Archive
holiday weekend
Its been a nice four days off work, like three Saturdays in a row and you still get Sunday. I got some gardening done, about 100 square feet in the raised bed John built. After he tested the soil and it came out with nothing I added 6 inches of horse manure, let that moulder for a while and turned it in good and planted it.
A couple of garlics I must have missed when I harvested had a bunch of little ones and I separated them and planted them first, then the garlic I had from the market, then the garlic Sarah gave me (German Porcelain). Then I got garlic from Trevor who had gotten it from “the Amish looking dude”. Also, right after the little garlic plants I planted a couple of cloves I grew. I picked up 2 kinds from the Root Cellar, the first was an Afghan garlic and then half a head of their generic local garlic. I planted them close because I like to maximize my space.
I also started turning over the soil in cold frame. I have some lettuce and spinach seed. I looked at Lowes when I bought furnace filters but they didn’t have any seed. A whole aisle of poison but not a seed for the Fall garden. I did get tulip bulbs dirt cheap and its only December. I’ve gotten them to work planting them in January.
I worked six of them by the end of the strawberry patch and weeded some. I had friends over and went out. I cooked food and ate food, cleaned, and kept the momentum going. Glad I have to go to work tomorrow before I forget how and think I live just to do what I feel like. I’ve been blessed to have more time doing that then most. I wrote this poem back in the day when I was living like that sort of and remembering when I was doing that for real. Dan Chisolm had a guitar accompaniment that was pretty cool and I remember singing it at our cabins up in Canada for Mike and Phoebe’s wedding when I was wooing Amee. My only real bad boy song. I have another one that I never did anything with but they were both written along with a third piece with several bad boy stories strung together but it was too busy, so I split it up. Any way here it is:
She said her boyfriend was out of town
And would I like to fool around?
She said her boyfriend was out of town
So you can probably guess where I was found.
And oh her kisses they were sweet
And the ecstasy couldn’t be beat
Smoking kief and fresh orange juice
I was feeling high, I was feeling loose.
And I’ve been lucky all my life
And sometimes wrong turns out all right,
It gets so lonely after sunset
I’ll steal some love to get through the night.
And oh her kisses they were sweet
And the ecstasy couldn’t be beat
Smoking kief and fresh orange juice
I was feeling high, I was feeling loose.
Punch and Judy
I’ve already titled this post, if I wait to see what its about sometimes I forget to title it, but its a decision not to write much of an update. I’ve been posting a lot so not much to touch on. I had a nicely paced workday which was good because in retrospect I pushed through the weekend pretty hard. Today I have been doing stuff all day which then if I still feel a little bad about not doing something it means a question of priorities because there’s not a slack in my day to add on.
Work is largely a no brainer, it pays the bills and gives me an opportunity to be a part of something that’s trying to help. After work its a brief with visit with Fido, essential and I wish I had more time for that, then I went to the Odd Fellows meeting. Parker fried fish and there was homemade corn bread and cake and it was fun helping out and eating and getting to know more people. Everybody’s pretty friendly and though I’m just getting into it I am ultimately intrigued by its history and mission.
I am deeply concerned about the future efficacy of government and other large institutions. I am thinking that some of the ones that predate an effective public social service system are important and need to be rediscovered by people who give a damn and prepped to pick back up the load. We can’t afford to keep generating cohorts of children that are casually nurtured and poorly educated and unleashed on a world without jobs or legitimate opportunity. Not unless we want Trouble.Health care is regressing in practical efficacy for most of us and the ranks of the poor grow and become more desperate. At least we can still bury the dead.
So I’m getting involved with the Odd Fellows. What I’m not doing is standing with Occupy Como to make sure they get to keep their tents up and no one is walking around spraying a big can of Pepper Spray, or should I say CS Gas with some Pepper in it. Pepper Spray makes it sound organic and not a dangerous chemical that can kill people. Right now I am more into building for the future then opposing the present, though I think both are necessary and good.
So yesterday I mentioned I dreamed this song/poem. Definitely the first line was written asleep and I got up and wrote it down verbatim in minutes so maybe the whole thing so I don’t know how much credit to take. Its not that different then the stuff I write awake so maybe I do a good job of getting my conscious mind out of the way and let it flow.
If you don’t know Punch and Judy shows go back to at least the Middle Ages and I think it was a Roman thing. Punch has a stick and hits Judy, they’re puppets, did I mention they’re puppets. This piece updates it for the modern age:
Punch and Judy went to a show
I think it was about five nights ago
Punch brought his stick he was feeling cocky
The retro theater was playing Rocky
There was nothing Punch liked more then fisticuffs
A big tough guy who liked to play rough
Punch thought the only thing that was a pain
Was that Rocky never took a stick to Adrian
The clerk asked how many and Punch said “Two please”
They went in the wrong door into Thelma and Louise
Punch couldn’t believe it he was aghast
He wanted to get out of there something fast
But Judy wouldn’t leave she wanted to see the show
Punch hit her with his stick but the usher said: “no”
He through Punch out right into the street
“When Judy gets home, she’s gonna get beat”.
But Judy’s not gonna take it anymore
She bought herself a forty-four
She can’t match Punch’s brawn but she has friends who can
By the name of Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.
Punch took his stick and hit her in the head
Judy filled his puppet body up with lead
Punch dropped his stick he was dead as a nail
There’s not a jury around that would send her to jail
She’s been taking Punch’s beatings since the Middle Ages
Its time that old script got a few new pages
Violence isn’t the answer to domestic abuse
But its appropriate for puppets who were meant to amuse
Because Judy’s not going to take it anymore
She bought herself a forty-four
She can’t match Punch’s brawn but she has friends who can
By the name of Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.
all bad poetry is sincere
Hello faithful reader. I am more and more choosing blogging over watching a movie, even though I just read watching movies is good for you. Improves your social intelligence with increases in theory of mind skills. Most of the article, again from Scientific American Mind was on the value of fiction. Stories help us understand how people work in a way that conveying the same information in a report format for example doesn’t. TV doesn’t do it though. The stories are to rudimentary the characters too stock the author theorized.
It was a busy day at work and I fell a little further behind but I got out only 10 minutes late to walk Fido to the dog park before it got dark. It was fun hanging out, going every other day at pretty much the same time I am meeting up with the same people and Fido is getting to know some dogs. It has a cocktail party feel today and after wrapping up my 6 week course on self esteem today I acted like a friendly and outgoing person. I’m torn between bringing a lantern or just meeting up with these folks in the dark. Conversations in the dark are different as the day turned into night.
Fido got in some good play but I had to introduce myself to the other guy with a small dog and suggest we walk off so the dogs could play. It worked out. The things I do for that beast, who just wants more attention and dessicated liver the more I give him and I do stuff for him I wouldn’t do for myself. Like talk to a stranger to meet an emotional need.
Got me thinking about dogs so when I looked over my poetry links page I decided I would put up the second poem I wrote about my mom’s dog Tiger. My sister Brenda got him after Mom died and I moved in with her in the old homestead after I got separated so we were buddies again. I tried to write a silly song about him his whole life because I liked to sing to him when the just two of us were hanging out but never came up with anything. I wrote this the day he died.
He got cancer at 14 and since he was a dog we just kept him comfortable until he got pretty close. He didn’t seem to be in pain just got harder and harder to move. I had been carrying him outside to relieve himself and laying him on a thick blanket when he couldn’t. Brenda and I both kind of checked in on him and he seemed to appreciate hanging out in spite of his condition, until he didn’t. We both felt it and I took him to the pound to have him put down.
It was sad but I hadn’t really cried until I left him in the car and went and talked to the guy and he asked me if I had a leash and I said no he didn’t need one. He handed me a red one and told me to walk the dog in. I had sort of a tear hiccup, a mini burst and blubbered out “He can’t walk”, and the guy looked at me like I was a nut. I went and carried him in and laid him on a metal table and told him I loved him and I would bury him deep in the backyard he loved.
I smoked a cigarette and waited until it was over and carried him home in the blanket I had been told to bring. I carried him around in the back yard and cried and cried. I started to dig his whole and I was crying and singing this song and I stopped digging to write it furiously on the back of an envelope. I haven’t been able to find it but know the most sizable portion and hummed out a sufficient ending in the kitchen while my canned chili was microwaving.
Tiger died 2 or 3 days after the space shuttle blew up on re-entry. there were some kid’s science experiments you may recall. Both space shuttle catastrophes touched me deeply and I mean no disrespect. I was also cautioned in sharing this poem because of something my Creative Writing instructor at MCCC Dr Bruce Merkel said: “I don’t want to read any poetry about your dead dog, it was a big deal for you, but for the rest of us that stuff tends to be pretty banal”. Or words to that effect, nonetheless here it is:
The ants and the rats and the astronauts
Were strewn across the sky,
And many many tears were shed
For who knows where their bodies lay?
About the same day Tiger passed away
I buried him in the backyard,
I shed tears for him that I didn’t give them
When death hits home it hits hard.
He was more then a pet
He was a friend to me,
He was a comfort to my mom.
And he howled that day
When the hearse road away,
And he was never really the same.
He lost a little spark and he was slow to bark
But when you called his name, he came.
The Salamander Dance
Fido is restless wanting to go in and out. He’s been by himself most of the day. He is not a fan of being home all day when I work, even though I come home for lunch but he deals. Tonight I went out immediately after work just stopping by to let him out and pick up the car. I had hoped to leave work early because my lunch got mangled but the day was too difficult to disengage from gracefully except a mere 5 minutes early.
I was rushing because I decided to squeeze a little Occupy Como before my beer and a movie I had planned. Elise was in town and saw her there but I didn’t see the “You Are Awesome” sign which is my favorite. I settled with “There’s Nothing Wrong With You” after passing over a lot of other signs. Even the “We Are the 99%” didn’t resonate today. I am part of the 100%.
I didn’t stay long and headed over to RagTag and had a Cuban and a Schlafley APA, which were both familiar favorites that performed as expected. I also picked up a loaf of Ancient Grains bread and caught a flick with Trevor. We saw Urbanized which was pretty good but dragged a bit and felt like school. Would’ve been a nice break from a boring professor in a class on urban development. But it was visually interesting and showed stuff I did not know. Copenhagen and Stuttgart are smaller then I thought. A human’s visual field is 100 meters by 100 meters and classic cities make their central square that big probably the most interesting thing. I’d never thought of that seems obvious in retrospect. I love stuff that’s like that.
So after unsuccessfully trying to extort a piece of desiccated liver Fido is settling into some tug-o-frog interspersed with some fetch so my post drags out in spits and spurts. its good though he needs the attention and the fun. He’s my buddy.
I was walking him the other day at the Bear Creek Park out past the little lakes and met an old vet walking with a cane. Fido was a little skittish but we struck a conversation and he said “dogs are pretty good partners” and they are. After having been married, lived with folks, siblings, political cooperatives, unintentional communities, roommates, and road trip buddies Fido is enthused, low maintenance, and can make me smile just thinking about him. Its supposed to be nice tomorrow and we’ll go on a long walk. Even if I never get my shit shoveled. Actually should finish that Saturday weather permitting or Sunday for sure. Seems to take all my energy to do much more then tread water.
So once again I am mostly posting to get more poetry up. My hits have been up and I’ve been picking up subscribers as I put out more stuff. I guess at some point I’ll have to start writing some new stuff. I keep singing “Black Iron Prison” hoping to get more but I haven’t added anything I want to keep. But I bet I got at least another 100 floating around in my head and 50 more on scraps of paper and old books and notebooks and probably another 50 floating in the world. So maybe I can keep up the production.
I might share a poem in my ed group tomorrow. I was covering Feelings Management and somehow our ultimate nature came up. I had stated I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts, and when asked what I was I thought my truest self was my will. That was called my actions but that doesn’t sit right but I couldn’t really explain how the will was different any better then Epictetus’s “moving towards a thing” or a sense of purpose. I also suggested a narrative or a story. There’s a couple of really smart dudes in treatment so it makes me want to take it up a notch and I may share my: i-believe-i-am-a-pattern I posted a couple posts back.
Well tonight’s offering goes back to the ill fated Appalachian Trail hike of 2000. I found it pretty challenging physically and it was an emotional low point but it was also filled with a sense of accomplishment intrinsic in climbing mountains every day and there was poignancy that makes that era very memorable. I had a tangible sense of intense nostalgia when I visited in September. I want to go back and hike more this Spring if I can get motivated on a few projects to make it happen. But anyway the biggest thing I remember was being cold and wet all time. It rained a lot, there was frequent heavy dew, and seemed times we lived in clouds, and sometimes above.
One night we (I hiked it with my wife at the time Amee) got a trail side shelter on the side of a mountain. The clouds came up below us and the other mountain peaks poked up and it was like being on an island in the clouds. But it was hard sometimes to keep spirits up in the rain and wet. But I noticed that that was when the salamanders and such would leave the little springs and streams and you could spot a lot of them out on the trail if your eyes open. I sparked this one and sang it as I wrote it hoping to cheer Amee up (and truthfully myself as well) when it started to rain for the umpteenth day in a row. I called all four of the pieces on the trip Appalachian Spring and a number. This one is number 4 so likely the last, but I can’t be sure of that without looking at a map. I went through a fairly intense non-linear period that I am still not completely over. Have to warn you its more then a bit silly, nonetheless “Appalachian Spring #4 (The Salamander Dance)”:
If it starts to rain by chance
The salamanders do their dance
They do their dance
The salamander dance
And if it starts to rain some more
Then the frogs begin to soar
There’s flying frogs all over the place
There’s flying frogs flying into your face
And if it starts to rain in pails
Then out will come the snails
With their slimy trails
Of snail entrails
And when the rain is finally done
Then out will come the sun
and the hikers will smile
For another mile
But if it starts to rain by chance
Then the salamanders do their dance
They do their dance
The salamander dance
used to read full time
I’ve been getting a lot more “likes” on my posts from other poets and that has been flattering. Its also inspiring me to blog more. I was talking to a co-worker about a clinical issue and mentioned I had recently read of a study in Europe more definitively linking marijuana use with psychoses and she looked at me funny and said “how much do you read in a week?” I thought for a second and said “not counting Facebook and stuff, probably twenty, twenty-five hours a week. That’s down a lot from what it used to be when I was knocking out two or three books a week. (I certainly didn’t tell her about Summers as a teenager when I was knocking out a book and a half a day. Anyway, she said “twenty five hours? That’s like a part time job”. The funny thing is up until I bought the house I used to read full time. I also didn’t mention a fair chunk of it lately has been Fantastic Four comics (I’m coming up on the mid 80s, Sue Richards has this spiky mullet, a new low and the time I was coming of age, how sad).
Today it was beautiful out. A gorgeous day for any season but with the coming of winter a precious thing. My COD group talked me into taking the show on the road and took the group on a walk. It was nice to get out on the trail and there was a universal uptick in mood and a couple of total shifts. Mine was improved and I was feeling none to shabby to begin with. Walks are such a no brainer on a beautiful day with a stir crazy bunch who really need to learn the benefits of walking and being in nature. The downside is you get less direct teaching and there’s a lot of stuff I know that could be helpful so I usually keep ’em in the classroom or at most take the conversation outside. Today we walked and it was good.
After work I shoveled the last of the horse manure on the cold frame and started the surplus pile. Might finish it tomorrow if i get an early start and Fido doesn’t want to hang out at the park too long. I’ve been steady on every other day walks most to the dog park. Olive is coming on Sunday so I’ll get a freebie. I’m going to make a chicken. I was going to roast it but with thanksgiving coming up I think I will cut it up and barbecue it.
Today I planned on cooking for myself. I had thawed cube steaks I needed to cook and tomatoes have been ripening on the counter so I put two and two together. I scalded all the tomatoes that were ripe or mostly ripe. While the water was getting hot I fried 2 pieces of bacon. I poured off half the grease and let the bacon soak out some grease in a newspaper (you can’t do that with the internet). I fried up a diced red onion, 1/2 green pepper, 3 thai chile peppers drying on my window sill in the bacon pan. I added tomatoes when the onions started to carmelize about 3/4 of the cast iron skillet and boiled that down, adding some Mrs Dash & Agave nectar to bring down the bitterness of the fresh tomatoes.
I browned the cube steaks 4 pieces, maybe a little more then a pound and patted them in whole wheat flour. I took rest of the bacon grease and sauteed another red onion, this time chunkier, green pepper 1/2 slices and a few baby portobellos I think and browned the steaks. Added all that to the now pretty yummy cooked for an hour tomato sauce and let that simmer for 40 minutes or so (another hour wouldn’t hurt, could have gotten by maybe ten minutes less, it was gooood).
I made a salad with red lettuce, thin sliced yellow squash and shredded carrots. Probably grand total the meal was literally 97% local topped off with Kevin bringing Uprise sour dough whole wheat and cookies for desert. I also had a Boulevard Wheat when cooking. Sweet.
Well in the never ending quest to get more poetry on the web here is a poem I wrote in Creative Writing back before I could write poetry but I was a little clever and got by. This one is about fungi and is in the 5-7-5 syllable format but doesn’t have a seasonal nature so its not quite haiku:
Ascomycetes
What in the world does it mean?
I know I don’t know
“I got time for one more cup of coffee”
What a day, nice to have someone to vent to over dinner. We had Kevin’s soup from yesterday, really excellent stuff with lime & pepper in a stock from a whole chicken with veggies. Lots of oregano, had some heat but a complex flavor, good stuff. I made chicken salad from the left over chicken mostly white meat with 2 little fuji apples, a red onion, organic raisins, yellow curry, fresh ground pepper & mayo. I had mine on olive bread from Uprise lightly toasted. Pretty yummy.
I realized half my problem was I forgot my second cup of coffee on the bathroom counter after my shower. I’m glad I had one because I had a client tell me I stink. I love people without a self censor. But a stressful day, needlessly so, but what do you do? I took the dog to the dog park. It gets dark early now and its a weird dynamic coming up on people in the dark and trying to be social so your dog can be near their dog and maybe play. Fido wasn’t going for it, weirded out by the dark and a lot of big dogs. There was a crowd though, hanging out in the dark, a few dogs running around.
Mostly this post is just to get more poetry up. This one I think I wrote maybe ten years ago and found in a notebook. It evolved from a couple of lines to a stanza or two and then rapidly completed itself. Its on the cheesy side but I like it.
I got time for one more cup of coffee
I got time for one more cigarette
I got time to read the balcony scene
From Romeo and Juliet
But I ain’t got time for a harsh word
I don’t got time to fret and pace
I don’t got time to hate anybody
For their views or the color of their face
But I got time to stop and smell the flowers
I got time to stop and see a friend
I got time to walk an unknown road
Just to see what’s around the next bend
But I don’t got time to answer the phone
I don’t got time to sit and cry
I don’t got time for the television set
To tell me all the things I should buy
But I got time to tell you I love you
And I got time for another kiss
If you don’t got time to spend with me
You’ll never know just what you missed
Cuz we got time to go to the park
We got time to look at the moon
We got time to love each other
But we’d better get started soon
at least kittens still work
I’ve had a pretty relaxed weekend going into it with a sick day. Gave me permission to take it easy even though its really nice out there. Its been a beautiful Fall and I am thankful, also for seeing gratitude lists start to come out. Its a nice time of year for a lot of reason. I devoted yesterday to crushing a novel which is something I haven’t done for a while. I knocked out most of “Peshawar Lancers” by S.M. Stirling. One of my favorite authors, I like his novels on The Change, post-apocalyptic fiction.
This is straight up alternative history. Set in modern times but in a world where a meteor broke up over the Northern Hemisphere in the mid 19th century, leaving Europe and North America in a three year winter and decent into cannibalism. The British Empire makes an Exodus to India, South Africa & Australia mostly with the heart of the Empire in India. So you end up with sort of a steam punk world with slower advancement airships, Victorian culture with a nice cross pollination of the cultures of the subcontinent.
Nice setting for an adventure story with the villain being the Russian cannibalistic Satan worshiping state church with girls they have bred who can see the future. Charming and fast paced story and I learned a little bit about Hindus and Sikhs. Can’t beat that, but it killed my productivity yesterday.
I did get some laundry hung and started turning the second half of the cold frame. Finishing that is my next project. Today I’ve devoted to puttering and cleaning house and the house certainly needed it. Got the place swept out, could have used more but I gave it a ‘lick and a promise’ as Grandma Trapp used to say. I find everything is connected to everything else and start cleaning and it can suck up my whole day. I miss Amee’s whirlwind where she could just knock stuff out. I am stuck slowly plodding along, stopping to ponder what I find, stymied on where to put stuff, etc, etc, etc.
Today though I did find a steno pad with some poetry I haven’t posted. I wrote this riffing off of Ignatius of Loyola’s bit on humility out of his Spiritual Exercises, which I still haven’t completely read. I was at a conference at some type of Catholic institution and they had a library and I pulled it off the shelf and read a random page on humility that shook me to the core pondering it. It heavily influenced this poem as I tried to assimilate its implications.
Ignatius was a bad ass and a powerful dude. I later bought the book but read how your supposed to be coached through them on a retreat and its better to not know what’s coming. I took it and a bible with me on a 2 1/2 week backpacking trip and worked them in a bastardized way. It was life changing. I felt I had to back off (I was going for the whole deal in a 30 day give or take deal) or risk making a permanent severance with the mundane world. Wasn’t quite ready for that nor did I feel it was necessary.
But setting all that aside I had only read the one page once when I wrote this which I guess I’m calling “Like cigarettes speak for the dead”:
Like cigarettes speak for the dead
They always have
Even since before the world was broken
But at least kittens still work
And many other Sunny Things
Fly high, some higher
Than they’ve ever flown before
Icarus wings perhaps
But at least we’ve known the Sun
And the Son remembers
Someone’s got to decide
If when, if then
I remember, am remembererd
I live, I live, I live
Humility in a poet takes reading
Ignatius of Loyola
Spelling it all out in 3 paragraphs
A thinking man can understand
Humility is the exercise of the will
For the purpose of promoting the will of God
As you follow the pursuits
Only accepting material gratification, social standing
Yea, life itself in a way compatible to the GOOD.
A noble path of humility indeed
Which only the best of us abandon ourselves to
And know the bliss of a clean conscience
In a world gone mad
With violence and control
Ego projection, ego projection, ego projection
Of course you haven’t forgotten
They were the happiest days of your life
We will always be one
And other evil lies said in the language of Action
In the real world
The real fucking world
Fucked up shit goes down.
Its happening right now
All around us
And the deeper path of humility
Cries out for us
For us to walk the path
(To)For the perfect world
That’s coming
Or walk away
And heal and mourn
And watch and pray.
When the final destruction comes
Lurches closer to being
Both or either
I don’t know
But all 3 demand
Us walk the past of
holiness and we’ll
take riches or poverty,
Happiness or unhappiness,
Respect or rancor, as
Secondary to the quest
For the perfect world
Knowing god
As only two loving
Beings can love
Hugging, not being hugged
Remembering and remembered
Image reflection
You know the Kingdom of God,
At hand, within you,
Many mansions, many mansions, many mansions
And real life with its
Treasures and responsibilities
And pleasure gratifications
Are all set aside
Treated as the same
Whatever occurs
In our place in the unfolding of divine will
The few that walk this holy road
For exercise if nothing else
Can choose a third path
Of striving for the divine plan
With all your heart, mind and soul
For so is love perfected in us
And whenever possible
To follow the path of the low
The poor, the reviled
The ignored, until even our
Death serves the divine will.
11/11/11
Happy Armistice Day. It commemorates the ending of The Great War or the War to End All Wars, and if only it did, it wouldn’t have morphed into Veteran’s Day. I like the old version better, a day to celebrate peace which is a glorious thing and well worth fighting for. Today is an extra special day with the trifold elevensies. I was telling the agency psychiatrist that numerologically 11 meant “magic”. Kabbalistically 1-10 is a progression from the source at 1 (Kether) to the material world at 10 (Malkuth). Eleven is magical because it goes one further, “this one goes to eleven”.
I find myself with time on my hands because I called in sick today. I had tummy troubles and unsettling dreams and woke at one and could not go back to sleep. Don’t have it today and rest is obviously in order. I will attribute both to peperoni and sausage pizza perhaps, could be a virus or something as well as I’ve got a bit of scratchy throat. I hope to nap and feel better, read some more John Byrne era Fantastic Four maybe more of my Stirling novel the Peshawar Lancers which kept me company through my long night of stomach upset.
My dream was vivid, I have been having vivid dreams throughout the night with increasing frequency and intensity since I read a couple articles on dreaming in the latest Scientific American Mind. There are articles on using dreams to problem solve and lucid dreaming, which I was always doubtful of but they can see it in f-MRI so it probably exists. Its a useful technique for PTSD so I have been trying to learn it and have definitely increased my dream awareness, which has been largely cool. My dreams are banal things of petty frustrations, ennui, and little anxieties mostly.
Last night I dreamed I was visiting the homeland and was feeling very out of sorts. There was some holiday or parade or something and I decided I needed to go the hospital. I went to Boone Hospital and after a long journey through white tile corridors I ended up in this cafeteria and a psychiatrist invited me to eat lunch with him and we talked. He had a large platter of bacon, which was good at first but became increasingly cold and greasy (see why I think there was a pizza connection?). Before we were done there was some kind of break for prayer or meditation or something and everyone in the room got into a big circle and put their arms around each other and prayed or meditated or something involving droning and people rubbing other people’s heads. I found it all very weird but was glad to be a part of it and it broke up and the doctor and I walked down a long corridor and he asked more questions. He asked me what I was feeling and I told him that I felt like a large crystal a picture of this became the dream a complex crystal structure but that I felt very fragile. He surprised me when his tone went from a convivial camaraderie to the voice of authority and he told me he wanted me to go to University Hospital for an evaluation. I thought it odd already being in a hospital but I asked him why I needed to be in a hospital. He said because you said you were fragile.
Usually for dream interpretation the question to be asked is what was the overall feeling of the dream. Bewilderment. I chalk it up to being sick as any larger meaning, but its made me think. Which is one of the points of dreams to look at things differently.
In the spirit of 11/11/11 I wanted to share an older poem I wrote about Solomon, our preeminent magic man. It probably goes in a series with my Biblical Biopics with a Twist with the one about Jesus and John and Salome.
Wise Old Solomon
Wise Old Solomon was an old soul
Walked closely with the Lord
But he could still rock -n- roll
From time to time
He had a thousand wives and concubines
Was courted by the Queen of Sheba
He drank her wine
He was a wise man
He won the prize to understand
That if one is ever truly wise
One sees through child’s eyes
He knew the names of a thousand angels
Never known before
He knew the names of a thousand demons
And what’s more
He put them down
Into the ground
So they never got up again
He bound them for their mischief
He bound them for our sin
He was a wise man
He won the prize to understand
When one is truly wise
He can fell opponents of any size
Solomon built a house
Where the Lord did dwell
And the dead went to Sheol
They’d never heard of Hell
And the Lord won’t dwell in a house
Built by human hands
And what Solomon built with
Few can understand
He is a wise man
He won the prize to understand
That if one is truly wise
One never dies
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sunrise war
Watching some Two Towers, first time seeing the directors cut, because the one thing about those films is they just aren’t long enough. Its really a brilliant film though but not quite enough to hold my complete interest a third time through. Frodo is such a Christ figure as his heroism is to endure undeserved suffering. I love the scene where he eavesdrops on Gollem and realizes he was once a lot like himself once and calls him Smeagel. Embracing his shadow self, he opens his heart and learns what he has to learn to move him along on his journey. Man, Tolkien rocked. The return of Gandalf the sweeping story arc, its just a great tale.
My own tale has been more modest and my Saturday has been more relaxing then I had anticipated. A little sad it being Dad’s birthday but glad for Fifth of November plans, won’t forget Guy Faukes day again. I saw Julie had written him a birthday note on his wall and since not even death will stop a facebook account I did the same. Been feeling it a bit with John back in California but being alone has its pluses too.
After coffee and the paper I hung out my laundry in overcast skies. The paper said no rain and ultimately the clouds broke and it got pretty nice. I went to the market and mostly realized that if you don’t cook you don’t get to buy produce. I got a nice head of lettuce and some green peppers and some ground beast but forgot to get eggs. The cold thinned out the crowd and the # of vendors. Now I wish I would have gotten a Patric chocolate bar at the book store yesterday.
I decided to make pottage for the potluck portion of Occupy Como. I had some spinach from last week’s market, perhaps even the week before that needed to be eaten and the kale from Sarah’s garden. It was a sizable amount so I decided to make it on the stove top instead of the rice cooker. I added a cup each of white and brown rice a cup of lentils and 6 cups of water. I added the little onions out of Sarah’s garden, another big cooking onion, 1/2 of a big head of garlic, a little less then a cup of olive oil, fresh oregano out of my garden, three dried hot peppers out of Trevor’s garden and 1/2 tsp of salt or so. Brought it to a boil and simmered the liquid of it. Pretty tasty.
Then it was time for Fido and I to hit the occupation. There was a good crowd with some speeches we couldn’t hear very well and maybe 100-150 people and a few other dogs. Fido was pretty chill but we stuck to the back. Saw Sharon and Megan but didn’t do much more then say ‘hi’ as the march was starting. I saw some other familiar faces but we never got close enough to say ‘hi’.
I was talking in my group on Friday about how there is very little difference between being a friendly and outgoing person and acting like you are a friendly and outgoing person. I decided today I am a friendly but aloof person because we didn’t really chat anyone up. Fido drew some admirers and got his belly rubbed more then once. He was also around some little kids which is good practice. He was generally admired and people commented on his good behavior.
We marched up to Bank of America with more speeches and I got to experience ‘The People’s Mic’ thank you no amplification at Zucoti Park, you’ve created a thing. Pretty cool but I saw a video bit with people doing it to disrupt a speech by the Wisconsin Governator that was very “Two legs good, four legs bad” kind of politics I find vaguely disturbing. As we were breaking up to go back to Liberty Square (the keyhole plaza in front of City Hall) Fido jumped on the brick planter without plants in front of the bank. I caught a flash and realized B of A employees were taking his picture. Fido was the only disruptive critter so I got him down and scolded him for his radical ways. Now he probably has a file with The Man.
So I didn’t have enough change to stay for the potluck which I wasn’t feeling anyway and I am as I said aloof so I left the pottage in the car and caught the scene for a bit. A guy gave me a flyer on why corporations are bad and said we needed cooperation instead of competition. I said we needed both but the pendulum was to far that’s for sure.
We stopped at the store so I could forget eggs again and pick up a few things. I was going to make a banana/squash bread too. Maybe tomorrow. I hope to get out to Lowes or someplace and get furnace filters and a programmable thermostat. Kevin and I are on the same schedule so I should be able to significantly cut back on the overall temps of the house and still up my critical 6:30-8:00 time when I might feel OK about putting the heat up a bit to Western standards of comfort.
I’ll also need to bring my laundry in since I didn’t do it today. I took a long nap which I felt was nice but sorry to miss the sunniest warmest part of the day. I did unload more horse manure and hope to have the main bed ready to go and get some garlic in. I don’t think I am going to put anything else in until i get the cold frame going, but that needs busting sod and double digging plus the manure bit, a lot of work and little daylight not sucked up by work. But one step at a time, do something every day, it’ll happen when it happens. The rest was nice though and well deserved. But the backyard squirrel has taken the trouble to get chubbier then I’ve ever seen him so he at least is expecting another hard winter. He must’ve heard about the La Nina sticking around for an extra year. Its a shame we broke the weather.
If I get through that Trevor’s going to see this Russian movie that looks pretty good. Its set near where Lisa is in the Peace Corps. Fido needs a walk too and Harry’s coming over for Walking Dead so we will see.
As part of my having a definitive list of blog poetry to add to now I am going to end with the second poem I wrote when I went mad in Amsterdam in 1996, which I’ve blogged about extensively. I had written my first one in an attempt I think to reach out and define myself because I was unraveling and my self organization was starting to flicker a bit, on and off. Everything was poignant with the intensity dial being set on 11, all day every day. Feeling a lot of stuff I had been stuffing. I blasted out my first pretty decent and emotionally honest poem.
I shared with the people I was with I think, all that was hazy but I remember them talking about Martin, the guy who owned the mind spa we were staying at speaking several languages and I said I could write poetry in any language. With a German dictionary I wrote a haiku. I gave it in German and English and the other to Jennifer who later sent them both to me when I was in my mad convalescence but I don’t know if I could lay hands them on anymore. When I wrote the haiku I started with one I’d written years earlier when I wanted to write a series of 5-7-5s (haiku without a season) on the major arcana in the Tarot. I only got the first one:
The Fool
S(he) walks towards the cliff
Not hearing the warning cry
S(he) does not need to
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Sunrise War
Sunrise War
Around dying Autumnal fires
‘Til sleep intervenes
a free verse poem about anything
An interesting night, all dressed up no place to go, if I was capable of being frustrated, I might have been. I was pledged to go to the Dinner Train to Centralia something I had been wanting to do and the Odd Fellows reserved a car. Tre and I were gonna go but he got sick and I couldn’t find the take off spot. The guy at Caseys didn’t know nor did the guy at the bookstore. So I bought a book. If I were up to the technological norm I could’ve looked it up easily, instead I just accepted it wasn’t going to be. Next time.
Thank goodness I have had ample opportunity to walk through a lot of frustrating situations with people and encourage them to roll with stuff outside of their control. I also read and preach a lot of stoic philosophy. All that helps me just roll with stuff enjoy the ride be flexible. I might do a lecture on stoic thought when I finish my series on self esteem. Got some good students, one with 8 pages of notes, cross referenced by topic because I like to skip around.
Most interesting conversation I’ve had has been on facebook. We were talking about judgement, he critiquing my encouragement of Fire your Bank day. (4.5 billion dollars pulled out of banks I heard on Marketplace and more people have joined a credit union in the last 6 weeks then in a normal year. That’s a nice protest with the multibillion dollar hit.) Anyway he cited Bruce Cockburn as saying we all want judgement on somebody else and said the Occupiers were as greedy as the banks.
I conceded his first point but challenged the second that banks with more resources are more liable to judgement for not helping the poor and that activists with some notable exceptions often take a financial hit and have a sincere desire to help and a simple lifestyle. He commented back saying salvation comes from belief not good works. But I wasn’t saying you get to go to heaven for doing good, I just said you face damnation for not. But we’re talking about different stuff, I don’t buy the concrete version of heaven.
The heaven I believe in is more conceptual, an idea, the memic universe. Do you want to know if you are living forever? Are you living forever right now? Investment in the trappings of wealth or power block out the eternal now that is accessible in a child like way to anyone who reaches out for it. That’s what I’m saying. Greed and accumulation make people scared, shuts off from real experience and transcendent awareness. I know because if they had it they wouldn’t act like that. You couldn’t if you value others like yourself.
Mostly I want to put up more poetry. This one I wrote a slight variation on the first line in my first chap book 16 Best. I took the title of the book from the CD that John Glenn took into space Neil Diamond’s 16 Best. I wrote on the top of a blank page something like “I can write a free verse poem about anything” as a statement that I could finish it on a first draft and have it be a pretty good poem. I couldn’t, and ended up hacking out a short little shitty thing. Some time later though in a late night manic rush I blasted through the thing in its completed form in only a little more time then it takes to read it ( a bit over 3 minutes unless I’m doing it in a slam with 3 minute time limit which I pick up the pace. I consider it my definitive slam poem.
I can write a free verse poem about anything
If I want to extend my ego
Or I can just let the world be
All fucked up and beautiful
Six billion lives alone
Living in self imposed exile
From real experience
Cast adrift in a specific social milieu
Which is then projected onto the rest of humanity
Except for those, few or many
We think of as “others”
People so alien to our experience that we deny our common existence as people
Greeks and Barbarians
A five thousand years old idea
Which still dominates our consciousness
And of course it does
How we clothe ourselves, how we feed ourselves
How we have shelter and transportation and the frivilous entertainments that make a C+ life feel like a solid A-
Can I hear an amen please?
Because of course I’m preachin’
In a free verse poem about anything.
The last frontier of the wordy hypocrite
On vacation from responsibility
When the knowledge that we are all one
And the world is in pain
Often and harsh and often preventable
If we can care more, know more, do more
more, more, more, or
nothing…
Block it out
Return to the acceptable
Accept the inevitable
Of the way things are
Just sit back an enjoy the fringe benefits that go to those citizens and their neighbors who get to vote every four years or so for one of the two guys who learned how best to suck up to power and gets to be the CEO of the big stick of Capital
Bread and circuses baby
Only now its on a hundred and fifteen channels
And the bread may take a little longer to get then it used to
But its so good
That’s why most of us have to make it
Or serve it
Instead of painting and writing poetry
Singing and dancing and growing gardens
We wouldn’t want them to do that would we?
I can’t make my own fucking Big Mac can I?
It isn’t someone has to dig the ditches anymore
Now its the guy who gets to drive the ditch digging machine is a lucky bastard
With a fat paycheck and a good tan
A paid lunch and health insurance
May I take your order please?
Would you like fries with that?
I’ll suck your dick for fifty dollars.
Because of course a man has to talk about sex in a free verse poem about anything
Because money buys sex and not just servitude
Would you like fries with that?
If you turn your back I’ll kill you
Just for what you’ve got in your pockets
I can’t write ads to sell cigarettes to teenagers in Asia can I?
But I watch the same TV commercials that you do
Where the guy in the phat car gets the skinny girl with the big tits and perfect teeth
And guess what motherfucker
Guns are cheap
Would you like fries with that?
Multiconstruct 
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