Thurgood Marshall

Purported photo of Thurgood Marshall's dog

Thurgood Marshal did something somewhere sometime. He knew stuff and he lived in a town or a city and had neighbors. If he had a dog it probably lived in the backyard and slept most of the time. People like Thurgood Marshal are famous for a reason. Whatever they did, people wrote about it.

There are a number of things I take from this. Number one, of course, is that I have a terrible memory. Number two is that almost all of us will be forgotten eventually.

Is that a bummer?

We are a world replete with dying men and women grasping for immortality. Everybody wants to be remembered. Not sure what your religious leanings are, but what if we don't have an end?

Not having an end would certainly ease my mind about forgetting who Thurgood Marshall was . . . I mean . . . is. If Thurgood has no end, it doesn't matter that I forgot what he did. Seems to me, if Thurgood has no end, the important thing is who he was when he died.

Who will you be when you die? Obituaries argue accolades are what matters, but if you have no end, just continue on in another sphere, what you did is nice but the end product is what matters.

I would certainly be sad if I died tomorrow without ever gracing a bestseller list, but I am caught in the pull of gravity just like you. This weight we inhabit, the press of pounds, I yearn for things I cannot command. Notice me. Honor me. Celebrate me. Remember me.

We are all too unaware.

The world inside is what counts and we are the builders. Your world and my world with outside lines blurred by incursions, or the lines distinct for those who see.

What we do in this life will crumble. Who we are will remain.

Who are you?

Beware any effort

Here is a random child, possibly mine, who will serve as today's object lesson. Note the scrapes and scratches.

Look close. See beyond the subject's obviously forced, cheery nature. Pain must throb and wholly own the conscious center some might call his sense of self or current awareness. The poor waif has no ability to reason or remember, only to feel. He is consumed by the horrific injuries you see in the image I have so indelicately uploaded. And how has the boy come to this sad state of writhing agony?

In the picture he sits at his favorite spot, a location in space and time so replete with his presence that when he intermittently leaves, ghostly images of himself flicker in and out if you care to look. Should his family leave on an errand, or even go on a trip in which they forget him and leave him home, upon return they find him there invariably.

Back to the injury. Do you suppose the boy sustained these great gashes as he sat at his desk and clicked?

Nay. This post-pubescent teenager strayed from his comfortable surroundings and entered what some call the outside world. And why would he do this? Let us suppose his stated reason went something like, "I'm going to hang out with or chill with . . ." fill in the blank.As is obvious in the photograph, all who enter the outside world live (if they are lucky) to rue the day.

I am pondering this line of reasoning as I sit on my couch and watch a television program broadcast from Rio de Janeiro.

Oh, the unholy light stream inflicted upon my eyes via diodes!

What lies! Arrayed before me, legions on parade who seem to have lived fully in the outside world, eschewing comfortable chairs and computer screens for exertion, effort, injury. For what?

Behold the true sirens of myth!

Better to view and click, my brothers. Find your happy place. Inhabit your happy place. Never leave your happy place.

Better to view and click.

Worlds do end

Google Calendar can create a reminder for important dates like birthdays. The pop up for the reminder will only change as Google sends updates that alter color and format. The message stays the same.

Not so for the people on which a birthday falls.

Youth tends to love a birthday. A present, hidden in a box and further secured by wrapping paper, is a magical thing for the young. For others, the expectation of friends tendering words of appreciation is the pull. Many who are not so young, but perhaps young at heart, like a birthday for the same reasons.

On our birthday, all the world (when world is defined as that portion that affects us) reaches out and acknowledges our contribution to other worlds. We are all world builders, each of us the center, but depending on the introvert/extrovert combination within us, we encroach to various degrees on others.

Birthdays have a beginning but no end. My birthday will be the same in a thousand years. The world I am building commenced and is commemorated by that day.

Funny that unlike birthdays, worlds do end.

What continues is the encroachments we made while building. For some, the birthday not only continues. It is remembered.

Bestselling book cover

I was doing a little reading on the Internet a few days ago and came across an interesting blog post or magazine article. Can't remember which.

The title said something like "How to Create a bestselling book cover."

I have to be honest, this threw me into a murderous rage. I even lost track of time for a while. Just came to myself an hour ago. Have no idea what I've been doing. Painting seems to have been part of it. Which is weird. I hate painting. And red is my least favorite color. Maybe I was helping a farmer winterize his barn. I don't know. I hope all that crimson comes out of my Pokemon Go t-shirt. Also weird, where did this vat of sodium hydroxide come from?

I've had a rant simmering in the back of my mind for a while, and here it goes: I don't think book covers serve a purpose so much as hack a weakness.

Something that "serves a purpose" in my mind is something that fills a need. Humans need good stories. Books can fill that need.

A book cover doesn't fill any need known to mankind. All a book cover does is entice people to spend. Good book, bad book, doesn't matter. A book cover has no say over the excellence or excrement it covers.

I'm as guilty as anyone else. When I was young I would buy pretty much anything with Frank Frazetta art on the front. I know what you 're thinking and no, my appreciation for Frank's take on sword and sorcery had nothing to do with skin and cleavage. Truth is, when I think back on those reads, a ton of those books sucked. But they had cool covers.

One thing I did right was identify a few authors that I loved and basically read everything attached to their pen. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Louis L'Amour, Phillip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card. Shakespeare. (okay, that one's B.S.) If they wrote it, I read it. Covers didn't matter for those authors.

We are all too enamored with the sell. All that glitters. All that gleams.

Not that this matters. Alien spaceships landed in a field behind me a few days ago. That pretty much signals the end of the world anyway. Can't believe I was smiling in the picture.