Gumming the carrot

The Shrader house stands quiet tonight, with only a creek here and again. Maybe Ken and Dave are sharpening their axes, maybe Christine is, maybe they are....dead. Maybe they are sharpening the same axe from the wood shed with the bright red handle, each one of them wondering why in the world it's so sharp already. These men may never even gum the proverbial carrot. Christine certainly will not. Let me be clear on what is being said. The striking realization and the gravity of the words "gumming the carrot" that have come to me tonight. The comedy is simple and tragic. The select few of us that achive financial freedom by the time we retire are bound to be too old and tired to enjoy it and will most likely spend the reminder of our days helping our children try to achieve the ever mounting goals of success or spend our fortunes on staying alive with feeding tubes. The american dream is as alive, maybe more alive than ever before. It is further away than ever. The pressure to succed is mounting for the wrong reasons, not for the pure capitalist satisfaction of building something better for yourself but out of sheer panic. It is like a fight that a single sperm must face to the egg. It burns within many but is lost on most. People move accross the globe, switch jobs, get degrees and cut throats to get promotions. The postpone vacations, don't garden, work with their hands or start families. Countless dogs and cats go without owners, gold fish die of neglect and more coffee and tv dinners are sold than ever. We buy houses that are conviniently located to drive to work, pay double for them with mortgages that surpass well into our early retirenment. We buy new cars and drive them into the ground driving to work to pay for them. Yes. Welcome to the rat race.

So how do we enjoy the carrot on a hammock in the sunshine with our own teeth? Not gumming it 40 years too late or worse yet, hanging it out for our kids to chase like we did.

House of Shrader

My purpose in life it seems is to seek out and find strange people and interact with them. I also like to tell stories and make people laugh, which in itself may be a sort of nervous tick to get them off my back in the short term and for them not to steal my stuff when I'm gone. I started living in a strange house on a small street in San Francisco in a fairly down and gone away (as opposed to "up and comming" neighbourhood. The house is owned by a nice middle aged lady named Christina who rents out rooms to make ends meet. The house is very run down, like most on the street, but is also very large. My housmates are Dave and Ken. Ken is sort of a quiet twitchy chain smoking conspiracy theorist that likes to make it a big secret what he does for a living by desperatley trying to give you hitns such that you would ask him what he does. He says things like "Ya, bit different my job...it's my Thursday today you see, not Monday like everyone else" Having studied mathematics for the better part of my engineering degree I still cannot figure out what mysterious calendar Ken lives by, but one thing is for sure I am waiting for him to ask me to help him make meat helmets next weekend, which I will have to confirm the "real" day of the week if I want to help. Dave. Dave does not walk, he swoons and floats, or perhaps it is the 4 inches of red shag carpet in the halls that make it seem so. He is one of those "ah well, life is tough but what are you gonna do" sort of fellows. Fellow is also a strong word here as he is openly gay, also like Ken, mysterious about it and wanting you to ask. Christina, the owner of the house is a very delightful woman who is overly nice, tired beyond comprehension from odd jobs and somehow able to be anywhere in the house at the same time. I am convinced she can run a 100 meters with the best of them...in her house slippers.

The house smells of "old" in the mornings and boiling rags and cabbage in the afternoon but is warm and cozy. Cozy in a sort of an old smelly aunt sort of way. All in all, a good place to think and be alone.