NOVEMBER 30, 2023 – For readers who’ve followed this blog since June 1, I’ve managed daily postings of two memoirs; writing projects with ample material that simply required assembly. Each day I reviewed plans, gathered parts, and applied tools to the task. Never did I experience “writer’s block.”
Today, however, I find myself without map or compass, seated behind the wheel of a vehicle with the odometer at “Post No. 1,655” and idling at a fog-bound junction. One roadsign points to “Politics”; another to “Local Color”; yet another aims at “Humorville”; and then there’s the arrow that directs to “Miscellany and Beyond.”
As backseat riders, readers aboard this blogsite before June have traveled all those roads before, but as the travel guide, I’m now lost. The signs have faded—or is it just the fog? I no longer know where the most rewarding scenery lies: Head down “Politics,” and we could wind up in a desert, a jungle, over a cliff, or more likely, in a 50-car pile-up; “Local Color” has possibilities, but in the eyes of some readers, “local” borders “boring”; “Humorville” could be at the expense of the Buddhist Temple in Nirvanaland, which lies in the opposite direction of laughter.
Granted, to counter dark news of the day—any day—we could use a laugh or two, but . . . at whose expense? After all, if you think about it, at the root of all humor is a human flaw or foible. Can’t have any of that in this Age of Wokeness. (See what I mean?). If self-deprecating humor is “Woke-exempt,” in my case there’s a limited supply: most of my mistakes are dumb, not funny.
That leaves, “Miscellany,” but who signs up for an excursion billed as, “You’ll See When We Get There.” Not good from a marketing perspective.
So, “Wht t dw?” as Grandpa Holman would ask before revealing the “solution”—in one of his interminable “business monologues” mumbled during car rides from New Jersey to Connecticut for the weekend. (I always finagled a ride back with UB in his convertible to avoid Grandpa’s monologue on the return.) My dear readers, I’m afraid, might respond to “What to do?” as Gaga always did: “Oh shut up! They don’t wanna hear about it.”[1]
Unsure of our route, I check the gas gauge. At least there’s plenty of fuel. But we’re beyond the limits of the closest cell tower, and the only audible radio station is “no talk.” It plays nothing but Golden Oldies—and static; no weather forecasts. We. Are. On. Our. Own.
I depress the clutch and tentatively shift. The car begins to roll, but down which road will it go? Before choosing I make a tight circle at the center of the junction.
As my readers shift nervously in their own seats of uncertainty, I ask out of the blue (we’re riding in a convertible, don’t you know), “What do you do as a passenger aboard an airliner cruising at 36,000 feet when the engines suddenly go totally quiet—and there’s no communication from the crew, no noticeable loss of altitude, no banking of the aircraft?” I wait a few beats for a response, but none is spoken. “Answer . . .” I say, “. . . You wake yourself up and land . . . head first on a pillow with the rest of your body snug under a down comforter . . . That’s what I did, my fellow travelers, to get out of a tight spot in a dream I was having last night.”
Two of the passengers grant acknowledgment . . . by barely detectable grunts. Otherwise, awkward silence.
As if blabbing more would make things better, I continue: “But, folks, when I woke up from that dream my first synapses were about a conversation I’d had in late August 1977. I’d run into Tom Spencer, an old friend from Anoka, who introduced me to another friend of his; a guy in training to be a Republic Airlines pilot. When talk turned to airplanes, aerodynamics and glide properties of a DC-9—the aircraft the guy was training on—he said reassuringly, ‘If the DC-9 loses power, it can glide a long way. Even a rock can glide if it’s going fast enough.’ So,” I say to my passengers, “maybe I didn’t have to wake up to save myself in my dream. And I coulda found out how far a rock . . . I mean, Airbus 321A without power . . . can glide.”
When I peer furtively into the rearview mirror to observe reactions, I see someone yawn—timed perfectly for a fly buzzing about.
Stay tuned.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] See Inheritance postings – 6/1/23 – 11/1/23.
