A blast from the past...

A FRIENDLY DRIVE

I was driving down the road the other day, when I flipped out. It wasn't a new song on the radio. It was the curb that caused it. Before I knew it I was doing summersaults.

My car landed right side up and I staggered out. I, literally, spit glass out of my mouth as I gazed disbelievingly at my car. People stopped and were asking me questions, but I just alternated nodding and shaking my head without listening to them.

My car ... me?

Not a bruise. Not a cut. The glass didn't even cut the inside of my mouth. Not one thing was wrong with me… No, I wasn't wearing my seat belt.

As my brain finally started excepting messages my eyes were sending it, I noticed my windshield lying a few feet from the car, shattered, but nearly whole. My newly bought side mirrors were, naturally, broken off. There was mud allover my car as luckily I had rolled on grass instead of pavement. The passenger side of the roof was smashed in a bit, my door was bent in, and the right rear fender was smashed.

Someone said I must have been listening to the radio to hit a rock and roll.

Somehow I got the idea of trying to start my car. Since no damage was done to the hood or anything under it, I got the car started without any trouble.

I ended up driving the car home, with no windshield in below freezing temperatures. I shook all the way home, partially from the cold and partially from shock.

One the way home I thought of something that Winston Churchill once said, one of my favorite quotes—

 "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."

I made it home without getting pulled over, even though it's illegal to drive without a windshield.

I can still remember (in flashes) that sensation of turning upside down and rolling. Things flashed by so fast. I saw parts of my life in quick, unrelated glimpses. Then, in mid roll, I thought to myself, "This is a dream."

Microseconds later I realized it wasn't a dream, that my car was rolling over and I was in it, and that I would be late for work. I wondered why it rolled. Was I rolling up a hill? Through lanes of traffic? Was I dying? Had I ever lived? Was my car paid off? Did I have clean underwear?

A feeling soon to be forgot, but a time long remembered. If the feelings that one has during an uncontrollable moment in one's life could be totally recalled, I doubt if many mistakes would be repeated. But the only thing that is truly remembered are the after affects, and they never seem to be quite as bad.

Yes, how easily feelings are forgot.

Trying times can test us and show what we're made of. I'm not sure what I'm made of, but I know that I don't like tests.

It sounds unusual, but I think Cicero made a lot of sense when he said,

 "There is something pleasurable in calm remembrance of a past sorrow."

Maybe it's just the fact that the adversity has been survived, and it makes present adversities seem conquerable. Something Friedrich Nietzsche said helps shed light into Cicero's statement:

       "What does not destroy me makes me strong."

You are stronger from living through past sorrows. Also past troubles seen through memory's eye always are less sharp and out of focus then is the pain of present problems.

Remember the lesson of the day — Brakes, steering and even good friends can fail. To remain strong without becoming bitter is the trick. Friends don't care about your failures, and they care only to beat your successes. The best one can ask of a friend is to tell the truth when you need it, also to lie when you need it, and to listen nearly as often as they talk. Many times I find myself praying like Marshall de Villars.         — "God save me from my friends

                  I can protect myself from my enemies."

I expect distress from my enemies but when it comes by way of friends it is unbearable. I guess I just have to learn something that Agnes Macphail put well by saying,

“Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life's greatest tests alone."

I guess when you have news that makes your life miserable the best thing a friend can do, from his point of view, is to exclude you from his life so you don't make him share in your misery.

"Heaven for climate, hell for company." — James M. Barrie.

Half my friends are in heaven, and the rest just have their heads in the clouds.

Dearly befriended,

èim  Uhr

P.S. It's funny the way

       one thinks of friends

                          in times of sorrow. I

                          can usually think of

                          them, but I can't talk

                          to them. 

Drive me away                                       RIP or RID(rest in drive)

                            We all crash alone

A Light Beyond

A    L I G H T   B E Y O N D

Endings always come to fast. Indeed, I've heard it said before, but up until now I have never believed it. Throughout my life I have experienced that in most of my relationships, endings don't come fast enough to suit me. I have always pushed to reach conclusions, in movies, especially books, and even in relationships. But as I sit where I have sat for the past twelve hours, only the direction I'm facing having changed, alone, through a long night, I think about endings corning too fast. Endings always come at last, maybe that's why they seem to come too fast. If they are to truly come at last, then once you have an ending it has to be the end, there is nothing more. It seems the reason I have never before feared endings, is because I always assumed there would be more. After a movie ends, just take a stroll down to the next theatre and see Rambo #12. After turning the last page of a book, picking up another and starting on page one. After saying good-bye to a temporary friend, although they never seem to catch on to this fact until it's too late and they wind up hurt, saying hello to a new one.

But what if this is the last movie to be made? What if after this book I find that there are no others? What if the last girl I have said good-bye to, is also the last one I will ever say hello to. The word "end" never meant the same thing to me as it did to other people. This is a realistic approach, but is it the better? Have I been living my life to the fullest? I may be taking too many things for granted. Is it truly living if you don't die with every flower as the cool winter wind cuts through your petals?

I have been living like I know that I'll always be living. But all things must pass. Once I did believe that endings would come and go, flowers will die and grow, precipitation turns from rain to snow. But now as I sit here in this field alone, I'm not so sure I know. What page are the answers on? Although I finish the book, will I ever be given a change to go back and reread? Those pages I skipped over may be important…

I watched the sun set, hours ago. But time is nothing but what my memory makes it out to be. Did this memory ever really exist, or is it something that my brain manufactures just to make sense of the present? Do the people around me really exist, or do they just represent pages in my book, with no lives of their own, just waiting for me to read? Once I leave my friends, do they really do the things they say they do? Or does my mind just make them say that to fulfill the need I have to make them appear that they are real? Do other people really form opinions about me, or do I just think they do, pretending that they have any thoughts? Is this just a fail-safe system my mind has worked out to keep me sane? Am I alone?

It can be pretty hard to check your sanity when you're not sure if you're already insane. Is it the rest of the world that's crazy? Every person must feel that they are the only ones who is truly sane in this world, and those that don't feel this way are the ones locked up in the asylums.

As I sit here, waiting, in the grass, legs crossed, I wonder if we each don't, in our minds, build four convenient walls around ourselves. Forever safe, in our individual, custom-made, asylums.

The sky is much lighter than it was just an hour ago. The stars, already starting to fade, are completely blocked by a cloud that drifts overhead. It's a fluffy, average-size summer cumulus cloud, and for a moment I wish that I too were floating, unaware of time, with it.

But things are not always what they seem. The looks of this cloud are deceiving as I know that it weighs at least 550 tons.

So here I sit, expecting nothing except what I expected from the start.

I catch a last glimpse of the moon hanging in the sky, as it in many ways represents the opposite of the sun. The moon, slow and cold, while the sun is fast and hot.

Endings always come too fast. The sun, at first peeks over the horizon, then bursts into the now bright sky. Though its warmth seems immediate, it is not enough to dry a tear from my cheek.

Endings always come at last.

Though a new day is beginning, what can be said of tomorrow?

There's a fine line between the darkness and the dawn…

                                                             Lastingly True,

      èim  Uhr

P.S. Time doesn't pass too fast. It’s all relative. For along

        the Earth's equator, dawn arrives at 1,000 m.p.h.

        But along the moons equator, it comes at only

        10 M.P.H. — slow enough for a man on

        bicycle to keep up with it.

Sane?                    More craziness 

                          Many good Crazy songs!

Bad Breath

B A D    B R E A T H

Take a breath. Make it a deep, long breath ... Now try it without coughing. Do it again. And again. See that? I bet I got you to do that for the rest of your life now. Breathing is a habit that is hard to break, and now you're hooked!

Why do we breathe? I have my own theories.

Breathing is only done when bored. It's a fact. And I'll be the first to prove it. Now think about it, isn't that the only time you have noticed your breathing, when you're thinking about it? Most of the time you don't even think about breathing-- and that's because you're not! People just sit there with nothing to do and they happen to think about breathing, so they start. They take a deep breath, then another, and soon end up gasping for air. But that's only because they are thinking about it. You don't need it!

You can prove it for yourself. Now take your mind off breathing, totally. Think of something else, say… air, for example.

O.K. Ready? One, two three, four, fi… Now stop! Are you breathing? Oh yeah, sure, now you are, because you're thinking about it. But at that second, when your thoughts returned from that other thought to breathing, were you breathing? Think about it. No, of course you weren't. Because there is no need to breathe. It's psychological. It's all in your mind (which at least proves there's something up there amongst the cobwebs.)

I may go down in history for this great realization. This could be more important than my stand against the typewriter companies. I'll be labeled as a genius. Millions will come to hear me speak at Bingo tournaments. My name in all the history books. My picture in coloring books. I may even get an academy award!

Air is stupid anyway. You can’t convince me that it’s in water, because when you take a fish out of water and let him breathe pure air – he dies! So if there was air in water, it would kill him. Who needs it? H20. H20! H20? What a dumb way to spell water. Why can't those crazy scientists be like the rest of us and spell this normally? If the had to write it in symbols couldn't they have at least made it WeT2r. How come air has no chemical symbols, if it did would it be A1R? Where “A” would stand for airline exhaust and “R” would stand for Refried beans.

I guess the reason scientists call water H20 is because of the hydrogen and oxygen in it. Which is another reason I also believe drinking or bathing aren’t good. After all, who wants the impurities of air in the forms of hydrogen and oxygen creatures to climb all over them or even to enter into their system? I think the hydrogen creatures are more neutral in and upon the system – it’s definitely the oxygen creatures that are the worst. Just breathe once and, before you know it, you have millions of oxygen creatures crawling around inside you. The hydrogen creatures aren't quite as bad, they pretty well stay put. But you have to watch those little oxygen buggers, they're so restless! Oxygen creatures breed faster too…

It’s a new-age fallacy that we have to breath. You have all those gurus out there trying to teach you to breathe – that’s because you don’t – not unless you’re thinking about it. So many charge you to teach you how to breathe, I think it would be money better spent to learn how not to breathe. Free yourself from your unnecessary addictions!

When you weigh the validity of this axiom please do not consider the source, just try to pretend that someone half sane is putting forth this idea. Remember, as Don Marquis once said:

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."

Changing the subject, without deferring far from the original idea of this article, I wanted to answer a common type of letter I'm always getting. People from all over the world write to me and complain (usually at the end of their long, complementary letter). I figure they suppose they must throw in one complaint, because if their letters were all complementary then they would seem false praise and not be taken sincerely. The one, and only, complaint  by the adoring public is that my articles are always too serious. They are tired of crying and gnashing their teeth. It is said I should try to show the lighter side of my meaningful topics. Even though I take my writing very seriously, I think it is also important to comply with the wishes and whims of my readers even if it's something that I feel ruins the article.

So, in cooperation with the whims of my readers, in my never-ending attempt to be everything to everybody, I would like to cover not only the heavy, deep side of my topics, but also the lighter side. I would like to show that I can be light headed as well as hard. This is the first article I am to attempt this endeavor. If it goes well, and has a good response and makes me a lot of money, who knows, I may sellout many times in the future ...

So, on the lighter side of… hmmm. What was I talking about earlier? What was the purpose of this article? You don't remember either, huh? Or possibly you never knew! Well, let us just turn back a bit. No, I promise you don't have to reread it.

Oh yea! I was talking about air and all its advantages. So…!

On the lighter side of air -------------------------- Helium!

                                          Thinking (lightly) of You,

                                     èim  Uhr

P.S: HaH! I caught you not breathing again!

But, proving that you are a hopeless creature

of habit, I bet you started again as soon as I

brought it up again. This concludes another

one of my breathtaking articles .............................. gasp …

____________________________________________________________

Girl in a bubble.

Catch her breath.                Breathe in Breathe out...

                                             Do machines breathe?

Breathing in cement