The Scrabble Enigma

Since childhood, I and my clan and many of my friends have engaged in Scrabble games.  And since time immortal we have done so on the old cardboard game board.  And what grand visits and conversations we had while doing so. 

Even though there are scores to calculate and record, a bag to be passed, tiles to be drawn, (and counted while doing so).  There is the to and fro-ing of the dictionary to look-up words like “cwm” or "udo" to see if such a bizarre combination of letters could really be words. 

And then there is the outrage of  “Roll up your sleeves for pete’s sake!…following by a gasp and sigh and then the concerted brainstorm among all participants to return the tiles to their original positions.   

And this is generally followed by a tutorial to demonstrate the difference between a sleeve roll-up and a sleeve-shove. 

And so we are busy, very busy it would seem, but still amazingly in the midst of all this other activity, the game goes on at a steady and stimulating pace.

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And so when opponents come to visit, I say to them…

“Would you prefer to play on the computer or on the old-fashioned board?”

And for a very few times, they generally say “Let’s play on the computer -- it’s probably faster.  We won’t need a dictionary and no one has to do the abominable task of keeping score.” 

And so we go to comfortable chairs at the computer and Hub even sets up extra mice so each player will have their own. 

But this is where the insidious and mystical thing happens.  The participants seem reluctant to visit.  The game is played in some kind of reverent, or should I say, irreverent silence. 

All those things I mentioned previously (i.e. passing the dictionary round, drawing letters, counting tiles, sleeve tutorials, scoring, etc.) are not interrupting our game and the game is going smoothly --- but oh so silently.

Yet amazingly, either way the game seems to go as quickly. 

But when the grandchildren come, they like to play Scrabble and yes, although they be tied 24-7 to their electronic hand-helds, they shut them off, put them aside, and positively insist that we play on the board rather than the computer. 

And this is where, in the midst of some kind of magical trusting openness, I find out so much about their moods, frustrations, school, and their day-to-day lives. 

I think the silence of a computer-game is embedded in the insidious psychological effects of electronic devices overall.  But I am mystified, and as yet have not encountered the research paper that seeks to explain it. 

Perhaps you might?

PRIVATE AND PERSONAL

While bumbling about on the Internet, looking for some sorely needed blogging inspiration, I stumbled on a blogging rule -- Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t say out loud.

What a bunch of crapola! I’ve been blogging now since 2003 and 80% of what I’ve told you I would never consider speaking out loud. At least not in a social conversation at my kitchen table or any other oral interactive venue. And the reason I wouldn’t is because so much of what I reflect on and explore is too intimate. Not as in sexually intimate, not as in real life drama intimate, or as in vulgarly intimate. No, none of that.

Intimate in the sense that if what I so often write, were to be openly spoken, in a regular neighbor-to-neighbor conversation, I would be strait-jacketed, locked up, and the key ground into powder. I guess the closest allegory to what I mean that might help the reader to understand is that what I say to you on my blog is too often similar in content to a seriously spoken tale of alien abduction.

That does not mean what I write are bold-faced lies. They are not. The happening is true, and so is my reflective exploration of that happening. But the reflective part is often so far out of left-field that it does sound like someone who not only could tell a tale of abduction but quite possibly might still be in that abductive stage without consciousness of it.

Now that I’ve got you thoroughly confused, this is what I am really trying to say.

Society, in general, now consider themselves so uninhibited, so out there, so with it, so conscious of all things to do with the intimacy of sexual relations, preferences, mind workings, etc. etc. We proudly feel we are modern, fact-based, uninhibited by Victorian rules, or naivety or the once held honour and magnetism of ‘innocence’ in the form of the blushing cheek or quivering lip.

We speak vulgarity without flinching. Movie characters engage in flippant, snippy, and cheeky language with children and peers that for the sake of common civility, I can’t believe could be so casually spoken.

Even commercials. There’s the commercial for a gravy mix where the hostess snips at a guest in the kitchen about when she’s going to bring in the gravy. Meanwhile she is simply taking a wee taste. And the one for a business that is not on line, ends up with some smart ass telling the ‘proprietress’ for a lack of a better term, that if she does not have her business on line, she doesn’t exist. And when she courteously asks, “Are you leaving now?“, his snippy response is “Was I ever here?“

Somebody should slap those kind of unnecessarily brusque individuals.

But, oh yes, we are there. So accomplished in our tolerance, and understanding, and intimacy that discussion of it all, exposure of it all, knows no bounds.

But intimacy has become so intertwined with things of a sexual nature, we have forgotten the real meaning - i.e. personal considerations within a quiet and private atmosphere. It is not, as so many tend to think just about sex, crotch shaving, and arm-pit hair. Somehow the true and real meaning of ‘intimacy’ has fallen by the wayside.

We no longer contemplate or consider the spiritual intimacy we had and shared before God died. And it matters not to me whether he died or not. That point of intimacy still exists but is never discussed at least not at the raw spiritual level. And by that I mean, it is never discussed by laymen, only those trained to think along a specific formula within a specific trench.

I want an intimate exposure of how people feel within themselves when dealing with broken relationships, health issues, old age, and great loss. I don’t want the language of programming. I want the real raw stuff. The casting about in a raw mind for a raw solution, and a raw sense of comfort.

The most and deepest intimacy of their souls. But seems to me we have cremated and discarded it as we tend to do with anything too puzzling, unpleasant, enigmatic, or mystifying for a fact-based scientific mind.

In today’s society, running through the public square buck-naked is easier than having to reflect on the intimacy of the soul, the spirit, and the moral fibre and all these other things we were born with, rather than taught, buried subterranean-deep within all the over-wraps of modern sophistication.

Can you not share with me the deepest intimacy of what you believed before you believed what you believe now?

[Despite the blogging rule of ‘not writing anything you wouldn’t say out loud’, that is a an utter falsehood. Blogs are exactly meant for writing what you cannot speak.]

Total Intellectual Nonsense

Now, wouldn’t you agree that being flattered for the wisdom of one’s mind is indeed a warmer thing than being flattered for one’s beauty?

But here we run into so many problems. The intellectual mind is too conservative to be publicly displayed. And though intellect is a grand collective of sense, of the greatest quantity, and finest quality, yet there is no way to hand it over to others to touch and marvel over.

I suppose one could say, if I was an intellect, which I am not, that I could reveal the extent of my wisdom through new discoveries, grand oratories, a book, and the like. But without one great lot of public exposure, that kind of revelation could take forever.

It all sounds so impossible, finding a way to ‘show off’ intellect. But, amazingly, there has recently developed a solution that bypasses all the difficulties I have already stated. And this solution I have derived from the blessedness of idly watching television.

What I have noticed is a new form of ‘suffix-ality’ used to display intellectuality. I might not have noticed but the effect is a kind of ‘grammar tic’ that pains the ear and interrupts straight talk like a sour note in music. But at the same time, these are interjections that provide inarguable evidence of intellectual prowess.

For example: ‘Carnal’ becomes ‘carnality’. ‘Function’ becomes ‘functionality’ ‘Constitution’ becomes ‘constitutionality’. Words like this have no greater or lesser meaning than the original root word, but the shorter word cannot form the desired perception of wisdom beyond that of men or women of commonality.

So there you have it. Problem of show-casing intellectuality completely resolved. Who could have ever imagined that it could be so easy? Mentality transported with such swift verticality by simply discarding oh-so-dire plain English and replacing it with a new sophisticality of lingu-ality.

All together now in the midst of our happy dance…

Eurekus-ality!

The Evolution of Correspondence

I see them everywhere. The many who so totally thrive and seem to be nurtured in some strange way by ‘word correspondence’. And yes, although my neighbours are all socially polished enough to ignore the newspaper on the kitchen table when they come for coffee, at the same time, in one short hour they will whip out cell phones every four minutes for a brief ‘read’ or more amazing yet, to write.

It is all, to me, such an amazing phenomenon. When did ’writing’ and ’reading’ become such a passion, such a delight, such a part of humankind’s existence? I would never have expected our species to come to this.

I remember my Mother nagging us when we were kids to send a note to Grandma to thank her for the new doll, or a note to Aunty for inviting us for the weekend. We cringed and wailed and held back hoping she’d forget it. She had to be kidding. Expecting us to go to school everyday, and write all those words and figures and then on an evening or weekend to be expected to send written correspondence to someone. Yikes.

Eventually, with all the nagging, the girls in the family might eventually send an un-inspired floral card. But with the boys, it was a useless battle, like expecting them to wash their ears once a week -- Not going to happen!

And yes, we were all keen to have a pen-pal. I enlisted several. Did I write to them? Not so much. A couple of grand epistles and that was the end of that. And even dear friends that moved away. The written exchanges dwindled away rapidly.

And I remember in school when the English Lit assignment was a short paragraph. An audible sigh of objection swept through the classroom that mimicked that same collective sigh heard when the health nurse arrived and we were all advised we were going to get a shot. And if the assignment was 200 words, the wail was a grand duplication of anguished souls in a great pit of fire.

Nothing was quite so degenerating as a request to write something down. We object, we scoff. We know full well what is, or isn’t, a waste of time. And written correspondence is a complete waste of time.

Reading, likewise. But without the luxury of television, we will read comics of a Saturday morning. Yes we will. But assigned reading? Not so much. For the book report, the art of it was to read a bit of the introduction, a page in the middle, and the final chapter all of which sufficed for that assignment. But even that was too much for most of the boys. They shuffled their feet under their desks, they agreed the book report was due, but even at that, no such attempt ever saw the light of day.

Hub was in the same Lit class with me when we were in school, and I know it is true, when he says he did not submit one written assignment during the entire year. He did not, nor did other boys in that class of the same ilk. In those days there were no bigger nerds, than the savages that devoured text or spit it out for love of it. No fashion in it, no style, no sophistication, no class, no koolness.

But now, look around you. Texting, texting, everywhere, without a chance to think. Talk about a savage perusal of written language. People, both young and old, of all genders, are tweeting, twittering, texting, like fiends out of control. And the necessity of doing it ranks right up there with the need for food, water, and shelter.

Texting is totally swank. Written exchanges are welcome and heartily engaged in whether one is eating, sleeping, driving, socializing, sexing, or on the john. When and how did this all happen?

And the amazing thing is the art of texting parallels, in a crazy way, that of the book report aforementioned. It has less to do with content and more to do with speed, terseness, compaction, and overall efficiency.

But even more an enigma, is my position in this new clime of correspondence. I don’t text, but I’m in there. Doing the trendy thing with my writing and blogging.

Yet, even in this new clime, among my circle of friends that are texting someone, somewhere, every four minutes. And same friends that are simultaneously aware of my passion for writing and aware that I have a secret blog. These same, reportedly, among themselves, with sadness that precipitates dewy eyes, express an ongoing and painful concern about the mental deficiency that drives my passion for written text on a daily basis. Go figure!

Sucked in by Another Addiction; Drowning in Another Passion

Yahoo! Anybody there?

Yes, I’m still here. Not often though. Another passion has taken over with burning fervor. I keep hoping (and so does Hub), that I’m fairly close to burn out.

Some days I feel I’m very close. Other days, when the tiles are the best that tiles can be, I’m pretty sure not. But if, and when, burn-out happens, I know what I will do. I will do what I have always done since I lost the competitive spirit of my youth.

I will eventually leave. And on my day of leaving, with no real destination in mind except the comfort and familiarity of places I have known, I will tread the circular pattern of someone lost for a time in life, ambition, and spent passions, but eventually returning to the comfort of my Blog.

But right now, I’m kind of stuck where I am with this feeble excuse. I’m not often going back and forth, because one cannot go ‘back’ without first going ‘forth’. And so in the meantime, despite a heavy ‘nebula’ (Note: good Scrabble word) of guilt, I am hanging out way too much at “Word Biz.com”, my pseudonym is “Keat”, and I am busy, very busy, playing Scrabble.

So if you’re missing me, like I’m missing you, come play a game or two with me. Just ask for ‘Keat’. We can drink coffee, play Scrabble, socialize, and tweet, rather than twitter. And perhaps some new word or bit of tweet will lend itself to the subject matter for a new Blog-rant.

Or, if you prefer to be helpful in another way, Hub would much appreciate any hints, or solid 2-step plans, to cure my latest out-of-control addiction before it drives him to complete distraction. Escape is complicated when one is trapped in an addiction that clutches most firmly lovers-of-words.

Three Ha's

It is a silly little thing, hardly worth discussing, but still I want to discuss it.

So this is the theory and it has to do with the meanings of ha, or ha-ha, or ha-ha-ha.

A one-syllable ‘ha’. What does it mean? I hear Hub say it a lot. He says it when he is working on a problem and in the process something positive is accomplished or discovered. ‘Ha’ is a good thing.

Now think about ha-ha. Another positive meaning—something amusing.

But ha-ha-ha. Do you remember hearing that in conversation? If you do, did you notice the negative meaning? That three ha’s usually signify a kind of sneering contempt?

And of course, remember when you heard ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Magically that lengthier repetition gives ‘ha’ a positive meaning of total hilarity.

So now that is the theory. The negativity of three ha’s is something I came upon recently in a book. I believe it was in “The Curiosity Shop” by Charles Dickens. (Don’t quote me on that though, because I finished the book a couple of weeks ago and was unable to relocate the page for reference.)

But going back to our original conversation, I have to say that when I think about my own experiences, I recall many times in conversations with friends, if a joke fell flat, the response from the audience to the joke-teller was invariably three evenly spaced ha’s. And other times, when a joke was very funny, the audience complemented the teller with four or more ha’s. So as silly as the theory is, I think it is true.
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And so now, if the theory is true, why does the exact same syllable render such conflicting meaning dependent on the number of repetitions? Those three ha’s seed and expand an aggravation within similar to the aggravation of listening to a musical performance punctuated by errors.

And so, with this new enlightenment, I begin to wonder if one shouldn’t be mindful of syllabic rhythm when composing a love sonnet, or a poem honoring the beauty of nature? They say the magic in poetry is the coupling of the words with a hypnotizing rhythm and that might be more important than even the content of the text. So in light of the theory expressed in the foregoing paragraphs, it might be well to stay away from three-gaited syllabic lines or meters.

I mean, truthfully, wouldn’t we all be a little chagrined, if door bells went ding-dong-ding, and clocks went tick, tock, tick? My beeper alarm clock goes beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep and God help me, let’s not even go there.

I don’t know enough about musical bars, beats, and measures to analyze the syllabic beats, but I wonder if pleasant or disagreeable melodies are tied to this same theory? If the theory is correct, then perhaps the triple lilt is the flaw that splays emotions all over the back fence when seduction is what we had in mind.

So maybe it would be well for us to pay attention to the beat cause it might be sounds in our environment that layer distress in our minds. Maybe it’s not situations in our day-to-day lives. Maybe the real cause of our distress is syllabic triplets in the beat. I’m just saying.
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And so, now in conclusion, I have given this a lot of thought in the past few days. And then just when I decided to dismiss it all, an eight-year-old from next door asked me if I wanted to play “knock, knock, knock”.

I immediately felt that flash of edginess that three ha’s engender and without thinking snapped, “I know whose there. Someone who can’t count!”
___

The thing I still remain unsure of is whether the aggravation is an uneven lilt or a three-legged lilt.

What a Wonderful World!

My greatest wonder in life has nothing to do with the mechanics of anything. That is Hub’s department.

What I find wondrous is nature, and life, hopes and dreams. But having lived in the same house with the same man for more than thirty years, beyond a new bend in Hub’s sense of humor, what new could I possibly find to wonder at in my home environment? The mechanics of material things change, which doesn’t impress me, but little else. Still, even at that, unexpected situations arise that tap into my emotions and leave me quite awe-stuck.

Take this morning, for instance.

Hub is in a funk and I am beginning to worry about it. He’s bored. He eats too much and sleeps too much. Seems restless and unable to focus on anything.

Added to that, the weather remains nasty, which doesn’t help. And so I am beginning to fear if the weather doesn’t turn, Hub may not turn either. Back to his normal happy and carefree self.

Still I do my best to try and cheer him, but all to no avail. So there remains little left for me to do except to remain quietly supportive and at the same time more attentive to Hub’s conversations in hopes of finding an opportunity to assist him, in some unexpected way, back to his normal good humor.

And so, for these reasons, I am immediately alert, when Hub says to me at the breakfast table this morning, “Do you know the words to this song?”

I perk up my ears and wait for him to hum a bit of the melody, but all I hear coming from his side of the table is a deep muffled rumble like a slipper tumbling in a clothes dryer. His lips are ever so slightly parted in a duplication of Mona-Lisa’s famous smile, and I can tell he is deeply concentrating while exhaling a soft sound, so I go to his side of the table and bend over and listen. An uncommon thing for me to do, because normally Hub talks and sings, so very loud.

As I bend near his face, I hear a rumbling hum that seems to be coming from inside one of the table legs rather than from him. I bend closer and peer into his eyes and see a look of such intense concentration. A look that leads me to think Hub may have quietly slipped out-of-body. It is a glazed look that tells me he has moved somewhere else—leaving me feeling quite alone. He is not immediately behind his eyes, as he should be. Normally I feel an intimate adjacency to the person behind the eyes, but when I look at him, it is like looking through 140X Binoculars across a great expanse. He seems so very far away.

But, despite that, if I am to render normality here, I must pay attention. I must listen and try to identify the song. And so I listen very carefully to muffled modulations of oblique sound that have spacing and rhythm that is vaguely familiar.

But the tune? There isn’t any. And that sets me wondering what is going on, because Hub, like most people, always attempts to jar my memory with bits of the melody when he wants to remember an old song.

This morning there is no tune. The sound is more like a liturgical chant. There is no melody. But that is not the full extent of the weirdness of the situation. What is even weirder is the sound I hear is, in no way, representative of Hub’s voice. Not his sad voice, his happy voice, his normal voice, or even his silly voice.

It is not Hub’s familiar voice I am hearing. It is another tone, another pitch, another pronunciation, another shade, another frequency. It is simply not Hub’s voice. But yet, there is something strangely familiar in this never-before-seen-or-heard rendition. The pulses of the sound are scattered but not random.

And now I begin to verge on a kind of panic with the dragging and quickening of bass-toned exhales and inhales, and again, I say, without melody. And furthermore, the sound is incredibly soft, because it is as if Hub is forcing from somewhere deep inside a sound outside of his own voice range.

I don’t know what is happening here but my inner gut tells me it must be way more serious than a high fever, a blood clot, or an aneurysm. And the eyes though still and unblinking, remain fixed on me in an imploring stare. Across the huge expanse I referred to earlier.

And then, by God, it suddenly hits me. I know the song! I know the song!

Not from the nature of it, but the mechanics of it. Hub was amazed I did it. But I was far more amazed at how ‘The Lord of the Mechanics of Everything’ (that would be Hub) packaged the clues to a musical piece into nothing more than the mechanics of the piece.

Now that I understand the virtual impossibility of what he was doing, of course his eyes veiled over with such intense concentration. It’s pretty close to miraculous when someone can deliver a memory of a song with little more than vibrations of E.S.P. accompanied by a rhythmic percussion of nothing more than the sound of a slipper tumbling about in a clothes dryer.

Now Hub can carry a tune. He knows if it is right or wrong. But as he told me later, he had completely forgotten the tune. He had forgotten the words as well. He had forgotten the name of the song, and he had forgotten the artist. But what he hadn’t forgotten was that the song was a happy song. That is the memory that led to the twisted Mona-Lisa-smile. And he hadn’t forgotten the timber of the singer’s voice or the rhythm of the song.

Now Hub is not an impersonator in any way, shape, or form. But the voice I heard, that was not Hub’s, but yet was vaguely familiar, was the deep voice, magical and dream-shaped, of Louis Armstrong.

And the song Hub needed to remember was “What a Wonderful World.”
____

Isn’t that totally delightful? When Hub wants that desperately, and needs that desperately to recall a song to sing this early in the morning, and that particularly happy song is the song he wants to sing, my heart is lifted and I know all is well. The weather has cleared despite the dreary skies outside the window, and I know Hub’s funk has flown.

Hub is out in his shop right now singing at the top of his lungs, in tune, and in his own voice with impeccable phrasing…

“I see fields of green, red roses too…”

An Open Letter to Anti-Bloggers

Dear Anti-Blogger,

March 17 is my 6-year Bloggiversary and with that I decided it was time to let you know how things stand with me.

I guess my first mistake was when I admitted that I blog. You said, “Get a life. Get out of the house. Make some new friends, find some new contacts, or join a club.”

“Come with me,” you said, but what you didn’t say (but still I knew), was you wanted me to compulsively, and almost daily embed myself in clusters of animated individuals.”

And I imagined you might be right. So for three weeks I engaged in dinners, dancing, and your other social events with their ribald conversations and compulsory social rites that accompany the ornamental membership that insulates your life from mine.

Together we whirled and twirled. Out and about. But despite the excellent food, the delightful bouquet of the wine, the brocade cloth, set against symphonic background music, and tables set with fork number one, and fork number two, and fork number three, all seem linked to a gloomy insincerity. I mean, maybe it’s just me, but I find it just a bit unsettling when forks have to line up and vie for time and an appointment?

I find that somewhat representative of the mockery of real life – where society is so bent on individual rights in a world of cloned disposition, designation, and duplication. Despite these thoughts, I remained silent. I promised myself I would not wound your intentions, though you didn’t hesitate to wound mine.

“It’s an ego-thing,” you said, “that blogging business. Like busking on the corner. ‘Look at me! I’m here! Listen to my song and dance and then drop a comment or two into the bucket.’ ”

Okay, okay. I can’t deny that, because that part of it, I’m not too sure about. Maybe that is the case.

But there is more, and for me to explain to you would be asking you to recognize the improbable. How can I defend my position by saying that here I form alliances with individuals for whom I have immense fondness? If I said that, you would laugh, roll your eyes, and say that I either lie or exaggerate.

How can I expect you to absorb my conviction that there is preciseness to be found in my Blog-World of totally diverse, yet collective intelligence? And brightness to each day gleaned from complexity made simple and simplicity made complex?

That here I see stunning world champions of Beauty and Brawn embellished with nothing more than the glow of ideas. Or sincerity in oblique convictions cast from another side of the seas of life. Though separated by vast geographical distances, we express closeted thoughts and analyze only those bits of interchange conveyed by words. But as limited as our exchange is, it is enough to know who is of sound judgment, sweet heart, and sober thought.

Relationships here are not based on superficial visual-perceptions of worthiness that trick us into forming new relationships that progress at such a reckless pace. Relationships formed in one day, fast-ripening by next week, and showing bits of rot and deterioration in three months.

Bloggers form alliances at a much slower rate. But in the end they are relationships that cause us to be touched, ambitious, and mindful of each other in special ways. I know you can’t understand it, but in the end we are linked as soundly by mirror-matter of the soul as gregarious and indiscriminate individuals in real life are linked by hot-spots of the flesh.

So frolic in your pulsing, steaming, social immersions of breath and body, while I frolic with equal delight with dear friends in the rapid transit of word, and phrase—essay, poetry, and composition—letters, quotes, punctuation.

(Written in honor of Blogger Friends who visit, cheer, and comment-comfort me.)

playing 'Cabin'

It is the first of a New Year and Hub has spent so much time in his cabin the past few days that he is looking more like Grizzly Adams than anyone else. But this morning he cracked open that new razor he got for Christmas and sheered down the forest before he came to the kitchen for coffee.

So when the newly shorn Hub came to the table for coffee – he looked g-o-od! And so in keeping with a 2009 positive attitude, I scratched D.O.G.’s belly and told him he was a funny boy and rubbed Hub’s neck and ears and told him he was a handsome boy. Hub laughed and said he was glad I noticed and then just when I was congratulating myself on that positive opener for the New Year, I was sailing down that slippery slope, where I usually bide, into puzzlement and analysis.

‘Did I get that right? Which is the funny boy? Which is the handsome boy? Gee, maybe D.O.G. is the handsome boy and maybe Hub is the funny boy?’

You see the problem is, in my mind, if you don’t understand it and don’t get it right, you better give it some more thought. Cause you know what happens. If I don’t think about things I will look stupid, feel stupid, other people will know I am stupid. Can’t be behaving or be having that.
_____
And so that brings us to the next analysis. As I told you previously Hub has renovated an old granary that he pulled into the back yard into a rustic cabin.

Visitors come. They fold themselves into the fascination of it all, but at the same time, despite valiant efforts to disguise their reactions I see eye rolls, shoulder nudges, and knee contacts under the table that indicate they really are wondering. Wondering if we are okay. Wondering why we do what we do.

So for the sake of being able to articulate rational reasons without the faintest echo of stupidity or senility, I am going to try and explain it to you.

What I need to try to explain is our new game. We call it ‘Playing Cabin’. To play it you must have a cabin with a dishpan, a teakettle, a towel rack, and a wood-burning stove. And so, the game begins.

And this is how you ‘play cabin’.

First of all – it is a lengthy game so we usually start in the morning. To begin, the basic necessity is fire. So first Hub and I cut kindling, chop wood, rumple paper. Then we artfully stack and interlace this mix in the firebox and strike a match to it. Then we debate, when the initial flare weakens to a wee spark if our efforts need to be fanned or left alone.

In turns we fan the fire, rearrange it, remove or add more wood, blow on it – I practice patience, Hub practices faith and eventually we have a roaring fire that sucks the smoke up the chimney rather than folding it back into the room. That is intrigue number one. Level one of ‘playing cabin’ reached and conquered. Whew! That level was a bit of challenge.

Now we fill the old coffeepot and commence another debate about which is the hotter part of the stove. Hub skids the pot here, I skid it there. And eventually we both agree that it should be moved more here than there.

Now we relax again and practice patience and faith. Soon the pot hums ever so gently than gradually – ever so gradually – the hum increases until we hear the happy little plop of the first perk. Soon after the hum breaks into a joyful railroad-steamer crescendo and quick plopping, perking sounds.

We listen to the music and it is delightful. We take down our blue granite cups and pour ourselves a cuppa – and man that coffee is so good. A healing tonic for the chill of wood chopping, a warm cleansing throat wash for the smothering intake of smoke while nursing those first flames, and a restorative for our objectives in our ‘playing cabin game’. We sip coffee that is hotter and better. And then we turn on the old radio and relax in a certain amount of childhood nostalgia coupled with the accomplishment of level two.

Now Hub makes bacon and eggs in the old cast iron – slow sizzled and really tasty. I toast buns on the stove-top while warming our socks in the oven. Our meal is manna for the gods, in a nest of the special soul-healing warmth that only a wood fire can give.

Then we put more wood on the fire, draw more water and put the old teakettle on the hot part of the stove and wait for it to sing its own unique tune as water is heated for washing up. And now we do dishes – with some kind of stupid delight even in that process. We are now progressing nicely. We have reached level three.

To complete this level we chop more wood, bring it in, or stack it in the woodbox outside the door. Sweep up, do the dishes, get fresh water, arrange our few worldly possessions in good order and we are ready for level four.

Level four brings out the coffee still piping hot from the back of the stove, radio down low, and a long session of silence and contemplation about why we do what we do. We move to the chesterfield in a silken contented way and the puppies go into happy dormancy around us on the cabin floor.

And so now, from the contemplation I have done on this matter, I have concluded that although playing cabin is a challenging game with the many levels of accomplishment I have told you, it remains a simple life without layers. (I think one can have levels without layers).

Yes, it is obvious, this is a non-layered existence. That’s what holds the key to the enjoyment of ‘playing cabin’. It is similar, but so much better than time out in a fishing boat, walking on a beach or 18 holes of golf. It remains one of those few small niches in this complex world where there is no economy, no bills, no phone calls, no concerns about anything except food and shelter.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you. Another reason we do it is because a voice came to Hub as a voice came to Noah. Not out of the sky, but out of the TV, and another from the radio, and another from various neighbors. The voices said, “The economy will be fully destroyed and the world, as we know it, will crash in its wake. It may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow, but it will happen.”

And Hub, like Noah said, “Then to preserve my family, I will build a cabin (now how many cubits was it supposed to be?). And Roberta and I and our puppies will go in two by two (maybe one by one – the door is only 27” wide) and we will be saved.”

Hub insists this cabin-ark of his will float safely though any economic storm or draught of heat and light. And if that is not the case, it is still our salvation. A life-preserving haven far removed from the risks associated with the daily stresses of ‘layered living’. And in addition to that, a place that shelters us from those other stresses that cause hardening of the heart, soul, conscience, good will and gratefulness.
___

So now I need to know. Are you convinced after reading this rant that there is nothing wrong? Will our visitors understand and be convinced? Or, are you rolling your eyes in dismay as you return to your Wii game, ‘The Sims’, the stock market, or another of the many games that others play?

Blogging vs. Facebook

I have questions. Maybe you have answers.

So to resolve my questions, I want you to complete one of the following sentences in the comments section:

I prefer Facebook to Blogging because_________, or…
I prefer Blogging to Facebook because_________.

…or maybe you can tell me why you think other people prefer whichever of the two they prefer.

Lessons in Review

I’ve learned a few things in the past few weeks that are quite astounding that have actually stuck in my forgetful mind.

I learned from another blogger’s summary of her life-mediator’s advice that one can improve their self-esteem by crossing their “T’s higher. And that journals, in order to effect positive change, should only contain positive thoughts. So much for my “Rage” journal – the one I keep to serve as a therapeutic outlet for the impetuous thoughts that I dare not speak (or post)...

I learned from the Dalai Lama that society needs to shed the conflict created by an enduring ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude and realize that with today’s technology we are all linked and become only ‘we’. And in realizing that we will readily understand that any act of aggression against other nations is an act that equally cuts into our own flesh.

I learned that garden dirt has something in it called ‘a happy bug’. Something that releases pleasurable endorphins that insulate our bodies from various ailments. We used to get an adequate amount from garden veggies but that is no longer so. The happy bugs are all being washed and rinsed away. Scientists say this happy bug is/was a source of immunity for children against allergies, bronchial problems, even asthma.

I’m inclined to think that such wee critters do exist. There has to be some plausible explanation for why Hub and the grandchildren become so giggly, garrulous, and gay after devouring garden carrots pulled from the soil and rubbed haphazardly on their jeans.

And then, from a science show on Intelligent Television, I learned the most surprising thing of all. That there is a relationship between the sex of the brain and the length of one’s fingers. With men, particularly, the gap between a longer ring finger and a shorter index finger, translates into the amount of male hormones present in the womb during the pre-birth of that individual.

The greater the gap the more competitive (risk takers) men are likely to be. The greater the gap, the more adept they are at science, math, and spatial-visual assessments, but at the same time they are likely to be deplete in empathy and emotional telepathy with others.

It was found that even as infants, male babies are more interested in looking at devices, while infant girls seek to look at faces.

I examined Hub’s hands and can readily see why he drives like a maniac and is so nonchalant about my emotional ups and downs. From this, I finally understand why when I cut or color my hair, Hub never notices. I now understand why I am invisible and why when my face plainly shows that my world is crumbling, Hub continues to dismantle electronic devices without distraction.

Male participants in the study admitted they have little intuition and if women expect to be understood, they need to explain in minute detail how and why they are feeling upset.

So, that’s it for this week’s lessons. These are my new convictions. I’ll cling to them for a while until they are debunked by something totally contrary which shouldn’t take long.

And so, in the meantime, if you want to see the crossbar on the “t” in “Roberta”, look up, way up – aloft, skyward.

Pig Latin Pulses

This short one-Act play is your mind bender for today. See if you can decode the pig latin phrases, do the math, think of more potato uses, and maybe tell me about the days in your youth when pig latin was your special way of communicating with your friends.

ACT I

[Hub and Roberta and the little twins from next door are sitting at the kitchen table after walking the dogs. Earlier Hub and Roberta picked all the potatoes.]

Hub: Woman, why do you always insist on planting so many potatoes?

Roberta: I want to make sure we won’t run out.

Hub: If we do, you can buy some. At the store, at the farmer’s market, at a neighbors.

Roberta: I don’t want to do that, it is too inconvenient. And they never taste the same. Rocks in the bags, tasteless, and smutty spots everywhere.

Hub: But look at all those potatoes. Did you do the math?

Roberta: Y—e—h. Three small pails per week, 36 weeks, 4 potato meals per week, 120 potato hills, averaging ¾ small pail per hill –oh, never mind – I did the math! And anyway, I need extra potatoes for days when I have company, for perogies, for potato bread, for soups, french fries, potato salads, and seed potatoes for next year. So, don’t even suggest it. There are NOT too many potatoes.

Hub: I suppose you’re right. We’ll also need some for Christmas decorations, dog toys, carved stamps for printing letters or logos on envelopes, dried potato heads, potato guns, for heartburn, and for batteries for my potato clock.

Little Twin Girl [with a broad smile]: ee-tay, ee-hay, ee-tay, ee-hay!

(She and her brother have been practicing their Pig Latin while we are on dog walks. And pretty much everything she says is in that dialect.)

______

I roared with laughter at that bit. But that is not all. I’m still laughing about Twin Boy’s antics when we were out walking the puppies. He tried to topple a dead tree and when it eventually came loose and he saw it was going to topple across the trail, he yelled:…. “imber-Tay!”

And to our astonishment, even though Hub’s attempts at Pig Latin are impossible to decode, and completely dyslectic, he scrambled out of the way with the rest of us. The twins told him they were “oud-pray” of his “a-way-om-cay-ish-lay-ent-may!”

Hub said when they left, “It’s too bad that the twins’ arents-pay and isters-say on’t-day owe-nay ow-hay uch-may un-fay ee-thay ins-tway are-way.”

I laughed and nodded.

Want to Make a Zillion Dollars?

It's too simple. Just create an electronic eye to put in classroom doorways that will disengage cell phones on the way in and re-engage them on the way out.

The Meme and the Challenge

I’m so technically challenged that when Ample Sanity tagged me for a meme, I couldn’t find the original reference. But the clues lead me to think that to participate I can simply tell you 5 things about me that you don’t know. (this techy point doesn’t count, cause you already knew that).

But, what you probably didn’t know, and what I vowed to never confess is that ‘makin’ it up works’. I know it does. That is how I write when all I draw is a ‘blank’. That is how I got passing grades on school exams when I had no idea what the question was referring to. So I can do this meme, even though I didn’t find the protocol.

I like to think about simple, basic stuff. So now let’s go to something really basic about me that you probably didn’t know. I love potatoes, must have potatoes. At least every second day. I have not eaten, don’t call it a meal, it was just a snack without potatoes – baked potatoes, fried potatoes, big fluffy mashed, garlic, cajun, dilled, creamed or gravied. Please pass the potatoes. Now granted, maybe you already knew that, but what you didn’t know is that sometimes Hub calls me ‘Potato Head’ because I love potatoes.

Continuing…I sincerely believe I have told you everything about me you could possibly ever know because I have been blogging for four years in March. And, whatever I have failed to tell you, you no doubt picked up somewhere along the way between the lines. Because writing is like a fine rack of ribs. There’s more meat between the ribs than on the lines. Scantily buried emotions stagger between the lines, rather than on them. So what you don’t know, that I didn’t tell you, is how much I know about you, that you never told me.

And what you didn’t know is like Ample Sanity, I can’t tie a bow either. But that is no shame. Cause, I can do something better than tying a bow. I can wrap a boxed gift without taping the starting edge of the wrap to the gift.

But lastly, and most importantly, what you don’t know, and I know you don’t know, and I am so anxious to tell you is this.

“Season’s Greetings! __________ (insert significant Other spirit) bless you. Everyone!”

Christmas Conversations & Sharing

This year I thought I might detour around Christmas. I couldn’t help thinking maybe gifts aren’t as important as I think they are. And conversation and sharing doesn’t seem that important either. Seems to me the only important things are the things we sock down deeper in our guts. Don’t look at me with such a questioning look? You know what they are?

Homemade pumpkin pies, golden turkey, spicy stuffing, Ceasar salad, butter tarts, etc. And you thought Christmas was about conversation and sharing. Nah. It’s not that. Can’t be. Because we come from a long tribe that don’t really share. Or even converse.

We don’t converse, cause when we talk, it’s a regular free for all. We all talk at the same time. (Hub’s family is not like this, they speak in turn, so even, after all these years, Hub finds the rabble of our conversations truly amazing). Amazing how we all huddle into an affectionate little pack, pick independent topics, and talk and talk.

And although, none lend an ear to the other’s rants, we still end up convinced we had a really special time and well satisfied that we got to ‘say’ our piece without being forced to truncate it. When, in reality, the only part of the conversation that was shared was the odd bit of wit that was too funny to be missed and so it was reiterated from one to another, like a special password, while once again handing round the chocolate truffles.

And as much as we are aware that being a good listener is a gracious act, we are an impatient lot and we know that if we listen intently to everything that anyone says, they will tell you any damn thing. Even a blow-by-blow description of a dripping tap. Just to sustain the moment and the fixation on them.

But in our huddles, where all are talking and no one is listening, the speaker has to shine. He/she has to create a special gem of conversation that is really compelling. Something that is too unique, intriguing, funny, witty, to be ignored. Participants in a group that are talking as fast as they can soon realize that only stories of the highest standard will be published. So if we share anything, the things we share are unforgettable. I think that’s why we converse the way we do. Works for us.

So ultimately, more often than not, it is the abundance of food and pleasure-releasing seratonin that give us Christmas joy. And the special opportunities we have at Christmas to eat, and laugh, and…share convers…chocolate truffles.