CONTINUED: Lucky

I’m really frightened that things will never be all right.  Everything will get worse.   I’m not going to have any supper again tonight and I  may freeze to death before morning.  Unless I’m willing to take another kid’s food away or beat his head in with the baseball bat I found this morning.  Then I could steal a coat.

My father is distant.  I think he knows something about my mother and the rest, but he’s not going to tell me.  When he does speak he calls me Alfred instead of Lucky, my nickname since I can remember.  He said my little brothers are out looking for food, but I doubt it.  They’re too young to be out and about in the dark on this dangerous night. When he lied to me, he stared into the fire and didn’t turn to look at me.  I know that means something is very wrong. 

We hear them coming now.  What an awful sound, a tearing and scraping.  Screaming and fire everywhere.  An ungodly awful smell.  I grab the bat and crouch down low near the ground.  My father crushes himself into a ball, I try to pull his head up by his hair, but he is rigid and locked up, his face buried in folds of his old loden coat. His whole body is shaking.  I want him to save me, but he won’t.  He can’t. He is terrified. So am I.  But he’s as good as dead if he stays here.  Everyone has left but the two of us.  I stand up to run and try to drag him after me by his collar..  He is too heavy and too paralyzed with fear. He makes no sound but a whimper.

I wish with all my heart and soul to wake and find this is a dream. 

Later, exhausted, my chest hurting from the hard breathing and running, I let myself collapse into a pile in the doorway of a burned out sporting goods store.  I roll up in the thick coat.  Moments or hours later I awaken because of a sound I can’t identify, I jump up screaming and lose it for a few seconds. I stop myself and take deep breaths.  But I don’t know if I heard something or dreamed  it.  After a few minutes I decide it was a dream. If it was them, I’d be dead by now. And then I remember the sound, exactly.  It was my father screaming as the blows landed on him, each destroying one part of him at a time.  

Maybe I won’t die.  Maybe I can stay alive somehow.  I’m thirteen, strong and smart. I really am lucky.  The old woman went down with one swing of the bat when I stole her box of graham crackers.  And my father’s warm coat still  has the winter lining zipped in.  

copyright 2011  David Griffin

 The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet,  SC

dave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Bad Connection

“You sound just like me,” said William, now completely surprised, fear beginning to well up from his stomach.

“I’m your twin. We’ve been separated a long time.”

William laughed. “I think Dad would have told me about you.”

“You don’t remember everything,” said the voice.

“Oh?” said William.  “Was Dad in on the joke?”

“That’s right,” said the voice.

“Well, friend, “ said William, “I guess you’re going to give me some proof of this.”

“Belin gusa,” said the voice.

“No, it’s mine!” William all but shouted.

The voice laughed.

William began to remember.  Someone was trying to take away his … what was it?  His mind was instantly transported back in time.  He tried to think of where he was but no words would come.  None that he recognized.

“Watel ara fin tick au trig,” William said.  Although he barely understood himself, he knew he was telling the man to back off.

“Our language,” said the voice. “You remember it well, my brother.”

“How could I forget I had a twin?” William wondered aloud.

“He made us forget,” said the man.

“I mean … forget my own brother, like you never existed.”

“He made us forget, William.”

“Arthur? Is that you?” said William in the private language that twins concoct in their cradle.

“He didn’t want us to grow up together,” said Arthur.

“Why?” said William. 

“He didn’t want us to remember each other,” Arthur persisted.

“Who did this to us?” William cried.

“He wanted us to forget,” said Arthur.

“Who could be so cruel?” said William. “Why would anyone separate us?”

“He had the tools, the skills, the need,” said Arthur.  “But he didn’t know about our secret language.  He erased everything but that.”

“Who did this to us?” cried William again.

“Our father, Jack,” said Arthur, “when he realized we saw him kill Mother.”

“Now, I remember,” said William.  “In the bedroom.  The knife.  All that blood.”

“When I remembered our language, then I remembered everything,” said Arthur. “And then I came looking for you.”

“I wouldn’t have remembered anything …” said William

“… if I hadn’t called.” said Arthur.  “I just need your address.”

“My address?  Why?”  said William.

“It’s been almost thirty years,” said Arthur. 

“But there’s really no need ….” began William, now wary, but unsure why.

“But of course we must get together.  And soon,” said Arthur.

“But Dad is …” said William.

“You have to kill him, William.  I can’t.  You must kill him.”

“Oh, no, I could never do that,” said William.

“You must!” said Arthur, “before he finds out we know.  He’ll kill us for sure.”

“Oh, Arthur, what is going on?”  said William, now very worried that he was not keeping up with something that might hurt him.

“Forget it.  Spell the key, William,” Arthur said.

“I can’t,” said William.  “Oh Arthur, don’t leave me again. I can’t do this.”

“Shut it down,” shouted Arthur over the phone. “Spell, it, William!” 

“S-O-P-L-M-O-M,” spelled William.

“Dah pah,” said Arthur. “Maybe next time.”

William hung up the phone.  He thought he must have dozed, and he’d had the strangest dream.  Someone had wanted him to do something, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what.

William’s father toddled out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the living room.

“Who was on the phone?”  the old man asked.

“I don’t know,” said William.  “I’m not sure it was anyone.”

"What do you mean?" said Jack.

"Could I possibly have a twin?" said William.

The old man’s eyebrows lifted and then settled down heavily.  He turned toward the kitchen.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.  “I need to get a knife.”

  

copyright 2012, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: War Wounds

.  The lad abruptly stopped and peered back over his disappearing footsteps.  He turned, staggered back to where he’d been, and was soon flailing in the snow as though searching for something.  Walter saw the boy’s bare foot and realized he had lost his boot.  

 As the snow came down furiously, the man bolted out the door, grabbed the boy, found the lost boot and carried them both back into the heated shack.  The boy was shaken by the almost violent rescue, and Walter was a bit stunned by his over-reaction to the little emergency. He coughed heavily before he was able to catch his breath.  Walter didn’t often forget to limit his exertion,  as he’d been advised by his doctor at the Veteran’s Clinic.  But he noticed the fear that seemed to arrive with the snow was now gone.

The boy looked around the interior of the little shed and thought it was pretty neat.  Everything including the workbench was smallish, like a playhouse, and all of the tools were lined up precisely where they belonged on the wall at the back of the bench.  The tiny coal stove pushed out a welcome warmth.  After they introduced themselves, Walter put David’s wet socks on the stove to sizzle and dry.  They talked of school and the weather and even soap operas.  Soon David could see the storm let up as he gazed out the window, a French door mounted horizontally with lots of glass panes and a wide view of the field.  When his socks were dry … actually singed a bit … he put on his boots and continued his way home.  David was pleased to find a new friend.  Walter was, too. 

David didn’t always find Walter in the little building each afternoon on his way home from school, although he would often peer in the window, ready to wave and say Hi.  Only when the snow slammed down in a howling wind with near blizzard strength  did David find the man out in the backyard shed.

On such days Walter left his wife to her radio programs, lit a fire in the stove and settled down in the tiny building to be with his thoughts.  He stared out over the field as the snow piled up and the fear continued to grow in his belly.  His mind was pulled back to those frozen snowy days in the Ardennes Forest. where he had been one of  81,000 American casualties in the deadliest battle of the War.  His mind’s eye again saw the trees explode around his foxhole and the snow and dirt plume up around him as mortar shells landed everywhere.  Once again he felt his limbs freezing and the terror mounting.  He saw himself lying with dead buddies around him in that awful frozen field, his lips mouthing the mantra, “It’ll Get Better, It’ll Get Better.”  But it didn’t.  Something tore through his chest and he woke up back in a Belgium field hospital,  drowning in a sea of pain.  Now, a decade later, sitting in the little shed in the middle of a snow storm, the fear came back to him and he sought to meet it again as he stared out on the field.  Walter didn’t know if he wanted to conquer his dread or simply shine a light on the pain.  He just didn’t want it to hurt so much.

On those snowy days when David came  across the field from school,  Walter would lurch from his frightful reverie back to the present.  The boy found himself welcomed into what he now thought of as a kind of man’s playhouse, and he would stomp the snow from his boots and  walk over to sit near the tiny stove.

There was one  particular snowy day when something new began, as David remembered it.  Walter  had asked casually about school and the boy pulled out his drawing pad and said he was supposed to draw something for homework.  It could be anything, but he didn’t know where to begin.  The man took the pad, propped it on his knee.  Taking a pencil from the bench, he  drew a great northern moose.  The likeness was quite good, and it was apparent that Walter had training.  Walter gave the pad to David and showed  him a few techniques for drawing animals,  using triangles and circles and ellipses.   David was thrilled to produce nice drawings by his own hand with this technique.   Over the next few months, the boy drew 13 moose, 11 dogs, 5 cats and a cow, the latter  on the day his father stopped by the side of the road to let him capture the animal in his sketch book.

 Walter was rather surprised at himself,  that his skills came back to him so quickly.  When he took some wrapping paper down from a shelf and spread it on the workbench,  ideas and old talents spilled from him as he  began to doodle and draw,  shading  and edging his work.  He wished he had real drawing paper and soft pencils and maybe sticks of  charcoal.  He missed the paints and pastels he had owned years ago, before being drafted and sent off to war.

David now found Walter in the shed each day when he crossed the field on the way home from school.  Snowy or sunny, on rainy or windy days,  Walter’s renewed interest in his art began to blossom in the tiny shed by the side of the field.  When David entered the little building,  there was always a new sketch or drawing hanging on a wall.  Eventually there were paintings of dense bright colors that suggested but didn’t define their subject.  David really had no words to describe  the paintings, but he sensed their power and  violence, and he could feel fear saturating each piece.

After the southern winds blew through the valley  in April and the sun began to climb higher in the sky toward the solstice,  school ended and David didn’t cross the field again until  autumn.   He could have walked up Conkling Avenue during the summer and crossed the field to visit Walter, but when he had last stopped by the little shed in June, Walter was painting in a frenzy, as if driven by a demon or the clock.  Conversation had been rushed as the man wheezed and coughed, holding his brush with two hands now, laying on the colors from dozens of new tubes of paint.

On the day school began again in September, David crossed the field and came to the shed.  The man was not there.  Paintings were evident through the window,  but not Walter.  The boy  passed by on two or three more occasions before finally working up the courage to go around to the front of the house and ring the doorbell.

Walter Katowski had died, said his wife, stifling a sob and wiping away the tears.  “War wounds,” she said. “He had only one lung, you know.  Lost the other at The Bulge,” she continued.  “Winters were tough on him.  I don’t know why he sat out there in that shed all the time.”

“To paint,” said David  “His paintings are still there in the shed.”

She looked at him as though he was crazy, but then walked with him to the little building in the back yard.  In a moment they were both inside.  Mrs. Katowski looked quite puzzled as she gazed at all the artwork,  and she began to cry quietly.  Walter’s paintings were arranged in a line around the inside of the shack, as in a crowded gallery. 

David noticed something about them.  There was an order to their arrangement and he could sense a drama unfold as his eye moved along the line of paintings that began on one side of the door, went down one wall and over the workbench, then under the window that looked out on the field, across the other wall and finally back to the door.  The objects in the paintings, whatever they were, never gained any more definition, but the colors toned down and became less garish as the line of paintings progressed.  The edges of the objects softened.  Imbalances came into balance and the chaos let up.  The fear came to rest.

At the end of the line was a painting quite different from all the rest, but David knew it had been painted by Walter.  It was somewhat larger than the others, a beautiful painting of the field in summer, as seen through the multiple panes of the shed’s window.  It was … and it still is … the most wonderfully executed landscape that David had ever seen.  Viewed through Walter’s eyes at last was a world at peace.  

  copyright 2007 by David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Breakfast

There are possibly fifteen of us and at each informal breakfast we'll assemble maybe 7 or 8 around two or three tables pushed together in the back corner of a K&W cafeteria at the north end of Myrtle Beach.  Most of us are retirees, some of us are churched, none of us care too much about religion per se.   

    We’re from all over the country.  Many are southerners.  Maybe a quarter of us are from the north … Maine, New York, Ohio, etc.   All of us were wondering a couple of weeks ago what has happened to America.

Now, it’s true old guys always worry about such things, but don’t forget  we were considered a valuable resource in earlier times when elders and their opinions were held in greater esteem.  

I would say we reached two points of consensus: 1. what's happening does not seem good, and 2. it's going to continue whether we like it or not. 

As to what one could do about it:

1. If a person sees an opportunity to join with others and work against the complete secularization of the country, that may be an avenue to follow.  2. Don't be surprised if the effort does little good. But by the way, a lack of success is no reason to NOT join the effort.

About the time the sweet lady who carries a pot of coffee around the restaurant had filled up our "go" cups for the ride out, it came to me we were doing exactly what people of like minds have done for centuries ... meet together in small groups, keep the light shining in our midst and ask a blessing for each other and our loved ones, as well as guidance for the way we live our lives.  We needn’t worry too much over what the rest of the world is doing.

Our little group's opinions may not fare well against the billions of dollars lined up in Washington and Hollywood in opposition to our way of life, but something tells me there are a lot more of us than some people think.  And if not, I won’t worry about that either.

copyright 2016 by David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Jack's Family

At the funeral,   a cousin I seldom saw repeated a story Jack had told her that he had never mentioned to me. 

Jack’s tale was about a well-dressed stranger he met one night.  He related it as if it really happened, so said the cousin.  I suppose it could have been real, or maybe a very vivid and certainly memorable dream. I’ve never been able to decide which.

The story began in the winter of his 9^th grade at school, when he was almost 16 years of age.  Jack came to blows with his drinking father and left their dysfunctional household for a few days.  No relatives would welcome him, so he spent a night in St. John’s Church, the large well-endowed Catholic edifice in downtown Utica.    The church doors were always open, but there were no lights on, except for the single candle hung over the altar. It often blew out. 

During the night Jack awoke as someone entered the almost completely dark building, made their way to the side altar, lit a votive candle and left.  The supplicatory candle, lighted for whom Jack knew not, spit out a weak light across the church.  Jack crawled out from his hiding place beneath the huge ornate baptismal font and found the rack of perhaps one hundred small candles, only one now burning feebly.

Thankful for at least a dribble of light, he sat down in the nearest pew where he could see the frail light play on the statues of Mary and   St. John as they stood watch over an all but empty church.

When a deep voice behind him said, “Do you want a penny to light a candle?”   Jack jumped nearly a foot off the bench.   As the man walked up into the light, Jack could see by his clothing he was a man of means.  The stranger had a kind face, and after looking fixedly at Jack for a moment, he walked over to the candles, dropped a coin in the box and scraped a match into a flame.  He moved the flame to one of the candles, paused and asked, “Will this one do?”   Jack was paralyzed, but shook his head yes.

The man touched the flame to the wick, seemed satisfied and turned back to Jack and said, “Your family must be worried about you.”  Jack found his tongue, “I don’t have a family.”  The man’s eyebrows raised a little and then dropped.  His face had a look of complete peace.   Either the stranger saw the lie or sensed the truth of Jack’s predicament, but to Jack it seemed wonderful to be looking into the eyes of one who was understanding and gentle.  

The visitor opened his hands as if to signify the entire church and said, “Well,  this is your family.”  Then he turned and walked down the aisle, leaving the darkened church.  Jack, still immobile, sat looking at his candle.  He knew it had been lit for him.

In time Jack came to have a new family in addition to those who had bore him and with whom he had been raised.  Jack’s birth family was crowded into a teepee of a house, a ramshackle dump on lower Mohawk St.  The entire brood of nine was subject to an alcoholic father and the needs of a sickly mother.  Brothers and sisters and their parents slept in two bedrooms, as well as the living room, and even the kitchen on cold nights.  Nothing in Jack’s family could be considered solid or dependable.  Everything changed hourly, ruled by emotions and fueled by drink.

Jack’s new family was ancient and unchanging.  Its adherents were admirable people and comprised the priests and successful parishioners of St. Johns Parish.  As well, the family was universal and extended even to Italy and Rome.  This new family had a daunting degree of tradition.  The “family history” of Catholicism interested Jack greatly, and he constantly read about it.  Seeking to control himself for an eternal reward, he consulted a host of laws and commandments by which he meant to live his life.  He unsuccessfully recommended these same strictures to me, his son. 

I had known very little of my father’s childhood, and the story explained a lot to me.  The troubled boy had grown to be a man, met and married my mother and raised three sons.  Through much of that time he remained rigid and extremely loyal to his church.  He scrupulously obeyed each rule.

But toward the end of his life, I noticed the religious artifacts and observances began to fall away. The pictures of the Sacred Heart on his apartment’s wall disappeared first and the various Catholic magazines strewn about went later.  I couldn’t tell if this was due to a loosening of his hard opinions or just an aspect of his aging.  Either way, he seemed released, as though he had gone inside himself, found the worry switch and turned it off. 

During his final year, my father lost his footing in the present and began to slide back into the past.  Surprisingly, he no longer mentioned religion or morals or rules.  Toward the end, he spoke mostly of my late mother, the balm of his sometimes troubled life

In time, Jack’s mind began to live elsewhere.  He never told where he went, but he always came back happy.    Eventually, he didn’t return and I lost him, though I stood next to his bed, listening to him breathe.  I was happy his mind was somewhere pleasant, but I missed him terribly.   I just wanted to hear his voice once more.  He could have quoted the canons of the Third Lateran Council and it wouldn’t have mattered to me. 

Until I lost my first hero, I had always entertained the possibility of a heaven.  My father’s death, when it came as I approached my forty sixth birthday, had such finality that at first I found it impossible to consider he could be alive elsewhere.   But as time went on a weak candle of faith somewhere inside made me want to believe.  For a long while after his funeral I would think of him each time the phone rang, smiling at the possibility he might be calling  from heaven.

And I hoped he was sitting with the well dressed stranger,  among a thousand lit  candles in a church no longer filled with darkness, but instead with a light growing brighter and brighter, as it welcomed him home to a family now perfected by peace, understanding and love.

copyright 2007/2015 by David Griffin

CONTINUED: Mrs. Unabomber

 “She’s a neighbor, Willard, and a widow,” I replied.  “This is important to her.”

“Mrs. Unabomber is a terrorist,” said Willard.

“Now that’s just silly,” I said.

“No, it isn’t,” he said.  “She mailed a get well card to the Missus and the writing matched the photograph of hand writing that ran in the newspapers back when the Unabomber was blowing people up.  I’m thinking Ted  Kaczynski was framed.”  

“That’s not much evidence to go on,” I said.

“She had the ability and she had motive,” he said.

“You think she knows how to make a bomb?”

“Those bombs were very low tech,” said Willard, “exactly what an old woman would make.”

I sighed.  “Out of what?  Cookie dough? Besides, what’s her motive?”

“Religious conviction,” he said with a straight face. “She’s a heathen.”

“I hear she’s a very religious woman, Willard.”

“Oh yeah? Look at how she’s always arguing with Father McCarthy.”

Father McCarthy commanded the nearby Catholic Church, an old brick and plaster pile we called St. John the Bazaar for its constant round of money raising fairs and carnival galas.  The parish often received checks written to  “John the Bizarre” and that sent the priest’s blood pressure into the stratosphere.  McCarthy was an old grump and incidentally a woman-hater who was known to have remarked off the cuff that if God had invented a third sex, the women of  his parish would have been sorely neglected.

Trying to steer Willard on the narrow path of sanity and good taste, I told him I thought he’d been lying awake too often listening to those overnight shows on the radio.

And I suggested he could be more sociable when he wanted to.  He needed to come down off his high horse, or in his case the big tractor that he’d painted red, white and blue and drove around the neighborhood handing out photos and audio tapes of Rush Limbaugh. 

He thought for a moment and then said, “Well, maybe it would be a good idea for me to investigate Mrs. Unabomber.”

His use of the word investigate reminded me of the cards he printed up the year before on the little printing press in his basement.

“Willard,” I said, “don’t give Mrs. Unemba the FBI card.  There’s no Special Agent named Roy Orbison.”

I convnced Willard to come with me to Mrs. Unemba’s.  I wanted to ask if she needed any help setting up for the party. “We’re retired,” I said, to Willard. “What else do we have to do?  You don’t have to eat her cookies if she offers any.”

Mrs. Unemba, a very tall black-skinned woman, welcomed us into her living room.  She was of indeterminate age, but she had the build of a pro linebacker hidden in her many-colored Mu Mu style floor length dress.

 “It is so nice of you to visit, Mr. David,” she boomed in her sing-song Caribbean accent.  “And you’ve brought along your kick in the side, Mr. Patriot.” 

“Name’s Willard,” he mumbled.

“Mr. Wil-LARD. I’ve heard you are making our neighborhood safe for Democracy.” she said. “With your tractor, no?”

“We thought we’d ask if we could help with the party,” I told  her.

“How nice of you,” she boomed.  “You just have a seat here in the front room while I go make us coffee.”

Mrs. Unemba went to the kitchen, leaving Willard and I to sit in big overstuffed chairs surveying the room’s spiritual landscape.

Her living room was filled with just about every religious article one could imagine.  Rosaries were draped over picture frames holding  paintings of famous saints with bloody hearts hanging out from their chests, while little plastic statues of Mary were glued on the upswept candles of a menorah.  A large gold Islamic crescent hung on the wall.  Cheap religious knick knacks dotted the end tables and religious magazines were scattered over the coffee table and the small white grand piano.  It looked like the Product Test Lab of a TV evangelist.

Willard inhaled as much of the sweet smelling room as his lungs could handle and then reached over to the coffee table and picked up what appeared to be a 14  inch statue of a monk.  He shook it, twisted off its head and smelled the contents.

“Brandy,” he said with a smile.

He took a swig, screwed the head back on and looked around the room, a museum of bad taste with good intentions.

 “I can’t believe it,” he said.  “God really does make junk.”

“Willard, keep your voice down,” I hissed.

“Look at that spool of wire over there,” he said, “under the picture of those guys at a bachelor party.  Just right for bomb making.”

“It’s picture-hanging wire,” I replied, “and that’s the Last Supper, not a bachelor party.”

“Really?” said Willard. “What about the picture over there of the fellow doing a drug deal?”

“Willard,” I said, exasperated, “that is Rembrandt’s ‘Judas Returning The Silver.’”

Our hostess entered the room with a tray of coffee cups.

“It’s so nice to have visitors.” she trilled. “Father McCarthy comes not so often, but alas we differ on Augustine’s turn to celibacy.  I tell him God is not against sex.  Nor probably a little covetousness, for that matter.  He gets so-o-o upset, that man.”

“McCarthy gets upset when the grass grows,” said Willard.

“So, how old is the kitty?” I asked, wondering why it wasn’t lying about the room somewhere.

“Poor Samson would have been nine years old this very next week,” she said.

“It’s dead?” asked Willard.

“Only the body,” she said.  “Anointed and buried under the tree out back with my late husband’s Smith and Wesson .38 Special -- ”

“Why did you bury the little voodoo with a gun?” asked Willard.

“ – that’s pointed upward,” said Mrs. Unemba, “so don’t go looking for it.”

I tried to change the subject, but Willard was nothing if not persistent.

“Why are  you having a birthday party for a dead cat?” he asked.

Mrs. Unemba turned her huge brown eyes to Willard, then narrowed them in shrewd appraisal.

“You are such a cute little man," she said as the smile returned to her face.  "Behave yourself or you won't get any of the lovely cookies I'm baking."

The smell of something in the oven now wafted out of the kitchen and overpowered the incense in the living room.

Willard jumped up and spoke with the officious tone of a Special Agent from the FBI.  “What’s in your cookie dough?”  he demanded.

I stood abruptly between Willard and Mrs. Unabomber ... I mean, Mrs. Unemba.

“Roy – I mean Willard - is on a special diet,”  I explained. “Isn’t that right, Willard?  He can’t eat anything with chocolate or he might fill up and turn brown - I mean grey.  Yes, grey is what I meant.”

“You poor man,” exclaimed Mrs. Unemba as she rose and brushed by me to fold her arms around Willard.   A foot taller, she loudly kissed him on the top of his bald head and said, “Perhaps I can help with a potion.”

“Potion?” Willard mumbled with a quiver, as he tried to extricate himself from her bulk.

“I didn’t bury all of ‘the little voodoo’ out back in the yard,” she said.

“I have to go now,” said Willard, and he was halfway to the door when I looked at Mrs. Unemba, shrugged my shoulders and followed the old man out.

“Thank you for the coffee, Mrs. Una -  I mean Mrs. Unemba,” I called over my shoulder as I ran after Willard down the sidewalk.

“You come back real soon,” she sang out from the top of the steps.  “I’ll have the potion ready for your friend!”

Her booming laugh chased Willard and I all the way down the road.

David Griffin         copyright 2013

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Trusting The Math

I have navigation equipment and sometimes it works for me on my water.  Sometimes it doesn’t work anywhere. Unfortunately it’s the only equipment I know how to use.

One thing I’ve learned in life is to not always trust finding my own way, or trust my own thinking.  Just because a thought occurs to me doesn’t mean it’s true.  A new direction isn’t always a good direction.  I seek advice from others because I know they might see where I have blind spots.  And I’ve also learned that when I don’t understand something … when I’m having trouble navigating my seas or  anyone’s … I can instead go by the numbers.  An engineer friend calls it “trusting the math.”

For example, I’ve never been good at accurately estimating distances, either of the geographical or emotional variety.  If I’m near a ship at sea and I want to travel completely around it in a circle while staying a mile away, my sense of things tells me the trip around will be about 3 miles.  The actual distance is over six miles, twice what my intuition tells me.

There’s a well known formula for calculating the perimeter of a circle and if I use it I’ll come up with the right answer every time.  I’ve learned to use the formula instead of assuming what I think is correct.  My sense of distance is useless.  If I want a true answer, I should do the math and trust it.

Sometimes the math can be very simple, such as when I watch evidence add up that shows I should be fixing a dripping pipe in the basement.  I can kid myself, thinking I’ll eventually get to the chore and all will be OK in the meantime, but when I count the number of days I’ve seen water on the cellar floor and  trust the math, I’ll know it’s time to get out the tools.

The same simple math also tells me when I skip my morning meditation more than a couple times each week, I become selfish and petty.

 It would be great for people like me if there was a type of math I could use for relationships. When I sensed trouble brewing with my wife, I could simply run the numbers and use the result to answer her needs.  I’d plug all the factors into a formula, get out my old slide rule and solve the equation for an answer no one could refute.

With that kind of math, I’d be right all the time. But I wouldn’t be as loveable.

copyright 2016 by David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Reunion Jam

Those who kept at their music sounded better than some of the others who like me at around age twenty drove home after a gig one night and put away my keyboard,  only occasionally picking up an instrument for another forty years.  There sure wasn’t much time for making music after our jobs and wives brought responsibilities and babies … and then teenagers and bills and all the flotsam of life that we thought we loved so much.

But the soul never quits.  And it shows in the sound we’ll never see with our eyes.  We’re so used to viewing good looking young people paired with good music  in our modern media that it’s a shock to see a guy who looks like Mr. Whipple playing some  pretty fine guitar licks instead of squeezing the Charmin.  Standing there waiting for the downbeat in his Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts … not the stylish baggy shorts of the young … you’d expect he was about to lead a bunch of old ladies in a few stanzas of Kum Ba Yah.  Instead he breaks into an intro with a 12 bar blues style and starts wailing into the microphone as if he’s Little Richard.  And he’s good!  Damned good!

Later on the fellow who’s been sitting with his wife at the next table stands up, runs his hands back over his $200 haircut and smoothes down his executive cut sweat shirt and tailored shorts.  Then he heads for the stage.  You’d think he was someone’s business agent or a successful stockbroker.  That may be, but he’s also the lead singer in a group that has remained together … most of the time … for the past 40 years.  Tonight they will reprise a list of songs that made the  hearts of a thousand young women throb as the girls danced to the music and sang out the pounding refrains in one last shriek of post-pubescent abandon before settling down to choose husbands and make babies.  Quite a few of those women are back here tonight almost fifty years later dancing down by the stage.

Unique about the music we grew up with is it being our music and it doesn’t matter if we’re playing it or dancing to it or just sitting there tapping our feet. The music is from somewhere in our soul.  That’s where it lives.

See also:  Not So Famous  -  My Short Life As A Musician

http://www.windsweptpress.com/famous.pdf

and 

                First Gig

                http://windsweptpress.com/firstgig.pdf

David Griffin                    copyright 2010