Jim's Blog

Jim's tips for guys #105

Jim's tips for guys #105. Whenever you see a pile of clothes developing, purchase and place a laundry receptacle at the site of the stack. If anyone complains just inform them that you are conducting an experiment and move on. Better to have multiple hampers than clothes on the floor.

Jim's tips for guys #104

Jim's tips for guys #104. No matter whether you are devilishly good looking or ugly as hell, good grooming will add at least 7% handsomeness to your overall appearance.

Jim's tips for guys #103

Jim's tips for guys #103. Fellas, If your iron starts beeping at you and you can find no button to stop the noise, look for an incredibly small orifice in the unit around which you can easily spill water. Once you spill enough water in the area to get some in the hole, the beeping should stop. Should the beeping continue, unplug the unit and head to the dry cleaners, you can wear that shirt another day.

Jim's tips for guys #102

Jim's tips for guys #102. Gentlemen, most of the women you know can stuff their dishwashers to the gills and end up with squeaky clean dishes. Unfortunately, this will never work for you. Our best chance to prevent re-washing things is to run it at about 2/3s full. A good rule of thumb is when you hear yourself say, "I can probably wait one more day to run the dishwasher," get the detergent and start the cycle immediately.

Jim's tips for guys #101

Jim's tips for guys #101. Don't obsess about getting every bit of lather out of the shower scrunchie, I once spent 11 days trying to do so and still had bubbles. Just give it a couple of squeezes and move on.

His Story

Part 1
Forty years had passed, since he last saw the medicine woman. The words he heard from her had anchored him, erected him, sculpted him. Shaved, formed and honed him like the unmovable boulders that nestled and shined, polished and eternal at the foot of the Jemez mountains near his home.

Forty years. His father had died at forty. Another life or two ago. Osaph moved his thoughts from the medicine woman to his father who died when he was fifteen. Every year he got the box out on this same date, so many times now since the medicine woman gave the contents to him that it seemed a common occurrence. This year seemed no different when he sat at the table of his breakfast room. The grain of the cedar always struck him funny when he tried to match it to the grain of the ancient oak table top.

He pulled the chair up snug to his back, put his reading glasses on and carefully unhooked the latch on the front of the box. When he had unlatched it, he rested his hands beside it before opening it. The words of the ancient wise woman touching his ears as fresh as when he first heard them.

“Before you begin, pause, and let the year behind you replay in your mind.”

He thought of nothing a first, pure black, a think which was at one time difficult for him to do, but a task which became easier over the years. Quiet, internal quiet, was the gateway to meditation and the things which lay beyond the realm of the senses. He learned that this kind of quiet didn't require a lack of physical sound, for if that were the case he might never be able to find it. He also had learned over the years that everyone achieved what he found in his meditation and connectedness in different ways. He chose to never try to convert others to his ways, unlike some people he knew and cared about, and the white and black preachers on the television.

On this day, he would not let himself go to a meditative state which normally followed his quiet, instead he focused on the first task that the medicine woman had given him ages ago. He began to reflect deeply on the year of life he had just completed. He let himself recall things and felt the power, positive or negative, of each thing he remembered. After an overview, he thought deeply about each season and let Proust guide him from a holiday, to a memory, to an incident. An item, a smell, a mood an experience.

After he worked through the four seasons, indexing all he could recall, he was emotionally confused. The mixture of joys and heartaches left him feeling a cacophony of agony and bliss. He felt at the same time thankful and angry. Yes, he smiled to himself and then said out loud, “The right mixture to open the box.”

Osaph carefully opened the box and set the five pieces of pottery one at a time between the box and himself. He paused to look at them and ran his old thick fingers over the surface of the piece that sat in the middle of the three, up across its sharp tip, the sharp contrast of the ancient paint making a broad and defined stroke across the everyday terra-cotta color of this piece of the small jar.

This was the first piece. He took it and set it even closer to himself on the table. The mostly round portion was obviously the base of the small urn. The circle of the base was almost complete except where the triangle chip was missing that took about an eigth of the total bottom. The piece that would fit here and angle upward to make a large portion of the body of the jar was always easy to identify, but Osaph would not let himself look among the other pieces for it just yet. It wasn’t time, and it wasn’t the next piece to add anyway.

Osaph took the base piece and turned it so the chipped out part of the base pointed off to his left. The base was about three and a half inches across he guessed as he ran his old hands over it.

Suddenly Osaph closed his eyes again, keeping the image of the base in front of him clearly in his mind’s eye. The words of the woman moved through him again and he went back in his mind. Back beyond the past year, back and back some more to his earliest memories of life. His work now was not to remember specifics, but to remember the first learnings of life. At first it was vague, things he could not specifically remember, how to walk, to talk, to eat, to help.

At this point, the generalities turned to specific memories again. He wouldn't let himself dwell on them too long, but he couldn’t help but see his father, tall and strong. The images came quickly now, he saw his hands spread too far apart on the axe and his father’s hands move them closer together. He saw himself running, racing his dad and brothers. He remembered the day, at 12 years of age, when he outran his father for the first time. He wondered over the years if it was intentional, or caused by the illness that would take his father’s life in just 3 years. His mind tried to move forward to the funeral, but staying focused, he pulled back to earlier in his life and focused on what he had learned.

Social interactions, how to treat elders, women, teachers, brothers, sisters, and friends. Or relatives that believed and lived so strikingly different than he and his family. How to carry himself, how to view himself, how to pay attention to details, which details were more important. How to remember names and faces. When to work hard at school, how he would learn things similarly to some of his friends but very differently from others. How his physical abilities differed from others.

Asaph paused and noticed how his recollections of these things had adjusted over the years. Many years ago, when he went through this part of his ritual he would find himself thinking of victories and losses, with his comrades in sports or other competitions. Now he thought of them as differences, not ratings or rankings. He felt the wisdom of age comfort him as it had been doing of late. The world was not his enemy, neither were it’s inhabitants.

After some time, Asaph stopped reflecting. The sum of his early learning still buzzing in his mind. He felt nothing really, only an astonishment at what he could remember. Asaph opened his eyes, put the middle three fingers of both hands on the first piece of pottery and said, “I am Asaph, this it what I am, this is my story, this is what I have learned, this is, this is.” Asaph took a deep breath again and said more slowly and deliberately, “I am Asaph, this is what I was, this was my story, this is what I once thought I learned, this was, this was.”

He took a deep breath, letting the echo of this last line sink deeply into his soul.

Asaph looked among the remaining pieces of pottery, he eyed a piece similar in size to the first but obviously a portion that made up the side of the belly of the urn. He smiled when he picked it up. He remembered how solidly this part fit into the base. He had learned to line up the side where it met the base and slip it to the left to where it almost make a clicking sound. Who would think that a broken piece of pottery in pieces could come back together with such intention. He also knew that the remaining pieces would not all share this convenience.

He turned the base of the pot to where the new piece, similar in size to its holder faced him. Smiling to himself, this part of the exercise was easy. He thought of the earth. He started big and worked his way down.

He loved the mountains, and recalled the largest mountain he had seen. Four years after his father died, his favorite uncle had taken him on a trip along with his son to celebrate his graduation. Asaph was a year older than his nephew and did not get to take such a trip and he recalled the extasy he felt when his cousin told him of the plan. The mountains of Utah took his breath away on this trip and compelled him to return there again and again. Mountains made him feel happy, and grounded, small, but significant. He loved how exposed portions of a mountain showed layers and layers of tiers, smaller portions, that made up the massive edifices.

Streams now, rivers, lakes, water, big water - cleansing, a new start, all encompassing. Forests, plowed fields, the sky, the colors, the wind, the death of winter, the hospice of fall, the life of spring, and enduring of the summer. Nature made him feel and know so many things. He learned to not be so specific here, but to reflect.

Asaph smiled the big smile, as his wife, now long gone used to call it. She would always know if he liked his dinner if he smiled “the big smile” for her. His children knew it as well. They loved to be close when daddy smiled that way. Asaph thought of his children for a moment, his eyes went blue, then grey before he caught himself, opened his eyes and stared at the second piece of pottery jutting up from the base.

He turned the beginnings of the broken pot ninety degrees so he could put the fingers of both his hands on each side of the piece now forming the first side.

“I am Asaph, this is what I am, this is my story, this is what the earth has shown me, I am this child of the earth, I am, I am.” Asaph breathed deeply, let his eyes close for a fleeting moment, then opened them again and said cautiously, “I am Asaph, this is who I was, this was the story I held deeply, this is what I felt the earth had shown me, I was this blind child of the earth, I was, I was.”

Asaph wiped an emerging tear from his right eye, smiled gently and looked at the remaining pieces. He wondered if he was crying because of what just happened, or what remained of his annual ritual.

The third piece was his favorite to look and wonder at. It was the piece that contained most of the glyphs in stark black, ancient paint on its outer walls. He had formed many theories of what the dipiction meant that traversed skillfully around the center of the belly of this jar. He wiped any dust that lay upon it away as he picked it up and moved it towards the erected piece. Although this piece was his favorite to look at, it had often been the most frustrating piece to have stay in place. It was not until the two pieces that went above it went into place that this one ever seemed secure. LIke his own life, a life of balance between the ebb and flow, the dark and light, the pain the pleasure, Asaph related warmly to this piece in flux.

The old man learned over the years to simply place the piece and close his eyes. Its tendency to fall outward only got worse if he gave much attention to holding it in place. And so he did, close his eyes and let his mind recall the words of the sage that had become more painful over the years.

“This piece is about human gravity, gravity of the soul,” she said looking directly at him, as though her words alone had healing.

He looked up at her from the pot. His young, deeply tanned face looking less confident.

“human gravity?”

“the force of the influence of every soul that you have known. They all have an impact on you. Even at 25 years of age, the words, actions, and presence of everyone you have ever encountered is a part of you. Some are there to learn, or pass a piece of goodness. Some to teach, some simply think they are there for play, but all are part of your make up. And all, all of them control. They can take your power. Some intentionally, but all potentially.

Asaph snapped back to the moment. He had read this year somewhere that the more a memory is recalled, the more is added to or taken away from it. He wondered how his visit with the woman had altered over the years in his mind. Maybe she had even matured with him. Maybe his words were more his now then hers. Maybe the influence of others becomes our own as she said.

He started with the most influencial people in his life. No chronological order needed here. His wife of 43 years of course first. The practical groundedness she brought him, her words rung true again, “you must be a realist," A phrase he had learned to take appropriately, he was not her, and her way of thinking was not as his was. But he loved her, and when she died it was devistating to him for almost a year. His children, lovers, and friends all filed in behind the memories of her. In the end, she had tolorated him, and loved him.

He went through these significant others one by one, most just for a moment, but some pulled him to longer reflection. Over the years he drew strength from his growing ability to recognize those who had hooks of control over him, whether living or deceased.

Empty

Except for the flowers in the kitchen window which looked less than three days there, the house was deserted.  The bare wooden floors showed signs of recent furniture drags but the rooms were empty. Upstairs the windows were left open with the drab, thin curtains blowing. One set of curtains in the particularly large room at the end of the hall was torn, shredded almost, especially near the bottom.  

I have been in this room a thousand times, but never realized it was this big.  Normally the poster bed and all the ancient furnishings filled it to the gills.  Now, nothing.  And that is exactly how I feel.

Words for an Ending

Words for an Ending

He: If you die before I do, I will wear my best suit to your memorial and sit near the back. No one will know who I am.  I will clutch a tiny bunch of daisies and cry and miss you.

She: If you die before I do, I will wear that nightie under my dress, stand and tell everyone you changed me, that you were the fork in my life road and I went towards you, I loved you dearly.  Then I will leave and cry.

God Visit

God Visit

I stopped to settle the charges with the man upstairs.  He let me off with a slap on the wrist.  I guess he is all knowing after all.  He knew that I thought he only existed in the minds of men.  It was funny because he was actually a he.  I thought for sure if he was real, he would be a woman.  I asked him about it.  He said he could be either and wanted to give me a start.

I asked him about Jesus and Buddha and some other shit.  He just shrugged and grinned and really wouldn’t commit to much.  I wanted to say that it sounded like a cop out, but decided it wasn’t in my best interest.  

I also referred back to a few years ago when I wanted to kill myself.  He touched my shoulder and said they get a lot of that during certain parts of the year.  His response didn’t really make me feel special, but then again, I didn’t know what I thought I should feel.  I guess I thought he would give me some “Footprints in the Sand” speech, but I am not sure he has that painting at his place.

Before I left, he asked if I needed anything.  I replied that I did, yah, lots of shit.  He restated did I need anything right now.  I said maybe a beer if it was cold and a six point.  He smiled and gave me some crazy looking fruit and told me not to drive after I ate it.

I got back to earth, and yah, I guess I am a believer now.

Under the Willow Tree

Under The Willow Tree

Underneath the willow tree
On a sunbaked patch of southwest soil
She remained seated, crying, quietly
I looked back to her, from my resolute path

I exited her life
Just minutes before and wanted nothing to do with her
It has always been hard for me to see beyond myself
A trait I hope that is not passed to my children

And yet, I struggle with the pride of it all
How easy it is to think of myself
Again and again
The football coaches, captains of industry, and meth junkies would not think twice

But oh, i think twice
It is a curse
Or is it
People don’t deserve to be left weeping under willows.