Tag: Coyote

A Cute Young Thing

Ah, youth.

Mine is gone many years, except in my heart when I gaze upon Susan (wife/partner/Princess).

She is my delight and my joy.

Together forty-six years, married forty of them, not always easy, not always nice, and wonderful to remember.

We knew early on we weren’t suited to have children. Anybody who knows my personal history knows I had no good models for parenting, and I openly worried my parents’…flaws?…methods. Yes, that’s better, methods of parenting would cause any children I had harm. As it was, I didn’t do my first wife proud except for the fact I left her, again knowing I was not suited to be a good husband, provider, and father.

I often consider that one of my first rational thoughts, recognizing how flawed I was.

Still have flaws, of course, and they are different ones, hopefully less vexsome ones, more along the line of liking a good superhero movie every once in a while because I need to veg out for a while.

And all that noted, I sometimes regret not having children.

A friend of mine recently had her tubes tied, so abhorrent was the thought of having children to her.
I chided her.

“Children are wonderful,” I told her. “Lightly roasted with a little salt, they’re delicious.”

Budda-boom!

And I still appreciate The Wild‘s sharing its younth with us.

He’s a Traveling Dude

Having previously missed my metaphor, we reach again.

Behold a traveling dude.

He knows his place and hopes we know ours. (we do)

He graces us with his elegance, his subtlety of movement, his ability to hear less than a whisper.

He moves on silent feet, watching, listening, wondering.

Okay, enough romanticizing.

The Wild is not necessarily cruel and neither is it kind.

What it is, is balanced.

The Wild understood economics long before Two-Legs ever considered the term.

For that matter, few (if any) Two-Legs truly understand the entirety of economics.

My first time through college, my first term, I had an economics survey course twice a week, 7:45-9am.

I went to the first class, the mid-term, and took the final. Never opened the book. Got a “C.”

That class pretty much convinced me economics was a joke, a waste of time.

Years (!) later I read Taichi Sakaiya’s The Knowledge-Value Revolution and both veil and vale were lifted. Since that time I’ve applied economic theorems to everything from energy systems to communication systems to marketing to cosmologic concepts and all and everything in between with great success.

But The Wild?

Remember the words of Pivey T. Krapnec…

Nature bats last and owns the stadium.

 

Not a Fan of British Television

Susan and I have…specific?…tastes in our TV viewing.

Probably comes from being an author and studying story structure (and all associated with it) so much.

Example: Some episode, show, or movie doesn’t catch our attention in the first ten-fifteen minutes, we move on.

Example: Characters behave in unprecedented ways, meaning there’s no reason for their behavior, we move on.

Example: The plot has holes you could fly a Saturn rocket through, we move on.

We mourn when this happens with a show we’ve watched for years and something changes behind the scenes. The best example was taking The West Wing away from Aaron Sorkin. The dialogue suffered, the action suffered, the plots suffered, the characters went from deeply three-dimensional and interesting to surface and glandular (bed-hopping).

More recent (and specific to British television) are Midsomer Murders and Shetland. Changes is scripting and production values resulting in weaker plots, less interesting characters, and a bit too much WTF? for our tastes.

Still, we remain loyal for the remainders of this season and hope.

Meanwhile…this young lassie caught me catching her and you’ll notice her attention wavers from me to what’s going on behind me (and is reflected in the window on my left (as you view this).

I leave food and am known.

So her departure can only be due to not liking what’s on the TV.

Which is a pity, because what’s on is Shakespeare&Hathaway: Private Investigators, which remains a gem and if no other reason (there are several) to watch Patrick Walshe McBride as Sebastian.

Pity this pretty young thing didn’t hang around.

It was a great episode.

 

Capturing the Moment

And not only am I patient, I’m also persistent.

I think that’s the term.

<ANECDOTE>
I’m sure I’ve shared this one before.
Way back in my first time not completing college, one of my dorm mates told me, “You’re steadfast, and that’s a trait of the Lord.”

He was a Bible major hence could say things like that.

He also had a beautifully thick goatee, was thin, and had angular features. Think a young Abraham Lincoln and you’ve got it.

If Abe ever wore glasses.

Anyway, I responded, “I’m steadfast, you’re stubborn, and he’s too stupid to know any better.”
</ANECDOTE>

Long before such concepts existed in the literature, I owned the concept of social distance, ie, first, second, and third person placement in a social sphere. Another example of this concept is “My child’s a genius, your child’s precocious, their child’s obnoxious.”

The moral is “the further away something is from you, the more extreme its measurement on any scale.”

“We survived one hell of a storm” versus “They were lucky they got out alive” is another example sans the second person attribute.

And be that as it may, I’m possibly steadfast. I’ll agree with persistent. Both go into my habit of not giving up on things.

Enjoy.

 

A Rather Brave Chap…or maybe not

As I wrote in A Healthy Young Fellow Trots Away, I am patient.

I think I learned patience from classic literature.

Take Les Miserables. Did you ever count how long Jean Valjean was alive before he found peace?

Far longer than most people lived in those days.

Or The Odyssey?

I mean, really! Odyseus had to have been arthritic and gray by the time he got home to his wife and son.

God forbid you should read one of the Russian Masters. Even their short stories are epic! As Woody Allen said in Love and Death, “Wheat. Lots of wheat.”

Or in my case, just living long enough to appreciate taking a long view of things.

Enjoy.