The Soul Of Wit

Today sort of feels like January 2nd. The big election day is over and we're back to the soap operas that really advertise soap instead of political smut on television. True to my word I didn't turn the TV on to hear the wrap up of the election results until the six o'clock news. What I did was to go by my youngest brother's business to talk with him about what happened. I really stopped there to pass the time until the usual crowd I call the Fox News Gang to show up at the cafe so I could gloat at their disappointment. It turned out that my brother wanted to go to the cafe too. We didn't say much. The smirks on our faces said enough.

It's not like my waiting until six o'clock to turn on the TV is unusual. It's a habit I've developed. It most likely that I'll watch PBS for the national news. I only receive over-the-air television. Too much spam on the usual network stations, and I don't receive any of the cable or disc shows. Sometime PBS gets boring when they draw out the details of topics I could care less about, so I'm usually doing something else at the same time. After the news I watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. If an interesting documentary is showing on PBS I'll watch that or turn the TV off.

That leaves a lot of time to fill during the day. My hands won't let me write as much. Writing makes time fly for me. It does it much better than playing card games and Sudoku on my computer. I can't really practice the scales on my piano anymore than I can use my computer keyboard and for the same reason. It's like I have a choice to either write or play my piano, and writing is more important to me. I have to rest my hands after about each sentence. I lay them in my lap and stare at what I've just written for a while. Writing makes my forearms ache, and oddly enow, the joints in both thumbs.

It's quiet enough now that I can hear the church bells and chimes playing in town a few miles away. A stiff breezes comes and goes, and it's whistling through the trees outside drowns out the sounds of the bells for a bit. It's like a sine wave. I hear the bells and then the wind and then the bells. I might as well be down at the ocean listening to the waves hit the shore. First this, then that, I know ten ways to skin a cat.

I've started meditating again. I'm doing oral enchantments of dubious origin. I practice the old exercises I learned in my various voice lessons and classes. When I first found out about it I was taken by surprise. Only the vowels are sung. Humans can't "sing" consonants. Consonants are what we use to chop up the sung vowels in either speech or song. "D, a deer, a female deer" is just a jingle designed to intone all the vowels a certain specified way.

Since I'm alone 95% of the time, I hardly ever talk anymore, and I used to make a living at it. If I didn't sing or chant mantras my vocal cords would shrivel and die. I can tell a huge difference in the way people react and respond to me if I've performed some vocal exercises before I go out into the public arena and talk to people. My voice reverberates with much more openness and control. It causes people to listen more closely than if I haven't talked for a couple of days and then go out.

The facticity of my practicing singing the vowel exercises cause my voice to pronounce each vowel with equal weight with the other vowels, and that's not done colloquially. People "hear" that whether they're paying attention or not. It's the fact that somebody in the cafe is doing that which enchants them. It doesn't have to make any sense to them. It's just that something different than usual is going on, and makes them harken to the sound of my voice all mute. Well, an a good day anyway. A man's gotta do....