Author Topic: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread  (Read 8231 times)

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Rikki Gins

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2024, 10:39:11 AM »
Hooray!  I've been waiting on this thread. Got some ramblings in mind for it.

Great, Wan!  Can't wait.

Rikki Gins

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2024, 10:40:46 AM »
Oh my god, Bart, MAX & Billy.  You fellows have made some fantastic slices out of your lives!

KSM

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2024, 12:02:55 PM »
Is there such a thing as a doleful slice of life?

If so, here's this moment that has stuck with me since it happened in 09.

A beautiful summer day I was out in the front yard watering the flowers and enjoying the lovely day while waiting for my daughter to get home from school on this Friday afternoon. Being Friday she would be one happy and cheery little girl.  We had a corner lot and around the corner walked a guy with a backpack on his back. He caught my eye and I caught his. I nodded and he nodded back. He had a look of despair on his face and I couldn't help but acknowledge this as he diverted his eyes and walked on. He wasn't a homeless guy or a vagrant, he was clean shaven and his clothes were clean. There I was in my paradise of a day while he walked on to whatever was next for him with a look of..

I think about him often. Looked like he was taking a knife to a gunfight.

#melancholly

Rikki Gins

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2024, 01:29:08 PM »
Is there such a thing as a doleful slice of life?

If so, here's this moment that has stuck with me since it happened in 09.

A beautiful summer day I was out in the front yard watering the flowers and enjoying the lovely day while waiting for my daughter to get home from school on this Friday afternoon. Being Friday she would be one happy and cheery little girl.  We had a corner lot and around the corner walked a guy with a backpack on his back. He caught my eye and I caught his. I nodded and he nodded back. He had a look of despair on his face and I couldn't help but acknowledge this as he diverted his eyes and walked on. He wasn't a homeless guy or a vagrant, he was clean shaven and his clothes were clean. There I was in my paradise of a day while he walked on to whatever was next for him with a look of..

I think about him often. Looked like he was taking a knife to a gunfight.

#melancholly

Any way we want to slice it, works.  And yours worked.  That was great, KSM! 

JUAN

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #19 on: March 07, 2024, 01:58:31 PM »
I moved to eastern North Carolina to work for a TV station that had tremendous coverage from FayetteNam in the south to Norfolk in the north and from the Outer Banks to west of Raleigh.  I would take Saturdays and visit the various towns in y the area.  I went to Goldsboro, the home of Seymour Johnson AFB, and about 2PM, I stopped at a fast food place.  I got my lunch and sat at a table in the back.  There was no one else there except for this tiny woman who was wiping down the tables.  She was crying.

I asked if I could help her, and she sat down at my table.  "I'm just so worried about my baby."

She hadn't known she was pregnant.  Her periods continued as usual.  The baby was several months premature and was rushed to a children's hospital in Raleigh - about 80-miles away.  The one bright thing was that her boyfriend was in the Air Force so his insurance covered the baby.  The bad thing g was that he was being deployed to the Gulf War in two days.  April, the woman, had no car and had to depend on friends to take her to the hospital.  It had been nearly a week since she had seen the baby.

I often wonder what happened to them.
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Rainman

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #20 on: March 08, 2024, 01:46:56 AM »
Years ago, I was travelling across country by bus to see some relatives for the first time. The journey would take several days and there was a sense of excitement, as well as trepidation. Inevitably, some strange fate would find me along the way.

Somewhere midtrip, a peculiar tall, thin individual, with long bedraggled yellow hair, got on the bus. There were other seats available, but he chose the seat next to me. Obsessively, he rambled on and drew me reluctantly into conversation. Over the length of the trip he eventually dozed off, yet for some reason kept resting his head deeply onto my shoulder. There was no escaping this so I chose the empty seat in front of us. Periodically, he would violently kick behind the seat where I was sitting. I moved again to the back of the bus, wedged in against other sympathetic fellow travellers. Everyone gave him a wide margin. In time, he was spitting, throwing drinks and apparently threatening a young woman in the seat behind him. She let the driver know and at the next rest stop the authorities were waiting for him.

Several weeks later, after I had returned home, there were reports of a women murdered in a seedy downtown east end Vancouver hotel. Description and background of the assailant was provided in the account.

It was him.

Rikki Gins

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #21 on: March 08, 2024, 09:54:37 AM »
Rainman's post reminds me of a past occurrence, though lots less dynamic.  I had entered an L.A. restaurant, shortly before closing and, due to the fact that I was a bit short on cash, ordered a mug of hot chocolate.  You know, the kind where you get a big dollop of whipped cream on top.  I began to sip it and it was quite delicious.  There was no hurry for me to finish because other customers were still there, finishing up their meals. 

After a couple minutes, somebody from the establishment walked to the front and locked the doors (the kind that would let you leave but that would lock behind you.)  I remember sitting there, savoring my hot chocolate and enjoying being in a brightly lit enclosure during the dark of night.  A little while later, a fidgety, long haired guy hopped up on something approached the locked glass door and tried to enter.  He pushed and shoved and banged on it with his fists.  Everyone inside ignored him and this made him mad.  I was just taking another sip of my drink when the guy started to spit all over the door, rubbing the slobber in with his hands. 

Now, If there's one thing that makes me nauseas, it's watching people spit.  I honestly can't remember what happened to the guy, I kind of think he wandered away after a few minutes.  I do remember not being able to finish my nice cup of hot chocolate.  It was still half full when I left.   

Bart Ell

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #22 on: March 08, 2024, 11:45:45 AM »
It was on my 7th day of being awake and was walking to a convenience store I think was called Zooms in Hampton Beach.
My sleep deprived mind was thinking that some vitamin C would be exactly what I needed.
I got a bottle of OJ and a sassy bottle of Banana-Orange.
I walked out the front door and downed the bottle of OJ.
There was a beach bum type fella walking into the store to pay for his gas who saw me enjoy my juice and said, "Orange juice, am I right?" and went for the high five.
I am not much of a high fiver but I obliged him on this one.
He was right, Rikki.
He was right.

Rikki Gins

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #23 on: March 08, 2024, 01:05:31 PM »
It was on my 7th day of being awake and was walking to a convenience store I think was called Zooms in Hampton Beach.
My sleep deprived mind was thinking that some vitamin C would be exactly what I needed.
I got a bottle of OJ and a sassy bottle of Banana-Orange.
I walked out the front door and downed the bottle of OJ.
There was a beach bum type fella walking into the store to pay for his gas who saw me enjoy my juice and said, "Orange juice, am I right?" and went for the high five.
I am not much of a high fiver but I obliged him on this one.
He was right, Rikki.
He was right.

Ha, I like that, Bart.  By chance, did the vitamin C happen to help any?  Two days without sleep is my record.  Back in 1969 I once worked at the famous Metlox Pottery Company in Manhattan Beach, California.  I was an industrial kiln operator there.  One night they fired a couple guys and were suddenly short handed.  I wound up working six consecutive 8 hour shifts.  It was hot work and I'm not sure how I made it through, except that the facility was close to the ocean and I could occasionally revive myself by breathing in some refreshing sea air through a screen.  (There were no windows there, just some big screens, oddly enough.) 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metlox_Pottery
 

Bart Ell

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #24 on: March 08, 2024, 06:24:53 PM »
Ha, I like that, Bart.  By chance, did the vitamin C happen to help any?  Two days without sleep is my record.  Back in 1969 I once worked at the famous Metlox Pottery Company in Manhattan Beach, California.  I was an industrial kiln operator there.  One night they fired a couple guys and were suddenly short handed.  I wound up working six consecutive 8 hour shifts.  It was hot work and I'm not sure how I made it through, except that the facility was close to the ocean and I could occasionally revive myself by breathing in some refreshing sea air through a screen.  (There were no windows there, just some big screens, oddly enough.) 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metlox_Pottery

The vitamin C didn't do much but the sleep I finally got did the trick.

I BET YOU KILNED IT AT THAT JOB!

PB

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #25 on: March 08, 2024, 06:54:57 PM »
It's 1986, I'm a few years out of college, living in Berkeley CA, and a friend is going back to Shanghai China to visit friends and relatives.  And I'm invited.  We'd be living in a now vacant apartment left behind on the move here for school.  There would be plenty of money - useless anywhere else - from payments received years ago from the government, pennies on the dollar, for wealth seized from an elderly stepfather long since passed.  Of course I'd like to go.  There was even a sister in New York who wanted to move here and would be delighted to come stay in my apartment and keep up on the payments while I'm gone.  Sounds good, let's get a six-month open-ended round-trip ticket to Hong Kong so we can come back whenever we want or stay for months.

We stay in Hong Kong for a week or so, some rich relative's flat up the hill near Victoria Peak.  Never met him or any family members, not sure who they were, where they were, or what my friend's connection to them was, just the maid and the cook - perfect.  Bustling city, plenty to do and see, it's like Chinatown only the whole thing.  Sort of.  Not too bad so far. 

China was still an empty spot on the map.  Oh sure Nixon went there 15 years ago, and we got some panda bears out of the deal, but there's not much in the way of news.  In Hong Kong there was a hill a ways out of town tourists would go to where they could look out into the PRC, supposedly the only place in the world where one could, and that was about it.

We're on Cathay Pacific, a short flight to Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world.  I'm informed it's nothing like Hong Kong.

We land late afternoon, get off the plane, walk across the tarmac.  Hmmm, this airport is about the size of the airport in my hometown Podunk, Washington.  Pretty small for a city of 12 million.

Inside is a hub of activity.  Travelers from out flight, people to greet them, lots of uniforms.  Lots of uniforms.  Military?  Police?  Both?  Everyone is doing as directed, that's for sure.  No smiles anywhere.  No other Westerners, and there aren't going to be any. 

You know, I'm not all that used to the big city of Berkeley/Oakland/San Francisco yet.

We get through customs and are met outside by two taxi vans full of friends and family.  And two seats for us of course. By now it's dusk.  There's nothing around, fields of grass or something, just a long dirt road heading off into the distance, one lane each way, with all the other vehicles coming and going on it.  Hopefully to Shanghai.  Right down the middle of the road, the whole way, miles and miles, is a ditch, maybe 10 feet deep and 4 or 5 feet wide.  No light poles, or any poles, on the side of the road, no wires anywhere, no signs.  There are strings of lights strung over the ditch the whole way providing some light for the workers - hundreds of men, stripped to the waist with picks and shovels, down in the ditch, digging.  Not one piece of earth moving equipment anywhere.  I was only on the plane two hours, how far back in time did we go?

Dinner was turtle soup.  I knew because there was a cooked turtle in it.

We're still going to see the pandas tomorrow, right?



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HamsterMuscle

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #26 on: March 08, 2024, 07:51:18 PM »
In the fall of 2022, I visited the USA.  I took the Starlight Express route on Amtrak from Seattle to Los Angeles.  It's an overnight trip of 35 hours and you sleep on the train.  Seated across the aisle from me are two magpies that are both talking non-stop at the same time and at full volume. The most frightful dialogue you can imagine; just random streams of consciousness pouring out of their pieholes simultaneously.  I leave for the sightseeing car to escape it, but when I return over an hour later they are still going at it.  I can't see any empty seats elsewhere, so I flag down a conductor and ask her if I can move.  She doesn't even ask why.  After awhile she returns with a card for Seat 6 and tells me I can move.

Seat 6 is, apparently, the only unoccupied seat left in coach.  I plop down into it, and dig through my bag looking for my charger which I just had in my hand not five goddamn minutes ago.  Along the way, I unearth my book "Shape" which is about geometry and the ways that it shapes (get it? *snicker snicker*) our lives in ways that we aren't aware of.  My seatmate (there are two spacious seats on each side of the aisle) is a Latin guy, moreno, scraggly beard and mustache, maybe 30 years, just ghetto enough that I start thinking about hiding places for my wallet, with a blue bandanna around his neck and a jacket with a pattern that screams "Albuquerque."  I detect this guy craning his neck to read the blurb on the back cover, and I'm searching a bit faster because I am much more interested in reading my book than talking to anyone, when he speaks up and asks me about it.

Felipe (for that is his name) is difficult for me to understand.  He stutters and backtracks and speaks like he has severe ADD.  But his questions are thoughtful enough, and almost innocent in his desire to understand.  Just something about his manner that motivated me to talk.  He picks up the basics fairly well; asks in particular when chess is mentioned; starts to hit the wall when I'm trying to explain about networks as an element of geometry.  We grope forward, me trying to understand what he's saying; him trying to understand what I mean. 

He shows me the book that he is reading: "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels.  And now our roles are reversed: he is teaching me.  His vocabulary is simple, but I am getting it.  We take a deeper dive into philosophy.  Talk about not knowing a book by its cover. I never expected this and I am absolutely loving every minute of it.  Until...

I don't remember how it started, perhaps because it was so surprising, but he starts telling me about the devices that have been implanted in his brain and under his skin by shadowy "men of finance."  He points to various areas on his head, arms and legs where devices are located. He talks about how "they" are trying to reprogram him with wireless signals.  "They" are feeding instructions directly into his brain.  He goes on to talk about drone footage and using this technology to control the poor.  Along the way, he's mentioning that he grew up in gang life, shot people and got away with it, hard drug use, homelessness, being in prison, sexual depravity.  None of the foregoing was the main point of the story. I mean, he doesn't tell a story about being in prison. He tells a story about his wife, then says something like, "And then after I went to prison..."

I'm listening to this and not believing any of it, but starting to think that I understand why the seat next to him was the only empty seat in coach.  I also realize that I will be sleeping tonight with this guy right next to me.  I'm holding my own by trying to prompt him to keep expressing himself and dropping a supportive comment every now and then, hoping that this buys me enough good will to not be murdered in my sleep.  But here's the thing: for all the coarseness and lack of polish in his expression, he seems like a good guy. Very polite and well mannered. When we reboarded after a fresh air stop at Klamath, he wondered aloud why nobody was talking. I said that it was because quiet time started at 10pm. Not another word from him until the morning.

I woke up at daylight, having had a wonderful sleep, and went to the sightseeing car so I could charge my phones and text my bitches.  The train stopped for a break, and as I got off I walked past an exasperated conductor who was cussing out the magpies for smoking amongst the passengers and not in the designated smoking area.  I bumped into Felipe, and we took a selfie.  Once back inside, I offered to buy him a coffee (he turned down an offer of breakfast).  We went to the sightseeing car and sipped our coffees and talked.  Had a freewheeling conversation. He claims to know how to crochet and described a table covering he made, which somehow seemed even more improbable than the mind control stuff.  We discussed sociology and politics, public policy, culture.   

He gets up and heads downstairs to pee.  A white woman, 60's, sitting at table across the aisle from us talks to me, apologizes for eavesdropping and tells me how much she enjoyed listening to our conversation.  Felipe returns, and I introduce him to the lady and they begin talking about sociology, his background, etc.  His vocal tics reappeared when he started speaking to her, though not as bad as before.  All of a sudden, without warning, she starts speaking in fluent Spanish.  Felipe responds in kind.  I can't understand what they are talking about, but when he begins pointing at places on his head, arms and legs I know what is being laid down.  I'm just vibrating with excitement, because I can't wait to see how this smashes into the image she had formed of him being a great thinker (much like I experienced the night before). But if it affected her, she disguised it very well.  They switched to other topics and continued their conversation in Spanish and English.  He's quoting Machiavelli and Descartes extemporaneously for us.  Explicating The Count of Monte Cristo.

I have met some people with a sensational ability to lie, but this was so complex and went on so long that I was suspecting mental illness.  Surely none of those awful life experiences could have happened to a man of his qualities.  He might look the part and sound the part, but then you listen to what he is saying, and you start looking around for the hidden cameras.  I decided to chalk it up to an educated guy facing a long boring train ride and deciding to have a little fun.

As Felipe and the lady continued with their conversation, she worked on something that she was crocheting.  Felipe pops up and leans down to inspect it, and points to a pattern and asks how she made that.  I don't mean like I just expressed it; they were talking in crochet PhD terms that I couldn't even understand.  Filipe DOES know how to crochet!  Of course he does!  After all, that's what you do to pass the time while in prison.



KSM

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #27 on: March 09, 2024, 08:56:13 AM »
A lot of very interesting slices to be found. Nice.

1989, middle of nowhere Alberta in the middle of the night on a lonely stretch of very dark road heading west via my thumb. We, the band had decided to take a break for a month so I opted to hitchhike the 700 miles home rather than take the bus as the rest of the guys headed south to Victoria in our band bus. First ride during the day got me to were I was, but he turned north at some point and I thanked him for the lift as we wished each other luck. He drove off into the night and there I stood in the dark with my suitcase and guitar. It then occurred to me that I was wearing black boots, black jeans, black shirt with a black jacket.  LOL.  AHH and let's not forget the long black hair.

Mr. Death on the side of the blackened highway hoping to be seen, hoping for a ride home.  ::)

I was very calm and seemed to have a sense of serenity as I stood there in the dark.  Freedom.  Eventually a car came and kept going.. and an hour or so later another car did the same thing. I figured that I would just sit down on my BLACK suitcase and take out my Les Paul and quietly play guitar in the dark until the sun came up and I could be seen. After about 30 minutes of sitting and playing my guitar I saw that another car was coming down the road.. I didn't even bother to stick my thumb out as I was quite sure I would not be seen. Car passed. Car slowed down. Car began to back up. While keeping his distance a guy got out and asked if I was ok. He was quite perplexed about this long haired guy sitting at the crossroads in the black of night. I chuckled and told him my situation, and this earned me a one way ride all the way to home base.

The ONLY reason he stopped for me was because he saw the chrome reflecting off my guitar when his lights hit.
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I really enjoyed the 3 - 4 roadside hours of uncertainty there in the night.

JUAN

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #28 on: March 09, 2024, 09:19:10 AM »
It was midi October 2005.  I was sitting on my balcony two blocks from the ocean in Jacksonville Beach.  There was a weather situation I've never seen before or since.  Clouds descended to about the top floor of the 15-story condos on the beach.  Behind them over the Ocean a more or less full moon was rising.  It illuminated the clouds like an old rear screen projector.  Flying very slowly through the clouds was a triangular-shaped UFO.  It had no lights and the only way I saw it was because of the weird lighting.  It was flying in a higher lane than the Navy helicopters would fly and much lower than the commer coal airlines.
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Rikki Gins

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Re: The EllGab Slice of Life Thread
« Reply #29 on: March 09, 2024, 10:04:45 AM »
You fellows are knocking your slices right out of the ballpark!