09-Aug-91 18:05    Purvis.Jackson@sei.cmu.edu   none, really

Sometimes you reach a point at which you feel like you just want to
have a little breeze among the hair on your neck, to stand maybe along an
old creek somewhere you once visited so long ago you forgot about it until
now because you've been too busy thinking about everything else because it
all seems so important and an old creek is, after all, just not that
important in the grand scheme of things, at least that's what you tell
yourself while you're out there trying to figure out just what is important
and what you need to do to have people say things about you that mean you
are important, too.  And maybe somewhere down along that old creek you came
across an old man sitting half asleep with a pole dangling from his hand and
the line out near the kind of stump or root tangle that always looks like
the kind of spot where fish ought to be but mostly never are and you wind up
getting your line hooked to a snag and breaking it off--but those old men
down those old creeks seem to never do that like you always do, and when you
ask them why they answer with little quips about you ain't holding your
mouth right or some such and you wind up all afternoon adjusting your mouth
one way and the next trying to get it right and eventually becoming so
caught up in it you forget about fishing and just go right on pouting and
smiling and being totally occupied with your mouth.  But you don't really
pay no attention to the breeze among the hairs on your neck at the time
because at the time you are caught up in your mouth and the thousand other
thoughts we always think about right now to avoid having to think about
right now while the right now is going on and so a whole lifetime of
potentially pleasant events pass by like a parade while we sit around
adjusting our mouths and not feeling the breeze until sometimes many years
later when we should be thinking about the right now and suddenly we find
ourselves thinking about many years before, the breeze on our necks, and
maybe an old man down some old creek.  And when it happens we want to ask
the old man the thousand questions we cannot answer for ourselves but we
don't know how to phrase the right way and besides that we are a bit ashamed
at the prospect of the old man knowing the answers to these questions that
have proven too much for us so instead we do not ask the questions at all
but nod at him, maybe raise a hand slightly in small gesture and say,
"Catchin any?"  and marvel at the wisdom that explodes from the old man as
he replies: "A few."