Saturday, January 31, 2004

Another cold Saturday morning in the middle of Winter. At least the Sun gets through and will warm up above freezing today. I just hate having to wear all these clothes to keep warm. Ahhh... I remember being nakid all day long last summer. Those were the days!

Every year I enjoy burning of the dry grass of my lawn right into the edge of the woods. There have been a couple of times it's got away from me and burned a bit of the woods around me. I have a reputation in my family for not always containing these fires. They always have to come and help me put the fire in the woods out when I do that. I've had good luck this year. Maybe that's because I bought a long hose to be able to control it.

I burn the grass off because if a fire got started in the woods the dry grass would take it right to my wooden house. I enjoy watching fire also. There have been many times camping out that I have stayed warm with a small fire. In my youth, we lived at several houses that had fireplaces to keep the house warm. My mother cooked on a wood kitchen range. My father was always clearing land and burning the brush heaps off at night. We would have to be there to pick up the trash wood like roots and broken limbs. Many times we would stay up most of the night to watch the fire that it didn't get away from us. Burning my lawn off brings it all back. Some of my recent friends might not realize how big a role fire has played in my life.

I don't seem to have many serious thoughts in my mind recently. I have found a new e-mail friend from the Netherlands that I'm exploring with presently. He seems to have figured out what's going on and has a flair for words. It continuely amazes me how many people possess English as a second language and write in it with aplomb. Some of the words that fall into my writing gets on their nerves, but usually they write better in English than I do. It makes me wonder what they write in their primary language.

The European's linguistic talents make me wonder why foreign languages were not mandantory at an early age where I was raised. The nearest place that spoke a different language than English was Mexico, and the closest point of Mexico from the coastal plains of North Carolina is over 1500 miles away. Nobody worried about learning another language. They taught French and Latin in High School, and I took a couple of years of French. I made bad grades. It wasn't very interesting to me. I didn't think I would ever need it, and because I don't possess it, I never have needed it. I kind of wish I had needed it. I could have used it while I was working those Cajun shrimp boats, but they speak a completely different dialect than what I learned in school. Besides, they all spoke English too.

I am attempting to teach myself to draw pictures of stuff. I was inspired by the comments of a friend of mine whose son is a good artist. I asked him how his son learned to draw. He told me that his son started out by tracing other people's stuff. I thought that might work for me, so I bought some tracing paper. The tracing paper I first bought wasn't very translucent, and the place I bought it had the only supply of it in this small town. I decided to drive over to Fayetteville where they have more options. I found some better tracing paper, and I bought a cheap drawing instruction book at the Bargain Table at Barnes and Nobles. I bought it because I thought if I traced the pictures used for demonstration in the book I could practice the lessons and learn a little at the same time. This didn't work out. It was too easy for me, so I just started drawing the examples in the book freehand. My efforts didn't look so hot, but between reading the book and drawing the examples I think I got a few ideas. Hopefully, with any discipline at all I will practice drawing instead of playing these stupid card games on the computer. I'm thoroughly addicted to playing Hearts and Spider Solitaire for hours at a time. If I spent that time drawing instead I should be able to represent myself pretty good in a while. I have harbored a desire to start drawing for a long time now. Maybe it's time has come.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I wrote this tonight and liked it so much I decided to immortalize by putting it on a well-maintained server.

That's the whole point of freedom. I can write anything I
want to, and you can react to what I write in any way you
want to react. The viability of such a condition is directly
proportionate to what rings yo' dingdong.