Daily Blague

Alive, kicking, well and meaner than Hell. We would like that mean to have a more antiquated meaning, one that departs a bit from anger and pushes over into other emotions, more like the mean of a group of numbers or as in the phrase 'in the mean we find'. Flight is calming. No drug, no therapy, no relationship save one with the Divine Spirit herself will make you calmer and more centered than to go a few hundred feet in the air and move relatively slowly, about sixty knots, move where you please, when you please in nearly any direction, literally dancing on and in air. Those who marvel at the sketches of Leonardo and go on at some length about the genius of a man who could conceive of such a device well before its time, need to, as we old salts say, stow it a bit and get in a light helicopter, one that will lift only two grown men, and fly around a while. And, then when you get off the bird walk around it, inspect its inmost parts, its sinews and tendons and all its many parts. Or, if you're like me you did that before you went up in the air and now you will do more since every hour in the air requires three or more on the ground in close intimate contact will the machine.

Sorry, RJ, I have, as I say, cowbirded your blog. I'll continue on my own. Dear readers you will have to excuse me, Mr RJ has over the course of several decades been exerting substantial pressure on me to move me from the physical, 'just do it', world to the cerebral, 'just write about it', world. The difficulty I find is that his pressure cannot be ignored but also that my East Texas training tends to temper my report. Culturally I was brought up to believe that talking about it diluted the experience and that those who talk too much likely don't do much either. And, now I've found parts of the roots of these backwoods ideas. Deep moving enjoyable experiences generally leave you wordless or if not then the cultural milieu was such that the ability to put the experience in words was not there for the average person. And, there in the combination of those two forces is the origin of the famous East Texas axiom 'if you be talking about it you no likely be having no time to be doing it' and thus the distrust of anyone who talked at great length about anything. Perhaps this attitude was simply an antidote to or a prophylaxis for envy. How the times change.