A Break From Boring Madness and Strife

Ah yes, yesterday was a beautiful day. I felt it necessary to spend most of it outside, as the long rains had stopped for long enough for me to cut the overgrown lawn. Besides, I had slept the morning away, this being one of my techniques for dealing with the likelihood of hangover. Saturday night I did indeed tie one on, as the saying goes. I suppose I should be grinning like the cat that ate the canary, but since I let that canary go, I'll just grin like the Cheshire Cat instead... long after that cat had faded, according to "Alice Through the Looking-Glass", the grin remained.

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I've been boring people endlessly, and evidently beating a dead horse to the point where nobody notices, with the recent critique of our society going -- to various degrees depending on who and where you are and what you do or don't do -- more than a bit nuts and adrift from its historic moorings, again, to the point where nobody much notices, or if they notice, can't seem to make themselves care.

Well, I notice, and I care. I care deeply, so no doubt I'll be returning to the issue now and then, or at least harking back to it, riffing on a theme as they say in the musician business. But I hope I'll feel far less need, in the future, to point out that sometimes when "birds of a feather flock together" those birds may have gone so far around the bend that they no longer just circle around up in the sky looking for easy pickings, they're muttering to each other "patience my ass, let's go kill something".

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If you frequently drive through the northern part of Aspen Hill, cutting through on Bauer Drive or Parkland Drive or Heathfield Road, it's quite possible that you have seen some person standing or sitting on a porch, probably smoking a cigarette.

Now, you very likely have driven past and seen this scruffy individual just standing around, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers. You may have driven past for years and years and every day it's the same thing, if the weather is nice enough -- and sometimes when it is not -- there he is, standing on the porch.

Why doesn't he have a job? -some people ask, and some people make other remarks. Well, based on observations, that is a bum, no doubt about it. Stalk him a while, and it's clear that he's got no job, doesn't shop much, definitely doesn't shop in the finer shops for upscale clothing. Goddamn waste of protoplasm, right? Taking up space and breathing other people's air, right? Almost certainly a mental case living large on the public teat in subsidized housing, for sure! Goddamn leeches, eh?

Well, that would be Yours Truly. Wave next time you drive by, I'm as friendly as you are.

This house has been mortgage free for over thirty years. The lawn is immaculate when the weather's cooperating. We pay lots of taxes and pay them on time, and we own other properties that are as well-maintained, and we rent them out to people.

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There's an old story about a fellow who gets hired to work on the line in a factory.

He works as hard as he can, and he gets paid, and as time goes on, he gets paid a little better and he works a little harder. He's not the brightest thing but he's punctual and doesn't take much sick leave so he stays on the job, working working working.

And over across the factory, there's this room with this man in it. The man is there every day, basically sits there with his head in his hands, looking down at something. Every now and then he takes a break, gets up and drinks a cup of coffee, and then sits back down, head in his hands. Doesn't do a damn thing other than drink coffee and sit there with his head in his hands, and the guy working on the factory line is getting madder and madder. One day he just can't stand it any more and starts raising a ruckus with his supervisor.

"Here I am working my fingers to the bone all day, every day, and there's that man over there, he don't do nothin' 'cept sit there with his head in his hands and drink some coffee now and then. I've 'bout had it, I'm fixing to go over there and ask him who he thinks he is over there bein' all lazy and stuff, while we're all out here working our fingers to the bone!"

And the supervisor tells him, "you know, you got the wrong idea. He's doing a job the rest of us can't do".

"And what would that be, I'd like to know!" says the disgruntled worker.

"He's thinking up the products that we manufacture. That's this company's founder and chief engineer. When he's got his head in his hands like that, he's working harder than all of the rest of us, doing a job we cannot do, and the reason you are working at all is because of him sitting there with his head in his hands. He's why I'm working, why you're working, why we have customers for our products and why our products have customers."

"So why ain't he all dressed up like a fancy lawyer or something?"

"I asked him that once, myself. He said he thinks better when he doesn't have a leash tied around his neck, and anyway, who here in this factory would he be trying to impress?"

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I get kind of bored with sitting around with my head in my hands, every now and then. And sometimes I've had too much coffee, and too much inside air, and I want to go out and stand around and smoke a cigarette. I like to look over the neighborhood, and see who's passing by.

I also like to see the changes that are, as time passes, ongoing. Some are things of beauty. (Sorry about the "Mister Rogers" voice-over.)



Some things are NOT things of beauty.

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A few years ago, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc., I went riding around with another such and took lots of pictures. The result was a somewhat infamous page, the General Crapification of Aspen Hill page. It's chock full of images, especially with paved-over yards, ridiculously big houses built over and around the original small structures, general hideousness caused by people parking their working cars on the lawn because of all of the wrecks they have parked in the streets, etc.

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Well, back to holding my head in my hands, not visibly working, and only much ever seen from the street when I step out to have a smoke or maybe to maintain my very own yard.