clouds & sparrows

By Adhesive Remover, on February 6th, 2013

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Reading Links are arranged top to bottom from shortest to longest reads. Short reads will take you perhaps a minute or two. Trenta reads will be more than 15 minutes. The in-between lengths are Tall, Grande, and Venti.

« S H O R T »

The Clocks at Grand Central Station Are Permanently Wrong

… and they’re that way on purpose.

« G R A N D E »

How Smiles Control Us All

And why we’re terrible at faking them.

« V E N T I »

Feet in Smoke

On the morning of April 21, 1995, my elder brother, Worth (short for Elsworth), put his mouth to a microphone in a garage in Lexington, Kentucky, and was—in the strict sense of having been “shocked to death”—electrocuted.

Things are still busy over here, so just a short non-billiards story today.

clouds & sparrows

Back in the days when I might have been somewhat of an athlete, I went up to the mountains with actual athletes for high-altitude training.

The sun rose early and I naturally woke up every morning at about 5:00, no alarm clock needed. There was a deck built into the side of the mountain and I went there every morning to wait until everyone else was up. A flock of sparrows would flit about just below the balcony before setting off to do whatever it was that sparrows did.

One evening at dinner with my roommates, I commented that I didn’t get the weather up here. What did I mean? Well, the days were all cloudless and clear, but at night, there was one cloud in the sky that never went away. I thought it was strange.

When they stopped laughing, they told me the “cloud” was the Milky Way.

Rather embarrassed, I went out to the deck after dinner to sit for a bit. The sparrows were massing and flitting about. As I watched them, I noticed they made no sound. They were completely silent. Also, they were leaving the area. I recalled, then, that in the mornings, they were actually – returning – from somewhere else, not flying away as I initially thought.

I leaned over the railing of the deck, and hanging only by my feet stuck between the rails (I might have been somewhat athletic but I was completely devoid of common sense), I looked under the deck.

There were bats.

Hundreds and hundreds of bats swirling out of a crevice in the side of the mountain, just below the deck, and they started flying around me.

I said, “Oh. Wow.” Then I calmly hoisted myself back on to the right side of the deck and went to get ice cream.

I get nostalgic for my ignorant and fearless childhood self so I recently made a bad decision in its honor.