I HAD TO LAUGH

It's the small things that give life its texture and grit

To skip the navel-gazing, scroll down below the totally unrelated cabin-crazies picture of the wooden rooster from our mantel during the SnowNami.

I must do better to remember.

But it’s not just me. We all have them: those absurd moments that must be happening to somebody else than you; casual but pithy banter that deserves to be part of a reality show or tragiComic script. But no. It was your—just YOUR moment of clarity that is gone for good.

As evidence of this laziness, I only recall two such recent vignettes of many, as I begin this confessional preamble. But some moments swirling over the cataract of forgetfulness were not foolish or funny but stopped-in-my-tracks beautiful or pleasantly puzzling or meaningful maybe just to me; or maybe not. Those are worth sharing, too, but lately, not so much remembering; not so much sharing.

I used to do a better job at archiving the small things, probably because for at least a decade (2003-2013) I shared them almost daily with the PUBLISH BUTTON in WordPress before I forgot them. I often recall them now, reading back over the archives of Fragments from Floyd. A few of you might have been along for some of those wild rides and personal thoughts and reflections. The Strange Farmer of Erewhon. Another story from another time.

And as I think just now in this moment about Fred’s big picture of writing past and future, I consider adding two things to this (and/or another) writing space in the future:

1) Retros/adaptations from the blog as far back as I can trace it.

It is not all extant, due to hacking and losses in moving from server to server. Fragments was my “commonplace book” and I always imagined the grounding it would provide to me someday (we are now in Someday). So join the Today Me as I reconnect with the Yesterday Me, and saw the continuity of self and zeitgeist, in hope and despair, as it came around.

2) Book 3 caught Covid and died. Some pieces survived.

I might as well “publish” some of these and get them up into the light. To do otherwise is to hide Kodak Moments in a drawer for no one to see. Some of those essays and musings are long and I will “serialize” them, maybe? 

But if I do all this, I will bloat my subscribers’ email inbox. So concurrently, Fragments is still sort of alive and might be refurbished soon. Or I might find another place than SubStack to post these bits. TBA….

Do please READ ON….to where this post really starts.

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This image out of sheer boredom from last week, snow bound as we were, has no bearing whatsoever to the content of this post.

Everything above this line is just me “warming up” and should be stricken. After liberal use of his red pen, my editor friend would tell me “Here’s where you start saying what you want to say.” But he’s not here, and I’ll let it stay.

And that will make my two little personal anecdotes that follow seem all the more trivial after such a build-up. I know no shame.

⬆️ TO EMBIGGEN

We are in a major push to shelve or discard or give away all the boxed books and miscellaneous Saved Stuff we moved here with us in June 2020. And last week from that vast pile came a familiar box of Kodak slides from Before Digital. Inside the box was a “slide carousel” (some will not know what that is/was) with most of the 35mm slides out of their slots and in complete disorder. 

I pulled one out at random with my left hand and held it up to the light coming through the window. The details were so small. What was this image about? It was so small.

Spontaneously I reached up with my other hand, and “pinched out” with my thumb and index finger, so as to enlarge the image inside the cardboard frame, of course. For an instant, it seemed like a senior moment. Then it was really, really funny.

I will leave it to you to appreciate the new-tech old-tech transmogrification. Creatures of habit we are, even if some of the habits, in my defense, were at least acquired in the present century. 

📸 YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA

I deposited a check at Bank of Floyd (a name that persists for me even though the official name for our small-town bank has changed. I used to refer to it as Bobs Bank. (Save at the sign of the sock! Garrison Keillor would say.)

As I approached the door to leave, I reached over and pumped the hand sanitizer placed there for exiting customers—as a courtesy. Or so I thought.

I pushed the plunger and a stream ejected hard left and straight onto my light green jacket in a long dark, wet squiggle. WHATTHA? My intial outrage was replaced instantly by the question: had I been booby-trapped? Had I been pranked? Was this a site gag for future broadcast on national TV?

And of course I looked around behind me back into the darkness of the bank, and saw cameras everywhere. Briefly, I entertained the notion that I had just been spoofed by Allan Funk. 

I waited but the camera crew never showed themselves.