When Hula Girls Ruled the Planet

 

Torn between keeping my good fortune a secret and risking jinxing it all by boasting, I have decided to spill the beans. I was born lucky. Really lucky. I am that pin ball that comes right down the center alley, without a single encounter with a flipper, and drops straight into the million point hole.

Bells ring. Lights flash.

Oh, it was never a game of skill with me. One must work to acquire skills. My excuse has always been that work might affect my authenticity. Raise your hand if you can see right through that!

There are days when I'm not sure if I have managed to stay off all gods' radars, avoiding lightning strikes and infestations, or if, in fact, I have contrived a scheme to always end up at the front of the line when the stuff gets handed out.

Before you ask, yes, I will be happy to share my great fortune with you.

Financial Times

My advice to whippersnappers is simple- start your own currency scam. The old guard have the traditional wealth, including the yachts, the real estate and the financial markets. The new billionaires have thrown in with the crypto-currency bunch. They're betting on water, net art, batteries and money that isn't really there.

The secret is that none of it is there.

I have personally witnessed folks doing unspeakable things for beads. Yeah, beads.

The real Americans gave away Manhattan Island for the things, remember?

They knew that you don't own the land. That's ridiculous.

If you're going for the intangibles, go with love. If you're holding out for something that you can own and wear and show off, stick with beads.

Have I ever steered you wrong?

 

The Universe Tugs

Big day here. I was able to talk to Aunt Jo on the phone for a few precious minutes. She'll be turning one hundred and five in a few months. Did I tell you that she had lunch with Eleanore Roosevelt at the white house? 

In other news, I've had Lola staying with me this week. She's a fine, sweet dog with no ambition and a good sense of humor. She won't really be led on a leash. I have to plan a route in advance and gently pull her in the direction that gets us where we need to go and gets us back home again.

Somewhere around mid-walk this afternoon, it occurred to me that the universe treats me the same way. I've never taken orders well. The cosmos has to trick me into thinking that everything's my own idea. Seems to have worked up to now.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

 

What If They Find Us Here?

 

Life's full of little lessons that I seem to learn over and over. There are only a couple of them that seem to matter much in the big picture. I seem to have spent the better part of a lifetime desperate for approval while working hard avoiding any measure of conformity. Assuring disapproval, you see.

Of course I'm far too lazy to check on a definition of eccentric, but I'll bet this fits in there somewhere. Almost a curmudgeon, I'm kept out of the club because I love almost everybody.

When I consider the time and effort that I have put into some vague notion of staying true to myself, I realize that I could have amounted to something by now. Cured something, earned something, won something, discovered something.

Lazy or stubborn?

Sticks and stones, buddy, sticks and stones.

When Evolution Fails Us

Oh, it's not so much that I'm disappointed with mankind... wait, yes, it is.

 

 

Line Up, Anarchists

 

As a longtime slow learner, it has taken me this long to get here. These days I'm too busy living to do much of anything else. I write but I don't finish anything. I sing and, when I'm lucky, the birds sing with me. I ran out of stuff to want a long time ago and never suffered much from too much ambition.

Somehow I'm optimistic. I believe there are more good folks than bad.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

Short Skirts, Short Songs, Short Buses

 

Looking back, I shoulda' done it all backwards. In high heels. 

If I've learned anything in a long life, and that one is open to debate, it is that nothing's worth doing that doesn't lead to joy. Yours or someone else's.

Oh, I know- I didn't write in waltz time enough.