Today

Today I did not see or hear anything exceptional, nor did I think of anything extraordinary. I was at work and thinking only about what I had to do there and not about thinking or seeing or hearing of anything exceptional or extraordinary. Work does that to you. I do recall seeing a woman who had exceptionally experienced looking hands. All I could think of was how her hands came to be so experienced. They looked strong yet old, you know, experienced. I tend to look at people's hands a lot. It's just me.

I did think at some point today, maybe it was after work, that I should begin a study of words. I wonder how one does that effectively. How does someone increase the size of their vocabulary. I could look up words I don't know every time I read one in a book. I would never finish reading a lot of books doing it that way.

I finished "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway today. I also learned a new word. Puttee or puttees. A strip of cloth wound spirally around the lower leg. Ernest uses that word many times in "Farewell" so I looked it up. From its context everywhere in the book I knew it was at least a sock or something so I waited till I finished reading the book to look it up.

There were many words in his book I did not know and I do not know now. I didn't look them up. I suppose I should have. Oh well, a lost opportunity; I'm not going to re-read the book to find those words now. Most were Italian anyway.

At a book store today I saw some notebooks that claimed some fame as being the brand made famous by Hemingway. I can't remember the name now but they were $10 if they were $9. A small, pocket sized, notebook for $10. For $10 I can get a lot of less costly notebooks. I outlined this post in one. I did not buy one. I guess I better go get one.

Tomorrow, I would like to go to a coffee shop and sit and watch, pretending to be busy but really I'll be watching the people as they come and go jotting down interesting observations in my new Hemingway notebook that I will inevitably use in a story someday. Now that is what I call fun. What do you call it?

In the cold of the morning night

I was just laying there, in bed, and I knew it was late. I could just make out the distant whistle of the Norfolk Southern over the moderately loud crickets outside my open bedroom window. The cold and damp breeze from the window slithering over my bare legs gave me the feeling of being in a graveyard at midnight.

Just a moment ago I was sound asleep dreaming a nice dream though now I can't remember what it was about. The crickets must have woken me up. I can still hear the train whistle now and again. Out here in the country there aren't many roads it crosses. But, within a few miles of my home there at least three places where the engineer must sound the whistle.

If I stretch my neck up a little I can see the clock. I bet it's only 3 am. Yep, I was close. I'll never get back to sleep now. I have to get up in two hours and get ready for work. What a bummer. Let's see, I fell asleep around 9 pm and it's nearly 3 am now. That's about 6 hours. I think I can handle a day on only 6 hours of sleep. I've done it before but I'm not 30 any more.

I'll put on some coffee, grab a guitar off the wall and strum a few chords for a couple of hours with a coffee break or two in there for good measure. I've done this lots of times. It'll be time to get moving soon enough. I'll just enjoy the peace and quiet.

Hemingway Had Paris

All one need do to be a writer is write. So with this premise foremost in my mind I set out to be a writer. Indeed, the discovery of blogging and the creation of this, my blog, is a result of the desire, no, need, to write and to express.

But, how does one go about being a writer? The inspiration to write what one will write may be a better question. I've learned that Hemingway composed his stories while seated in a French cafe, somewhere in Paris, scribbling out his words with a pencil on a page of a notebook he kept in his coat pocket. Throughout the day he would observe the people he saw there and what they were doing. In this manner he may have spent whole days enjoying himself quite well, and indeed I believe he did, yet may only have constructed one or two paragraphs in a days time. If we are to believe the critics of his work some of those paragraphs have stirred changes in the world yet unknown.

Today it is the thing to tap out our words on a computer keyboard, watching to see when our words will begin to form the sentences that are part and parcel of our story, hitting the backspace key almost as many times as the e. And just now I find myself tapping a keyboard, anxiously spying my monitor, insuring each letter falls in the correct sequence forming each intended word in its place to form the sentences of this composition. But is this the place where we write?

Something is missing in the process. I think it is the pencil and paper. I think it is the watching of people and, on occasion, interacting with them. I think it is the experience of living what you will write before you write it. These are the very things I believe must be done. Life has a way of getting in the way dealing a preemptive blow to our creativity.

Am I not also seated in a Parisian cafe? No. Hemingway alone had Paris. I have the rest of the world. I can write from anywhere. I can see the look of a young girl's eyes upon her lover. The love and devotion of her feelings toward him are in her eyes as surely as the light of the Moon is in the Sun. I can then put that in a story set anyplace I choose. But I could not do that if I had not first seen it. The realization that living in the cocoon of my existence will certainly bring about the failure of my creative side to enjoin the rest of me in life has brought about a certain awareness that the job I do to earn a living can kill me just as easily as a bank safe falling from a great height. In each case I won't know what's coming until it is too late.

But to have lived in Paris as he did I cannot do, that Paris is gone. The modern world has no place for serenity. You can search high and low and you will not find it. There is no place where one can loiter the day by. You will not be left alone. Someone will inevitably molest your peace as you watch and loiter and enjoy and learn and see the things about which you will write and the characters that will live out their lives in your imagination. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's hope so.

So...You want'a go hunting?

The news is abuzz with Dick's marksmanship with a shotgun. Too bad a lot of it is just bull manure from the left, nit-pickin' about every little, and I mean little, detail. Who cares whether or not he had all the right licenses and duck stamps and/or migratory bird stamps or whatever.

You can't impeach a president because:

• the vice president was hunting without a proper license
• that while hunting he accidentally shot one of his hunting partners
• some time delay was noticed by the media that it had not been reported soon enough

Anyway, I still have to laugh when I imagine Mr. Cheney in front of George's desk, with a little pout on his lips and the Prez is saying, "Who said you could go hunting anyhow?"

Any one heard from Teddy boy?

Who is Allah, anyway?

In the news recently there seems to be a misunderstanding that I believe needs to be discussed. It seems to me from listening and reading the news lately that everyone accepts that Allah, the god of Islam, is also the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Judaism, the Father Of Jesus the Christ, the God of Christianity. This is just not so and the proof is so easy to see.

As I understand it, in Islam Jesus is just a prophet, but with less authority than Mohammed. In Judaism He is nothing special, yet. In Christianity he is the Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the savior of the whole world. But here is something that puts Judaism and Christianity closer to the same page. The Jewish God is the Father of the Christian God, making Jesus equal to God. Here is the tie that binds Judaism with Christianity that is missing between Islam and Judaism.

So, Allah cannot be Yaweh. The two systems of religious thought are in such opposition to each other they could not have arisen from the same source. The Prophet Yeshua Meschiach, Jesus to you, once said, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined...," Matthew 12:25.

So, since we see with our own eyes the followers of Allah hating and pursuing the destruction of the followers of Yaweh, it seems logical to me that Yaweh and Allah are not two names for the same Creator of us all.

So I ask the question, since I know who Yaweh is, who is Allah? And another question might be since all gods are imaginary, who cares?