I have a reason for using this hyphenated expression to indicate a simile with "meaning". It's because truth can only happen between me and thee in real ti-me and nothing more. I'm thinking even to say only WHEN you and I are face to face. Just as soon as we look away from each other what WAS truth is instead mere history.
I just hate this. God help me when I think of those ti-me-s I've betrayed the truth that ex-is-ted between thee and me. It's how I've become a shamed man. A man of constant sorrow. I'm forever guilty of turning away from the truth that extemporaneously excludes the world of being-for-the-other to see you look at me as if your prey. I loved being your prey. When you consume me I grow back with fresh eyes, the better to eat you with my dear.
The situation with the pipe that got eaten by a pine tree root system had me in a dither. I just gave them the money without a fight. I won't fight city hall. It's not to die for. It's only money. They'll make more.
I decided to drive down to the ocean and back to give myself a chance to allow new scenery to give me fresh ideas. Hopefully something i could obsess on for a little while to get my mind off the way the fox got into the hen house.
The completion of Interstate 40 to the Atlantic Ocean port city of Wilmington has really provided me with something new to look at. I've been making that trip frequently for over sixty years. It's only an hour away. I haven't gone there much in the last few years. I-40 has changed everything. The capitalists have arrived and turned it into a shopping mecca larger than I had ever imagined.
Oddly enough, the one commercial enterprise that impressed me was a CostCo store across from the Corning campus where I worked a few months. I helped fit pipe to build a large addition to make fiber optic cables.
Hordes of people occupy both sides of US 17 along the beach north of Wilmington. Expensive places. Luxurious places. Places that lure hurricanes to come and show them who is boss. Nobody cares. They'll build more.
It's a little dangerous for me to be alone so much. I get so used to having my own way that having to adjust to the rights of others can catch me off-guard. It's not dangerous to anybody else. I just get grouchy and act nutty, but people are more likely to try to calm me compassionately than to react in fear. They seem to know I'm no threat to them better than I do.
I had a difficult time yesterday calming myself down from having to write that check for so much money. I live pretty close to the bone. I figure sometimes I need a little reminder that I'm not dead yet, and that for as long as I live I have to take care of my personal affairs for as long as I can or somebody will take care of them for me, and whether I like the way they're doing that or not.
One of my most profound and humiliating experiences was to see my father trussed up in a straight jacket because he wouldn't stop running around the hospital hallways nakid as a jaybird. He was in his second childhood and thought doing that would make the grown-ups laugh like they did when he really was a toddler. He had no idea he was 87 years old.
I walked into his hospital room at the county hospital where his home nurse had sent him for some reason, and there he was looking like the saddest little version me I'd ever seen reflected. The nurse told me what happened and that he could either behave or stay in the strait jacket. I felt so helpless because I knew that if I forced the issue to take the strait jacket off him he wouldn't get the treatment he was there for.
My memory of that occasion prevented me from unknown results I might have gotten when I was in a hospital for a back operation. I was all doped up and walking around with the wheeled cart that carried the bottles for my IVs, and when I looked out the hospital's windows and saw the neon lights of downtown I decided that I'd like to go to a cafe and sit down to a good cup of coffee. When i explained this to the nurse they called for a big strong orderly to watch me and keep me from leaving the hospital premises.
That's when i remembered my father in the strait jacket. I changed my tune immediately, explained myself, apologized for not thinking straight about my situation, went back to my room, and the orderly went away.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
