The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Hits: 41

Hits: 27

I guess most of us have asked ourselves the Big Cosmic Questions. We’ve traveled our separate paths looking for Answers. We’ve read the holy scriptures, we’ve chanted OM until we’re blue in the face, we’ve sat in quiet meditation or done yoga poses, mindful of our breath, listening for the First Sound. We’ve wanted something to believe in that seems, well, More. Physics maybe, maybe the Bible, maybe the Book of Mormon or the Koran. Maybe poetry or a sign held up by some mendicant on 5th and Jefferson that says Will Work for Food God Bless.

Maybe something is missing. Maybe something in us just likes a Spiritual Journey…. We go to Tibet up 15,000 feet to eat rice and sit at the naked feet of the monks. We seek a swami who hasn’t spoken in 20 years in some jungle Hindu cave. We listen for Clues in AM pop songs and signs in the numerology of license plates. We envy the natives who seem Closer to something important. We see Jesus in the stain on a box of Cheerios. We read Carlos Castenada and watch for Omens, we’ve smoked ganja, we’ve eaten magic mushrooms, we’ve consulted psychiatrists, we read self-help books.

We’ve searched for the Wise Man, the Guru, the Priest and the Monk and come up short. We thought Happiness was an answer. Or Wisdom. Or all you need is Love, yeah yeah yeah.

I’ve lived 65 years in this body, in this mind, and I have yet to meet anyone that might come close to that Enlightened Person. I sat once with the Head Honcho of the B’Hai. Nice guy. Something to be said for that, I thought at the time, and still do.

The world is a riddle and maybe the riddle is the world. There comes a time, at least for me, when the paths seemed … oh … dead ends. That the questions themselves were wrong. That the seeking itself was the problem. That the mysteries would always be mysteries. That this life is just exactly what you think it is. That the universe is exactly what you experience. If there’s More, what does it matter?

So be careful, I guess, what you think this life is. Down here on the unenlightened South End, it seems plenty. And try to be good to your neighbor, it might be me.

Hits: 43

Hits: 20

So I’m sitting in the South End Clinic filling out paperwork they lost the last and only visit many years ago … when a young guy comes in with what he tells the receptionist is a very bad cut on his hand from work. His hand is wrapped in a dirty handkerchief held in place with duct tape. The receptionist explained they don’t do that kind of emergency — he’d need to drive himself to the next clinic down the road in Stanwoodopolis. About 10 to 15 miles.

But wait … did he have insurance, she asks. He did, but then he was told the clinic about two pints of hemoglobin away wouldn’t accept the insurance he had. Could he drive 15 to 20 miles further?

Healthcare, at least from my seat in the waiting room, seemed hazardous to this guy’s health, if he even makes it the 40 mile drive before blacking out at the wheel. No one asked him how bad the cut was, whether fingers were missing, if a transfusion was necessary. I know it’s not an emergency room, but it is, supposedly, a part of the health care system.

My brother, back in our days together in college, wanted to be a doctor … until the night he did a drunken back flip and hit the radiator in his dorm room with his head. His roommate ran him to the University ER where he sat for a couple of hours with other patients bleeding and vomiting and oozing fluids. By the time he got stitched up he had changed his major from Pre-Med to Don’t Know. Probably good to learn he was squeamish around pain and blood before he interned.

Sitting my turn at the South End Clinic, I know how he felt. Trouble was, I was a patient. On the South End we’ve always relied more on Self-Reliance than health insurance. But sadly, the time comes to all of us when we need outside help. Course, chances are good they’ll tell you to go further on up the road. Keep the gas tank full is what I’d suggest. And carry a tourniquet.

Hits: 19

Hits: 26

Some of the radicals down at the South End Marina were discussing the take-over of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge down in eastern Oregon. They had started down by the boatsheds but had ended up in the Pilot Lounge where they could fuel their anger with alcohol. Walter, as usual, was the most vocal. “We ought to go down there and join these fellow patriots,” he cried after a couple of rum and cokes. “Show some solidarity!”

J.D. shook his head. “Don’t count on me, Walt. That’s another Waco in the making. The Feds are waiting now, but when they get bored, they’ll go in and clean up. Gonna be a bloodbath for sure.”

“It’s people like you, J.D., who let the government push us around. All these folks want is their land given back to the people.” A few heads nodded, another round was ordered and J.D. said he had to get home. “My turn to babysit the grandkids,” he said meekly and Walter’s laughter followed him out the door.

I was parked at the end of the bar with Guitar Bob, nursing a beer. Maybe it was the cold I’d been fighting for a few days that made me ornery. “Why don’tcha take over the State Park?” I asked the assembled militiamen. “Get our land back, why don’tcha?” Guitar Bob raised a glass in a salute.

Walter, always up for a challenge, shouted, “That’s the best idea you’ve had since I knew you, Skeeter. You gonna come with us?”

“Walter, I got some bad news for you. We already own the park. And we own that Wildlife Refuge down in Oregon too. If you got the park back, who you gonna have run it? Fix the roads? Clean up the toilets? All that stuff? You??”

“Power to the People!” Guitar Bob shouted menacingly. “Off the pigs! Remember the Alamo!!” Bob had recently fallen off the wagon and to make up for lost time, he’d maybe a had a few too many. “Don’t tread on ME! you %#@**!#”

Well, as you can imagine, things went swiftly downhill from there. Last I heard Bob was 86’d from the Pilot Lounge. Walter couldn’t muster enough manpower to take the men’s washroom, much less the State Park. And I took my head cold home where I fell asleep watching the evening news which probably explained my troubled dreams.

Hits: 36

Hits: 39

I just read a study that proved ‘grumpy’ miserable people live just as long as the happy cheerful folks. This is good news to us seasonally afflicted South Enders, all us perennial grumpsters holed up in our dark shacks hoping Global Warming is true and it gets here soon. I can say for myself, at least now that I can rub this phony smile off my mug and go back to honest cynicism knowing it won’t cause cancer or a heart attack, it’s a relief. A smile, I don’t care how many times you sing it, isn’t much of an umbrella. Even face down ….

Course half of us down here don’t believe in science so a ‘study’ isn’t going to change most minds. Half don’t buy climate change or evolution or the Round Earth theory. Just ornery, I guess. That, or they got religious beliefs we’re supposed to be tolerant of even if they’re intolerant toward everyone else’s.

I’m sure next year we’ll get a study on whether religion makes a believer happier. You’d sure think it would, not that they’d maybe live longer, but go ask the Taliban how cheerful they are without music or dancing in their lives. Some of our righteous neighbors seem too busy casting stones at the rest of us they don’t squeeze much joy out of their own lives, probably wouldn’t if every day was warm and sunny.

Personally I don’t think happiness springs from too rich a soil, not something that needs or wants much fertilizing. It requires maybe just the opposite occasionally, brings a little balance to the garden. Me, I sprinkle lots of skepticism, amend with some sarcasm, keep things a little on the warm side when I need to. I get plenty of bugs, worms, even critters. Gardening has its ups and downs, but the harvest, even if it’s on the lean side some years, is pretty good. Might not help me live longer, but it seems more natural, more honest.

And McDonald’s — you can go ahead and change the Happy Meal name, no health benefits, to what it truly is: Crappy Meal. You got science on your side now.

Hits: 56

Hits: 93