Trivia (Haiku)

Trivia is posted
Hoping it's good for someone
Take it at its worth

Into the Wilderness 2019-- Audition and Discard

Last year I did this and had mixed results.  The overall result was good but I think it could have been better with more discipline.  I am going to do it again this year with more resolve.  My idea is to get as close to isolation as possible; in other words eliminate external influences on my thinking.

The rules have been slightly modified but generally are the same:

1. Working, doing Voice-over auditions and/or rehearsals and performances of plays and films is fine.  Contact for the purpose of securing work is encouraged.
2. Socialization only in the response mode; i.e. initiating no casual contact but responding directly to contact when it's made.  This would also preclude prolonging the contact beyond that for which it was initiated.
3. No recreational electronics, including radio, television, and phonograph.
4. Telephone only to answer it and Email checked once per day with both telephone and Email usage according to Rule 1.
5. Reading , especially on acting work, is encouraged.
6. Writing thoughts and impressions, as much and as often as desired.  (Last year this was recognized as a distraction at times.)
7. No change indicated for eating habits.
8. Going out only to get groceries, necessities, to keep appointments, or to exercise and adhering to Rule 1 when out.
9. Physical exercise and artistic practice, such as singing or reciting, would be allowed to any extent, even going to the fitness center and golf courses; remembering Rule 1 when there.
10. Discard, without recrimination or remorse, anything deemed useless.

The themes of this foray into the wilderness are Audition and Discard.  Auditions refer to voice work, commercials and other voice-only jobs.  And after that is established with a series of successes, go ahead and pursue plays, movies, and other video work.

Discard is sorting out and purging belongings, such as books and files, tools and materials, clothes and accouterments.  The idea here is to reduce the clutter and it has the added benefit of being aware of what one has and where it is.

Construction, repair, and maintenance of whatever would be allowed; always in accordance with Rule 1.  The difficulty was filling the time with some sort of productive activity.

According to my rules, work defined as Voice over and acting is fine; and I can work, cook, bake, go out for necessities, exercise, shoot pool, play golf, or walk.  I can clean, fix, construct, discard, purge, sort, and donate to my heart's content.  I can think, and write to get thoughts on paper, but I realize that the important thoughts, the life changing thoughts, will be with me, written or not.

Jim Harcum's Funeral

Jim Harcum was a friend of mine.  We got word on the Tuesday, the 19th of February that he died on Sunday, the 17th, from some sort of lung disorder.  We made a decision right then and there to go to the funeral and pay our respects.

We met Jim and his wife in 1968 and became friends right away.  His wife was the leader of a chapter of Epsilon Sigma Alpha sorority, a women's philanthropic and social organization.  The group was active and we all had a lot of fun together going to conventions and other events.

Jim, like me, was a boater.  Over the years he had power boats, a sailboat, and a pontoon boat.  That was our connection, even to the point of going sailing in the Virgin Islands with some other friends of ours.

My wife and I left Louisville Kentucky for Virginia early on Wednesday morning and stayed with our daughter in Virginia Beach.  On Thursday we set out for the peninsula and Yorktown where the reception remembering Jim was being held at a funeral parlor.

We had dinner at Harpoon Larry's in Newport News, a favorite eating place of ours whenever we went to see the Harcum's, which we usually did every summer when visiting our daughter.  It was a small homage.

The memorial was an emotional event for me.  I had trouble talking about Jim without having my throat swell holding back the tears.  There were pictures of him over the years depicting the various activities in which he was involved.  The pictures included, of course, his family and friends.

I talked for a long time to an even closer friend of his, Jim Charleston, who told me of Jim's last moments.  His lungs were failing and became precipitously worse over the two weeks prior to his death.  He called for a beer to drink just before he died.  Jim was not a heavy drinker but enjoyed a glass or two of beer, or bourbon.  Jim went peacefully, surrounded by his family.

At the memorial, we saw friends that we hadn't seen for a while.  It was nice.  Finally, we left there and went back to Va Beach.  I was still quite emotional but kept it in.

The next day we went back to the peninsula, to lunch at Smokey Bones, a BBQ place that the Harcums, friends, and we likewise frequented; another homage.  Then we went on to the funeral.

The funeral service was at St. Mark Lutheran church in Yorktown.  The church was full but I knew scant few of the people there.  I was particularly surprised by some who weren't there.  Jim was active in the church and I think most of those there were members of the congregation.

It was a Lutheran service and very similar to Roman Catholic.  The pastor related how he went to give Jim the Eucharistic bread and wine only to find that he'd picked up an empty kit.  He stopped and got some white bread and cheap wine at a convenience store and used that.  The wine given as the Eucharistic wine at this service was that same cheap wine in memory of what happened with Jim.

The same little wooden box with the name James Paul Harcum that I saw at the funeral parlor, was on a table in front of the altar.  It dawned on me then that those were Jim's ashes.

After the service there was a reception.  Mark, Jim's son-in-law, gave a eulogy and asked me to say a few words, which I did.

I related an episode that occurred one cold, rainy, wintry day, about this time of year, when Jim and I set out to take my boat back to Merrimack Shores and went aground in the Poquoson River.  The Coast Guard came to pull us off and repeatedly ran aground as well.  Watching their antics, I asked Jim if we were obliged to take a line if one was thrown by them.  He said no, where was the whiskey?  I had none aboard.  He then  impressed upon me, that day, that a bottle of whiskey was required aboard any boat for just this sort of event.

Mark followed that with a beer toast, everyone had been given a few ounces of beer in plastic glass, to Jim Harcum, husband, father, and friend.  Everyone, including my wife and I, drank to his name.

A little while later we left.  So ends a long friendship, in life anyway, that spanned more than 50 years.  We did a lot, laughed a lot, and made some great memories.  Propriety prevents me from detailing some of them.

A Strange Sight Indeed

We, my wife and I, were going in on the ramp to I64 West from the Gene Snyder North the other day when we espied a committee of buzzards in the green area between the ramp and the interstate.  There were twenty of them, maybe a few more or less.  It was a rainy day not very cold but it is winter.  They may have been feeding, we couldn't tell.

Not a remarkable sight but wait.  We finished our business and were on the way home, about an hour later, when we again got on the Gene Snyder; returning north.  As we crossed the overpass of I64, there on the light standards, were the buzzards.  They had reconvened atop them, all twenty or so at five or six per standard, with their wings stretched out.  Just roosting there, with their wings out as if drying them.

They were there before we came onto the freeway and remained there after we passed.  All those buzzards, each with his wings spread out; quite a strange sight indeed.

Character Sketch of Boss Finley

My name is Thomas Finley, people call me boss.  I was born outside of  St. Cloud (Alexandria) LA in August of 1907 that makes me 58 years old this year.  Grew up in a two room shack not far from there.  Attended public school until I got noticed by the local politicians and recommended to work for them in St. Cloud (Alexandria) and, later, in Baton Rouge doing odd politico jobs.

I literally came from the clay streets of the little town where I grew up.  My family was poor, my daddy no good for nothing, my mother stern but loving.  I started in politics young (15) and got the schooling and experience I needed in the Democratic machine.  Everyone knew I played for keeps and more than one bit the dust.

I am now the most powerful politician in Louisiana and Southern Mississippi.  And I'm dirty, I know it and use it to my best advantage.  I am totally self-centered and look out only for my own self-interest and enrichment.  I am going to die as rich and famous as I was once poor, and no wife and/or family is going to get in my way.

Heavenly Finley, my daughter and younger child is 27 years old, and my only daughter.  She's the younger sister of Tom Finley Jr; and Chance Wayne’s longtime sweetheart. Like her late mother she is a practicing Catholic, although this frustrates me because my "base" is protestant. 

When she was 15, Heavenly suffered through an awful loss, an operation to eliminate a venereal disease that left her sterile.  The operation was at my behest.  She put on black in mourning. Although we attempted to keep her circumstances private, there are rumors throughout St. Cloud (Alexandria) that something tragic has happened concerning Heavenly.

Tom Jr is my legacy and I'm grooming him to step in for me.  Miss Lucy is a necessary encumbrance on my life; she takes care of my "needs."  Chance Wayne is nobody, of no use to me, and certainly not going to marry my daughter even if that’s what she wants.  It was he that infected her with the disease.

The current situation is: I'm making a public appearance at a dinner.  There's talk about Heavenly and she is feeling sorry for herself and pining over Chance.  She's going to go with me come hell or high water and make a good show of it.  It's an opportunity to showcase Tom Jr and put the gossip about Heavenly to rest.

Mind and Life (Haiku)

Straddling the abyss
Mind is at once in the one
And in the other

The spiritual
And then in the physical
Imagine, dream, act

Alone, with others
Look at what we accomplished
And we're not through yet

A part eternal
The physical dies at death
The Master lives on

Continuity
Life will never be extinct
On the living Earth

Advice to a Young Lady (Haiku)

Look through a glass pane
Not always in a mirror
You will see much more

Seeing the other
What they have compared to you
It will seem better

Comparing it not
To yourself or anyone else
Avoids the problem

It's not what it seems
Not in their eyes anyway
Yours will seem better