The Plumber

I am the only plumber in my family. Plumbing, after all, is a relatively modern thing, with the convenience of pipes and running cold and hot water and toilets and showers replacing chamber pots and tubs that were filled by the bucket only a couple of generations ago. Mid-winter trips to the privey. Brrrr!

Plumbing work is heavy and dirty. There probably are not many lady plumbers. And it ain't rocket science, though it could get tricky fast once you get into its engineering aspects, the new on-demand water heating systems, for example. My forebears hired plumbers. They would open their summer houses by the ocean and close them in the fall, sometime after Labor Day when they would migrate back to their winter homes inland.

My forebears did not work much with their hands; they were owners and executives, not laborers. I must be the antithesis to all of them. I work with my hands in order to escape the frustrations of these executive pursuits. I do this because it challenges me to learn how, to be self-dependent and save money. They chose to do what they and others felt were more gentle, appropriate things. Ah, reality! Boethius would have shown how the wheel of fortune turns. The Mississippi football coach and dean of boys had his own saying for it: "The sun don't shine on the same dog's behind, all of the time."

NaNoWriMo

National Write a Novel in a Month project well underway. I am warping its rules to suit my own needs by using bits and pieces of blog with new writing. My object is to meet the 50,000 word goal within the month, and have something that might actually be worthy of reading. Others who have mentioned the project have all said they did not do anything with their work after November 30th, the final day. To me that is almost useless. And I have many stories which center around Time for Change, the Providence and Little Compton axis and family poles. Use them or their impetus.

Life is like a Cocktail Party

November 2008. Been here before, 58 times, with another two or three dozen in the tank, odds on. A dozen, anyhow. It is like a cocktail party, the art of knowing when to leave. It will be lonely and unfortunate to overstay. Do I want to outlive my wife? I do not want to outlive my daughter. Does my wife wish to outlive me? The coward's way out would be to go first, but I would rather not have Sally have to deal with my demise. I ought to ask her; maybe she would like a reprieve from my foul company near the end? Depressing thoughts, brought on by the gray skies, the fall chill, the looming prospect of The Holidays and ever mounting bills.

Piracy

I steal, therefore I am a thief. I rationalize: we all steal, everything's derivative. Art, stories taken from real life, fiction created out of fact. This much, I know is true. I have writings upon writings, mountain ranges beyond mountains of thoughts and ancient postings. They accrue and moulder, or whatever things do in cyberspace. And now I am using them as pieces of a larger framework. Old pieces tied together with the new. I am redeeming them like books filled up with green stamps from the supermarket, hoping to win my own reward with points from my own thefts or purchases. Yes, I am pirating my journal of thoughts, happily, thankfully, without remorse. This writer is a thief!