Over the previous month and a half, my spleen has been vented. Twenty-nine posts tagged as Thoughts. Those writings were mostly drafted in the last quarter of 2018 though more than a few were written quite recently. All of them were rewritten and often butchered from their original rough forms that laid out some thoughts and ideas that were floating through my head. Sometimes I returned to the document three or four times for editing before it was edited three or four times more times after the text had been slotted for publishing on my blog.

Things were hardly complete at that point as there are nearly always flaws in logic and run-on sentences that require the finessing hand and mind of Caroline to proof my writing so I don’t appear “too” idiotic. Then it’s time to find a photo and publish it.

Back in January when I decided to purge the random files scattered throughout my computer that were in various states of completion, I wanted to put to rest what loosely felt like a thread of laments, though I was never certain that anything tied them together. Well, there was one thing: I wrote everything while sitting in coffee shops. So I thought of these writings as my “Coffee Shop Series” and to that end, I snapped a bunch of photos while visiting some of the places I did my writing at and used bits and pieces of those images for the blog entries.

Now I’m done.

Why then call this entry “The Crumpled Straw Wrapper?” One day, while talking with yet another stranger in a coffee shop regarding what I was doing, I explained my subject matter and rejoiced that shortly I’d be able to move on from what was feeling like non-stop laments. I told this person that as soon as all these blog entries I’d staged were finished that I was looking forward to writing about anything else maybe even about a crumpled straw wrapper that I pointed to.

That piece of trash, which earlier had been the sanitary wrapping of a length of straw, now laid discarded, poking out of a mini trash bin on the counter. Its single-use function was now depleted and it would likely find its way to the landfill. How long ago were its constituent parts found in another form? Maybe ten or twenty years ago a spruce, pine, fir, larch, or hemlock tree was planted in a grove. While thinning these new trees they were sent off so their softwood could be turned into pulp that would become various paper products.

For decades we have mindlessly used these conveniences without any regard for their impact beyond assuaging our anxiety of germs; though I’m not at all certain that is a conscious decision either. Then all of a sudden, midway through this last bit of typing, I’m becoming aware that I’ve started moving back into more lament. Maybe there is no escape from these tangents where I take out the grump for exercise so I can discover something else to complain about?