December 2, 2018 – I’ve written about these things before, these words and pictures that someone puts up on electrical boxes. Well, I think those boxes are electrical boxes; whatever they are, they are some utility something-or-other. Usually the boxes feature just a saying. Sometimes they resonate with me. Sometimes they don’t. This particular one had a long paragraph, and things that are long attract my attention. What is someone trying to say on that long message? I stopped my truck so I could see, parking it on the side where there just happened to be a spot. This box is on Sunset Blvd. and a street called Hauser, or Martel; I’m not sure because that street changes names, and it’s just a way I go, so I don’t pay attention to the name-changes at any given spot. This intersection is about a block or so west of Guitar Center. There are guitar fix-it places in the building to the right, a cleaners across the street, some houses converted to restaurants to the left. While I was stopped, another car stopped on Sunset and a youngish woman got out to take a picture of the box on the side facing Sunset. I assumed it was the same message on that other side, so I walked around to see. We had a conversation about these divergent posters on this electrical box, two women of different generations, both moved enough to stop in LA traffic and take pictures of our respective sayings. The two sides weren’t the same message. The other side was just some saying. I can’t remember what, but I told her to read the one on my side, the side facing the store fronts that only the Hauser-traffic could see. She took that in, and I can’t remember if she took a picture, but still, she was moved by the one on the other side, not by the long one on my side. I wondered what it was about these two different messages; perhaps it was her youth that made her not be as moved by my side.

You see I have this theory…

I think there’s a period in one’s life where one does, or at least try to do, everything by the book, everything one is supposed to….

A few days ago we were talking about beauty, the physical kind. But I’ve always said, even in the times and years I could pull off physical beauty, that I’m more interested in being interesting. Interesting is that frame of mind where you don’t necessarily think by the book, even if you live by the book. It’s that quality that makes people want to be around you, not just look at you. And it’s lasting. Oh, and I think what it is, that quality that makes one interesting, is something like this box described, that quality of hanging on to the person you were as a child, the one who sees the world in the way it should be, not the way it is. Call it coloring outside the lines. To me, that is true beauty. And, the crazy part? It’s not that interesting to be in the period where one is at their highest physical beauty. Perhaps we need to get to a certain age before we can throw the book out and start coloring outside the lines again. And I think once we get there, that mind-set lasts forever, if you want it to. And it is … beautiful.

(No song this week, just a poem.)