As I sit here at the Rush Rush enthralled amongst the older teen and younger twenty set my mind fills with memory snippets from conversations past. Overheard fragments of wisdom gathered from the life comments from my elders echo. Listening in on today’s conversation I’m reminded about th0se memories as they are being triggered by a scent or noise or shadow. Well, I’ve lived a good life as these are now settling down around me. Is it YaYa’s fault? It could be as he attracts such a wide and varied crowd. Today however, he is on his best behavior as I do believe that is Mrs. YaYa I espy at one of the tables. And yet still the yayas come through the door.

It was while cooking the other day that one of these memories appeared in my mental sphere. I was opening a can of tomatoes and the scent carried me to the smells of my school playground. It was of the early school year in Stockton, an agricultural town, and the big cannery next door to the school. The tomato harvest was in and the factory was running full bore. The activity, the smells and sounds that emanated from this big machine were fascinating and captured my curiosity. I always loved school, learning, knowledge and the quiet order so with the first whiff from the opening of the can I was transported to a land of yesterday. Light filtering through the window, hard desks and a whole world of knowledge floating through the room transformed me to another plane. At the end of the school day I returned home to a house with 2 bedrooms and a family of 3 sisters and myself as the younger set. Today it would be cramped but then it was just warm and comforting. A change of clothes and I was out the door and into the 2.5 acre field with Boxer my best friend and my dog. The two of us spent most of my youth in solitary days out in that field. Falling asleep in a field of mustard plants and then awakening to a vision of blue skies framed by yellow flowers and green leaves I became a solitary being. It was a truly rich life. Only when I entered high school did I get an inkling that I didn’t come from a wealthy family. Still it took years even decades for that reality to take hold and even then I rejected it, as I still do. By the high school years we had moved “up” and into a subdivision in town. And then the fitting in process began and fortunately it has never quite taken effect. In those years, I hadn’t yet heard of the Social Contract and how that provides a means to fit in so I just rejected the whole thing. Through the years that vision of the individual outsider has remained. Sometimes though I look through a different door of perception and I glimpse myself as others might see me. And I wonder which of us birds are free from the chains of the skyway? Is freedom confined to the world of laws and concepts or is it to be lived and breathed. Then the sounds of the world come in and my thoughts are back here at the Rush Rush. And loud it is. Yet I don’t worry as I know those moments and thoughts will be back with the wind. Such is the way of life.

An interesting flock is here at the Rush Rush today. It’s the first blue sky morning in a quite a while and everyone is chattering, some with wisdom or should I say agreeable to me, but mostly all I hear is the volume. But I’m on top of my game and it’s on with the headphones and the “Across the Universe” soundtrack. So here I sit with a smirk on my face listening to “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road” while couples of all ages pass through with their magical elixirs of coffee and magic ingredients. I pray no one asks why I’m smiling. But where is the Raven? She’s been gone from her nest for quite awhile. Sophia the Bulgar is missing, as well. Piaf, Griz, The Mick, The Georges and others are nowhere to be found. And where is Big Tech when you need him. Just the other day we were discussing the writer Paulo Coelho and now that I have his book The Alchemist the Big Tech guy is notable by his absence. Now old Paulo is a fellow you could chat up about the solitary and or the individual life with. Hell in just reading the Prologue and Introduction I felt more enriched than I often get in the reading a whole other book. Mu curiosity begs to know what dreams the individuals in these packs carry and have they been acted on or do they lie in wait? And what about the juniors around me? Will they follow that inner pulse in pursuit of self rather than collections? And you know what’s great? I’ll probably never know. These are just soft thoughts on a blue and cloudy day while I pass the time away.

Share a smile and make two people happy. Ooops! I have to admit I lifted that from Samuel Goldwyn who said “When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.”

Gump’s Brother

No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life.

Samuel Goldwyn

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