Well, this is just a friendly update because I don’t want to do anything else that is available to me just now. I could read. Maybe later. I could watch a movie – Ugh!!!. I could call but when I call someone they always think I have something to say and of course I don’t. I could text someone, but the same principle holds there as well. If we both had smart iPhones we could do video calling, or if you are on an Android unit Tango would work. I haven’t figured out just what kind of benefit that is supposed to be, but what do I know?
I am not actually lonely but I like the instant communication of phones, SMS, Chat, FaceBook and Twitter. Problem is not too many people I know use all those avenues of contacting their friends and relatives. I just think it is all magical and we should be out there playing until the dawn’s early light. Well, but, what do I know? I remember going out the back door and seeing the neighbor and saying “Hi” and we would have a conversation over the fence about nothing and it would be quite satisfying. Low tech. But real. It’s probably not fair to think that just because I want to talk that others should be ready at that particular time. Kind of reminds me of sex. If memory serves, it was pretty much like that. Now and then everybody wanted to talk but more often than not, it was a problem. I always loved to talk. So to speak. Then, we all have our own special interests. If several people with the same special interest meet up then you have a real conversation that goes on into the wee hours. Take for example the political types. My god can they go on forever about how brain dead our Republican governor is. I mean, tell me something new. Actually I don’t have much positive to say about politicians these days whatever their color, and furthermore, I do not enjoy talking about it. And then there are the spiritual types that sometimes use special words and phrases that nobody else knows. Kind of like a secret handshake that everybody else wishes they knew. They usually indicate a special level of spirituality. One such phrase is “Praise Jesus,” which means, I think, judging from the context usually attending the exclamation – “Jesus is a friend of mine,” and I think it indicates that the person saying it has just returned from a conference or something. Another one employed by many in the American yoga/Buddhist/Hindu diaspora, is “Namaste”. I have done extensive research on this and the closest English translation I can come up with is, “Y’all come,” and in a more colloquial sense, “Pass the salad dressing.” I could be wrong, and I am sure it’s deeper than that, but … there you go. What do I know? Probably the most popular thing to talk about on one or the other social sites is whatever fantastic thing I have just done that I am sure none of you out there have done or even imagined doing. I understand this. If I had just climbed Kilimanjaro, or lost ten pounds, you’d choke on all my whooping and hollering. I get to do so little stuff that when I can do something really neat and sort of exclusive, like that time I slid on my ass down the icy driveway, well, I just think people want to know about that. It’s only natural. Well, the sun shone yesterday and it was 75?. I woke up this morning to snow. The sun is now shining again but it’s not as warm. Something needs adjusting. There you go: the weather is always a universally loved subject, and everybody knows as much about it as everybody else. I hope it’s good where you are. Be well, and stay tuned. Jerry HendersonI have an old friend who chides me for playing solitaire on my computer and various other hand held devices. If he weren’t such a good and valued friend I’d tell him to stuff it. But I don’t want to alienate him because he is a valued computer consultant whose little finger knows more about any problem I might have than my entire brain does. And anyway, I love the guy, in spite of himself. So I put up with his mightier than thou attitude and go along playing my “Australian Patience” brand of solitaire – nearly exclusively – and while doing so grind thoughts and ideas in the mill of my mind. I also fall to sleep now and then while searching for a card to move – grinding or not.
Computers these days are capable of so much that is truly amazing that to play a game of solitaire seems like woefully underutilizing such a machine. Like driving a Ferrari to the super market when the open highway is only a block away. But it’s so seductive, and whose business is it anyway? I won’t tell you how many games I have played, but at a couple of bucks a game I would be made whole. It’s fun. It serves as a disconnect for my mind. I won’t be so foolish as to suggest it is a kind of meditation, but it is a kind of meditation. In that last great cyber reckoning day, by and by, it will be found that I spent only a fraction of my computing life playing solitaire. If those years using a “PC” in the Microsoft sense of that term, is included in these calculations, most of my time was spent re-booting, re-installing and scratching my head while the damned thing wrestled with the idea of working again. So here is this little machine sitting in my lap and connecting me to the virtual world in an instant. I mean, I am remembering lying in bed on a Saturday night listening to the Grand Old Opry on WSM in Nashville on my crystal set that I made in the kitchen. The surplus Army Air Force headphones I was using made my ears itch after a while but I heard it all and thought it was pure magic. If I played solitaire, I had to deal the cards by hand. There wasn’t a single cognitive cell in my brain to resonate with the reality of this little lap top, had such a reality been revealed to me at the time. Not much was revealed to me at the time. I could have used a word or two about sex, but that’s a whole other story. I see it is now approaching midnight. I better shut this thing down soon and get a chapter or two read before the eyes close up on me. Well, maybe one or two rounds of Australian Patience first. There’s always room for a game of solitaire. You see, that’s the thing.
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