A couple of weeks ago at the Gold River Auction in Olathe Jeanne found this thing for free because nobody bid on it. She gave me a call and asked if I’d like to have it. Seemed a strange concept to me, but I told her to snag it for me.
Believe it or not this thing is not electric, doesn’t require any software, and you can just type words into it to get them printed right away. No hassle with a printer, no hookups, no dried out printer-ink.
Jeeze! You just type into this thing and if there’s a sheet of paper in it, you end up with a page with what you typed right there already.
Hi readers. Some things are already good enough. No johnny-com-lately movie maker needs to come along with some glue-sniffing team of 21st Century Drama mamas and papas attempting to do it better.
Robert Jaws Shaw in Battle of the Bulge is one example.
James Mason as Rommel in The Desert Fox is another.
Faye Dunaway as Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde [Bastards have already given that one a half-assed try].
Anthony Quinn in everything he was ever in.
Burt Lancaster in everything he was ever in, but especially The Rain Maker.
Stevie McQueen in everything he was ever in.
Rod Steiger in everything he was ever in.
Marlene Deitrich in Blue Angel.
Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou in Sorcerer
The human mind is a strange place to find ourselves living if we ever get enough distance from the background noise to notice. I tend to notice it a lot.
This morning seemed destined to be just another day. Gale and Kay were doing the Austin Gem and Mineral Show, so I’d figured to walk up to his house to get the truck mid-day so’s to take care of putting their chickens to bed tonight. Startled me a bit when I looked up and there he sat in Little Red a few feet away, having brought it down to me. My hearing must be further gone than I’d realized.
Seemed they’d no sooner gone than I got an email from Jeanne saying my old friend from childhood and later lost-gold-mine chasing days was in Fredericksburg trying to get hold of me hoping I could get over there for lunch. Heck, it must be 15 years or more since I’ve seen Keith, though recently he’s been reading this blog. Naturally him being 40 miles away and me with a truck sitting there available, I headed over there.
Really nice visit, but in the course of bringing one another up-to-date he asked me a number of questions about my situation here that forced me to take a hard look and organize my thoughts about it all. That kicked off a series of trails of thinking to organize clearer, more concrete priorities for myself within a realistic examination of my options.
There aren’t a lot of them, but they’re all stacked atop a single one: having the means of leaving this place in a relatively short time if the need arises. It’s time I decided on a single course of action and begin leading events in a direction that allows it to congeal in a way that accomodates the needs of the cats.
But the process of thinking about it in an organized way had a parallel thinking-path over whispering somewhere else in my brain wiggling out a sort of excitement, anticipation about it. Here’s something that will be pure trauma and agony for the cats I do everything possible to spare such things, and my ticker’s beating a little faster in a pleasurable way just considering it.
That, combined with the certainty the process of getting things together to execute the plan I come with is going to involve some unpleasantness, excruciating work and fingernail chewing as it goes along.
Seems I’ve somehow contrived to be two different places at the same time inside my mind. One being pushed by probabilities to do what makes sense rather than what I’d prefer, the cats would prefer. And one reaching somewhere into fond memories of pinon trees, high mountains and an entirely different sort of solitude than I have here.
Keith confided to me today, “Everyone thinks you’re crazy.” I can’t find any good argument that everyone’s wrong. It’s nice being crazy and still being as happy as I manage to be all the time, though.
Anyway, to satisfy that fiddle-footed nagging, here are some songs of the highway and the road.
How fortunate we are to live in a time when all this can be pulled together into a single post. You didn’t put a lot of miles on the dance floor with these songs. You stood still.
To me all these are #1 when I’m listening to them.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 