Brand of Make Believe

What Day it is Can Sometimes Matter...

2011-12-03T06:33:00.001-06:00

December 3 is the International Day for People with Disabilities. There are no people on Earth who are not aware of the importance to love and support those who depend upon the able bodied for an extraordinary spirit. More of us then we often realize simply stand beside the people we know who cannot stand easily at all. You might sometimes ask, "How is it going?" You might even answer their questions first.

A day for others will place you on a footpath that is unmistakably "Spiritual." Funny how often it's breakfast, lunch or dinner as well.

Be well today... whichever you are. The supposedly normal, or the technically disabled. All of you sit beside of beautiful light that only reaches to the recent past. We, whole and broken, are the real world.

Be well.

Domain/ Hope/ Intention (With Ada)

2011-10-17T15:10:00.003-05:00

The sound of the oars against the ring-bolts of the fourteen foot boat reminded Ada that she'd let go of them. How thoroughly she'd looked anticipating a sight of this water. How glad she'd been to see it finally. The first two days it had blown her past clear away… but now, she could not help but admit it was more than water, the sea, but she could not see beyond that. She wasn't even a dimple on the surface of this areola. Not a dimple. Not an afterthought, not a consultation. Just a wrinkled up piece of litter, perhaps. Though, yes, she knew the whispers of its sentience. She did not believe that it was dead. Ada feared that she was.

Was it far to the horizon? Ten miles? Twenty? There was a circle that she had fantasized about. Saraheim had said she needed to cast a circle, and Ada had little notion how to do that. The flatlands were full of hicks who might no longer hang her from a tree, but she could not bear to bid them hello or goodbye. "Good riddance" was her mantra to the certitude of the land. Goodbye and good-day to the world.

And, it was gone.

Ada stuck her hand in the warm embrace of that penetrating, probative god of salt, mystery and terrifying patience. She was reminded in the distracted manner of a school-girl by a window, of a hand she'd embraced a long time ago. Emilio. "Nothing to say, about him," she'd answered to Saraheim's inevitable questions.

"Nothing?" Saraheim had answered quietly in shock as much as exasperation.

Ada had held his hand. As Emilio's fingers softly slid into her own she had sighed and looked at him startled by the sound she was making. It embarrassed her and she'd laughed. Emilio looked at her with the awkward questions of inexperience in his eyes. She thought she'd embarrassed him. She could not tell Saraheim, the jay-walking tantrum of appetite and satiety, this. So, she simply waited her out. Here, in this empty boat, in the limpest grip of this water she felt the strange perils she'd ignored all her life, as keenly as her efforts at concealment had meant them dull.

Ada drew her hand from the water, looked at the horizon and chuckled at her weakness and poor imitation of the willful persons she'd always envied.

"Second fiddle to the living, Saraheim?" she asked aloud. Looking at the water dripping down the oar she now gripped, she knew that what she did not know then-- she'd never forget.

Old women, she supposed, in any case shouldn't dally too long on the subject of little boys. She hoped so.

Domain/ Hope/ Intention (With Arachnid)

2011-10-16T18:49:00.002-05:00

The light of the sun runs through the sieve of the sky and slams in myriad short blasts of violence into particles of dust that are the size--- if you can believe this--- of the color blue. The size of the color blue? Let's just say it's true--- they are not the size of the color red.

The remainder of the sunlight continues to the terminus of its prior (or current, rather) self--- and sprouts wings as some relative of itself. A trivial quantity heats the air itself--- especially its water vapor--- which causes the patch of air to become a balloon without its parachute--- unbounded it rises, catching a few carrion birds along the way.

As it reaches the edge of the ceiling of the troposphere it spreads, attempting to remain in its habitat of choice, but with the support of such an engine as the sun, it breaks into the rarified cold atmosphere anyhow.

Eventually the air becomes extremely cold, and water vapor forms around dust creating hail. The hail becomes heavier than the air and begins to fall, pulling air along with it. The cold mass of air eventually achieves an enormous velocity and hurtles toward the ground, a rather disasterous atmospheric animal. It hits a carefully tended woods with quiet paths all around it, and snaps a hundred trees, some of them two to three feet in girth, like twigs none-the-less. The limbs, leaves, twigs, and trunks lie in a wet ruin throughout the evening. In the morning there is an absence of the usual chatter of songbirds and the call of a dozen or so raptors but, from the broken darkness of the many fallen trees, a spider creeps from a shadow and climbs up the skinned trunk of a tree. The smooth dead wood runs thirty feet high and the spider climbs, pausing at intervals and where another fallen tree's dying branches touch another tree, the weaver begins her nine inch orb. By the time the risen sun penetrates the disordered woods, the orb is completed, the weaver sentinel at it's center. From the chaos of violent attention from the sun crawled the undistracted intention of an unintelligent spider. Broken things darned with protein filament?

From Poland, With Love

2011-06-21T19:59:00.001-05:00

Sometime around the time I was in high-school I had sardines for the first time. I'm guessing, for no particular reason, that it would have been the Aleesi brand... given the ubiquity of that Italian maker of kitchen hardware, coffee stuff, and (esp. in America) foodstuffs, popular in mid-western supermarkets. I was a particular fan, at the time and for years, of their sesame breadsticks. One day I bought my own sesame seeds and roasted them myself with homemade dough. That was the end of that.

I think what inspired the sardines was a peculiar moment in For Your Eyes Only, the '80's James Bond flick. Sean Connery was about the only thing good in the ridiculous movie. Was Rutuer Hauer in it? If so, he would have played some Eastern European, Iron Curtain pantiwaist (sic.).... so, who cares? It was a bad movie, but, had a period of, to a kid, boring exposition, where James opens up a gleaming briefcase, and within it is all manner of canned delights, including caviar (Beluga, surely.) In any case, I eventually would eat caviar now and then with my adventurous family, but not sardines. Why? I'm guessing that the ubiquity and frank fishiness of sardines has prejudiced us against them (in canned form) since they were first caught to become the ancestor to Ketchup and the growingly popular Asian/ Eurasian fish sauces. I certainly don't remember being fed them even once by my Mom. Had she fed them to me, I am certain I would have eaten them habitually while working on the farms of my young adulthood. I never did, however, because they slowly grew on me, after, I think, remembering that Sean Connery moment... and fantisizing about having my own [brief]case of delights. In search of delights I came across sardines.

Occasionally a girlfriend and I would share a sardine sandwich, which, indeed, is an intriguingly "whole food" looking thing, with its silver skin glinting against sprouts, tomato, horseradish and caper. Sort of a poor mans Lox and Bagel. And a healthy mans too. With their high fat content (esp. when packed in Soy/ Olive oils) of the exact sort recommended to us these days, and complete protein... in a small, recyclable aseptic container, they are indeed, a hell of an alternative to a Pepsi. And, they cost less then a Pepsi! Go figure.

I'm waiting for the day sardines exceed their absurd envelope of awesomeness and become known by people beyond the super-foodie world, which has a long standing appreciation of such foodstuffs. Most of the sardines I get are packed in Poland, from vessels fishing I couldn't say where; Sardinia? I've had them packed in the Middle East, Russia, Poland, and China. Rarely ever, if in fact even once, in the U.S. I don't think we experience the sardine in our oceans much. Perhaps they detest our capitalistic excesses.

I don't eat them every day, since it goes without saying that they are fish from a polluted and somewhat disgusting ocean: while their mercury level is low, it is hardly non-existent. Also: they are a delicacy,. meant to be enjoyed, on an intriguing time frame: popped open like a convenience, but savored like a thing of beauty.

A few rules: Don't be fooled by the snake oil salesmen who would have you believe they fish with gilded fishing nets. The ocean is an unbounded salty body, which, while far from homogeneous, is none-the-less neither organic, nor conventional. It's just the ocean. Fish are fish. If you must pay three dollars for sardines, go ahead... eat one third my take. But I'll have you know that the fanciest variety available at the specialty stores will never beat my $1 oil packed variety with hot sauce and capers. I make fun of my housemate Richie for buying his "organic line-caught" sardines at our local fancy swag food shop... organic fish? He agrees, but finds the lively packaging perhaps a sort of status symbol... who knows?

Lastly, today I was peeling back the pop-top of my sardines, at lunch time, in the midst of an irritatingly endless scraping session on an exterior paint job. The house is, perhaps, 100 years old. The paint job prior to the last was lead paint, so even now, we must take extraordinary measures against inhalation and the spread of drop paint chips. This costs us enormously in poly-ethelene plastic and canvass drop cloths, since you can't simply re-use a drop cloth filled with lead dust. The face masks make the mild early summer heat feel worse, and the sunshine was not much appreciated. When I'm this grumpy, somethings wrong. I guessed that I was hungry. So I walked some distance to the Music Library ( the house was not open) and washed my hands and face, and walked back. I opened up the tin of sardines with its pop-top (I don't wear flip-flops, Mr. Buffett and fans.) Inside were only four of the fish (the fancy sardine companies make hilarious distinctions amongst their various price-point levels of sardine loveliness. Their are "two layer" cans. And "three layer" cans. I don't know what else is offered since I refuse to imagine ANY sardine being "value added." However! Mother nature had a small gift for me. I noticed a billowing girdle of roe, within each fishes body in the can and gasped a bit. Beach Cliff, the grocery store brand I buy, can also be found at the Dollar Central. So I was literally eating Dollar Store smoked fish roe. "One and One Half Layer."

It is sometimes important to note a distinction.

Delicious.

An Eddy in this Sometime Crick

2011-06-11T14:34:00.002-05:00

I've been fairly busy lately. Despite this, my job sometimes requires me to spend an hour or two, or even a half day in a state of suspended animation. Waiting for someone else to do what should have already been done. I've always enjoyed this, provided I'm not starving or going completely broke or something. There are always things to do other than work. And to smell the daisies requires, sometimes, a bit of attention distracted from the ennobled tasks of our civilization. Have you ever told someone, when asked what you did today, "smelled the daisies?" If you have, A: good for you. And B: you know it takes a bit of courage.

It isn't, however, courage in me... I more or less was born this way. I'll never forget when I was but a child at 12 years old in summer camp, I'd steal off from structured activities, "clinics", to spend time alone, reading in the woods, or hey, sitting at a picnic bench, in the middle of an open field. The wind on my face, and the smell of clover (smells like honey on the breeze, right? Clover Honey, at least.) I never got caught... given the times, few adults were much worried at our YMCA camp as to a 12 year-olds safety. I knew, as did most of society around me, that bad things could happen... but very infrequently were likely to. That conclusion, however, was hardly an accident. Super bad things happened to my family and myself at times throughout my childhood. It was a discipline fostered by my parents: to imagine the world as indifferent to my suffering, and (this is so incredibly important to my life) danger toward me as particular. NOT in the parlance of more and more journalists recently: structural. There was no organized effort to hurt me as a kid. There is no such thing today. There never has been. There never will be. And, best of all, there virtually cannot be. Especially if I think carefully about my actions, and alliances.

None of this is meant to be metaphorical or political whatsoever. It just amazes me, that's all. I am my parents age, more or less back then, now. Many of my friends have children who are the age I was then, now. I hear all the time about all the child molesters and thugs and rapists and boogiemen who are out to snatch their kids away from a summer camp, ect. Don't get me wrong... I suppose I have some issues about leaving the kids with a charismatic religious figure with the presumption, "what could go wrong?" But to see these children today, where an encounter with a random arena of their own devising being something of a tactical impossibility... it's clear as a bell to me what this is doing to the person they will become. With plenty of exceptions, people often seem to grow into an expectation of an organized and controllable life: where consequences are sequestered to a fairy land of exquisite presumptions. That these same presumptions can have nothing to do with actual consequences to actual life is nobodies concern. The one way this is comforting to me is my memory of my parents having serious trouble with almost exactly the same thing in our happy little leafy suburb while I was growing up. Despite the ugliness of some aspects of my parents childhood, they knew that there was something honest about the odor of the real world: and the "good cheer" of the suburbs, like a giant spritzer, casting a wide rain of Febreze all over a happy burg, seemed to them
queerly dischordant with what they simultaneously hated about their pasts, and seemed strangely attracted to. Is that not the odd appeal of suffering? Especially in hindsight and at some distance?

I do the same thing, more or less. I have memories of incredible hardships I have endured (and I must say, earned, in my case) and they are oftentimes good memories. I not only don't trust their goodness, but suspect that there is an underside to my nature that, while hardly provisioning me in the expedition of life with a fortune, none-the-less is as resilient as butyl-rubber, and therefore, simply takes the sleights of my past experience as motivating: like a cup of coffee takes its over active molecules for nothing but the sustaining heat of its cheery nature. An odd, and overdeveloped metaphor, but there it is. My point being, obviously, that I greatly prefer fooling myself about the specific details of my life. The underlying machinery of the roller coaster might be nothing but rusty metal... but the ride is what this man is thrilled by. Just listen to how manipulative that statement really is. The ride. Is it possible to dismiss that as haokum? Well, of course. It is an unsupportable bunch of mystical bull. I'm just a wandering fool. There is no ride. My hardships were due to poor decision making and childish risk taking. I also preferred to not pay my elders with the helpful gift of my attentions. Any surprise I ended up a hero of the trashbin, resplendent in rags: friend to all who were not there? Nabokov asks memory to speak. I'm almost certain memory would be, should I invite her closer, a hell of a crappy choice in friends. Perhaps I ought, in light of this, provide her a funeral service in celebration of, get this, my own life. Such are the privileges of embodied metaphor. I wouldn't do it to YOU, reader. Promise.

Which, given the utterly unreliable mechanics of narrative brings me around to White Oak cemetery, at the side of which I stood, my head cocked like a silly dog, seven days ago. It is a plot of land one block over from where I sit, on the north west end of the center of Bloomington. This section of town was filled with workers mixed in race; predominantly trades-people and factory laborers. Many of the houses from here and down the rail line toward Illinois (a short distance toward that state, I mean) are almost comically small. And occupied at a rate that Atlanta and Phoenix would envy. Gee, I wonder why.

Why it is called White Oak I couldn't say. I suppose there are some white oaks around. I don't really know what one looks like. Mostly, it seems Bloomington is filled with the red and pin oaks. The latter, I believe, being virtually a domestic, given the vagaries of its range: hewing close to us, like rats and pigeons. Harder to find in the dark brambly havens of deer and muskrat. But White Oak? It's probably heaving above my roof as I speak, weighing in on when to give it up, given last nights howling winds. All the seven or eight hundred trees that have blown over in the last few months in Bloomington are riddled while whole and alive, on the inside with their Grim Reaper: mold. The snap like toothpicks in shear winds, and even sometimes lesser howling. My imaginary white oak figures when the going gets tough.... But I, typical human, am thinking hard on bigger things.

In any case, planted with small sweetgum trees near 7th, (thirsty, annoying, messy things, if you ask me) and running about the corner of that street and Adams, bounded on the North by the old Illinois line, the cemetery gets it share of traffic: cars, whizzing down eighth to avoid the dogleg that the city planners created when they divirted Kirkwood (5th street) into a boulevard that inexplicably, to the newcomer in town, becomes W. Third.

The reason for the dodge, which the newcomer is so busy driving, and probably texting, that they might not notice, is that White Oak became superseded by Rose Hill Cemetery, which sits, you guessed it, straight in the path of progress West, of Bloomington. Rose Hill was built, in the 19th Century, when like Indiana itself, it was the West. Now, it's an oddly quiet center to the ceaseless shuttling of the quick: whilst long lived trees fall down amongst the slow erosion of big names once of a time, but, yes, right here still. One of the last of the large trees there has finally fallen down, my friend Shannon tells me. In heaven, we will buy tickets to such things, but here, dear fellow mortal, we compose chainsaw elegy. I can hear them singing, each to each.

Oddly enough, a week ago, I inspected most of the graves at White Oak. The small cemetery gets more traffic than the big one, strangely enough, because it is on the rail line, and the indigents, homeless, and time-shorn lovers of place and process (like me) find rights-of-way abutting cemeteries precisely the sort of places to make our passing.

I wonder if little Minnie, the two year old I stared down upon, buried at the cemetery, likes the setting as much as I. A modern adolescent would say, "there are so many things wrong with that question." A college student might say any number if things, of course, but sure to include, "her soul is not in that field." But a certain number of us, when asked at the right moment, especially in the light of the moon would simply redden with emotion not meant for the light of day, and sink to the depths where men and women go to die with the matters that once composed the meaning of their lives: down with the ship/ off to the old folks home. Yeah, Minnie, I DO think you are there. I do. And frankly, I have to laugh at the curdle of feeling that this inspires in the living, yes.... for hon, what do I know, which you have not had chance yet to even begin the telling?

We were a long time gone already when we yelped our first salute. Long, long times on either side of our life. My first and lasts are fixed, but pardon me here for just a moment, these mundane passages for Minnie. And she was hardly alone there.

So, in the sunlight (the perfect, yellow, warm, life giving, carcinogenic sunshine, that is) I took my hours pleasure that Saturday, a week ago in White Oak. I had not known much in my hurried former moments near at hand. I guess I thought I should go out and meet my neighbors, but the rest of the quick were down at Market getting good weight and marveling at the riot this side of entropy. Just as in Summer camp, I went to the quiet place and stood before graves marked, where the marble wasn't illegible or supine: Born 1778; Died 1804. A body beneath my feet that old I usually imagine to be of the peoples my State was named for. They are obviously in state everywhere. We are baffled by the pattern of their fluid culture: unbounded by a curiosity of magnitudes: the very small thrown out, inconsequential, trending on the infinite. They, therefore, have melded with the very stuff of our soils: but a dark stain on the red clay wall of our well. Only slowly melding with us: unnoticed, unreal, uncatalogued, unimportant. Even Minnie is at least a monument next to that smear of trace minerals that The Old Souls leave still with us. But, on the bright side, their remains give off very little radioactivity these days. So, if you made whiskey with them, by accident, the government wouldn't allow you to sell it, by regulation: only the properly radioactive alcohol (made, in other words, of recently living stuff) can be sold. They have a Geiger counter, and per regulation, use it, before sale. This prevents alcohol being made for consumption, in America, with petroleum distillates, or some such thing. And... if you have a Geiger counter, you can check the sleight remains and dark smudges that you occasionally find in our mineral Glacial/ eroded oceanic moraine, here in Indiana. A lack of beeping and you might be communing with a stranger indeed. I'm tempted by an old Geiger counter for sale for seventy bucks down across from the Kroger on Second. They call it, I kid you not, the Ghetto Kroger.

My friend Brennan disappeared two weeks ago. I took a few days for me to hear that his Mom was sick and possibly ailing. She, in fact, did die, which saddened me considerably, given my awareness of his closeness to her (she lived here.) Additionally, I had only just met her, a few weeks back. She had seemed nearly as twinkling and in humor as her son, who walks a hell of a tightrope wherever you string it. She, apparently, was a somewhat liberated woman back in the day, and any ropes meant for her today, she had craftily braided into something decorative, oftentimes presented to the world through her children, or on the porch of her small home, which I had sat in a car outside of from time to time. She was and remains, in short, a person who took these prosaic materials of our curious life, and made them something, which to her, surrounded and nested her within a meaning personal and otherwise. All of that energy remains. I was standing outside her house yesterday, having just seen Brennan for the first time in weeks (at his store.) After work I went by to say hello, and prior to going to a meeting together, we went to water his Mom's plants/ intentions/ gifts to the world/ burdens/ celebrations.... you get the picture. The dog also needed some attention. My prejudice being what it is, I summarily thrust my way into the garden to attempt to find a hydrant and water the flowerpots. In and amidst the thick probity of perennials and other signs of life, on tops of facts of life, on top of sheer dirty tricks of life, I failed to locate the, now obviously vanishingly unimportant form of even a hose. I called out to the dog walker for help. He told me that the hydrant was where it would normally be, which is beneath a good chunk of sequestered carbon dioxide, glowing menacing green. I parted the vegetation, beaming a bee square in the face and gained purchase on the giver of life's elixir. Piece of cake!

Standing beneath a behemoth fir tree, and before some Neo-Classical arborvitae, I wondered at the house and garden of Brennan's late mother while watering, looking for all the neighborhood like a bum peeing
in that saintly woman's Zinnias. Careful not to encourage the plants too much, I turned off the water, which, went about as well as turning it on, and while waiting for the dog to bring Brennan back, I snooped around the property. His Mom was a champion finder of valuable stuff, and the yard had little grace notes of her canny capabilities all over it. Most of the stuff was beneath the celebration of this particular season, but, some was not. I looked at the stuff that was not.

Ducking beneath Spaceship Fir Tree, I went around the side of the house to see if the Earth really did continue back there, and sure enough, even some of the small house did as well, in the spectral light of that Gymnosperm. Along the foundation wall (not leaking!) of the house ran a ladder, which my criminal mind noticed, to its pride, and my shame was unlocked , and I smiled at the prospect of ripping anyone like Brennan and his Mom off. Such is the manner in which rather effective phantoms, or Banshees are born. Then I noticed that upon the ladder was what looked like some very oddly colored squirrels. Upon closer inspection the squirrels turned out to be small kittens, three of them, one white, the others who knows. One of them darted into a hole exactly the size of their bodies, small but not tiny. I walked to the front of the house and garden, and saw Brennan coming out of the front door. "Hey," I said, "did your mom have cats?"

"Yeah," he said, "she has one in the house." At least, he said something like that.

"Well," I said, "she's got kittens living in the crawlspace. Do you suppose she was feeding them?"

Ever the investigator of aesthetic appeal he asked me, "long or short haired?"

I gave him a look that forms one part of the basis for our friendship. It wasn't flattering to either of us.

"Do you honestly think I know how long their hair was? I thought they were rats for Chirstsake!" I pleasantly suggested.

His endurance of my over reaction was the sort of look he often gets while enduring noise coming from my direction. He was, no doubt, weighing something toward a rate I can't fathom. We both were smiling. Kittens are after all, a smiling variety of vermin.

"I'll need to catch them somehow. Do you know how to trap them?" he said, eventually.

"You're on your own there, buddy. By the way, who planted those arborvitae, your Mom?"

"You mean the pine tree? That was our first Christmas tree, twenty-four years ago." he said.

I didn't mean the tree. Though, given what he'd just told me, I had trouble emoting much that was intelligent.

"I guess we should be glad you didn't plant six of them, huh?" I said, more in wonder, looking up at the thing, then anything.

He gave me the gift of his laughter. I guess I'm partial to people who are tolerant.

While driving to a meeting, I asked Brennan a little more about the last two weeks, and with great calm and very much out of character, he slowly related some of the details of the passing of his mother. He told me that they had wanted to bury her in Kokomo (I think) but that the expense was somewhat crushing, and given all the other things that needed doing they had settled on a place in town.

"And where is she buried?" I asked him.

"We buried her in White Oak, " he said.

I am obviously off today, given the length of this post. When I have finished typing these words, and attended to some people who asked my attention, I am going to go where I have never been asked for anything. But, it will in some senses not be a return. For the sod is turned over, and some ashes have been placed upon a deliberate spot particular to no soul who still commands the difficult carriage of our burdens, and our gratitude. To the shade of some trees I will step... their shadows soon enough their own resting place. And to the edge of a grave not yet marked even by a stone from her children, the vernal green that followed her will be gone: but return. I will stand there with her, and Minnie, and with the others in White Oak. Only paces from my home, and but a few from my habits. I know nothing of their place and time to which I too must return. But I will stand there none-the-less for a friend, and myself, and from those habits, apart again, as ever, in summer camp; in half of life.

(This is for Brennan, who I told, "I hadn't realized how much I care about you." when he returned. Such cognizance need not be repeated. And also for Harlequin, who has her own realms, shorn from this half. To return, Harlequin, as the grieving are often asked, is, I think, an unfair request, given the unity of life and of death. We are shorn, yes, but the world is united. I can not be human and with Minnie and all the rest. With grief, I believe connections are none-the-less made. We owe no-one a return, a birth, or an innocence. Thanks for your friendship. And your honesty. I suppose it is sad, to say nothing of dicey, to make so plain a case, as is my habit, for the beauty of pain. But there it is.)

The Unbearable Lightness of Ancestory

2011-05-29T23:35:00.000-05:00

It doesn't matter to whom the viscera go, but rather whom holds that quill which might dribble the ink of record. To the far from pacific, to say nothing of rested, in Heaven, this sad burden of History has passed to the hands of their children: us. As with most things inherited: beauty, health, wealth, intelligence... the gifted can hold readily their privilege, but make of mockery of its use. A rich man will spend a dollar in pleasure no more readily than he will stroke his fancy clothes, like a pet, all weekend. He can be forgiven what he has forgotten: he lives in the base of his brain. A thousand dollar palace of withdrawl: only to return when, Jesus willing, his thrill is gone. How sharp the stony floor of the beach, where, the ecstatic comber plays. How heavy the ectoplasmic hand of his ancestors: yet his excuse is at hand, for father, mother, grandmother, uncle; soon, he will be dead like you.

There the monolith of innocence. No touch to crumble it's mortar. No mark, even, of the craftsman, or woman. Simply the blank cry of hunger, the curdling scream of abandonment. How we sophists smile as we remember a time when we could look away from the edifice of our making: our grizzled sculpture scraped with paw marks of atonement. Do we stand, so marked, to any account? From the eye of science we're but vessels/ from the eye of religion the serfs of both king and our nature/ from the eye of our experience we dance through the silent questions of our bodies constant song. "How are you doing?" to another. Awaiting an answer from the self.

With What Will You Ice My (Piece Of) Cake

2011-05-17T19:27:00.001-05:00

Oh, shiver me timbers and pull my leg
It wouldn't be hard, you know
I once met a woman who told me, "Hey,"
You can't have a girl for the gold.

You can make all your millions
And lay Thee down,
To a rest only innocents take
But a beau shouldn't hope for another round
For your loves just the ice on the cake!"

I could tell she meant well... after a spell
Where I heard only cruelty and shame
All the earthly pursuits ("like Hell!")
I despised,
There was something from her I might gain.
Ha! There was something from her I might gain..

I'd been living a life of Riley and Gin
Where I'd open my eye to the day...
Hell had no fancy for the bed I laid in,
But a friend in this man in its way
Yeah, a friend in this man, in its way.

Oh, I guess I'm still in, or counting out
For my plans are anything but laid
It's a bat to the face and a hand so sour
To be hoping for things from a maid
It's a piecemeal job (if you're paid!)

Now please don't be cruel, if I remember you
As the one who had these things to say
Life has it's way, from the red to the blue
From the beggar to fool, from the beggar to fool.
And Death has its way with Whom?
Amd Death its way with Whom?

There are yards filled with men,
So much better than Sin,
And the daisies and granite too
Though a whistlers haste, is a waste, just a waste

For it takes more than observing
Beneath the heavenly pages
More than observing is due
Lest the rock and the weeds request their wages
And shake down a widow or two
And shake down the very few;.

Lest the rock and the weeds request their wages
And shake down a widow or two
And shake down the very few.

Move Over Gentile

2011-05-07T17:50:00.002-05:00

(No joke, some of my best friends are gentiles....)

If bacon could straighten the wandering Jew
Whilst Euclid spins like a pig on a spit
For, I noticed the sidewalk won't give him his due
Since it curves around obstacles... trees.. to wit;

Some say that hunger brings out the tiger in you
Others give lovely and profound advice
Some only love life when they've had a few
Then measure but, once; and cut, oddly, twice.

If taken by odds that you think aren't your due
You might take to praying to God for a bit
The diaphanous hanging warmth of your blues
Blown 'bout by Grace no man can inherit

Once shaken with shame, on this path curlicued
The Classics in shambles... the libraries dump...
By the grave with a veiled but broad daylit widow
Who's head held up high, above shoulders that slump

Ask her, though veil there obscures her eyes,
"Is this a loved one, beneath the old weathered stone?
Whom do you honor with your dress and your guise?
Does the savor of life follow the host?"

Hidden beneath the black fine worked fabric
Through the trick of the light, and tradition too
The eyes of this loved one, turn to your own
And given the voice, the mouth, too, you assume.

"There were stretches, I guess, where I was sometimes unhappy,
Where I hated, at times, who he was, what he'd been...
But, there was joy, and there were moments, circumscribed by our marriage
That gave an address of the person I'd been.

His name was... it's still strange to say that,
Charles L. Cohen, when I took the name,
And it's safe to say, from this grave where I've sat,
Many times I've realized I'd do it again."

Her gloved hand rose, to the edge of her veil,
When the voice therein had finished her words
As she lifted what hid a West Russian face,
I felt my own take a slight pinkish turn.

"We wait all our lives, for things, young man.
Things of the world, recommended and forbidden.
And I wait yet again; do you understand?
But, not for the things that I've already been given."

I looked at her still, silent, form for awhile,
Somewhat speechless, ashamed? I couldn't be certain;
Perhaps, like a monkey, I gave her a smile,
Oh, she beamed back at me, of that be assured.

We turned our sweet mirth to Charles old stone,
I had no desire to ask after its years,
And I took her hand, as we stood there alone,
Some distance from shame, and let fall some tears..

Even The Clever Ought to Do Some Things

2011-04-23T12:28:00.003-05:00

In the course of my advice taking, especially where I am expected to share, it is frequently pointed out that I trend toward intellectualization, and, moreover, that such a trend is, fair to middling, not a great strategy in life. Honestly, I never regarded that as very likely the truth. And,while I'm confident that a resolution to such questions are some distance from the human collective capacity at understanding, still, there are interesting ways to consider that damage caused and, more specifically, the damage I continue to cause, by intellectualization of, what in the end, is very likely to be stuff meant for the sacred; untouched by human minds.

Who doesn't wish to touch what they are intstructed not to? But once touched, who considers the value of the same unaltered? We, by the very nature of our being, sully what we wish to remain pristine: and moreover, complain at the rate (slow) the debauchery takes.... given the consequent lack of benefit to our collective coffers (economy.) This view is unlikely to be arugued against by a clearheaded observer, but remains unutterable in the company of common sense. Sunlight must be expended in the creation of energy... no matter how much you might which to bottle it. Even on a cloudy day.

What is less romantic than intellectualization? Your lady calls you (these days) while you drive home. Once you get there, from the sound of her voice you can expect certain (surprise) lovely feelings. It can't always be this way... so, no fool, you have the rational response. While smiling, you move toward the refrigerator... while smiling she takes you to bed. While smiling, later, you remove your leg from her twisted limbs. While smiling she forces you to lay victim to a backrub. While moaning at the fact that this can't be the same life you, now, distantly recall sometimes sucks, you somehow manage to fumble at some kind of reciprocation to her talented removal of all pain in your short, harsh existence. She looks deep into your eyes, and a very slight glassiness developing, as if she's just remembered that nothing, including very much yourselves, stays the same, she says, "how bout some beer and a movie... and please, sweetheart, smoke a cigarette. Two or three won't kill you, and its drives me wild." You're looking at her, wondering at her. You reply, "By all means, I'll take you up on that offer, sweetie. You'll have to excuse me, however, for the sheer sense of astonishment that I feel, when I consider, as I have been this entire evening, that you are bound for nothing more, in the end, then heat death."

The look, as is entirely appropriate, she gives, is probably less elegant than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but, unquestionably promises a great deal more, in terms of human affairs and actual living, then any discourse on entropy could ever, ever, ever promise. Yet, here we are, Lord.

Electrons (basically elegantly "supposed" concepts) do a great deal of stuff, as they make their way from the chloroplasts of plants and find their way to your girlfriends face. But that doesn't mean she is joking, when she extorts that molested sunshine to tell you, "you probably shouldn't talk when I'm enjoying myself. There's a sort of square of the distance relationship there." Harsh.... but hey, they say in some Arab cultures women are the repositories of shame and consequence. In my culture they are thoroughfares of electrons taking the scenic route. And do we men know it? Go to jail. Hang out on a ship of (generally recognized as) fools. The VIP electrons you encounter there will pretend they're Nutrinos.

All the same... cleverness and amusement can only distance a dyed in the wool fool for so long. Eventually he will question the nature of coitus en flagrante. Which is not exactly a first person sort of thing. Though it should be? She nods. Then... she shakes her head so sadly. "Your mouth is a journey some thoughts shouldn't take."

It's nothing personal, honey, my thinking. "Oh," she replies, the word containing so very much meaning that you just forgot about the promise of robots, forever. Ray Kurzweil appears between you and says, magic being nothing less then technology yet developed, "you know, Andy, all this relationship needs, is a dash of nano-technnology, given the trends..." She politely, charmingly, and skillfully asks Mr. Kurzweil to leave. Then, when you ask if you should go as well, she turns, places her oddly smooth, attractive feet on the floorboards (which, are anything, but classicaly definable as "attractive." Only the human perceptual frame can allow the foot to be nothing less than a foot.) Her back is as you imagine. But her back is also real. She says, "I flipped a coin in my head." You ask, "why did you do that." She says, "He came up first."

On your way to your home in the car, while driving, you remember her back, and assume it hasn't changed. But, four years later you will have trouble recalling her entire appearance. Which, will do wonders for your hard faught attempt to never metion to your new love, that four year old day, which your new love wouldn't guess in a million years to gift you with, the requieted, back rub, film and booze and cigarettes, part. Which is fine. You've willed a new kind of bovine attentiveness toward women, which, outside of certain sparkling exceptions, where you both are chatting like schoolgirls, works far better than Cartesian curiosity (to say nothing of detachment.)

Of course, shockingly, none of this has a thing at all to do with girls. They are as subject to the ravages of philosophical objectivication as men. It's just, your friends gift you with silences... the women are body snatched. One disturbs more than the other. Though, it could be argued, that it's frankly disturbing for a grown woman to explain what a bore is to a bore. It's isn't exactly ice cream beneath a high intensity discharge light. On a hot summer night.

Beside excellent advice as to how you might make your ankles seem bulkier (with big socks) the Second Law of Thermodynamics is impractical. My legs would pass on a woman. And women DO pass on them. Then, like some strange foreigner straight off the boat, a woman comes along and wants to conspire with you to confuse people as to the outside diameter of your, what, femur? Tibia? "It matters?" she says. Reminding you of how much you like listening to her talk to her mother. What is that strange muscularity of the human voice, Hal? Sing me a song Hal. Sing it like you used to. Very funny the robot doesn't say. Very very funny, mean human.

She reads these very words.... this one.... and this one... and this. And despite the fact that you, meaning me, regard.... this... as somewhat amusing, she gives you an empty looks, then squares her jaw and says, "You know, Andy... not so differently than my German mother, I have an affection for the stuff that is tangible, the stuff that is real. You might regard your bank balance as an abstraction, I regard it as the most reliable of bedrock. It is not my intention to mine it. I appreciate it, like Hillary might, 'because it's there.' Or rather, as sometimes is the case, 'because it's [not]. That the balance on the screen is made of electrons, reminds me of the sound of my Daddy's heart, when my ear lies on his chest. His heart, like the electrons, is not for me. But it's so reliable, Andy. You know what I mean? Only rarely does the fungus leave the lichen. Only when it is no longer needed. You see how much less reliable my presence in your life seems when I talk this way?" I nod, and say, "I hear you loud and clear, but just now I need to read about lichen." "And listen to the song "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" she implies with that bizarrely expressive fury. And I didn't even spurn her. Formally.

Only a fool wouldn't be frustrated. I sent a friend of mine, a therapist in a sense, a long early draft of my still unperfected essay/ blogpost "Nightmares For Sawyers", and he never responded to it. Most people regard lengthy expressions of contemplative minds, a sort of, unvarnished good. Extremely experienced social workers and psycologists are far more interested in normative behavior. "Nightmare For Sawyers" is probably going to one day be a somewhat foundational essay in a collection I'll put together from this blog, about ecology, and congnitive implications in my/our consideration of the "natural" world and the more pedestrian one (questions of artificial unity and division.) All that my friend wanted was a garden variety letter from me, about a garden variety foundation. Love thrives on bricks and mortar. No sonnet could outdo news of your homefire burning. In such a light, the poet is the tawdry guy who earned his reputation. Luckily, History regards the dead as somewhat necessarily so. And once in the "proper" condition, History can make space that need not include all the details of your County Courthouse Platbook. But while your alive, that Platbook will tell a dull tale that amounts to a path more likely to include the smile of a maid. Shakespeare be damned.

As is the case with both Hal's song (in 2001) and Bogie's song (in Casablanca) the question comes down to "fundamentals applying" and the impermenence of existence. Will it be the "bicycle" or the "carriage"? You better be a better singer, in somewhat better condition then Hal, should you wish Daisy to mistake your bicycle chariot for a fundamental thing, upon application. She may, and properly so if she's a smart woman, apply your query to file thirteen.

The last thing in the world required in even this pedestrian circumstance is some kind of intellectualization. Any fixation of circumstance to the firmament of "understanding" must include some serious practical footwork. Outside that, your dreaming.

It's funny, but, despite my fears, at times, I'm not dreaming. This exercise, while for any number of real and imagined women, friends, family and yes, you, dear reader, is not a dream. It's an exploration of the insanity implied my routine cognitive iteration. At some point you step off and say, "all right." I know certain things, and they apply to certain things. The danger is to go for knowing when doing is much better. I have suffered plenty of times an ignorance of that fact. However, my humor, here, so inexpertly applied, is meant to review for myself, and hopefully, you, that yeah, I'm a work in progress, but I deserve the life which includes attention to the basics, but also the gifts of the poets embrace.

And I promise to consider the square of the distance, dear.

"No community can be truly had, where there is not space for the intolerable to abide." ----I forget who said this, but it's a key theme of my annoyingly thoughtful friend, Jim.

What My People Call A Plaza

2011-02-09T09:31:00.000-06:00

Growing up a white kid from the suburbs afforded me a lot of opportunities, and pleasures. I ran in the woods. I ran in my neighbors yards. I ran on the sidewalks of my town as well. Living in a small town, traffic wasn't too bad, and sometimes there were no sidewalks. But that was ok, since there were very few cars, and most of the time I was in a residential neighborhood where nobody ever walked except for recreation.

After I dropped out of college and moved back to my home town, I quickly came to realize that I more or less could not afford to live there. Rent was more expensive than I wished. And opportunities mostly presented themselves outside of the suburbs... in town. So eventually, for a lot of different reasons, I got a job delivering pizza and managing a pizza joint at the corner of Westlane (71st street) and Michigan Rd. Also known as 421, Martin Luther King, and Northwestern Ave. A historically interesting corner of Marion County, Metro Indianapolis.

This corner was a place I had grown up driving past, and being in the near vicinity to. There was a child care Kiddie College just a block or so away. A number of stores, and dry cleaners, some of which my family continued to use for nearly twenty years (more or less my entire childhood.) And, most of all, for this story, the grocery store, on the corner, that anchored a thirty year old shopping strip, called Westlane Shopping Center. It was a corner I was extremely familiar with... especially from running errands for my parents. And yet, it was always a place I had visited by car. To this day, I have never visited it in any other way. And yet, as I came to discover, working at a pizza place on this prominent corner of my part of town.... many, many people in that neighborhood did not own a car. They used public transport, or walked, wherever they had their business.

As I settled into my job delivering pizza to the neighborhood, I relished learning more about the geography of that part of my hometown: the Northwest corner of Indianapolis. For one thing... for all the times I had driven my vehicle south on Michigan or Zionsville Road... once I got to 71st and Michigan, I really didn't know so well where the rest of the landmarks in town were. It didn't really occur to me, immediately, that St. Vincent's Hospital was more or less a few city blocks away on 86 St. down Harcourt Rd. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that "short cut" out. Even though every map of the area had the same black and colored lines connecting the hospital to my new workplace. The map in my head, as I was to learn and be somewhat philosophically curious about, did not comport with the map on paper and, perhaps most of all, the roads themselves. As you might guess, I am naturally bad with geographical situational awareness, and this new job of knowing the best route through an area I naturally had a poor abstract concept of (on multiple levels) amounted to a very interesting puzzle for a hilariously long time for Mr. Coffey.

In a sense, I simply pretended that I belonged in a job that I was naturally bad at. And worked in a neighborhood that was a bit rougher than any I'd ever spent more than just a few minutes in. The combination fascinated me.

Perhaps the third day I worked at the pizza joint, a new 17 year old kid, named Scott came in the door looking for a job. He called out the name of Jaykita, a girl who worked there making pizza's and answering the phones. Jay exclaimed, "hey!" and ran around the counter in an obvious act of familiarity and reconnection. Being new, and knowing neither of them, I just kept to myself. But, as it turned out, Jay and Scott knew each other from school and Church. But, neither had seen each other recently, since Scott had been in jail. Now that he'd been released, Scott was looking for a job. Within a few days he began working at the pizza joint. And a few days after that, the manager asked me if I'd give him a ride home, down 71st to a somewhat bad apartment complex called Timber Falls. "Sure," I told my manager. "As long as he don't mind holding the pizza's while I deliver them first."
"No problem," said Scott generously, "no problem at all."
So, while delivering the pizza's, and with Scott in the car, I asked him if he'd mind just sitting there, while I ran in each building with the pizza, and left the car still running. "Where else am I gonna go?" he asked.
As if to answer the question while I drove to the next house, Scott told me, "Say, this is a nice ride. Olds Cutlass Sierra... where'd you get this car?"
"Well," I told him, "unfortunately my Grandma died. I guess I was given a good deal on her car. I payed a few thousand for it... I guess it was worth about five or six at the time. I got a really good deal from her estate."
"Yeah, this car is beautiful," said Scott.
Not wanting to seem like a spoiled brat... I just gave him my most convincing "yeah" I could.
"In fact," said Scott, "I'd be tempted to steal this car if it wasn't yours. But, I wouldn't steal your car, man."
We both laughed... "glad to hear that Scott."
I pulled into his neighborhood, waving at the superfluous guard at the shack at it's entrance. It was not only the one neighborhood with a guard who controlled access to the parking lot--- it was also one of the most dangerous neighborhoods and one of the more expensive section 8 neighborhoods. The guard was a way to confuse people into spending more on a worse place to live. You'd call this irony, if it were in any sense different than simple greed.

All of this was between 6.6 and 7 miles from my childhood home. A remarkable statistic, which provided no little shame to my heart and mind over the years.
And that was how I met Scott. It became a ritual to take him home... and it became a welcome sight to see him walk in for a pizza to take home to his Mom, or more likely... to take to a girl. He had a fast smile, and a clever way of including everyone in his orbit. He was tough, but easy on others... and he didn't seem to be up to anything too terrible these days... though he was always, like most people I worked around at the joint, up to something.
The years passed and I came and went from the pizza place to work on a farm and start a cleaning service. On and off I worked for the pizza joint for two and a half years. Finally, I found myself one November without a car, home or job. I was twenty-three years old and had mined everyone in my life clean of ore... and I was more or less at my wits end. My car had broken down in a more or less safe place.. so I could sleep in it until it got too cold. But, I needed a job to make money for somewhere to live and eat. I needed a solution to my circumstance.
One day I called the old pizza joint, thinking they probably had no jobs available, and one of the guys I used to work with there, John, was working and answered the phone.
"Hey, Andy, how are you?" he said in his utterly confident way.
"Hey John, I'm all right. What are you up to these days, delivering pizza?" I asked, figuring he'd make fun of me for asking such an obvious question.
"No, man, I'm the General Manager these days."
"Your kidding! What would you say if I told you I needed a job?"
"I'd say that's why your calling me," he said.
We laughed.
"Yeah, you know. It is."

The next day I had my uniform, a place to live, and a vehicle to drive. I would be working from 9 AM to 2:30 AM every day, with overtime. Within a week I would make more money than I'd made in the previous month and a half. I made nearly a thousand dollars a week. Long hours, overtime and tips.

John was doing a fantastic job running the place. It's numbers had grown enormously over what I had seen in previous years. I had managed the place a little and knew enough that I could see his delivery times had been whittled down to the very edge of what physics and municipal law (and perhaps a bit of poor judgment) could allow. In short: the times were fast.

This resulted in low return calls... happy customers... hot pizza's... and more money. Drivers could expect on a six hour shift to make between $50-70 in tips. Plus minimum wage. And... I was clocking thirty plus hours in overtime per week. My checks were grotesquely large... I had no time off, but with Christmas coming I didn't care. My phone call to John meant I could tow my Grandma's old car to Scott's and ask how much he wanted for it. He gave me a poker face and the car a pass. I paid for its disposal at a metals facility.

By the following late February I had an apartment, near by, was off the streets and had been promoted to the assistant manager of the place. More or less, I closed it down every night with shift managers. I worked five days a week, and had two days off. I still made great money, plus occasional extras in tips, ect.

I did notice, unfortunately, that John had a new girlfriend who was sixteen years old. I felt like I should at least be civil, since John didn't seem to understand what I was talking about when I said the words, "statutory rape." I am not proud that I didn't walk away at the moment I learned of the relationship.

He hired his new squeeze, of course. And one day while we were opening the restaurant, she ran to the bathroom in a manner that gave a person the sense that she had to get sick. I looked at John, "you simply gotta tell me, now, that she might have the flu."
John smiled broadly, perhaps with even a tinge of pink in his cheeks, "no. I think she's pregnant."
"From one of her other boyfriends, right?" I said.
He guffawed. "No, Andy. I think we're gonna have a kid."
"Let's not get the cart before the horse, here, old man. She just had breakfast. Now the breakfast is in the toilet. Your other women had something like ten kids over the last twenty years.. and now, your picking out names?"
"I'm pretty excited," he said, as Nadia exited the bathroom.
"You ok?" I asked her. I knew that such a question was patently ridiculous in the neighborhood I was in, under the circumstances which she seemed to accept, and given she probably still had a bit of her breakfast to clean off her lips.
"Yeah," she said, "morning sickness sucks."
I don't know what the look on my face was exactly just then... but it was the same look that makes my friends laugh today... when all you can do, is agree exponentially.

A few days later I was exiting my car and John walked out of the pizza place toward me, with huge tears in his eyes. "Nadia bled out today," he said, throwing his arms around me.
Feeling the shuddering and heartfelt sobs that were coming from my totally screwed up friend made me confused as hell. But, somehow, I patted his back, and kept my sense that the world was sometimes an exceedingly balanced place to myself.
"There, there," I remember thinking, "surely one of your other twelve known children's birthdays is coming up soon. Look out for quality time." He was really sobbing.
"Your my best friend, Andy."
"Well.... thanks, John. I'm sorry about Nadia. Mother Nature just sometimes spares one heartbreak with another. But that doesn't make it easy."
The rest of the day I felt like the biggest jerk in history, and therefore was completely unprepared or aware of what far more important things had entered my head and ears over the previous months. I'm almost always as stupid as I need to be.

The next day was pay day, and as per usual I walked the length of the strip center to the grocery store (the pizza joint was on the far end) to use my bank, which was within it. Depositing my check, and feeling sort of amazed for the thousandth time that I was being paid so much to do so little, I was walking back toward the store, on the sidewalk in front of a CVS, when I saw Scott walking my way. Scott, in the intervening years had cleaned up his act. He looked wonderful, clean and stylish... like only the gals and guys in that neighborhood could pull off. Not in my wildest honky dreams was I ever going to walk down the street looking as good as Scott on his average day. His hair corn-rowed and his shoes a few paychecks down. His walk, which portrayed a canny awareness mixed with a stoic toughness, either of which would have simply been lies had I the ability to transmit them in my gait (I didn't and don't. I carried a baseball bat, when delivering in those neighborhoods. When a nice customer would see the bat, upon which I rested their pizza, and inevitably asked, "what's that for?" I always replied, "to beat people up with, Maam. Perhaps you noticed the size of my wrists?" Generally the person would either frown in disapproval, or laugh. Both couldn't decipher my meaning. And both were successful in creating their own.
I was mugged four times at gunpoint, and shot at once, over those two and one-half years. Fifty or sixty times I was approached where I saw a man look at the bat in my hands (a large, expensive softball bat, and a 24" Maglight on my belt) and turn and walk away. I usually called out, "Where I come from we always say Howdy!" I'm ashamed to admit I fantasized about being attacked... and acted this out a few times. Then again, sometimes before you knew what had happened, someone was flossing your teeth with a Glock.)
Countless people I never saw none-the-less never approached because of the bat and my changed bearing as I became used to being attacked.
There was also the unpleasant business of getting myself out of trouble at the bar with John. The less said about that the better. It was probably a good thing that I never saw any family or friends in those years. Sometimes I looked pretty crazy. I'd forget I had a busted lip or black eye, or bruises on my arms and face, and I'd go to Wal-Mart or worse, the Mall. I'd look at some kid in the store aisle as I passed a family walking to get some motor oil or what have you. The Mom would grab her kid away from me, as if I were a wild animal. As a confirmed member of white middle class suburban heaven... I could do nothing but laugh at such an action by a good parent. These days it doesn't strike me as nearly so funny.

So, walking back to the store... in the somewhat safer circumstances of no longer working in the streets, I was in a great mood that day. Money lining my pockets. My expenses low. Hardened by my experiences, and made far more safe by my promotion. I didn't know what I was going to do with myself eventually... but for the time being they were planning on just giving me the store, and giving John another poor performer, in an even larger market, to turn around. We were certainly running huge numbers. Sometimes hundreds of pizza's catered before lunch even started. When a driver couldn't make it, John and I would both pocket fifty bucks from the gratuity, before the store would even open. We were minting money... on a Tuesday morning.

Like I said, I looked up and there's old Sugar Man himself, Scott. "Hey Scott. How are you on this fine, fine Friday afternoon?"
"Oh, I'm okay," said Scott, looking over my right shoulder and turning as if to check for bad business at his five o'clock. He wouldn't make my gaze.
"Great," I said, "I guess I'll see you in a bit, at the store. You work tonight?"
"Naw," he said, "I got stuff to do, and I'm not scheduled." He said most of this while walking away. Something was wrong.
Scott had been going to the most prominent local Baptist Church. He'd given himself fully to the Church's activities, and programs. And, as should be the case, he found the values in his fellow parishoners to be worthy of emulation. He'd been doing a great job with that, and seemed to be thriving. I stood there a little worried, from his tone, that something was throwing his game off. I really cared about him, and wanted him to be OK. I was rooting for this guy I'd met straight out of jail. He had never stolen my car. In many ways, his story had stolen my heart, however.
On his way back, Scott looked up, and his mien was not that of an old friend. "Still here?" he said, without smiling.
"Yeah, man. You've got me worried about you," I said.
"Worried about me?" he said, somewhat accusingly. "Andy, I'm worried about you. Aren't you?"
"No. I'm not. Why are you worried?" I asked.
"I'm worried that you don't seem to have a problem with John's behavior as long as he still gives you your money," said Scott.
"Do you think he's stealing, Scott?" I asked, genuinely interested.
"No, you fool," he said, disgusted. "I don't know why I'm wasting my time talking to you. Can't you see he's screwing his help?"
"Well... sure, he shouldn't have hired Nadia. That's unethical. I'm pretty sure the corporation is more in love with their numbers then they would be proving something in a court of law. But that's just my sense of things."
"Naw, Andy, they're not going to need no court of law," he said, looking out over the pine trees above Westlane Laundermat.
"Well," I said, "I agree... I'm mean, Scott, look around."
"That's what you need to do," he said, looking straight in my eyes. "You know the truth, but you aren't paying any attention. I used to respect you. But you are putting your friendship ahead of the right thing here. He's got you fooled. And a smart guy, Andy, who acts like a fool? What do you call that?"
"Well fine, Scott. I'm a fool then. What else is going on? Is he stealing?"
"He might be stealing, but I'm not gonna worry about any of that. He's screwing everyone, Andy. Everyone! Everyone under twenty-five and female. That's how he does the schedule, man. That's how they get their hours. You didn't know this."
I was having, I admitted, a bit of trouble focusing just then. My heart growing with gratitude toward this wonderful, tough, smart man; I felt like an idiot. And my wallet was starting to feel thinner (though truthfully, also a bit familiar). I spoke to John about the allegations. He agreed and he denied. But mostly he just seemed bored by the conversation. It didn't concern him. It was merely about him.

I called my regional and district managers. I told them that I was aware that I had been working for a sexist and fairly conservative corporation since the beginning, but I had to ask if they were aware that their star manager in the area was having trouble keeping his ink pen in the modern style.
"What do you mean by that," said the dumber of the two.
"Well, Terry," I asked him, "when's the last time you dipped your nib? I hope you're recording this conversation. Your star manager, John, has been screwing his employees. This has come to my attention, and I'm sorta figuring you already knew. Then again, I had been sorta paying less attention then I should have.. so. I'm going to help you transfer in a new guy, but after what these girls have been through, and given that in the society I live in today they have no other real choices... I think the ethical thing would be for me to train the new guy, and leave within the month."
And that's more or less what happened. I went and worked for minimum wage in my home town. I had always thought it would be great to work in my home town at this job that had been so dangerous, at 71st St. But, when I got into the actual job in my home town, across from all the old familiar buildings... I just had lost any desire to be associated with the job or company. Within a few weeks I quit. I had three hundred dollars in my pocket. I went to a few organic farms and tried to get a job. They laughed. They didn't know or need me. So, with a rental car I couldn't pay for, and enough cash to make it for less then a week, I drove to Bloomington. I told myself I'd moved. I had visited a few weeks before on a cool May day. Once enough rain fell over my cheeks, I felt just the slightest bit clean for the first time in a few years. Even if I had to sleep beneath the Hostas ( which, the first day I was there, I saw pushing their leaf mould straight off the ground) I would sleep better than I had in months.
I moved to Bloomington and slept in my car for about thirty-five days. I met some new friends and got an apartment and a job within two months. I'd settled in with a girl within fourteen months. I felt slightly sick of, but incapable of leaving my new home town within two years. That's when I knew I'd found my place. And I don't think it was raining that day.

Two years after I moved to Bloomington, I was returning to Indianapolis to visit my therapist and an old friend of mine in Broad Ripple. My usual route to Broad Ripple was over 71st St. past Michigan Rd to Meridian. Mostly for old times sake. I still love Pike Township from New Augusta to Meridian Hills. Memories of childhood and the playing of softball with bad guys heads in the hood, seems fresher than fresh when you've spent a few years around your average well behaved cat from Bloomington. I couldn't even fathom a black eye. And hey, just the other day a woman saw me playing with her kid and asked me if I was married. I didn't ask her why she didn't worry about her child's safety around me. I was glad she noticed how much I love kids. I was glad I noticed how much I loved kids.

Anyhow, I went to see my therapist, Jim, and then went and had dinner and spent the night on my old buddy Daniel's couch. The next morning we went for coffee and scones at the local coffee shop, and I took off, retracing my route back toward my past... toward 71st and Michigan. Noticing that my gas was a bit low for the short trip back to Bloomington, I pulled into the Shell gas station that remains where I used to work for those years... and have driven past my whole life.

While pumping my gas I looked around me.. like everyone pumping gas. I looked over at the window where I once knew all the attendants names: they were thankfully on to greener pastures... I hoped. And I looked to where the public phones were, and noticed, given that someone was on the phone, they obviously, unlike in prosperous Bloomington, got some usage. The man on the phone hung up and turned around. I felt a strange sensation of extreme joy, and a haunting fear. It was Scott. My old friend who straightened me out. Who never would have stolen my Olds. Who looked odd. Then again, he was squinting at me as well.
"Yeah, man. I haven't got any hair left... it's Andy, Scott. I'm uglier than ever."
"Andy... holy.. Andy how you doin..." he called out to me, and walking toward me, I could see he had a pronounced limp.
"I'm OK, man... not making the kind of money I used to in Nap Town. Bloomington is wage slave heaven, and I'm a baker making very little. But I'm happy, and have a decent girl. Things have been worse... as I'm sure you recall."
"Uh," Scott smiled, showing an extremely gapped-toothed and worn smile,"you were all right..."
"Scott," I said, "I wanted to thank you when I left. I never had your phone number.. and when I came back they'd moved the store to Georgetown Rd. I went there and no one had ever heard of you. It's Scott Brinks, right? Brinks?"
"Yeah," he said, trailing a little at the wonder of my remembering. We were both surprised. "Brinks. Scott Brinks."
"Are you doing OK, Scott? You still with pastor Jim, and his troublemaking brothers? It was Boys to Men back then... right? What is it, Jars to Clay these days, coming to see your famous Church in Indy? Trust me, they aren't going to Zionsville."
"Oh, they might be going there, Andy. We're all Christians in the eyes of God."
"I guess I'm as arrogant as ever," I said, in remorse.
Scott laughed, "we're all of that in His eyes as well!"
I smiled, a wave of sadness rushing over me. "God, it's good to see your face."
"You too." he said.
"You know, I'm not a very busy man. Can I give you a ride... can I buy you a coffee or something."
Scott got a somewhat startled look, and gave a sidelong glance, then said, "I got somewhere to be... but I'll see you again."
As always, when it is brought to my attention that someone else isn't feeling exactly as I am, it startled me. He had been being nice. I had been warming up. He'd been being polite.
"Oh, yeah," I said, "of course. Thanks for talking to me. You were like... I don't know, my Virgil to this place, Scott. It would have been impossible to come here, without you. And in the end... you were the reason I left with some of myself intact. "
"You always had something nice to say," Scott smiled sadly, " that I couldn't make sense of. You got rid of that car--- the Olds?"
"Yeah... you wouldn't buy it from me." I said.
"Yeah!" he cried, "you brought that broken down piece of junk and tried to leave it at my house."
"Well..." I said, defensively, "outside of my Uncle's best friend, you were its biggest fan. Besides, I owed you."
"For what?"
"For not stealing it sooner."
We laughed. I did what pathetic memory of our old handshake remained in my stupid honky arm... and gripped his hand, looking into his tired smiling eyes. "Good to see you."
"Yeah, man. Take care."
In his face, and his limp, as he walked away I could see his exhaustion. Only a few iterations away from what should have had happened to me. And frankly, given my nature, he probably had made it far longer than I ever would have. Who knew?
My heart sank, as I got in that car, and turned away from his figure, as he continued down Westlane, on the apron of the street where the pedestrians in that neighborhood walked. There was no sidewalk. Just a flat graded gutter for errant vehicles, plowed snow, and slowly eroding men.

Six months later, another old friend, Jaykita ran into me at the grocery at Westlane Plaza. We laughed about funny memories.. and I asked her why Scott was limping when I had seen him that Spring. Jaykita looked at me strangely, "Scott... Andy; he's died."

He overdosed two months prior.

Knowing that some people can construct a rationale for his demise that could none the less endure my cultures perspectives: it gives me strength to listen sometimes to this heart that he helped to better shape. And it helps me realize that nobody is half as good as they think... nor half as deserving of any fate that is the going wage.

Splenda The Good

2011-02-03T21:55:00.000-06:00

Check out this wicked warrior of serious weirdness: Becky Stern. Wow! My minds reeling.

A Chair, A Book, His Life and Her Cover

2011-02-02T23:40:00.002-06:00

After work today I wanted to get a cup of coffee. So I went to the bookstore and coffee in hand looked around. I oftentimes think to myself while doing stuff at home and around town, "why in the world did I once go to the bookstore and library so much?" And then, like this afternoon, I'll be at the bookstore or library and my mind will be blown by a number of things, and it all comes back to me.

A few weeks ago I was at the bookstore and saw a publication by the folks who do Make magazine. The book was more or less a Chemistry Sets for Dummies book. I pulled it off the shelf convinced it was somehow over selling itself, since such a book, well done, is approaching a holy grail for me... and what do you know? It's really well done. A couple days later I was watching a lecture by a robotics engineer and he casually mentioned a mass spectrometer he built through the ministrations of Make magazine. I'm going to have to subscribe immediately. The Chemistry set book is so incredibly great. It's staggering to me that kids don't receive Chemistry sets these days. That I don't receive Chemistry sets these days. It actually just occurred to me that I should make a few sets and try selling them through some friends. I'll bet you could sell them pretty easily (with a robust waiver, of course.)

Today's finds at the bookstore were pretty amazing, too. I frequently read Taunton Press magazines like all the "Fine...." franchises. They are incredibly well written testaments of the quality not only of certain kinds of human interest, i.e. Carpentry and Crafts. But, also of the soul undergirding many craftspersons endeavors. Sometimes people express very complex worldviews in the simplest of explanations. Building a table becomes a parable of a craftpersons many faceted life. Many of Taunton's articles and the books they get turned into reflect this.

I was looking at the quilting section... I had never really looked very hard at it before. My mother is a wonderful quilter, and has done some stuff with fabric that staggers me. Partially due to her, but really just the inherent beauty of the art and craft of fabric work is something I'd like to pay a great deal more attention to. Textiles as materials rival some of the mathematical genius in nature in terms of their complexity and the ingenuity of their design and manufacture. Without doubt the early twentieth century computers made thorough use of the elaborate encoding cards that told automated looms what to do in the printing of incredibly detailed custom weavings. Coding for fabric threaded the needle (I can't resist) for computers. What other paradigm could have assisted in the mechanization of patterned "loops" of instruction? And, a surprising quantity of delicious math goes into my Moms quilts. Though, she doesn't often put it exactly that way. I see a lot of quilts as gorgeous meldings of soulful human sentiment into the simplified fractals that most directly provide us with pleasure in both the natural and handmade world. Digital quilts on TV aren't so popular precisely because the symbolism and aesthetics of quilts are less then half their soul. They are first and foremost the masterworks of ingenious human beings... oftentimes like a skater executing a killer trick, gleeking out with incredible complexity and verve. At least that's what my Mom does. Quilt or die, Maam!

I noticed beside the quilting books something else. And to my shame, given what I wrote above, I temporarily forgot about quilting. The books were all about furniture design. I'd never seen but a few of them. The carpentry section doesn't include them. While none of them are particularly amazing, looking through the books was pretty cool. One of the chair builders I read had an extremely cool sense of humor. He was also wicked honest. He said he frequently autopsies his old chairs and looks at their joinery (cutting them in half.) This practice had caused him to make some pretty significant changes to his practices. He mentions, for example, not making mortise holes so snug that expansion and contraction causes a crack. He found a number of causes of cracks in his work, and eliminated the offending practice to the best of his ability. He also explained something I frequently wonder about when I am in my friend's antique shops. The chairs in these shops can be well over a hundred years old, and in some cases, will obviously never have been disassembled. With nothing but glued up joinery and nothing but abuse to look forward to, how in the world do chairs last? (how many valuable objects do we abuse more than a chair? I was looking with admiration upon the ratty old wooden chair of the bookstore I was in. Funny how the book was a window into what I was sitting on... making me more alive with wonder.) Some really fascinating answers were provided by the author. Basically, three things give chairs their strength. The first is materials. Chairs, real stiled, crafted chairs without fasteners, joined together. These are made of prescribed materials, chosen by tradition for strength, in a manner that truly puts them in a category pretty far away from any carpentry I ever do. Their woods are oftentimes from the oak family, and split along the natural lines of tension in a tree, rather than sawn. This is believed to give the wood extra strength (I'm convinced it does not... however, like many other human convictions, the belief sustains a credo that infects the rest of the process with confidence, honesty and truth.) The second is that chairs are fastened together, with adhesives and clever joinery. Joinery has a surface area which, provided the adhesive is doing its job, dwarfs a fastener, in terms of it's ability to withstand abuse. I've written elsewhere as to the astonishing lifespan of colonial homes in America that were pegged together. Nails and screws turn to dust eventually. Joinery turns to dust on a horizon that, scaled to human lifespans, is a nearly spiritual matter. And the last thing that makes chairs last so long is what Buckminster Fuller called "Tensegrity." Tensegrity is the merging of the words "tension" and "integrity." Any civil engineer will tell you that you must exert tension in order to keep a road surface above a river... or, a building above six stories. Try spanning a great distance with an unreinforced concrete beam. Stone has compressive strength, but under tension (or hell, just through gravity alone) stone cracks and breaks. That's why you'll find building materials of stone in bricks, slabs, and other large items of great thickness. A beam of stone would break under tension. Buckminster Fuller noticed that by creating skeletons of tensioned "bones" in his vehicles and architectural designs, he could span distances that freed him up for organic shapes, and more biological aesthetics that justifiably made him famous (even if round spaces are a disaster to the rather square sensibilities of human civic engagement.) It's worth pointing out that Cathedral makers approached Fullers ideas through their iterative development of spidery stonework and buttresses. The chair-maker I read explained how he devised flaws in his designs which caused the mortises of his chairs to only grudgingly accept their mating tenons. By forcing these unwilling joints together, his chairs become unified under stress and tension. It is this tension in classic chair design (like many pre-industrial arts, barely articulated except through tradition) that causes the chairs to remain whole, long after their joints glue turns to dust. Really? Really. The "flaw" that is often pointed out as a component of many traditional cultures folk art forms... like an ancient tapestry reveals an interrupted series with a slightly flawed instance of variation.... turns out to be a component of some of the most Cartesian seeming objects. For all the hurtling desire of a chair maker to give his crafted object strength and perfect 4 legged poise upon the plane of the floor--- their exists in his endeavor the dope of imperfection.

I also read some of a brand new book about consciousness and how it arose from the dynamics between the brain and body, not only the brain. It's author is a Neuro-Scientist, and some of the sentences in it cracked me up. At one point the author was describing certain organized dances between different neurons and the body and he flatly states after a few paragraphs of fairly esoteric anatomic and pathological description, "it is thought that those phenomena may amount to what we experience as "feelings." I'll remember that next time I piss a woman off. "You don't know what I feel!" she'll say. "I have some idea..." I'll unwisely reply, taking an book off the shelf to read a bizarre passage. Love...

It's remarkable how cognitive science and robotics have allowed us to begin to question the deity status of our human brains. While only a fool would claim that the brain is even remotely understood (look up work that is being undertaken to map it some time. Experts who are responsible for actually mapping neurons, like a street map, aren't too depressed.... in case you don't know this, we aren't even remotely close to doing this. The experts say they figure one day we'll have some robots which might be able to automate the mapping to absurd scales of endeavor, which might get it done within a human lifetime. I more or less believe that. And yet, what it intimates is that the human brain, physiologically, is like an inward universe. That I have one (I tap my skull) right here, right now, is funny. My strange little priceless patch of the infinite. And can I fly across this eight pound Universe? No more, really, than I can it's somewhat heavier sibling. The reason I mentioned questioning this remarkable organ, is that Cog Sci is really just what they used to call artificial intelligence. It is mapping, aping, and attempting to replicate the astonishing biological emergence of cognition, that is the driver these days of the best questions about the brain. And much of the modeling (proto- cognition) that happens in the brain turns out to be highly assisted by our bodies continual feedback. The conversation between the body and brain turns out to be some pretty astonishing architecture. And it just might be that all of what we colloquially call human thought, feeling and comedy happens in that space, in that conversation. Not the product of a particular structure of the brain. Not a function of form or intention at all. (a wonderful lesson in any case.... sense I suppose I was something like 33 years old before I realized that evolution does not intend the improvements that are owed to it. There isn't a hierarchy of evolutionary direction. And natural selection will just as happily deselect traits human beings regard as dear and valuable, as it surely has encouraged the same: but crucially, through no intention, or "improvement" of any kind. Sight and flying evolved into existence and out of existence tens to hundreds of times. Natural selection does not prefer a trait: it reflects, as a theory of ecology, that traits come and go by their impact upon the fertility and survivability of the species. That is why eugenics are actually not Darwinian, though they are frequently called that, and for all practical purposes you'd have to be a jerk to deny the colloquial meaning of "Darwinian." The survival of the fittest. But what is fit, to the maul of Mama Nature? Surely not the perfect fit to some Southern Hoosier's presumptions! But, none the less, the improvement of the species by cunning genetic manipulation and breeding has nothing whatsoever to do with the underlying principles that Darwin developed his views through.)

One of the best things about the book was a beautifully designed cover showing the title and a large letter "i." Next to the "i" there were some variations on a filled circle that seemed merely koan like at a glance. Then your mind sort of kicks in and you realize that the "i" is obviously punning the subject of the book, which is clever enough. And the little half and whole circles are stages of a rising sun, ending with the dot on the eye. The number of archetypes this clean little execution touches is staggering. And it hits you like a shot of bourbon on the tongue of a babe. I could have bought it for the cover alone.

I Couldn't Resist

2011-01-31T11:01:00.002-06:00

Just now, when I should be biting into a sandwich with both hands, instead of operating this silly machine... I got what was coming to me, looking for a list of pertinent info, from my laudable local Building Department. About ready to give up, a small feeling of guilt, and moral embarrassment came over me: I hadn't looked at the Frequently Asked Questions. Like most human beings, I'm allergic to instructions and FAQ's. Especially when I am hungry and even more so at lunch time. The list begins:

You'll notice.... Taxes, Drugs, and Death play a significant role when people look to their County Gov't for help. Perhaps my favorite question is: "Where is my loved one being taken?" Depending on who's asking the question, and the state of mind, composure, health, ect. of the loved one... it's hard to imagine how to answer such a question. The way the County handles the question, it becomes obvious that for Monroe County, "Loved One" is a euphemism for dead relative. Oh well... How do you add or remove someone from your property (Q12)? Provided they aren't a "loved one," that is a wonderful question. Welcome to Southern Indiana.

Q1.When are taxes due?

Q2.What is Drug Court?

Q3.Why is the Coroner involved in the death of my loved one?

Q4.I'd like to change the mailing address for my tax bill. Is that possible?

Q5.Where is my loved one being taken?

Q6.I re-financed my mortgage. I was told that I had to re-file my Homestead deduction. Is t...

Q7.I just bought a new house. What deductions can I get

Q8.Where do I file my property tax deductions?

Q9.What is the deadline for filing deductions and exemptions?

Q10.What do I need to bring to the Auditor's office with me to file deductions?

Q11.When are Monroe County property taxes due?

Q12.How do I add or remove someone from my property?

Q13.What are your transfer fees?

Q14.How do I find out who owns a specific property?

Q15.Can I pay my property tax by credit card?

Q16.If I call to request information about my property tax what information do I need to provide for you...

Q17.Can I change the name on my tax bill?

Q18.What information do I need to provide to the Treasurer’s office to obtain a mobile home title transf...

Q19.How much were my taxes in previous years?

Q20.Can I find information about taxes, such as payments received, taxes due, etc?

Q21.Who is eligible for Drug Court?

Q22.How does Drug Court work?

Q23.How do I find out more information about Drug Court?

Q24.How do I make changes to my benefits?

Q25.How do I contact PERF?

Q26.How are jurors selected?

Q27.What are the requirements to serve as a juror?

Q28.What are the different types of jury trials?

Q29.What is the difference between “eligible for duty” and serving as a juror?

Q30.If my juror number is read what does that mean?

Q31.How long does a juror have to serve?

Q32.Are there any exemptions from jury service?

Q33.Where do I park if I’m required to report for jury service?

Q34.Do I get paid as a juror?

Q35.How many jurors are required?

Q36.How many jurors must agree on a verdict?

Q37.Does the Court provide lunch for jurors?

Q38.How can my family reach me if there is an emergency at home while I'm on jury service?

Q39.I have additional questions or concerns about jury service. Who do I ask?

Q40.How can I get a copy of the most recent food inspection report for a particular food establishment?

Q41.Where can I obtain food manager certification training?

Q42.How do I make a complaint against a food establishment?

Q43.Can I prepare food in my home to sell in a commercial operation?

Q44.What do I need to do when I plan on opening a food establishment, either as a new owner of an existi...

Q45.What records does the Vital Statistics Department have?

Q46.How do I apply for a birth certificate?

Q47.What documentation do I need to obtain a birth or death certificate?

Q48.What documentation can I use if I lost my driver’s license due to theft or fire?

Q49.What kind of payment does the Health Department accept?

Q50.What is the Health Department’s address?

Q51.How soon can I receive the birth or death certificate?

Q52.How do I apply for a death certificate?

Q53.How do I apply for genealogy certificates?

Q54.How do I amend a birth certificate?

Q55.Are the Public Defenders real attorneys?

Q56.What types of cases are assigned to Public Defenders?

Q57.How do I get a Public Defender to represent me?

Q58.What do I do after a Public Defender is appointed to my case?

Q59.What happens at the appointment?

Q60.Should I hire a private attorney?

Q61.Should I try to hire a private attorney because they will do a better job/the Public Defender is ove...

Q62.Who else can I talk to about my case?

Q63.I forgot the name of my Public Defender. I forgot my court date. How can I find out?

Q64.Will the Public Defender represent me if I am a resident of another county/state/country?

Q65.My English is limited/I am Deaf. Can the Public Defender get an interpreter to assist me?

Q66.Do I have to pay the Public Defender?

Q67.I have limited financial resources, and my case is not criminal. How do I get representation?

Q68.Why does the gas pump show 3 gallons of gas when my container is only 2.5 gallons?

Q69.Why does the gas pump show more gallons than my vehicle holds according to the manual?

Q70.How can I contact Weights and Measures?

Q71.How often are gas pumps checked?

Q72.Why is the scanned price on some items higher than the advertised price at stores?

Q73.What kinds of diseases can I get from swimming in a pool or spa that does not maintain water quality...

Q74.What is the difference between a Flood and Flash Flooding?

Q75.What should I do if a flood or flash flooding is likely for my area?

Q76.What should I do after the threat of a flood or flash flooding has passed?

Q77.Is there anything I can do to prior to a flood or flash flooding?

Q78.What is flood insurance?

Q79.What is the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning?

Q80.What should I do once a tornado warning has been issued or if a tornado is imminent?

Q81.Where do I find a list of job openings?

Q82.Where to I go to get an application for employment?

Q83.How will employees be 'billed' by the Employee Health Clinic? Will they pay at the time of ser...

Q84.If a specialist orders blood work, and the Employee Health Clinic draws the blood and sends it out, ...

Q85.If I see someone at the Employee Heatlh Clinic and I am need of a referral to a specialist, will the...

Q86.Will Williams Brothers be able to fill non-generic 90-day prescriptions, for maintenance drugs...

Q87.When do I need a building permit?

Q88.What is my Zoning?

Q89.What can I do on my property?

Q90.How do I divide my property?

Q91.How many acres are required to create a buildable lot?

Q92.When do I need a logging permit?

Q93.When do I need a sign permit?

Q94.When do I need a grading permit?

Q95.What are my building setbacks?

Q96.What are the regulations regarding home businesses?

Q97.Can I have a second home on my property?

Q98.What are the regulations regarding outdoor trash and junk vehicles?

Q99.Where can flood plain information be obtained?

Q100.What are the regulations regarding livestock and domestic animals?

Q101.What is the Lake Monroe Watershed area?

Q102.What is the phone number for Legal Services?

Q103.Does Monroe County have a Noise Ordinance?

Q104.What restrictions do we have for open burning?

Q105.Does Monroe County have any regulations concerning fire works?

Q106.Where do I pay my Ordinance Violation?

One Joke Over The Line

2011-01-20T23:57:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned before on this blog that I got in good natured trouble with a girl awhile back over an affection I feel for Lawrence Welk. While I perfectly well understand that Lawrence isn't for everyone... I guess I just think he's the best... and any doubts entertained honestly and publicly about him in my presence I've got zero tolerance for. Sort of stick my finger in my mouth and go pop, you know?

I think the doubt I heard that night, which ended with her looking me right in the eye and kissing me on the cheek or head or something (which felt patronizing... as if I were a puppy or something... which is to say, as a man, it was great.) had something to do with Lawrence's incredible taste in women. In fact, I'd argue that his taste was so good, that now that he is dead, the women still come onto Public Television and more or less tear up in his memory (every week!) Which gives even Arab funerals a run for their money. This is a guy from Minnesota folks!

She thought his taste was bad...very bad. His depiction of women wearing candy colored dresses instead of Katherine Hepburn trousers... and swinging on swings, instead of speaking with authority into cell phones.. and dreaming wistfully of romance... instead of scheming with their girlfriends at lunch... was too much for a modern sensibility. And, I'm sympathetic. However, it's not as if my role models are the fools I watch on TV. And it's not as if I believed Barbara Mandrell and her sisters bore a passing resemblance to the terminal figure on the evolving Woman picture that shows a woman having just stepped out of a long procession of figures starting with apes and, second to last... housewives.

I guess I thought Ms. Mandrell et al were superflous... fun.... entertainment. Like make believe. Like a Brand of Make Believe... if you would... or will, or could imagine.

Some folks can't. And that's OK. But it causes it's own problems. And being offended... or getting your sensibilities all charged up, can on occasion make you seem like a Godamned fool. I should know... I've more often than most thought I knew the right answer. And more often than most allowed society to decide for me. But that's none of your business.

This evening I was eating dinner with some folks and I asked, given that these things are always on my mind, what they thought of certain settled cultural questions: the one that was on my mind this evening was the Jefferson Starship song, "Sara." A demonstrably awful song. I remember liking it when I was 11 years old. If I ever saw the video... with the singer and his love interest sporting matching mullets, and a bracing Great Plains tornado scene (which serves mainly to distract music lovers from the pointlessness of the "instrumental section." The first riff of the song, a harmonica line, sounds like Stevie Wonder stubbing his toe. Though you could say the same about a lot of Willie Nelson songs I love.. so, go figure.) I've got nothing good to say about Jefferson Starship, except that it is frequently on my mind as one of the warning signs of what ego can do to something fairly great (Jefferson Airplane, for example.) That said...

I've had some friends over the years, even my adult ones, who basically love the song even today. It's true that they are not from America.... though you can find American's listening to late night syndicated radio and AM Radio who are more than happy to sing along to the song "Sara." As much as it pains me to admit this, I cannot come to the conclusion they are demented. And this plays right into my rationalization for torturing self styled hipster, beautiful females with Lawrence Welk: what's cool isn't just a matter of what the other kids like. Or what is politically correct (like a woman in a role as boss: very common trope of modern commercials.. as it should be.) Or some fairly obvious characteristics which form a recognizable constellation that pleases the senses and heart: you know, like stories of romantic loss... like the song "Sara"?

My old Korean (not Korean American) roomates oftentimes revealed a taste for things far more technologically advanced then even nerdy Americans. For example... back in early 2003, I remember Young Ju, a woman who lived with me, getting on the computer she shared with me and hanging out on this one site... instant messaging people, and looking at little boxes playing constant music, and cartoons popping up... her laughing and seeming for all the world to be highly entertained. I couldn't understand why anyone would appreciate such an obviously crazy form of computer usage. I could understsand email, or archive's and forums... or list-serves, or just Wikipedia.... but this Manga like mish-mash seeemed insane to me: what Wired magazine would put on its somewhat tongue in cheek page: Japanese Schoolgirl Alert. What are those wacky Asians up to now?

What I never would have guessed then.... is that I shared a taste with 600 million others (and really, many more than that) for Young Ju's fix: and at first it would be called MySpace... but eventually it would just be Facebook. Just like that, seven years later, I was sorta watching cartoons, looking at pictures (my Korean friends all had Camera/Phone/Walkman/Mp3players... which you could not buy here.) All of it on one Website all my friends were on. What had seemed silly now seems not only normal, but somewhat mandatory. And I do it not alone: but with everyone I've ever done anything with. Whatever accounting there is for taste: I'm hopping wasn't auditing me in 2003.

My point is that Koreans, and Japanese, and many other countries around the world are not backwards, or behind us... and yet, my Korean roomates.... all of them.... had extremely odd taste in music. The first example of this I ever heard was at a Chinese Restaurant I used to go to for lunch, where on speakers above your head played "chinese" pop music. All the songs were super lyrical, and belted out with enormous earnestness... a sort of parody of rock and roll. One song, completely in Chinese would suddenly end it's ascending and exciting refrain, "Happy Birthday!" As if the guy were singing "My Way." And whatever the singer was doing, it's true, he was doing it his and his fans way... but not me, and my country's way... more or less. Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday! Sing it again! I love that pop song Happy Birthday! Given that I have no idea what the song is about, I'm hoping it is about a man who dearly loves (somebody) and wants the best for them on their Birthday.

What's this got to do with my Korean friends? Well... it's the same thing. They loved music that was Atomically heart felt, earnest, and sugary sweet cornball cool. If there could be such a thing. Oh wait, that's right, there is! It's called Jefferson Starship. And Barbara Mandrell. And "To All the Girls I've Loved Before/ In and Out of My Backdoor." Stuff liked by a lot of people who weren't Asian... and who knew the words. And who sang along. And sometimes... get this.. were very cool. Authentically cool. Mainstream interesting and cool. And yet... there's "Sara."

So, most of the Korean Americans I've known (only a handful) couldn't really stand, as teenagers, the Korean exchange students I've been friends with. And from talking to others... and reading... and talking to Asian groups at our local University, it's obvious that there is plenty of animus from the Americanized Asian group toward the, to put it crudely, off the boat group.

A great deal of this seems to be due at least in part to the fact that the Americans know who P Diddy is, and the Koreans might be somewhat less on that page. Of course, in Seoul, tastes, among the congnescetti are going to be basically the same the world over. But a cross section of the population will not correlate in such a global manner and this causes prejudice between the Native group and the Non Natives, just as it has since the stone age.

And it isn't as if most of my friends actually don't judge the Koreans as well. They do. They think they are cute. While the Koreans think of themselves, like we all want to, as cool. The Americans laugh at the Koreans taste, and giggle about their "ignorance." It is simply a settled fact that Eminem is better than Jessica Simpson, whom, man and woman, every last Korean I have known (from Korea) dearly loves to listen to sing: especially the song "I'm loving Angels Instead" (of having sex with you--- my explanation for the lucky souls who have no idea what this song is). Which, as we all know turned out to only be true for a year or so. Then along came Nick. Thanks National Enquirer.

So.... is it possible that we are all wrong... and that there is something to our earnest interest in the human spirit, and the gliding wonder of a song.... any song... which this cultural appropriation, and argument, and prejudice is failing to consider? Is it possible that Jessica Simpson is really transporting us, with Barbara Mandrell and Jefferson Starship to a place that isn't laughable? It's not something I am nearly as comfortable answering, as I am in my fandom of Lawrence Welk.

Am I freaking out here and dodging critical faculty? Am I saying that we should give every song a pass? No.

We need to signal with a full language of many channels of emotion... so we can achieve efficient communication between many different groups... confidant that we know something about each other. Our signals are messy, but on the local level, they require instances of common presumption. And the media--- music, art, various cultural groupings... really help. But does this mean Jefferson Starship sucks?

It doesn't make it suck.... though, surely Jefferson Starship objectively sucks, no?

I can't tell you the number of times I have been with a friend.... oftentimes a wealthy person from a different culture... speeding down the road in a sports car, or Mercedes... them, enthralled by sharing my American Road Culture Shared Archetype. And then, they turn it up: hey... I know that song... and the windows are down.... and the wind is in your hair... and the low sun lights up the world in it's Golden Hour saturation of hope...

a corny harmonica plays it's line.

(here's Welk's show doing it's part with an, ah, OLD TIME GOSPEL SONG)

But Will Jefferson [Jalopy] Ever Play?

2011-01-12T19:25:00.000-06:00

"Memory it can't be bought'n,
it can't be won, the carnivals for free.
It took me years, to get those souvenirs
And I don't know how they slipped away from me." -John Prine

Among the things I'd like to do, sometime this year, is a retrospective of my writing on this blog and in my music in the last few years, or at least since Brand of Make Believe was begun a few years ago. It wouldn't be a genuine retrospective... more a capsule form discussion of themes and subject matter. Post by post. It won't take terribly long... maybe five or six pages at the most. I should hope.

What gets me thinking about this is what a wonderful forum for what is on my mind that the blog has turned out to be. Something like a website of my day to day stuff, it is fun to go back in time, and it's easy to do simply by looking at the table of contents, organized by date! For you, this holds little excitement. For me, however, it is a diary and a great deal more. Pictures, poems, essays, recollections... stories and happenings. Only by the seamless tricks of our lying minds do we convince ourselves of a memorable past. The truth, as we all know when asked for details, is that we can't remember, and are mighty surprised when anyone else can.

It wasn't till I was old enough to "know" how lousy I was at many things in life, that I learned from long-term relationships that I sometimes remembered things that other people did not. It isn't fair, given the biological realities, for me to expect my Mom and Dad to remember as vividly my childhood as I do. And conversely it isn't fair for my Mom and Dad to expect that I would have as nuanced a memory of the Iran/ Contra affair as they do. Our memories serve different functions at different times in our lives.

I have always had a peculiar memory. I have always found it extremely difficult to memorize rote facts. This, I know, is a problem for everyone. And no, I do not think that I could not learn. It was just a fact that without a constant study companion, I could not, on my own, force myself to sit as a very young man and learn rote facts. If anything, as an adult I find the discipline easier, but the memorization even worse. I sometimes, even frequently, can't remember my phone number. Out of seven routine bank accounts I only know three account numbers. Sometimes, I am mumbling an account number (I go to the bank multiple times a day: as someone who used to constantly have trouble with money, it always seemed impossible for me to ever imagine myself as one of those guys who takes his kid with him to get US savings accounts, like in the Public Service Announcements I would listen to back in my wasted youth. Well... those PSA's are one of the reasons, I suppose, that I enjoy bank transactions so much. Besides, you are transacting your money in a manner just as consequential when you buy yourself lunch, or a haircut, or your weekly $200 groceries at Wal-Mart or Kroger. At the bank the purity of my intentions, and the bizarre ease of access to "products" of the American banking system to which we citizens of my country have access (especially as opposed to some of my Asian, European, and Middle Eastern friends) definitely is on my mind; despite the incredibly crappy, airplane like aesthetics of what passes for a bank in my world.)    I was trying to say above, sometimes I am mumbling an account number correctly, as I pull my wallet out to look it up. This infuriates me, since when I remember not to look at the number I almost never can remember it! Only the chafing of the back of my hand, as it reaches into my wallet and the odd strain on my right rotator cuff allows my mind to say, "yes, it's 12345678910." Oh well... you get the picture; my memory is terrible.

And yet... how often can I remember in exquisite detail, every last breath and supple bend in some landscape and/or emotional arc I've shared with a friend or lover? Trust me, we all dwell on the past. Especially the recent sad and lonesome past. There is nothing so tawdry as the truth off the mouth of a friend who tells you how your suffering is necessary for your future pleasure. In any case, it isn't unusual for a friend to tell me, between bouts of shock at me not knowing my phone number, ect. that they are shocked that I remember that day, a few years ago, when they were doing such and such and I was taking them to Nashville. Trust me... I don't know my phone number, but I know that trip to Nashville in Technicolor. Even if it wasn't a romantic friend. Even if it was a favor for someone I didn't even like much at all. Your stupid beating heart is all my screwed up being needs for its mnemonic needs.

Of course, you might have seen those people on the news, a few months back, who remember everything they've ever done, down to amazing resolutions, back to when they were babies. These people apparently remember everything!   Obviously, if I remembered everything, I long ago would have demonstrated this skill to someone who would pay dearly to have a sidekick with such an ability, and retired to my farm, and warehouse full of laboratories and workshops by now. No... my memory is not extraordinary. It's only special when placed against my memory problems.

And yet... certain things seem to interest a writer; in particular where memory and the hilariously inadequate term "living" are on speaking terms. I wrote a poem in 1994, for example, December of 1994... late at night, perhaps one thirty or two in the morning. I was living with my parents at Clarkston Rd in Zionsville, my last childhood home. I was relaxing after work delivering pizza at Papa Johns. At the time I had been working at the pizza place for only a month or two. I worked at least forty hours a week delivering. I found it a bit intimidating due to the fact that the delivery area was at least one half riddled with bad neighborhoods, and incredibly neglected instances of commercial effort. Thirty minutes prior to writing the poem I was sitting in a chair, in the South facing section of my parents living room, beside a large brass chest. The chest had all over it little dimples with round things, like nail-heads stuck into them. I always liked that chest. It actually occasionally needed polish. Something to look for in brass. Beware of polyurethane coated metals. I was sitting beside my families baby grand piano, the big square chest, in a chair looking across the foyer of our house, through a slot above the front door that sometimes, being sheathed in a thin sleeve of metal, vibrated like a reed during certain winter storms. One of many things in childhood a grown person wouldn't mind hearing. Perhaps one day I will write a letter to the current occupants (whom my parents knew prior to selling the house to them) and ask after that braying front door, secretly hoping no handyman ever managed to silence it.

It was two weeks before Christmas, and I had decided to sit in this somewhat strange quarter of the house, due to the fact that I had many fine memories, sitting in that chair, reading, and sometimes, lying on the ground, reading as well. My childhood, I knew, was over. Hence the gangbangers, and otherwise awful storm clouds of feeling that seemed to surround you ten miles away where I worked everyday. My childhood was gone... I knew... but for that brass chest, the carpet with its anarchic tassels, and the white oak floors, and braying front door. The house seemed to remind me of my promise as a human being. The promise that dropping out of college had marred somewhat. The promise that failing to function as a normal adult outside my parents home had marred a great deal more. So, here I was, late at night and abiding beneath the sheltering arms of a house that could not live my life for me: but seemed eerily lucid in its depiction of a life I no longer had.

The night before I had written in a journal, sitting in the same chair, before I went to my Mom's computer to type the poem I'd written. The poem I wrote that December night, more afraid, nervous and anxious than, self reflective, was called "No Peace." I have the poem, somewhere. So do most of my family members, if they kept a sheaf of poems I gave them for Christmas one year. It wasn't a terrible poem. But it isn't one I feel anything for. The poems I like from that collection I sometimes still look upon and wonder "what were you thinking?" But really, I already know. I'm not a thinker, really. I'm a phenomena oriented guy. A man who is more or less a average thinker, but a decent feeler and processor of experience. Especially what most folks regard as the spiritual and mystical sides of life. That's why I have for years preferred all these journeys. None of them amount to anything concrete, of course... their value to me, is that they are the only ways I have ever, in life, been able to attach meaning to my life. Long hours in the snow drifts unplowed, beneath the mustard lights of the ghetto delivering pizza. Sometimes ten and twelve hours a day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, taking a lousy meal to some very excited poor folks. The kids would be jumping around, and the parents smiling (not for the pizza, but because they love their kids. It was unmistakable.) The snow would be deep and relentless in its defacing of easy divisions between the suburbs and the 'hood. A lazy stream would reach beneath the snow, and lose even this fiery sodium plasma lights embrace, and be, for the evening, the only instance of rebuttal to all the flakes of water..... save the trees. I'd have a cigarette in my mouth and be driving those snowdrifts, unplowed, at midnight, more miles and miles until the last of the pizza's were gone. I'd listen to some unabridged book on tape... dreaming of the day when I could have an endless supply of non fiction to listen to. Dreaming of today, actually. But it wasn't so, back then. Listening to James Mitchner, and if I was lucky T.C Boyle, or something. Listening to everything, like an inmate within the jail library. This book, or that bunk. Those books or that car... with the endless madness of the commercial radio between sweet sessions of NPR. I couldn't listen to classical music all night. Though eventually, I'd turn everything off. And skate in my Olds across the silent clouds of snow, back to my parents, where the end of a night often meant a poem or two before bed. After a minute or two in a chair to stare at the door.

The poem I wrote when I stood up after looking at the bleating reeds of the door, ended, with a last line, "and a future so like nostalgia." I suppose I liked that line, and still like it, for all wrong reasons. It sounds cliched, which, if you are insecure enough, means you belong to a canon of some description, yes? If it must not be good, can you at least say it's cliched? I hope so.

"a future so like nostalgia" I definitely still like it. I've never disliked the line. The poem itself was never meant to mean something particularly romantic, or deep. It was a poem for the sake of being poetic. A pretty irritating thing... like the fragrance of hand soap. Something demonstrably useful, but constructed with no thought to its place on a scale of meaning or time. So, it was perhaps me fooling myself that I might take myself less seriously than I in fact did. Something to that effect. But, looking back, I was miserable, and scared, and I think I knew that as well. There must have been something to the fact that I was working in this soul killing world of the ghetto, sometimes risking my life to take people food they could not afford that demonstrably kills them: and then writing about "a future so like nostalgia." Maybe it was my way of saying that when things are much better one day (as they became, eventually) I didn't want to remember myself as some calloused fool. Somebody pretending things were too terrible... or too good. I'm not sure... but I do definitely remember liking myself, and my take on the world. In many ways I loved those crappy neighborhoods where I worked. The way they punctuated the end of the gifts and innocence of my childhood, and preyed on the very substance of my highest ideals. The sheer certitude of poverty and disability. The accelerated lifespan of a people who I shared everything with, but fate [mostly.] The conversation, the siren like cooing that that fate had with me. "Just listen to the softness of my voice, Andy," it would say. "You, son, are here, 'cus you pissed your luck away." I knew that wasn't true. I was there for a job, and a chance to be tested in some way I couldn't explain. Eventually I would leave some of the people I came to love in those neighborhoods behind... many of them have died. One man in particular, Sheldon, is a character whom I have been trying to write about for fifteen years. More than once he proved himself a more pure soul than me. But it only took one night to bring him down.

"and a future so like nostalgia"

Last night, as I was falling asleep I laughed to myself, reading an article in a New Yorker sent to me by my father (the subscription, that is.) I had to get out of bed and come and write down a passage from an article about the perceptions we have of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue early in the Second Gulf War. Big surprise, great article. I think it more or less explains itself.

In "The Future of Nostalgia," Boym's book on history and memory, she described Soviet era monuments serving as "messengers of power... onto which anxieties and anger were projected." The Princeton architectural historian Lucia Allais, who has examined the destruction of monuments during the Second World War, mentioned to me one of the most famous topplings ever-- of the statue of King Louis XV in Paris, in 1792, during the French Revolution. The action was portrayed by its authors as a liberation from the power of the monarchy, but they put in its spot a symbol of a new sort of power: the guillotine. These monuments destruction "are usually acts of monumental replacement, which hide continuities of power... behind the image of rupture," Allais wrote to me in an e-mail.

("The Toppling" by Peter Maass, The New Yorker, January 10, 2011; pg. 53, paragraph 2)

'cus she'll offer her charms to the darkness and danger of something that she's never known/ And open her arms at the smile of a stranger who'll love her and leave her alone-- K. Kristofferson The Silver Tongued Devil

"acts... [of magical replacement] which hide [unbroken] power.. behind [apparent change.]"

A recipe, perhaps, for our ideologies, no?

Or, just a liberal artsy version of Arthur C. Clark's definition of magic?

What a strange sort of magic trick being argued here, by this social rearrangement.
It's strange the sobriety that black words on a white page can claim. And yet, guilt, in such realms as the rhetorical. is hardly unimaginable:
               Wouldn't you know...
                         We have the motive.
                         And, we have the weapon, too.

One for the Ladies, Two for the Critters

2011-01-08T17:38:00.000-06:00

I received for Christmas one of my Dad's slightly used digital SLR Nikon's, though in some senses it was not in fact a Christmas present, but rather, an invitation to spend a portion of my free time sharing something they have a passion for: photography. Typical of the thinking of a person my age and generation, I more or less told my father I didn't have the time for photography. Well, at some point I somehow figured out that: A. Photography can be learned over the course of years. and B. This camera and all the endeavors it would seem to represent, is not merely about photography. Big surprise. Especially given that old chestnut, "it's the thought that counts." And, as usual, their thinking, about me, is somewhat better than my own about the same.

Apparently the only way to avoid a parents wisdom is to avoid the parent.

The other reason it seemed prudent to celebrate rather than think about photography in a time management (and obligatory) frame of reference is that my parents live in New Mexico, where they have, in Albuquerque, a relatively easy jaunt just a few hours away from one of the most spectacular winged migrations on planet earth, at the Bosque del Apache. It's within one of the Rocky Mountain flyways of the Sandhill Crane (among many, many other birds.) Apparently the Western Hemisphere's greatest collection of cranes, period. Possibly the worlds. For some reason I sort of doubt the latter.

Of course, I live in a flyway of the Sandhill Crane, as well. Here in Indiana, we are on a backwater flyway of cranes, sort of backwash from the great Mississippi flyway... the miracle mile of birds that follow a river, that perhaps due to its muddy nature, has never managed to overwhelm the negative reputation of the American State named after it. Oh, well, everyone gets a little jolt of Huck Finn fun, just thinking about, much less, seeing, the Big Muddy.

The birds agree. Perhaps less due to Mark Twain, then the thirty-thousand years of sixty mile wide floods that were business as usual until Americans placed even such a leviathon as our greatest river, into our manifest as destined to be tamed. And tame her we did, with concrete, and dam, and dredge, and worst of all: the intimation of utility and value in her service to us.

The birds wouldn't have guessed Eli Whitney's smoky brethren puffing the paddles of boats would have much to do with their future fishing on the floodplains and watershed of the Mississippi. Just as the Wright Brothers weren't exactly singing "Fly Me To The Moon" at Kitty Hawk. It's one thing at a time... of course.

Eventually, the paddle boats and pumps, and other instruments in the civil liberties of beasts of burden out flooded Mother Nature, and everyone was driving their Chevy's to the levy. The path that drained most of the Louisiana Purchase had been channeled, tamed, and taken to pasture and stable alike. So now, on a great swath of America, when it rained, it would rarely flood anymore.

Turns out that birds like water for a number of reasons. The most obvious being that water is where the life is, and a bird, being larger by far than the vast majority of lifeforms (even a Robin, or relatively small songbird.... most lifeforms, by absurd and nearly unthinkable magnitudes, are tiny, and vastly populous) needs a great deal of life during one stage or another of its existence, to support its bones, and flesh. Water carries a great deal, and attracts even more life. So, water necessarily plays a huge role in birds lives, from a basic needs standpoint.

Furthermore..... I learned from my parents, who have had to study a bit of bird psychology, so as to capture them on film in as revealing and yet, discreet a manner as possible.... birds prefer to roost in safety, away from predators. Water birds (when, I am assuming, not sitting on a brood) "roost" in, where else? Water! Apparently, unlike big cats, and crazy humans----coyotes, and other predators, don't find water to their advantage. But birds do. Hence the enduring appeal to millions of birds, of the Mississippi flyway.

An Ornithologist, just having received his Doctorate, told me a few years back, to my disbelief, that the woods surrounding Bloomington (a huge swath of green on the map... mostly state forest and parkland.... as well the the Deam wilderness... the only "wilderness," whatever that is, really, in the Hoosier state.) is home to the largest songbird population in the country. But why?

I'm guessing that Indiana's Hickory, Oak, Beech temperate forests, are far enough North, and far enough South, to enjoy the benefits of both climates, and therefore enjoy a greater diversity, and perfusion of ecological niches. I'm also guessing that when the Holy perfection of the sacred forest feels a little bare, the birds may endeavor to break the surly bonds of our cartographers, and munch on corn for a few afternoons. You won't find this on a magazine cover any time soon, but it would be a surprise to me in the extreme if Indiana's big, monocultural, much despised (though highly relied upon) farmland under production, didn't account for a great deal of poultry in the sky. Besides, from what I have read it is legal for farmers to occasionally kill flocks of predatory "nuisance" song birds. You've heard the recent alarmist headlines: Even though blackbirds carpet Jack and Jill's walk to pre-school: don't worry Mom! It's natural. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta die.

So, songbirds, as I write this, are gorging on wild cherries fermenting since Autumn, due to the slow embrace of winter. They've no need to fight with the Flamingo's (or whatever is down south.) They like the quiet stillness that so bores the barflys of Bloomington, when some well meaning friend takes them on a "hike." Most of the time, there are only a few earnest hikers.... the occasional hunter looking for male ungulates, and the great hilly forest for, as we Hoosiers would put it, "the critters, and the critters alone." I tried once to remove a twig from McCormick's Creek; the first state forest created in Indiana. It's about a twenty minute car ride from my door; and maybe a 1.5 hour bike ride. The Forest Ranger, a wrinkled and smiling man, listened to me as I made my case for a twig IPO.

"This twig," I told the Ranger, holding it up to his inspection, beneath a tree containing perhaps a hundred thousand identical specimens, "says something special to me. Beneath its skin of bark, and leafless lack of modesty, I can see a pride I could learn something from; whaddaya say?"

As Kris Kristofferson might have said: "That kindly ranger looked at me/ All eaten up in sympathy/ Then poured himself another beer/ And came and whispered in my ear/ If [twigs] were just a dime a bundle/ Boy you couldn't buy one for yerself." (a botched rewording of his not terribly popular song "Best of All Possible Worlds." Name dropping Voltaire's "Candide" in country music is not a good idea... even for a Rhoades Scholar.)

The kindly Ranger looked at me, and said, instead, "Son, them's fer the critters."

Being a nice boy from the suburbs, I bent down to place the critters quarry upon the ground. No toss about wastrel, me! Well, mostly.

(McCorkmick's Creek is in Spencer.... which, as I said, is less than 30 minutes from my door. People in Spencer have a way of talking that sends shivers down my spine. I do believe, despite the old axiom, they've plum stopped progress. As if the sheer beauty of their speaking voices weren't enough to send me into spasms of pointless blogging, there is also the matter of Townes Van Zandt's song, Tecumseh Valley, which, should I ever learn the truth, and the truth be something I wish it were not... would be very bad. Some people don't operate like this. But, you see, I've had a number of girlfriends give me shame for being too rational. I tried to tell them that people who've known me a long time should get the last word on the subject... but being a man, I queried no one but the girls, and the girls by some force unspeakably wicked, powerful, and sublime, convinced me to sometimes quit thinking, when wistful, wishfulness + apocrypha could stand in, like Uncanny Valley Girl Mannequins.
So, I choose to believe that Townes lovely song about a very unlucky whore from Spencer, is name checking the town I live near.... And don't forget that the fantastically interesting Tecumseh: Native American mystic and strategist par excellence: is from Indiana! So that's two strikes against getting too rational and actually researching the question; ha! I guess I'm doing this one for the ladies.)

Some of you are thinking this time he's done it. Despite the intensity of my boredom, I'll read this thing in its entirety, just to have at hand proof! That Andy has become completely entangled in the marginal, marginal, marginal, margarine margins of his mind! As Billy Joel would say, You may be right.

I don't want you to quit reading, so I'll give this classical narrative piece a very steady hand on the joystick.... and a slow hand to my climax: which you and only you can decide if it's on topic, as opposed to a bad substitute for butta'.

Standing on a clients roof a few months ago, just as November was beginning to kick my ass, I felt the cold moving in on my bones weaken, and the sun came out from behind a cloud and just decided to stick around a bit longer, after all the ruccus of the summer and all. I stood there, shivering and unaccustomed to what from January's perspective was very mild cold indeed. It's fifteen degrees out, American style, and that's nippy for a Hoosier, amongst the entrails of his state. Whilst, attempting to not have George Harrison singing in my head, but betraying just that wish by sighing like a baby girl, instead of working, I happened to space out for a minute or so, in pleasure. Then, I heard a strangely familiar sound. It's impossible to describe, but I knew, for example, that it wasn't a cricket, and it didn't quack like a duck. The strangest sensation came over me, and I began to realize that the sound I was hearing was a Sandhill Crane. I scanned the sky behind me, thanked my lucky stars I wasn't being paid by the hour, and sure enough on the horizon a hundred or more cranes were flying my way. They shifted around restlessly making cuneiform, calligraphy, hieroglyphics, or perhaps just a mockery of Thomas Pynchon. I couldn't say, and they were defiantly democratic: just kept on deciding all the way across the sky. I hungered, let me tell you, to be up there amongst that two or three tons of poultry. They are freakishly beautiful creatures: perhaps unique among the embodied beings on earth, in their liquid embrace of space, and shimmering, morphing, collapse and expanse. Humans will never ply the entirety of their precious wells... long after we have destroyed every last hope we have, there will live the beauty of our terrible hubris. Upon the scar of the earth, and the boiling remnants of our post coital solar systemic collapse, God will pad about this woodshed and having lost His religion for once, sigh, "here lived humans..." Mercy to the Angel who inquires toward that muttering.

But a crane...! A crane will rarely hide behind figleafs from the erogenous abiding earth... a crane does not whisper like a race of Wicked Playbills. It croaks as honestly as a pile of shit stinks. And with as much embarrassment. It knows the entirety of the universe (cleverly composed, unlike yours--- you poor, poor creature--- of its concerns: alone) is bidding its attention. Across the sun, and through the moon, brushing featherprints into a rainbow, the crane alights... as unsteady as a drunk in his favorite bar. You look upon its feathers and see planes of a thousand equations... rippling, engorged, bodily and masterful: a strange world of interface between the air, and a dinosaurs tattered genome. Lordy, the six foot wings polish the air like the thick substance it would seem but for its ubiquity... and hands you a piece of the wind: billowing beneath it like a ghostly twin: or a human's song to themself. You watch this clockwork space filling, flesh puzzle sublimity... and recognize, briefly, the lie.... the Wild Duck lie, that undergirds the span of your life. Identity, and ideas, and knowledge and understanding, step back, for a bow. They step back, as pleasure enters the room, unencumbered by the modest stoop, she normally cultivates, so as not to bruise the peaches of your tender character. The cultivated traits of culture and society step back for a bow. For this born witness, hurtling with the wind, and turning upon the alignments of the planet and stars, the dignity conferred by our cultural expectations is no match for our noblest of states: belonging. And only here, in the Basque Del Apache, with my parents and myself, clicking photo's of these embodiments of incensed sacrament, do I see the worry behind my ascension into all the corridors of human entitlement.

With these cranes I stand with my family to look upon the grace of our abiding, unknowable world.

Tecumseh Valley By Townes Van Zandt

The name she gave was Caroline
The daughter of a miner
And her ways were free and it seemed to me
The sunshine walked beside her
She come from Spencer 'coss the hill
She said her Pa had sent her
'Cause the coal was low and soon the snow
Would tuwn the skies to winter

Well she said she'd come to look for work
She was not seeking favors
For a dime a day and a place to stay
She'd turn those hands to labor

The times were hard Lord the jobs were few
All through Tecumseh Valley
But she asked around and a job she found
Tending bar for Gypsy Sally

She saved enough to get back home
When spring replaced the winter
But her dreams were denied her Pa had died
The word came down from Spencer

She turned to whorin' out on the streets
With all the lust inside her
It was many a man returned again
To lay himself beside her

Well they found her down beneath the stairs
That led to Gypsy Sally's
In her hand when she died
Was a note that cried
Fare thee well Tecumseh Valley

Redolent Woods (Continued)

2011-01-06T05:01:00.000-06:00

(I've been tossing and turning over a professional quandry for days.... and just now, at 4:41 AM, after falling asleep at my writing desk, and rousing myself to brush my teeth, and place my head upon a pillow... I have discovered the niggling solution. A few hours ago I could feel the pressure of the need for an answer putting grotesque strain on my mind. The last few mornings I've awakened, and as I slide off my clothes to enter the shower looked into the mirror at someone who looked like he had been tortured all night. It's not all that bad... just riddles that present themselves to someone who NEVER knows nearly enough answers, and refuses the sensible retreat of his fellow creatures. In any case... for the next seven or eight hours I can put into play the puzzle that has assembled itself... but for now, before I grab breakfast, I might as well write a bit. Sleep.... beautiful sleep, has been replaced by a slightly less accusing mien, as I bend to my washbasin, an inch or two from the mirror... it's nice to have that slightly wrinkled codger back...)

The bath of my vineyard client is a tiny affair, with an old tub of cast iron, beneath a surround of thin plastic. When I peel the plastic from the wall, an old window reveals itself and its frame, beneath. The frame sticks out a few sixteenths beyond the wall, promising trouble for the concrete board that needs to, none-the-less, tuck neatly behind the tubs coping, and accept the mastic, tile and grout, for water-tightness and appearance. The window, which must have provided a yielding and mixing atmospherics, and more even than that... useful light, in a neighborhood that predates electricity, lost it's purpose beneath the expedience of a toggle switch and the moist, musty, confines, of this old bathroom, somewhere in the Eisenhower era, I'm guessing, wildly. How many old bathrooms have a window frame rotting away in the near reach of a shower? It seems crazy until you consider how thoughtless our energetic largess... our switch flipping entitlements have truly made us. The dim, yellowed plastic and asthmatic intermittent hum, of an elderly, fake vent/ light, in many bathrooms, stand in for the sun. And when, pray tell, was the audition for that?

Then again... perhaps I should not give much thought to auditions! Who, after all, is the impostor, really, on this quiet, July evening. A piece of trashy electric junk... or me? As I try to imagine explaining my complex thoughts about the shooting claims of Honeysuckle, into the abiding arms of the sun gentled fluids of these Cicada buzzed hours... I realize what an odd choice of work I've made for myself. Construction workers don't, as a rule, regard biophysics as deserving of their attention as Payton Manning. Perhaps. One of these things... is not like the other. But is one of them me?

It actually makes me smile. I'm just feeling defensive for the poor trashy bathroom fan. Once upon a time it was a mat of lovely Pleisteine ground cover... which turned, by a number of miracles into petroleum (which should give pause to any interest in "organics" whatsoever) and somehow then, instead of being a sacrament to our ecstatic societies thermodynamic signature, it was polymerized and injected into the tomb like sarcaphagous of a Do It Best, injection molding Asian contract factory. Was it molded into the happy utility of a Schedule 40 pipe, to carry, plumbed and pressured, the fabled needs of a City On The Hill? Not exactly... the regular perforations of its unmolded rectangular form, were meant to brook no barrier to the unspeakable humours our children are taught that we stopped believing in, when Pastuer provided us with a different kind of religion. But the perforations within this Chinese made, plastic cage, are a lie... not the fault of the ancient groundcover... or it's long arduous journey to China, through time outta mind... or the poor saps who flip a switch to listen to a bicycle wheel buzzing fan flap sound, that perfectly mimics all the symphonic potential of the concept of broken: no the fault is in our desire to not be human. To not stink. To need privation more than a window. To build a wall that makes claims before the elements, and forgets that the rain will quench the thirst of the dying, just as surely as it will fall, like a tear, upon your broken pane.

What was it Fitzgerald said about "two opposing ideas in your head, at the same time, and still retain the ability to function?" I just looked it up, and found a blog by a Gulf war veteran applying the maxim to his "fighting and flying" instincts. His daughter is on the autism spectrum, and he fairly beautifully allowed his white hot feelings on that subject to elucidate how Fitzgerald's quote might limn something as staid within him, in our sad little world, as that old chestnut called a principle. As talkative and self expressive as I usually am (my business partner, looking at my paperwork on my computer tonight, around midnight, said, "Jesus man, I guess you really like to type." In a move that reminded me somewhat of Brian Dehenny pulling his orbitals skin to the side and bathing a voyeur in the movie Cocoon, I just tapped on my Blog Dashboard and admitted, that next to a spreadsheet, the canvass of digital parchment, lets my fingers do the walking.) the reserve that some people have, where their suffering is a given, can fill me with wonder.

Fitzgeralds's quote is often considered one of the ways in which intelligence should be viewed. This cracks me up, since what most of us regard as community and loyalty, are therefore pools, relatively free of the pollutant of intelligence. How many to stand at the dinner table and speak, with feeling, and enthusiasm, against the general drift of conversation? How many in a court of law? How many as the last words to their loved one? How many before their congregation say, "this is my blood? Does anyone else think that is a little macabre?" These acts are considered intelligent? I suppose Fitzgerald could be counted on to reply, given that he was certainly a functioning alcoholic, "well, Andy, you wouldn't in those circumstances retain the ability to function.... and that wouldn't be intelligent, now would it. One need never act upon the sea creatures of their uncharted mind. It is enough to know they are there, yes?"

Frankly, I'd rather act astonished at a fake bathroom vent, or, to wit, an instance of possibly fraudulent transubstantiation. Rebel, rebel.

(perhaps I should throw in the towel now, and not claim a continuation.....)

Redolent Woods, Alien Flowers (and the grape's and bath's amore)

2011-01-02T19:04:00.000-06:00

It's late July, 2009. Warm thick air carry dozens of insects across the impossible stars up and down this street. The sodium lights, are so bright, however, that the insects shadows are impossible to see. I drive down the street, slowly, and crawl nearly to a stop where a honeysuckle vine climbs the remains of a long dead tree stump. The stump is thin for these parts. Where many are five and six feet across, this one is only a few feet wide, and carries instead of the girth of its previous self, a riot of stem, flower, and burning placental photosynthetic hunger. I slow the vehicle, for I have been thinking, and feeling, with a mystical intensity all my own, hidden placental dreams, stretching from my most active growing place, my human mind and heart. Plants, and fungus, and the history of us... we lifeforms have been on my mind, heart and soul. From the songs at the school that come from my lungs, to the sodium lit theater that slides past my car window (unless I command it to stop) I am seeing and feeling things I had not known before.

This past few weeks I have been watching this galloping honeysuckle fill space and time, according to its own set of claims.

Years earlier I had seen this sort of plant growing in December, before the frost would kill it. So, being the fragrant, Asian import that I knew it to be, I watched it in wonder, flowering constantly from spring to this dark honeyed evening, when not even the moon would touch its flowers... but its yearning could be seen, for something vertical, to hold, and to hold to.

I've watched this plant, while coming and going from ten or twelve houses in this near southern neighborhood in my town. This street is one I have walked, bicycled, and driven on all eleven years of my time here. When I stand still, and look to the faces in the cars that pass by, I see familiar ones, most of them concentrating on the narrow street, and the dangers such an thin artery portends. Flashing by, their faces I see... sometimes wishing I might say hello; sometimes glad for their passing. This is their road too, and they and I are why there is a town. So hard to remember. Yet, how could it be otherwise?

I had passed, four days prior, a woman who met me this spring in my garden. Out walking her dog, as she had been when she passed me the first time, she had inquired if I might do some work on her home. My sisters wedding was a few weeks away, but I desired to pack as much work in as possible, so I told her, provided I could get the job done, without much waiting, I'd be glad to bid the job the following day. My bid was accepted, and the week prior to my sister, Mary's, wedding was spent juggling the complexities of three job sites... all of them with that magnificent honeysuckle, in somewhat cancerous embrace of the light and air, between them. How filled the mind becomes with the fears, desires and claims of ones' clients, and yet how much more room there always can be, for the ghostly miracles of our fellow life forms. I passed that Honeysuckle that night, after finishing up the dog lady's bathroom remodel, and was on my way, after buying a sandwich to try to put a bathroom tile job away. I had something like seven hours to get it done. The honeysuckle murmured in its shape and intention to me, something like, "good luck, you earnest lost boy." Some people who get migraines, get them from honeysuckle. You don't want to live in southern Indiana, if you can get a headache from a flowery smell. At night especially the white flowers reek of perfume, and some of it is meant for the sort of things more appropriate to Halloween, then a childs dreaded return to the classroom. Oh well... sorry kid, maybe one day you can work all day, then learn that you have to tear apart two days of preparation to prepare a bathroom wall for the latest greatest fickle pleasure of a customer. All the bells of a lazy, fall school day would have rung, by the time I get the concrete board cut and back up after tearing it down for the new plumbing, chosen at the last minute.... that is, the minute when the owner realized how much better a bathroom with nothing in it looks, then the one that most of us spend our lives using. Actually, I still feel sorry for you, kid. I'd rather work sixteen hours then spend one day in school. (I promise I'll never tell my children that. Though I have a feeling I'm going to have to lie.)

I pull into an alley, at right angles to the Honeysuckle's street, and drive toward the back of my clients lot. Behind the old, low, one story framed home, is a large fenced in back yard (chain link) with a spacious cinderbloc two car garage behind that. Thick along the entirety of the fence, I see with a smile on my lips, the vines of grapes, running perhaps two hundred feet around the yards periphery. When I exit the car, in the twilight I can see, the small bundles of ripe fruit and I caress their bloomed surfaces with my hand, wondering when I will first be able to leave the bathroom tile in its mastic and come out to pick the tender fruit, it's wet musky juice and bitter crunching seeds crushed between my lips and teeth, and the odd wealth of the summer heavy on the arch of my aching workday shoulders. Not nearly soon enough, I could tell anyone who'd listen.

No one is listening, however, and the house is silent as I turn the key in its arthritic lock. Opening the door I smell the work of many decades of mold... a sweet tang, like composted citrus... mild and virtually below the radar of what my friends tell me is normal. I get the feeling that most people think this smell is wood. What it really is, is the slowly aerosolized resins of the woods, by the action of fungus. The fungus lives everywhere as a spore, and one day, resting on the surface of of wooden board, warmed by central heating, moisture leaks through a foundation mortarblock, and gives the fungal spore life... which it spends growing for as long as the woods remains wet... which in Indiana is damned near forever. As the fungus works its way through the wood, the laboratory of its inner mechanisms parse, digest, and release all manner of energy, and usefulness from the building blocks of the wood. Heavy metals, and certain toxic substances, as well as other chemicals, it discards, out of preference for the cellulose, and other complexed sugars and alcohols of the wood. The esters and rosins that make up the protective chemicals in the wood, meant to ward off insects, the fungus releases as "gases" and sprays of aromatic compounds. This is what you smell when you open the tupperware and see that dark blue, sporulating pennicillin growing on your organic bread, one week after you stopped eating it. Sometimes... as with bread, it's a musty set of aromatic compounds... cardboardy, and wet paperish. It's more or less a bad smell. And very consistent with our disgust and recognition of mold. In fact, it's a slight component of the mushroomy connotation, when one imagines the smell of a portobella. Yet... within the house, as I ascend the stairwell, to the main floor from the basement, where I have a key to enter, there is this liberated wood ester smell: where the tree obtained the fatty acids to produce them ninety years ago, I'm going to have to remember to discover one day... but for now, they are pleasantly vying with the mildewed basement boxes and rugs for a place of preferred prominence, prior to my opening of the tile mastic, where industrial solvents... most, but not all, derived from fossil fuels, not fungus, will rise to my olfaction, leaving the fungus to itself, in any case, within the confines of my somatic sanctuary.

(to be continued...)

Blind Witness to Some Wishes Unearned

2010-12-18T20:35:00.000-06:00

She had long taken heed of the shallower implications of her aging. So much so, that these new circumstances... her widowhood, her isolation, her dependence on the few she wished, frankly, she didn't have to talk to at all... struck her, mostly, in their scale, more so than their substance. "Here I am, " she thought, as she always knew she would. The ugly formica paneling of a waiting room. The caustic uncertainty with no one to soothe its burning. The plain, unforgivable fact that she not only could have predicted this all, but long ago looked upon these prosaic objects that were in fact all that remained, and said to herself, "this is what it will look like." She had never looked away. And now things looked just as she had thought.

"Mrs. Auburn, your sisters nearly done," said the very nice nurse. And it was certainly good to be forewarned. She used to flush with anger at the unexpected phone call, back when weeks would pass without incident. Back when life, her life, was what anyone would recognize as normal. Today though, Dilly was never surprising in any way at all. Never surprisingly thoughtful. Never surprisingly lucid. Never surprisingly resilient. Well... she had never been resilient at all. So, no surprise.

Dilly did come through the door, looking pretty and composed. She was telling the nurse something about somewhere she'd never been. It all sounded perfectly plausible. The nurse clearly recognized which was the life of the party. Anne hated partys. The nurse wouldn't hate parties she realized. And surely, like so many people, the nurse could not imagine hating Dilly.

As Dilly looked into her eyes, with the subtle triumph in her eyes that reflected her pretensions had fooled them all again, Anne knew she would say nothing to contradict her sister. "Are you hungry?" were the only words she could even think of. And, of course, they had the benefit of having something to do with her own circumstance.

"I don't know," said Dilly. "We should go to a movie... what do you think?"

As always, "I think I'm hungry," said Anne, while they moved into the bright and ceaseless sunlight of the parking lot, to the car.

"We could eat popcorn, you know," said Dilly. "You love popcorn."

Anne loved popcorn, yes. But hadn't been able to stomach it in some years. And, yes, she knew that old hunger for a movie and popcorn. For a good time, just the two of them.

"We should go to the pharmacist. And I have things I need to get done. Though one of them is off the list," Anne said.

"You need a worry board," said Dilly. "You should ask Bill to make you one. He'd love to give you a gift." Dilly smiled at this in the old way. And, as always, Anne nearly blushed.

Closing the vehicles door she couldn't deny her sister, "I could probably use something to calm me, true. And yes, he has never hidden his feelings. I'm the one with that problem."

"If wishes were horses, you still couldn't accept him, Anne. And he won't go begging forever. Just say yes! Isn't that the magic of a man?" Dilly looked over the Hospital building, as if canvassing a crowd of breach bronzed body builders, nearly shivering at the thought.

"The fact that you are right, does not change my feelings, Dill," she said to her sister, pulling out into the street, toward no theatre, no popcorn, and remaining, therefore, upon the the path she had seen already, long ago. At the signal she stopped, it's color being red. And she noticed, with the peculiar senses she had always been burdened by, that her sister had nothing else to say, and it satisfied her, this confluence of conversation and the obedient traffic.

Things certainly had grown complicated since Dilly's husband, Joseph, had died. Joseph had never been someone Anne looked forward to seeing or spending time with when they were young. His tastes extended to all manner of exotica, and Dilly was only one of the pleasures he'd taken as his birthright, being a man, and being indifferent to refinement of any sort. It might have bothered Dilly to some extent, Anne surmised, very early on, with Dad and Mom and the Hoidays, in all the expected ways. But Anne knew that once Dilly had recognized her fears of retribution from the family were never going to be realized, now that she was married, she completely quit thinking about it at all. It was a friend that suggested to her that Dilly's lack of concern might actually be the rational response to her marriages tension with her family. Like a half resolved, cloud covered spot of light on the horizon, Anne could imagine there being something virtuous, and heartfelt about that perspective, but there was never going to be a question as to whether their had been a betrayal or not. Dilly walked away, from the family, and whatever her rationale, could not subsist simultaneously as a completely accepted member of their tribe, and a wife to Joseph. They drank excessively. They cared nothing for principles, either generally recognized, or potentially held by strangers. They offended, loudly. They brought children into not only a dangerous world, but the heavily consequential orbit of their own worldview. Were they train wrecks, these resulting memories, Anne would ask herself? No, a train wreck would not be seen, predicted, and so much the fruit of causality. A train wreck was a tragedy. Jo and Dill's family were precisely what you'd expect them to be. The phone calls were distressing, but there were never any questions to ask. Only, "What can I do?" Dill had certainly been interested. Dill could not have comprehended that it wasn't a question, either.

As the years had passed, though, the callouses did thicken. And there were times, Anne had marveled, where Jo seemed like nothing so much as a brother in law, and a predictable one in the end. His pleasures, even he'd confide, had their costs. Their marriage, they seemed to enjoy, like a foam mat upon deep, dark waters. One side, in the sun. The other, what? Out of mind? After decades, and funerals, and troubles faded by time, the whole imposition of thier union in the face of that old fiction of a once so hopeful youth, had replaced the implacable old boundaries. It was surprising certainly, to witness. Though so oddly comforting.

There was Josephs treatment of Dad, for example. Dad who sought to offend no one; Dad who had accepted this son in law, somehow. Joseph delighted in the composure of her father, realized Anne. Joseph certainly knew he had no desire to compromise his freedoms with his family, for the father of his wife. But Dad had, in the ripeness of time seen something in his son in law. Perhaps it was simply that way with men. A lacking maliciousness proving some irrational bonhomie? She'd been grateful in the end to Jo. He shrugged off Dad's illness the way he shrugged off all mysteries, apparently. He had strange riches of time to spend with Dad. It seemed, often, they talked more to one another, near the end of Dad's life, than anyone else. It helped Dad.

Ashes to Ashes

2010-12-17T22:41:00.001-06:00

"Maybe when a kids screaming, they're just the only one allowed to speak their mind."

Born of a mind
To take down the world
As long as my dogs in the fight
I wiped every tear
And patched every hole in sight

I didn't need........ a flag or a name
Pieces of pleasure
Or beautiful things
All those shadows
Just abstracts and
Art in my eyes

The long nights of living
In places where knowledge
Could kill time
Put me straight in the arms of
Souls just as hungry for dreams

And wouldn't you know
That the love and the wine
Brought fertile flowers
That knew how to climb
To, honey
this future of
Your mama and me

Baby you're born
And daddy's too late
To dwell on things that might never change
So what
Maybe that worlds out of sight

I'm just a fool
Born in a small town
Shakin' off dust
For the future I'm bound
I 'spose
Rubbin my neck and my eyes

Still up in the sky
The future glows
From the pastures
Of of plenty
That everyone knows
Yeah, we're dust
But don't we look pretty tonight?

Strange World

2010-12-12T20:11:00.000-06:00

So... I've been playing around with this blog more. Under "Stats" on my blog I can look up all kinds of info about where my readership is coming from. Right now most of the people who normally read my blog have joined collective blogs and websites to which I sometimes contribute, but I continue with this blog since I find it the best way to express and access my thoughts and feelings, through a distance of time and geography. Carrying a journal can't really compare. And try sharing it!

Google traces people reading my blog from 43 countries. The vast majority of the people who have visited did so accidentally. How do I know? Because, creepy as it sounds, Google can show me their words in the search bar of the page in which they searched. For example: someone in the last week, I don't know who, searched on Google for the words "how to make snow come." The second hit, on the list of results Google gave her, was exactly wrong. It was my song, three or four posts back from here, "When the Snow Comes and Falls in the South." Kinda hilarious. My song has nothing to do with making snow come. Moreover, who searches with such a fascinating patois as "make snow come." That word "come" fascinates me. Was it demanded by the obvious trouble that simply asking how to make snow my generate? Some people might be inclined to instruct one in snow making by shaving ice. Others would demand that reverse sublimation, as in Nature, be reflected. The nerdiest would be frustrated when the resulting snow didn't limit itself to six sided crystals. "That snow is crappy... it's just unreal!"

Dare I search "how to make authentic snow?" What song might that generate? Probably a Head and Shoulders jingle.

Another person searched " "aunt.peg" + (swallowing or swallows or swallow)" "

Well, I don't know whether it makes me more uncomfortable that I have an Aunt Peg, or that someone found me while looking for whatever that is!

Lets see where I come in when I search for that: (I search, and read a few pages of hits....) Hmmm... someone must of had a long night. Apparently "Aunt Peg" doesn't refer to the Aunt Peg I mention in my blog, my Mom's Aunt. But rather, a very busy pornstar who is either frequently "swallowing" or sometimes "swallows" or has been known on occasion to "swallow." Kudos to the searcher for leaving no stone unturned. And.... I didn't have the patience to wade through all the hits until I found a small mention of my Aunt Peg, by myself, in my blog, from a post I wrote a year ago. I hope Aunt Peg never searches for herself, on Google. Bottoms up!

Someone searched for "andy coffey blog." Now we're talking. The only problem is the number of Andy Coffey's out there. Boy oh boy.... there's a ton. Most of them in and around Louisville and the Midwest. Journalists and TV personalities, and lots and lots of dead people. I can assume the dead people didn't blog.... to an extent. There must be an Andy Coffey somewhere about to die... I hope it isn't me. My mourners would be searching for my blog.... gee wiz, let's just hope someone was looking for me, this blog, and found it. Good for you.

Somebody in Britain looks me up frequently. Someone in New York City. Obviously people in Sweden and Denmark. There's a couple of instances an Ipad was used in New Mexico..... hmm.. Now what would someone out in the blasted Desert be doing with one of those things? Who knows?

You wouldn't believe what Google will tell you if you simply ask.

Encounter Down From Morton And Lime

2010-12-11T03:13:00.000-06:00

I leave my door every single day
With my small cloth satchel underarm
Sometimes to the Church, to confess or pray
Sometimes to the dance hall to be charmed

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

As the light in the sky, still so early fades
You'd not be too surprised if you could see
The figure of a woman, walking just your way
In the dim light passing by it would be me

"In the Sweet By and By" above me play the bells
My mind is nearly taken by the tune
Though just before they're done the music swells
Through yellow light that I am walking through

But not in celebration of enduring pain
It comes from where I walk across the street
For the fiddle and guitars make a different claim
And I'm smiling for the friends I'm there to greet

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

The crowd grows restless that they've yet to dance
In pairs they walk to the center of the room
When twinning fiddles have their way with darkness chance
What hearts of those assembled will refuse?

I took the hand of one named Johnny Bland
A sheepish sort of look on my face lies
As a witness from the window can see us dance
Out of four there is no blinking of our eyes

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

Some of the songs call to twist and spin
I hold and trust from him I'll never fly
Some of the songs switch me to other men
And they're clearly not unhappy in my eyes

Then the waltz comes at last and some people sit
While I look for someone that I've never seen
And who should approach but the perfect fit
For a girl who doesn't mind the touch of dreams

He'd seen me coming with his kind and gentle look
Sadness drained from his dark and tender eyes
He offered his hand which I gladly took
And I shivered at the other on my side

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

From a people that had searched over seas and hope
The fiddles found my footsteps in their sighs
I simply fell where led by the dark eyed bloke
With the light of every pilgrim in my eyes

It is difficult I knew, even then, to awaken
And meet, alone, the troubles of my day
The journey in the arms with him I'd taken
I feared would end when the fiddles ceased to play

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

The fears of every mortal being far from wrong
The dancing ended as the sun will take a dream
The players of the instruments meant me no harm
When tradition broke the heart of Harmonie

I pulled my new beau to the side of the floor
A place I'd never had a reason yet to be
And as entwined the hands of other boys and girls
I asked the dark eyed stranger who was he?

He said, "Since there we danced, I can hardly dismiss
The sad and watchful man I came here as.
My name is Billy Faren, and it's a pleasure, Miss,
To meet and dance, but might we make it more than that?"

"Harmonie Jennings," is my name dear man,
The answers, yes I'll walk with you tonight"
So we passed through the sound of the fiddles and the band
To a starlit street before the town folks eyes

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

We walked for a time that neither could discern
Amidst the woodsmoke, and other scents of life
So many dreams and yet what could we hope to learn
Whilst holding, there, each other in the night

We stopped beneath the lamp at Benders lane
And from his pocket he took his other hand
"Need I even tell you for what I pray?"
When with a touch and kiss he hoped I'd understand

"This is the house within which I was born"
Said Billy, sadly, to the shadows in the night,
"There's something I have yet to inform...."
But I kissed him then again beneath the light.

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

Billy walked me gently in the darkness of the night
Past an ending dance, where a last waltz sadly played
Past the steeple where the bells hid out of sight
Arm and arm to where it was my fate to stay

To part would be as silent as it was hard
So I simply turned from Billy to my home
There would be tears eventually even were we not to part
For till the morning... I must now be alone

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

Whispering Your Name, Not Another

2010-11-27T00:33:00.000-06:00

If you been around, can't blame the seasons,
The waters gonna rise, and the rains gotta fall
Mother nature's just as fickle with her reasons
As any womens gonna be with me at all

I just pulled in here, guess I'm a lucky sucker
Even the best of luck wouldn't give me the right....
Will you dance with an old cross country trucker?
And give me touch of your body tonight?

Tasting Cuervo and Salt, Angostura bitters
Touching nearly as much as a drunk can reach
Whispering your name (I hope) and not another
Passed out in the sheets from that Sex on The Beach

I used to have a wife and two small children
Sometimes just buying groceries, we'd have a ball
I could catch the girls there lookin and lookin
And point them out to my woman, who'd turn red and smile

Anytime you feel just a little bit normal
That's just about the time your going to need to get drunk
So despite my record when I'd get informal
There finally came a day when I could do what I want.

Tasting Cuervo and Salt, Angostura bitters
Touching nearly as much as a drunk can reach
Whispering your name (I hope) and not another
Passed out in the sheets from that Sex on The Beach

Sally Huesen's brothers had a need for cushions
To catch the growing asses of American men.
Problem was the factory was somewhere in Houston
So she naturally asked if I could haul them in.

There were six good bars between Indy and Texas
But the borders so far from Matagorda Bay,
Back in that grocery I never reached for Mclellans
Could you guess the first thing I did in Oyster Lake?

Tasting Cuervo and Salt, Angostura bitters
Touching nearly as much as a drunk can reach
Whispering your name (I hope) and not anothers
Passed out in the sheets from that Sex on The Beach

Mama Said

2010-11-24T23:02:00.000-06:00

Mama said, "Don't let the door, hit that lady in the ass,"
I swear to you, those were the words she cried,
So baby, don't, let that wooden door hit your rear end as you pass
To fall for someone with the apron strings untied,

Mama said, "She's younger than, she's cute, if you ask me,"
I'm serious, that was her take on you,
I swear upon, my own Mom, if you won't believe
She sorta thinks, in her mind, you're kind of cute.

Mama said, "She'll leave you, but, then come and beg for more,"
She looked surprised when I started, then, to laugh,
"I'm just a guy, she's just a girl, and Mama, that's the truth"
She said, "For now there's one of you, in the world."

Mama said, "Hold the door, and tell her that you love her,
It's pathetic, but, that's all a man can do,
A woman's work is never done, but your marriage is in reverse
Should your wife ever have to hold the door for you."

I never guessed just what she meant
Till long past the day she'd tell
And one day I was so dog gone spent
With my woman and wouldn't listen well

Jess, my wife, was crying over something
I now, can't report
"Not now," I told her, "I just can't make the time,"
It took ten months, before I was to learn how I didn't hold the door
God, how I'd love change that damn fool's mind

A friend of hers
Whom she loved so young
Even now it fills her eyes
Had that day, finally, after eight months
Lost his life.

Mama said, "You dropped the ball, and cut the roast before it was time!"
I said, "Mixed metaphors and you're yelling at your son!"
Mama said, "You musn't live your life like your only five!,"
I said, "If I do, than it's from what you've said and done."

The lie sat there between us, like the state of age and youth
A figure formed of anger, fear and pride
And I could see the twist of the face of a pretty woman abused
And could hardly believe the shame that bloomed inside.

"Mama" I said, "You told me always, to tell the honest truth,"
Well, today, I'm so sorry that I just lied,
In a world of pain and suffering, my mother tended every bruise
Without you I'll never have a shot at being wise.

Mama said, "I know that, I'm your mother, you goon,"
"You can't fool me, I always know you've lied"
But thanks anyway for the really nice words, they made me feel real good,
Now go right home and talk to your pretty wife."

Till The Snow Comes and Falls In the South

2010-11-22T22:19:00.000-06:00

Tell me truth
On this pain
If on the roof
Of your mouth

Tell me truth
I'll be laying
In the night

Tell me truth
On this pain
It's not enough
For me to doubt

Tell me truth
Till the snow
Comes and falls
In the South

Oh this deaf dumb mind
Heart broken sails flap untight
Tell me blues
Spoke and cog
Of the night

Tell me truth
On this shame
On the roof
Of your house

Tell me truth
I'm here waiting
In the night

Tell me truth
On this shame
It's not love
For me to shout

Tell me truth
Till the snow
Comes and falls
In the South

Till the snow
Comes and falls
In the South

Till the snow
Comes and falls
In the South

Owed To Anna Nicole

2010-11-22T00:37:00.000-06:00

Darling, it's a ruined trip
Bruises up my smile
To look upon the empty seat
And see your face awhile

Pulling down the miles again
Catching 46 for the line
How many times I've missed this bend
With you upon my mind?

I can see you're still fine as then
Cool your heels with mine
On the banks in Madison
I'm gonna lose my mind

Your Papa he's a big big man
Got screwed there
Back in a foreign land
Took his vengeance, I understand
By growing you up in Madison

Some things fly like a church bell's hymns
I'd die so damn happy then...
Some girls lie with unjust men
Baby drown me in Madison

You'll see things you'd never know
Could flow so soft in your eye
The silver flow of entire oaks
In the Ohio's flanks tonight

I didn't mean to bring to mind
So many cruel things
It's just this towns so filled with signs
Of old desire and pain

She smiled and something
Like a hundred things
Fell in blue waters washed
From brown eyes in Madison.

Darling it's a ruined trip
Bruises up my smile
To look upon an empty seat
And see your face awhile

Pulling down the miles again
Catching 46 for the line
How many times I've missed this bend
With you upon my mind?

How many times I've missed this bend
With you upon my mind?

Pleading

2010-11-21T23:41:00.000-06:00

Were the presence of your life
Somehow to awaken...
I'd be crying just to mind
All the bruising, here, you'd taken

For you turned this pain
To Gold, and you promised
What I was given
Were the presence of your life
Proof that I'd be soon forgiven

Pleading, pleading
Justified by nothing, were my mind
The one you're reading

And heeding, yes, heeding
Heeding little that you told me
So, now, I'm pleading

In the seams of dark black coal
Far from mind of golden rings
Live the white lies that I've told
Dreaming hard on bigger things

And though few have fallen near
As fast as I used to do
That beastly miner, fear
Pays this Cancer all her dues

Pleading, pleading
Justified by lucre, here's a book
I'm glad your reading

And heeding, yes, heeding
Heeding nothing that you told me
So, now, I'm pleading

Out the gate the bulls come hard
On the heels of foolish guests
Though it might seem so bizarre
They're neither punished, nor are blessed

For while we'll fight in sight of bruises
And stoop to foolishness for gain
It's great sport for one who loses
Half his balls at this parade

Pleading, pleading
Justified by nothing, here's a prayer
For your receiving...

And heeding, yeah, heeding
Heeding nothing that you taught me
So, here, I'm pleading.

Heeding nothing that you taught me
So, here, I'm pleading.

A (Bad) Suit Against The Reaper

2010-11-14T18:58:00.000-06:00

Ten years ago I was sitting on a grassy hill, over looking 9th St. Park, here in Bloomington. Beside me was an old friend, and we sat and talked about this and that. At some point he confessed that he thought we, as a culture, and a people of the world, might live forever. I remember feeling kind of irritated, and confused by this, but also somewhat compassionate.

I could understand how anyone would desire such a thing. The art I had seen my whole life has depicted such a yearning. The science fiction I had read (including the Old Testament of the Bible, no joke) had enjoyed the fantasy of extremely long lived beings. Many movies, stories, and mythologies dealt with vaguely fantastic God like ancients, inevitably making a mess of their endless largess... as writers of the books I read on writing narrative would have it, "rarely is it a good idea, in a story, to give the protagonist the appearance of having satisfied his or her desires." Unless, of course, it's at the beginning... after which, the fun begins in earnest.

Was ever a story told, where the character desires something.... then, bang, gets it? Of course... it's just that hardly anyone could find reason to read it. The techne of writing and reading (the learned effort, the hidden machinery of your mind, experience, and spirit) is in fact very costly. Costly to the individual to obtain... costly to the culture to earn (in schooling and the over arching social infrastructure)... costly in the basic economics of time management: cost/ benefit costly. The story that speaks to the character getting what they desire, without complication, is not a story at all, of course: it's an aphorism. Could a fable be constructed in such a manner? No. Grandma and Grandpa tell "stories" that they can only sell to their unconditionally loving family for the very good reason that they aren't stories at all: they are life lessons, with most of the true consequences of experience butchered carefully for ingestion. And we should be glad. Real stories, told well, cause discomfort and terror. Such stories are best left to the faceless devices that are presented to the seeker in all of us at the cinema, bookstore, and other purveyors of narrative. A lot of bad movies are intentionally bland conversation pieces, for the large majority of any society which is lonely, and nervous, and needs something to talk about that doesn't create confrontation, ect.

So, the God-like characters I read about and saw depicted in stories and narratives on my childhood landscape HAD to have problems, so as to avoid being mistaken for a grandparent (though some of them were that as well!) And, among the Greek and Roman myths, the simple satisfaction of earnest desires, can hardly be found. The same can be said about the plays of most cultures, the literature, the opera, and indeed the politics.

"Why can't the politicians just be good?" you sometimes hear people ask. After these paragraphs above I need not say more than the obvious fact that, this is a very nice question. The answer lies to its seeker, beneath a thick carpet of dust, a few yards away from the spanking clean computers donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, at your local library. To be fair... the computers have tons of answers as well, with very diverting pictures of cleavage, undyingly clickable right next to the mostly earnest fare of your disposition. In any case, the answer is old, and bloody obvious, should you know the purpose of a politician, the power of narrative, and the ultimate willingness on your part to meddle in what is sometimes mistakenly presented as your representation. It's the politicians fault, of course.

It's probably true, as these old stories (or one might say, reminders) seem to obsess over, that there is something riveting about having all the problems you have today: forever. Who wouldn't want to wonder when the current war will end, for centuries? Who wouldn't want to change their mind so many times over that they stop even relating to themselves? Surely such a thing should only happen once, or twice in a life!

As the hilarious, and more than a little intelligent "film reviewer" Chrissreviews, put it, in her YouTube review of the Twilight New Moon sequel to the blockbuster series: (I paraphrase for fear of losing my attention by actually looking at this beautiful intelligent blond say these words again) "I mean, if I could live forever [as the vampires in Twilight do], wouldn't I want to spend the entire time in high school?" Of course you would... what else is there to do with life?

In some ways, depending on one's perspective (possibly, completely depending on one's perspective) we already live forever. By which I mean we have many years, as humans, before the responsibility of family obligation and childbirth to orient ourselves with the world, or universe. And, usually, we have some number of years beyond our family obligations to orient ourselves some more. Isn't it interesting how utopian that sounds? Surely, no one would be naive enough to really think that's how it works. Somehow, such a simple minded description of a life neglects the undeniable impacts of heavy involvement and attachment to the loved ones and places of our life. As long as we remain with, or are preparing for this attachment, we are far from the cosmic orientation that should be allowed from a merely technical perspective, to a lifespan of seventy to eighty years. It is both too bad and gloriously helpful that this is the case. Welcome to the humane riddle of humankind's largess.

So... it's settled. In a sense you kinda live forever, but can't practically appreciate (or enjoy) this, so really your lifespan is quite short, which everybody, who's anybody, knows only too well. Right? Your basic spiritual types, who are actually spiritual, versus the "of course I'm a spiritual" type of person (who, you know, needs a job, or kid, or whatever) will say that we all have more than enough time to address the truly important things. While this is undeniable, like, say, one's proper body weight, it has a lot in common with the same. Being told you should eat your vegetables is an unpleasant form of discourse. Besides, most folks (a hell of a metric, don't you think) do not agree. They want to go back, Our Town style. They want MORE time, not better time. This is due to the fact that youth is a time of extremely stupid behavior, and valorization. It's what...? Oh, yes.... Wasted. On. The. Young. While we wouldn't put our money on this statement, say, while playing with the grandkids, it is absolutely crucial to our dignity, should we reach back to the choices we have made. So... we can all agree, we didn't use the time we had properly, which leaves us in the unenviable position of admitting that yes, while we wish we had known better, we COULD use more time. It's not what you'd like to be saying... but there you go. Your old enough, now, for the truth (and man, you weren't back then, eh?)

So, back on that hill, at 9th St Park, with my friend, I hadn't really thought about a lot of this. For one thing, I was in my twenties, my early twenties. I knew I could yet make a lot of mistakes, and still get married to the wrong woman, and yet find a truer (though never, really, true) love, and some serenity. A number of wonderful friends of mine reveal this to me today. People who have lived; have loss that they lived through. This loss is instructive. Back at that park I had noticed a bit of this, but wasn't focused on it, even when the subject of life extension and immortality was brought up.

What I thought about at the time was: why don't we have a greater hunger for the lives being lived right now? The lives that have been lived already? The life we live today?

I didn't know, just then, the excuses and explanations that help to destroy all of that, and render the stone and grass graveyard so much less than even a pretension of it's categorical nomenclature. The deadest "memory" in the ugliest "garden" imaginable. And The History Channel says you were meant to picnic at the cemetery! It's the sort of fact that would appeal to a teen-ager who's lost no one. God bless 'em.

I whistle beside it all. And humbly miss my dead, kid.

And, I guess, in the language of my Southern Hoosier brethren, I hope you're long for the world.

Darkness Knows

2010-11-06T17:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a song I've been playing around with a few years. The version you hear at the top of the player at left, was my original improvisation. Somehow it just came to me at Elm Heights. Hence my preoccupation at the time with "reasons for believing in ghosts."

Darkness Knows

Give it up to windblown days
The nighttime just glows
For it’s tailor made
To the things that Darkness knows

Driven out by the nimble ways
Dark houses blow cold
For it’s love that bades
Goodbye to what Darkness knows

Now I don’t believe in Ghosts
Though I usually say hello
And ask the reason
For their stay

Any given sinner has
A lifetime of reasons to pray,
But the reasons for believing
In ghosts, never go away

Little kid comes in your room
And wants to know
‘Cus he’s so afraid
When the lights get turned down low.

Say, “Kid, get up in my bed.
Where you won’t be cold.
And we’ll both try to guess
What the Darkness really knows.

The liars all will boast
That the bad things go away
And the nighttime rumors
Just can’t help themselves

But it’s getting on eight o clock
And the creatures are getting bold
Like in the olden days
All the things that Darkness knows

One of Two New Songs

2010-10-11T02:45:00.000-05:00

Sixteenth Street, an asbestos shack
Always has enough for this all night game
By the eyes of my customers, they're coming back
Nothing else can help them to ease their pain

And I, walk that plank of shame
As I, say, "Please, come again."
I walk that plank of shame

Always had a thing for the easy load
Trimmed all my possesions to this jet black frame
And tonight while I rumble on the open road
My daughter ships out to the fiery gates

And I, walk that plank of shame
As I, pray for her again.
I walk that plank of shame.

My little boy you're bundled to your daddy's hopes
Waiting to be watered by the future's rain
Though the doctors words were a terrible blow
They were nothing like the look upon our neighbors face

And I, walk that plank of shame
As they, walk their kids away,
I walk that plank of shame

Sixteenth Street, an asbestos shack
Always has enough for this all night game
By the eyes of my customers, they're coming back
Nothing else can help them to ease their pain

And I, walk that plank of shame
As I, say, "Please, come again,"
I walk that plank of shame

Unposted Last Spring

2010-10-08T22:45:00.001-05:00

Here's something that went unposted, in drafts last Spring.

The last sun strewn day I remember from 2009 was at the Green’s. On my knees assembling their greenhouse, in the low southerning sun of the last days of autumn. The feeling was as if you were beneath a giant, warm spotlight. Your every action caught and amplified. The morning’s frost sublimating wispily off your very shadow. I doubt, like many instances of my memory, I will ever forget that day.

Yesterday, I was invited to dinner by my friend Marty. A historian by training, and PhD, he makes for interesting company to say the least. But in the end it is his character that is most intriguing. Something about him moves with an easy, yet stalwart, character. Perfectly reasonable foibles, and blindness, seem to give Marty wide berth, who, like a linebacker on decency’s team, receives little truck from either the devil or his lieutenants. As for myself, as Brian Wilson might say, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice?’

Marty invited me to a somewhat new Indian restaurant. I arrived fashionably early, perhaps due to having stood him up accidentally on a prior occasion. Or was the reason due to the fact that it was in the sixties degrees F, and as sun strewn as the Green’s valley last fall, to which I could compare no other somatic experience since. I stood their against a wall, and simply felt… the warmth and breeze, and the coming conversation with my friend all conspiring to fool me into thinking there was something fundamentally new in the world. And wouldn’t that be nice? I suppose I should not comment…

Marty came, perhaps thirty seconds late by my watch, which, of course, I pointed out. We hugged and walked hungrily to the patio of the restaurant. Sitting at the patio, and eating truly delicious food, I was reminded of nothing… I sat there, outside, in the first weeks of March. Knowing Winter remained, but was strangely impotent just now, Marty must have seen the look on my face, for he said, “I consider this the second day of Spring… yesterday was the first.”

“For some reason, I make a big fuss about the twenty first, regardless of the weather. But yes, sitting here, the grass and crocus… it more than resembles spring.”

We finished the delicious meal (we asked for extra helpings of rice… and groaned beneath the task, with pleasure) and as per usual, I got a decaf coffee to go from a nearby café.

Marty asked, “is this the church run café?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him, “I guess I supposed it was a non profit, not a church.”

“I think it’s a church project that funds their work,” he said.

“I’m sure your right. What’s the difference?” I asked, revealing the difference between us, with startling naivete.

While walking past a “church” on Washington, which had the words “Jesus Is Lord” in foot and a half letters across its face, Marty quietly confessed a refusal to support organized religion.

His conviction seemed simultaneously one not shared by me, and admirable (unless you detest coffee.) It amused me that I’d brought him there.

I walked through our beautiful towns neighborhoods with Marty, in the remnants of a winter that was rumored to be longer than most. The fact that in most of North America winter was far from over, didn’t disturb our walk through the quiet, faintly firesmoke incensed air. Not a molecule of springs perfume had been released, so the season seemed to sleep before it wakes to the soft caresses of it’s subjects morning lovemaking, and fevered dreams. People were halfway through their doors, speaking to someone on their phones, as if suspended in disbelief that the space beneath their transom was one again of pleasure and bore nothing to brace against. The pitch and tremble of their voices carried their delight… and of course the fact that they are people, an oftentimes delightful category, still close to twilight.

Stopping by Marty’s I consented to his offer of his restroom (he knows me well) and embracing him in farewell, turned back into the night, toward the coming blessings of the season, warmed still slightly by Hoagy Carmichael’s sun soaked Stardust “garden walls.”

Been Awhile

2010-10-07T08:58:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted, and I'm not even sure why exactly. In any case... I thought I'd return with some thoughts, and read some stuff others have shared in the last ten odd months. Thanks to those of you who have communicated interest via email, Facebook, and in other ways.

A Good Person

2010-01-10T01:33:00.000-06:00

Four or five years ago I was casting about for meaning in my life, living somewhat nihilistically, but feeling hopeful, and grateful even, for my life. It was an oddly lonely, but rich time of musing. Perhaps I was healing from some subtle wound... or not so subtle wound, I can't really say. I lived more or less in my head, reading and watching the natural world. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset: as Broadway might put it.

I worked at a Courtyard hotel in Bloomington, which the day before I quit, to become a construction worker, I tried to explain to my friend A.J.

"I think quitting is rash, Andy," calmly intoned A.J.

"I am a server, A.J. The funny thing is, I serve a buffet. How exactly can you be a buffet server, A.J? I guess the truth is I serve coffee. Wow.... can you imagine the pride I feel. (I swagger here, and act like I'm on the make) 'Actually, Miss, I am sort of like a humanoid airpot.'"

"You make decent money,"

"For the poor, you have that right."

A.J. has an infectious laugh that is really a form of deep generosity. People who love to bear their souls are attracted to the hospitality industry. And I think it's telling that such a huge margin of the American economy is comprised of people serving others. It's looked down on (like a lot of wonderful stuff) but many, many people wake up every day to love others in a formalized fashion, for very little money.

A.J. couldn't persuade me not to leave, so I put a one month notice in. And I was scared to death, for I only had a very little bit of work in construction so far, and what I was doing was motivated by emotions, not common sense. In the end, it was an act of self esteem, or, crazy love for my idea of myself. But it was the wrong way to go about the right thing. Like a lot of things I've done. Oh, well.

To this day I enjoy the company of many of that hotels employees: they were like family to me; another feature of most peoples work: you literally love your coworkers. Is this the baseline of human social endeavor? We cannot be together without love?

One night I was working in the lounge, a euphemism for the breakfast bar, with some bottles exposed in cabinetry above. My usual habit was to go to this two dollar bookstore, buy a few books, and pour over them in the "lounge" while I waited for some poor soul to come and buy a beer or chardonnay. Needless to say, even making eight dollars an hour (plus "tips") reading and occasionally watching Book TV, isn't painful (people would walk in the lounge, and see Book TV on and ask me, "What's that!?" "It's football in drag," I'd joke, while changing the channel to something unwatchable.)

One night a customer walked in the bar, who like many customers, happened to be beautiful. I didn't think anything of it, as I had worked for the public for a rather long time, and your evening being punctuated by pretty women, is more or less a fair description of any person not hiding in their house. In any case, this woman, who's name, it turned out was Deborah, sat down in the lounge, sort of took a glance at her surrounding, and sighed as if resigned to be, yet again, young and bored.

"Wonderin', like me, I suppose, what the heck you're doing here?" I asked her.

"Oh," she looked at me, faking surprise, as if a man would rather be looking at his toes than her. "I just wish I had a cigarette."

"Well," I told her, "I don't really smoke enough to keep a humidor in my pocket, but this being America and all, there is a pack of cigarettes available rather near at hand."

"Where would that be? And could I have a beer?" she asked, and asked.

"What's your pleasure?" She told me: a watery, insipid, low carb franken-beer, that we very much did stock.

With her "beer" in hand I said, "Here you go, and just sit tight, before you're halfway done with this so called beer, I'll have your...what, let me guess, Marlboro Lights? (For some reason a lot of fashionable women smoked Marlboro Lights in Southern Indiana... go figure.)"

"You don't have to do that," she said with an edge of real anger.

"You'd be surprised the reason why that isn't true," I told her while leaving.

Rocket science is oftentimes a few block affair (especially in terms of human sentiment.) The best bartender in the world, is probably the one who can serve ten drinks a second without breaking a sweat (or a glass) but, hey, I was not the best bartender in the world. I was just a thoughtful midwestern service worker who had to do things, sometimes. And it surprised even me, what I sometimes had to do.

Returning with the cigarettes, I noticed her beer was nearly gone, and her eyes had that subtle sheen that a humans take on when you start to go from detached from the notion of having a drink, to somewhat more compelled to continue with the intoxicants. An ex girlfriend of mine used to term this state of being, "sparkly." Sadly, she learned to distinguish such stations off the cross from her father, a expansive lush. My customer took a Marlboro Light from it's pack, and flicked her Bic.

"I suppose I don't need to tell you, Maam, that smoking is not legal within public buildings in this town. We have, being a Courtyard, a lovely hibiscus scented courtyard, which I'd love to show you, should you wish to smoke."

"You can't even smoke in bars?" she said.

"I've afraid the health of the average Bloomington alcoholic has markedly improved. Who knew?"

"That's ridiculous."

"When I'm a few beers into tipsy, I will usually agree. But, as a so called bartender, I enjoy being able to smell the musty remnants of yesterdays wine."

As we walked to the courtyard, she wrinkled her nose. For the first time, I looked at her face, and its unique beauty, mixed with her personality, which due to a surprising arousal within me, seemed less grating, and contentious, and more a product of some strange heartfelt discernment; a kind of taste, or aesthetics. Need I admit I felt this attractive?

I opened the door for her, exaggerating my intent with a small bow, as if I were Sir Galahad.

"Please," she groaned, though a very slight smile passed her face, as any clown intends. "Wow, it is nice out here. Can we sit at this table?"

"Ah... " I said, groaning inwardly, possibly that I had confused her. "Come on, I thought you needed a place to smoke a cigarette. This is the prettiest ashtray in the whole world. Sort of..."

"What, Andy, eager to get back to that pile of worn out books?" she was smiling now in a manner not common to strangers.

"I'm not eager, no, though there is nothing wrong with those books."

"Just sit with me," she said, with the strange flowing ardent confidence of someone who rarely admits to, but knows things will come to them.

"Well, since you asked nicely, I suppose Daniel will attend to my typical lack off expertise at this bartending thing," I said, sitting down.

"Just because your work doesn't usually involve doing anything, doesn't mean your bad at it."

"Thanks."

"Jesus, said to the Pharisees, 'as to rules, there are only two: Love God as no other, and love others as you would have them love you.'"

"Yes, I like that quote. And like me, if memory serves me, like me, in the Scriptures, He was more or less always in the red." I said.

"You like to joke about Jesus Christ?" she said, with feeling.

"And everyone else I admire."

"I doubt your mockery is in earnest, if you are a Christian."

"My, ah, jest, is no mockery, and I am not a Christian." I told her.

"What?"

"You heard me. And I like Jesus words... I can't imagine my life without a Christ. And let's face it, humanism, while reviled by so called Christians, is more or less a body at an impasse with Jesus' infectious sentiments. He represented us to the world ruled by power, and seems to have provided a different reason for living. I'm grateful for that."

"So grateful, huh," she said, "that you deny his sacrifice, and refuse to believe. Thanks for your testament, Andy."

"I am not a believer, Deborah. Yet, I see reason to believe and smile upon his compassionate example. I cannot fathom explaining the Golden Rule to a people who believe in agency and power alone. Much less can I imagine compassion from a people who believe that through belief alone, they might claim it. Belief is a worthless fashion to me. It may come and go. But compassion is desperately difficult to pin down, and seems to me to be owed, by my people, mostly to Jesus Christ. We should be grateful, but even that, seems separate from belief."

She grabbed my hand, and bent forward, full bore, protestant evangelic mirth. "You are a lovely soul, Andy, and Jesus knows this. He works within you whether you know it or not. I know that you can feel Him, as I do. Why are you afraid of your feelings?"

"It is true, Deborah, that I am afraid of my feelings." How amusing to say this, just then, but such is the plight of any man, most places but the privation of his own home. "It is not true, however, Deborah, that I have a problem with the concept of an active, present Jesus Christ. It is only that I believe his active presence to be socially constructed, and a critical part of a world formed of many, many different perspectives: none particularly dominant, but all in service to compassion. It is an old joke to imagine Jesus on earth today, and I think that joke has its power in the difference between the way we live and the way we wish we could."

"You're just afraid... and that's it."

"No, I'm not afraid. For example, I would dearly love for you and I to be subject in some obvious fashion to His demands. For the dice playing dipshits of the world to have their scams revealed for what they are. For the folks in line at the gas station to feel Him and throw their lottery tickets on the ground, say nothing of the whole enterprise of "winning." You ever won, Deborah? Was it compassion that had your fist in the air?"

"This would be a good time for another beer," she said.

"In deference to the chains of modernity, with humility, I concede," I said, and exited briefly the humid, but lovely heavy breeze of the courtyard's evenings yellow light.

As I entered the hotel, I encountered my manager, Daniel.

"I can see some customers are always right," quipped Daniel.

"If confidence is being with the truth, Daniel, far be it from me from dissuading her."

"Oh, I'm confident you'll screw this up, Andy."

"Thanks," I said, and found another bottle of grain alcohol and water, masquerading as beer.

As I returned to the courtyard door, Daniel was still standing there. "I see your interested in what's out there, I told him. "Being Filipino you could give her a chance at a two hour conversion, for her corn fed cause."

"Even with my girlfriend back home, Andy, I still know what I like to look at. Are you looking very hard? Should you need a leave of absence for an evening, I'm sure your record will save you should I be so swamped with customers, that your leaving gets found out. Though it won't."

"My, er, customer, is thirsty, sir. I bear water... and thanks for the offer."

"Holler if you need a wingman!"

"She just needs someone to talk to, Daniel, and I guess I would like that as well."

"Yeah, right."

Deborah was exhaling another Marlboro light into the air. She looked as relaxed, and comfortable as an aunt or grandmother upon my return.

"I don't get it," she said, "you respect, and understand the importance of Jesus, and compassion, but don't believe He died for your sins."

"Yes, I think that more or less describes the arrogant secular humanist. I've never met one that thinks Jesus is a joke. But what does your belief animate? A better world? You hold Him responsible to the evils you cause? Do you beg His forgiveness, or take it for granted, in a shell game of so called 'faith'?"

"I never take Him for granted, and screw you for even saying that. My belief helps to carry His gospel. Surely that's in His stead, not in my own. His relationship with me changes my life, and molds it to help me be less like myself. I'm not playing a game. I was born a girl and became a woman, and now I have choices. I can't imagine making them without Jesus in my life. And I don't beg anything of Him... His forgiveness: it's been there since long before I was even a glimmer in my mothers eye."

"Look, Deborah, I think you are an earnest and caring woman. I don't doubt like most of us extremely, almost pathetically, lucky winners in the world, you don't wish the world was a better place. I just think it's a little odd, that at the very moment in this world when our lives are probably more capable of bringing agency and light, and love and mercy to the entire world, we choose to very publicly fall into meditation on such abstractions as "belief." We could be working for commonsense good. Working, giving, and living outside the construction of our nationality. One group of people in the world, all deserving the blessing of all those who came before us to make us richer than even they could have ever guessed. You hear all the time: the economy is doing great! But what are we, and what is this economy next to the obvious admission that the economy cannot touch those very many souls who are not doing great? I'm happy to celebrate Jesus Christ. I'm just allergic to the notion that our greatness is somehow due to our thinking of Him and us contractually. We can live more to His example, without borrowing it, at virtually no cost, as a kind of entitlement. Nobody can deserve Jesus, least of all the Christian who should know better. You know, Amazing Grace! What's amazing? Our bored liturgy would have you believe it's anything but. You, Deborah can be found, but I don't think we can "find" it. It is our fallen nature to always be lost. And it is as good a description of the world we live in, as I can imagine, that you and I, at this hotel, over a drink, should see ourselves as anything but deliverers of a confusion: never an answer."

"If we are lucky," she said, leaning close to me and placing her hand around my neck, "then that is a gift from God, don't you think?"

I couldn't argue, in a physical or verbal sense with this iron trap argument. So I nodded.

"I agree, Andy, that I am lucky. I love the way you deny credit for the sacrifice of Jesus. I suppose I hadn't thought of it that way, so thank you." And she embraced me, in a manner not common among strangers, even touchy feely one's like me.

We "parted" to a degree limited by the dictates of the term. Our hands still upon one another, her hand on my shoulder and one on my bald head. It felt warm, and wonderful in a manner known to all. My hands her upon her shoulder blades. My eyes fixed to the contours that a plastic surgeon must study to have any purchase in the vagaries of her field. For once I was convinced of the genius of such a fetish.

"You dwell on things to take them apart. But does it ultimately do others the good you wish for them, Andy?"

"No," I told her, resigned that a lie would be revealed through any other choice of words.

"What can we dwell upon, tonight, then..."

My hands approached the fullness of her question. My thumbs stroked the full ellipse of their degree of motion. My mind released the potion of sentiment and principle, to take up the entirety of a new mystery that was this person: beyond the capacity of it's usual hope, and "understanding." Our steady breath beneath the undying yellow sodium light.

There was so much that I could have said. So very much I would have liked to. But even for this silly man, it was obvious that I had abandoned my obligation to my ridiculous job. And truly: if something was passing between me and this woman, could it not stay for a sober day of reflection? Was it as enduring as the truths it pretended? It was, I knew, my curse to wish to discover as much.

I enwrapped my arms about a woman who I could no longer so much as see, but feel. I think I saw her briefly through eyes that she had probably been trying to conjure for me anyway. As if in winking appraisal of such a poltergeist, I stepped between fate, and ourselves, with a few words as naked as they were unwise.

"You are a good person, Deborah. And I wish I knew why."

And with that I released her. To turn to the stupid vagaries that did not include a long night of discovery.

"What?" she said, with surprise, and confusion.

I touched my nose to hers, and as her chin swept to an acceptance that was as heartbreaking as it was doomed I told her the same.

"I'm sorry, did you say, 'You are a good person'?"

"It's a hard habit to break, honey."

"Can't we just go somewhere?"

"Well... are you any good at washing glasswear?"

"You're joking."

"Only on Wednesday, when I'm on the clock."

"Come on. I'm not so serious about what I said. We were having fun."

"I don't know how to thank you, save what I'd very much like to do. That said, I'm gonna probably wish I was dead when I reach the cold embrace of my bed tonight. So you can comfort yourself with that image for the rest of your life." I slid my hands around her one last time and told her again that she was a good person. I could just tell.

The next morning I was serving breakfast, or coffee rather, in a fantastic improvisation of a human airpot. At some point a beautiful woman, probably comparable to most who pass through the hotel on any given day, came up to me.

"Andy?" she said.

"Deborah, good morning. I hope you had sweet dreams."

"Well, my best memory was long before I fell asleep."

"I admit some trouble with my bed as well."

She smiled, ruefully, and retrieved a folded note from her smart suit blazer.

"Should I wait till you are gone to look at this?" I asked her.

"No. You can look at it now."

I opened the note, and scrawled in the maddingly gorgeous calligraphy of her well practiced hand was her name address and phone number. "I was hoping this would be of some use, to such a lost soul as yourself."

"Thanks," I told her, and gave her a hug. Which was nothing unusual in my business.

"One last thing... I thought about it for some time, last night, but I have to ask?"

"What's that?" I said.

"Did you tell me I was a good person, last night?"

Thao

2010-01-03T19:57:00.000-06:00

Thao grew up in southern Vietnam... her parents what could be considered middle class for their time (she was careful to mention, things have really changed.) She went to public schools of course, private one's being more than out of reach. She used to really like math she mentioned casually, when trying late in our coversation on a flight to Dallas from Albuquerque, to weigh the benefits of a job she enjoyed as a Chemical Engineer, in Corpus Christi, with the diminishment of an old joy, now used, like a childs stuffed animal, beyond recognition.

That said, she had a confrontational look, mixed with an incredibly ingratiating demeanor, that had a man believe she could slice you and dice you with plus signs, and multiplication one's too. And don't even get her started about making a difference (she'd make a difference outa you.) She had been merely hiinting in the manner that long conversation, that rambles the mansions of two strangers hearts, can provide an instance of small false confessions... if only to prove to herself, and with a certain squint of her eyes... myself... that what she believed, and what she said, weren't separate matters but dynamic all across the equal sign of our time together.

And it wasn't long... maybe one and one half hours.

So growing up she'd done well enough in school not to be ejected from the unnatural selection process that provided that few with what the many desperately needed: opportunity, a future, and dearest of all: security. Food for the table from a hand that could be counted to provide it. Thao was careful to point out that such a thing was almost unheard of: and going hungry all too common. Even though, she was, as it were, middle class.

Her mother worked full time and came home to cook her three meals a day. "I was terribly spoiled. But you know, I never would say, 'I love you mom,' and she wouldn't say that to me either. In Vietnam the family is everything, and it goes without saying that you do what you must for your family without thanks, or words of love. My brother is a PHD candidate in a Paris suburb, and the moment he received a grant for his Masters degree, he sent me nearly all the money, so I could leave Vietnam and attend college in the US. Were it not for my brother I would not be here. I had the tuition, but I could never have eaten, or paid my rent."

"How did you come to Albuquerque?" I asked her, now confused by this timeline that seemed to include college in New Mexico for a few years, and some period of time, from what she had casually mentioned, in Fargo, North Dakota.

"So did you see the movie, Fargo?" I asked. "Was it like that? I've never been there."

"Oh," she said, "it's exactly like that!"

"Murder and mayhem in a white wedding winter?" I asked.

"Well.... " she said, "definitely a white wedding winter. Not so much murder... its was winter that was killing me.")

"But why, New Mexico? I'm an American, and I really had no idea what New Mexico was until my parents moved here, from Indiana. I thought it was more or less cactus with a hispanic accent, or something, you know?"

"I was hosted by a family in an exchange program in high school. Cultural exchange. They were such wonderul people, I called them Mama and Papa. They took me all over New Mexico, to California. I remember seeing, with them, the Grand Canyon for the first time! Can you imagine? From Vietnam to the Grand Canyon! They became new parents. So I came to them this Christmas."

"Your Mama and Papa? Here in Albuquerque?"

"Yes. I left Fargo, to attend the University of New Mexico for the remainder of my undergraduate studies. I have no intention of doing graduate work in Chemical Engineering!"

"Sounds like you have a tendency to make wise decisions!"

"Things are going well."

"So, your Mama and Papa, where did, or do they live now?"

"Are you aware of the mountains east of Albuquerque... The East Mountains?"

"Well, I wasn't until my parents moved to Sandia Park."

"Your kidding? Sandia Park... your parents live in Sandia Park... that's where I lived."

"Crazy..."

"That's where my exchange program was. With Mama and Papa."

What a lovely woman to talk with on the way home. After we exited the place, Thao asked if I would walk with her to the next gate, the predictably insane distance. We got on a train together, and stood their chatting. She with an almost sterling silver can do positive attitude, and I my usual sarcastic, gee whizz self. In some ways two stereotypes... ambition and jaded indifference.

My stop came first. We clasped each others hand goodbye, and the longing in a strangers eyes, after connection, came to me once again. The roads so endless, and the crowd so many.

I stepped from the train, and looked back to see her looking upon this last moment with a man she only knew as Andy. Then Thao was rushed to the future in which she so fiercely seemed to believe.

(Though, in all fairness, it can't be that difficult to find a Thao, Chemical Engineer in Corpus Christi. Something tells me she leaves an impression, wherever one might find her.)

Serpentine and Watermelons of Repose

2009-12-24T18:16:00.000-06:00

Last night, before bed, I sat on the guest bedroom floor with this computer and tapped for awhile to friends, and loved ones for a bit, then watched whatever the Charlie Brown Christmas special is called. Merry Christmas Charlie Brown? Perhaps....
Must be interesting watching Charlie Brown if your a depressed person... a source of humorous torture, or something. The show is remarkably true to Shultz's downbeat creation. I had forgotten that. In any case, it's a fun show. Something nice to end my second (!) day with my Mom and Dad.

Earlier in the evening I discovered to my total shock that I had accidentally grabbed my version of the book I bought my father for Christmas (a sort of ridiculous pean to himself by James Lipton, on Inside the Actors Studio, a guilty pleasure of mine, back when I was crazy enough to watch TV.... all night long sometimes.) Lipton is sometimes unintentionally hilarious, like his posture (which is so bent, it suggests he must have been a slouching orphan for the first few decades of his life) and other times, like with his early book (An Exaltation of Larks) about the fanciful names in English for groups of animals (Jenny and Ande I think you would be highly interested in this) Lipton verges into an almost perfect imitation of a clueless academic, who knows all about, but nothin' much dead on. You know the sort of names I mean (apparently a group of larks, is an "exaltation") a "murder" of Crows, a "pride" of Lions, a "Clan" of Rednecks (all animals have some kind of name.) I'd love to meet the clown who named a group of fish a "school." Schools of fish have extraordinary behaviors, which have been schooling us for decades... perhaps the cad who named fish "schools" somehow just knew they'd play a role in studies of emergence. Jeez, I'll ask Mr. Lipton: "Say, Jim, what's your favorite word? What's your favorite color? What's a group of Three Toed Sloths called?"

He'd answer every question, deadpan, "authentic, Andy. Quite... Authentic is my favorite word." Keepin' it real, Jim.

I'm sitting in my parents living room, and have been looking at the glowing mountains for a few minutes here. One mountain top is purple, others are dark already. More or less a hilariously nice view. People ask me all the time, "So, you going to Arizona for Christmas?" Oftentimes I just say, "yes." I'm not always in the mood explaining how very un Arizona this place is. Though Arizona is nothing to complain about in the winter. I loved living there one winter years ago. Amazing place.

All day long I've been thinking about what looks like Serpentine, a green rock used in buildings, and for sculpture: it sorta looks like green marble. I saw this "serpentine" while passing through the "canyon" which is the part of Interstate 40 east of Albuquerque that you take to get to my parents on Highway 14, the so called Turquoise Trail, which was, I suppose the original highway to Santa Fe. In any case, it goes there. My parents are between one third and halfway up 14 to Santa Fe, in Sandia Park, named after the Sandia Mountains, which in English, somewhat hilariously, are Watermelon Mountains. How the hell did they get that name? You would think Watermelons (which are from Africa) would not possibly have reached New Spain (Mexico, and portions of the Southwestern U.S,) till three or four hundred years ago. And the minute someone saw these mountains the sun just left dark for the evening, all they could think of was "Watermelon," Sandia? Oh well, Spaniards had a lot on their minds, with the Blood of Christ Mountains in Santa Fe, the Sangre de Christo's, and other macabre manifestations to contend with (like killing the natives) perhaps there was a winking irony in naming these New Mexico red sun dappled piles of rock after fruit: not the blood of the Savior, but big juicy balls of fruit. Sure.

What's wonderful about these mountains is that they arent' granite, like their northernmost neighbors, the Rocky Mountains, for the most part are. The mountains here are, when you look at them, comprised of tilted beds of sedimentary sandstone, limestone, and some kind of metamorphic rock, which is always a sedimentary rock, heated and put under huge pressures until it bends. From what I have read, and common sense, the rock here was originally either sand dunes, or ocean bottom. Limestone, in Bloomington, came from the great inland sea's that covered North America a number of times prior to the last great glaciation of the earth, twenty thousand years ago. They say we're still warming up from that freeze up.

In any case, the rock's here were sediments like sand and silt, compressed and baked like a kiln until the silicates melted and fused rock together. The reason I mention this, is that something strange happened after that. Unlike the Rockies, with originated due to a series of great orogenies (a fantastic, seemingly lewd word that means "springing from the earth due to strange, mysterious forces in the mantle.) the mountains here began as a huge flat expanse of desert sand, or ocean bottom, dried up (or not.) Slowly these huge many mile across chunks fractured from one another, somehow. And each chunk, due to the fact that it is not only huge across (above the ground) but three dimensionally huge (below the ground, the entire thing know as Terrain) begins to float, somewhat, on the Earths mantle. And slowly a huge series of chunks all would tilt sideways, until they are at a thirty to forty five degree angle. Exposing the great rock from deep in the earth, on their backsides, and plunging the previous above ground sediment from the ocean or desert, deep into the ground. Of course at the top of this half buried cube, is what was at one time flat ground, like the deck of the Titanic, now sticking way the hell up in the air. After thousands of years of erosion, all of this gets rounded off, and plants take up habitat, and snow falls on the gracefully curving features in winter. You have what are undeniably mountains. But if you look carefully you can still see the carefully laid down layers of the millions of years when there were no mountains for hundreds of miles around. It's, more or less, completely nuts. And cool. And fun. And what Darwin studied, in order to develop a new conception of time, so as to imagine lengths of time long enough to watch a Finch's beak change it's shape. Tens of millions of years makes a hell of a picture show.

And of course, God did it all for me.

Merry Christmas from the Watermelon Mountains.

Note: My Geology describes the famous Basin and Range "Terrain" of the Southwestern United States. My cousin Tim's friend Andrew came to visit on my last evening with my parents, and, I got a chance to ask about these "sedimentary" mountains. Andrew was cool enough to point out that the part of the mountain I was looking at was granite sheathed in a "thin" layer of sedimentary rock. On the other side of the mountain, the granite was exposed by the dropping of the Rio Grande Fault. And the mountains here were caused by the Rio Grande Fault, not my basin and range idea, which is what I wrote above. I was a little embarrassed to be so wrong, but enlightened by his wonderful explanation (and lifetime advocation.)

It wasn't my "fault." Puns.... low humor for a lowdown fool.

Funky Ho Down

2009-12-22T02:16:00.000-06:00

Recently I copied this passage from Mae-Wan Ho's insane and wonderful The Rainbow and The Worm (the physics of organisms) into an email to a friend concerning the magic of muscles:

(after writing at length about the magic of an organisms eye, and the manner in which it collects data, and the rate at which that data is organized, processed, and refigured to usefulness, she writes...) Another instructive example is muscle contraction. About 40% of our body is made of skeletal muscle, i.e., muscle attached to bones, like those in our arms and legs and trunk. Another 5 to 10% is smooth muscle such as those in the gut and body wall, and cardiac muscle in the heart. Skeletal muscle consists of bundles of long, thin muscle fibres, which may be discerned under a magnifying glass. These fibres are several centimetres in length, each of which is actually a giant cell formed by the fusion of many separate cells. A single muscle fibre, magnified a hundred times or more under the light microscope, can be seen to be made up of a bundle of 20 to 50 much smaller fibres, or myofibrils, each 1 to 2 micrometres, or one millionth of a metre in diameter. A myofibril has regular, 2.5 micrometre repeating units called sarcomeres, along its length. Adjacent myofibrils are aligned so that their sarcomeres are in register. Under the much higher magnifications from the electronmicroscope-- thousands to tens of thousand times-- one will see extremely regular arrays of the periodic structures. One will also see that each sarcomere consists of alternating thin and thick filaments, made up respectively of the two main muscle proteins, actin and myosin. In three dimensions, there are actually six thin actin filaments surrounding each thick myosin filament, and the six actin-filiaments are attached to an end plate, the Z-disc. Contraction occurs as the actin filaments surrounding the myosin filaments slide past each other by cyclical molecular tread milling between myosin 'head' groups and serial binding sites on the actin filament, forming and breaking cross-bridges between the filaments, in all three dimensions in the entire array. (here she continues with a bunch of stuff about the uptake of ATP and it's conversion, ect. ect. very interesting, but not completely necessary to the mind blowing conclusion.)

(Continues...) In a typical muscle contraction, all the cells in the muscle-- billions of them at the very least-- are executing the same molecular treadmilling in concert. Simply waving our arms about is a veritable feat requiring a series of actions coordinated instantaneously over a scale of distances spanning nine orders of magnitude (!!!) from 10 E-9 metre (or a nanometre) for intermolecular spacing between the actin and myosin heads, to about one metre for the length of our arm; each action, furthermore, involving the coordinated splitting of 10 E19 individual molecules of ATP. Now, then, imagine what has to happen when a top athlete runs a mile in under four minutes; the same instantaneous coordination over macroscopic distances involving astronomical numbers of molecules, only more so, and sustained for a long period without break.

(Cont..) It is truly remarkable how our energy should be available to us at will, whenever and wherever we want it, in the amount we need. Moreover, the energy is supplied at close to 100% efficiency. This is true for muscle contraction, in which the chemical energy stored in ATP is converted into mechanical energy, as well as for all the major energy transduction processes, as for example, in the synthesis of ATP itself in the mitochondria where carbon compounds are oxidised into carbon dioxide and water in the process of repiration. If that were not so, and energy transduction can only occur at the efficiency of a typical chemical reaction outside living organisms, which is 10 to 30% efficient at best, then we would literally burn out with all the heat generated.

(Cont.) To summarise, then: being alive is to be extremely sensitive to specific cues in the environment, to transduce and amplify minute signals into definite actions. Being alive is to achieve the long range coordination of astronomical numbers of submicroscopic, molecular reactions over macroscopic distances; it is to be able to summon energy at will and to engage in extremely rapid and efficient energy transformation.

(Cont.) So, how is the sensitive, vibrant whole that is the organism, put together? An organism that develops from the relatively featureless fertilised egg or seed to a complicated shapely creature that is nonetheless the same essential whole, until it dies?

We have certainly not exhausted the wonders of being alive.

Oh no, we have not.

The most important concepts in The Rainbow and the Worm, for me, have circled around the concept of life as a great big web, intimately associated with it's habitat, solar system, and sun; but built for comfort far above the thermodynamic equilibrium. I'm crazy for these structures that catch falling electrons (a name of one of the chapters in RATW) and crazy for the structures further down the chain that maintain the "quality" of the energy that the falling electrons give us, storing it as carbohydrates, or using that self same energy for enormously useful stuff. Coupled with the history of the Earth's surface once it met cute with life: this oldest of materials (for example: you) has not only the usual fascinations assumed when one is speaking of life, but has terraformed the world to it's dictates: and stolen from the way things ought to be: to sing a ballad in praise of "the will."

Among the delights of this "oldest of materials," life, there is the oldest of questions, like, why is life improbable. Or, rather, why doesn't life just self assemble, in the laboratory, without much trouble. Turns out the selfsame high energy that I was describing in the above paragraph, stored in very large amounts in covalent bonds as electronic bond energies, make frankenstein smoothies a bit difficult: equilibrium states simply, by definition, don't fluctuate much of anything into a high energy life form like you. You're special. Even in the morning before you've had your coffee.

This is such a revelation to me.

And it doesn't just go for organisms: since very, very large, complex systems, also contain high energy flows, and material cycles, which form interdependent reflective relationships: witness the jet stream effect on flows, and temperature of air masses, and the weather they create. Witness the probable impact of CO2 on ocean streams cycling from the tropics to the poles: change.... what kind of change, who knows, but any change means serious changes in the weather of places that are rather culturally unready for sudden lattitudinal changes in their "normal" weather. The material of our world: quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, cause a change in gross flows of material and energy gradients, which as boring as that sounds, is the difference between zero Celsius and zero Fahrenheit.

The entirety of The Rainbow and the Worm is a sort of elaborate metaphor, carefully built by a physicist, and constructed amongst a dozen fields, to show how the seemingly material qualia of physical organisms, are in reality constructed of highly organized energy, and complex structures that result (and proffer) such organization.

Among the subroutines of the metaphor are discussions of a number of fascinating topics: for example: The Benard-Rayleigh convection cells. These are the convective movements that make the honeycomb holes in your shallow pan of rice, before you give it it's final stir. Unless your some kind of bachelor slob, who microwaves his way through life, you have undoubtably seen these honeycomb patterns in a pan. While it's fascinating to know they have a name, I'm sure, why do I mention them? Well... they represent a sort of H20 molecular roller coaster for individual molecules: each cell comprised of something like 10 E23 water molecules, cycling around and around. So, picture this: a giant playground where happily squealing kids (I walk through one such lovely place with a more or less public sidewalk going through it, when I stroll over to my friends' Mike and Luane's place. The other day I was sort of time machined by the squealing of a few of the girls: so high pitched and random: never changes, never will... thank God. Dennis Lehane has a kind of extended ode to such behavior as part of the healing and grieving process by his father in the incredible Mystic River... it made me really admire Lehane's grasp of real fatherhood, and love.) Let me try this again... picture this: a giant playground where happily squealing kids are running around American style (not doing martial arts, for crying out loud) about as organized as you can well imagine. All the sudden, the sun rises a bit higher, things heat up a bit and every single kid grabs another kids hand in in strict formation pinwheels like some Cirque de Soleil skit. The teachers are delighted until they realize... there's no stopping it, as long as the sunshine flows, the kids pirouette.... those annoying little shits have become dancing zombies (what'll we tell the parents?)

This is more or less what happens to the water molecules; it's strange, extremely strange, since below a certain temperature, the water molecules dart about like any fluid must, when not frozen: randomly moving about, without a lick of organized movement. But the moment the Benard-Rayleigh convection cells form (at just below boiling temp): suddenly a molecule moves in a relatively tight formation (though huge for the molecule, given that there's 10 E23 of them per cell...) As long as the heat remains (energy flow) a "structure" of cycling molecules is maintained across the shallow pool of heated water.

Throughout the rest of the book Ho makes arguments for energy to create other, perhaps not similar, but you might say, similar enough, emergent structures. Other cycles, energetic, chemical and material, are evidenced for scrutiny of the physics at play within living things.

In a previous post about falling electrons (I've been rereading this incredible book for almost four months) I mentioned the rattling around that a unit of energy has to do, through the structure of the biosphere. This rattling around, amounts to the obstacle course that ecosystems put up, which in effect is what allows life to rob entropy blind. So while things wind down, anyone who knows me, knows that I (something of a lifeform) don't wind down in the least.

Interestingly, for folks bored silly by all this biology talk, there are implications from these very questions at the bleeding edge of studies done on energy creation, storage, (fuels) and policy. In other words: the rising costs of energy, and the seemingly endless questions surrounding where we might get the electrons we need without begging alchemists for suggestions. How much energy is in the worlds biomass? A very interesting question, indeed, discussed by one of my favorite professors at MIT, whom I have been watching the lectures of for the last year, and who influenced my views on energy enormously. He received an enormous grant from the recently unveiled partitioning of the DOE's stimulus money. I wrote a blog entry on it a few weeks ago, given that I am considering investing in his commercialization of electrolysis. His lab developed a special catalyst to split dirty water, at lower temperature, and atmospheric pressure, than the state of the art electrolysis machines. Read: cheaper hydrogen. This gentleman, Dr. Dan Nocera, has an arresting way of looking at energy, around the world. And after you hear his views on how our Earth's population is going to consume energy, you will realize how implicitly uncompassionate even our most pedestrian views about global policies are: we depend heavily on the poverty of others, so as not to have to share in a common endeavor. I'd love to hear some of my less thoughtful friends ponder these things, for the solutions are hardly available through even the best of thoughtful lifestyles. Solutions like building one nuclear power plant A DAY, for the next forty years, to have even a fraction of the energy we will need. Nuclear power is a dead end, globally. But you won't hear that frequently. I mention all this, because Dr. Nocera is one of the more admired surveyors of estimation of global biomass energy. His numbers speak to how much energy is in our total global biomass (whether burned, or turned into biofuels, total energy. Here's a link to his incredible talk on MIT World: you should watch him. Be advised however, he's a Doctor, Jim, not a course of Paxil. You might have trouble sleeping should you listen very carefully. If you give a ^&$% about human beings. You do... you really do.

So, lest you think I've gotten off the topic.... I HAVE NOT. I promise. For Ho, in The Rainbow and The Worm has a few things to say about storage in the biosphere:

(don't worry about these numbers too much. they're real, and interesting, but not at the heart of why I am sharing this excerpt....)

Ho writes: Unlike chemical species, however, energy cannot be tagged, for example, with a radioactive label, and its fate followed through the system; so the residence time for energy cannot be measured directly. However, as the flow of energy into the biosphere is always accompanied by the flow of materials, especially CO2, into the system , the mean residence time for energy can be taken as the mean residence time for carbon in the system. (Cont.) The size of the various carbon pools on the surface of the earth has been estimated, giving the toal biomass (both living and dead) on land and in the sea ats 2.9 X 10 E18 gm and 10.03 X 10 E18 gm, respectively. The values for carbon flow, i.e., the total fixed by photosynthesis per year, on land and in the ocean, are respectively, 0.073 plus or minus 0.018 X10 E18 gm and 0.43 plus or minus 0.3 10 E18 gm. Putting these values into the Flow of Species formula :

Flow of species = Total amount of the species in the system/ Mean residence time

gives residence times of 40 years (on land) and 21.8 years (in the ocean) repectively. (!!!!)

(briefly... I ask you to ponder that for a moment. That's how long it takes carbon to "cycle." And this material cycling of forty years duration, and 21 years duration for land and sea, is presented to stand in as a material shadow, for energy, material and energy flows being siblings of equivalent scale and relevance. How lucky I am that such simple stuff can make me so very, very happy. Now for a little more funky "Ho down"....)

An interesting question arises here: what is the significance of the long residence time of the energy that comes to the biosphere in photons from the sun? The energy of the photon meanders through innumerable cycles and epicycle of metabolism such that it is released and stored in small packets ready for immediate utilisation or in medium term depots such as gradients and fields to longer term deposits in the form of glycogen and fat, and even longer term depots in the form of fossil fuels. The efficiency (and perhaps stability) of metabolism is associated with this drawn-out web of coupled energy transfer, storage and utilisation within the highly differentiated space-time structure of the organism and, in the case of ecological systems, the ecological communities of organisms. Metabolic and structural complexity prolongs the energy residence or storage time, perhaps by an equal occupation of all storage times (or all storge space times), affording the organism an efficient and stable living.

So, not only are the falling electrons of the biosphere captured in high energy bonds, which then give and degrade and change through the "innumerable" cycles, and "space"/"time" of the biosphere, but the entirety of this extremely complex pinball machine, serves possibly to stabilize, and smooth out both the mega structure of the biosphere and the individuated structures of the organism, one being something of a fractal of the other. See what I mean, Ho is a poet of energetics and our physical realm.

In future posts I would like to discuss a little more closely some of the things I have learned from Ho, and from another book, Oliver Morton's Eating the Sun, about photosynthesis. The mechanisms life has at it's employ operate in a manner quite unlike the tools we utilize to accomplish the tasks we sometimes imagine as similar to the mandates of "living things." The truth about the engines of the biosphere is far weirder, and more wondrous than our fleshed out metaphors could attempt to mimic.

"Free" is NOT The New Black

2009-12-08T11:10:00.000-06:00

Everywhere you turn, should you turn to the media, you find people discussing the supposedly riveting concept of "free." Free is the new black. Info wants to be free. Blah blah blah. Much of this seems, as intelligent observers sometimes manage to concede, to be apologist rhetoric for mass theft of intellectual property. Sucking it to the record companies is a lot less abjectly immoral when the songs just wanted to jump into your ear. And I have to hand it to the previous kings of music distribution, the greeting card is possibly no less immoral a device for intellectual property (a song) than some super small time thieves' hard drive. Though, don't quote me on that. Theft is theft. Not greeting cards.

What's odd is how thoroughly very intelligent people seem to ignore the tempest in a teapot nature of this seemingly interesting subject. Terabytes of data are large amounts, yes. And much of this is more or less in the public domain (or available with a library card, or student ID) sure. And it is super interesting that such a service has become available due to the classic scalability of systems. Definitely! But axioms should not apply to service this phenomenon, that pretend to say something new. The water company provides water very cheaply, where I live, but it is hardly free. Merely consumed ubiquitously. Not free. And it don't want to be.

Same with other "utilities." A word that, unlike "free" deserves to grow in usage and relevance. The truth is that "free" as we experience it in the digital realm, is (as everyone knows) not free. It is paid for by elaborate structures that belie its seeming simplicity, in an aping of nature, not in release of her "surly" bonds. If anything, in greater service to them.

Aren't humans funny? Though many of us hurt when walking due to arthritis, it is rarely posited as a human dream to "simply be able to walk without pain." The old man I live with put this in an unintentionally hilarious way one night when, over dinner, he said in a slight mockery of grace, "God bless those who can swallow!" His point? Sometimes, swallowing can be a struggle. So enjoy it while you can.

And so it is with "free." We experience greater ease and access to something, and come to nearly supernatural conclusions (sometimes elaborating at 350 pages of nonsense, knowing people are gluttons for fantasy, despite the nose on their face.) Imagine if all the nonsense on the internet, including these fantastic denizens of the "ultimate sale" were somehow to provide their concepts for peer review. I wonder what sort of attitude the Second Law of thermodynamics would have toward the sudden appearance in human history of something for nothing? Oh yeah... there's something for nothing, just about everywhere you go in the world. And hiding behind the celebratory signage are the sobering facts that con-artists leave out. These claims are not sometimes a scam. The are not the new black. They are always a scam. Always a diversion. Always a shell game. Almost always cleverly just to the left or right of the MAIN THING (for example, your value system: put more bluntly, your rather fickle desire to "make a difference.") The examples litter history, and how often are they clothed in the finery of progressivism? Frequently. Ah, the good of the people rests on theft from the big shots. Somehow, as much as it would be nice if that were true, Beaver, I thought better of you.

Lastly there is the little matter of what causes "free" in the first place, which the so called intellectuals who traffic in this tawdry subject rarely seem to feel is interesting enough to look into. Occasionally some wag will hear that economics and fluid dynamics can be seen together, dining at a swank place endorsed by Science. Well... I should hope the two are comfortable in a math book together, but on a Friday night this would earn either little cache, don't you think.

"Free" is not possible due to some sweet little metaphor tidily escaping a genie bottle of compressed air, gas, heat, or other simplistic calculus, involving not much more than a numerator and denominator. Oh, sure, such entities would be necessary to describe "free", in the manner such a description is possible. And it is, in a sense, possible. "Free" is an emergent phenomenon having very little to due with social good. "Free" didn't care about your Grandma's water bill, just as it doesn't care about yours. "Free" comes about due to the manner in which systems of delivery of immutable pieces of information were built. Their architecture (servers, packet switching, and the software, mathematics and theory behind all of this) is complex, systemic, and yes... to use an overused word: chaotic. As such, phenomena, which have happily been surprising us, have been emerging for years. Like YouTube. Few could have guessed the appearance of, market for, eventual actual demand, and underlying capacity (throughput) possible, for the "service" known as YouTube. YouTube is commonly regarded as "free." In truth, of course, its value was readily settled upon by the parties that bought and sold it. And readily paid for (as some contentious observers worry about to this date) by Google. Shouldn't free stuff be free? Plenty of people who value YouTube would tell me I am missing the point. THEY don't pay, so it's free. And this too, their time and attention, and the value of both, seems to confuse the hell out of everyone in this discussion; just as it confuses the hell out of some of my friends who think their time is worth their self estimation (a very low value) and therefore never make any money, regardless of their skills, or opportunity.

To further elaborate, in a less popular vein, the Internet was designed to provide redundancies which, by design, have value, in the manner that a self repairing car would be incalculably more valuable than the sort we are cursed to drive. Many of the qualities of the web are powerfully valuable due to their novelty in nature, and especially as in deference to some of the systems that grew in the natural world: like the social and economic dynamics of locality.

This Internet "system", or web, was not created to deploy the qualities that we eventually most powerfully desired of it. It was never meant to provide, and never will provide, something for nothing. That it has powerfully deployed efficiencies of scale and information theory, changes little in the maintenance of power demanded to continue it's use and growth. All the while, it changes our lives, creating less predictable futures, and less relevant roles for our skill sets on the time frame of a human lifetime. Ask an economist next time you get a chance, "Which is it, that most pressures deflation over a time span of the last ten years: computers, or recession?"

Computers have yet to be blamed for recession, but one of the hallmarks of a recession, the loss in value of an economy's goods, over time, is deflation. And one of the greatest drivers of deflation is the most powerful tools being used across all industries to replace laborers, services, costly mistakes of inventory, and overall logistical choreography: Computers, of course. These savings for Paul, have meant a serious loss of revenue for the Peter's who previously provided costly services that computers have replaced. Hence intense downward pressure on the value of bookkeepers (Quickbooks, however, still cost's hundreds,) simplistic piece manufacture (laborers to robots,) "counters" and others who labor to "see it all" (spreadsheet and inventory management, as well as RFI tags, and other radio frequency devices that have taken the handlers out of much of the shipping and receiving industries.) And don't forget about the more or less novel expertise of logistics players, like UPS, who reorganize local systems like the mail system in the former Twin Towers, which was so slow that people used the US mail, rather than brave an "inter office" system which was built to fail.

So what's happened to those of you affected by all this progress? I guess you're free, eh?

You can't stop progress, but you sure as hell can call it something other than "free."
I bought a chopsaw the other day, that was worth nearly $200, for $20. The price of such tools has dropped over fifty percent retail, and possibly more wholesale. There is currently a consolidation amongst the largest players in the power tool world: significantly Stanley Tools, and Black and Decker (maker of Dewalt) wish to merge their famous yellow badges. Gonna hafta settle on a slightly different yellow tonality, methinks. But in any case, the change in cost, across our economy, depending on the sector can be astonishing. For some things: like copiers: the makers of the device recoup the cost in servicing the machine for its life. Automobiles have more or less worked this way before. Less and less to be sure, but still a significant portion of the value of a car company comes from the dealers privilege to raise the "flag" and do business in concert with the reputation of the cars badge. Any fool knows that service at the dealer is supposed to be a premium. And costs reflect this for the customer. And "value" of companies sure as hell reflect it as well.

Hulu (the web video service) is from nowhere. Yet it is a rich, reasonably ubiquitous source of experiences and brands known the world over, and seamlessly entered into the expectations of the new user who types in Hulu's URL. Due to the fact that Hulu is supported (and they do not pay its bills in full, as of yet) by ads, many people perceive their experience watching Hulu as free. And yet Hulu is considering charging a small fee in the future to supplement it's ad structure. This perfectly demonstrates the perception of free, vs. it's deployment. Somehow, free gets paid for. By the rich, or by the relatively poorer. "Free" is an emergent phenomenon of complex systems we just love to fall into. Our pleasure, so rare amongst these well worn brands, is easily mistaken for "free and easy." But hasn't that been the case since the first shill ever sold an otherwise worthless rock as an arrowhead? Your sensations of novel pleasure are "emotionally valuable" and there fore, in a sense, value added. What was once a [30] Rock, is now a sexy projectile. Both of them are not free.

I'd Like You to Meet A Friend

2009-12-04T20:23:00.000-06:00

(Muertu is an old character of mine, who I've had some very good times with. In some ways for me, she's like a very old girlfriend or something. In any case, I'm hoping to write a little Novella about her and her life. Sort of a Genre fiction thing, at least my approximation. I hope you like this taste of her, and I'll be posting more, as long as she's willing to answer my calls. Enjoy.)

Chapter One: (".... I had thought we said goodbye...")

Muertu placed her hand on the long broken door knob that was only slightly cool due to the fact that it was on the interior side of the door. Turning the knob, like a game of chance, resulted in some strange combination of broken pieces within the mechanism until finally, three cherries popped up, and the door miraculously popped open. You're the only thing more broken than me, she thought, smiling at the fact that she had a few years left of sometimes working herself.

Eighty seven years in this world and still willing to be cranky, she knew, the end would come when she found herself smiling too often. She had managed to avoid the seemingly inevitable desire to be with small children constantly. Books, the radio, the garden, and yes, a very occasional friend, were all that she needed besides the work. And tonight she moved through her garden, simply enjoying it without much thought, savoring her slow approach to the street, and the path beside her house that led up to the ridgetop she loved in the manner of all terrestrials. If you can't go up by wing, scaling a hillside should be the next best thing. But then, even a bird loves a tower... what we love, must be in some measure what we need... our feelings sometimes our curse, and others our reward. How many times had she been glad to feel nothing at all?

Her thick, dark grey hair, pulled into more a mass than a bun, swung very slightly none the less at the cadence of her efforts up through the trees. She touched their bark, sliding her fingers over each as she passed it, in greeting, and self pleasure. Of all the big troubles in the world a tree stands opposed... somehow crucial to everything else, but without need of even the slightest rancor. Save fire, or windstorm, causing it to basically die, and fall through her roof, Muertu had never once been anything but gifted by these trees company.

A breeze blew just slightly more than the the dead stillness below, up here. Some of the oaks rattled in their wintry death sounds. Muertu knew she was a little colder than she preferred, but endured it for the sight of her valley, stretching an improbable distance away. How she had resented this dead quiet place as a young woman. How each detail spoke nothing to her singing ardors. How entirely different she viewed the place now. She giggled (senility should be a little fun) at that silly child. How often it feels bad to have it good, was a question she'd have tucked within her, like a flower in the hand, when she died.

A hawk sat in a tree, near the edge of the woods, where pasture met the incline of the hill. So still and quiet, waiting for a rabbit or mouse or other less careful being... making crossing of the grass beneath the sky. Muertu could not see it terribly well, there at the bottom of the hill, through the trees. But she could see well enough it fall to the ground, then take flight... with something invisible in it's talons (or perhaps a failed hunt altogether... she couldn't tell.) And as a little girl she'd thought this animal was going to be extinct by the time she was retirement age. All of life a fresh surprise: for better or worse. But never according to the plans, and fears, of man.

Her regard for the animal benumbing the ache of her day, flew nearly as fast away, as Muertu startled to the vibration in her pant pocket. Damn... why did I forget to leave this demon home?

"Yes," said Muertu.
"Boss, we found your old friend..."
Muertu dropped the phone from her ear, for a few seconds, looked for the hawk, but could not see it. Things lost and found... so long and she had nearly forgotten.
"Jesse is she alive?"
"Oh yeah, she's more or less in perfect health. Two and one half hours from Alsterbern. You could see her tonight, if she'd have you."
"She's not going to want to see me. Christ, I have thought she was dead so long, I can't believe this."
"Well, right or wrong, we now don't know how the story ends, Dr. Saco."
"Thank you Jesse, I'm on my ridgetop just now,"
"That sounds like you,"
"There are times I wish my home was more or less my description. But as you know, were that the case, I wouldn't have to take your God damned calls."
"Nor my company, Boss. I've always somehow enjoyed the fact that we weren't friends. I like you more than a number of my friends. Strange, but true."
"Pity will win any number of accolades, Jesse... but you've lots of time to be pressed beneath the burden of that truth."
"See what I mean... strange. I suppose you'll call me, I don't wish to injure your feelings with any further attempts at contact. Is it even remotely possible that I'll receive your instructions? Or can I go open a bottle with my wife?"
"Drink with your wife, should it be necessary, I'll drive."
"Oh, that's good, 'cus when she learns I'm working tonight, sobriety isn't going to help matters."
"Like you said, Jesse, it is convenient for all concerned that we are not friends. As it stands, you'll hear from me when I need you."
"Ok, Boss."
"Thank you, Jesse."

Muertu dropped the phone back in her pocket after turning it off. The fading light of the sky, released the spinning forms in her mind, and as per usual in such circumstances, what appeared to be ghosts wandered the sky and pathway with her. Good heavens.... Saraheim, how have you made it this far. Muertu had never expected to live this long. Though, she had never expected to die, and even today, it seemed deeply unlikely. Which made no sense for an old woman to think. But there it is. She had always expected Saraheim to die young, and when she disappeared? There was no need to over think it. A woman without a soul in the world knows ecstasy enough, and danger, to be lost in the snowdrifts of consequence, without note by anyone. No one named her loss as a tragedy, or as even newsworthy. Even Muertu, once so close to the woman they could finish one another's sentences (and fight until a miserable silence realigned their estimation of one another,) found herself calmly accepting the inevitable. Was having lived so close to death for so long, and dying a tragedy? Muertu coldly thought it unfair to equate Saraheim's death with real tragedy. She was sad, but felt little confusion on the subject.

But now, as was always the case with their friendship, this news brought fresh uncertainty, old worry, and tired curiosity. Even an old crone with that woman's blood... this is going to be a bitch; she always was.

Muertu passed the quietly heroic trees, which waited out the mysteries of the world, she was cursed to parse. And slowly, in as much foreboding, as arthritis, found her way back to the door's broken handle.

Deck The Halls (with Daddy's Folly)

2009-12-01T23:16:00.000-06:00

Stopped at a cafe in town today, and since I've known it's proprietor for ten years, sat down (bad idea, I was tired and I felt even more so, once sitting) and chatted with her and a mutual friend of hers and mine, and the friends daughter. The proprietor and her friend were decorating the Christmas tree with what looked to be 1000 ornaments encircled by neon signs of christmas lights. It was very Vegas, very bright.

Anyhow, most of what they were saying had to do with Christmas Tree strategy, so I looked over at the girl, Megan, and said, "say Megan, why aren't you helping them?"

Megan was staring deep into the eyes of the Universal Teenage Phone Thingy, and was kind enough to raise her eyebrows in salute. "I'm talking to Chris," she said.

"And Chris is your great uncle, from Peduka?" I asked her.

Funny snorting sounds erupted from behind a star on top of the Christmas tree, with a hand wiggling it into a semblance of uprightness.

"No..." said Megan, looking away from the UTPT and up to the tin ceiling of the cafe, "Chris is my boyfriend in Atlanta... and Mom, he has the money next week."

I had no idea what that meant. Mom said, "well, your going to use it wisely, not foolishly, huh?"

"Oh, of course!" said the fifteen year old. I raised my eyebrows this time.

"None of my business, of course," I said, "but what money, from where. Is he a crack dealer or something?"

More snorts from the approximate position of a tinfoil jacketed gingerbread man.

"Of course not," she shrieked in mock teenage alarm, while texting on some awful subject. "His father died and left him money, which he will be getting next week."

"Your kidding..."

"No," she smiled, looked me in the eye for the first time, and actually dropped her phone to her side, just to think without distraction, on this golden thought.

"So... uh, I'm curious..." I asked her, "outside of his dead fathers money, what exactly does this guy do for you?"

A chorus of, "That's mean, Andy." Came from the Christmas tree.

"It is?" I asked them, turning around. "My fifteen year old friend who won't graduate from high school for three years, has designs on an inheiritence owed to a boy her age, by his DEAD father, and I'm mean for wondering why the money is even a conversation piece by a mere love interest. I'm mean? What does this money have to do with anything even possibly good. My God, she's fifteen."

Everyone just looked at Scrooge. "Sorry I'm being mean," I told Megan, "'cus, I guess the real truth is that you really love this guy, huh?"

"Oh yes," said, Megan, "and you weren't too mean, I can't understand what your saying anyhow."

"Well, it's hard for everyone to text and think," I said, "and besides, I am definitely a boring guy."

She read the remaining sentence in her UTPT, and sort of startled when she realized I had stopped talking. "Why do you say... you say you're definitely a boring guy? Why?"

"Well isn't it obvious," I explained, "my Dad's alive and well."

The Christmas tree fell over...

A Lost Book Of Names

2009-11-30T23:28:00.000-06:00

Hello to those of you I have never seen identified on this Blog. I like you a great deal as well, and do not care as to whether you comment or not. These words are for our people. And that is you. A friend of mine, Midnight, reminded me of this just now. And she wrote the letter some time ago. How powerful her words, to bring me back here, yes...

Whether you comment or not, hello. I suppose science has laid to rest the function of prayer. And your prayers are felt by me. Thank you.

Making an Ass Out Of You and Me

2009-11-28T16:44:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned before how astonishing I find this meta conversation that Blogging (and other computer aided conversation) is. Well, in my last post I wrote of my fascinating family who really mix the loving and accepting with small grace notes of profundity (the Colts!) as we celebrate our lovely lives together. A number of you responded with words that delighted me for more than an hour, yesterday, as I attempted to consider not only the meaning they had added to my meditation, but also the significance of them to my life. You people are a piece of work. Real piece of work. And you add to my happiness. A great deal.

In any case, when I returned to my computer today, I wanted to remind myself, before posting something new, what was so wonderful about yesterday. There was a new comment, from Mule. In the comment Mule expanded on some things he had hinted at before to me in other comments. He's been a somewhat politically conflicted guy his whole life. He's worked hard, and lived somewhat hard, his whole life. He feels old, but unlike some, as they near their golden years (he's only 57) his perspectives have not hardened into a disinterested apathy. No, his perspectives have grown in their breadth and expanse, to be more and more inclusive of others... Hilariously, he voted for a Democrat, last election, EVEN THOUGH HE'S NEVER TRUSTED DEMOCRATS! Well, Mule, neither have I. But then... don't get me started.

All of the above was lovely to hear and consider. But then Mule spoke about a neighbor he had met when he was invited to dinner with her and and her husband. "Kind decent people. Her husband is away at evenings and I started visiting the wife when her husband works. She told me I was welcome any time. She always gave me delicious food every time I visited. Turkey, cheese, hamburgers, you name it man. She told me a lot about her life. Her husband was appartently an asshole, never made enough money for her. I told her about my wife who left me fifteen years ago for another man. And my children who never visit. This old man sits at home by himself with only a cleaning lady who visits daily. And some friends from my job. So I suggested she should get over to my house now and then and use my swimming pool. She was overjoyed. My house is her house, I told her. We had a hell of a time for a while. I felt twenty years younger and started to putting on weight. We ate a lot, Andy. And drank. It was a true paradise. Then she told me half a year ago they had to move. Why? I asked. Turns out the worthless husband had lost his job. "Alright," I said. This country doesn't protect its citizens. I never thought about it before, but when looking at this beautiful, innocent forty year old woman with long black hair, I felt, what the fuck? I may be turning into a communist or socialist but I will protect my community. I would not accept this. I went over to the husband. He was smoking. I told him right there and then the poor man had a job as a handy man to help me with things. I payed him $1400. More than nothing, the man was in tears as he accepted. You see, Andy, I look after my community." ....continues, "Lately, I realized this country should do the same! People with money should help the poor. Next time it could be me. Or you my friend. We aimed for a shining temple on a hill, but this temple shall include all of us." "Freedom is more than words, don't you think? It's bread and butter, ham on rye."

Well Mule, their are certainly some pessimistic and cynical wags out there somewhere that would merely see in your words the self medication of a good Samaritin. But I believe you discovered grace, and like the Dancing Scrooge, found it somewhat difficult to keep the secret. You opened your home to a stranger, when she showed you an unexpected kindness. And you found, in these simple, pedestrian moments at home... what? swimming, and having a whiskey? a paradise. One that was in you all along. But, man Mule, it's a hard thing to find, without a little help from our friends. I'm so thrilled you shared this with me.

I do not think fiscal conservatism is incompatible with a progressive society. We need not blow our money. The biggest waste in America is, as you said, not money, but real "bread and butter, ham on rye." Our real freedom is the chance to continue, to be free to be loved and to love others. To sit still, or to come away. All of which has been converted by a number of complex factors in modernity, to look like a credit card, or a paycheck. Living from paycheck to paycheck is not only living without proper security to truly be able to see the world around you, but also living through that tiny little porthole called money. And money cannot be spent on the same merits as love. It can purchase ribbons, bows, trophies, and baubles. It can buy a new Macintosh, and be the centerpiece of an evenings admiration by your friends. But, living through paychecks will only bind you tightly to whatever economic system you live under, providing you with no choices whatsoever beyond the purveyors of your appetites. A life lived by the brain stem alone. Fancy.

You can stand still in life. Even clutching your infant, who, I know, it seems like will die the minute you live for anything other than it. But you can stand still. With a bottle for the kid. And consider what you live for, DESPITE your inclinations.

I wont tell any stories about people I have been loved by, and the happiness it brought them to sacrifice for me. And I won't tell you any anecdotes that reflect the thick moorings of my happiness... the old wisdoms are nearly obvious in their ubiquity. It isn't RIGHT to treat people as you want life to treat you... it is basically your only option (should you wish to ever enjoy your dangerous life.) Those who steal from the living, to conjure imaginary kingdoms in their short lives on this planet, are, like it or not, as deserving of my love as the woman with brown hair. The rich are unhappy in the same proportion as the poor. Only love, listening, joy, laughter, and the simple, endless truths of the great wisdoms of the world will ever cut the mustard, for this ham on rye. A dollar is but a promise made by a bank, by comparison. So.... hoard promises, if thats your reality. Or use them, like Mule, to love another, and receive something---- real---- in return.

Would that the eyes of the world be upon you, Mule. But hey, I guess, in a sense, you really had no choice.

That you have made mistakes is the consequence of your suspension between birth and death. That you have loved is the consequence of your discovery of something that ideology could never hope to proffer.

Thank you Mule. I am eager to be a man like you.

Keepin' it Turkey

2009-11-25T17:29:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is what for many Americans must be a favorite holiday. I'm not sure Christians would completely feel comfortable saying it, but Thanksgiving is an awfully fun and easy time. And even for the cook, what could be more fun than an entire day of pigging out (and watching football.)

Some families have lavish meals with ham, turkey, and god knows what variation on the usual table sagging feast. Some people fill the turkey with oysters (which sounds like a great thing to try. How could, provided the oysters were fresh, it taste BAD?) Some people have a complicated "stuffing" mix (a sort of bread mixture that is put into the turkey. Health officials have been warning the public for years to keep it out of the bird, and bake it in a pan instead, due to the fact that Americans routinely eat Turkeys that through the process of slaughter are infected with human pathogens. The stuffing keeps the turkey much cooler, and absorbs the germs, protecting them from the killing heat of the oven. It's part of the fun of the American "feed," be it BBQ, or Thanksgiving, to cheat death, break the rules, and give grandma a kiss all at the same goddamn time. Hey!

I'm not really in the mood to ask a lot of questions about Thanksgiving. I never really thought it meant anything but the enjoyment of family, anyway. One thing you always notice on Thanksgiving is that every driveway is absolutely filled with cars of visitors, and people are packed in every house. Of course, some people go to a restaurant, and order a depressing variation on what grandma can't cook anymore. It's a great measure of the difference between what commercial establishments promise, and what, at the end of the day, even the finest can really deliver. Savor for a shilling; but only at the right time, and never over the boundary of the sacred. Blackened redfish for Thanksgiving, at least in Indiana, is roughly equivalent to having sex on a churches altar. Even if nobody but God knows. It's simply a fact.

Very few holidays in America, are about America. Sure, the fourth of July, is supposedly about America... but if you bring that up at the BBQ, people will tolerate you, as opposed to welcome any sort of conversation. You could say instead, "Have you seen that cat video, on You Tube, where the cat is inside a pair of underpants (even if you are making it up!) and the entire table, or patio of people will laugh and tell you their own You Tube obsession. Just don't discuss the fourth of July in the context of American history. It's like, fifth grade history, or something. Know what I mean? (say "know what I mean" with no spaces between the words, and you are getting close to sounding like a Hoosier. Be sure to really ring that "mean." MEEEEEEEN!)

Thanksgiving, however, sort of beats the crap out of you if you don't sort of realize its significance where the coming together of family and friends is concerned. Always at the back of your mind, even if you're a surly redneck, is that this was the holiday that sort of nods at that tiresome, and none the less slightly true fact that America is that idiotic country where people break bread together who have absolutely nothing in common. Of course, there are many other countries that merge many different cultures probably far more effectively than America. But still... I more or less have no ethnicity, and it's been a long time since a date even asked me, "where do you come from." It completely doesn't matter. That I write poetry is perhaps twenty times more important to someone I meet than the fact that I am Polish, French, German, and Irish.

So, it's probably the case that at Thanksgiving, we sit with the ghosts of our grandparents and ask them, "why didn't you notice your husband had that funny accent... couldn't you have married a person from the home country?" Then someone asks you to pass the gravy, and grandma's passions sort of make sense. She was probably eating something, and noticed the guy with the hot-dog. It was the hot-dog that made her do it. We're Americans. Hot dogs are important. Pass the gravy. "Let's talk Turkey." Nowadays you'd say, if you were my age, "keep it real." Same difference. In America. But do people say in France, "Let's talk Turkey." I doubt it. They probably say, "Lets boil a frog in the river it was born." I could well imagine that. Of course the kids in France, due to the global passion for the artform of the African American, say, to their parents total shock and illness, "keepin' it real." Ribbit.

I told you I wasn't going to consider this thing critically. I refuse. I'm going to my aunt and uncles tomorrow, and we're going to eat a lot, play Charades, probably go to a movie, and drink to the point where driving is a real bad idea. And halfway through the meal a litmus test of a persons true American mirth will be dipped in each person at the tables soul. What's this? Well... my uncle, a great lover of obvious questions and I think a close observer of human behavior, though he'd never really make you feel analyzed or anything, typically asks everyone at the table, to go in a circle and state what they are thankful for. This is generally not done, in case you aren't aware of this, in America, since like everywhere else, "what I am thankful for" runs somewhat counter to the basic observation that today is, as it were, "another day in paradise." As in, one more goddamn day. So my uncle ignores this basic tenant of the typical modern individual and asks you anyway. And everyone says something. It's a nice tradition, and like most such things, drives the sufferers of particularly bad humours rather nuts. Which is perhaps its true appeal for me. I could easily get away with saying, "I'm thankful that the Seinfeld cast is going to be together on this months episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, at eight PM eastern standard time on HBO!" and everyone would giggle, but nod politely, and more or less mean it. I could as easily say that I was thankful that I lived for twenty two years of Mother Teresa's life, before she died some eleven or twelve years ago. Way to go Mother! I miss you. Thanks! And my family would nod sagely, there being at this sacred table, no particularly jarring difference between Mother Teresa and the television listings (or for that matter, my appetite for either of them.) This can drive a philosopher crazy. But for me, it goes really well with cranberries, mashed potatoes, and corn bread all mixed together, cold, in the middle of the night, my feet bones aching on the tile floor of a dark midnight... giggling with my cousins. Let the philosopher have the aria of his or her convictions, and I'll take the simple, concentrated animal feeding operation of my truly thankful people.

Close Encounters With A Pimp-Bot

2009-11-24T18:25:00.000-06:00

I got a lovely comment today for my last post, about my music. The comment was more or less, ".................." It appeared to be a link as well. But I didn't notice that at first. So I did my standard response to a new comment and wrote to the commenter named "Ladys."

"Ladys," I wrote, "I haven't seen you here before, but that's the longest ellipsis I have ever seen." Later today I clicked on the "long ellipsis" and it turned out it was a link... to a chinese porn site. What's funny is that I visited the Ladys profile page, just to see who "Ladys" was, earlier. And I was excited to have a Chinese follower! Turns out it's a pimp bot.

Come to think of it, perhaps I am thrilled to be followed by a Chinese pimp bot. A custom tailored, "Ladys" killer, that we'll call.... Chinese Pimp-Bot.

I guess I am rather naive.

Music (finally)

2009-11-18T23:46:00.000-06:00

Well... it's going to take awhile, but before long I will have every single song of mine recorded and put up on this little gadget in the sidebar. The mixture of computer sites, and music equipment that I have had to learn about has been incredibly daunting... so I am sorry to all of you who have been so kind to ask after my music.

This first song is my original demo of "Highway 46." I had just returned from Madison, Indiana that day, working for Habitat for Humanity for an evening, and as I recount in Domestic Neon (under Highway 46's post) mourning my mothers father, my Grandfather Wilondek's death. And my mothers loss. And my own.

My voice you hear, is singing the rough outlines of the song for the very first time. As the track begins you can hear the radiator hissing, and it's valves popping. I like that very much, but my future versions of the song "might" be missing that. We'll see.

Obviously the version I wrote in Domestic Neon, is the one I sing today. But I am very attached to all versions of my songs (a bad idea, to say the least.)

I hope I can get all my music on here before too long. In 2010 I hope to force myself to write one bad song a day, and quickly record it. I know I can do it, and it will help force me into more interesting musical places.

The guitar I am playing here is a beat up old sixty dollar collectors item I more or less learned to play on. I had no idea that I would be so inspired that night. I started four of my favorite songs ever that night. Thanks Grandpa, and Mom.

And thanks to you.

Andy Coffey

PS The picture is not the greatest, the stupid website was crashing over and over, and it was the best I could do. I will replace it with an accurate representation of my incredibly handsome self as soon as the plastic surgeons work heals up a little.

Szilard Loved Utopia

2009-11-12T21:02:00.000-06:00

He called you Moonlight, when he brushed his face against your cheek; his chaste gesture held more longing than a handful of kisses. "Your skin is like moonlight," he'd say, tracing the almond shape of your eyes, and staring close in, in wonderment at the shape of your eyelids, then laughing.

"What are you laughing at?" you asked him.

"I just feel so happy that I can stare at you now," he'd say, as if your love had already been sealed and given over to the commitment and vow of marriage. At those times he truly seemed contented.

With a world falling apart, and the adults, parents, teachers and all the rest working tirelessly to plug the holes in the dyke, you hid your friendship, and denied even to each other the fervency of your desires. He met you in the graveyard, where the last remaining rational people in your town lived, and laid down amongst them as much in hiding, and in comfort, as for pleasure.

You lay within his arms, and when he finished inhaling your scent and staring at your glossy wet eyes, he looked to the sky and asked, every time, questions about the sky. Your father had taught you all the stories of the constellations. The myths of the hunters, the sisters, the scale balance, and the warrior. And you would recite the stories again with your hand aloft and pointing to the slowly turning sky: black but punctured by a world that wanted in to the district of this darkness: a small patch of shadow in a solar system of sunlight. He'd reach up while your hand swept the universe, and touch your arm. And sometimes when you finished a story, you'd wish to see his face, and tears would be wet upon it, which you could not help but rub with your fingers, and touch upon your lips. On such evenings the the two of you would come dangerously close to talking about some memory of pleasure, which had for so long been denied you. As if the promise of his tears and your gleaming eyes, had somehow reminded you of a world where you both were not slaves to the insane adult world. Where gravestones were mere chairs in which sat the lively ghosts of persons who had only known happiness. A complete impossibility for the townsfolk alive, and yourselves.

All to soon the warrior, and his starry belt, had crossed the sky, and he would say to you, "I cannot look upon your face again tonight, for I must go, and you should too. I cannot look at you." He hurt you a little with an embrace as desperate as it was welcome, and picked you up off the ground, and without a goodbye, walked back toward his home.

As you walked you thought of the larger world, knowing nothing of it really. Except the awful looks on your parents faces when they read the paper, and listened to the radio. Something terrible was happening; was going to happen; and surely already had. You could not remember the last time you had stood beneath the cherry trees, you mother smiling in an unmistakable ecstasy. When had your mother last smiled at all?

Four days later...

The boy who called you Moonlight was killed that morning, beneath a mushroom cloud above your home, Hiroshima. All anyone knew, among the living, was a new normal of hunger, thirst, fire, and, probably most of all, death. The pressing night sky, your hand up in the heavens, and the feeble thought that you are beautiful, died with your first love.

(This is a true story, of real children. She is seventy four years old, and lives at home, with her children, in Hiroshima, Japan.)

(Leo Szilard, a physicist, was standing at a stop light, in London, and when the light turned green, it matched one in his head. At that moment he was the only man in history who had even the slightest notion of what a nuclear chain reaction was. The reason: it had just occurred to him at the stoplight. Szilard was a very committed optimist, and believer in world government. He believed the chain reaction would be used industrially. Six years later, "she" lost her love, and Szilard, more or less, got a glimpse of the closest he'd ever come to Utopia, which, to his credit, he suffered for with the remainder of his days.)

Perfect Day

2009-11-07T22:56:00.000-06:00

A short time I have to be with you my love
But a short time is better than no time you see
So I bring to you all my posessions and would that you share them with me
I bring one springtime of robins one springtime of robins to sing
I bring you one summer of roses one summer of roses I bring
I bring you the dry leaves of autumn dry leaves will be helpful you know
To soften the fall of your snowflakes when I bring you your winter of snow

------Willie Nelson "Summer of Roses"

One season is always something that another is not. With yearning, regardless of the essence of the season, for something essential to another, but gone until it returns. A Christmas thunderstorm might occur once in a great while but, in general, it should be a real option should one wish to exercise it, to miss thunderstorms at Christmas. Thunderstorms don't know Winter so well, and go South with the birds that time of year.

The Spring is not the fall, and suffers for that. Just as the Winter is not the Summer and suffers for that. Just as the Summer will lack what the Spring had to offer, and one might yearn for a gift of another season.

As Autumn comes into the fullness of its ripeness, we are much with the peculiar dying of what we watched develop so recently with such joy. We cannot guess, because we are human, that we will shortly be celebrating the holiday season. When we are with the death of the green goddess of Spring, Christmas seems a bent and drunken plastic fakery. But when Christmas comes, Autumn is not on our mind. The swirling mythos of human mastery over darkness and discomfort make the blazing song of Autumns display, seem merely the base traces left by something displaying the color of life, without it's crucial open smile.

When the Winter gives us it's seven hours of light and seventeen of darkness, we walk past buildings that in seemingly another life would give a constant radiant warmth from their sun scalded masonry surface, night and day. But in January, the life that that warm, invisible glow seems to infuse in the topography of your stroll through town is gone entirely, and what looks identical feels as if it's receding right before your eyes. The feeling is eery and you look to the sky for comfort. Oddly, the Winter sky is more beautiful and saturated all day and night long than during the warm season, but it cannot reach you with it's cirrus so high and made of ice. In January, only water can provide the appropriate respite from the steadfast refusal of the world to respond with feeling. Water frozen, or water expanding and heaving the soil. Water frosting the windows into unstained, but beautiful art glass. Water providing a dimension to the flat fact of cold that otherwise would seem a vacuum. And when it snows, everyone knows the world is reborn, except that it categorically has not been. We are repositioned to accept it. It seems to have responded to our needs. And we, therefore, refuse to believe this place so appropriate to the curious human wonder, could even be related to the dark, grey, place of feeble daylight that it shares a season with. The power of our pleasure at a Winter wonderland is a testament to our yearning and twisting denial of the cold, dark, world.

And yet with all that, and in much the same vein, what should one make of "the perfect day." The step out your door and the sun is shining and it's sixty five, "we have all day," all thirteen hours left of it, that is. The perfect day. Who doesn't see the bounce in the step of people as they walk with the astonishment that this is the same life as the one where they lay prey to a dentist. A world informed by fantasy, again. The same world, subject to the same vagaries of sunlight and water. A butterfly beat its wings in a Saharan drought, and now the whole Goddamn town is smiling due to the Chaos of the thing. "No, Andy, " they will say, "it's only that it's so nice." And I suppose I should salute them. When it comes to perfect days, there is the fact that they are beyond compare.

Should you be, however, a persistent fool (a cruel thing to call myself, yet in a democracy one risks a vote at every eventuality) you can't help but notice on the perfect day, there seems to be as much interest in the perfectness of the weather, and it's sheer compliance to the dictates and whims of bliss as a winter blizzard attracts an opposite sort of attention. There is an undeniable persistence in the jocularity of the citizen as they spin their cane, or rock their hips with a new summer dress waving like the flag of the State of Grace. Perhaps these revelers are merely appreciating things: students of the rare pleasures of life, and even rarer individual given the freedom to actually enjoy it. I can't deny that a lot of people seem to fit that bill.

But, as you may have already guessed from my lighthearted mocking, the purpose I am attempting to embody with this Blog entry is one of asking: does it ultimately serve a person to place a significance, great, or small on the "cool" of their day. Is this season the one to be jolly. And that, the one to regret? Are you served by cursing the drought; the one that comes when it is normally very hot, and the rainfall not so much. Are you hoping instead for the snowfall that you cursed at the other side of this ellipse of the sun?

Ultimately we look for any excuse to prescribe to nature the yoke of our feeling. This is probably healthy, all things considered. But antithetical to the wisdoms of the world I have noticed over the years. The Winter day is not given its miseries by its action upon your body, so much as your total surrender to it's hand on your rudder. The Meteorologists even developed the Wind Chill Factor for the ostensible purpose of convincing people who are inclined not to take seriously the cold weather, and perhaps might die as a result, that it is colder than it really is. More often than not the Wind Chill Factor is bandied about by the general public to make an mildly apocryphal case about how it really was.... "fifteen below....windchill." The real temperature was twenty degrees outside, but which would you employ in a screenplay?

Sometimes, yes, the weather gets rough and the tiny ship gets tossed. And sometimes, yes, some damned fool thinks the weather knows better than to mess with him, and finds themselves educated in a hurry on the finer aspects of a casket's interior (an undeniably innocuous environment.) But, by in large as Randy Travis was surely suggesting in one of his songs twenty years ago,("as long as old men sit and talk about the weather,") people are going to find a way to speak to their preferences in life through their favorite subject. And will their preferences be for what they are experiencing right now?

Only if it's a "perfect day."

A Greenhouse In A Valley

2009-11-05T22:08:00.000-06:00

Today was just the most beautiful, and moving day. A few weeks ago I got a couple of calls from four or five people who needed stuff done. Of woman, the mother of a friends old employee (a gorgeous young beauty) called me a bit frantically about a greenhouse she was desperate to get into the ground before winter. Her husband was too busy (and besides, she confided in me, he was frustrated that he couldn't figure the "kit" out. She was concerned about the effect of the whole project on her husbands manhood.) They couldn't seem to figure the greenhouse kit out. The snow would be flying soon.

"I can come tonight," I told her, three weeks ago. "Oh, no. Not right now... can you do it in a few weeks?" she asked me.

"Sure, just let me know. It's my pleasure."

So last night, after visiting my mentor in Indy, I drove to the Green's property down a road, North of Bloomington, which I had never been on. The rode dove and dipped over ridges and down, steep and deeply into valleys, huge hardwood forests blanketed the landscape and small patchwork farms popped up at vertiginous angles. The drive alone was like being in a national park. And the Winter blood red sunset wasn't breaking my heart. Having only missed one turn I called Pamela a few times, since the hills were killing my cellphone signal, and literally a hundred yards from her property, I turned down the thin ribbon of "road" and pulled up next to her falling down barn.

She showed me where the greenhouse was supposed to go. I told her, "Great. Where's the greenhouse kit." She pointed to the falling down barn. She thanked me and her husband shook my hand, and I went home, and was relieved to have finally looked them in the eye and shown them that I cared.

Well, today I drove back to the property, stunned at the unbelievable beauty of the valley in which they live. It's nothing like a mountain valley. It's midwestern. But the hills are gorgeous and late morning fog and cows mix with the hardwoods recent loss of leaves, and an azure sky, to give all manner of feeling to this man.

So, when I pulled up to the house, I knew, this was the perfect location to be today.

All day long I searched and found solutions to that damned greenhouse. It was supposed to be bundled up into a "kit" which was coded by little tickets and numbers and letters that the fifty page assembly book referred to. Instead of such an organized "kit" what I found was a pile of aluminum posts and angles underneath a bunch of junk in the barn. There were no identifying marks left attached. Rain had soaked any and all paper and cardboard. And a small pile of Raccoon shit topped things off like an Iron Chef. I could see why Pamela had commented to me that she didn't doubt if I thought she was crazy. These people weren't even trying.

That said, my policy is to enjoy the strange fact that in my life today, what would have confused me enormously in the past, and scared me away from trying things, I push right into and refuse to be afraid of these days. Every time the instructions turned out to be wrong and the "kit" didn't have the right pieces or identify in the instructions the right sequence of events, I just laughed to myself, that once again everything would work out, and at the end of the day I'd have a greenhouse, where Raccoons once stooped to conquer.

At the end of the day, Pamela came into the slanted winter light that had followed all the day through the valley, sweeping around the 120 year old Oak tree that stood off fourteen yards away ("There's a spring underneath that tree, and I guess the tree really likes that water," she told me. Such a lovely woman.)

"I'm going to remember this incredible day on your delightful home property for the rest of this year and beyond, Pamela." I think she actually blushed. The embarrassing evidence of her husbands regret were being swept away by the bright glints of sunlight, shining off the newly erected aluminum structure.

"Were you hoping to start some plants in there, in February?" I asked her.

"Oh yeah," she said, smiling with scarcely concealed pride. "You never did get too frustrated today, did you, Andy?"

"More curious, then frustrated, Pamela. I guess I'm not obligated to experience every complication in my customers lives as frustration in mine. And besides, sometimes the world has really bad information, at hand, for an otherwise pretty reasonable cause. A greenhouse is a wonderful thing to conjure in the world, and regardless of my amusement at the damned "creative" soul who designed this kit, I can't help but appreciate that you have now allowed me to go and tell my friends, when they ask, 'Yeah, I built a greenhouse today, for Pamela Green.' Thanks, Pamela Green. You still think that I think you are crazy?"
"I guess not," and she smiled that beautiful smile. I drove away, through the hills of this lovely world I live in, and couldn't help but wonder how that Winter tinged emerald valley came my way, save for grace, and the chance to be a little bit useful to the Green's.

Tricks and Treats

2009-10-30T16:49:00.000-05:00

The rain falls steady on my world, and 'tis true, to some extent, this season. It is not truly cold yet, but the garden knows what my skin cannot. In the garden there is memory, trained as curled as any vine, the long tail of ancient consequence, and its reckonings I share. I agree with the mottled plants, the huge fallen Tulip Poplar leaves covered with the ravages of their short time up high, now, for the first time this season, somewhere I too glance with reckoning: my feet. They: burned through and burnished with the accretion of a season of viruses, and new labors for their aging tree. But I cannot shed my accretions, and so must sing with only emotion, this newest of seasons, my new scars, set down, and forever upon my skin.

How lovely, of course, this season. The mouldering remnants of the still hot world, with the fruit of the forest and field, piled high: on sale of course. The new colors of women's scarves and hats and boots, and the just beginning hint of a day still early, but lit by the fabled lights of man, near twilight. The loneliest, loveliest time of day.

I drive to a new job sight, a home a friend has recently bought, and we pull, him in his truck, and me behind him, down a long drive, crackling against the limestone gravel that is the gift of my towns bedrock. I comment to myself, since nobody is in my vehicle, goodness what as beautiful lot... the lawn and surrounding woods make a lovely secret place to live the fantasy of home and hearth. I look over, across the lawn and see a doe... a lone deer, tall and alert, but chewing something in the interstice of wood and lawn. She looks as mysterious as the winter seems in it's approach. I always forget the feeling each month brings. I never can remember... since, I suppose, these are deep and inarticulate things, not well worn by the mechanisms of logic and philosophy. I stand before weather, and cold, in the warm lit, remainder of a summer like yard with that doe: and can only know: for each of us time will bring what it will... but neither of us will choose the winter.

Of course, each winter brings so very many gifts. The frost heaves the dirt in mysterious and wonderful ways, and heaves a kind of enterprise into me along with it. The hunger for the warm abandon of different climes brings a frame of mind not available in times of ease. The cyclical setting forth of supplies for the day, and buttoning of coats and adjusting of hats, is it's own dance, with it's own kind of sensibility and mystery. The cold hands of a lover, cold lips, and shivering sound of a woman, as she half laughs and half shivers, is something lovely in a manner that almost makes it worth the cost of being a man. And other things, surely, pay the debt in full.

The smell of firesmoke is something, regardless of its danger to my health, that I always consider a kind of incense of the winter. The whole of the world tinged with its lovely preservative, meaning, and intimation, of food, warmth, longing, and everything else a children's book, from the perspective of an animal might call a "man thing." Being a "man thing" does smell a little of danger and death, but also the life supporting genius of fire.

Ultimately, I usually dread the hottest months of summer, and love the Spring above all. But a longer summer would drive me crazy, with super hot days, and azure blue skies, and the oppressive all consuming light of our nearest star. The autumn does not only mean the winter, of course. It also means the approach of my deepest time of family, at Christmas, and some changes in my work life, and practices, which come in handy, all things considered.

Also, all too soon, the Spring returns, with it's deadly threat of tornadoes, and all day thunder storms, floods, and hosts of golden daffodils. And what would Spring ever mean were it not for these Poplar leaves at my feet?