Vera … Vera …

I guess enough friends have inquired about the whereabouts of the sister in the pair of littermates I agreed to inherit rather than lose the company of when their mistress abandoned them a couple of years ago on a fling with a thing. I gotta face the fact that sweet Vera is to never return without the slightest notion where she’s gone. It is much different than knowing she died like the past two that passed through my home and heart. In memoriam to her I present the following fairy tale I wrote for a collection Minx was asking for contributions to sometime last year.

Goldiwotsits and Boldigrushin

She wasn’t the most affectionate person in the world, but when Goldiwotsit wanted loving she knew some covers she could climb under to reap all the affection she and Boldigrushin ever needed. They both slept alone most of the time just for the comfort of guilt free farting and collision free restlessness. They both had their middle of the night inspirations to get up and write, draw, make or eat something and middle of the day siestas and passed each other affectionately in their separate interests throughout their lives. When the weather grew chilly the farts and the nearness kept them warm every night.

Goldiwotsit had a special life all her own of which she never spoke nor would he be aware had he not loved to watch her in his idle hours as she followed her muse about her day. Without benefit of books or teachers he watched her learn about reflection, refraction, spectrums, magnification and fluid dynamics by experimenting in the pond near their home. These were experiences she would never forget due to complete lack of need to explain herself to anyone. The closest she came to discussing such things was gazing into Boldigrushin’s eyes until they both slowly closed them with a nod of mutual understanding and ultimate love.

When he was rapt at his drawing board at times of her repose she could just sit and watch his concentration, his inhalation upon inspiration, his exhalation of herbal dilation, his tongue flicking in and out as if whittling out the precision of his expression. She wondered what the source of his need to have the rest of the world see what he sees might be. He’d spent a lifetime getting better at it and when they’d met he’d left the city behind to establish this wooded home as a place he could draw his pictures to trade for bullets to keep the wolves from their door. This gave him the quiet solitude to write his stories and tootle his flute for the pure pleasure of expression and learn to grow his vegetable garden for the satisfaction of self reliance in supplying the absolute necessity of life. She didn’t understand and felt no urgency to end such an interesting, alien mystery.

When she needed his attention, his touch, she knew she had only to nuzzle his ear to draw him back from the world of his imagination and gain him all to herself so long as the feeing was mutual or until either one became interested in something else. No matter who they may be with or what they were doing, they both knew their primary interest was in each other. It was less concern about whether they were doing well and more admiration for how well they did everything in their lives, even the learning from their own mistakes part.

Her curiosity was mostly satisfied by watching one place for long periods to let the pitter-patter pattern of local activity establish itself wherever she alit so that she could filter it out of her attention to spot the anomalies by the slightest glimpse, peep, scent or electric charge out of the ordinary. Boldigrushin had learned the method from her while they meditated on the mystery of life each sunrise sitting in his potting shed over looking the garden. She knew he understood her when he entered the state required to notice and watch a clod of dirt become dislodged and unbalanced by an emerging broccoli sprout and roll several inches away.

When this autistic, fugue, trancelike patter analysis state gleaned curiosities sufficient for further investigation, she was all over it whether it was a slithering lizard, a four leaf clover, new noise, scent of jasmine, nose right down in it for all the rare sensations to be offered. Seeing life be a such joy for her, whether snoozing or active, lightened his sometime jaded attitude toward his species’ jaded attitude toward the nature of the planet that sustained the lives of all its species. He got especially upset with their treating the rest of the world as property. always prompting him to explain to her that they even think they own their daemons and call them pets. When he got this agitated she knew he needed to be kneaded in his tense shoulder muscles now that she’d learned to hold in her claws.

•

cat and mouse

Because that song of Pink Floyd’s echoes so bittersweetly even when talking to her brother, Priest, that I have changed his name from the one they grew up together with. In light of the fact that he now has my attention all to himself he takes total advantage of mutual affection sharing to the point that I have decreed his name is now Schmoo, both for his color and shape and willingness to be whatever Lil' cxcxxxxx Abner needed at the time. As a sign of his constant companionship he added his agreement to Al Capp’s hero’s name.

the original schmoo

LETTIN' OFF STEAM

Once upon a time, there was this ventriloquist’s dummy who believed he was a real puppet master at the controls of a cast of toads clad in the official robes of authority and enough initials behind their names to yoke a yak. The thing that convinced him most was that no one could see the knee upon which he sat much less see any lips move while he flapped his jaw hinge. Having been carved from the wood of a traditional hot house bush, he could function only in the rarified company of praise for which he awarded formerly prestigious positions throughout the system by which the people, who could see neither the knee or the lips move, swore. They could see the flag and the presidential office he sat in quite clearly and that was enough for them — the emperor has a fine suit of clothes and we don’t torture.

•

And we thought Alberto Gonzales was bad. Michael Mukasey outsquirms a whole compost pile of night crawlers with such a blatant thumb to his nose at demands that he get on the hook that Bush couldn’t have found a better rear guard for his bloody trail. He admits that if waterboarding was done to him he would feel tortured. Mighty white of you there, oh mighty white head word twisting lawyer of the land. In all other cases of water boarding, the USAG would have to know the circumstances before knowing whether to call it torture. No matter what the circumstances in the case of one person taking the life of another it must be considered murder irrespective of justification from accidents to atrocities, from serial cannibals to soldier combatants, from self defense to self destruction. The fair witnesses from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange land couldn't say the house was white until they’d seen all sides, but none would have argued against its being a house.

No one called him on the fact that, while admitting he would think it was torture if it happened to himself, he couldn’t stretch his imagination around the idea that it might seem that way to anyone else. He’d have to assume he was more sensitive than anyone else to deny that it was torture for them. What is he doing there?

•

What is our government doing in the hands of secret level clearances above elected representatives, ethically immune by sheer anonymity? In the beginning of his eight years as president, Dwight Eisenhower was shown the alien bodies and UFO remnants from the 1948 Roswell crash. Before he left office he’d lost access to that level of government secrets. Our real government is not elected and is obviously beyond responsibility to be candid with its subjects. Ike warned the nation of the formation of the “military industrial complex” (the American twist on fascism) which now consumes 44% of the national income and employs 22 million citizens (7.4% of the population). That’s one government employee for every 13 civilians, it’s a much heavier coverage than guards/prisoners ratio at Auschweitz.

The only reason governments need to keep secrets is to do unethical things either to enemies or to their own citizens. National competition need never loose sight of the benefits of cooperative cohabitation in the nature of a planet we are all learning our connection to. It is time for the pendulum to swing back toward coevolution with what we have been abusing for instant gratification as a worldwide paradigm of thought and action. Subsidized research into sustainability, release of long buried, beneficial technology, and abuse penalties are a few changes toward real transparency that might be implemented. Kucinich’s idea of a cabinet department of the future is an excellent start on that.

KIND

OPEN UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

I used to have a business web site whose host’s email service was so shoddy it threatened my livelihood with oft broken communications. The fact that I only got one hit for business purposes over five years wasn’t a big problem since my work pretty much sells itself. Toward the end I began adding more personal things like a section about my garden and a bit of political ranting of which I posted most here on the blog just before I took down the site.

Yesterday morning, I was luxuriating in the lap of my new shed sling chair gazing out across the sparkling, chilly lettuce and arugula thriving in the late damp winter and the newly composted and seeded black earth of the spring beds pushing their luck against the odds of a late frost. I have yet to have a good summer out of the three I have been doing this. I sometimes feel like I am discovering what everyone who has ever tried at less than industrial rates has always known — don’t plan to farm through the summer in Tejas. I keep planting earlier and earlier. The light and the crisp purity of the air this morning encouraged me to take some pictures of the garden for the first time since I tore out all the spoiled rotten tomatoes back in July, reminding me of the fun it was to keep up the garden site.

This all leads up to the fact that I have been rejuvenating, repurposing and republishing my web site as Green’s Gardens, Graphics and Gab to encompass my three primary modes of activity. I took out all the strictly business works of my old web site except for the portraits of friends and music posters and album covers which were as much inspired by the muse as any done for fun. I have made the garden journal the natural basis for the site, whereas the graphics are my observations of nature, mostly trapped in civilization I’ll admit, and words a second language. I am pretty happy with how well the site is operating given about 24 hours or so of recalling procedure and repairing links as I sewed new ideas into old material. It is just a crude beginning and I would appreciate any, I mean any, comments, criticisms or glitches you may care to apprise me of.

I plan on expanding the garden section to include the culture that has adopted my pond and my venture into free range poultry. The portraits include a link to the entire Hole in the Wall Haul of Fame collection, which may serve as a reference for further “Tales from the Kitchen” as the portraits are of the core crew of hooligans about whom I write. And this blog is the Literary section with the addition of the publications and collection of potent quotes on the site. Welcome and enjoy.

Take me to your leader. Has he got an agent?

I found this video over at Cannablog just now and am posting it here for the same purpose this ethnographic researcher, Wade Davis, intends his work to accomplish; the dissemination of awareness and respect required to allow ethnic diversity to remain in tact. I love his breathless, gulping delivery of information he has personally experienced and dearly wants us to comprehend. At about 21:10 in he mentions the we he is a part of and my whole perspective changed. Please watch the video before reading the rest…



I fear that the well meaning exposure of the unique cultures he speaks of is paving a highway to their oblivion — the reverse of his intent to pickle them in National Geographics’ gallery of travelogues — they’ll never again be what he found, simply because he found them and, rather than live with them, came back to tell the tale. All those kids will be wearing tee shirts and gimme caps in ten years.

It is too bad too, because I admire the way this guy seems to love what he has been doing and how he seems to respect these cultures, but I think they would all be better off if he and everyone else had never found them. Or at least kept their secret to themselves in reverence for what they purport to respect.

I guess I am posting the video to counter commercial copyrights of corporate ethnotours; the very opposite of a seemingly benevolent gesture. Just like more food creates more starving people and more laws create more criminals. What a troll I am.

IFOUNDOUBT

i’m an idea
dilating where e’re i look
like a fish eye lens
expanding the center to the sides
to reveal the theme
to facts stretched so thin
the threshold between
incompatible dualities
reveals itself
to be a spindle
on the generator
of the spark of life,
requisite opposites
for either to exist
to any other.

At absolute zero
that spark goes out
ifoundoubt
reality comes apart
at the seems.

MUST BE A DAY TO GET BLOWN AWAY…

Gulp!

ALL TOGETHER NOW

human nature's light
shines through four fingers
and enclosing thumb
upon the antics of the palm

TO FREELY BLOOM …

To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.
— Gerry Spence, lawyer

I love onomatopoeias. Just the letters "sq" evokes the squeakiness of squash, squid and squeegees. The quote above is an onomatopoeic thought. I am often inspired by the weekday quotes from Anu Garg over at A Word A Day and today’s inspiration is so vast for me that I feel like I am blooming unto blushing.

The sense I get of the word bloom in this thought is rival to my love of the word threshold, the sense of consciously becoming and further beholding what one has always been like the future of a seed no matter where it takes root or the conditions of its growing. For people to freely bloom is a process that is anathema to the myth of western civilization. As the economy requires both parents to work, day care centers become the hot house programmers at the earliest, most impressionable age of human sprouts. By the time pubic hair sprouts on the little saplings they resemble the destiny of the seed like a plastic xmas tree, never taken down, just decorated more every year resembles a sequoia. It takes great parenting to remain aware of the unique seeds that are blooming before their very eyes and to refrain from carving initials in their bark, hanging swings from their limbs or pruning them because they drip sap on the car.

I just recalled finding some bamboo stalks that had broken through the floor of an old shed in our back yard and grown straight up for the ceiling. When they reached immovable resistance from above they began a perfectly natural cane handle sized curve until they were clear enough of the ceiling to reverse the same gentle curve upward again. One stalk repeated this snaking three or four times until it found a broken window to escape and grow along side its fellow shoots to the sky. This must be an ancient art somewhere.

In the same stream of thought I remeber walking and climbing along the boulder strewn shoreline of the Pedernales River one day when I noticed something for its subtly anomalous behavior. There was a ten foot sapling of the variety growing all around, long, gently sweeping limbs and fluttering silver and green leaves that was different from all the rest. This one was growing out of the crack in one of the rectangularly fractured boulders and although its limbs were long and sweeping they sometimes had two abrupt, horizontal then vertical 90° sets of corners, to be followed by the same sweeping shape it had before. I finally figured the hitches were a reflection of the change in the allowable travel of the roots to find new fractures in new directions within the boulder. A sort of natural bonsai origami, as it were. It was certainly apropos of this post. It was no doubt the kind of tree it's seed intended, with slight interruptions from without — character you might say.

At the threshold of conscious blooming one senses the choice presented by Shankarachara,

“I can cover the earth in leather
or
wear my own shoes”

BLOGS THAT EXCELL

I have observed a range of responses to memes and awards go from giddy outbursts of the closet exhibitionist in every blogger through total indifference to ivory tower animosity towards cretins daring to touch the hem of genius.

Awards seem to generate from the feeling anyone gets upon observing something extraordinary making one turn to see if anyone shared it or might. In my relatively small blogroll, I have such wishes to share tid bytes and whole stories with which my reading is littered and am often tempted to start one of those many blogs that are a sort of ongoing award show with a daily collection of links to such awardable posts. About one out of ten of my posts give shout outs to individuals or posts whose thinking or action inspires my own. The family of folks I tune into daily have extensive enough blogrolls that I need not have one of my own except as my own speed dial but I continue to add them to aid their exposure if not my daily visits.

Two of this daily family have hit me with the Excellent Blog Award which, while being the kind of flattery that will get them anywhere, seems to dilute itself by coming with the stipulation that each awardee then award ten more. Burbanmom listed her 18link speed dial, “All of the blogs I have listed under 'Family, Friends and Blogs I Like'”. Minx included me in her decade as, “so here are my list of 10 victims who are less lazy than me -,” and went on to list nine other boggers far beyond my skills or talent. As blogosphere inbreeding would have it, both Minx and Burbanmom got awarded by another on my blogroll, Leslie. And so it goes.

And me, what about my ten? I am still holding off on awarding the the last of five Thinking Blogger Awards which befell my duty way back in ‘06 sometime. With one tenth of the concentration the word excellent requires to be used for any one of these folks I give you my list of excellent blogs not already awarded such as far as I know.

The Far Queue — Pisces Iscatiot’s words have no meaning until he puts them together. Consistently, though too rarely of late, the most thought provoking writer in my sphere of discovery.

The Time Being — Steve Kilby’s daily stream of creative thinking is the kind of honest self examination and meditation on love and life that allows his originality to shine through all the derivative artifacts with which we all must express our thoughts.

Karoline in the Morning — Read her gentle words, feel her sense of life invade your defenseless places and soon there is nowhere to defend, and you are filled with Karoline.

Unremitting Failure — Mike’s drollery is the most constant joy in my blogging experience. He’s got some poignant zingers in amongst his dry humor, so wait ‘til it’s over before you guffaw too loudly, it may be about you.

Empress of Dirt — Melissa has a garden blog like I will have if I ever learn to grow enough food to sustain myself year round. Her love of growing things and creating garden art and showing photos of what she loves to see in Ontario is inspiring to say the least.

Driftglass — The only one writer blog amongst my political animals category, Driftglass seems to find the same horrors being perpetrated by our government that I do and expresses them with far more vitriolic insight born of closer experience in the arena I only catch putrid whiffs of.

Well that’s six out of ten, as far as I got with my first attempt with the thinking blogger award.

°•°
˜

Memes, a tag game within the blindman’s bluff of the internet, seem to be generated by a genuine wish to know more about perceived secrets held by intriguing bloggers. It’s a whole new world, this making fast friends based on no more than our perception of the mind and intent authoring pixelated words expressing observations, interests, ideas and preferences without a voice to measure passion or a face to pigeonhole with physical prejudices. One would think it would be a purely mental activity. Without natural direct experience of one another we are only information along with the lying agendas and the possibly photoshopped pictures that create our world view on the news. We have, in this modern age of instant worldwide communication brought mankind full circle to where the level of individual success within society no longer depends on the believability of authority or reported facts at hand but the on the ability of the perceiver of the chaos of information to find the theme relevant to specific concerns. No more laws, walls or weapons for an established truth to work from — we are face to face with creations too vast to be believed, much less understood, in which only our grounding in the natural curve can find meaning. The government is no longer a guarantee of nourishment in the shopping aisle, we must revert to hunting and gathering the berries of truth growing in the jungle of information. Memes serve as taste samples of particularly interesting berries.

Whoa, sorry about that little side track into the liberating effect of the internet. Burbanmom also tagged me with the six unimportant things meme??? which comes with the following rules:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you.
(2) Post the rules on your blog.
(3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
(4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
(5) Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Here goes a delve into the unimportant habits and quarks here in the vapors —

1) I cannot put my palms down flat due to a symmetrical gradual shriveling of my pinkies over the past twenty years.

2) Because of one, above, I am often mistaken for a mason when shaking hands.

3) Because of one, above, I have a callous on my right pinky from pressure on the mouse that is as large as the callous I developed on my bird finger from using pencils, pens and paint brushes all my life.

4) Before either pinkie began to draw up like a chicken foot there appeared an minute indentation in each palm as if a stitch had been taken from within my hand.

5) The indentations in my palms are the anchor points for the rigid, shrinking tendon that is pulling my pinkies into fists of their own.

6) I am very careful about not falling on my face or slapping anyone or thing because it really hurts to try and straighten out my pinkies even slowly.

C’mon, you guys. The meme called for unimportant. There exists no limit to the unimportance of the infinitude of my quirks, I feel like the savant that can reel off the first few thousand decimal places of pi.

Realizing that everyone is not so gifted, I will embarrass no one by passing this meme on. Because the six are to be chosen at random, choose yourself if you so choose. Happy meming.

IF YOU CAN'T GROW IT, EAT LOCAL

I don't know where to begin in touting the virtues and benefits of growing your own food from eradication of allergies and dependence on fossil fuels to harvest and deliver agribiz food to rejoining symbiosis with the earth by organic rather than chemical methods of soil replenishment. The concentration of the population into civic centers, while good for limiting sprawl, also limits an individual's access to space in which to grow and time in which to care enough to realize a harvest (city life demanding more money=time, and all).

Despair not, their are oodles, nay, dozens of farmer's markets within a gallon round trip for anyone who wants all the benefits of growing their own food minus the one-on-one symbiosis with nature through seasons, soils, seed and sprouts. My favorite champion of going green, Burbanmom, has turned me on to an even more radically cooperative way to do your best for the health of your family and the planet, called CSAs (Community Sponsored Agriculture), a step beyond farmers markets. Read all about it at Local Harvest, and many more great green innovations. I tell you, the real wave of the future is back to nature!

RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSITY

“I haven’t met many women that didn’t have to pee at the time.”

Popping me with her towel, turning on her heel and sashaying down the hall past the restrooms back to her tables, Carol called over her shoulder, “That’s your analysis.”

The pun was so perfectly bad that my appreciation of my saucy head waitress deepened yet further, even after years of her tolerating my occasional hungover mornings and reconciling inevitable mood clashes and food fights between passionate people performing panic paced prandial posts during the lunch rush. My work related appreciation of her was as an excellent buffer between me and impatient customers. Anyone who has ever worked in the service industry is familiar with the attitude assumed by all too many when being served, especially those who had never served anyone themselves; that of owner to slave. Carol knew her customers and she let them know it in terms so straightforward I recognized the brave honesty with which she dealt with her life in general and the key to why my regard was so deep at all.

When I started cooking at Shelter from the Norm the only thing Pug told me was that I wouldn’t make more than the salary I was bitching over beers about getting for running the print shop across the street, but I could have all my meals free. At that point in my evolving dematerialization food consumed a quarter of my expenses so I had only one reservation about taking this new job. “I don’t want this to be a place to expect fast food, there’s a Jack in the Box right next door. I want to have vegetarian day, and fresh seafood day and improve the daily menu beyond burgers and steak fingers.”

Pug was delighted, especially having kept the kitchen closed for over a month since firing the last cook for drinking six packs in the alley during his shift. He even initiated “shuckin’ and jivin’” on Thursday afternoon during which he and I mangled our hands opening two bushels of fresh oysters for Friday’s seafood special. All to the delight of our visiting friends’ sympathy and jibes as they waited to use the bathroom or suffer the crowded kitchen long enough for some erudite conversation and the occasional sample like gulls around the docks, just shuckin’ and jivin’. He also balked at a couple of changes, such as taking the steak fingers off the menu, which he claimed to just love as a snack between his fourth and fifth meal of the day. He acquiesced when, after eating two and a half of the little buggers slathered in BBQ sauce, he noticed that I had cut up, breaded and deep fried the corrugated cardboard in which the steak fingers had come packed.

To that point in my life preparing that menu in its cycle through its vegetarian, pasta, beef and seafood special week in and week out was the most rewarding of my varied livelihoods. I still cannot think of a more life reaffirming action than providing healthy food for those who would have it. I invented sandwiches that were tasty enough to cause people to eat food that was good for them. One, the Elfagator, got recognition from rock stars to master chefs whose ethics demanded they ask my permission to serve. Over the years the kitchen staff developed into a rare endeavor until slamming into the brick wall of fiscal responsibility.

But this isn’t about that. This is the beginning of what had often been recommended I do and I have more than once threatened to do: Tales from the Kitchen. A true account of a fictional bar and the wonderful assholes that found camaraderie within its walls through the last half of the ‘70s.

Just one more tale before I leave the rest for further installments in later posts. This involves one of those supervillians in the comic book aspect of the Shelter from the Norm. Being a laid back amalgam of west campus residents, students and professors in the school of communication, the most physical aggression manifested during the day shift was over answering Jeopardy at five. But this time he came in during the day and was recognized only when asking, after he’d been served, “ Do I have leave to reenter the empire?” Having been banned before anyone at the bar that day ever entered the first time, only Suzi, the day bartender, recognized Flame from Pug’s description in tales of his infamy. Neither Suzi or Sandy, the day waitress cared to deal with him so it was down to me to 86 him. As politely as possible I explained it was my sad duty to inform him that he was still forbidden entrance per Pug’s wishes.

I’d barely heard the words, “gauche lackey” or some such blather when the ice cubes and vodka he’d been served unwittingly got relayed, sans glass, quite wittingly to my face. He was out the door before anyone reacted, so we didn’t do anything except be glad he was gone. A few hours later he returned — with his mother, who requested that Sandy fetch me from the kitchen. When I answered her query as to his banishment with, “Because he’s a total asshole,” he slammed another vodka into the wall. The truth of the situation passed non-verbally between mom and I leaving me to only express my wishes by raising my hands palms up and sweeping them towards the door for her to drag him out by the ear. He never returned and was forever stripped of his supervillian status.