Hermes Baby

Kent Asked a question, and I will try to answer it, or is it them, here. “What’s your OTP routine?” Routine? That kind of implies that I am organized, or regular, enough to have a routine. There is the reading routine and the writing one. I open it up after my Morning Pages writing. OTP is usually here by then. I search out my favorite authors and read them. Then back to the top to read most of them. At the most, or least, involved or well, I scan them. It takes me half an hour to read them all. I am also working on my speed of reading. It has been slow for the last two years. One Typed Page is the first of what I read in my morning batch of emails. And at times, there are other things calling for attention. Now, writing, the writing part of the One Typed Page portion of the OTP routine, that comes in the late afternoon or early evening. I start with date, place, and typewriter. Put those things down and indented at the top. That is my warm-up. And sometimes I wander off and return hours later to continue and get something typed up. I am lucky in that if my wife has gone to bed I can type. She finds the sound relaxing. Very lucky!

One thing I do while reading the One Typed Page of the day is looking for patterns among the sequencing of the pieces. I am convinced that Daniel tries to put some order to the group. I know they are not just ordered by the time they arrive. So he reads them all and then orders them. What is his method for choosing the sequence? This is fun for me. So I do not ask him about it. I look at them and wonder about them and what they have in common and what goes first and all of that kind of thing.

Figuring out the sequence of things is a habit I grew up on in doing photography. Sequencing is important. Poets have the same concern to worry about. Studying Spanish and Latin had me very aware of sequencing. In Spanish, you have a house small and white, in contrast to a small white house in English. In Latin it is SOV, Subject-Object-Verb, nearly they can be changed around some for poetic reasons. By the way, a lot of Latin is great fun to learn due to the roots of our language. It makes learning most vocabulary easier. Well mostly. They still have conjunction lost in English.

— MichaelRpdx :: hr

This typewriter came to me from Kent Peterson. I have not used it in a while but today is special from that perspective. It will be the last time I will see him for years. I drove down to Eugene to visit with him today. We had a great visit. With a long dialog on the subject of memory and memories. (more on that) Maybe we should have had a pizza. This typewriter came to Kent from Venezuela in a pizza box. Instead, we drank tea. and talked and talked until Kent needed to pick up a box to pack a bike into. I continued my bad influence of giving him a ride. Kent does not use cars very often. I seem to get him into cars every other trip. ??

On the subject of memories – one of which Kent told me. He swore that I had been told the story. I do not have a glimmer of any type about it. Have you had that experience? This is not like amnesia, though come to think of it, hrmmm But I have forgotten a lot after my stroke (my?? stroke? like I own this particular experience? note to self: consider the ownership thing here) So back to memories, We had both failed, gotten an F, in a grade school class. He used his F to organize classmates to … well you will have to wait and hear it from Kent as it is his Story. But for me I went on to get an A in every class because they made the classes interesting. But that, those, are not the point of this digression. Because the doctors that treat strokes do not get enough recognition. “Vascular Neurologist” just does not roll off the tongue like cardiologist. Where was I going with this segment? Damn memories. I will come up with that and report back sometime. If I remember it.

“Figure out the food thing.” That was an early piece of advice from Kent on the subject of a sport that I was amazingly unsuited for but kept going at it for years. Randonneuring. Give it a whirl sometime if you like to ride a bicycle. It is remarkably satisfying, to ride 200 kilometers in a day (well 13.5 hours) and if you keep it up you will find that a 50 or 60-mile ride is just time out enjoying the day. I hope to return to that level.

There was a point to something here. But instead I will ramble on no more tonight. Instead, I will remember things with Kent’s voice guiding me as I went out and tried.

— MichaelRpdx :: hr

Well wow. I was woken wide awake at 2:00am with the news that Trump had tested positive for Covid-19. I could not get back to sleep after that news. Wait, why couldn’t I go back to sleep then? I do not really know. But I was up. The New York Times carried the story. One person was surprised on FaceBook After an hour or so the local paper, The Oregonian, had something. In the meantime, I kept looping news sites looking for something on it.

Why did I, do I Care?
What happened to sleep?
Where did I spend today?
Who do I really care for?
I sure as shit am not in touch with the Tao.

There is a bit of reality creeping in abouv Covid—19. I was/am living in a bit of a bubble. Wear my mask when IT am out in public. And it is all good for me. Well, except for my wife insisting, that I do not go into grocery stores, that I am too vulnerable.

A Short History

In 2017 I retired on September 15. On the 17th I fell and fractured my leg. On August 28 I went in for an aortic valve replacement. There were complications. I spent four weeks in the hospital and two more in rehab. A year later a side effect of my treatment for Hodgin’s Lymphoma, in 1976, surfaced and I had the upper left node of my lung removed. Now I am working on a full year out of the hospital.

End of the History

I do not know how Trump getting Covid-19 has triggered my fears about health. But today is the day. Fuckadoodle-doo.

I believe that people have their happiness levels set. If you are Optimistic, happy guy the circumstances don’t really affect your mood. If you worry and are prone to despair same thing. I am typically a happy guy. Optimistic.

Today is an exception. see you later, when I am back to being myself.

— MichaelRpdx :: hbb

Hay ortos, Señor o Señoritas o Señoras aquí qué tiene Español? Tengo la lengua. Well a bit of it. A small bit. If you do, let me know.

This is the second of four typewriters. It is one of my first. That is to say my first in advanced age years. It’s portable. And right before Kent bought it, it was in Venesuleza. Arriving in the US in a pizza box. A Domino’s box, I think. It comes to life for boughts of Spanish or trips when I want a portable typewriter ahead of any other value. OK, I get it out fo# fun. It is a fun
machine to type on.

The start of a new year. What shall we do this year? Besides learnings this keyboard. Those activities will be told to you later. I have a bad habit of my telling people about something I plan to do. And then I get side tracked by another activity and it never happens.

This double spacing is an artifact of this typewriter. Type a few lines and it slips into double space mode.

OK, enough for now. Until tomorrow,

— MichaelRpdx :: hb(r)