When the going gets tough, sometimes the tough going doesn’t get going. Sometimes, the tough going just hangs around. One can resort neither to fight, nor to flight.
One must simply endure.
In tough goings like that, I keep in mind this sage advice:
If you are going through hell, keep going!
– Winston Churchill
Keep on truckin’ folks!
Copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
An escape from the pomposity and pettiness of Boston on a Saturday morning.
We took a drive up Route 2 on our way to Vermont. As we passed Walden Pond, we started talking about Transcendentalism-Thoreau, Emerson, the Alcotts. My wife had just read an article about the subject and she regaled me with details of Bronson Alcott and Fruitlands, the Utopian community he founded just off Route 2 in the 1800s. Despite the proto-vegan diet, back to nature sensibilities, and Transcendental mojo, the Fruitland Utopian community only lasted seven months before they all went back to Beantown.
We got to Vermont at dusk and witnessed the most incredible display of fireflies we have ever seen. There were thousands of them floating on and off in the field around the old farm house. It was like we were in one of those snow globes and someone had shaken it. Except it was fireflies, not snowflakes. It was like the stars had come down to the field and the forest. Amazing.
Later, as the firefly spectacle abated, I started thinking that Fruitlands must have failed because they brought too much Boston pomposity and pettiness with them.
It’s really quite an achievement they made it seven months!
Copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
Several weeks ago, it is hard to tell now whether this is a faded memory or dream, I found myself in a thrift store. It was Friday afternoon and I had decided to surprise my wife by bringing home some Thai food. I was killing some time while I waited for the take-out to be prepared by the restaurant next door. The thrift-store had all kinds of second hand stuff: clothes, furniture, dishes, but I was attracted to the used book section.
A slim volume with a familiar cover caught my eye. It was a collection of short stories by the famous Argentine write Jorge Luis Borges. When I was an undergrad I was really impressed with Borges, as well as anyone should be. His short stories were clever, erudite, and in every sense of the word, fantastic. I bought the book for fifty cents, got the Thai food and went home.
Later that evening, I ate a Thai-roll and bowl of ice cream. In moments, the pain in my mid-chest was excruciating. I went to the emergency room and spent a week in the hospital waiting to have surgery. Never mix Thai-rolls and ice cream.
A week later, I was home recuperating. A slim volume with a familiar cover caught my eye. It was a collection of short stories by the famous Argentine write Jorge Luis Borges…
Continued at Borges, Asimov, Ice Cream and Thai Rolls Part I
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
I am writing this in bed, in the hospital. The Red Sox are on TV. They are tied with Atlanta but I am not really watching. I am listening to the game on the speaker of the hospial bed remote. Just like it was old time AM radio.
May has been a tough month.Work was busy and stressful. Another friend died suddenly in his prime. It’ been a tough month for the Red Sox too.
We both keep in mind it’s a long season!
Copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
Here’s one from early April that somehow didn’t get posted…
I woke up this morning to find the world outside lightly covered with snow. It was quite a surprise because it’s April, and we are almost month into spring. It was a pleasant surprise. I wouldn’t quite call it a dusting because the snow didn’t have the consistency of dust. It was heavy wet and heavy.
I got up early and walked with my wife past the baseball field on our way to work. Low hanging grey clouds were thretening and a damp wind was blowing. The snow covered the entire field, but green grass was coming through in spots here and there. The grey clouds, and the white and green of the baseball field made a pretty combination.
Then, out of the clouds came a great honking. A flock of geese was swooping in to land. Being experts, they put on quite a display of precision flying. Half floating, half parachuting with their wings wide open and not flapping, they came relentlessly down and in unison made perfect landings on the snowy-grassy field.
There were ten geese on the baseball diamond. I presume one was the manager.
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
Is April the cruelest month?
T.S. Eliot thought so. Whether it is or isn’t I am not sure. But I am certain it is National Poetry Month.
I started the month like I do every year, and that’s with my own personal reading of The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. I usually try it out on people who didn’t hear it last year. Or the year before that…etc..etc…People who have heard it before generally start making themselves scarce around the end of March. I try to do my best rendition of what it is suppose to sound like in Middle English. For all I know it might sound like a version from Middle Earth. Bilbo would be proud.
As for T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, I haven’t read it in years, but I started reading it again tonight on line. The poem is alternately profound and inscrutable. Just like I remember it.
Is April the cruelest month? I’m not sure, but it certainly has been one of the busiest.
It’s been a struggle to find time to blog!
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
The Popcorn Hour occurs every work day at 4 PM.
The First Rule of the Popcorn Hour is that the popcorn must never be popped before 4 o’clock. Exceptions can only be made for half-days, and on days I have to leave work early. Otherwise, the popcorn cannot be popped before the appointed hour.
As that magic hour nears, I get up from my desk, go over to a cabinet, and take a package of microwave popcorn out of a secret supply I keep in reserve. I then proceed to the break room to microwave up some tasty kernels.
Sometimes, I start the microwaving process before 4 o’clock but, as a strict rule, I never finish before 4:00 PM straight up. In otherwords, it is permissible to pop popcorn into the Popcorn Hour, just not before it. Often, people come into the break room and comment on my popcorn making. I respond with some innocuous chit-chat. However, I am very careful not to engage in conversation. I don’t want the people to hang around until the popcorn is ready because I might have to share some.
And that’s because the Second Rule of the Popcorn Hour is try to keep it all for yourself!
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
This Winter has been the longest, Long Underwear Winter of my adult life. Not every Winter is a Long Underwear Winter, but this one sure as hell has been. For those who are not familiar with the term I offer the following:
To qualify as a Long Underwear Winter (LUW), a person needs to wear long underwear:
This Winter has been so stubbornly cold, I’ve been wearing long johns 24/7. At work, play, awake and sleeping. I am even wearing long underwear as I write this blog. During most Winters, I would only wear long-johns when I was skiing or snow blowing. This time around I’ve been forced, months ago I might note, to buy several more pairs to work into the rotation. And that includes my trusty Union Suit.
On the Brightside, Spring is a few weeks off and eventually I will be freed from the surly bonds of all this long underwear wearing.
Depending on how hot it gets this July and August, I’m getting prepared to blog about the No Underwear Summer (NUS).
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
Many of us have unpleasant memories from our past. Things we don’t want to remember. Things we would just rather forget. Moments of terror that have scarred us forever. Recently, I have begun confronting the traumatic memories of my childhood. Personal and private, I wish to share the sources of these fears here, with you, in an attempt to grow as a person and to be set free.
Once, when I was ten years old, I saw Bigfoot on TV and it scared the living hell out of me. I had blocked this bowel-trembling experience out of my mind for years, but it all came back a few weeks ago when I was watching re-reruns of The Six Million Dollar Man. All the fear and terror came back. It was horrible. In the episode I watched, Bigfoot was lurking somewhere in Northern California terrifying people in the woods. To make matters worse, the old Sasquatch was working with some space aliens on a plan to blow up the West Coast. It was bad.
Fortunately, it was back to back episodes. In the second part, Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man himself, got in a fight with Bigfoot and got the best of the hairy beast. Later, Steve made friends with Bigfoot and the aliens. By the end of this second episode, I myself was at peace with Bigfoot.
I am still somewhat suspicious of space aliens, but that’s from watching Star Trek.
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
Another winter night, dark and cold, with a light snow falling. I walked home from the gym along the edge of an empty, snow covered athletic field. The lights of the houses in the distance glowed warmly. The field was quiet and still under several feet of snow. In the cold and gloom, the baseball games of summer seemed a long way off . Snowflakes swirled in the halos of the streetlights, like the bugs you see swarming near the lights in summer.
But it wasn’t summer.
Today, I looked out my office window and couldn’t see the buildings across street due to the latest blizzard. Again. It’s become hard to tell the time of day when it seems to always be gray and snowing.
I have entered a timeless zone in which it is alway 3 PM and snowing.
copyright 2014 Magnus Incognito
