60 Year Old Duct Tape

Hey, if Jay can write a nice piece about duct tape, he can write
about anything. I'm expecting a great post titled "Zen and the Art of
toilet bowl unclogging". It will be in-topic because he will wax
poetry on great stick and rudder honing skill with the plunger ;-)

THAT hits awfully close to home. (With 36 toilets, I've become quite
proficient with the working end of a plunger... :-)

I just got back from three days in Wisconsin, attending yet another funeral
(Mary's Godmother passed away, this time, just a few months after her Mom
died...), and have done a lot of thinking whilst droning along at 6500 feet
under crystal-clear, ultra blue skies.

Writing for me is a catharsis, and -- when the time is ripe -- the words
just tumble forth at an amazing rate. Some of the best stuff I've written
took only minutes to compose, and often seem to come out of me
pre-formatted. I always find a few things to polish (primarily spelling
and punctuation), but generally posts like that are almost involuntary.

I trained to be a writer, and have often longed to do nothing but write --
but I fear that doing it for a living would turn sour in a big hurry. I
simply can't "produce" on cue, although I suppose it might be different if
that was *all* I did.

I must confess that the closest I've ever come to being suicidal was when I
was an English major in college, and had to produce large quantities of
written "product" on demand. Sitting around pondering the universe,
producing quantities of poetry and prose, was a terrific way to spiral
straight into melancholy -- especially at that age.

Now, with age, I would hope that things would be different. More like Bax
than Poe, with luck. But I doubt I'll have the luxury of finding out any
time soon...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"