The dogs were either lying around calmly soaking up rays, scratching their back with their feet up in the air or sparring with each other in celebration of such a beautiful dawning day.
A hen announces her proud accomplishment from her nest while her sisters devour some crumbled corn tortillas at our feet gossiping in quiet purring clucks only they understand.
Small birds nervously drop down to the chicken feed cast in the yard, relying on their fellows in the trees to warn them of the cat. The cat, in his new, improved, tail-down stealth stalk, approaches from the direction with the tallest grass, still unaware of the lookouts above. Although I keep his bowl full and he has yet to even get close to catching a bird, his instincts demand he try just for the sport of it all. A grackle joins the game by flying directly at him a mere three inches higher than the crouching cat’s vertical, claw extended paws outstretched explosion a good six feet straight up.
The chickens, cat and small dogs run for cover when the giant red hawk’s shadow stains their open play ground while the big dogs chase the dark spot in hopes the hawk will come down close enough to pluck out of the air as they have several panicked chickens and a peacock.
Sparky, the bass player in his and Homer's band, the Cramdens, let’s himself in through the gate across the road to here and is greeted by all the dogs. As he strolls through the dappled light beneath the trees, a thought of Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle’s mentioning paradise whenever he recognizes he’s in it let’s itself into my consciousness of now and is greeted by Homer, saying, “You know? There’s a lotta people in this world that would commit suicide if they had to live like we've learned to.”
It was the first time I ever laughed at one of Homer’s jokes.
I still am
•
Addendum: There seems to be some question as to this description of a day on the porch having any application to reaching the summit. Other than actually climbing a mountain, all summits to be reached are ideals in metaphor. Pisces Iscariot got it so well he suggested using "un-learned" for the striving to reach the summit I speak of, since he knows, as I do, that it is our introductory education into the spectacle and faith in the authority of its mythology that must be questioned to reach a life more symbiotic with the nature of the planet whose dependent cells we all are by realizing how belief in man's ownership of it all increases our destructive usury every day. The invisible prison is insidious.
Where do you grab a naked man? — Awestun, Tejas circa 1978, UT Campus
I sometimes feel like this fellow who lost it in public trying to get through the walls to let the civilized world know what beauty is being destroyed outside by it. Added 6/8/10
14 comments:
ah, but i would love it...
Bit like a Cold War summit, eh? All talk, no action, yet a feeling of superior accomplishment at the end of the day.
That is kinda funny. Heh.
We are free to interpret this any way we choose, but like your comment yesterday, Jeff, way off the intent of the offering. Ah, well, Brian understood both - 50% is 50% more than I need to know what I mean and say it. Glad you don't hold back either. Somewhere in there is a nugget building under heat and pressure, just natural.
simple pleasures. one man's paradise is another's crippling boredom...
I live like that! Well without the chickens. I'm a little confused about the relationship to reaching the summit but it's a sweet portrayal nevertheless. (I warn you, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed)
Paradise bring the summit of our existence?
You paint idyll well- and I have come to appreciate chickens too, since my 7 year old nephew has acquired 3- they make wonderful pets and give you eggs :)
Baino, One person's nadir is another person's summit.
Flip side to that joke is that there are a lotta people committing homicide if they don't figure out how to live more like ya'll do. There is bliss within the basics of life.
The summit of humor reaching its goal!
Perhaps he'd've been more accurate to say "... to live like we've un-learned to" :)
I have to say simple pleasures - live on!!!
Great writing, my friend.
As for the photo, it reminds me of Randy Newman's "Beware of the Naked Man."
UF Mike
I need to reread before I vote. I will. But in a hurry today.
An enlightenment as an summit! I love it!
I always have to read your posts a few times. I get lost in the language. You describe everything so beautifully, I sometimes don't realize what else is going on around it.
I like how you have approached the story... setting the scene up like this. It really makes sense... You have to know the basis in order to laugh along with the joke.
Plus I really want to sit outside but we're still muggy and nasty 45 minutes north of you.
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