there was a ominous wave of momentum building and spreading in the wrong f'ing direction ….. and all true Yankee lovers know how that ended up. I don't need to go any further dredging up bad memories.

And I truly want to live forever and outlive everyone currently alive or still to be born and also including all objects in the universe such as the moon and stars but I never wanted to live long enough to see that bunch of steaming, smelly B.S. And I recall some teacher at some level of my education telling those of us who were attentive in the classroom that day that one should never start a sentence with the word "and" but I often don't care any more about that lesson then I do about the red sox.

And anyway game four happens tonight ….. "God willin' and the river don't rise" as I heard John Wayne once say.

Deja Vu

A wet Sunday night in Autumn on graveyard shift. Deja Vu!! It occurs to me that I've been in this exact situation several times before. I know the exact feeling from previous experience .... Autumn, cold, rain, Sunday night, a sense of loneliness. The clock moves slower than usual, almost stopping. The type of night where you look upward at the stars (if you can see them through the clouds) and ponder life.

Sense of loneliness in the air .... What does one expect a night like this, spent at work, to feel like?

Doctor Visit

A few days ago. After my doctor visit …. Two men outside the clinic, maybe 70 and 40 years old, possibly Father and Son, locked in a deep embrace and crying. The kind of embrace where time stops for that moment and nothing else in the universe matters. Good news or bad news? Dying or the joy of defeating death for now?

Notes

• A person ought to be able to get their money back when they pay beforehand at a dinner buffet and the menu item that drew you in, isn't available. But I somehow doubt there will be any sympathy for the jilted one.
• A twenty-something woman thumbing through the wood crate full of vinyl records at the antique store, passes on Jackson Browne's first album. I feel disappointed with myself for not having the courage to raise my voice and explain to her the error of her ways. Maybe share with her how I took it home forty-six years ago and what the songs meant to me. Hell I should have purchased it and then presented it to her. Pay it forward!!! So I went home and played "Rock Me On The Water."
• A lady at work walking around and I'm standing there confused and thinking to myself: "Who the hell does she remind me of?" After much contemplation, I finally figured it out. She reminded me of last years version of herself.
• Will I ever be satisfied that I haven taken the perfect photograph? (I've likely mentioned this previously a time or two.) I find an image of interest and can take fifty attempts at capturing it but always want one more. Will I ever look at the first attempt and decide that's the best I can do?