Waiting Game

Why are humans so very impatient these days? For that matter, why am I so impatient? I started wondering about this when I noticed myself tapping my fingers and toes anytime I had to wait for anything. When did I decide that life was taking too long? I wonder if it has something to do with being over thirty (or was I always this impatient?). Everywhere I go, I notice the same tell-tale signs: people rolling through stoplights, constantly checking their phones for time, texts or voice mails, rolling their eyes whenever somebody breaks out a checkbook. I mean, does it really take an interminable amount of time to scribble shit onto a tiny piece of paper?

Perhaps our everything-at-our-fingertips world taints our ability to persevere. Perhaps being able to flip through channels when commercials come on, or flip between windows when our movies are buffering, led us down this path. Is it really so bad to wait? Are we so insufferable when we're waiting because we smell the end at hand (and I don't mean all this 2012 nonsense)? And I'm certainly not suggesting I'm immune to this behavior. It's not that difficult to wait in line, or sit at traffic lights, but somehow it seems as though anything usurping our precious time ought to wind up before a tribunal on crimes against humanity. The rapid pacing of our lives seems to have eaten away at our ability to slow down, to take our time. To savor the universe around us, rather than spin ever faster down our paths. This is tragic. Perhaps we all need to sit back for a few seconds every day and watch the clouds marching across the sky (unless you live in Texas right now, then imagine them, like I do), enjoy the birds chatting up each other in the trees, or the accidental sculpture of hills and valleys. Because our internal clocks are right. We are running out of time. And the truly saddest people will be those who lived without enjoying themselves, because there are no guarantees as to what awaits us when life's over.

So I beg you (maybe not you in particular): savor the small things, slow down for just a second or two. You'll get where your going eventually, but will you be ready for what you don't find?

Vacation-Based Absence

Hello to the occasional browser or repeat viewer. I've been on a three week vacation and limited in my ability to access the internet. In any case, its been a while since I've updated Cult, but rest assured there is more material about my inane existence forthcoming.

We had a pleasant if strenuous (meaning both travel-time and alcohol intake) vacation, which brought us back into the tumultuous Midwest and its wildly vacillating climate - for example, when we arrived in Madison, it was in the upper fifties (at night, that is). That weekend, we climbed into the seventies, nearly to 80, but by the time we arrived up north (to the Lake Tomahawk area), temperatures were in the fifties during the day.

But the relaxation and the booze both flowed freely, and now its back to the daily grudge. Above is an assortment of imagery from the journey, with a high-speed tourist review of Memphis, TN forthcoming.

Pictures (from top):

Arkansas Rest-Stop Flag (I'd never been to Arkansas. We stopped in Bill Clinton's home town of Hope. The last president we had a stable economy under was from Hope. Hmm...)

Walking to Downtown Memphis, with our friends Aleks and Tyler.

Weird picture of a semi on the way out of Memphis.

Stormy rural Missouri.

Stormy Madison, Wisconsin.