The Elements of a Post, Again

(I did this once before in this post and, honestly, it was a lot of fun.)

Include these phrases written on the same index card:

"I want to remember that."

"I never clean the detritus out of my guitar case, all manner of things... a guitar case..."  (Yeah, that's what it says.)

Some scans of home-made Pokemon-style trading cards:

An arbitrary scan of four Reds tickets:

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Some profoundly unrelated photos:

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Two scanned objects which should have been photographed:

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Something colorful and inspiring like two marker coats-of-arms:

Words to include: distillation, angst, puny and mutton (mutton, what the hell...)

Ideas to include: Baseball's curious hold on me; English muffins; anachronisms and such and what Nick said about the things that sometimes scare him.

Some other considerations:  Use the plural of coat-of-arms, consider why a child does something we think is unusual, be tempted to accidentally hit publish and pretend you couldn't figure out how to fix it, mention a title for a post you never intend to write.

Needed:  A device to include all these things in one post and lunch.

Time allotted:  Three hours and forty-seven minutes, includes lunch.

Note:  Use italics to show result and turn copy red when referenced.


I'm gonna go make lunch and think about it, I'll get back in a few.


I don't think it can be done.  I guess I could lead off with that painfully odd guitar case thing, admitting that I actually know what it means - that things accumulate in strange and perplexing ways, and, as they do, a distillation occurs that sweetens and mellows, greens go to browns, sharp scents change to mere hints of fragrances forgotten.

I don't think that would do, perhaps if I started with the Reds tickets, explaining how we made it to the last regularly scheduled game of the season and had a great time, and my underdog hero Corky Miller hit a two-run double and caught a couple of innings.  I might add some thoughts on how I truly feel about the baseball season, how honestly I am glad I don't have to watch seven or twelve or more baseball games this season.  I might extend my metaphor on the poetry in baseball to include the notion that it is not the number of poems you read, it is in the deep understanding of just that one that landed, movingly on your chest.

And I could end that bit with the picture of Mr. Reds in a snow helmet as a symbol the winter hibernation of our favorite sport.

From there I could use a clever transition, which is currently evading me, and say something about how things shift so stealthily; this show is no longer watched, this cereal no longer favored, this color now that color, English Muttons Muffins are now a breakfast consideration and biscuits are out.

Easy segue into that yellow bungee-cord-looking-thing that I scanned - although I should have used the camera - which is actually a small yellow curled cord that was attached to a little plastic carabiner type clip that Nick got five, yes five, years ago and yet it still surfaces, he cherishes it, adding that he also made the curious metal object out of a cheap little magic trick kit he got, taped it together and showed it to me the whole while not seeing that he'd spelled the word "god" and added a delightfully stylized cross above the 'o'.  And, I could add a picture I took to make things a little clearer.

After all that I would add that when I first started doing this nearly two years ago, my initial thought, when I found this on the floor, was:  "I want to remember this."  It still is my initial mission, in fact the entire purpose of this post is to archive these moments and images I never want to forget, remembering.  If I remember, perhaps they'll remember and perhaps you will as well, whoever or whenever you are.

Speaking of that "whenever you are thing" I've been echoing here, I wonder if you even know what that is there on the right, on a table.  And on the left?  Well Zack asked me:  "What is that, Daddy?" pointing to the candle I have on my desk, my "focus candle", and I launched into why I use it to help me think, and... he interrupted, "No, that other thing."  Oh, that burnout, used match, something which you've never seen before.  Something that I saw everyday as a child their age.  Just as they see that thing on the right, that laptop, that, had I seen in a magazine or book, would have baffled me as to what it was.  (The rest of the story on the picture of the laptop is that, and this is essential, is that I took it to remember the way Nick had perfectly arranged the cord to go that particular way.  Only a boy would think of and then respond to that seemingly unorthodox approach, I wanted to always have image to look back on.)

Lets see then, that would leave the Pokemon cards and the coats-of-arms, but, I could just peddle those as 'the usual' around here and not really dissect them, not notice the darling little monkey-bear in the one on the top right, the puny little guy labelled "worst enemy".  There's a lot of weird imagery in those four drawings, I can always analyze them some other time, in the future, if I need to...

So, that most of it right?  Oh, except that one that's difficult, except that "what Nick said about the things that sometimes scare him."  He said that it scares him when other people are mad or really, really sad, upset in general gives him an angst that he is having trouble understanding, as indeed he should.  I guess I'd tell him, although I don't want to, that we all feel that way but, most of the time, we just have to let that feeling wash over us and engulf us and defeat us quickly, rapier-style and move on.  It's bad advice but he'll never see it will he?

For some reason I want to call this post "I Fed Schoenberg's Schrödinger's Cat" and include atonal piano music and show my general lack of understanding in things philosophical and physics.  I don't know why...

Now to change this would-be piece into the actual piece by adding italics.

And now to avoid hitting publish prematurel