Like unpack and reorganize and fix and repair and clean and wash and generally take care of my world. I like my world to be somewhat orderly and cared for. I'm not very good at making it so. But it's important to me and thus the effort or at least intention does distract me from other things that are also important.
Right now? I need to make a three- or four-foot wide spirograph. Tried to a few months ago but didn't design the gears properly and they bound up. Today I will try again using this tool, printer paper, pens, a router and a sheet of masonite or something useful.
But first. I just needed to write about not writing. A/D is writing more. He is a naturally inspiring writer just by virtue of writing as he does, and I feel I would benefit from following the example, however poorly I do.
So, Moose.
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| Moose and Betty |
He wandered over from next door on our first day to help us set up. When we met he didn't say anything but laughed at me from behind a walrus mustache and sunglasses. He had a two-foot tall purple fur stovepipe hat jammed onto his head. He looked to have been athletic once upon a time but now had a beer belly large enough to hold three bowling balls. When he fell off the ladder coming down from the chill space atop our camp's converted camper-bus, he bounced off Lars' nose and landed splat on the ground with a sound like a jellyfish. Lars was afraid he'd split open (and waste all that stored-up beer, was my thought), but he just got up and staggered away. He was a 30-pack-a-day man and undoubtedly just sought out his medicine chest in the neighboring camp where he was staying.
Moose was unfailingly positive. I saw him as a sort of Fat Freddy Freekowtski with the voice of Slim Pickens. He didn't seem entirely present, but he was game and from what little I saw, incapable of ill will. We were sitting around in the wee hours near our camp's rope bridge one night when he stumbled over and watched with amazement some nimble people navigating its difficulties. For me, the rope bridge was not easy, but I could do it. Moose was sure he could too, and with the crowd's loud encouragement gave it a go.
Someone said he should take off his shoes. So he did; and his hat, and his Hawaii shirt, and his shorts, until he was trying to aim a foot towards the rope in nothing but dirty white jockeys. It took him awhile to get a foot on the rope, and then of course the rope squirreled away and wouldn't let him land the other one. But he held onto the rails (which are also just ropes) and tried and tried; and finally managed to rise up in the air on the first step only to slip off again and land hard on the ground with the bridge's main hawser whipping up into his crotch. He didn't like that much and after awhile gave up and took several steps to get his shorts back on.
All this while the crowd was encouraging him but I stayed quiet as I felt a little like we were yelling "Jump!" to someone climbing up to the ledge. I think we were all relieved that he didn't get hurt, and I wondered how much ridicule he had endured all his life. But he just put his clothes back on, made more of his usual loud observations about random things, and regarded his erstwhile audience with a complete lack of concern. They told him he did great and that it was hard to do and so on, and that was that. I walked away to define my next adventure (which could have been bed, or another ride out into the night, I have no idea).
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| The rope bridge, and not Moose |
2 comments:
Dude. I love Spirograph. I can't wait to see this thing!
Good luck with the spirograph. I don't think I have to patience to create just one gear wheel. Just remember the story of BMW (or Mercedes or Rolls Royce) purchasing the design of GM's automatic transmission--once they saw it, they decided to tighten up the specs, BMW fashion, because the GM design was pretty sloppy. It did not work.
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