Whisker Windfall

This Labor Day was the twentieth anniversary since I grew a goatee. Haven’t seen the ugly under those hair follicles in this century!

Several weeks ago Janet and I traveled, and in Keystone, South Dakota, I shaved.

I was shocked! Without hair on my face, everything looked different!

At least my receding hair line, even if it’s in a steady retreat, is a gradual reveal.  It’s like a slow descent plane landing.  But shaving cold turkey and going lickety-split from whiskers to clean shaven after twenty years, well that’s an engine failure crash landing!

I felt like I needed to introduce myself to the guy staring back at me in the mirror! Who is this stranger?

The worst part, however, was somehow, sometime in last twenty years, someone snuck another chin under the original! It doesn’t look like a double chin with facial hair, right?

But now, my face looks pregnant! Nine months. With twins! Continue reading Whisker Windfall

Writer’s Block

The weakest ink lasts longer than the strongest memory.

Sometimes the ink flows.

But sometimes it’s stuck in the pen.

Full, but nonetheless, dry.

 

Thoughts crash in thunderous explosions,

Yet it’s all thunder, no rain.

Ideas, memories, laughter, pain,

They come, they go,

Enter, leave,

Flicker, fail.

Nothing sticks, nothing lasts.

Writers Block

Like Alzheimer’s,

Random, continuous thoughts flow,

But nothing connects in logical sequence.

Before a memory is expressed,

The wind catches it’s seed, without root,

And no effort or concentration can make a difference,

As neurotic puffs wisp away the thought to oblivion,

Never to be seen, nor known, again.

 

And so it is today.

The pen remains silent.

Still.

Dry.

Maybe tomorrow ink will flow.

Maybe.

 

Writers Block

Throw Momma From The ‘Plane’

Last week we flew to Rapid City, South Dakota to start a six state vacation tour. There’s always a variety of people on airline flights.  I catch myself evaluating everyone, particularly the men, just in case I have to fight.

Don’t call me paranoid. Call me, I don’t know, prudent. Maybe paranoid.  Mainly, prudent.

This flight though, I was more worried about a flight attendant than anything else! At first, I wasn’t completely sure if he was a she, or she was a he. It was she.

I’m figuring she could’ve retired in 1972, but has held on to working as long as she can. The airline must have great benefits! Hair styling, Botox and charm school, however, aren’t among them.

Her gruff, don’t make me slap you, matter of fact, I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day for lifer voice seemed disturbingly familiar. She even looked familiar, but patting my chin with my finger, I couldn’t figure out from where…

Then my mind started churning….a movie, maybe?

That’s it! That’s who the stewardess looks like!  She looked like mama from the 1987 movie, Throw Momma From the Train!  It was uncanny!!  Twilight Zone music started playing it was so eerie!! Continue reading Throw Momma From The ‘Plane’

To See The Way

A college student in an electric wheel chair was moving up the sidewalk beside our local university.

She controlled her chair with one hand while tapping a cane back and forth in front of her with the other.  She was partially paralyzed, and on top of it, blind! Yet there she was, out in public, on her own, making her way from place to place!  Amazing!!

I respect her immensely for doing what seems impossible to me!

She reminds me of a blind friend named Randy I knew in college.  Randy was 7 or 8 years older than me and had lost his sight his senior year of high school when he caught a rare virus. Continue reading To See The Way