Mr. Careful

The family gathered at Castle St., and soon my Mother was asking me to step aside. Her question was, "are you racing motorcycles?" and my answer was a guarded "Yes." (I have referred to this in an earlier Blog entitled Carelessness/Careful Less). She was concerned, of course, and wondered if it might have something to do with my riding a "street machine" on the freeways and streets, and whether this might be considered a dangerous way to go. "Wouldn't it be better to just stay with the VW Bus?"

My response was that I would be careful, as I was with the Guzzi on the street; but then she reminded me that she had heard a story (probably slipped by my Father) that the Guzzi had sucked a valve at fairly high speed on the Santa Monica Freeway and that only luck and secondarily quick thinking had saved my neck. Again, I repeated that I was a careful person, first born male, stuck with responsibility and obligation, careful ways. She huffed when I said that my middle name was "Careful," to which she replied that it is was, in fact, "Lee," and that the words were not synonymous as far as she knew.

I tried to mollify her to no avail. She repeated her cautionary tales and I tried to convince her that this was a part of my so-called midlife crisis, was no more dangerous that driving a car in L.A.; and that my other midlife hobby, body surfing, although not completely without risks, was, in fact, fairly harmless ... as was motorcycle riding. She was having none of it, and then I told her that it wouldn't be long before both were going to be hung up because of an impending job change (to another state) where there would be neither surf nor motorcycles in the picture. Well, I was saved temporarily by this "paradigm shift," "What, you are going to New York, haven't said a word?." etc., etc. Julia was always one for going last yard with myself and siblings. Bless her Heart, she was great one.

Blog Writing

I've mentioned, in apology, my "policy" of not having a way for people to respond to my BLOG within the Blog. Fortunately many people have found their way around this to give me response one way or another. One of those mailed of a story in "Harper's Magazine" (Oct. 2009 pp. 64 - 66) by Jonathan Lethem called "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear," in which the blogger, Jaw, tells of the perils of having The Whom and justiny moving around in the blog world.

The story, both amusing and alarming, takes you into the never never land of the blogesphere, where the pros and cons of blog life are examined. The Whom is menacing, and the Jaw extremely reactive to the menace. justiny wants to praise the Jaw, but seems to drop away when support is sorely needed: "A first appreciation has come. A tentative thing, a shred of sensibility, something that tiptoed in on little cat feet and graced me with praise. A he or she, I can't tell from the byline: justiny. i wuvvv your blog, justiny said, in a note, a seashell-pink crayon scribble on a fragile curl of tissue, the equivalent of a whisper, a thing I found stuck to my boot as I made my proprietary rounds, polishing brass railings and marble doorknobs and such like, and which I might have failed to notice."

Continuing, The Jaw says: "My blog loves you too, justiny, in its way. But I think my blog's love is more cosmic or Buddhist, more impassive and impersonal, than the need always to answer. My blog is for all ears that might listen, and who know how many might be? justiny happens to have piped up. (Barely.)" Dreaming Jaw, Salivating Ear.