THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
“What’s wrong with you, Larry B, is nothing that hasn’t been going on all along. You need to take yourself in hand.”
Time: Yesterday.
Place: Doug the Dog Breeder’s table at Wal-Mart, where Doug holds court every afternoon while waiting to pick up his wife, Anita, at the end of her shift.
Speaker: Doug himself, referring to what I wrote here a couple of months ago, about how every so often I “remember” things that haven’t happened.
“Time for you to get a grip on your life, my friend,” Doug went on. “It’s all about paying attention, which as far as I can see is the one thing you seldom do.”
“What do you mean, I don’t pay attention?” I said. “I’m doing it right now. Watching you. Listening….”
“Now, sure. But what about the last five times your truck and mine passed each other on Highway 14? You see me wave or hear me honk day before yesterday? And the day before that?”
“Well….”
“That’s right,” said Doug. “You didn’t. You were too busy thinking. Or writing in your head. Day dreaming, my teacher used to call it back in second grade. Before she rapped the daydreamer on the knuckles with her ruler.”
He fixed me with a look that reminded me all too well of my own second grade teacher, and I heard her voice just as though she was in his chair. “Larry? What did I just ask? What’s the answer?”
“Um—“
“See?” Doug said triumphantly. “You’re doing it again. How can you keep track of what’s real when you keep spacing out?”
I sighed. One thing I didn’t want was more evidence that the magic I’ve lived with all my life hasn’t been nothing but a series of my misinterpretations. I needed a lifeline to save me from Doug’s practicality.
Fortunately, I had one, secure in my metaphorical back pocket. Validation in the form of a veritable blizzard of responses to my recollections of things not necessarily past.
For starters, there was this note from “Lizi,” heaving her own big sigh of relief:
“It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has experienced this mutable reality… How wonderful and strange the world is. By the way, thanks for a lot of nice reads.” (I especially liked that last sentence, which absolutely proved her sanity to me.)
And this from longtime reader D.C. Rowlett:
“I reach on the wrong side of the door for the light switch often. Wake up in my bed and I am turned around in my mind…The road is on the wrong side of the house for just a minute until things come into focus. You are okay, old buddy. Things like that happen to all of us.” (Beautiful words, D.C. Who doesn’t love absolution?)
DS, a gent I’d never heard from before, wrote this:
“Its the time travelers from the future altering the past. They do it all the time. We don’t realize it because their alterations result in a complete set of memories at the exact current moment, totally different from those we had even a few minutes or a few seconds ago… Right now I remember reading lots of your articles in the past. But yesterday I might not have had the same memories because you may never have existed yesterday….” (Hmm, maybe I have heard from him on other issues. After all, we already know neither he nor I can trust our memories.)
I really enjoyed this next comment, from someone identifying himself as one of my favorite actors:
“Thank you for saving my sanity. I have been experiencing the same type of event for the past several years: light switches operating in a opposite manner for on and off, scars appearing on the opposite side of body than remembered, etc. I call this my sinister universe (as in left handed). It is a great relief to know that someone else has been experiencing the same thing.” Signed: “Dennis Hopper.” (Who always has seemed a little sinister, now that he mentions it, although not necessarily in that way.)
My favorite response, though, came from my friend the Old Billionaire. Because it told me so much about what underlies various events in his life that I’ve been discussing here recently.
He’s given me permission to share, and I will.
Right after I drive over to Doug the Dog Breeder’s place and honk like there’s no tomorrow.
