Last night I read myself to sleep at about 10 and then woke up at 3:30 in the morning. And could not get back to sleep. After lying there in the dark for about an hour I decided that I would not be going back to sleep, so I got up and sat down at the keyboard.

But nothing of any seeming significance came to mind, nothing worth writing about.

So that's that, I guess.

Perhaps I am not really a writer after all, and perhaps I have been foolishly frittering away precious time all these many, many years. Maybe I was born to be an idle dreamer. And nothing more.

Could be . . .


"All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."
--Sean O'Casey

Nothing Today

Nothing today...

Nothing To Report

Nothing to write at this moment...

Slow Sunday

JoAnn is running in a half-marathon here in Tucson this morning and then later, around noon, we are going out to lunch at El Charro Cafe.

For some reason I am just not in the mood for blogging, nor for writing of any kind.

Maybe later...

Busy, busy, busy...

Lots of things happened yesterday but I had no time to record any of them. And today is going to be another one of those busy times. More later...

A New Landscape For Me

As I promised yesterday , here is one of the pictures of snow that still abides atop one of the Rincon Mountain peaks to the South.


Again today I walked for about a mile down the path that runs alongside the dry wash.

It's much different than walking on the tree-lined sidewalk on Old King's Road back in Jacksonville, Florida. And there was no Winn-Dixie supermarket waiting for me at the end of the mile; so I turned around and walked back to the house.

I saw no quail today nor any roadrunners, but last night Mike asked me to go outside to the pool area and listen to the coyotes singing in the distance; it was a fine chorus indeed, accompanied by the barking and howling of many neighborhood dogs.

I edited to double-space this new paragraph five times and it still kept defaulting to a single space, so to heck with it.

Got some more unpacking of boxes done today. I found some of my old software disks (or is that 'discs'?) and will load them onto this computer eventually. And I also opened two large boxes containing some of my photo albums. Images of long ago people and events. Memories. Nostalgia.

Et cetera...

Events And Horizons

I am still too busy to write much; there are too many newly arrived shipments that I'd sent from Florida, and they keep coming, and they scream to be unpacked.

This morning I took a break and sat out on the back patio drinking my green tea while watching Eva cavort around the pool. From where I sat this was my camera's view -- the Santa Catalina mountains.

Later in the afternoon I went out exploring the area (on foot) along a path alongside a dry wash and snapped a shot of another mountain range, the Rincon mountains, with one peak still covered with snow. That picture is still in my camera, so, I'll show it on another day, maybe tomorrow.

Maybe . . .

Place Holder

Place Holder... still getting accustomed to this brand-new computer and Windows 7.

I'll soon be back in the groove. (rut?)

In AZ

Arrived at Mike's today.

More another day.

Last Day In Florida

Will be going to a hotel at the airport late this afternoon.

Laving Florida early tomorrow morning.

More another day . . .

Leaving Early Monday Morning

The rest of today and then one more day in Florida.

(I see this entry as a place-holder; if I think of something appropriate to add to it, I can always do so at a later date...)

Almost Ready To Move

I turned in my Comcast Hi-Speed Modem and now am running on my old slow, slow dial-up, courtesy of my old FREE Juno account. God, it sure is SLOW.

My sorting, discarding, and packing is almost finished now. One more box to fill, tape-up, address, and haul to the Post Office. Then three pieces of luggage to fill and I'll be ready to leave this place Sunday for a hotel room at the airport. And fly off to somewhere new on Monday morning.

Of course I have thoughts about the move, but it's way too soon for me to write them down here. Later, maybe...

Tribal Loyalty

St. Patrick's Day.

Imagine that.

A day set aside each year in which human beings wear a green-colored article of clothing to proclaim one's pride in being of Irish ancestry.

Imagine that . . .

The Herd Instinct?

In The Meantime

Seven days remain of my Florida residency. Preparing for the move to another state has been hectic and is not finished by any means.

Today I will call the telephone company and Comcast cable to tell them to cancel my phone, TV and Internet services as of March 21.

Nothing to say . . .

I've decided to stop blogging.

But I could change my mind

at any moment.

Out With The Bath-Water

In yesterday's blog entry I asked: "Why do I think anyone else is 'truthfully' interested in reading such drivel?" My understanding of the word 'drivel' is but one of several dictionary definitions, this one being: "childish, silly, or meaningless talk or thinking; nonsense; twaddle."

What I had written was indeed "childish nonsense." It skirted the edge of truth, a truth that wishes not to be easily revealed.

I am not afraid of making this upcoming geographical move. No. On the contrary, I am looking forward to it. Can't wait for all the preliminaries to be over.

It is the plethora of panic-producing tiny minor details that threatens to suffocate me. Again and again. Day in and day out.

Especially my seemingly impossible fumbling attempts to inform other people of my move and to interest them in buying some of my possessions.

Or even my wishful-thinking-like desire to announce (using some effortless ESP) that anyone who wants them can have these things without charge, absolutely free, if only they will come to me and carry them away. ALL of them, just get them the hell out of my sight and out of my mind.

There is such overwhelming difficulty in making decisions. Should I pack this? Should I discard this? How about that? What about this?

Decisions, decisions . . .

And time is running out . . .

Unresolved decisions . . .

Poppycock. Delusional drivel.

What will be, will be.

Sometime during the evening of Sunday March 22, 2010 all this will be behind me. Florida will be in the past; all of its years will become a mere set of fading memories.

Jacksonville, Florida

The exit door will have been used then happily closed.

But . . .

A new window offer ups a new and panoramic view.

What, then, is there to fear?

Two more weeks . . .

Blog entries this month will be sporadic and, on some days, will be non-existent. Moving time approaches and finds me strangely upset when I allow myself to think about it. To 'dwell' upon it. Two more weeks until I board that plane.

Often I must consciously and forcibly wipe away the mounting apprehension I feel at simply forcing myself to begin, to continue, and to finish each small task. Such as packing another box. Such as staying awake instead of drowsing in my chair.

Things are chaotic, both physically and mentally. I can feel the tenseness in all my muscles. Can not seem to relax this body that seems to ignore what my consciousness attempts to tell it. That there is nothing to fear.

The 'tremor' that began a couple of years ago is growing more noticeable. When I look at my face in the bathroom mirror I can see that tremor as my whole head trembles. And my hands. And I can no longer consciously still or even slow the quivering.

Fear. Such a powerful and insidious emotion.

My daily walks are growing more difficult. Some days I feel that I cannot complete the two-miles as my steps drag one after another toward home. I can feel the quickening of my pulse, the rapid pounding of my heartbeat, and steady breathing becomes difficult.

I am eating way too much. As if food is my drug, my tranquilizer. Which is most certainly is.

Why do I think anyone else is 'truthfully' interested in reading such drivel?

The smartest thing I could do at this time is stop writing until after the move has been completed.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite or fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

--Horace

Short Blog Entry Today

My computer is acting up and I don't know if it is a hardware problem or merely an application failure, or possibly some degradation of Windows XP itself. I first noticed it a short time ago after one of the recent Windows XP security updates.

It might even be some sort of virus or somesuch.

Specifically . . .

When I try to save a file (using "Save As") the computer briefly 'freezes' and then I can hear a slow "tick...tik...tick... from the hard drive and then eventually it will 'SAVE' the file.

Always something . . .

Still busily packing stuff for the upcoming move.

Better cut this short and get back to it . . .

If Ignorance Is Bliss . . .

A site labeled An Atlas of the Universe can be (to the conceptualizing mind) a portal to eventual madness.

For how can one reconcile an individual's quandary over what to prepare for breakfast with the realization that the planet housing human kind is nothing more than the most minuscule force-point of an ion within an unfathomably immense universe? A universe which has existed for many times the number of years that life on Earth has existed and will remain in existence eons after any and all forms of Earth-borne life have been extinguished.

How can mere Man (let alone one single man) remain sane after realizing that the strangely uniform shape of the visible universe from a distance of 14 billion light-years from our sun signals a possible purpose. And after envisioning the possibility of this universe being merely a single particle/wave existing within an incomprehensibly intelligent living entity?

And just imagine that the entity this particle/wave connotes actually communicates with another similar member of a group of even greater entities. And this group being but one of a cascading spiral of other groups within an 'infinity' of groups, each group inhabiting a 'higher' plane, being a Higher Power to the group just below.

Have I reached that point of madness yet?

Sometimes it certainly seems to be so.

How would I ever come to know?

How could I even know?

Why would it matter?

And to whom?

Or to what?

"...?..."

A verse from an 'oldies' song keeps running through my mind and interrupting my thoughts.

Up in a tree so high way up in the sky

Sits a wide eyed monkey on a limb

He wonders why the people go

to so much trouble

Just to try to be like him . . .

The recent earthquake in Chile has dominated the evening news of late.

When I was but a brainless lad studying Spanish in school, our teacher (Miss Luty) passed out to the class a number of names with addresses of Spanish speaking students in other countries. We were each to take one and to then write to that person, thus becoming a Pen Pal.

I still remember, all these many years later, the name of my Pen Pal: Carmen Galaz Rias, a student studying English in her hometown of Concepcion, Chile.

And I've been wondering . . .

"Did she survive to the present day, and if so does she still live in Concepcion, the epicenter of the quake?"

No man is an island, entire of itself...
--John Donne

BANG...BANG...BANG... etc.

While watching an old TV rerun of the Sopranos, I noticed that Ralphie (one of Tony's captains) while reminiscing to a couple of his young soldiers, pours an envelope of Swiss Miss instant cocoa into a cup of (not even steaming) water and does not stir it. Yet, after completing his back-in-the-old-days story, he picks the cup up to drink from it...(fade to black)

When I occasionally indulge in that sane delicious (to me) Hot-Chocolate drink, I find that the water must be extremely hot, boiling rapidly, and I must stir the mixture thoroughly with a spoon for the powder to dissolve satisfactorily.

Minuscule story details such as that constantly impinge upon my consciousness and distract me from the intended meanings of a story's content. It seems to me that the scene's director might have had Ralphie at least give the cup a stir or two.

But that's just me, of course.

Yesterday I read a short poem titled:

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry

by Howard Nemerov

And this is the poem:

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Word Of The Day

phantasmagoria
--noun
1. a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, of deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination.
2. a changing scene made up of many elements.
3. an optical illusion produced by a magic lantern or the like in which figures increase or diminish in size, pass into each other, dissolve, etc.

That unknowable actuality that human reasoning labels as "Space" will continue to expand even after entropy is complete and all the planets, stars, clusters, and galaxies have stilled and stopped and become nothing in any conceptual form or fashion.

In the durationless enormity of eternity space will cease to expand, will remain as it is for trillions and trillions of unmarked epochs of non-time.

Until space, with or without a reason, contracts in a measureless amount, beginning a chain of changes, disturbing the status quo.

Since time is nonexistent, space will at some newly created 'instant; experience its utmost contraction, having become compacted to such a degree that explosive expansion must occur.

Then erupts a really Big Bang.

The AWAD Though For Today is:

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
--Albert Einstein

Re: Fact Or Fiction

Question . . .

Why have I decided to discontinue the series of Higher Power scenes?

After thinking about it, I have come to suspect that good fiction is more than thinly disguised fact. Sometimes I am right and sometimes I am wrong with subjective conjectures such as that.

If I had originally entered the three scenes as pure fiction, without prefacing it with the revelation that the story is based on fact, I might have been able to continue a while longer. But as it is, I am too unsure of myself. The subject matter is internally frightening. And I am tempted to change the true circumstances and results within the story itself. I have, in actual fact, already done so.

It just seems to be 'not right' for some reason.

I will probably eventually delete those three entries from the blog, but I will save them for a complete re-write later, perhaps as a submission to my Writers group, and maybe incorporate the ideas into another fictional form..

I should now stop discussing the details before the whole things just somehow morphs into the category of 'old-news' -- to be cast aside for something new.

And this blog will once again be a receptacle in which to toss whatever aberrations my mind conjures up. Like it used to be. As I wished it to be.

"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!"
--Edna St. Vincent Millay