BoomSpeak

A Freud to Avoid?

By

F I C T I O N  I ran into Sigmund Freud the other day (I told you once but I’ll tell you again. It’s my fiction so I can meet up with anyone I like).

We were in front of a smokeshop and he was just coming out the door.

Sig, long time no see. Are you still smoking?

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

I know, but the research? I mean you must know smoking is bad for you.

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

Hey, I’m really glad I’ve run into you because I had this dream a few nights ago that —

“The madman is a dreamer awake”

Okay, but this dream was really weird and I can’t figure out what it means.

“If you can’t do it, give up!”

That’s it? What happened to the whole dreams as wish fulfillments and dealing with the unconscious? You’re the man when it comes to understanding repressed thoughts.

“The ego is not master in its own house.”

Boy oh boy, today you’re handing out these bromides like they’re lollypops.

“When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.”

Sig, you know I respect you and the whole thing with the Oedipus complex and the libido, I mean it’s brilliant. You’re brilliant. But sometimes you can be really dense.

“We are what we are because we have been what we have been.”

That explains it. That explains everything. How about a little help here. My dreams make no sense to me and I’m really trying to get to the truth.

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

For a guy who’s explored the human mind for a living you can be little flippant about my problem. I’m looking for answers.

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.”

That’s what I’m talking about. You talk to me like I’m a hopeless case. Can’t you tell me some universal truth, something that will forever improve my psychic condition?

“Time spent with cats is never wasted.”

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle.

Guitar Lesson

By

A R T S   If we are going to make music together there definitely need to be some ground rules. First of all, we will get along much better if you wash your hands, not sometimes, but as a matter of course whenever you are even thinking about touching my body parts. Who wants germs and/ or lunch fragments coming between us in this relationship? We might not be curing cancer here, but I know that you know that I know that we are going to be intimate. So let’s start off clean shall we?

Your first assignment will be to give me a name. Just do it. B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Willie Nelson all have names for their guitars. Anyway you don’t want to be in a relationship where you don’t have a name for the other party. Imagine a life of being referred to as hey you. The wrong name is like a wrong set of strings. It will mess us both up.

So listen, while its’s technically true that I am Gretsch Boxcar Model 9200 serial number CAXR 165214 that you bought off the internet, can you fit all of that into a name? Meanwhile, before you commit, try using endearments such as “Good morning, beautiful. Are we ready to set the musical world on its ear today?” Yes indeed, you will need to talk to me the same way you talk to your golf balls or chocolate chips. It’s a relationship. We have to relate, Partner.

What a guitar has to say and the way it gets said is the foundation of a relationship with the human voice. Every guitar, of course, has its own particular sound, and it is important to not get in a hurry making demands or blaming each other when things aren’t exactly right between us. Does that sound impossible? Ask your teacher if you need clarification on any of this, and by the way, how’s it going with choosing a name? If you get stuck, consider Carmine, not spelled like the opera, but mysterious, a little wild, and red is the color of your true love’s finish.

I’d kind of like to wrap up this first occasion with an overview: in a relationship, the essence is in the relating. Remember the four agreements: “be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best.”

So, same time tomorrow?

Anne Animas lives, writes and hides out in Southern Colorado.

Adios Costa Rica

By

T R A V E L  Where’s Fredy when I need him?

Fredy was my “go-to” mechanic in Costa Rica. From brake pads to fuel injectors, shocks to wheel bearings, Fredy could diagnose it, fix it and I would be on my way – usually within a day.  Sometimes he would even deliver the repaired car to the house!

I’m jinxed when it comes to used cars.

We bought a 2013 Hyundai Tucson the day after our arrival back in the U.S. – actually within hours – because our “second” Costa Rican car was a Tucson (Tooc-sun in CR) and it was reliable has heck. BTW: in 2011, we bought a 2004 Tucson for $20,000. In 2017, we paid 1/2 that for a 2013.

We bought the car on Friday, 7/28. First road trip, the A/C was iffy. Since we weren’t sure if it was the 100 degree real feel outside that the a/c didn’t handle it, we drove it the rest of the day. Next day we were convinced it was not US it was the Tucson, we took the car back to the dealer on Monday. They wanted us to leave it but we were running around like crazy house hunting. I took it in on Tuesday. They sent me back on the road after a couple hours, but Wednesday it was not cooling like should. I took it back in to the dealer, he gave us a loaner, and three days later we are still without our car.

We were told today they had reproduced the problem, but needed Hyundai to sign off on the repair. I guess South Korea is kinda preoccupied with Kim Jung Yum Yum because are awaiting further instructions on repair of our car.

Fredy could have rebuilt the damn a/c/ by now.  I’m positive.

If it’s not fixed soon, Nancy may go ballistic before Kim Jung Yum Yum does.

Mark Van Patten writes a blog called Going Like Sixty and has been married to the same woman since 1968.

Things Boomers
Can’t Let Go Of

By

E  S  S  A  Y   I recently stumbled across a list of things baby boomers can’t let go of…I’m guessing it was composed by a millennial. There were supposed to be 25 things on the list but it ran closer to 45. Maybe boomers have trouble letting go but we did learn how to count.

So what kinds of things made the list you might ask? It starts off with diamonds, golf, the mall, plain toast, 24-hour news networks, Yahoo and Crocs. Honestly, I know many boomers  would be OK with losing all those things.

From there the list moves on to Reader’s Digest, ironing, jorts (which I had to Google to know what they are), airbrushed t-shirts, cruises, messages in all caps, and Mrs. Dash spice. Once again, many of the boomers in my circle would have little trouble walking away form these things forever.

Racquetball, patterned wallpaper, those fuzzy rug matching toilet seat covers, potpourri, buffets, metal detectors, juice from concentrate, infomercials, Avon, knickknacks and chain restaurants? It’s all good man, if I never see any of them again.

The entire concept of boomers being unable to let go of these things was starting to smell funny. Fossil fuels? Most of the boomers I know want us to promote alternative energy sources so that we can fend off climate change for future generations. Maybe the 70 year-old oil company executive wants to keep drilling but that would put him in the boomer minority.

Was there anything on the list that I did want to hang on to? How about meatloaf? I’m okay with that. It’s not my favorite but it still ranks very high on the all-time comfort food list. Retirement funds? Millennials are so cynical about the future that they think saving for retirement is pointless. That’s harsh. Catalogs? I like catalogs in moderation. Sure it’s a dead tree product but sometimes you just want to see something printed on paper rather than on a monitor.

Somehow this list comes off as just another Buzzfeed tease. I’m ready to battle back with a list of things millennials can’t let go of. Start with bashing baby boomers by blaming them for everything that’s wrong with our world. Then add Starbucks, YouTube, smart phones, yoga pants, Chipotle, Pinterest, Snapchat, Netflix, and more. You can see where this battle of the lists is going, and it’s pointless. The stereotyping does not work. Let’s try to spend more time focusing on what all of us agree are things that are worth hanging on to. Someone second that motion!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle.

No One Had Sex.
Nobody Died.

By

T R A V E L  We’d taken a couple trips back in the day, when we were students. And we traveled together a few years ago when both our husbands were gone. This time we planned eleven days on the road: every important stop in New Mexico and Arizona from Carlsbad Caverns to the Grand Canyon and points in between.

She lives in the Midwest and I’m in the Southwest. We put the trip together over the course of a year, conferring by email and on the phone. We both noticed an interesting phenomenon: almost any time we mentioned the trip to someone they came back with “Oh, Thelma and Louise.” And then when I returned, friends urged me to write about my Thelma and Louise “experience.” I wasn’t sure I’d had a Thelma and Louise experience and it had been at least 25 years since I’d seen the movie. Truth be told I didn’t even remember which one was which anymore.

Undaunted by my hesitation, a few friends secured a copy of the movie and we made a festive evening of it. Snacks, pizza, margaritas. And the movie was good. Thelma and Louise are quite clearly delineated and now I know the difference again. So how did our trip stack up against theirs?

Well, let’s see. First there are the cars. They drove a 66 Thunderbird. Pretty cool. We ventured out in my 2009 Subaru Forester, newly overhauled by professionals to insure its safety on the road. They drove off the road a number of times while being chased by police. We never did. Our only encounter with the law was at a border patrol stop in southern Arizona. There was a short line and we spent the time rifling around in the car for our purses so we could produce our drivers licenses when asked. Our turn came, an agent stuck his head in the car, looked at the two of us, and said, “Both American?” We nodded and he waved us on. Thelma and Louise should have been so lucky.

Then there was the rowdy bar. Nope. The assault in the parking lot. Thankfully, no. Stolen money? No way, we used credit cards. And at the Grand Canyon, the highlight for sure, we did not drive off into the abyss. I’m not expecting that anybody will want to make a movie of the Susie and Norma trip any time soon. After all, no sex, no death, but I swear, it really was fun.

Norma Libman is a journalist and lecturer who has been collecting women’s stories for more than twenty years. You can read the first chapter of her award-winning book, Lonely River Village, at NormaLibman.com.

Flogging Plutarch

By

A R T S   Back, back, back, way back, in my high school freshman honors English Lit class, our teacher (who’d just arrived from pre-Summer of Love San Francisco) swathed our 15 year-old brains with classical music from then underground FM radio as a backdrop to the classical titles we were expected to read in class. These included Homer’s Odyssey, a small selection of the Poems of Ovid, Volume I of Plutarch’s Lives, and a poet of our own choosing. I chose the decidedly unclassical Jack Kerouac. It was 1965, after all, and I’d been drawn to the Beat authors, painters, and musicians since I was about 12.

Plutarch was difficult for me, but I got through it with Mrs. Ware’s accompanying mini-history lessons to explain who these people were. I think it was her class that sparked my interest in history, and I chose to read Plutarch’s second volume over the following summer vacation. Imagine that. Mod little me sunbathing in our back yard in my Hawaiian two-piece bathing suit and my perfect Pattie Boyd flip, listening to the Beatles and the Beach Boys on KRLA while reading Plutarch. Or trying to. Fortunately, my mother had raised me not to give up on a book however difficult, but to keep a notebook and a dictionary at hand, and to boldly annotate the margins. Predictably, I never checked Volume III out of our library, and soon, 1967 happened and I turned my attention to reading the popular books of the era: Brave New World, Siddhartha, and literally everything by Richard  Brautigan.

It has been 51 years since Mrs. Ware prised my eyes, ears, and mind open so I recently decided to give Plutarch another go. A free eBook is a free eBook, after all, and I decided, with both anticipation and trepidation, to flog through Volume III. I have to say Plutarch was much easier reading for me than he was in 1965. The vocabulary wasn’t an issue and the names were much easier to pronounce. Still, sitting down to read it felt like a chore compared to my accompanying reads, The Letters of Pliny the Younger and Stephen Fry’s Moab is My Washpot. Unexpectedly, I found the lessons in each of these books to be basically the same. Biographies, memoirs, and letters are interesting enough, but these books explore the moral and ethical characters of the authors and the people around them. What helped me most was my love of ancient and classical history. When I was younger I couldn’t put faces to Plutarch’s strange names. They weren’t people. Now, after a lifetime of autodidactic education, assigning humanity to these names was automatic.

So thank you, Mrs. Ware, for giving me the time machine that continues to take me places where I meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise ever known existed. Would that there were more teachers like you!

SK Waller is an author and composer. Books One and Two (With A Dream and With A Bullet) of her rock and roll series, Beyond The Bridge,  takes places in late 70s London. Read more at SK Waller Blog and SKWaller.com.

boom_blog-icon        facebkicon_boomspk        dc06_favicon