Back in St. Louis

It's hot, July, no rain lately and none coming.  The river is back down and barge traffic seems about equal, going upstream and coming down.  Two bridges across are in my window, a third is just to the south, and a fourth is soon to be completed, but this river is still a real border as it has long been.  An old slave state on one side, an old free one on the other.  Slaves were sold on the steps of the courthouse right below me; Lincoln lived on the other side.  There was a lot of back and forth, though.  Dred Scott's trial, which was also in the courthouse below, was about his going back and forth; Sherman lived here; Grant settled here; Robert E. Lee lived here and built a dam that saved the city from losing its landing on the river.

NYC 4am Monday

The city is hot now, so it's going to be a killer day.  The people up are car-movers like me, serious partiers, early shop owners, and the poor souls we used to call bums and now call homeless.  It's quiet, for the city, but you feel the thunder of a city day rolling in.

Not with a bang but a whimper

I think Eliot is mostly right.  Many do not - evidently even he revoked the idea - because they see an explosion ending the world.

Worlds, societies, networks, friendships, love affairs.  Their endings may start with a bomb, but there is always some measure of life in the rubble, and it isn't until that life dies, until there's nothing, no talk, no love, no life, that it's over.  And that sounds to me like a whimper.

Busted clavicle

For a teenage boy driver, the metal horses they put on subdivision streets are racing gates, allowing you to slalom through the neighborhood.  I recall it vividly.   But for middle ager on a bike, his head hanging low because the ride is getting long and sweaty, the horses are bad critters.  I ploughed into one the other day and went airborne, slo-mo, reconsidering my many faults, and landed with a crunch on my shoulder.

A broken collarbone, the left clavicle.  On the x-ray it looked like a busted branch.  May need surgery, but in the meantime I'm in a sling, looking like a kind of disabled vet.  I tried to spruce up the sling by using a madras necktie, but it looked a little crazy.  Like I really didn't know what to do with a tie, and so used it to hold up an arm.

Recalibration

This business of writing up in the Internet sky has changed a lot in my 10+ years of doing it, and I have tried to navigate the head winds, but the methods have spread me too thin and the result is really nothing I care about. So I could go back to writing for the drawer, but as I've posted here plenty of times, for me writing for the drawer means no writing at all. I still need the - what? - the mixture of choice, and risk, and spraying-my-tag-on-a-public-wall I get from putting my stuff out into the ether.

So now I'm out there, lots of ways. I'm in Google and Facebook and Twitter and wherever my Mac Air puts me. But I'm sick of seeing that I have become a dossier, a big fat file of marketing opportunity. I'm really sick of seeing other people - and their programs - attributing pictures, items, articles, places to me. I could go further up into all these social network levels, and many newer ones, and I probably would if I wanted to have, sooner or later, my own 15 minutes of fame. But Andy - I don't. I want what I deserve, no more, no less.

I hope I deserve the occasional reader, who will almost always be a friend from the rest of my life. So for the next tranche it's back here, back to this one place, Strays. Where I started. The readers will come and go one by one, via word of mouth. If it falls back to just one - me, when proofreading - and stays there, fine. This isn't a survey, or a convocation, or a collection plate. It's words, slung sidearm or overhand and curved, changed up, or fast. That's all.

Big Snow

When it's like this, the shrubs are smashed down and the trees lose their limbs.  Other than that it's simply radically beautiful, especially the day after, when the sun comes out.

Something about this is so evocative of childhood.  Maybe because I grew up in the land of Lake Effect, east of Cleveland, where like Eskimos we had different names for snow.  Yesterday it was what we called Good Packing Snow, hell to shovel, fair for sledding, and great for snowballs and snowmen.

Maybe also because it means you go out bundled up and come back wet, tired, and looking for hot chocolate.  Like a kid.  Only now the reason for the outdoor effort is to make sure the paths are clear and you can drive to work the next day, not in order to snowface your brother.

Heaviest snow we've had here in St. Louis, heaviest since a blizzard in the early '80's.  But everything is pretty well organized, no one died, and the world is covered with meringue.

Hiding from The Big Guy

There aren't many stories from the Bible that stick with me but two do clang in my head, off and on.  The first is right up there early in Genesis, when Adam hides from God because Adam knows enough to know he is naked.  The second is the terrifying parable of the talents, where one servant hides his talent (a nicely ambiguous term) rather than putting it to productive use.  In both cases, the hiding man suffers.

I do know enough to know that I'm still hiding myself and my talent and that, well into my seventh decade on the planet, I'd better come out and start to produce something with meaning or I'm looking at quietly sinking beneath the waves, with nothing but a reputation for being a pretty nice guy.

It's more than sitting in the front row and raising your hand a lot, because I did that.  It's more than volunteering for tricky assignments, because I've done that too.  It has something to do with coming out and standing in front of The Big Guy, and standing up to that authority.  Saying, here's my best shot.  And pulling the trigger.