The Trailing Edge

In my teenage years I discovered the cure to the They don't love me back dilemma: Horoscopes.  In my pre-teen days, I suffered from love sickness. The adults around me called it puppy love. It's only now that i realized that they were not referring to the young girls as puppies but to me as puppy. That how boys are trained into men are dogs.  I remember my first love, Laura. Actually there were two Lauras. I remember Laura the First as very pretty and I remember lots of wonderful baby fat. She was the class queen.  Since I was not the class king, she did not love me back. A dilemma that haunted me deep into my teenage years. I might add that I do not remember Laura the Second other than her name. The horoscopes was on the same page of the newspaper as the comics, although I had not noticed the horoscopes before. My horoscope that day said auspicious day for love . One thought led to another and I ended up in the library borrowing Linda Goodman's Love Signs . ...

    Humans and animals have always talked to each other.  Lest you think this untrue, consider if a human were walking by a pig pen and were to say to a pig therein, hello , the pig would wag its piggly wiggly little tail and come running over.  If a pig were to grunt, hello at a human walking by his pen, the human would look over and keep walking by.  What is never clear is did the human not understand the pig or simply ignored the lower status pig. Humans are like that - ignoring lower status animals while courteous to higher status animals.  If a lion were to roar, hello to a passing human, you can be assured that the human would stop, look at the lion, and gently and as sweetly as possible say, nice lion . Humans are animals too.  We talk to each other, all too often, with not much worthwhile to say. If a rich human is passing by, the other huma...

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For a thousand years, writers have been sitting in coffee shops (and bars) writing stories. This morning, I am loitering on a street corner, in front of Starbucks, sipping my coffee. I watch a sea of humanity stream out of the Metro train station across the street into the courtyard. So many people. The stream comes in waves lasting two minutes or so. It’s as if the train has an upset stomach and is heaving up people. The first thing I notice is everyone pulls out their cell phone as they emerge from underground into the sunshine. They walk on staring at the little screen, Gotta check for messages just in case it's the end of the world and I must save it, like the teen-age girl always does in those alien invasion disaster movies. A pair of blonde women emerge. They are holding hands. They are pretty and dressed in professional light grey suits and white blouses. Finance banker types, if you ask me. They kiss, much lip touching and a full length body closeness that comes w...

           For a thousand years, writers have been sitting in coffee shops (and bars) writing stories. It's early morning, 5am or so, and I am waiting in Starbucks for the Barista to prepare my commuting coffee. I see this fidgety guy at a table, let's call him Joe, and I start to make up a story about him. Joe’s arms rested on the table holding his cell phone. He looked up and stared out of Starbuck’s window. He watched the sparse number of pedestrians passing by. About what he expected for early morning. He looked down at the picture of her, the one he secretly took of her in the office. Her hair was up in a bun showing off her beautiful face and cleavage. If there was a flaw, it was her nose, a little bulbous. Could use a bit of reshaping and a wee bit less width. Joe smiled. At least better looking than the last girl he perused. And what a leech she had been at the end too. Couldn’t accept when it’s over, it’s over. ” Your turn baby,” he wh...

                   For a thousand years, writers have been sitting in coffee shops (and bars) writing stories. I am in Starbucks, across the street from our Art Museum, sipping coffee, and bored as can be and reduced to staring out the window. All I am seeing is tourists covered in tattoos. Tattoos are a mystery to me. Here comes a tourist with tats (short for tattoos) all over his body. In the old days, if you saw a man covered in tats, he was a Hell's Angel biker, a mean scary bastard to be avoided. Now, a guy covered with tats turns out to be a Starbucks barista. He is so nice, smiles and greets you with, “How can I help you today?”  So harmless. Then there are the ladies with the "tramp stamps". A whole generation of women with tats on the base of their spine just so you can see it, along with their thongs. Yeah, pretty trashy. The best tramp stamp ever is still, "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me." I ...