Bell, book & candle .... & guns

Guns and roses. I mean guns and tulips. Well, sort of both, if you count the Guns N' Roses' song sung here by Jani Lane. These tulips faced too many thunderstorms and succumbed to an early death. Jani did, too, and drank himself to death at the ripe, old age of forty-seven. Guns and books …. and bells hidden by wolves .... and candles .... and furniture made of wood .... and singers who had a difficult time facing the thunderstorms of life and living, and who encountered early death. Well, think of this photograph as a reflection of my thoughts at the moment. Nothing more; nothing less. Except, maybe, what really is more dangerous? Guns, books, flowers, bells, wolves, candles, music, furniture made of wood .... well, think about it .... I do know the answer to the question, but I doubt that you do. By the way, if this post seems discombobulated, maybe it is you, not me .... to repeat myself, think about it ....

Drifting in Neverland & thinking of you ....

It is nice to see and to feel the burn from the sun on my body. It is not a bad burn, but enough to see and to feel.

The day has passed quietly and quickly since I said good night to you. I am not even sure what I have done other than eat a bit and read a bit and wait for time to pass.

I think I have spent my entire life waiting, but for what, I really do not know. For something? For someone? For eternity?

A few people have told me they think I am impatient while waiting for death. I am, in the sense that I am impatient to see what is around the next bend when I am canoeing on a river or who might be sitting in a restaurant or in a bar when I walk through the door or what tomorrow might bring when I go to sleep at night. I am curious to know what there is to know with each step I take.

This translates, I think, into no fear: Nothing to lose; maybe, something to gain.

I have wondered what it would be like to have been dead for a million years and to somehow be aware of it. Do you think I will ever know?

It seems pleasant to me to think of death as a long, long, endless sleep, filled with endless dreams, and periodic looks out the window to see if the sun has risen yet.

I recall I have told you before that sometimes I think I died -- was killed -- when I was in my early twenties, and that the past few decades have been but a dream. Most of my life has been a dream, I sort of believe, and I wonder what it will be after I die within this dream.

My favorite dream within a dream poem I have mentioned before, too. Quote the Raven .... whoops, I mean quote the Edgar Allan Poe:

".... You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream ...."

This has happened before. I begin a note to you, and it will end up, sooner or later, as a post on my blog. I am not sure what to make of this, but, in any case, I hope you have a pleasant day. I will see you there ....

 

Is it time to go home yet? No way, baby ....

A (sort of) vision of two handguns

No matter what anti-gun, elitist fear-mongers would tell you, American gunners come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexes and ages. Here is another from among the circle of people who are part of my immediate world. She is firing a Browning Challenger pistol. Notice the safety glasses, the hearing protectors, the absolutely perfect grip for holding a handgun when firing it in a controlled situation. This is the type of handgun which is used mostly for target shooting. There is an "old" saying which goes like this: "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Essentially, it is true. A thousand laws preventing ownership of guns will only keep them from honest citizens. Outlaws -- criminals by definition -- do not obey laws and will obtain guns no matter how many laws are on the books. And, these same laws may well leave honest citizens disarmed and unprotected against criminals. And, unlike many anti-gunners, I do speak from real-life occupational and personal experience.

A follow-up about a wartime pistol

Some few of you might recall that I placed a post here on February 24 about a pistol and its accompanying holster. I was seeking, inquiring and searching for information about the man who carried it during World War II. The pistol was a Browning Model 1922, and bore hallmarks of the German military.

Among the words I wrote then were these: "If no one does (contact me with information), then I will look for another branch in the road ..... Let us see if the steps continue, if the story evolves. Or not."

If you wish more background information than that, you can always read or re-read the post.

It was no surprise to me that I had no responses to the post, so I took "another branch in the road" and walked it by myself. The result was this: I have identified the original "owner" of the pistol. I know he was in the German Luftwaffe. I know his name, when and where he was born, and when and where he died. I know a few other things as well, but the only other one I will mention is this. He died in March 1945, less than six weeks before the war ended.

There is a saying to the effect that no one wants to be the last soldier killed in a war.
 

Whether it makes sense or not, it bothers me a great deal that the man who carried this pistol was among the last in that war. There are many things that bother me which I find it best to keep to myself except when in the company of close friends and six drinks (or more) have loosened tongues. I once collected handguns used by famous fictional characters in novels. It is not so easy to own a pistol carried by an actual man killed in a war.

World War II might seem like ancient history to many, but, to me, who has had ancestors in every American war since the Civil War and who has slept in many places which once-upon-a-time were battlefields during the Plains Indian Wars, it is only the blink of an eye in the past -- just a glance over my shoulder in the distance.
 

That is the way it will be with this story other than to say that I hope to visit the cemetery where this man rests in the not too distant future, just as I visited both Allied and Axis cemeteries at Normandy a few years ago. It is a measure of trying to understand why we are what we are .... from both the inside and the outside.

Do you think that would make me happy, he asks, with a smile on his lips?

To say good morning and really mean it

This young lady firing a Glock pistol is not one of my ex-wives or even among my former girlfriends. Rather, she is a good friend from one of my past incarnations. Beyond that, she is someone who I trust to watch my back. She understands the nature of firearms. She knows firearms are tools, and that whether they are used for good or for evil is determined not by them, but by the person holding them. She understands that acquiring knowledge and skill in their use is nothing to fear, and that such knowledge and skill might save her life or the lives of others some day. She realizes -- as not everyone does -- that only tyrants and dictators wish to take guns away from the ordinary citizens of America or of any nation.

Guns, watches, kisses & Manitous

I acquired an old, single-shot, Stevens, .22 caliber rifle a few days ago. There is no way to determine its exact age, but this particular model was made only between 1894 and 1912.

It is, in the least, one hundred years old.

I fell in love with it immediately. Maybe, I even will give it a name. Remember? Davy Crockett named his rifle "Old Betsy."

Is it some manner of sin to be in love with an inanimate object, especially one for which the primary intent is killing? I am not certain if I mean that question to be rhetorical or not.

I have kissed this rifle a few times. I really love it. I wish it could talk and tell me where it has been and who has held it and what it has seen since it was created. I frequently feel the same way about old pocket watches and old coins.

As for being in love with inanimate objects, they do not necessarily have to be old. I bought myself a Rolex Submariner for my birthday in 2011. I kiss it regularly, too. I love it. I never have regretted the thousands of dollars I spent to obtain it.

It was my second Rolex. I had purchased my first a few decades ago. It was sort of stolen, but, it might have saved my life at the same time. That is a story for another day -- a six-drink story.

So, is it a manner of sin to love an inanimate object and to kiss it?

I might remind you that I believe in the concept of Manitous -- that everything, animate and inanimate, has a Manitou, a spirit within it, a personality, if you will, a reasoning, magical, intelligent power. Therefore, it is the Manitous of my Rolex and of my rifle to which (or to whom) I am displaying my love and emotional attachment.

Well, enough for now. Life is as simple or as complicated as each of us wishes to make it -- as earthly and secularly barren or as magical and spiritually active as we individually form ourselves  to be. Personal faith, belief and will power make us what we are, and that has been true since the dawn of time.

So, have you kissed your watch and your rifle today?

Somewhere, there exists the stairway