A Day in the Life of Chaos

There is an odd feeling of finality as you wait out the final days of your sentence.   Like a prisoner waiting for parole your life becomes gentler as you experience increasing work release. You have long seen what’s on the other side yet for 33 years it seemed so close but yet so far.   In a few short days I will be liberated but it comes with a calliope of associated feelings, some sweet, some sour.   Work in many ways is like a relationship.  It becomes a major part of your life and is the foundation of your routine.  Everything is scheduled around its needs and a significant part of your day consists of meeting the associated obligations.  Since I was a young man most of what I do, even in my personal life is governed by my job.  Like asking permission from a parent, supervisors exercise a god like authority evaluating, considering and permitting many facets of life.  In the case of the self-employed their lives are equally restricted by the needs of their businesses.  In the re

As life progresses I am progressively certain that much of our life is determined in the early years of our own lives.  We live with our parents voices always over our shoulder long after they are gone.   Perhaps it is their everlasting gift or, equally possibly, their ever present revenge.  One way or another they tend to always be there in life and in death.   I wonder how one day my voice will echo in the mind of my son.  Hopefully positively or at the very least, elicit a quiet smile.  It will probably resound mostly in my sarcasm or the stupid jokes that I make annoying and perhaps comforting in the same sentence. My mother’s voice often echos in my mind.  It happens at so many different levels.  Could it be that mother’s nag us more and that is why they stay with us?  Everyday at work when the cleaning women makes her way through the office she stops to clean the restrooms.  It always seems to happen at the moment I need to pee and I think she spends an excessive amount of insi

As you age it becomes increasingly difficult to segregate moments of time.   Our memories can recall events yet trying to reconcile the event with age can be problematic at best.   I find that if I start with an event I can build a recollection however, if I was to start with an age, say what happened to me when I was 8 years old, it is nearly impossible to construct.   There are times when I attempt to torture my mind by trying to rebuild a picture of not only an instant but everything that was around me.   Often times our only recollections are programmed around photographs that remind us and often reconstruct moments long forgotten.   When does this happen in life?  How old are we when our minds transition to a point of fogginess with incidental clarity?  I have recently taken interest in period television that reconstructs the past.  My past.  I drift away from the story to analyze the environments and try to recall if it was the same as I remembered.  Sometimes when I watch a pe

Edward Raymer (natural father) and me I really hate to admit this but I have passed an invisible line in life where my life is now a vivid contrast between a world I knew as a young boy and the world of today.   I have always wondered when this would happen.   When did my grandmother begin recanting the vastly historic and different world of her childhood, in the face of computers and internet?   Now I am becoming the old guy that shares stories of an intangible past to young people of today who, quietly wonder how did people in my generation survive such barbarism.   I think it often starts with technology because this is area where we can see the most visible change in our lives.  Paper to typewriters to computer screens, the evolution is dramatic.  It might be difficult for a young person today to comprehend but “in my day,” television was simple and almost unrecognizable in its current form.  I witnessed black and white tv’s evolve into to color.   The end of the aerial (that's

David Hockney's "Pearblossom Highway #2." As I cross the mid-point of my life and move toward third base I always find myself wondering where is home?  These thoughts have recently come brilliantly to the forefront as I not long ago made contact with a distant cousin who is in the oil industry.  He lives a life of wandering that makes my own seem humble.   While Texas is his home his journeys carry him to Russia, Egypt, Oman, Yemen, Kazakhstan and East Africa.  Oh the old saying, "Home is where the heart is." has a certain ring to it but does it really mean anything?  As human beings we associate experiences with places and they color our minds in a collage of memories.  For some these are all close to home and for others, they span the world.  I often wonder if those that never lived a vagrant life are more satisfied?  They must feel so connected to the place that they live.  Like it is a part of them and they a part of it.  Are they happy with this or do th

As time passes I have always chosen to look over my shoulder.  I like to know who is still following, who is still there.  Some people blaze a trail into the future and chose to let the moments of their life they built it upon to fade into the mist.   You should never look back they say, never dwell in the past.  While we can't live in the past, forgetting is is like forgetting the foundation a building was constructed on.  Memories can be kind, beautiful or as sharp as a knife.   They can rip at our psyche like the teeth of a jagged saw yet they make us what we are.  To forget them entirely is to forget a piece of yourself. While I may never see them again, there is something wonderfully cathartic about knowing the figure I harbor in a memory still exists.  Occasionally, lives might cross again.  The most magical of these crossings allows for apologies for the mistakes of the past and redemption through the knowledge of a moment in life once shared together.  It transitions the

I saw a crazy man this morning. I've actually seen him before but this morning he stood out like never before.  I was riding my Vespa to work feeling quite stylish and quite Italian.  I wore my jacket with the British flag on the back and dark goggles.   While feeling quite chic in my mind I was hoping with all hope I would not be side swiped by a red neck in an F150 or hit on the head with a beer bottle.  I suppose my black visored helmet had that later covered but the former would have been disastrous.  I was motoring through West Columbia, an area that was once a suburb of Columbia and now is seemingly forgotten.  It is run down, dotted by apartments and small houses that should be condemned.  If that wasn't enough, the area is punctuated by a chicken plant that dispenses an odor strong enough to wrinkle the nose.  There is usually a parade of interesting people out on the street but today one particular man stood out.  He was probably in his 60's, of course the appar