8.14.2026 – moment you’re suspended

moment you’re suspended
knowing nothing and no one …
not even yourself

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you,

and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place,

and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.

From The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (Harper Perennial: New York, 2021).

Time marches on.

As Willie Wonka said, “Oh, you can’t get out backwards. You’ve gotta go forwards to go back. Better press on.”

But there are those moments.

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place.

Maybe these are life changing moments when one part of your life is at an end and a new life starts tomorrow.

Sometimes you see it coming.

Sometimes you see it was coming when you look back and you say should have seen that one coming.

Sometimes you might not even know it happened until years later and you say, you know what …

I have long be fascinated by these isolated moments in your life when you are in that moment, suspended, knowing nothing.

As an example, back in the day I play a lot church league softball.

Baptist Church league softball.

If you ever want your faith and testimony challenged play Baptist League softball.

I was challenged a lot and failed a lot.

BUT I DIGRESS.

Every so often I might get a hit and end up on base and it occurred to me that while on base, time kind of stopped.

The was a finite time that I could be on base.

There was an infinite time that I could be on base.

While on base, my clock stopped.

I couldn’t (well maybe I could have) ask for time out to use the bathroom, answer the phone or respond to any number of calls on my attention.

I was on base.

I was safe.

I was safe on base.

And in softball as well as in baseball, there was no clock running.

No one could point to a clock and say I had been on base too long or that time was running out.

I was on base so long as I was safe.

OR until someone else on my team did something so I could score or get out and maybe the side would go out and I was no longer on base regardless of what I did or said.

It was a magic time.

The past that I’d been standing on fell away behind me, and the future I meant to land on was not yet in place.

Admittedly that on base moment is a snapshot of moments where the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place.

Sometimes these moments of the time of an elevator ride.

Sometimes these moments stretch on and on where the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place.

And for a moment … of maybe a lot longer … you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.

Between barstools was the way some folks put it.

And that’s where I am right now.

The past that I have been standing on has fallen away behind me, and the future I mean or I hope to land on is not yet in place.

I am suspended.

Still know things I think but what to think that I should know when the future I might land is not yet in place.

I am reminded of the Steve McQueen role in the movie when he said:

It’s like that fella who fell off a ten-storey building.

What about him?

As he was falling, people on each floor heard him say “So far, so good.”

Fish Haul Creek Road, Hilton Head Island, SC

8.13.2026 – everywhere nowhere

everywhere nowhere
jactatively away
like the falling tide

Adapted from the poem, Words in a Certain Appropriate Mode” by Hayden Carruth as published in Collected Shorter Poems, 1946–1991 (Copper Canyon Press: Port Townsend, Wash, 1992).

Aside from the many moods captured in the poem that match many of my current moods,

Nor not alone, where cognition seeps
Jactatively away like the falling tide

If there were a tide, and what is left
Is nothing, or is the everything that keeps
Its undifferentiated unreality, all

It was that word there, Jactatively.

Was it made up?

Is it really a word?

Was gratified to find it is indeed a word.

And what a word!

According to the Online Merriam-Webster, Jactatively is an adverb derived from the rare word jactative (pertaining to boasting or the restless tossing of the body), meaning in a manner characterized by bragging, ostentatious false claims, or restless physical agitation.

In the 17th century, lawyers began tossing around the word jactitation, which can be traced back to the Latin verb jactare, meaning “to throw.” Originally, jactitation was used as a word for a false claim or assertion being publicly thrown about to the detriment of another person. Run-of-the-mill slander and false claims of being married to someone were two common types of jactitation brought to court. Before long, jactitation had jumped over to the medical profession, where it continues to serve as a word for restless, jerky, or twitchy body movements. In 1761, British writer Laurence Sterne threw jactitation into his novel Tristram Shandy as a substitute for discussion, but that meaning never caught on.

Restless physical agitation.

BOY HOWDY!

All I have to do is turn off the light and lay down yet my mind jactatively refuses to release me to sleep.

Here is the poem.

It is not music, though one has tried music.
It is not nature, though one has tried
The rose, the bluebird, and the bear.
It is not death, though one has often died.

None of these things is there.

In the everywhere that is nowhere
Neither the inside nor the outside
Neither east nor west nor down nor up
Where the loving smile vanishes, vanishes
In the evanescence from a coffee cup
Where the song crumbles in monotone
Neither harmonious nor inharmonious
Where one is neither alone
Nor not alone, where cognition seeps
Jactatively away like the falling tide
If there were a tide, and what is left
Is nothing, or is the everything that keeps
Its undifferentiated unreality, all
Being neither given nor bereft
Where there is neither breath nor air
The place without locality, the locality

With neither extension nor intention
But there in the weightless fall
Between all opposites to the ground
That is not a ground, surrounding
All unities, without grief, without care
Without leaf or star or water or stone
Without light, without sound
anywhere, anywhere . . .

8.12.2026 – pursuit of money

pursuit of money
renders no longer worthy
of citizenship

Adapted from the book, The Bully Pulpit : Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2013), where Ms. Kearns writes about the impact of Ida Tarbell’s profile of John D. Rockefeller serialized in nineteen articles that ran from November 1902 to 1904.

Ms. Kearns wrote:

As her narrative progresses, Tarbell’s indignation at Rockefeller seems to grow, and her language sometimes slips into the same metaphors for soulless mechanical power that cheapened White’s portrait of Boss Platt.

She describes his eyes “as expressionless as a wall,” notes the “downward” droop of “his mouth,” his “cruelest” and “most pathetic” feature, and the repellent puffiness of his cheeks.

More than a touch of personal vindictiveness colors her representation of Rockefeller as she describes how his pursuit of money renders him no longer “a human man” but rather “a machine — a money machine — stripped by his overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes a man worthy of citizenship.”

According to Wikipedia: Magazine historian Frank Luther Mott called it, “one of the greatest serials ever to appear in an American magazine.” It would contribute to the dissolution of Standard Oil as a monopoly and lead to the Clayton Antitrust Act. Tarbell concluded the series with a two-part character study of Rockefeller, perhaps the first CEO profile ever, though she never met or even talked to him. Rockefeller called Tarbell, “Miss Tarbarrel”.

We talk a lot about citizenship today.

We talk a lot about what qualifies a person for citizenship today.

We talk a lot about who qualifies as a citizenship today.

I put it to you readers that the pursuit of money renders anyone no longer “a human” but rather “a machine — a money machine — stripped by their overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes anyone worthy of citizenship.”

As an exercise, I asked AI, which is as numb to feelings as numb can get, what are qualities which makes anyone worthy of citizenship?

AI responded: put the emphasis on character and conduct rather than wealth, education, religion, or political affiliation.

AI then said, some of the strongest qualities are:

Respect for others – Recognizing that fellow citizens have the same basic rights and dignity, even when you disagree with them.
Respect for the rule of law – Accepting that laws apply to everyone, including those with whom you agree and those with whom you strongly disagree.
Personal responsibility – Taking responsibility for your own actions rather than constantly blaming others.
Honesty and integrity – Telling the truth, keeping commitments, and acting ethically when nobody is watching.
Civic responsibility – Voting, staying informed, serving on juries when called, paying taxes, and contributing to the functioning of society.
Tolerance – Understanding that a free society necessarily contains people with different beliefs, cultures, religions, lifestyles, and political opinions.
A willingness to contribute – Contributing to the community through work, service, volunteering, raising a family, creating businesses, teaching, helping neighbors, or other productive activity.
Respect for freedom – Valuing your own freedoms while recognizing that other citizens possess those same freedoms.
Courage – Being willing to stand up for what is right, including defending the rights of people with whom you disagree.
A sense of community – Understanding that citizenship isn’t simply “What does my country give me?” but also “What do I owe the people with whom I share this country?”
Willingness to learn – Being open to evidence and changing one’s mind when facts demonstrate that one is wrong.
Commitment to the country – Not necessarily blind patriotism, but a genuine desire for the country and its people to prosper.

Easy to dismiss as AI but lets go back to that sentence, stripped by their overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes anyone worthy of citizenship.

Now imagine some of the folks I have in mind and take these 12 points as a check list and review them one by one against these folks and answer yes or no for that person.

I get 12 for 12 in the no column.

Stripped by their overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes anyone worthy of citizenship.

8.11.2026 – sweet love remembered

sweet love remembered
such wealth brings that I scorn to
change my state with kings

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him,
like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art
and that man’s scope

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet … in these thoughts myself almost despising …

Haply … I think on thee,

and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth)

sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare (1609).

I know that a sonnet is having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a rhymed couplet and the recitation of such should follow the rhythm of the scan but when I am already editing Mr. Shakespeare down to a haiku, how much more of an offense can it be to try and add parsing in my own fashion (which I stole from a YouTube recitation of the Sonnet 29 by Judi Dench (which I will leave to you to look up on your own)).

BUT I Digress as the point of this is to say in words better than I can write, Happy Anniversary, to my wife!

1989 to 2026, for some better and lots worse, and still together … after all these years!

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings …
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

8.10.2026 – peerless brightness blinds

peerless brightness blinds
you like a spell; you feel you
could follow it to hell

The men who can’t remember when they learned to swing a pack,
Or in what lawless land the quest began;
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,
The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North,
You will find us, changed in face, but still the same;
And it isn’t need, it isn’t greed that sends us faring forth—
It’s the fever, it’s the glory of the game.

For once you’ve panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It’s little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You’d follow it in hunger, and you’d follow it in cold;
You’d follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you’re stiff and battened down let someone whisper “Gold,”
You’re lief to rise and follow it again.

From The Prospector as published in Ballads of a Cheechako by Robert William Service (Toronto: William Briggs, 1911).