I must attribute my lacklustre life research results to having things bassackward for most of my days. Apparently I was focused on the generalities while ignoring the particulars, when I should….
lose focus on things general to delve into the particular
Hello Everyone, I hope you are all well and ready for another Ragtag Daily Prompt. Here is your word for Thursday, 8 August 2024 — LACKLUSTRE. Create a post (words/images/both) inspired by this word! Just a reminder, anyone can join in. Link to this post by creating a pingback, or paste the URL of your post […]
Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead! – Firesign Theatre
Monday morning meaning has gone through many permutations through my days. From hope to dread. Trepidation to turpitude. Triumph to terror. Always a turning point highlighted by a calendar infused post industrial revolution angst about gain and loss, productivity and projections. The get some ethos of our time.
No longer just another day of existence, it was a morning where I stepped back into the world of commerce and played the role I had chosen, or was chosen for me, out of necessity to earn my daily bread by hook or by crook; as was glorified on the entertainment platforms and corporate shill magical moments; to make me want what I had been shown to really really need to be happy.
Yes, and I helped. Daily blur, became weekly blur, folding into yearly blur, cascading down through decades of blur. Just make it through another day so I could make it stop.
The good blur. The productivity blur. The compensated blur. The blurry blur.
Then I got a new role and worked evenings and weekends. Friday afternoon became my Monday morning, with all the same alchemical needs. Only later in the day, and frankly with much less stress. It was just a job and no longer a career. I could cruise on through the five day cattywampus week, with only daily task mapping to keep my steps to a minimum, and as a result, the pain to a minimum.
Now, with those calendar deadline days behind me, and aging into the time of life that medical care could not bankrupt me; I have distilled Mondays down to their essence into this haiku.
Sort
Monday morning sort. What to do? What to read? What to post on my feed?
The thing about corridors You want to be sure You are on the right floor Before you knock on one Of the corridor's doors But no matter which one Don't spit on the floors
🎵 Corridor Be on the right floor Please use the cuspidor That's what it's for 🎵
I realize I have to reconcile all the bounced emotional checks that are stacked up in my past like planes making a final approach to O'Hare airport on a holiday
having landed I meander through my conscious concourse to where they have been placed on my baggage to-do list carousel to circulate around procrastinations drain till the last possible moment as overdraft fees take their toll on my psyche
In the mid 1960’s my Aunt and Uncle bought a house near where we lived. Maybe one or two social classes up from my neighborhood. Quite literally the other side of the tracks. I would have been nine or ten at the time. So of course they invited their poor relatives over to tour their new home. Actually, they had always been in the rotation of family holiday get together locations so much time would be spent visiting for the five or six years they lived there. That is until they took another step up to the burbs leaving us real Chicagoans behind. It was a nice two story home with the best bonus in the world for a boy my age. The second story bathroom top row of tiles had delightful naked blonde cartoon women, ala Marilyn Monroe, discreetly hugging bubbles in various provocative but still tasteful poses on alternating rectangles around the whole bathroom. Just a little above my pre-puberty eye level. But what an eyeful for me in those clueless days of the mid 60’s. I didn’t know why I liked ’em. But boy did I. Even to this day the memory makes me smile. Best of all nobody else seemed to pay them any mind and I knew better than to remark upon them. So that particular decor choice by the previous owners stayed and I had many inspired visits to that lavatory as the revelations of puberty over took me. I think I hold those tiles responsible for my life long penchant for blonds.
I finally scraped the last bit of gumption off the soles of my inflatable shoes to follow the moving yellow line to board the Dutch Elm Street bus but I’ve fallen into my shadow and I can’t get up.
The Guide says a towel “is the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have … you can wrap it around you for warmth … lie on it … use it as a sail on a mini-raft … wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat … wave it as a distress signal in emergencies … and of course use it to dry yourself off, if it still seems to be clean enough.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
What was once an almost imperceptible rumble may or may not have been there all along. To those paying attention to rumbles, those scratchings were already on the wall. It’s just a matter what attention is given. Many things are a concern. All the usual accoutrements of the American Scheme. Both purveyors and consumers. Some more than. Some less than. The claw of complicity claws rampant o’er the land. Once noticed, the volume of rumblings continues to climb. It fills every silence with it’s sticky content. That content grew bigger teeth. Fiercer talons. Now content is clawing at the door. At the window. Leaving marks on once impervious sensibilities. Ramparts of rationality. The claw of opinions. Things influencing both happy and sad events. Highly unlikely conspiracies. Rabbit holes that have no more bunnies to give and yet do. Claw back attention to things that influence circle encompasses. Ignore the outrage industrial complex. Try to do good where it can be done. Be kind or just be.
“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all.”
A Scroll Threw Life 