Whistler

The whistling was pleasant at first.

Loud enough to cut through the noise of the trolley, it was a simple melody consisting of about eight notes, followed by another eight notes.  If the first eight had been an innocent question, the second eight a perfectly satisfying answer.

Standing in the center of the rear half of the Green Line train, I turned about to see where the music was coming from.  The car was about half full, and it was not obvious who was responsible.

The whistling continued without a break.  The same eight notes followed by the same eight notes.  Followed again immediately by the exact sequence.

The pleasantness quickly evaporated.  Now it was simply curious.  Who was whistling?  My stereophonic powers finally got a fix on the source: a man riding in the very rear right corner.  He faced the window, his chin resting on his hand, motionlessly staring outside.  Yes, it was him, for though he sat still, the movement of his lips could be seen in the reflection of the glass.

Now the whistling was becoming irritating.  It was incessant.  Incessantly annoying.  Naturally the thought of either me or someone else saying something to him entered my head.  It was so loud, so piercing, so persistent.

Three people sat opposite him at the far left corner.  A nice group of coffee cup toting people, the guy had complimented my bicycle as we all boarded together in Santee.  They were happily engaged in some conversation which I could not make out.

Suddenly, the Whistler, who had been looking away from them, wheeled around and spoke sharply to them.  It was loud enough for me to make out his words very clearly:

"Will you folks PLEASE keep it down?  I'm SICK of being stalked by you people from the freighter."

He then turned back to looking out the window and resumed his incessant whistling as if nothing had just happened.

The three people were struck silent.  From the other end of the car I could hear the two fare-checking officers, a man and a woman, approaching.

"Tickets and passes!  Tickets and passes!"

One of them, the man, walked quickly past me to start his run from the very end where the music maker sat.  Whistler immediately stood up to retrieve his Compass Card from a pocket, and spent a moment explaining something to the fare checker.  As he gestured with great earnest, he had the trolley officer's rapt attention.  Though I could not hear the conversation over the ambient noise of the train, it seemed a full 30 seconds before the officer seemed to cut him short, acknowledging his pass.  The Whistler sat down and immediately resumed his repetitive two-part concerto.

As the two fare checkers met up in the center near where I stood, I saw the man speaking to his partner and subtly motioning his head back to indicate the Whistler.  They shared a smile that seemed to confirm my suspicions that they too agreed that this guy was cuh-RAY-zee.

Gradually the three riders who had been "told off" by Whistler resumed their quiet conversation.

The whistling continued unabated for the duration of my long ride.  Every now and then I'd glance over to watch him, frozen in the same position save the movement of his lips.  A couple of times, though, I saw him quickly reach for a pen, and furiously write something on his own left hand.

On his right wrist he wore several rubber bands.  Rubber bands as bracelets can mean different things.  One may just like to use them as adornment.  Or perhaps just as storage, for ready use in case of need.  Or, perhaps more likely in this case, they are prescribed by psychiatrists as "thought control devices".  When you have a bad thought, you just reach down and "snap" yourself.  Sort of like using a rolled-up newspaper on a misbehaving dog, only you do it to yourself.

I imagine what the doctor may have told his patient the Whistler:  "Now, when you're riding on the trolley, and you get that old 'kill everyone on the trolley' feeling, just give yourself a good 'snap' with the rubber band!"

Perhaps it's not very politically correct for me to refer to the Whistler as "crazy".  We all have various mental aberrations, I'm quite sure.  Take for instance, the man sitting between me and the three in the corner.  (You can see him in the second picture, he's wearing a grey tee-shirt over a navy blue hoodie.)  Because of the layout of the newer trolley cars, all the seats at either end face away from the center.  So he had his back to me the entire time and I never saw his face.  However, I did see his eye, because for much of the time he held up a small square mirror with blue tape across one corner to serve as a grip.  No one was going to sneak up on this guy!  Whenever I saw his eye right in the center of the mirror I knew I was being watched.  Mostly, though, he just kept an eye on what was happening in the rest of the car behind him.  (It was during one of the few times he lowered the mirror that I felt emboldened to lift my camera).

Happiness vs L.H.

Today I realized that I have misquoted the publications when I've said "money doesn't buy happiness".

Really, money does buy happiness.  If you find a $20 bill on the ground in the parking lot (and there's no chance of finding the owner) you feel happy!

If it turned out I had a distant relative who I never knew and he died and left me $50,000, I'd be very happy!

Even finding a quarter on the ground gives me a little bit of joy.

So what the publications say, in line with the scriptures, is that money does not buy lasting happiness.

Skulls -- Part 1 (maybe there'll be a part 2)

This post might not be really suited for a blog named Clemency, which is supposed to be all about "nice stuff".  For some, at least, it might seem misplaced.  For me... well, I'm not sure, I go back and forth.

Skulls.

For some, a symbol of death.  For others just a cool design rampant in pop culture.  For me skulls are both of those, but more importantly, I find them to be an underappreciated aspect of the Creator's amazing design of living things.

I've collected "skulls" since I was a child.  The first was a dried-out lizard's head that I found on the ground (which I still have).  It looked so interesting, so strange, so fascinating.  As I recall, his jaws were frozen in a twist which revealed some tiny lizard teeth.  His scaly skin remained intact.  If I held the head in my fist I could fool someone into thinking I still held a living creature.  Yet he was dead.

Over the years it's been an on-again, off-again hobby.  Lately it's been very "off-again", for a long time in fact.  I still have the box with my collection, but it's been some time since I opened it up and shared it with visitors.

Today I got a call from an old, old friend from the wayback days, Philip.  We've known each other since we were little, but during our early twenties we really hung out together.  There were four of us, including my brother Paul, Phil, and another friend named Mike, and we did lots of things together.  Anyway, Phil asked me today if I still had the skull collection.

That reminded me that about 3 weeks ago I was walking through the nearby college on a Saturday, dressed in a suit.  Still dressed up from the morning's field service, for some reason I'd taken the bus home to the nearest stop, and needed to walk through the campus to get home. 

Up ahead in the distance I could see a pair of crows in the air, harrassing a third bird by using greater speed and turning ability to continually fly past it at close range.  The third bird flew steadily and landed on top of another lamp post, and the crows also landed nearby.

My thoughts drifted for a few moments as I continued walking, forgetting about the birds.  As I drew closer, however, one of the crows sitting on the streetlight began chirping in a very odd way.  It sounded just like the noise a keyless remote for an automobile sounds:  "chirp chirp".  Later I did some research and found that crows "can be masterful mimics. They have been trained to count aloud up to seven, and some crows have learned more than 100 words and up to 50 complete sentences; others have been known to mimic their owners’ voices in order to call dogs and taunt horses" (source).  So evidently that guy or girl has spent some time around cars.

As if that wasn't fascinating enough, suddenly I saw the "third bird", a hawk of some sort, take off from his lamp post and head toward the trees south of the road I was walking on. Immediately "Chirp-Chirp" also took flight and began giving chase.  An instant later I felt and heard the sound of a "whoosh-whoosh-whoosh" as Chirp-Chirp's mate flew just over my shoulder from behind me to join in the behavior, which I later discovered is termed "mobbing".

Feeling peaceful with no sense of urgency about having to be home at any particular time, I set off on foot across the field toward the trees, where I could see that the hawk had now landed.  The crows too had landed somewhere, but my eye was on the hawk.

Unfortunately when I was about halfway between the road and the hawk, he took off and disappeared behind even more trees.  Since I was now basically in the brush already, rather than hike back to the road, I decided to try and take a shortcut over to Fury Lane where I could enter the complex where we live.  Going carefully to try and avoid snagging my suit, I worked my way around bushes, and even found a safe narrow crossing for the creek that runs through the southeast corner of the college grounds.



~~ NOTE: This blog entry is about to finally arrive at its main point. ~~



Suddenly in a small clearing I looked down and saw the half-decomposed carcass of what I reckoned must be a dead coyote.  He lay on his side, and part of his skin was gone exposing some ribs.  

That was three weeks ago.

Now it's 3:43pm on a Monday afternoon.  The dishes are done.  The colored wash is probably in its rinse cycle by now.  I should be going online to take this course on "financial aid" which is required before making an appointment with the Financial Aid office at the school I'm considering attending.  However, I'm overwhelmed by curiousity to see if that coyote is still there... and if it might be appropriate that I make another acquisition to my macabre collection.

Inclemency

In class this morning one of the instructors could be heard remarking to another, "It's raining like crazy out there!"

Yes, it's a very rainy day in San Diego. 

Wendy loves the rain, she really craves it.  I think it can be cool, and fun, too, as long as the roof or the window isn't leaking.  Sometimes I wonder why Wendy thirsts so much for rain.  Perhaps it's because she grew up in England where rain is really common.  In San Diego rain is not quite as common, and out here in El Cajon it's really dry.

This morning I left my bike at home and walked the long block to my bus stop.  Wearing my backpack in front so it wouldn't get soaked without my knowledge, I carried a couple of umbrellas, my old favorite "No This" one from New York City, and one of Wendy's old "Felix The Cat" umbrellas which I broke the handle off while twisting it to shake the rain off.  The idea was to be able to share the broken one with some ill-prepared unfortunate soul who might be in danger of getting soaked.

The friendly bus driver lady commented on the rain, and I asked her if she enjoyed driving in it.  The answer was a resounding "Oh, no!  Everything changes in the rain."  Later I asked her what she didn't like about driving in the rain, and she mentioned how it takes longer to stop, just like a car, and also people tend to pull in front of her at the last minute, because "no one wants to be stuck behind a bus".

Rain always fascinated me as a child, and really, it's still pretty amazing.  Even though we all know about the water cycle and how water evaporates from the oceans and is carried over the land by clouds, it's still really awe-inspiring that water, which is really heavy, comes falling out of the sky like that.

That reminds me of the whole "water being composed of two gases" thing that just trips me out to no end.

One of the vehicles that passed near the bus stop this morning was a Smart Car.  I've always liked Smart Cars, but a few weeks ago I was riding my bicycle in a parking lot and a Smart Car drove past at close range.

It sounded like a lawn mower.

So after that I changed my feelings on Smart Cars.  It sounded cheap and small and unsafe.  Come to think of it, several years ago there was a lot of talk in the media about "crumple zone" and how in a collision the engine compartment would compress and absorb the force of the crash before it reached the passenger compartment.  It would appear that the "crumple zone" on a Smart Car extends through the cabin and perhaps even beyond the rear of the vehicle.

Of course if someone gave me a Smart Car I would happily accept and just drive really carefully.

Gratitude Stone

Sitting in the back corner of the bus earlier this week, I heard something drop on the floor near my feet as we braked for a stop. Looking down, I saw a small round pumice stone, like the kind that sometimes appears in the pockets of brand new jeans. Just underneath the stone lay a dime. So that made it seem worthwhile to bend over and pick up both off the floor of the bus.

Evidently the stone had been sitting on the shelf just next to my seat and had rolled off.

As I examined the stone, a guy sitting in the same back row at the opposite corner said to me, "Did you just find that stone?"

Replying in the affirmative, I wondered if it was "his stone" or something. However, he simply said,

"You should keep it as a 'Gratitude Stone'. Rub it every time you feel gratitude for something. I mean, you just found it out of nowhere, right?"

Inside I was thinking "what a crazy idea" but I thanked him for the idea and put the little round rock in my pocket.

He went back to reading his book. He looked like he might have been a recent high school graduate, or just starting college.

Almost immediately afterward I regretted not saying to him something like "When I feel gratitude I pray to Jehovah God". Not prepared to "be a witness all the time" just like our Service Meeting part this week!

Ahh... however, I'm ready now, and I hope to see him again on the bus. If he asks me if I still have the stone, I'll pull it out, show it to him, and ask him more about the origin of his philosophy. Then I'll tell him my habit of praying to Jehovah when I feel gratitude for something.  Who knows where the conversation will go from there.

ps.  My favorite point from the Kingdom Ministry part this week (which we had last night, a couple days after my Monday experience) is that we don't have to start a conversation with a scriptural point.  Jesus didn't when he met the Samaritan woman at the well.  He just simply asked her for a drink.