Tuesday, September 16, 2014

rinse our toes

rinse our toes


9/ 13/ 14


I am running out cleverness and the skill produce it from a top hat.


My number of pertinent anecdotes is getting low.


Wit to counterbalance my tiresome litany of complaints is sputtering. I feel like an insufferable bore reading what I write; how can a faithful reader not feel the same?  


I tire of metaphors; I think I am getting too old for them, ancient relative to similes.
It's silly how constantly I'm guarding against cliches and cryptomnesia and big words, for that matter. It's hard work protecting one from oneself, from stodgy syntax, wonky jargon, and being impelled to use at least three items in a series; and then there's energy wasted on making sure that the of parts of speech are in agreement within the series.


Energy is mostly what's at stake here. The choosing of ones battles. [omit / cliche]  Do I peck out another sentence when to do so automatically commits me to peck it out at least twice when you factor in my addiction to mid- sentence editing?


Energy is at premium these days. How much time spent just to avoid wasting it; and time is precious in much the same way. How much of it spent just to save energy? A lot, I know for that's for sure, in both cases.


As children, if life had not already made its terminal aspect known -- by disease or by dearth (add alliteration to my engrained habits) -- we could afford to be wastrels. As with change from a dollar let to fall from holey pockets. As with six half-eaten chicken nuggets swimming in twenty half-squeezed packs' worth of ketchup? [omit/ similes].  Of time and energy, we had a surfeit [omit / big words] [rearrange stodgy syntax].  


You and I are not children anymore. We can't afford prodigality. Not with nuggets. Not with nickels.


Nor time. Nor energy.


When climbing into bed saps you and situating yourself beneath the sheets downright drains you and waking is the biggest bummer of all, it's time for a break. Sadly, a nap won't do because  it creates a cycle of bummers -- three by my count, in agreement grammatically, as snug as bugs in rugs. [cliche]  


Whew! Chronocaloric expenditure. [nonce jargon/ keep!]


9/ 14/ 14


John Gunther memorializes his son, Johnny, in the book Death Be Not Proud. Johnny died at seventeen of glioblastoma multiforme. (Upstart!)  "One morning, [Johnny] said to the technician who took his blood count, "What's the point of going on with this? What does it all lead to."  


I imagine this a common consideration of the terminally ill as it is to many of the terminally  alive, I am certain. I confess to struggling with both malaises along the way.
But in Johnny’s case above ,he refers to a nasty diet that he’s been on and after discerning no results helpful results would sure like to know what that bother is. In my case, belowdecks[sic] [auto- corrected incorerectlty to icarly] [ I have considered rim the same thing about this journal and as a consequence, this blog. Do I abjure the thought of them? On the contrary ,keeping-up with them has become one of the highlights of my weeks; moreover, sharing them with gracious readers one is of my great pleasures, but . . .


Time and energy . . . tick tock, zip zap.
You might think thief is racing [opportunity for me that it may camy on ab breze foreordained for me as such a constant wroniter as [ me For example, no, it's not] in my thickening confusion, things are taking a turn for the Joycean.


9/ 15/ 14


So, this is where I am -- tired by just about everything i try to it do with anything approaching gusto, confused at every turn, breathing hoarsely at every stop. It may time to refocus my   energy.


But first . . . Prolegomenon Reprised.


9/ 16/ 14


Not for pity. Not for sympathy. Not for applause. Yet not for nothing, I hope.


And now . . . revised focus Number One: Fantasy Football  -- it's only week been two weeks and my teams are already looking abysmal.


So . . . join me on this my lacuna.

We can gather beyond the lazy sediment and rinse our toes in the freshening eddies.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

upon a time, along the way.

Upon a time, along the way.


9/ 4/ 14

Upon a time.


One score minus four years ago, his mother brought forth a new Scott boy, conceived in nunyabidness, and dedicated to the proposition that all newborn Scotts are boys. This particular boy's name was and continues to be Winter Michael Scott and today we celebrate his presence as we did his entrance sixteen years ago . . . with delight.


His mother will concur that the labor proceeded swiftly and without travail. Strike that, reverse it. Stuck in time and womb, this continent of a baby took its sweet time, as continents are prone, making its first appearance. Something like ?hrs from water break to umbilical snip. I was delirious, faint, and falling towards the ceiling -- as good a time as any obstetrical phase to foist an infant on a guy.  Fortunately for me, mine was an alien child.


No nurse' s deft swaddle could disguise the fact, especially when a granny's unhooding, the right to which being won by arriving first on the scene, was defter by far. Of all the I things was not prepared for, I was least prepared for a mini-Beldar, a newborn Conehead, that is. Relative to passing-out flat on the floor, this was the moment of crisis. I performed my first real of act of fatherhood. I abruptly and by no means securely shoveled Winter into the (hopefully yet doubtfully) well-prepared arms of a nurse or a granny.  No dibs required or requested.


Me notwithstanding, Winter made it to the observation deck. Not the right name? Suspect identification room? He made it is the main thing . . . 10.5 lbs, 23.5 inches . . . a veritable lunker -- purplish and powdery -- no alien, my very own brand new baby Scott boy. Today is his sixteenth birthday and we are delighted to celebrate it.  The intervening fifteen arrived far too swiftly but very little travail. Strike that, no travail worth mentioning stacked-up, as here, against the perennial honor it is to recognize annually the pleasure that Winter brings to us day after day. (Orange Who? Orange you glad I didn't say "daily"?)


Along the way.


In no meaningful order that I can discern, Winter . . .


. . . is a better musician, more mellifluous singer, more diverse instrumentalist than his clunky old man. However, out of respect for his elder, I will retain prolific lyricist until such a time that I deem it such a time. You can hear him nights surreptitiously reciting, honing, scratching his head, urging his rhymes into seeming effortlessness. (K-nock, k-nock . . . orange you glad I didn't say "bedtime?")


. . . surely but surely is growing taller me at six even and surely with a view to at least reach his namesake, Uncle Michael, at six-five and, to all appearances, counting.


. . . is more mature at sixteen than I was at sixteen and currently is out-maturing me in proportion -- as in : act your age, not your shoe size. Sigh even still . . .  me at age sixteen, shoe size ten with wiggle room for wriggle room; Winter today and maybe even tomorrow, shoe size twelve maybe even twelve and a half. Sigh even still . . . he's got me every which way you slice it.


. . . became smart, is becoming astute, will become wise. But never at a rate which outpaces his destiny when he becomes healthily disillusioned with grammar.


Hey, Winter, remember . . .


. . . that time at Disney World when a plus-sized boy came rip-roaring at every bit of 10 mph on a toddler-sized coaster which emerged from a tunnel built-into a kid-themed restaurant  giving the munchkin-ride all it could handle -- hands up, girth pushing the limits of the car’s safety restraints. Funny enough as is, but funnier than I could  stand for the rest of the trip when my new found hero, checking his audience below for satisfactory attentiveness, braced unnecessarily for a four foot drop, and declared, “Best! Ride! Ever!” -- a sarcasm so skillfully wrought that I have yet to quit envying the invention of it and yet to quit laughing at anytime I think of it.  I guess it’s a you had to have been there sort of thing; luckily, we were there, you and I.


. . .   how we went golfing with your Paw Paw all the time and you would scarcely believe it when we surmised there were no snack carts running that day -- hot as it was, hungry as you were, and how every time you had simply never. I confess . . . I usually felt a bit indignant myself -- no purple PowerAde or Pibb for Paw Paw, no Snickers or Nestea or droopy ham and cheese sandwiches for anyone and the three of us simply had never! But don’t forget vindication when we retrieved our telescoping Shakespeare rods and nabbed bluegill after crappie, after bass from the teeming course ponds and how we stopped for cold beverages and plump sandwiches on the way home -- famished and parched as we were.


. . .  when we went to parks and I would tell you to quit throwing rocks and you’d obey instantly or at least take a break to replenish your arsenal until such a time as you deemed it such a time to recommence throwing rocks; or I would crawl through a spiderous plastic tube to meet you on other side and we’d scare each other into ricocheting giggles.


. . . that one birthday you beat me at bowling? that one when you decided you had had just about enough of one Mr. Chuck E. Cheese? that one when you came to peace with the notion that not all presents given to you would necessarily be opened by you? ditto candles lit and candles blown-out?


. . . that long ago birthday, was it the first? the one you got tossed like sea bass at a Korean fish market -- was it to my Granny or your nurse?


Of course you wouldn't remember that . . . no, me neither, just checking . . .  like a sea bass at a Korean fish market indeed!

. . . this -- Best! Son! Ever! Especially that.