Original Thought us, after all, only an attitude.

From Evernote:

Mr Oberon

Looked much like a dumpy matron. Fiddled among his peach orchard in a droopy Panama hat. Had bizarre notions he considered meant he was an Original Thinker, did Mr Oberon. 

Conversations went much like the one with Smithy, the village mechanic. 

Oberon: It's the oil companies, They want to sell more oil, so they conspire with the automakers to build larger-than-needed crankcases. The pump can suck up a quart as well as three of them. 

Smithy: And what happens to your bearings and valves while that quart is in your filter?

Oberon: You don't understand! Oil pumps can pick up as little as one quart off the bottom of the crankcase!

Compost in trees. Not the cause, but effect, he declared. Not the root but the blossom. Thinking down limits your vision. Tied his garbage in bundles wrapped in soil from the garden center onto the branches of his peach trees. Let others do it the old stale ways, he declared. 

No peaches that season from Mr Oberon's orchard. Like most Original Thinkers, he sought near and far in an ever-widening perimeter from where he stood for the cause of his crop failure. 

Sat by his phone. Watched it, even. Had written to the local press about his idea for matchmaking. A complete and thorough survey must be conducted of all young adults and the results should be graphed and weighted and catalogued according to will and deferences, character and preferences, appearance and references. Marriages would be performed by computer, with text notifications, such as:

Congratulations! You have been found worthy to wed _________, and the ceremony was duly performed during Cycle 12 at 1100 hours this date. 

No more rival fights, mean girls, locker room lies, embarrassing date or prom nights. Kids won't even have to learn to dance in order to simulate sex; the matter is taken out of their hands, so to speak, with no more angst, tears, or loss. The relief of automating such a fraught function as mating will clear up complexes and completions overnight. 

He had emailed the suggestion and included his phone number. Mr Oberon had, despite his forward thinking, one of the last land lines in the village, so he remained in range of that instrument day and night, expecting a call at any moment from the school board, a think tank, perhaps one of those chirpy frothy morning tv shows. 

Mr Oberon consulted his copy of the paper, permanently folded to that day's Letters to the Editor page. 

Yes, yes, the phone number is quite correct as given. 

From Evernote:

The Artists

We have achieved the essential in the aesthetics of art. All who encounter our public sculpture respond in dramatic and predictable moods. They are sad and then glad and either reaction is formed out of magical material using masterful and inspired technique. 

Our team is good. The Queen is proud of us. 

As we proceed, other moods - anger, disappointment, uncontrolled merriment - are set out in the park and all react as expected, including the artists themselves. 

Next we learn that  mood and manner determine actual personality, then character. We can create art which in turn generates a nation of Polyannas or Timons. We design a gloomy Sunday, and in time, actual Nietzsche clones. 

The Queen has a word with us. It would be ever so helpful were you to - and so of course we do. 

What was it you wanted? They call their wives from the store. Oh, sorry I missed the appointment. Shouldn't you be at work? Where did I leave my auto? The big guy from the island; what was his name?

The projections from the royal accountant are not reviewed, nor are the crop futures. Trends are nonsense, like cloud pictures. No public statement by the Monarch or her court is contrasted with the previous editions, because yesterday doesn't exist. Yes, of course it doesn't. 

The queen is most happy with us. I don't know why. She praises us for our sculptures. One of us - I forget the name - asks me, "What's a sculpture?"

Our principality was very powerful once; most warlike and appeasing in turn. We were a most sanguine sort, albeit depressed at times. Perhaps you've heard of us?

I forget by what name we were called. 

From Evernote:

Here for Tests

He was very professional. Told me what he intended. He would remove my left leg and place it on that desk right over there. It was somehow comforting, such precision. 

I didn't quite catch the diagnosis, the symptom he hoped to alleviate; indeed I wasn't sure there was a symptom and whether removing my left leg would cure it. 

I assumed he meant to replace the leg. 

The operation is the 20th, I told Niki J. Hey, I said, today is the 20th!  

We were here for tests, I thought. Oh, well, all the staff seems so unconcerned. Probably just a routine procedure. They inspire a lot of confidence, these professionals in white suits all about us here. Best to allow them to do their jobs. Not my place to interfere. 

I'm really not worried. 

From Evernote:

Joe Moss and Mrs Booth

We're in junior high, a small town in Texas. Mrs Booth, a rather erudite lady for our town,  teaches Social Studies and, as I remember, something called Reading. In that last connection, she informs us, in a colloquy I recall like a Damon Runyan episode, about right and wrong reading, which is really quite simple. 

Mrs Booth: 

In order to enjoy reading, you have to put yourself in place of the main character. If you don't like to do that, you don't like to read. 

Joe Moss is a prolific reader in our class. Always he  has a book in his hand. He slurps a breath now (later I'd hear this habit described as Reverse Swallowing): 

Well, I like to read, and I don't put myself in place of the main character. 

Shut up, Joe,

Mrs Booth explained. 

My dream involved these two in a building not our own, but a school setting nonetheless. Mrs Booth is trundling along the lower level, left foreground to rear background, towards the office, bottom-right of the ground floor as we watch. I notice Joe Moss has entered the upper level, heading lackadaisically* right to left on the third balcony. 

These levels I speak of are enclosed corridors with access to the three floors of classrooms behind them. From the main floor below, which is the gym/auditorium, you can watch all students exit and enter any classroom. (There is a fire escape, but used only in emergencies.)

Joe is silently approaching a door at the close end of the third floor corridor. He pushes the horizontal handle and the scrunch sounds to all. 

He immediately breaks into a run to the steps and down them. Mrs Booth also is sprinting. She was too close to the office; now she must retrace her steps at a combat speed for a vantage point to observe whoever is moving during class time, which is forbidden without a permission slip. And Mrs Booth, the hall monitor this period, is charged with demanding authorization from anyone caught out of a classroom. 

Joe ducks into the first room from the near stairs on the second level. As Mrs Booth achieves a post from which to scout the three rows of classes, she finds the corridors all innocent of transgressors. 

She is utterly defeated. For one can never be sure which level door sounded, nor which room the malefactor either left or entered. 

I suspect she suspects Joe, and would like to have snagged him, but he escaped. Whatever he was doing he got away with. 

So, what was he doing in that third floor room? Or, what is he doing in the one into which he ducked?  Clearly he should not have been in one or the other. 

But Mrs Booth would appear foolish were she to look into every room. She would need everybody's class schedule to see who was out of place, and indeed they may now all be in their proper classes. 

She knows I would never tell, nor would anyone standing around. We didn't notice, we would have said. Nor would a teacher rat out Joe, another teacher, and herself, because they none of them cared for either Mrs Booth's high regard for strict discipline, nor indeed for Mrs Booth. And, really, who would admit to slack roll calling or classroom discipline beneath the Booth standard?

Any time Mrs Booth was disappointed in her mission, the entire school was secretly delighted. 

* This was the word with which I attempted to stump Mrs Booth during her vocabulary challenge. She offered anybody a quarter were they to confound her with any word from our library books. She only paid off once when under her strict judgment her definition did not properly jibe with that of Mr Webster. 

Still Obstacles with Life

It is another dark progression through a shopping center as a gothic maze. It shouldn't be this difficult. 

I cannot find my way. I've left Scoobie in the auto with another unidentified canine, and urgency builds as time goes on. I really should be back there by now. 

But I cannot ask for directions. Even if it's obvious I'm lost, I continue in my own way, climbing over counters and stepping out rear windows. If I proceed deliberately, they will think I have a plan. 

A woman in a passing aisle says to a companion, "Oh, but you can't trust what the children say," and I butt in: "- which is why we attend to them so closely." She smiled as if she understood me. I didn't. 

In dreams, I never arrive wherever I'm going. Maybe these obstacles are like my bathroom urgency in dreams; I wake up before I wet the bed. Mostly. 

--
"Hearing the raven cough
in winter sticks"