Windwhistle sentences, Part Two

*I had trimmed my beard in preparation for receiving visitors.

*His observed indifference to photography seemed callous at first.

*Michael wondered if they had yet marked the sound of his felt-tipped pen rasping against the page.

*It was unfair, now that she mentioned it, for him to have expected that the profession would be received in any other manner.

*The autumn was coming soon, the sweater season, and with it innumerable chilly days until the spring anniversary.

*He fingered his joints in mournful anticipation of the arthritis that was to come decades hence.

*The clips on the line continued to rap their senseless cadence against the flagpole long after the families had departed.

musing

There's nothing like the spring. Any other season, you can have it back. There's nothing like the spring.

And I was just thinking, you really shouldn't tell someone something because you think they want to hear it. It's a dirty trick. If you love a person, you need, and they need, for you to be able to tell them the truth.

Pens that won't run out of ink, and cool quiet and time to think

I was thinking recently about how we are constantly stimulated wherever we go. It seems to me this leaves little room in the mind for our own thoughts. Where does your mind go when it is constantly under assault by a thousand different kinds of media. Print ads on the subway, iPods in your ears, television at home, podcasts during work hours, even something as innocent as a book or magazine to read on the bus ride. To me, it all seems to be taking away from the time we have on our own, to think, to consider deeply.

On Friday evening I had something hopeful on my mind that I wanted to think about. What I realized, though, was that in my normal routine, I don't really have any time to consider things. I'm often in a hurry, and I'm almost always being stimulated by something exterior to my brain. I had to turn off the TV, and the music, and the lights to even have a chance to process the thoughts I had wanted to process. I was completely surprised by the fact that in my normal day, I don't really have time to think things over. I hadn't budgeted my time for that, and I wasn't even aware of it.

It seems to me that we often lose sight of how much stimulation we are forcing our minds to endure. It's important to think about stuff! Give yourself some time, unstimulated, to go over everything that's happened to you thus far, and consider everything that will happen. It's a lark! It's also something that is essentially human, and that we need to be sure not to lose.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

As time goes by

And never can I remember such happiness about so little. There's happiness everywhere I look. In every corner, in every passing tree sunlit this morning. Another day has come for me to live. There it is for me to grasp and wring life from. I yearn for more life. There is happiness in the little tender sadness that spills over into the edges of my life from pop songs and memories. My life to do with as I please. To go to work each day, to thank my lucky stars, to love people as hard as I can, to log another 40 hour week and never forget that my whole life has been a blessing, a reward beyond reproach that I may never have known until this moment.

If there were an All-Madden team for name-dropping gourmands, I tell ya, you'd be on it

Isn't Thanksgiving really about overeating, after all?

As a red-blooded American, I was worried, as anyone would be, that I wouldn't be able to overeat to my heart's content in Canada.

I was wrong. There was more than enough food, and I ate more than enough of it. And it was great. It always is. Am I supposed to apologize for eating too much? It was delicious. I'm sorry that there are people who don't have enough to eat. I would like to help them. But at Thanksgiving, you stuff yourself. It's what's done. I can't turn the tide back from the shore, and I can't help but eat too much at Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. Feel free to stuff yourself. And give some thanks.

Thanks.

Abstinence only alcohol policy

I've been trying, lately, to not consume any alcohol for at least two days a week. It's easier than you might think. The experience leads me to wonder whether it might be time to consider the role alcohol plays in our lives.

I can't, for the life of me, figure out exactly why I drink. It used to be as a sort of rebellion. When I was younger, drinking was fun because it was illicit, secret, something I wasn't supposed to be doing. It's not like that anymore, but I still drink. I tell myself it's because I like the taste of a particular beer, wine, or liquor. More than anything, it's probably the force of habit. You start drinking because you like it, but you keep drinking because you were already drinking.

Furthermore, you drink because everyone else drinks! There are few other bad habits so common in our society, and so widely reinforced. Have a drink, everyone else is doing it. Of course, we all have free will, but the power of alcohol is immense. Don't underestimate how persuasive thousands upon thousands of movie images of good-looking people drinking alcohol can be.