the Good the Bad and the Ugly

My friend and his wife had invited me over for dinner at their first house, a little cottage in Edmonds. When I entered their house, the front door opened into a small entryway, and I found myself looking at a poster of Eli Wallach. I turned right and looked into the living room. On the opposite wall was Lee van Cleef. When I walked into the living room and turned left, there was a third photo, life size, mounted on the far wall...Clint Eastwood! The Ugly, the Bad, and the GOOD...

classical music

I've been listening to Classical King FM a little more lately, ever since I made a donation and became an official member of "listener sponsored radio"... No more guilty feelings, no more thoughts of being a free-loader. I wonder though if I'm listening more now because I like classical music, or is it that I'm just cheap, and "I paid for it"?  

my face hurt

"I've got blisters on my fingers!" - John Lennon. "My fingers have turned into icicles!" - me...this morning, walking along the river in 30 degrees. I HAD to go out and walk when I saw how beautiful it was! The low angle of the sun, and the wonderful colors and shadows. I had to walk, and I had to take my camera. It doesn't sound that cold, but with the damp cold we have here in the NW, it's Cold! Even my face hurt. A very different experience from when I was standing at a bus stop once in Boulder, Colorado. It was also an early morning, it was dark, it was snowing, and it was Zero degrees! But the cold there was a Dry cold, and with my coat, hat and gloves, I was comfortable. Here, not so much...

old man walking

I would see him walking, early in the morning, usually when I was driving to work. Over the years he started slowing down, his walk slowing to a shuffle. One say, the cane appeared, and I remember silently cheering him on..."hang in there old man!" Eventually, the one cane became two, and he slowed down even more. His face was getting what I thought was an angry look. I learned later, a few years after he stopped walking, that his name was Phil, and the look on his face wasn't anger. He just didn't want to stop walking. He was my Hero, and I still miss him...

farting in the bunker

Robetrt Schroeder, from Long Beach, NY, was drunk, in the middle of a sandbag bunker in Vietnam
the whistles of rockets flying overhead were gone
the whistling sounds were ok, whisltles meant the rockets were passing us by
we did not like the sounds of "whump!"..."Whump!"...that was the sound of rockets hitting nearby
phfffft! the sound of a fart
laughter
"stop that man!" from a new guy, the rest of us laughing...
phfffft! the sound of a another fart, and an "I'm sorry, I can't help it" from Robert
"stop that man!", more laughter, and the rest of us telling the "stop that" man to shut the %$# up!!
darkness inside the sandbag bunker, waiting for the "alls clear" sirens
phfffft!

duck families

I'm looking forward to my morning walks this Spring, and this season's new baby ducks. Last year I was watching two groups, two families with 4 ducklings each, wandering around nibbling on the ground. As the two groups sort of merged, the little guys moving around here and there without a care in the world, the parents were watching them, and me. A duckling from one group ended up with the other family, and that family started moving off in another direction. I heard a sound come from the second family. The little duckling's head popped up, and it scooted back to it's own group.

Walking along the same area a few days later, I noticed there was one family with 5 ducklings, and the other family had 3 ducklings. Later on, I came across the same two groups I think, at two different places along the river, and one family had 6 ducklings and the other one had 2 ducklings.

invisible

An older fisherman's wife was selling fish on one of the sidewalks leading down to the waterfront. My wife, who was Korean and spoke no Japanese, would tell me what she wanted in English. I would translate to Japanese, telling the fish lady what we wanted. The old woman refused to acknowledge that a white guy was bartering with her, and talked directly to my wife in Japanese. Back and forth it went, sort of in a circle, old woman to wife, translation from me to wife, wife back to me in English, and me in Japanese back to the old woman. We finished our transaction, we got our fish, and the fisherman's wife never once looked at me. It was like I was invisible...

nightmares

I remember an episode when I was 15 and a half, hearing a commotion in another room of our house, and finding my father on the floor after a drinking friend of his had pushed him over some furniture. I kicked the man out of our house that night, and my mother told Dad about it the next day. That was the last day my father ever drank alcohol.
I remember the routines, when Mom would give me a dollar and say "Chuck, go to the store and buy some pop." We would all be happy. Dad was stopping his drinking, again. And we were all going to get a little glass of pop.
I also remember a dream I had when I was around 27 years old...Dad started drinking again! That dream had been coming to me during the night for over a decade, and I had been suppressing it.
I never had that dream again.

I did it again...

I did it again. More than a few times, before picture-taking took over my morning walks, I would return home hungry, and almost dizzy from the exercise. I would forget how early I got up, and I would head out for my walk forgetting that my last food was 3 or 4 hours earlier. With another windy rainy morning today, my 30-40 minute walk was brisk (the camera came out only one time), and I did it again... 

bubbles popping

My original plan when I started this blog was to write every day. Today is the 16th of February, and my last post was 4 days ago. Oh well. My life goes on, with, and without these entries. Memories keep popping up in my mind like bubbles, and I'll resume recording them here soon...

it should be!

I've always envied good writers, those who just have a way with our language. A perfectly turned phrase can be a thing of beauty. I just remembered using a word once when I was talking to a friend of mine in Boulder, and asking her "is that a word?" She said "I don't know Chuck, but it should be!"

the Goat Lady

Karin, the Goat Lady, lived in the woods behind my house on Lopez, and in exchange for goats milk, I let her keep her goats in a small pasture I had across from my house. One day she told me about the glowing light coming out of my house when she walked by at night...my little black and white TV, which I watched mostly for sports and news. This was in my Chuck-the-box-maker days, and a few days later I gave her a small hinged box I made out of walnut. In it was the plug from the TV. I gave the TV to my niece down in Seattle...after I attached a new plug.

"Easy Does It", the Head goat. Photo by Pat Reinholz

love-hate

I remember saying that I had a love-hate relationship with Japan when I lived there, but I didn't feel comfortable using the word 'hate'. Sometimes I would substitute the word 'dislike' instead. The memories of previous readings, or historical news programs?, must have been in the back of my mind. Anyway, I've always enjoyed 'historical fiction' with fictional characters, and sometimes real historical figures, woven into their story lines. I've read real life accounts of the Bataan Death March for example, Iwo Jima, and any number of POW stories. I'm still watching 'The City of Life and Death', but I can only watch it in 15-20 minutes spurts, it's that powerful... John Raab, who is depicted in the film, was a "German businessman who saved more than 200000 Chinese during the Nanjing ..." He was recalled to Germany in 1938 because the Nazis objected to him helping the 'enemies' of their ally Japan. In spite of his efforts to help the Chinese people in Nanking, he was ostracized because of his Nazi connections towards the end of his life.

I hate phones

My brother showed up at my door on Lopez Island one day, and when I opened the door, he pushed past me and started looking around for something. He located a black cord and started following it, hand over hand, until he located my phone. I had it buried under a bunch of House Beautiful pillows in an old cabinet. He held up the phone, and told me "Chuck, you already live way the hell up here in the San Juans. The least you can do is answer your damn phone!"

icicle fingers

These cold winter mornings are so beautiful when I get out early for my walk. The only problem is that my focus now seems to be more photo-taking more than actual walking. I may have to start a whole separate exercise routine. And my fingers turn into icicles by the time I return to my car, even when I'm wearing gloves!

chinese movies

Chinese films are my favorites right now. I'm currently watching "The City of Life and Death", a black and white movie released in 2009, about the Rape of Nanking. It's so powerful that I've only been able to watch it in spurts. I'm a quarter of the way into it, and an actor I watched recently in what I would call a Chinese "chick flick" has already been killed off. Damn! He's very good, and I was hoping he would escape and become a Resistance fighter or something...

chasing the sunrise

This is the first entry for "crlazlo meanderings". I was inspired to write this blog by a free book I got for my Kindle awhile back called "Hidemi's Rambling Volume Two". It brought back memories of my year in Japan as an English teacher, and her struggles of being a musician took me back to my "box-making" days. I bought and read volumes 1 and 3, and I am now catching up with her current blog.
This morning was one of those "chasing the sunrise" days. The golden glow and low angle of sunlight at that time of the day gives us so many beautiful colors and shadows. I will never tire of these early morning walks of mine here in Tukwila, but I anticipate amazing things when we live in Cebu...watching the sunsets over the mountains each evening through our 15 foot windows...and in the mornings walking over the skybridge and going up to the viewing area of the Crown Recency hotel next door...the sunrises over the water to our East...
Also, my walks, hiking, snorkeling...