I am a writer. I’ve denied it for years because I once thought that it didn’t count unless you wrote the novel of the year. But I write short pieces and string them together to make this blog, and that is the niche I occupy. It’s not Tolstoy. It’s not even Stephen King. It’s a sort of blather that I started to amuse my children and then found that those children were not easily amused and I was going to have to work at it to keep them reading.
Then it was something that I also did for myself, like writing a journal that you allow people to see, rather than keep it secreted away in a leatherette volume protected by a weak lock that will open with a tiny golden key (or you could just cut the flimsy leather strap with any household scissors). To me it was saying, like the Neil Diamond song – I am.
I suspect that there are others among you who have had times in your lives when you wanted to say I am. Writing has been helpful to me, and you can see how little talent it takes to do it by reading my stuff. So write without fear, friends. You have nothing to lose but your dignity, and you may say something that resonates with a stranger on the other side of the world.
A change has occurred in my own thought life as the years have passed, and now I find myself saying more and more as my bucket o’days accumulates – We Are.
The horrorshow that reading the daily newspapers has become is never going to improve if all of the bozos like me do nothing but run around saying I Am in our separate and desperate identities. Except for those among us who are card-carrying psychopaths, there should be enough common ground for the remainder to stand on while we roll up our proverbial sleeves and get to work.
For me, at least, that means thinking more in terms of We and less in I. Alone I can make little progress in any of the problem areas America faces. But WE can.
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More from the El Arroyo restaurant
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From The New Yorker
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Got by April Fool’s Day unscathed. Actually it gets easier to do when the kids have moved out and you aren’t living near any of them. Who’s going to prank you? Neither Robin nor myself are pranksters, nor any of our local friends, who are mostly seniors. We seem to have got past that phase of development. Or maybe it’s because a good prank takes some planning, and that is too exhausting to contemplate.
We did our taxes on April 1 this year, challenging the Fates. But my fingers were crossed all during the session with the tax preparer, hoping that nothing gets in the way of the small refund we are supposedly due. The woman who does this work for us each year is named Darla, and she’s an old cob just like we are. Plainspoken, good sense of humor, solid advice.
Somehow we got to relating an experience Robin and I had when we first moved to Paradise. I don’t even know why we had to go there, but we made a visit to the local Social Security office. It was in a low brick building that was nondescript except for one thing – a small sign outside ordering: DO NOT PEE ON THE SHRUBS.
Even in laid-back Colorado finding a sign like that doesn’t happen every day, so once inside we asked a clerk if that was a problem. She said that since the facility didn’t have a public bathroom, and the wait times were occasionally long, some of the clients would relieve themselves in the landscaping.
When we related this story to Darla, it got us all to giggling like schoolchildren for several minutes, and I earnestly hope that there were no large errors made in our return during this period.
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Robin and I have kayaked and canoed for most of our life together. For a time we had beautiful Kevlar kayaks that weighed nothing and flew like arrows. But time caught up with the boats and with us, and we found getting in and out of them much less enjoyable as our bodies’ flexibility lessened. So we sold the old boats and were now marooned.
But this Spring we’ve been window-shopping for new kayaks of the sit-on-top variety. Except that they are heavier to tote around, getting in and out shouldn’t be an issue. Especially getting out, where all one need do is flop to the side and fall in the lake.
I love to float. Heaven would be leaning back in a kayak and being towed by an otter.
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From The New Yorker
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Watching videos of games from the women’s side of March Madness is watching basketball at its best. Period.
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Little Home In The Valley 