Some thoughts arrive slowly, bogged down in the sticky dough of our daily distractions, and some arrive without any preparation or warning, not needing them, especially, not teasing or kneading them along, but appear, allied to the search for daily bread, a task in which we can all surely relate.

While shopping at the, uh, The StaveWay, we shall call it, this store -- a place within 20 miles of us, out here in the country -- an overheard snippet of conversation caused a long and lasting spark in the oven of the mind.  The unavoidable eavesdropping has given rise to even more thoughts, just as quickly as the first one popped up, too.  Here's how it started:

Having observed bakers in a grocery store complaining at length about their jobs, and in plain view of shoppers, it did not seem a safe way to inspire employee-customer relations -- but there you are, the deed was done, and it set me to thinking about much in this world.

Surprisingly, my mind handed me a matter-of-fact complaint to hurl back to the bakers, just in case I might be asked:  Nice you two guys have a job, so you have something to complain about here at your work, while the rest of us are shopping here for groceries, just trying to find our daily bread.

Ever since I happened onto that chance, overheard encounter of bakers griping about their jobs inside a grocery store, a drama held out on the sales floor as they lobbed their complaints back and forth, I have been mulling over some things, including the realization that unemployment is a death sentence in this country.  Let's just say I've had a lot of food for thought, from that one trip to the store, going after that daily bread.

There's no easy way around it:  It's a scheme of money on Earth, one we all are stuck using, to satisfy our daily needs and desires.  And, unless we are born into or win great wealth, or somehow escape the inevitability of working all our lives in order to live, we are dependent on jobs to keep us alive.  It's so simple and brutal a concept, I think we can forget how it actually and really is, lost inside all our attempts at living, it's gone in all our distractions.

It's morning on this side of the planet and solar storms are raging to high heaven, largest in five years, triggered by massive solar flares earlier this week.  Earth is to be blasted with charged particles heading in at four million miles an hour, our thin atmospheric onionskin playing catch with all these incredibly quick-moving hot potatoes.

The universe is capable of staggering speeds and inconceivably mammoth distances.  On Earth, right here, the coffee pot is all the way across the kitchen, an infinity wrapped in a finite fold of space.  Even once filled and tripped, the coffee will take two-thirds an eternity to drip and to drip, slowly evolving its primordial bouillon in there, finally creating the life-giving brew as we know it -- warm, old-style CPR breath compresses, delivered unto our lips, taken in sips.