Signal to noise

I remember when I was a lad, I used to go camping with friends. By the time we were in high school this had become an excuse to go off on underaged drinking sprees. Among the necessities we brought along, with a case of cheap beer, was a radio.

This was back in the very early 70's so those old radios were monaural. With telescoping antennae and running on 4 D batteries and a built in AC adapter they fairly hefty. While the thing probably weighed as much as the tent it was none the less one of those items that were indispensable to the teenage camper.

One thing I remember most about those camping trips was the variability of reception on the radio. I didn't know then, that those cloudy nights were the nights that we could pick up the RPI Fieldhouse, and listen to the lastest hit from Aretha Franklin, and that on those clear nights when the sky was alive with stars we would have trouble picking up the commercial station broadcasting out of Rutland.

Currently, my brain is acting a bit like the old Emerson, on a clear summer night. I cannot seem to get my brain to register anything but noise. What ever poor signal of inspiration for blogging and story telling I usually experience is not coming through at the moment. There have been a few flashes of a clear signal, perhaps stories that will appear later. For the moment I only seem to be experiencing hissing and popping.

Instead of fighting it, I am just going to let it happen and do a little mental star gazing until whatever mental clouds that are necessary for me to string together a few coherent thoughts have formed.