Two unrelated things get connected, yet another installment of loving all the links, worth making a wish for.
In the daily ritual department, Cori and I enjoy our first cup of coffee and conversation in bed. Well, she’s the early riser who ventures down to fetch our fresh java. After that, heading downstairs, already my head full of the looming Work Things, I have to make a pit stop on the landing between the stairs, for a “morning Scritch”.
It’s a calm few moments to give the now old(er) dog some attention, which he craves (and would take hours), and for me, well a minute or two with the head not full of gunk.
A small gesture goes both ways.
Then, among the routines, is the filling of the same said dog’s food bowl. I see an everyday object that most of th world would not really have an association with. But for me, some days, objects cascade back in time and place.
It’s just an old, yellowed plastic measuring cup, with any coloration for lines long rubbed off. I’ll leave the story for the curious in the flickr photo caption, but it weaves a Jack and a Jim and then could cascade farther back with stories I remember from my old neighbors.
Touch an old cup, and the stories flow. Well, they do for me.
Over breakfast, I am relaying all this to Cori, and she with her loving soul so embraces and appreciates my story pathing, it goes back in time, and forward with her.
And then another connection thread lights up neuron number 449354271 (I made this up) in my brain’s softdrive. A TV show I watched in the 1970s. The title escapes me, I just remembered it was hosted by musician Harry Chapin’s brother. The show had this frenetic format where Chapin (first nam escaping me) would start with an object or a word, and would create all these connections to history, place, all told over a fast flashing mix of animation and photos.
While my brain does does not store all the facts, I have this nifty device where I can type “Harry Chapin’s Brother” into a box, press a button, and get in return not some statistical average of text as an “answer”, but a set of information paths I can make my own choice to travel to cultivate my own understanding.
It’s not “Tom Chapin” I am looking for but naturally, Wikipedia his information and within it has the reference link to… Make a Wish, a tv show that was on 1971-1976.
Each episode of the series, broadcast on Sunday mornings, focused on a particular theme. One episode, for instance, was about snakes, and another was about motorcycles. Chapin would introduce the topic in much the same manner: “I think a snake is what I’ll be. Imagine all the possibilities.” After that, there would be a sort of free association presentation on the theme featuring stock footage, animation and Chapin’s music and voiceover commentary. The quick-cutting, free-association, stream-of-consciousness style of the show caused Chapin, years later during a talk show appearance, to jokingly describe Make a Wish as “a show for six-year old speed freaks”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_a_Wish_(TV_series)
I would have been 8-13 and definitely not a speed freak. I could find maybe just one worthy example in the big pile of tubes, but it definitely illustrates the vibe of the show (complete with VHS tracking glitches)
I’d like to think this love of connecting information in such a human associative way was formative. Maybe it’s my own Enquire Within Upon Everything or it’s just the supposed brain rot that TV was blamed for.
So, a scratch of a dog’s head, scoop of an old cup, and the associations are off to the races. That’s how it goes around here.
Featured Image: A screen shot I cobbled from Lightroom comparing the two photos I had imported to post to flickr for this post- Morning Scritch flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) and Everyday Object and Stories flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0). So CC0+CC0=CC0!
