Looking in the mirror, he noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, reminding him of a river journey with a friend, laughing for days and seeing white wrinkles amid the tan lines. Today, my face is tan and rounded somewhat, perhaps from the beard, going gray around the edges. There is that combination of youth and age that defies our usual indication of time in a body. A smile is often present and there is something about brown eyes that can tighten into a focus when speaking directly to someone. My niece was at a family reunion that I did not attend and she told me my grandmother’s last name meant bent willow, which I find interesting. There is a northern European look about me, heavy set and I think short, or stout might fit. Am I pleasant to look at? Only when I am fun to be around. But my portrait is not that, it is in my song: I’m a child of the desert, hot burning sand And a friend to the buzzard circling the bleaching bones of a man I spent my contemplation under a pinyon tree And a nut fell down and hit me and that’s what [...]
It is night here. I had a dream that I was listening to music at a concert and the music finished. It had been instrumental music with drums and percussion and other sounds that I can’t remember. A musician spoke, saying the concert was over and that he had not said much with words because the music spoke for them. It has been over an hour since that experience and I am awake, still. My mind is overactive, running through a range of thoughts that I can usually avoid in daylight. i think about being unemployed until I can “officially” retire. I think about my part in what we have done to our environment and our world. I think of the worry and fear that permeates our existence, and how much of that is our own doing, our own actions, that we followed so easily. I think of the anger and rage that I see in so many places in the different media, and how easy it is to step into that state of mind. I think that Loving Kindness is a means to overcome all that I find to be negative in my world. In my dreams, I have [...]
It is easy to respond in conversation. Words are spoken, mind engages, and responds. That has been my world in this blog.
Now I find me trying to create the beginning of the conversation. it was easy with meeting the man that lives a few houses down the street. Our first conversation was about his four dogs loose in my yard. I asked him to do something about them being loose and his response was that he would kill them if I wanted. A great way to initiate a conversation. I had to tell him four or five times, “just keep your dogs in your yard.” I haven’t spoken to him for three or four years. He has a puppy that was loose and came over to my house. We were cordial, talking about the neighborhood, the traffic on the road, and the fact that his neighbor wants to sell his house for $325,000, and it is on a railroad tie foundation.
We live in a strange world where some people are out of work, houses are foreclosed, debts are unpaid, and yet there are optimists that are trying to act like nothing happened in 2008. The value of houses is a wonderful example of the wide range of perceptions that populate our world.
While I helped a friend build his house, his neighbor tried to sell their house that they bought for $500,000. They wanted $750,000, but no takers. They moved out and left the house. The bank asked for $425,000, with no one buying the house. The bank tried to auction the house but the initial bids were below their asking price. The last time I talked to someone looking at the house, the man told me that $300,000 was too much for the house, I think that had become the asking price.
The financial problems that began when the housing market faltered are not over, at least where I live.
My Dad used to tell me that something is worth what someone will pay for it. I think of his statement when I purchase something as well as when I want to sell something. The real problem comes in when the investment in the materials to make something for sale costs more than what it will sell for. I think we were building and loaning way over what people could afford, then. Now there is no affording. Empty buildings and homes everywhere.
I saw new homes going upin an area near where I live and wonder what is wrong with the homes already available. Madness! I agree the problems are not over, Bouzouki.