The Goodness Factor

 It is very easy to believe that people are unkind when you read news accounts or watch TikTok challenges. But, based on my experience, many people seem to be carrying a high degree of worry and anxiety around with them and sometimes that makes them less kind than they would otherwise be. For example, a neighbor's parent passed away and in dealing with their grief, they snapped at me when I was exchanging pleasantries. The next time I saw them, they apologized and we commiserated about how grief can really be hard to handle. We are better neighbors as a result of the exchange, thanks to the clearing of the air. This makes me think that people are probably better than we think they are. It is not every exchange that we get clarity about. But better to presume that people are doing their best, regardless of their behavior. 

I want to talk about the goodness factor which is my very nonscientific theory that goodness is the predominant thing we humans have going for us. It is why we try to avoid running down confused squirrels in the street and continue to listen to friends' woes even when they have made their point numerous times. We really want to do good in this world. Leave it to the comedians to say what we are all really thinking about those things that irritate us mercilessly but we tend to lead from compassion or goodness first! And good for us.

Do we always live up to it? No, we all have our own problems and concerns so it stands to reason we aren't always as good as we can be. Still, when we act in a less-than-positive way toward others, we tend to feel guilty. I don't know about you but when I feel guilty, I tend to try to make amends or strive to do better--again, it is the goodness factor at work.

Even on my most cynical day, I make an allowance for this mysterious factor that promises a better tomorrow. Call it reckless optimism if you'd like but it seems to get us through the bad times. Maybe it is because when you figure out how much dumb luck we have just to be alive, goodness seems like the least we can do.

The Curmudgeon in Me

The curmudgeon in me thinks:

- People need better ears than the standard equipment they come with.

- The creation of motorized gizmos that don't make sense on a road, trail, or sidewalk should cease and desist.

- Dogs don't do a good job of communicating their illnesses.

- People who adopt dogs and cats without any training of how to care for them probably shouldn't do it.

- That I may not be better than most people, but there are a few I think that I may be.

- You could do more for others, but not when they are being a pain in the ass.

- I could do a lot better left to my own devices, except when I don't.

I am Happiest When

 I am happiest when...

- I let myself be

- I look outside myself

- I am in nature

- There is music

- I am among friends

- It is early morning and I've slept well

- I have cleared my mind from niggling problems

- I am playing my guitar

- I have written a new song

- I have made a journal entry

- I have an idea I'm excited about

- I connect with someone else and help them through a hardship

- I am writing jokes

- I am in the flow with my beloved.

Hurry Up, Autumn

 It is a beautiful, dry sunny Iowa afternoon and the thermometer is sitting at 85 degrees. For early September, it could be warmer, but I am glad it isn't. I am secretly wishing for the green leaves to ease into yellows, oranges, reds, and browns. I am looking forward to the faster scurrying of the squirrels as they gather their winter acorns and the silencing of the cicadas to make room for the stirrings of crickets in my basement. 

I am a lover of the autumnal change of season. I look ahead to the autumn breezes, the rustling of leaves swirling in the corner of a set of perpendicular buildings. The cooler evenings, with the temperatures dipping to the point that igniting the fire pit ablaze are singing like the Sirens to me. I can taste the cider that summer apples will make and the soup to be made. Hearing those low-speaking voices echo as the trees begin to become barren and the increasing volume that the owls' screeching takes on lets me know that cooler temperatures are quickly coming and to be sure to check the woodpile so there is enough firewood to get us through the winter to come. 

Summer, I respect your desire to hang on a while longer, but will not in any way be sorry to see you go.

Music is My Language

 I am from a family of people who love or loved music. From the Fisher-Price wind-up radio that played "This Old Man" to the current guitars that I punish with my less than stellar playing of them, I can't remember a time when music was not a soundtrack to my well-being. My father loves jazz and big band, and my mother loved pop music.  Between the two of them, we were exposed to a wide variety of music from classical to show tunes. To this day I can remember the theme music to the cartoons that I watched, the opening themes to shows like "Mannix" and "Green Acres" and some much more obscure ones. 

I shared a stack of records like "Dick Shawn Sings with his Little People" and "Tom Glazer and the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus - OnTop of Spaghetti" with my siblings that grew exponentially when our folks joined the Columbia Record Club. It was through this that "E Pluribus Funk" by Grand Funk Railroad, "Chicago at Carnegie Hall", "Seven Separate Fools" by Three Dog Night, and many more seeped into our consciences.  High School brought Album-oriented rock giants like Yes, Genesis, The Alan Parsons Project, and rockers like Queen, Led Zepplin, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and The Police. Then came the funk, Ohio Players, P-Funk/Parliament. Of course, the Beatles, the Stones, Mott the Hoople, and David Bowie were in there. And what WING or WTUE were playing, I was listening. Jimmy Buffett and the Eagles were my senior high school favorites. Away to college and I discovered Elvis Costello, Warren Zevon, dug into Bob Dylan, The Band, McCartney and Wings, Styx, Bad Company, and Ian Hunter.

Moving to Texas and meeting my wife who was a couple years older led me to Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, The Fixx, R.E.M., The Cure, Prince, De Peche Mode, and Swing Out Sister. When we went to Corpus Christi, Robert Earl Keen, Guy Clark, Susie Boggus, Mary Chapin Carpenter Marcia Ball, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Cray, Joe Ely, and others entered into my musical lexicon as well as World Music, Tejunto, SKA, Reggae and other dance in the summer sun music. Johnny Rivers, Bella Flec, Lyle Lovett, Arlo Guthrie, Dan Bern, and Leon Russell showed up there. A trip to New Orleans introduced us to the Neville Brothers, Clifton Chenier, and Zydeco music. Austin City Limits made us big fans of John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, the Vaughn brothers (Stevie Ray and Jimmy), and cemented Willie Nelson as the all-time greatest at crossing musical taste lines. 

Our move to Iowa introduced us to Greg Brown, The Pines, Catfish Keith, Keven "BF" Burt, Dave Zollo, Dave Moore, The Replacements, Dar Williams, Girlyman, and reintroduced us to Melanie Safka, Lucy Kaplinsky, Richie Havens, and many more. Most recently, I have found myself listening to a lot of blues, jazz, and Americana music and revisiting artists like Boz Scaggs, Todd Rundgren, and Graham Nash.

I don't dislike modern radio music, but find it relatively lazy, even by pop standards. I love the lyricism of Rap and Hip-Hop but don't always like the maliciousness of some of it, nor the musicality. But it is fair to say that I can find something to like about most music I have heard. I look forward to my retirement years when I can both play and listen to more music. Last night I heard the song "Blues Run The Game" by Jackson C Frank who was a Folkie in the mid-sixties. I realize that a lot of great music seldom finds an audience until the next generation claims it. And isn't that the real beauty of recorded music, it can reach you wherever you are and whenever you live, and can speak to you in whatever language you need to hear. 

The Long Run

 I have seldom been in a big hurry in my life except when I am walking or, in my more youthful years, whenever I perceived I could lap someone while running. I have always been a "in the long run" kind of person. I am the person who thinks that things work out in the long run. I think that because we all are dead in the long run. Petty jealousies? No time for those when you're dead. Being jerked around in this world? Not anymore, when you're dead.

I have come to conclude that the long run is where you go on the road to death. Also, on the way to the long run, your memory gets fuzzy. It's hard to hate people forever if you can't remember them or the incident that sparked your hatred. Vision blurs, hearing goes, your teeth fall out, and so does your mind's eye. Those technicolor visions of love lost and venom incisions give way to a rosier-colored set of recollections where, mostly, things worked out.

I can honestly say that I look forward to the long run because the short run is full of exhausting sprints, the momentary furies that lead to road rage, the cursing of someone's fortune that exceeded your own, and the milieu of other odds and ends that get whatever is left of your goat. The long run is like well-marinated meat, still chewy, but much more satisfying.

I figure I have about 25 years to complete the long run. How I'll feel at the end of it, I can't fathom. I have a recollection of my high school days. For gym class, as proof of our physical fitness, we had to run a mile around a cinder track. I was in no kind of shape and I remember how very sick to my stomach I felt when eventually I got to the finish line. It is my fervent hope that isn't the way I feel at the end of my long run.

My Lost Wedding Ring

About four years ago. I lost my wedding ring. My ring finger had grown wider and wider over the 32 or so years I had worn it and one day I took it off. Where I put it is a complete mystery. It could have been in our TV room by our daybed where I may have idly removed it for a finger breather, but turning that room upside down revealed nothing. It could have also gone missing in my "man cave" off the kitchen. I often sleep in that room and may have removed it there. The decrepit wooden floors there could have either swallowed it up or sent the rolling band in innumerable directions, but again, it did not turn up there. Finally, I could have lost it while putting up tarps on our outdoor shed. The precise reason for this I cannot recall, but it caused me to get down on my hands and knees to comb through the grass and leaves searching in vain for it.

Since then, I have come to believe that this white gold antique band inscribed with "G, love without mediocrity, pp" has been a reason for our troubles. That by losing this band, I have somehow released the demons that cause marriages to fail. The prevalent one is infidelity. By infidelity, I don't mean an affair or some such thing, but the infidelity of losing a symbol that was/is a touchstone of our relationship. I, of course, have kicked myself innumerable times for misplacing the ring, and yet there is the voice that says to me, "well, maybe it was a subconscious thing--you know that things have been pretty up and down for you two." 

And that is the quandary. Is losing the ring a symptom of a larger issue or did I just stupidly lose that ring? Confessionally, marriage is tough to maintain as a couple changes. Betsy and I are genuinely loving to each other, but we simultaneously go down destructive rabbit holes that are predictable and, at times, laughable. We struggle from time to time, but we also still find a lot to love in each other, even if some of that could well be the sentimentality that comes from a lengthy history and all that comes with it. Still, with losses on both sides of parents and pets and illnesses of close friends, there is also the fear of aging and what will become of us in our waning years. There are also the natural jealousies that come from disparities in finances, the tug-of-war of can I trust you to be here when I need you most, and the last gasp of is this the way the rest of my life should play out?

I never really understood the power of the ring. My mother gave us her wedding ring from my dad and her's marriage. I replaced a missing diamond at some point which made it feel more like Betsy's ring. But even that gesture was ill-conceived. We were in serious debt when we bought the "bloodless" diamond. Ironically, there was some bad blood for a while over it. Since I lost my ring, Betsy has offered to replace it several times, but no real action has transpired on it. Whether it is the usual hemming and hawing or perhaps an underlying current of mistrust or something else, I don't know. But with every day the imprint of the ring continues its slow fade, the more I wonder if it is a harbinger of things to come.

Just today we spoke to the guy replacing our upstairs window and said that the secret to a long relationship is to be stubborn, but not too stubborn. As I begin the "retired" phase of my life with her, I hope that I don't become as rigid as she seems to be about how and with whom she spends her days. But, I also know we are two people with two different ways of navigating our needs. While I tend to be the more self-contained, Betsy does need her friendships and traditions. I am hopeful, ring or no ring, we will be able to find our sweet spot together without also becoming the bane of each other's existence. Future me understands that one of us will be left behind. I leave these thoughts behind for her as much as for me. I want to remember how things are in all their imperfection because the soft glow of time tends to make the bitter sweeter than it should be and the sweet, a bit sourer for the wear and tear of living it.

Somewhere in this universe, my ring lies or has been found. Secretly, I want it to find the right finger to live that life without mediocrity. I have done my best to uphold our optimistic exuberance and yet, I know I've failed at some points and with age probably will be happy with that. If I am with Betsy until the end, as I plan, it may not be entirely for the pleasure of her company, but because learned that real, down-to-the-bone love is as imperfect, forgetful, and clumsy as I have turned out to be.