A commercial came on my telly a short time ago, and asked me that question. It also proposed an answer: “space flight?”

So I’ve been sitting here, trying to conjure up some shreds of childhood dreams, but all I’ve come up with are a few flickers of nightmare. Ain’t that the pits?

But one thing I’m pretty sure I never dreamed of doing is space travel. I’ve never cared for cramped spaces, and space ain’t Star Trek. Between here and out there is a whole lot of nuthin. I can barely picture myself holding it together for a long monotonous cruise across one of earth’s oceans, let alone to the nearest habitable whatever.

So what did I want to be if and when I grew up, when I was, say, 8? I don’t know. That file is on a drive that is not accessible. I remember being 9 or 10 and listening to a lot of classical music. Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. Maybe I dreamed of being a conductor.

“The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.”

– Eric Hoffer

This is just to say I bought four plums at Albertsons last night. And some yogurt. The yogurt is not relevant to this post, except to say that it contains no animal fat. I do, but enough about that.

Four plums. And they looked pretty good, so I took a picture of them. It’s lucky that I did, because now there are only three.

The one that I ate wasn’t as good as a plum ought to be, which brings me to the point: quality. That essence of a thing which makes the perceiver of it aware of himself with respect to it. Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing a very old memory of reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s like art; I don’t know what it is, but I know it when it makes me sentient.

I have a memory of a tub of cool water, and plums floating in the water. It was on the screen porch of my grandparents’ old farmhouse in McFarland. I don’t know how old I was, but I was a little kid. And I can remember the taste of those plums, at once sweet and tart. They tasted like summer, like the rich soil of the San Joaquin.

The plum I ate today was a lot more like wax. Still it holds the power of memory. It took me back almost 40 years to a hot summer day in the country. I remember countless feral cats moving in the shadows around the old barn, the ground covered with with the split husks of black walnuts. I remember Papa’s chair in the living room, and on the table beside it, Readers’ Digest and novels by Louis L’Amour.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

— William Carlos Williams

Cashin’ in my chips on another amazingly furtive flicker of a day. Where did it go?

I spent a big chunk of it with Happy. She hung out with me while I waxed my pickup. I told her I was going to wax Tasha’s camper too, and she looked at me like I was stupid, but she didn’t say anything. Turns out TurtleWax doesn’t work too good on painted Fiberglass. Who knew? They oughta teach this stuff in school, ’cause I had a helluva time getting it off. Had to use detergent.

My Dad uses the term draggin’ up sometimes, when he’s ready to knock off for the day. He has a lot of projects for a retired guy. Right now, he’s got the backyard deck partly dismantled. Termites.

My uncle used the term to inform an employer in the oil fields of southeastern Alaska that he was finished with that job for good, and heading south. That was back in the early 1970s I think. I remember he sent me a letter from Juneau. He repeated it, “I’m draggin’ up,” to a helicopter pilot, who replied that he’d already made the last flight to town for the day, and my uncle would have to wait overnight. My uncle explained that the pilot could either take him to town or step down from the chopper and take his ass-whoopin there and then.

The pilot chose wisely. And hey, when you’re possibles are packed, they’re packed.