I have finally reached an age when I can look back at events of my life and weigh whether my experiences have been worth the effort, were positive and worthy of remembering or repeating. Someday, I may be unable to perform the tasks and interests that I used to. Will I be able to continue flying? Will I be able to drive a car, motorcycle or even my lawnmower? Have I done anything that I regret or anything I wouldn’t do over again?
       Long ago in my twenties, I quit picking up hay bales and roof shingling. My doctor actually told me a few years ago that anyone over 50 years old should not be shoveling the snow from his driveway, not just me but anyone! Not that I’m in poor health but at over 50 or 60, you just don’t know what piece of necessary body equipment might fail you under heavy physical exertion. For a few years ages ago, I climbed power and telephone poles, not anymore. I realized my physical limitations in those areas even without a doctor’s advice. That is just good judgment.
       I have given up smoking, arm wrestling and platform diving. I’m a lightweight when it comes to drinking also. But I’ve also given up things that might be good for me, like exercise, running regularly and I will probably never learn to play the piano but I do eat more spinach and broccoli and stewed tomatoes. All vegetables that I couldn’t stand when I was in my teens and twenties. So some of my changes in habit have been a positive thing and some a negative.
       When I was 25, I climbed communications towers, water towers and installed antennas on high courthouse domes. I had no insurance, was paid very little and all while being responsible for a wife and two children. That may have been poor judgment but I do not regret those times. If those experiences had ended poorly and if I was still alive, I would probably have regrets. I remember all of those experiences fondly but I probably wouldn’t do them all over again under the same circumstances even if I felt I was in  physical shape enough to do them safely.
       In my 30′s and 40′s I rekindled my interest in flying. I finished my flight instruction and earned my private pilot’s license. I flew cross county flights in older single engine aircraft alone for no particular reason, just for the joy of it. I had a couple emergency landings that concluded calmly and successfully. I copiloted while dumping skydivers out of twin engine aircraft from 15,000 feet. All while being physically able and all done safely. Although I understand if others might think that dumping 15 people out of a perfectly good aircraft at that altitude was anything that you could call safe. But you can weigh the pros and cons and decide on plans that make otherwise dangerous things safe. I would do and probably will do all of those things over again at the next opportunity and in a heart beat. Yes, now at my age, it is all about the heart beat.
       These days at work, I’m in a position to watch younger people do what I used to do and to talk to them over the phone helping them do those things. My career is on a different level and I can see the end. So in a few years from now, and I am unable to do the things that I once loved to do, will I have any regrets? Hell, I’m not sure that I will have any regrets about things I didn’t like to do. When I’m sitting out on the front porch in the old rocking chair with my legs covered by an old quilt and drool running down my chin, my face may look expressionless but look more deeply into my eyes, I’m betting the only regrets you will be able to see in there will be my regrets of the things that I didn’t try to do. Can we ask for anything better?

Such is the life of John

The town has a well groomed courthouse square
surrounded by uneven red brick streets.
Like most towns, 24 times a day,
the clock’s bell strikes the hour and old men check their watches,
As if they have places to go and appointments to keep.
But they sit on the green donated park benches
that have names engraved in brass.
Some whittle, some stuff their tobacco pipes
and some spit into throwaway cups.
And everyone knows the name of the town dog
that runs free, unchained but friendly,
Searching with wildly wagging tail,
sniffing at pant legs, pockets and shopping bags,
Everyone knows that in this town
only the police chief’s dogs are allowed to run free.
While the old men sit and whittle,
smoke their pipes and spit in throwaway cups.
And nervously check on appointments
that have never been made and they will never keep.

E.

        I feel a lot of negative vibes radiating this morning. I’m finding it hard not to perpetuate them with a rant or two. So I am trying to nip them at the bud right now, my inner E will not be let out this morning. E? you ask. Instead of releasing a bunch of negative vibes by ranting, I think I will explain who E is. 
         As I grow older, some would add wiser, which I question, I can recognize certain characteristics in myself, characteristics that I use to handle all different kinds of situations and daily routines. I call them personalities because it seems there are characteristics that group together and appear or emerge collectively as one person to handle whatever life is dishing out to me at the time. I have identified at least three complete personalities that reside up in my otherwise hollow skull. I have E, DSS and the life of John. Each is fully aware of the others at all times. We think as one and don’t necessarily speak separately to each other. You might say that we each know what the others are thinking. Each of us are allowed to write a post if he feels like it. We are not at all split and I have never woken up under a table somewhere in a fetal position wondering how I got there. If you are thinking of Sybil, it ain’t.  
         E knows what can get under my hide and he can tweak me in very specific ways to allow him to come out, or should I say escape. He is a very opinionated personality but shy. He is politically very shrewd, and  he is very good at convincing me to ”let my normally high standards of conduct take a brief respite in order to attain a better social and economic position”. Those are words others have said about him not mine but I allow him to do just that. Unfortunately he is trapped in a perpetual “winter of our discontent” and his story is already written and frozen in time. A very nice guy but a very puzzling personality. I use him to conduct my rants because of his social and political astuteness. Perhaps a personality that may be hidden in all of us.
         Then there is DSS, DistantShipSmoke, the creative one, the poet, perhaps a little naïve. He loves music, music he can not play or skillfully sing. I really believe he is a poet. He loves to write it and he loves to read it. He is a people watcher. He can be found lying on his back staring up at the sky looking at the clouds and airplanes during the day and the stars, moon and satellites at night. He stays up late watching favorite classics and indie films. Sees nothing wrong with sex in movies and prefers it to any kind of violence.  He is a terrible speller and can see nothing wrong with inventing a word or two if he can’t find one in his vocabulary that fits. Hoochalala!
         Which only leaves me, John, the one leading the life, living the dream, the collection of the billions of cells. I am the name that’s on the mailbox and social security card. I deal with the mess that the other two may have gotten me into. I am the one that has to be the adult. I tell DSS when it’s time for bed and E to not worry about his social standing. I’m the guy that you raised hell with in school, you girls may have dated and maybe the guy one of you married. I can write, do math, mow the yard and repair about anything that’s broken. All while DSS and E are chugging away dreaming and formulating opinions. They call me John but I guess I could be better known as JohnDistantshipsmoke&E.

And that is about all I can say about that in five paragraphs.
Such is the life of John.

Do I need to remind anyone that it is Friday? For me this is going home, hitting the road, drivin’ like hell day. I will have 4 hours to think. That is if noone calls or texts me. We do not use the cell phone while driving any more. I must stop and my reply will be on what I call now as my “immobile phone”. Much smarter, more safe but it does take a little longer to get where I am going if business is booming and I have a few people calling with work questions. On Friday, the conversations are short, because I would rather be driving like hell.

I have get-home-itis and it must be treated. Sweet conversation, home brewed coffee, the smell of aircraft parts, Direct TV and Blue Ray movies are the only cure. And it requires at least two full nights sleep in my own bed, maybe three. I probably won’t shave until Sunday afternoon.   

Such is the life of John

I have a love hate relationship with our yard. I have written before of my 30 minute rule. It is my rule at home to spend no more than 30 minutes per week mowing my lawn. It used to be my 60 minute rule but the advent of a riding mower cut the time in half. In the few years that I’ve had the rider and calculating from it’s built-in hour meter, I have saved 39 hours of time to use on other things. That is almost a full week of 8 hour days. You might say a week’s vacation. My neighbor down the street must have a 8 or 9 hour rule. His yard is immaculate, looks better than mine but I think he is obsessed with it.

5 or 6 years ago I turned my underground automatic watering system off. If you are a grass in my yard, if you can’t live on the water natures gives you, you die, I can not help you. If you are a grass in my yard, if you need additional fertilizer, herbicides or insecticides, you are going to die, I can not help you. You are no more than a weed. You may grow here and you are welcome and I will trim you to a socially acceptable length, but otherwise you are on your own. You are rabbit food.

My yard is finally being trained to live on its own. The bermuda grass is flourishing, turns a little yellow when it’s dry and a bright green after a small rain and it keeps the weeds out. Within the bermuda, only the deep rooted fescue is surviving now, the shallow rooted, water thirsty, fertilizer hungry varieties are long ago gone, and good riddance to them. In my backyard, among the sparse fescue and broadleaves, glorious buffalo grass is voluntarily taking root. The perfect grass in my opinion, I hope it does well, but it is on its own. This fall I may spend 15 minutes and hand sow a couple pounds of buffalo seed and hope for the best next spring. 

I am breaking the tradition of trying to make this arid, shallow topsoiled county that I live someplace it is not. There are natural grasses that can flourish here if we let them. Why plant a yard that you must water everyday and fertilize just so you can mow it twice a week?  If you are looking for me, and if I am home, you will find me in the nice cool house or garage, reading, writing or working on the project. Don’t bother looking for me pissing away my time in the yard, I won’t be there except for a few fleeting minutes each week.

Actually it looks pretty good too. I may take a picture of it someday but I don’t want it to start thinking it is special.

E.     

 Thanks to you all for coming out to play and for being nice to me and to each other.
You are my collage.  

 
You are my Peeps!

See ya on the other side.

John, Distantshipsmoke and E..

It’s 4:00 AM and I’m watching it rain. I’ve been listening to the downpour from the snugness of my bed for about an hour now. Here in July, if a straight rain lasts longer than an hour and high winds never develop and the weather alert radio doesn’t go off, I consider the drenching an event. It is worth getting out of bed and taking a look. Rain without severe winds just doesn’t happen that much in this part of the country. But this month has practically been a monsoon, we have accumulated 2″ of rain in July. Compared to most years it seems like a monsoon anyway. I predict we will get more than another inch this morning. Glorious rain!

Two years ago I wrote this:

Looking out over the harvested field across the road from my home, during this hottest and driest July that we have had in years, I wonder if anything can possibly survive. Hopefully under the crust, just below the widening cracks, nature’s work continues. Just digging my hand a few inches below the surface I can feel the coolness of the ground and feel that all is not baked. Just below the hot, wind dried hopelessness, life is still at work, continuing to prepare for another season. Only the surface waits for rain.   

Gaze long upon the stubbled wheat
and the fruit’s dry amber veins
What once were fields of wind blown sprouts
are now the dry straw’s remains.

No rains will fill the lengthened cracks
Hot south winds now dry the dust
Only hope of August’s evening storms
will soften land’s arid crust.

But just below this hardened shell
Nurtured work is now concealed
Tasks consumed by primordial life
Secrets soon to be revealed

So put away the tandem plow
Let no steel scar this sacred earth
For below the field must breathe and brew
preparing next season’s birth.

DSS

         Well we only have a few days before the Xanga change. I guess it will either be Xanga on the WordPress platform or no Xanga. If no Xanga, I’m guessing most will be moving to a different blog site somewhere. Very early I signed up for the new Xanga.02 and I do hope they, I should say we, succeed in raising the capital to continue. It is very close to the goal. I think those of us left and still faithfully hanging on here will continue on with Xanga in what ever form it takes in the future. Regardless of the outcome, we all will continue to identify ourselves as “Xangans” (or should it be “Xangonians”) not “X-Xangans” anymore than we could call ourselves X-Italians, X-Huguenots or X-Kansans.
           Over the years we have all acquired or created an identity because of this community we have been a part of. For some, perhaps the only identity they have ever had or cared to admit to, whether your blog had hundreds of subs, friends or footprints or whether you just enjoyed using Xanga as a personal journal with only an occasional visitor. Either way we have declared ourselves as individuals, free to move inside or if we wished outside of the box and Xanga has given us a place to express ourselves to the whole world or simply to record our thoughts privately in an interesting format that’s available to us no matter were we are at. And probably more importantly we have all been able to expose ourselves to diversity, creativity and points of view that otherwise we would never be aware of.  All from the comfort of our own couch, motel room or fancy new mobile device. That is pretty awesome considering only a few years ago the only place we could do that was in a red spiral notebook, a letter to your folks and friends or if we were pissed off enough , a letter to the editor.
            To put it simply into perspective, it is fun here. I am sure none of us are here because we hate it. So let’s keep having fun. 

DSS.

As a child my first encounter with human death was at the age of eight attending my grandfather’s funeral. We lived on a farm at the time and seeing the death of animals of all sorts was already common even for a boy of my age. But now experiencing the thoughts all people have of death of a close family member, this was the first personal relationship I had lost and my mind was filled with all sorts of thoughts.  And it was the first that I remember thinking of human death and realizing that someday I may experience it. Even at that age I was skeptical of the traditional explanations of heaven that my mother was telling me. Welcome to a bit of my childhood macabre and a night I spent peering from underneath my blankets and even then making up words for things I was trying to understand.  

There are none
None that burn the candle or stir the last dimming coals
that haven’t listened for that noise or peered into the night shadows
listening for that hum and watching for the fleeting movement in the night
while holding breath and staring deeply with squint eyes
hoping it is not there but still anxious to have but a glimpse
as if seeing only briefly would make it less.
Beware the Doombroser.
One that no one has seen but all have felt.
Beware your wish to see that shadow or hear that hum.
For last visions seen and last breaths taken may follow. 
From under the protection of blankets we watch and listen
Minding mother’s words of just asleep and gone to heaven
And remembering the smell of the scent of magnolias.

DSS