January

Taking a half dead birthday balloon to the trash
I tie it to the porch and go to retrieve the can
When i come back it's gone
I look up at the black trees against the black sky
And think of all the friends that have gone

Being broke

I was raised poor. My parents were not raised rich.  For years i disliked rich people. First, i didn't know the difference between rich and poor, and then i realized that being an asshole was just as random as being rich, and both were distributed like leaves floating down in the fall-not all rich people were mean and selfish. I've always been lucky enough to not be flat broke generally until payday was close enough to survive. I've been fortunate to meet some really helpful people at crucial times, but money had rarely been in abundance. I never have put much importance on money, it's not something to accumulate in excess of my requirements I guess. My good friend died when we were young, a fairly freakish accident I felt not quite responsible but very near to, and his early departure left quite an impression. See, he didn't take anything with him. Maybe that's why I've never focused on accumulating much of anything. As soon as i have money i want to enjoy it, because just like when Jonathan died, he had no inclination death was near or imminent. However, to go out when you're fourteen is to avoid many of life's little letdowns. I've always thought he went out on top, before the wave crested and fell in upon itself. I was remarking to a good friend of mine the other day that we had both managed to be smart enough to pass through life with a strong B average grade with no great effort, and therefore hadn't developed the drive to achieve great things. I can get by with nothing, i know i can survive tough times, and while i enjoy having some savings of some kind, i know I'll get by if i have to. So, while i don't have any gut wenching tales of deep, prolonged financial woe, I do feel as if financial strife has lurked in the shadows nearby since birth. It's always right there next to running away from my problems, developing a drinking problem, being mean to everyone, and all the other dastardly grown-up issues we pretend don't hide in our shadows.

Weird like me

Weird like me

Vegan restaurant

By the hardware

Hairy armpits

Strange food

Upstairs apartment

Live plants

World Atlas

Weird like me

Downtown bar

Six dollar long islands

Quart jars

Limit two

She insults him

He leaves

They tell her to follow

I'm now with strangers

New friends

Bar closes

Rooftop

Charlie professes her love for Suzi

Suzi has ferrets

But no paper for a thank you note

Somehow I find the proper house in the morning

Weird like me

New town

New life

Don't fit in

New friend

Recognizes two similar spirits

Weeks later

Rolling down a hill

Hand in hand

Midnight

Years later

Random smiles

Weird like me

Black dog

Midnight

She waits

In the middle of the road

Just rained

Black trees line the way

Humid night in Georgia

Burned in my memory

Work

I listened to a podcast today with Owen Benjamin and Bert Kreischer wherein they discussed manual labor and the benefits thereof.  I've done manual labor my whole life.  I've been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a half hour lunch break for ten years now.  I have a bachelor's degree, my father has a masters in education, my mom's parents were both teachers, and her mother also had a masters in English.  All of my grandparents were also farmers, as has the family been (mostly) since we landed on this continent.  As far as I can tell, most of my family has been in manual labor for centuries, based on our countries of origin and religious association.  There is a small connection to some royalty and some outlaws, but mostly we're just normal people. 
I have come to enjoy manual labor more than my brief stints at desk work.  I have also discovered that the more a job pays, the worse it is.  I used to make "X" per month and that job was terrible.  The sacrifices I had to make were large.  So, I quit and got a job that netted me half the pay but was MUCH more tolerable.  Thanks to a bunch of people gambling on junk mortgages, that company went out of business and now that my profession life has seemed to have regained some stability, I'm now making a quarter of "X" but I have achieved a level of pleasantry in life that I enjoy greatly.  Now's the time to keep what I have gained and now try to grow the "X" factor.  However, I digress.
There is a certain and very solid appreciation for manual labor that those who haven't made a hobby of it can't recognize but I believe those who do other work have the same opportunity to feel it.  See, you have certain skills and abilities that people pay you to exercise that I don't.  I can do things you can't and for these skills I am compensated.  The pay may be different but the satisfaction in a job well done is the same. I can stand back at the end of the day and identify concrete objects I have created, tell you how I did it and why.  Manual labor is similar to meditation or doing menial chores or riding motorcycles in that it either requires all your concentration or very little, but you're doing something physically.  I always enjoyed a job that at one point requires total concentration and then at another, very little.  I once was discussing a holster I had made with a guy and he was impressed I had made it myself and said he could never do such a thing.  I later found out he was a retired heart surgeon.  Now clearly he is capable of many things I am not, but he respected my craft just as I do his.  All that to say, any job done well and with pure intentions is valid and valuable, no matter how manual it is.

Honesty and Perception, or, My Take on the Election and News Media

Here's what I think happened: People have generally lost trust in political figures.  For whatever reason, Hillary did not appear trustworthy.  Now, many will say Trump didn't/doesn't either.  They're both guilty of pandering to certain demographics in an effort to try to get votes.  The Democrats seem to have taken for granted they would get certain votes and therefore didn't have to work for them.  Granted, Hillary won the popular vote.  Obama has said several times since the election that the reason he won Iowa is he was there on the ground talking to people.  Trump had a tendency to change his position almost all the time, but it was easy to believe he stood behind each of his statements no matter how crazy or unfounded they sounded.  Hillary seemed as though she was trying to please everyone, and I think this may have been a downfall.  Americans just want simple honesty and to not feel tricked. 
This concept continues to news coverage and political ads.  I lump these together because the money and the motive behind both are unknown to common citizens.  It would be foolish to take at face value any information disseminated via political ad without some internet research, not only into the validity of the statements but also the source of the financial backing.  The same bleeds over into this rash of "fake news" that may have had a large impact on the election results.  Some folk say "fake news" is the new word for "conspiracy theory" but this is not quite accurate.  Fake news can be dispelled quite quickly via Google, but conspiracy theories usually have no defined debunking. All this to say, there is quite too much unreliable information spreading throughout.  We're all too busy staying paid and getting ahead to dig into the deeper information to see what's legitimate and what isn't.  Also, a person naturally accepts information that makes them feel right about their position and rejects that which doesn't.  Thanks to algorithms online, what we see can be tailored to match what we've looked at already, leading to a bubble of self-supporting information. 
All humans have ever wanted is to just not be lied to.  We want to be able to trust each other and those that give us the news.  Denzel was right when he said "If you don't read the newspapers you're uninformed.  If you do read the newspapers you're misinformed."  Every print and online publication has some known political leaning which can taint or twist not only the information they disseminate but how they portray it.  You just can't trust anything or any political figure anymore.  I'm not saying its the only reason Trump got elected but I do think he appeared more genuine, even if he flip flopped a lot.  Ok, flip flopped all the time. His tendency to spout off without thinking appeals to Americans because its totally different than our current crop of politicians who are extremely adept at answering a question and not saying anything whatsoever.  Even if Trump sounds like a loose cannon buffoon, we appreciate that he doesn't sound like what we're used to.  Politicians as a rule have been afraid to take a stand of any kind or lose a single vote for so long they've forgotten what they were elected to do in the first place, and the American public are so thirsty for a politician to actually do something that they're willing to overlook a large array of poor behavior to achieve it.

That's my two cents.  For full disclosure, I didn't vote this time around as I was unwilling to cast my lot with either candidate.  I am for lower taxes on the middle class, higher taxes on the top one percent, abortion rights for women, gun rights for everyone, spending on infrastructure, tax reform to help keep American companies earnings in America, continued climate change reform, and Sunday alcohol sales in Indiana!  Oh, and I believe you should be able to marry whomever you want, and pee in whatever bathroom you are legally recognized as.  LEGALLY. Not in your heart but on your driver's license.  Not necessarily what you were at birth, but what the state that issued your license recognizes you as.  That should clear things up.

Chapter four

Some things are too precious and personal to make public until years of life have offered the proper perspective and reflection into their impact.

Chapter three

The crushing disappointment with life is we don't receive any forward notice regarding the pivotal experiences before or while they're happening. It isn't until years later we  look back and identify exactly where things took an unwelcome turn. Sometimes events happen involving us at too young an age to understand or fully process its impact.
When I was fourteen I sleeve two days hanging out with a good friend of mine from church. We went canoeing with his dad and then I spent the night at his house. The next day we went to see the movie Twister and then they dropped me off at home. Five minutes later they were hit by a tractor in a freak accident and my friend died instantly. While I never felt it was my fault he died, it's hard to not feel responsible for them being where they were at the time. This event may have led to my not feeling like planning ahead or saving money was worth much thought. No matter the plans or large reserves you may have, sometimes a tractor with bad brakes comes down a steep blind driveway and crushes the side of your car and kills your son while he listens to a cassette of a comedy routine he hopes to perform at an upcoming talent show. Sometimes you sit at the dinner table for hours, spinning a nut back and forth on a bolt waiting for a phone call to find out which person died and which one lived. And every day you're glad you didn't drive to see why all the sirens were going down your normally quiet country road shortly after your friend and his dad left your house. Fourteen is just too young to learn about the realities of the world we live in. A person should be eased into reality slowly. Every three years after that event I lost someone-a friend at school in a drug and alcohol fueled car wreck, a Grandma, a co-worker, a grandpa that was very important to my formative years, then my parents divorced, then my last grandparent died. By this time I had grown crusty with defense mechanisms. I struggle to hold onto money of any large amount. I moved every year or less for ten years. I have few friends, though the ones I do have are very strong friendships. While these events may not be related its hard to think the first didn't affect the following.