UNINSPIRED
Amazing how quickly it happened. I’ve been back from the Lower Columbia for three days now, spent those three days helping my buddy with chores around his yard, walking Maggie in a mile circle three or four times each day, and watching a select few innings of the Mariners game.
Suburbia has its grip on me once again, and I am painfully aware of why we sold the house and headed off into the Great Unknown.
I am numb.
I’m not unhappy, mind you. I’m glad I can help my friend, and it’s nice to be making a few alterations to Puddle Walker. However, it all leads me to this blah statement: I am uninspired!
I felt alive on the road. Here, I feel like someone slipped me a dose, or ten, of valium.
GETTING INVOLVED
I have an online friend by the name of, well, let’s call her Elaine, not her name, but with online stuff, it’s better to play it safe and keep the crazies away.
Elaine posted something on Facebook the other day, something which happened, indirectly, to her, and she felt the need to share it. I’m going to let her tell you, in her own words:
“Yesterday was a weird day filled with all kinds of emergencies and feelings and urgency and technical difficulties. I want to share my morning with you, but before I do, I want to make something clear, I didn’t actually do anything.
I got to the office, I heard someone crying for help, I heard him say “he’s hurting me!” I heard cars honking. I put my dog away, I took the sidewalk the half block to the commotion. I saw a man, beating another man, trying to throw him into oncoming traffic. Remember, I didn’t actually do anything. I just kept walking into the commotion. As soon as the man beating the guy realized I was going to be there, he let go. I moved the hurt man to the sidewalk, I picked up his things, we walked away from that location. All of the people who had honked went on with their day. Drove away.
I didn’t do anything except care enough to walk myself into what was happening. I was never in any danger. Neither were all the people who were just watching, irritated that they couldn’t drive on to where they were going.
A few people praised me. I don’t think it really warranted praise-what I don’t understand is why I had all the time to put my dog away, to take the sidewalk and to get there to retrieve that poor man-when all of those other people were already there.
The police came, so someone called them. I guess that’s what we do now. But a lot can happen in the amount of time it takes for that kind of help to arrive-that man was afraid for his life. He’s okay. I called to double check this morning.
I’m not suggesting that anyone play hero and get themselves hurt, but this particular situation held up a lot of frustrated people and none of them even got out of their cars.
That’s what is heavy on my mind.”
I don’t even know where to start.
For a vast majority of this journey blog, I have raved about the goodness in people, which I have witnessed firsthand. It pains me to write what I am about to write.
This is a tough situation to discuss. As my friend says, she is not suggesting that someone put themselves in harm’s way . . . but is it asking too much for someone to do something? One of the things I do not understand, never have understood, and will never understand, is indifference. And when it comes to indifference towards our fellow man, I am beyond words.
I have seen this sort of thing before and please, trust me, I’m not saying this is the sign of an epidemic of indifference, but I am saying it happens far too often for me to comprehend. There are people out there who do not want to get involved. If it doesn’t affect them, or if it is not related in any way to their life, they walk on and pretend it isn’t happening.
But it is happening, and it affects all of us when any human being ignores the suffering of another.
Don’t want to get involved??? You are involved, simply by being a member of this species!!!
I was not raised that way, period, end of discussion. My father, for all of his faults, would jump into the fray and help someone in need in a heartbeat, and any danger his action might risk was just too bad and not worth considering. And he raised me in the same image and likeness, drilled it into me, and I believed the importance of his message sixty years ago, and I believe in its importance today.
There is an insidious danger in being complacent and indifferent. Those actions, or lack thereof, are like a cancer of your soul. They will eat away at you, eat away at you, eat away at you, and there is no cure for that kind of sickness. And it is a cancer which can spread to others, a group cancer, if you will, and heaven help us all if that becomes an epidemic . . . which it is capable of becoming.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just an old man ranting to the wind, all nonsense not worthy of a blog. Or maybe, just maybe, what I say has a tiny bit of merit.
TIME FOR A FACELIFT
Next week it will be about time for me to get a haircut and have the beard trimmed. And, since it is good enough for me, and since Puddle Walker was created in my image and likeness, she is undergoing a facelift as of this writing, June 28, 2023.
Puddle Walker now has curtains. I know, very upscale, very posh, not like my image at all, but seriously, those blackout, silver panels just looked trashy. It was about time, and I must say, Puddle Walker has held her head a little higher since the curtains were installed.
I am waiting patiently for a chair to arrive from Amazon, a swivel, rocking chair which is replacing the uglier than ugly bus seat which has been the first thing anyone saw upon entering my old girl. It is a seriously blue chair, and I will mount it on a seriously yellow platform, and in a couple days, the first thing anyone entering my old girl will see are some rainbow colors.
The cassette toilet has been moved to the very rear of the bus, curtained off so no one has to look at it. Four shelves, upon which I have stored miscellaneous junk for four months, were removed. That particular move gave the bus a much cleaner look, not so cluttered, and it pleases me, as do the two ceiling tapestries.
I will also build a storage divider between the couch and the chair when it arrives, a place to put all of my shoes, and attached to that will be a table top on hinges, up when needed, folded against the storage divider when not needed.
That’s about it for the interior. I haven’t decided on the outside yet. I wish someone with artistic skills would do some seriously cool paintings on the outside, but I will just have to wait for that to happen whenever the universe decides it is time.
I will post pics on Facebook, if interested, or maybe I’ll make a short video so you can see it “live.”
A MAN AND A CHICKEN
I will warn you right now, this is going to seem like a strange thing to write about. Bear with me, please. I think it’s rather important.
I know a man. Veteran, forty years old, PTSD, nice enough guy, stays pretty much to himself, quiet, quick to smile, helpful, fighting demons of his own making and those made by the U.S. government.
He lives on a couple acres outside of Olympia, does a little writing, does a little painting, other than that, a walk to the country store each day, and taking care of his chickens, twenty total, that’s how his day unfurls, week after week, month after month.
We’ll call him Gus. Not his name, no need for his real name, just Gus for this accounting.
Gus loves his chickens. You know how many people these days have service animals, care animals, comfort animals to help them deal with the heeby jeebies? That’s Gus and his chickens, and his favorite chicken is a Rhode Island Red name of Sweet Pea.
A couple weeks ago, while holding Sweet Pea, Gus noticed a large growth on Sweet Pea’s breast. Concerned, Gus immediately called a friend for a ride and took Sweet Pea to the vet, where he was informed that Sweet Pea needed to have that malignant growth removed or Sweet Pea would die.
Gus didn’t have the money for that kind of operation. The vet, noting how important Sweet Pea was to Gus, offered to do the procedure for free, but it would require follow-up medications (also expensive), and close, one-on-one care, for a few weeks. Gus would need to leave Sweet Pea with the vet and, if all went well, he could pick up Sweet Pea in fourteen days.
Gus cried.
A strong man, a man who had survived combat situations, a man who had lost friends in horrific ways, a man chiseled from iron, broke down and cried at the thought of not being able to afford care for his chicken, and because he would not have his chicken for two weeks.
I’m a creative writer, but there is no way I have this much creativity. It’s a story which seems too unbelievable to be true, beyond comprehension, way too “out there” to be taken seriously.
And yet, it happened.
What does it all say to me? It says we all need companionship. It says we all need support and comfort and we all need to know that we are not alone.
I look at Maggie and I can only imagine the pain I am going to feel when her day arrives and I will have to make the decision to let her go, to cross over that Rainbow Bridge. How lonely I will feel. Who will I talk to during the day if Maggie is gone? Who will understand my silly musings better than Maggie? Who will provide comfort to me, on the road, when the night closes in and the ghosts of the past come silently creeping into Puddle Walker?
No, this is a true story. Gus and Sweet Pea. And it’s a story we all should be able to relate to, if you really stop and think about it.
Which obviously I have done.
How many of you reading this has a dog or cat? How important is that dog or cat to you? This is an interesting topic for me, the love we give our domesticated pets. I would love to know the percentage of adult homeowners who have a pet. It must be close to 75%, wouldn’t you think? And the love each of those pets receive. And yet I see so much hatred in the world. How is that possible, that humans can love a pet so deeply and yet not have compassion for a fellow human?
I’m confused.
