tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22838497174879617082024-03-05T23:55:14.404-08:00Orgrease CrankbaitWriting, Miscellany frm Gabriel OrgreaseAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.comBlogger204125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-19717785566400479072015-04-05T05:13:00.002-07:002015-04-05T05:13:22.505-07:0010 Composition Tips<div id="fb-root">
</div>
<script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><br />
<div class="fb-video" data-allowfullscreen="true" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=799757146782515&set=vb.128082840616619&type=1">
<div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">
<blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=799757146782515&set=vb.128082840616619&type=1">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=799757146782515&set=vb.128082840616619&type=1"></a><br />
10 Composition Tips with Award-Winning Photographer Steve McCurry!www.artFido.com/popular-art<br />
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=799757146782515&set=vb.128082840616619&type=1">artFido - fetching art</a> on Saturday, March 21, 2015</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-76217715449388413482013-05-03T06:37:00.000-07:002013-05-03T06:38:56.438-07:00Not Quite There<br />
<h1>
<span style="color: #993300;">ONE</span></h1>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Monday. Stoney was in
the quarry. He moved slow, pushed the rusty wheelbarrow from one path to the
next, careful he watched the rocks. Very gentle he passed the wheel of the
barrow along the worn path. Rocks are not like people; they need nothing, they
lay around peaceful when not disturbed, they do not ask questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Yet rocks are like some
people, they are vacant and empty of importance -- like Stoney. No rock is able
to think about itself or able to know itself; there is no mirror in which the
rock can recognize its face; no rock can do anything intentional: it cannot
help but sit, and its lack of motion has no meaning, since a rock cannot reason
or dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It had often been unsafe and
insecure in the quarry, the region of dynamite explosions and flying stone
shards separated from the road by a high, chain link fence with warning signs,
and the sounds of the trucks that passed had disturbed what little peace there
was. Stoney ignored the sounds -- over time he had grown habitually deaf. It came upon him
slow and he did not notice like when lichen eats away on the surface of an old
stone. Also, the sounds and the turmoil and the explosions had diminished from
day to day as the quarry business went under. Though Stoney had never stepped
outside the quarry, he was not curious about life outside the fence. He was not
curious about life inside. He was not curious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Monday. Stoney was the quarry. He moved slow, pushed the wheel barrow from one path to the next, careful
he watched the rocks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">The structure at the front
part of the quarry where the Boss Man worked might just as well have been
another part of the universe. Cars parked around it. People went inside and
outside and drove off. In the rear of the maintenance shed in the old quarry that faced away from
the new quarry soon to be old, and away from the world, Stoney had his small room and his bathroom
and his path that lead to the heart of the hole in the earth. When the rain struck upon
and rattled the corrugated metal roof Stoney did not hear it. In the shelter
from the weather he would hold onto his collection of special rocks. His
favorites, he would hold them close to his breast. He would nestle with them in
his bed and on cold nights sleep with them curled beneath his thighs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">What was particularly nice
about the quarry was that, at any moment, from a stand in the narrow paths or
amidst the broken rock, Stoney could start to wander, he would never know
whether he was going forward or backward, unsure whether he was ahead of or
behind his next steps. All that mattered was that he moved the barrow in his
vacant time, like a tumbled rock round and round.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Once in awhile Stoney would sit
on a rock and not think. Nothing was easy for Stoney and like a sun basked
lizard he could sit for hours. The wind, mindless of direction, intermittently pushed
up clouds of quarry dust that settled evenly, whitened the flat surfaces of the
stone that waited patiently to be rinsed by the rain and dried by the sun. And
yet, with all its stillness, even at the peak of noon, the quarry held a mysterious
and intimate biosphere. Under every rock lay a centipede or a lonely spider. Stoney
did not care to know which was more important: the quarry's muted surface or
the life that grew hidden within it. Stoney did not care. It was all the same
to the rock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">For example, there were some stone
slabs cut for retail, then forgotten when the deposit check bounced, stacked
over near the south wall. Beneath them lived a family of chipmunks in complete
disregard of the bustle and noise of the quarry. Like albino fish in a cave,
like Stoney, they were deaf chipmunks adapted to their environment. Stoney did
not care.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney set in his own light,
in his own color, in his own time. When he placed his hands down upon the rock
he followed the law of gravity that forever pushed all limbs downward.
Everything for him when he sat with the rocks was as one. In this vacant world,
the vibration of the bedrock in the quarry was the lone hearing aid of a deaf man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">By changing the pressure of
his hand upon the surface of the rock, first lightly touched then hard pressed,
he could change himself. He could go through phases, as the quarry wind and the
driven rain went through phases, but he could change as he wished when he
twisted his palm against the stone backward and forward with varied pressure.
In some cases he could spread out his consciousness into the rock without an
end. If he moved his hands against the rock Stoney could bring the world of the
rock inside. Thus he came to nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">The rock looked like Stoney.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">He sank into the rock. Like
sunlight and fresh air and mild rain, the being of rock entered Stoney, and
Stoney floated into the rock, buoyed inward by a force he did not hear or speak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">He suddenly saw the yellow
front loader moving above his head and the face of the straw boss at the
controls. Reluctantly he got up, careful to lift his hands free of the rock – he
took it slowly to become himself now separate from the quarry -- and stepped to
the handles of the barrow. The straw boss leaned out of the cab of the front loader
and flapped his arms. Stoney did not like the straw boss. Mike Pernit had come to
work at the quarry as a cutter some time after Julio Gutierrez had gotten hurt.
Mike was a last hold out. He was fat. He was from the local community. He
smelled of bad cheese. He was rumored to cohabit with cows. Stoney did not
understand. How could he? As a rule Stoney had little to do with the straw
boss, and he had never eaten cheese except on the crackers that he on some days
got from the roach coach. Now Mike wanted Stoney to come up to the office real
quick.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney pushed the barrow
along the upper path that lead towards the quarry office. He did not trust the
lower path since the time Julio Gutierrez had been trapped beneath a stone fall
for hours before they had to amputate his legs. Stoney pushed the barrow along
the upper path until he reached the rear entrance of the office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">The last time he had seen
this part of the office the walls of the quarry, now tall and lofty, had been
quite small and insignificant. He caught sight of his reflection in the large
glass window. Stoney saw the image of self as a small pebble and then through
the window the Boss Man busy on the phone in a huge chair at his desk with
papers and folders and empty beer cans piled on top. The Boss Man's hair was
gray, his hands wrinkled and shriveled. The Boss Man breathed heavy and smoked
a cigar. The Boss Man smelled of tobacco and moldy underwear and old stinky
cheese. He did not smell like the bottom of a wet rock when it is first pulled
up to out the air.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney set the barrow down
then walked through the entrance door. The offices seemed empty; the disheveled
and broken blinds at the windows barely admitted the daylight. Slowly he looked
at the desks and copy machines and telephones covered over with plastic.
Beneath the flicker of fluorescents he looked at the walls where the yellow
paint slowly turned to a gray smudge. He looked at the carpet that bore stains
of stone dust and glacial footprints.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">There were no words between
Stoney and the Boss Man. There could be none. Stoney could not hear, and he
could not read, and he could not write and the Boss Man was not very good at
pantomime. Stoney was like a rock, and it was the Boss Man himself for his own secret reasons who had sheltered
him in the quarry ever since Stoney was a child. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney's mother had died a
few minutes before he was born. No one could or would tell Stoney who his
father was. It was like he was an immaculate conception. No one could tell
Stoney where he was born. No one could tell Stoney that he had once had
parents. No one could tell Stoney much of anything. Stoney would never be able
to understand what others said to him or around him. Stoney was to work in the quarry,
where he would push the barrow in peace and harmony. He would be as one of
them: quiet, a rock set in the sunshine and heavy with dampness when it rained.
His name was Stoney because it was. He had no family. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Although his mother had
been ugly as sin, her mind had been as solid as his: the dense compaction of
his immovable brain, the bedrock from which all his thoughts froze, had been
stalled forever. Therefore, he could not look for a place in the lives led by people
outside the quarry gate. The limit of Stoney's life was his quarters and the quarry;
he must not enter other parts of the quarry or walk out into the road. His food
would always be from Bob's roach coach. No one else besides the straw boss was
allowed to enter the old portion of quarry. Only the Boss Man himself might
walk and sit there. Stoney was often forgotten.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #993300;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Tuesday. The straw
boss shouted into the phone. He turned and he saw Stoney. He pointed to the
desk. Stoney approached. The Boss Man in his executive chair was propped
against the wall and seemed poised intently, as if he listened to the ring of a
stone wedge struck by a hammer. His shoulders sloped down at sharp angles, and
his head, like a heavy stone, hung down to one side. Stoney stared into the
Boss Man's face. The man's mouth was open and large like a small cavern. His complexion was gray and only one eye remained open, like the eye of
the sick crow, the one with the hole it its wing that would let the sky
through, that could often be seen in the quarry. The straw boss put down the
receiver. He went to the desk and pulled out a lower drawer and removed the
cash box, emptied it out. He gave Stoney three tarnished quarters. He then went
outside and got in his pickup truck and drove away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney gazed at the Boss Man
for nearly two hours then he took his three quarters and walked out. Utah, North Dakota, and Hawaii. The Boss
Man smelled funny. Stoney sat on a rock in the quarry and was one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h1>
<span style="color: #993300;">TWO<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Thursday. Sitting on a
rock in the quarry Stoney did not hear the sounds that came from the office. He
looked up and saw the ambulance and the police cars parked in the lot just
inside of the quarry gate. Hidden behind a large cube of cut stone he watched
them carry out the Boss Man's body. When they left they shut the gate behind.
Stoney sat on a rock and was one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Days passed and no one came. Not
even Bob's roach coach. Stoney ate sardines, stale pretzels and spoons of
uncooked lemon-lime gelatin out of their little boxes. Each morning he rose
early and went into the quarry and pushed his barrow. Everything was in order.
It had rained during the night. He sat down on a rock and dozed in the sun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">As long as one does not look at
it the world will not exist -- it only began to exist as it is when one turned
to look at it. One is responsible for all of this. Otherwise like a mirage a
few more Mondays are nothing. Only when you look does the world stay in one's
mind before being erased and blank. The world is as a dead rock or the eye of a
sick crow with a hole in the wing. The same is true of Stoney. If you take one
look at him he can exist, otherwise his image will blur and fade out to nothing
and he will be forgotten. Stoney is missed from not being watched by one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney had no presentment of
a future. He was contented. The Boss Man had died. There was nothing to be known
good or evil from this death, or from any death. It simply was not life.
Stoney, like a rock, did not know of life or death but he was hungry just the
same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">When Stoney saw the gate
pushed open by the child he sat and watched and did nothing. His barrow had a
flat and he was tired and did not care to push where it would wander off the
path and crush and scrape against the bare rock. In the past whenever the
barrow had a flat it was repaired by the straw boss, and before that by Julio
Gutierrez. Stoney had not seen the straw boss for more than a week. There were
tools in the maintenance shed with which to make the repair but Stoney did not
know them. They had never held his hand. The workshop of the shed was dark with
no electricity and smelled of oil and burnt straw. There was not the life of
warm sun on rock inside the shed and Stoney staid outside. The trespassing child
picked up and threw a rock at the plate glass window of the empty office
building. The window was broken. The glass shattered. Stoney sat silent in the
sunlight as one with the rock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Wednesday in the
morning when Stoney put on his work clothes, his jeans, a pair of large
sunglasses, his canvas coat, and his hat. He filled a cloth sack with empty
tubes of toothpaste, a stone hammer and his favorite rocks. He carefully
trimmed and combed his hair. This morning Stoney was driven by his hunger. He
wandered over to the barrow and felt of the wooden handles, lifted the weight of
the metal body. He set the barrow down. All was peaceful there. He set the sack
down and then he set himself down on the rock and felt of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Friday in the morning
when Stoney put on his work clothes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">It was Monday. Stoney was leaving
the quarry but he did not particularly know this. Outside the quarry the world
was gray. Other than for the gate and the fence there was no boundary
distinction between one place and another. Gray is grey. Where he had never
been did not exist. It had taken Stoney several hours of meandering around the
quarry from his room to the gate to his room to the quarry to the gate. He
would stop and sit on the rock and feel one with it. The rock did not move, and
hardly did it seem that Stoney would move any faster. The instinct of life,
unlike with a lifeless rock, pushes one around and Stoney eventually found
himself standing on the shoulder next to the road outside of the gate. He did
not know how he had got there and he did not know where he was going. It was
all new, an invention. He was outside the gate.</span><span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney remained standing alongside
the road, not knowing what to do. The sunlight dazzled his eyes. The road was a
darker shade of gray; it might have been a slab of stone though it more than
likely resembled a long stretch of black salt-water taffy. For some time he
stood along the road looking around lazily in the morning sun. Around him he
saw rocks that he had not yet seen in their lives and their lines were
unfamiliar and their angles badly shattered and without pattern. They seemed to
reach toward him.</span><span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">There was a lumber truck come
along and as it passed a large board fell off the back, bounced on the asphalt,
then flew up and hit Stoney in the left shin. He was struck. He had not been
looking in that direction and he did not jump up out of the path of the board
as it bounced. Stoney was in pain, he could not stand on his leg and he fell
over onto the gravel berm that was hard. He felt a pierce of pain, and cried
out. Stoney felt of his pain and he felt of the hardpan that vibrated calmly
beneath him. It was all new, an invention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h1>
<span style="color: #993300;">THREE<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">When Stoney came as one to see
the world once again he rose up on his good and on his bad leg and he left
behind him on the shoulder the bag of empty toothpaste tubes and his favorite
rocks as he limped his way back into the quarry. The rocks of the quarry stood
silent and erect. Stoney felt with his fingers their edges. Then he walked back
to his room at the back of the maintenance shed where he slept.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">When Stoney came to see the
world once again he was not surprised: the road, the rocks, the birds, the
smells were all new and as such they were neither expected nor anticipated. It
was all new, an invention. He had the feel that there was nothing to them. They
meant nothing to Stoney. He began to walk. He limped. In the middle of the
road, he became conscious of the weight of the bag of empty toothpaste tubes and
his favorite rocks and of the heat: he limped in the sun. The road went up a
rise and slow it bent around a curve and shimmered in the afternoon heat. Now
he could never return to the quarry. It was invisible and behind him. When
there is truly nothing in front of a person is the time when there is nothing absolutely
behind. Behind Stoney was the bag of used toothpaste tubes and his favorite
rocks that he no longer had the energy to hold high as he dragged the bag along
and made a trail in the dust behind. He could look at this trail, but he did
not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">There was a gas station with
two bays and an office small enough to hold a coffee pot and a candy bar
dispensing machine. There was a car up on the hydraulic lift with two mechanics
and a gas jockey. Stoney was thirsty and hungry and limped his way into the
office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Where the hell you
going old man?" said Raul the gas jockey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney did not reply to Raul.
Stoney would not have replied because Stoney did not see Raul and he could not
hear him. Stoney proceeded to pour himself a cold coffee into a dirty cup. He
tasted of the coffee and found it burnt bitter. He poured a few tablespoons of sugar
into the coffee and twice as much non-dairy creamer. There was an unwrapped
tuna fish sandwich that sat on wrap paper where it unsuccessfully warded off
flies, next to the coffee pot. Stoney groped up a half of the sandwich and
sniffed it. It did not smell foul, but it was a new smell -- the smell of fish.
Stoney bit into the sandwich. Raul Menendez who had come in behind Stoney then
hit him in the back of the head with an empty gas can. Everything spun around
him; then his mind blanked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">He awoke in a room flooded
with a pink sunshine. He lay on a very large bed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Was it the bread?"
he thought. Then he thought, "What?" Then he thought, "Thought?"
There were no rocks in the room. The walls were a sickly pea green. He wanted
to follow this new voice that had been invented in his head when he was
unconscious and he kept looking behind himself. There is nothing much to see in
an empty room. His breath smelled like old fish. Stoney floated on the bed,
tucked in naked beneath the sheets, and he looked at the green ceiling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney pulled up the sheets
free of his left leg. The middle of his calf swelled in a red-bluish blotch.
There was pain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Mr. Trow Holden,"
she was saying slowly. "You lost consciousness."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney closed his eyes and
looked inside for the voice that he heard. He could not find it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Raul can be, let us
say, a bit hasty. Don’t you think?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney squinched his eyes
closed tight. It was as if he were worried that his brains would escape. Then,
in fear that he had not done enough, he put his thumbs over his eyeballs and
pressed hard. There was pain all around him and it hurt. There were colors
inside of his head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">There was a knock at the
door; it opened and a man appeared wearing a bloody blue smock and bottle-thick
glasses. He carried a fat leather case. "I am the veterinarian," he
said, "and this must be Mr. Trow Holden?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"All that we know is
that he had with him a bag of used toothpaste tubes, a few rocks and a hammer.
We assume the name on the hammer is his."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">The vet joked, "Raul’s
victim is very well endowed. But now I'll have to examine him, and I'm sure you
will prefer to leave us alone." The vet with a slight smile slipped on a
pair of latex surgical gloves over his rather large and meaty hands. They
snapped tight to his wrist and one finger escaped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">When Stoney pushed on his
eyeballs there was a curious effect and the vet seeing the solid muscular priapus
beneath the bed sheets had aptly remarked on this phenomena. But it was all
lost on Stoney who, when he heard these strange voices in his head, pressed all
the harder on his eyeballs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"I dare not leave the
room, Randy, lest you take unfair advantage of our unfortunate guest in your
examination."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"This is something
compared to a donkey, I admit, but it is nothing to an elephant. You need not
worry Sophia on my behalf. I’ve held the best in man or beast that god has to
offer."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"It is not your behalf,
or your other half, either, that worries me."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"You are such a tease,
Sophia. I would think you want this lost boy for yourself the way you go on."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"It is not any business
of yours, and if you don’t mind stay to your business. His leg is badly
bruised, as well as the lump from Raul on his head."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney's leg was tender; a
purple bruise covered almost the entire shin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"There was no other
damage?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Not that we know of."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"What fun is there in
that?" said with a wry flicker to his lips. "I'm afraid that I'll
have to give him an injection so I can examine the leg without making him faint
when I press it."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Randy removed an enormous horse
syringe from his case. While he was filling it, Stoney continued to press on
his eyeballs. Not only was he not aware of the proximity of medical care,
distraught by these noises in his head and captivated by all of the colors, he
did not know that it might be in his interest to show that he was afraid. He
lay there beneath the sheet like a tumescent rock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">The vet evidently did not
notice that Stoney was not responsive to the outside world. "Now, now,"
he said to Sophia, "it's just a mild state of shock and, though I doubt
it, there may have been some damage to the bone, though from the look of things
it hardly seems evident. I’ve used this mix of pain killer, tranquilizer and
psychotropic to good effect on raccoons." The injection was quick. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney felt no pain. He
removed his thumbs from the pressure on his eyeballs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Aha, that is
curious," remarked Randy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Yes?" inquired
Sophia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"I’ve not seen flaccidity
as a symptom in raccoons. Usually it is the complete reverse."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"How can you make more of...?
I mean, how can there be more of so very much to begin with?"</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Though Stoney kept his eyes
shut he felt something. It may have been the movement of the bed sheets. In
places on his body it felt cold, like a small stone pressed against his chest,
or a thing warm that pushed against his legs. He was rolled with his face
towards the window and the light of the sun cut through his closed eyelids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">After a few minutes the vet
reported that there had been no injury to the bone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"All you must do,"
he said, "is have your stranger, Mr. Holden here, rest until this evening.
Then if you feel like it, you can get him up for dinner. Just make sure he does
not put any weight on the injured leg. Meanwhile I'll instruct Raul about his
injections; he'll have one every three hours and this pill at mealtime."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"That is a pill?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"Don't mind the colors.
The swirls mean nothing."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"I was not worried about
the color! The damned thing is the size of a large cookie!"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"If you cannot get him
to swallow it whole it is fine to break it into smaller pieces, as long as he
swallows all of it."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Sophia's attempt to break the
pill in her hands did not seem to work and she now had it wedged against the
foot of the bed where, as she applied pressure with her foot, the frame of the
bed shook slightly. "God damned, man! We'll have to use an axe to break
this!"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney was tired and sleepy.
He opened his eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h1>
<span style="color: #993300;">FOUR<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">When one is addressed and
viewed by others, one is not safe. Whatever one did not do, or say, would then
be interpreted by others in the same way that one interprets a rock. Without
words to provide a description a rock is a fairly inert element placed at
random in the scenery. Some rocks are larger than others, some are more
colorful, but there are a good number of them scattered around on the earth and
it is very easy to lose track of their identities. Whole entire families and
communities and civilizations of rocks can wander around and not be recognized.
They are without labels and if we want labels, or words to put with them, then
we are forced to invent our own. But it is a risky business; a rock could never
know more about one than one knew about them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"I almost fell asleep,"
said Stoney. Then he lay there in the bed and wondered where that noise had
come from. He would have continued thus but for an intrusion in a soft but
harsh voice, something kind of raspy and sweet all at once. A voice hat he had
heard earlier as if off in the distance but he had not been able to find the
source of. These sounds of voices came at him and he was not able to hide from
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"I am sorry if I
disturbed you," Sophia said. "But I've just spoken with the vet and
he tells me that all you need is rest... and these pills, and injections. Now,
Mr. Holden —" She filled in a wooden rocker next to the bed. "I must
tell you that you can lay about in my bed as much as you need, but this is my
bed and I will sleep in it with you. I won't be denied my bed at night. If you
snore you go out in the peacocks' shed with Raul behind the station. Do you
understand? If you have an objection to share this bed with me then speak it up
now."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Stoney did not speak up.
Stoney closed his eyes and quickly pressed on his eyeballs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">"I'll take that as an
answer."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: #993300;">Through Stoney's mind rushed
a vision of rock, glorious and resplendent. Molten hot igneous it flared
through him in a hot rush. Unleashed in uncontrolled spasms it was as if a
magma fountain had been plumbed to the very core of his being. It came at him,
and at him it came in a psychedelic wave of lava. Folded and unfolded it lapped
away his strength. It left him blanker than blank. He threw his arms out for
the embrace that he felt with the solid earth. He was swallowed in chasms of
ageless geology. He was made one with the universe of volcanic disruptions. His
hips jumped against the weight that held him. He struggled to free his jewels,
gems of the night, the poor pebbles lost in the folds of a primordial creation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-26220159059454820742013-02-24T04:50:00.003-08:002013-02-24T04:50:58.969-08:00TP Over or Under?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaEwGm-LN2_dCVzaYuwPOg9JMWxQZWErexD8PeqTb-N0SpZFVzDyqmqN65xQdfB7sQw4Kr_0iCA3nQ-npCqwdp-torENHnbE32CnYMfFn6NtZELpnCLHJk-x0LwNHASHbEK53zViEAreY/s1600/tp+over+the+head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaEwGm-LN2_dCVzaYuwPOg9JMWxQZWErexD8PeqTb-N0SpZFVzDyqmqN65xQdfB7sQw4Kr_0iCA3nQ-npCqwdp-torENHnbE32CnYMfFn6NtZELpnCLHJk-x0LwNHASHbEK53zViEAreY/s1600/tp+over+the+head.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For those in need.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinHBSIsOUo5Liwbn8foaz3qdo7HEZpxLpx3oTCV6xWb7_F8tTTcwYRNy9zYoCYU-wKfebhyMKfzqYPFvw2O9RaXXjnBEGvzN07_9Qgtenttv6Z9bnVqpYoCm4xm9hmUY2db-8N3VOIma8/s1600/2013-02-22+07.30.42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinHBSIsOUo5Liwbn8foaz3qdo7HEZpxLpx3oTCV6xWb7_F8tTTcwYRNy9zYoCYU-wKfebhyMKfzqYPFvw2O9RaXXjnBEGvzN07_9Qgtenttv6Z9bnVqpYoCm4xm9hmUY2db-8N3VOIma8/s640/2013-02-22+07.30.42.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As seen on the Port Jefferson, NY to Bridgeport, CT Cross Sound Ferry</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-48258881098666393492012-09-17T05:28:00.000-07:002012-09-17T05:36:29.842-07:00Dig Well<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth. Genesis 26:15</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">~</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Damn, I hate August... hot, humid, stinking dead days entombed in boredom. Dead summer, an armpit-perspiring stink. Worm fodder doldrums. August here is a burning piss hole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Discussed with the family when Pop suggests -- as he suggests many projects – that we dig out the old stone well in the back yard. Enthusiastic, I am for it this time, it fits me. For one, I like to dig holes, and then, it keeps me out of trouble to go along and do whatever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Don’t go down to that place, I say inside, but I can’t help myself. My earliest memory of Pop we are at the kitchen table eating and we are joking and laughing and he throws a washcloth at me. You can say it happened then and not now, it is the past and over, and I should not talk like it is happening right now, but whenever I remember, it is just like it is happening all again, I’m afraid inside and want to escape. The cloth strikes me in the eyes and I laugh. I throw it back at him. It is a worn brown washcloth thin with holes and slightly damp with his hand sweat. It strikes him on the mouth. I throw it back at him, laughing at our game, like he has thrown it at me with the force of a child. Not funny. Pop swings with the back of his heavy arm and hits me in the head. I am knocked out of the chair onto the floor. I am not allowed to cry. A strong boy never cries. I hold my lips, they want to break.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Desperate for two wells. Pop argues. The house well beneath the garage is hardly good for one shower per day. We cannot use the new Kenmore dishwasher without waiting an hour to flush the toilet, before and after. I’m sick of washing dishes in the sink, my chore. No labor saved, we are thirsty half our lives. With budget we could have a well drilled hundreds of feet deep through gray mud and boulders to the aquifer above the clay line. (Money, who has money for sensible stuff? We live on onions, kidney beans and ground chuck. We collect food in the woods like it was a convenience store. He buys a Cadillac.) Drill a well for good water, more of what we already get, or … run into sulfur water like our neighbors. Sulfur. A stench all year of bad eggs, drill a well and then sulfur.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Depression. August. At the homestead well ring near the garden, fat Pop splays in his lawn chair. Nearby, I cut brown sod, repeating an old beginning. The stones uncovered look like a fire ring, the opposite of the water ring that these stones are. I struggle, with my ratty sneakers slipping on the shoulders of a shovel blade. I jump up and sink down, alternately swatting black no-see-ums that want to sting my eyeballs. I do not know what Pop is thinking, straining the nylon strapping of the chair, diddling around with a recent copy of Clutch wrapped in Popular Science. He says, “Son, you have to lean into the shovel when you break ground.” I lean my very hardest, and break a skinny wind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Down we dig, then dig more, and dig again. The sun recedes into a radiant halo above my head, a 40W light bulb slowly diminished by a rheostat, or a candle sputtering as the wick sucks up the very final drop of wax. Dimness of lost light. Everything burrows down to darkness, while Pop explains stuff. Pop, his mind wandering into the fading sun of a dead August wind, drones on camped there, describing amazing wonders of the modern universe. Above me the last gasp of an aperture to the 4th dimension. I burrow. More days pass digging. I am clumsy with tools. I want to dig with my hands and sharpened sticks, claw the deep blanket of earth with my teeth. Just me and solid ground.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Days go subterranean, burrowing into the coolness of earth. Progress slowly downward day by day into a mayfly cocoon of stone. In dimmer and dimmer light I scratch mud and fibrous roots from within the circle of glacial-deposit boulders. As if they were here, those pioneers that planted our apple, lilac and quince trees, I join them in this digging.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Drops down the ladder, every morning. I climb down. Pop pulls the ladder back up. I dig with a rusty trowel, a hammer, and a Chock full o’Nuts coffee can. Earth beneath bare feet, cold feeling to squiggly toes. Crouching in this shirtless hole, abysmal. Then mole farther downward. Fill the coffee can with loosened earth – with it, crouch over and fill a tin bale bucket. Pop, when he is there at the top, pulls the clothesline rope. A tin din is echoed off the sides of the stone tube as the bucket weight rises. Some dirt escapes from the bucket and filters down through the dim light, landing on my head. A centipede crawls on the back of my neck.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Dirt, I love dirt. Snuff of dirt. Sucking out the brown-caked crust under bloody fingernails between dry lips. Sifting it through the hair, scratching my head. The funk smell of dirt clogged in my nostrils. Any time, digging well or no well, I suck and squirm and roll and bathe in dirt. When Pop is not there to pull up the bucket I wait alone and am happy with the dirt and imagine. There are no productive discoveries in an imagination frozen with fear of life, but a constant returning to the same aborted hole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Thirst of life. Digging past everything, all the scenery down there. I look upwards to the sunlight, and Pop sits there in his regal paternity talking to the hole in the yard. On occasion he remembers to let down the wooden ladder. I ascend. Drink raspberry bug juice. “Piss in the woods, Son. Save on the well.” Pop spreads his weight and basks in the lawn chair, sweating in his shorts, and gives educational pronouncements to the hole in the yard. “I killed a man in Korea. I was lying at night in a hole I had dug, freezing in the cold, when this Chinese came out over me to kill and I stabbed him with the bayonet. We were just there on the land with nothing and we dug a hole.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Destination eternity. I’m no longer sure what direction to go in, like a beaver trapped in an amusement park cage: eternity. At Bible class they tell us about God the Father and Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, a trinity. Quite a big project, this beginning and end of everything. I quickly learn not to say what I think. I do not want to blow it. I learn from Mrs. Meyers in Bible class that God may speak to you, but you don’t talk back. You never throw in the towel with God. Are there times when nobody gets the complete message? Or am I alone? Even when you are sitting at the table for the chicken dinner in the church basement and people are easy with each other and laughing, you behave yourself and take a small glass of water when the pitcher is passed. Reaching out, there is nothing but pain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Digging a hole. Whenever I surface, the smelly neighbor kids tease, “Esek is digging a hole to China.” I don’t know where China is, but now I want to be there if that is where the hole goes. With all Pop’s other projects on the property, I also hear about Orientals. Pop says, “In China they would put one hundred coolies on your job. It would be done in one day.” Pop says he knows torments that I will never know. Hiding in the well I am one alone. There are only so many days in August. In time I will escape, though the velocity of pain is forever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Down past the layer of worms. Remnants of a rusty hinge and a broken medicine bottle, things that I finger and turn over and examine before sending the fragments upward for further scrutiny and classification and the comment, “Keep digging.” Down past my own height. The earth towers over as I reach out from side to side, not quite able to stretch fully, confined within the tube of boulders, some larger than my belly, some smaller. I will find this water. Down I dream, and down I dig in dreaming to the core of the world or beyond, downward in search of muddy water. Like any other immigrant to here, I am mud-hogging the stone lining of a dark womb. After a lengthy silence Pop shows up. “How does it look down there?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Dark, divining thoughts. The ladder hardly reaches this day’s work. There is no clue as to how deep this well will go or how deep it will have to be to give up life and find us water. The digging continues. Pop is distracted: we are too close to success, and success is to be avoided at all cost. He goes back to the house to watch an Abbott & Costello movie on the new color television. He does not stay with any one project for very long. If we do not arrive soon at the end of a task, he changes direction. When I follow him we are always going in circles, like the circle of the stone in this darkness. We never know when we will find water, or food, or money—but we keep on in this searching.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Death and taxes,” is what Pop says. Yet some of us keep digging. Some of us go off in the woods looking for another hole to talk to. Some of us wander around looking for a hole that will deliberate, that will respond when spoken to, that will give up answers. Some of us keep digging despite the fact that all we find is a replenished source of dirt and murky water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Diverted to another search, Pop comes back in the afternoon and tells me about this atomic scientist, Edward Teller, talking on the television. I do not know who Mr. Teller is. Pop says he blows things up for a living, like dynamite, but I know “atomic” means that. All the kids know about the bomb. I wonder, listening to Pop speaking from the top of my hole, how many days Mr. Teller would spend digging his well whether Mr. Teller hates August as much as I do. Does Mr. Teller wash his dishes by hand in the kitchen while looking out the window above the sink and dreaming of escape? Pop says we can turn the well into a bomb shelter if we do not find water. I go back to picking, with a piece of broken tree limb, at the pungent soil compacted in the spaces between boulders of sandstone and gneiss, feeling with my fingers the coldness of laid stone. I wonder how old this well is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Delivered as fifteen days for fifteen years, on the afternoon it is about the sixth hour of digging, as when Isaac's servants came and told him, “We have found water.” It springs up suddenly between my toes. At first I am not sure what is happening. I see brown water mixed with mud. Then I am excited, an everlasting spring. It appears slowly between two stones and then rapidly increases in flow to fight for clearness, to be free of mud. The heel of my foot is now wet. The well is deep, and without the ladder I have no way to climb out. I yell for Pop. My ankles are muddy, and the water is cold. I call for Pop some more. There is no answer from above. My knees are shivering. I’m screaming, for no answer. The water is cold, around my waist. Praying, I think about floating to the top. I think about climbing the stones. I am thirsty and wet, all at once. There is nothing more to dig, as the water ascends. Now my shoulders are shivering. Pop finally sets the ladder down. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Drenched, I climb up. My hair is wet, and my breath is labored. He shows me a puffball mushroom that he just found in the woods. Cut open, the inside looks like white brains. He says that when it is fried in bacon fat it tastes like hamburger. I pay attention and wonder what the lesson behind all this is going to be. He is an artful cook, learned it in the Army. I tell him about the water. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Disengaged, Pop leans over toward the hole and says he is worried. “It smells like shit. Too close to the septic tank. I think we should fill it in. You did a good job, though. I’ll say that. You dig well. A real good job.” I stoop perplexed next to the well hole, basking in the depth of my accomplishment and Pop’s pride. I want to slam a rock into his head. I’m no longer sure what direction to go in, like a beaver trapped in an amusement park cage. Trapped. Sometimes I think it is just not good to follow too close to Pop. Silently I want to slip away behind him into the woods and take a leak, then climb a pine tree to the top and watch the wind above the world, from one of those places where he cannot follow. Holding to the topmost crown, the last limb, with pitch stuck to my hands. I will never come down, until supper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pissed, I stick around and help Pop pull up the ladder, and then I begin to fill the hole. The trowel and coffee can, my digging tools, are left down there, to await a future excavation. The wood tools float on the surface, rising, fake battleships, which I pretend to explode and drown by dropping shovels of earth on them. The sound of a released dirt storm splashes and echoes within as it is dropped from the spade. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I do not dig a hole to China. There is no climax. I do not explode. I go inward. The dumb motion of work takes me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pop goes off somewhere into the basement to play with the wah-wah peddle on his electric guitar. Oddly, shoveling the dirt back into the well does not take me enough days to notice. I work mornings and evenings to avoid the heat. I take little notice that the midges have gone to sting other eyes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On some days there are thunderstorms, lightning and rain striking the earth around us, and the air chills, though only for short snaps. Pop decides to trade for a cheap horse, a black stallion that will let nobody but Pop ride him. We stable it in the garage above the good well. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In time I pretend it was not such a bad thing to fill in the old well. I went down behind the first diggers until I found water, and now I follow others in the act of refilling the well once again. In the Bible they stopped talking about digging wells and giving them these really weird names once everyone had their fill of drink. I’m still thirsty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Today Pop talks about building an experimental airplane, but I am not so interested in crashing. I’m learning to shovel horse manure and lime it. We still take care to not flush the toilet and run the dishwasher at the same time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">September is a cooler month.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">[Note: previously published onliine at<a href="http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/2009/08/03/dig-well-by-gabriel-orgrease/" target="_blank"> </a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/2009/08/03/dig-well-by-gabriel-orgrease/" target="_blank">Fried Chicken and Coffee</a> and Gator Springs Gazette</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">]</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-73368962028235372402012-07-14T09:26:00.000-07:002012-07-14T11:48:01.908-07:00The Hampton Classic Horse ShowWe went to the Grand Slam... or the Grand Whatever... I never ever go to horse shows and so to go out to Bridgehampton on the South Fork of Long Island on Sunday with my wife, who is the one with the experience and love of horses -- for me to accompany her to see the horse show was a new adventure. The Grand Whatever should be on the television so that you can see and hear what I did not see or hear. Look for it.<br />
<br />
What did I see? Well... I saw booths of people who sell boots, very expensive boots... and there were saddles, very expensive saddles without horns and there was faux antique furniture, not cheap. There were no chairs without seats to be woven by old men with rash opinions about the Swedes. The post-colonial English style is alive in the Hamptons, proper. There was also an opportunity to purchase the golf clubs of your neighbor’s dreams, a Jaguar or Range Rover but noticeably no Hummers, a very large tree with a wrapped root ball larger than our living room, and a Learjet. The Learjet was of the most interest to me and to a line of others better dressed -- clipped of tail and wings and packed into a semi-trailer for road transport... I speculated adaptive re-use as a camper when the fuselage is no longer used for horse shows.<br />
<br />
I would like to say that this is a love story, but to admit so at this point of my general confusion that is mildly exacerbated when I walk around in new steel-toe work boots that pain my feet -- all so that my wife can inform me gently of what I do not know about what I do not see... and we find a blacksmith who works out of a truck... not works actually, sort of sits around and shoots the breeze... but I see that he has a collection of new unshod shoes. I begin to perk up. I feel frisky. No horses just yet, but there is a laundry trailer with red and chrome scooters for sale. I'm confused as to why a laundry sells scooters, but then I see a washing machine through a doorway. It makes no more sense than previously, but I'm assured that when all else fails we can clean our clothes and make a quick getaway.<br />
<br />
There are signs of people from Brooklyn and further points west, evidence of visitors from as far away as Wisconsin. There are signs of people that camp out, if that is what it is called out here. It is a relief that not everyone stays over with a friend at their beach house, or in a $600 per night motel.<br />
<br />
I never saw any horse books for sale. I understand they are expensive and come with colored pictures. But, you could get your photo taken with a helmet strapped to your head and have your body superimposed onto the photo of a jump horse... a rider less thoroughbred but in the apex of a huge lunge forward just the same -- but I saw no books for sale. I think it goes to a suspicion that nobody who attended the show will read this. I feel safe to say that no horse person sequestered in the Hamptons is constrained to invest in reading. They are after all just like the rest of us.<br />
<br />
I saw the layout of the show -- studied a map tacked up to a fence. You had to walk through three-quarters of the hubbub to find it, but there it was. The field was divided up into smaller fields with nothing to happen just then in any of them, while we were there, and one main arena for the horses to jump. Jumping horses, that is, but only at two o’clock. It was noon and we ate tacos.<br />
<br />
Two men who sat at a folding table next to us at the concessionaire's tent talked about how long it took them to drive to the show from their residences a modest distance south of the north shore Gold Coast of Long Island, then they talked about the political problems of their country club. It was apparent that they attended at the behest of their wives and children out of love. They ate wraps, the latest solution for a sandwich.<br />
<br />
I looked for action. Though it had been a session of contemplative feed that we went through after my initial study of the map, and short of there being nowhere evident the promised exertion of horses to watch, I set out to review and admire the logistics of the portable toilets. They had the small one-person port-o-lets in rows, blue plastic huts with doors, and then they had swankier toilet trailers. One side was for men, the other side for women. Big white things they were. There was a wait everywhere, but it was orderly and civil. There is upscale in the society here... even the port-o-lets had shelves and mirrors in them. I took off my baseball cap and combed my hair. It looked good, though sparse.<br />
<br />
I thought it odd that I did not see any horse manure in our walk. Either it is true as I had begun to suspect that there were no horses, or somebody runs around and shovels it up at the hot time of delivery. I felt enlightened as at breakfast I had read in a book about the British and how during World War II they had a secret service that designed bombs that looked like horse, camel or elephant patties. The idea, I suppose, was that the Germans in their heavy goose step would not look down or suspect if they did, and not pay too much attention to where they jumped off, would desire to stomp on the incendiary devices. I was sincerely anxious to see the real McCoy. I'm fairly certain this was not what my wife had in mind to bring me along. I imagine there must be a national museum of these sorts of bombs somewhere.<br />
<br />
There was a trailer full of tack. A lot of leather stuff with soap as best I could tell. I was not inclined to investigate as I knew full well I would have to ask the names of almost every item that was there. It is bad enough if you have to ask the price, let alone have no idea what the name is of the odd item that you imagine a purchase to hang on the wall in the den as a memento. I do not like to look stupid in public. I prefer to shop online. That is how we got the gross box of super fly masks. I like the color.<br />
<br />
I stood idle to wait for my wife to complete her pragmatic inspection of a service unit when a black Chevy sport utility vehicle pulled up, lead by a Show Security man... a handsome black man in a black suit with a stylish earpiece who walked in front of the SUV to clear the way of people. It looked pretty serious, heavy metal in those trucks accented by their blackened windows. The SUV backed into a slot in front of a vegetarian pizza truck and two kids in their twenties got out, a boy and a girl. Hand in hand they walked towards the VIP tent followed by what had to be the chauffer. Soon they were joined by a body guard. I have no idea who they were; dressed casual like people I might know. But I did not know them. For all I know they were going to visit their Aunty.<br />
<br />
A woman with bug-out eyes walked up to me. In desire to be polite I looked the other way. When I turned she was in my face and asked me if there were any horse activities going on elsewhere. I had no idea. I told her I had never ever in my life gone to a horse show and that I was curious to know where they put the horses... it seems the price of a ticket did not include a program. I had gone to a rodeo once in Houston at the Astrodome but I thought it too complicated to explain to her that to sit up so high in the air that you need binoculars to see the riders does not quite in my imagination count as attendance to a horse show. I told her that so far what I had seen at the Hampton Classic was people. All sorts of people and a lot of them physically rude and not very well trained... they like to walk and drive into and in front of each other in the Hamptons. The Hamptonites also seem to wear funny summer hats that have no relation to the equestrian arts as far as I can tell. Sort of breezy and squashed up lumps. My new bug eyed friend, who did not wear a hat but just the same stood too close to me for my comfort, did not appear to believe me when I told her that I had no idea where the horses were at. I had to shrug my shoulders, twice, then once more. I had to repeat myself politely several times before she walked. She went off toward the horse tents where we had previously seen no horses. As she parted I blessed her that she might get to see a horse.<br />
<br />
I like the idea of horses that stand in a field undisturbed and when we drive around the island on back roads, usually lost, I make a point to point them out to my wife when I see them. "There is a horse," I say. "Yes, dear, that is a horse." I do the same with squirrels, but it does not have quite the same effect. I know when I am being trained. But, all humor aside, despite my reading about them in a book I imagine the best use of a horse is that it hold down the field, better yet a bunch of them spread around like tacks in a wall map.<br />
<br />
The situation was not exactly fair... we had seen a horse. It did something. It moved around in a circle on a long leash held by a woman with a very impressive whip. She could have been fly fishing if you had not seen the horse. I would say the horse trotted or sauntered or dressaged or whatever all that is... but I have no idea about horse vocabulary and so I will stick with the horse moved around in a circle. With the horse, there was a girl on its back, or on its neck, or flying off its rear, or running beside it... it was difficult to tell exactly what was intended... there was a girl. She looked like a nice girl as girls go. It looked like a fine specimen of a horse, as I was informed though I had to suppose -- we were short of other horses to make a comparison. At one stroke the girl stood on her head on the horse while the horse was moved around in a circle.<br />
<br />
A young fellow right about then, dressed in a mustard-yellow coat with a distinguished emblem embroidered on his chest, walked briskly past us -- when he saw the girl jump up and down on and off the horse he said, "It used to be just enough to ride a horse." He then took great pains to avoid a large puddle that he almost stepped into. I looked over the puddle fairly closely; it was rather deep for a puddle and full of dirty water. I was impressed that it did not explode.<br />
<br />
I was interested to notice the variations in sand from one area of the lot to another. You could easily tell the difference between the natural yellow sand and the white sand deposited and spread over near the VIP entrance that had been imported. I'm curious if anywhere there is an ecological concern over an intermix of invasive and native sands.<br />
<br />
We were bored and had time to kill and the horses were shy. I had heard about this shyness in the past but did not realize it was so.... so terminal. We once more took our chances and walked past the horse tents but I saw hardly any horses... a few horse heads here and there and they looked kindly upon us. Mostly I was struck by the effort of the temporary landscape. It was as much a garden show, if not more, than a horse show. Here there would be a little corner cut out of an area of fence with a temporary tree for shade and wood-chip mulch and a row of well-trimmed bushes and a spray of bright fresh flowers with a wood table and a few wood chairs. It struck me that this rustic camp scene, assembled with such a delicate sense of industry, would be wiped out by next Tuesday if not sooner.<br />
<br />
We walked around behind the corporate tents where we had to move out of the way for a fellow on a golf cart that was loaded with plates of smoked fish, cheeses, sun-dried tomatoes and asparagus. The tents were up on wooden platforms. The driver stopped in front of us, he blocked our way though I had no idea what way that was, and from the tent platform above a fellow with suit and tie told the guy on the cart not to forget the Wall Street Journal. To wit, the fellow on the cart shouted up, "Are they going to pay?"<br />
<br />
This little interchange of capitalist commerce made me feel comfortable that all is right with the world.<br />
<br />
So we gave out in our search of horses to do something and we went to look for our seats in the Grand Stand. They were grand seats in the second row in Area C... which was difficult because they put the alphabetic area signs where nobody would ever think to look... my wife paid extra for this... and we sat right next to a barricade that was painted white with green stripes and had columns with flower pots and a spray of white lilies... like church flowers they were. Flowers very bright and cheery with promise on this sunny day.<br />
<br />
Across from us was another barricade with an advertisement for something expensive on it... it may have been jewelry or boots but I don’t recall other than that it was not perfume. There was perfume around us; it went by on thin legs with short skirts, a bodacious scent that suggested distant fields, the gentle roll of aromatic meadows, with apple and peach and herbaceous notes... but no horse smells. I don't know how you can enjoy a horse without you get to smell it.<br />
<br />
When I was a kid we had a horse, we stabled it in our garage. I'm not sure if it was a thoroughbred... it always seemed to be angry. You get what you pay for. None of us kids could ride, too dangerous -- our mount was forbidden. Papa on an odd Sunday away from the television would dress up with his sequined chaps and his western hat and he would saddle up to run the angry beast up and down the asphalt street in front of the house. It snorted and whistled and made us feel Western. Mary Jane Austen next door rode English, the distinction is that she bobbed up and down. She dressed in black. It was a regal event, like a little parade, and us kids would all run around to the neighbors to tell them to get out into their front yards to see the sight. I learned to spread lime on manure.<br />
<br />
From the Grand Stands in Area C Row 2 to the left were more barricades with little arched bridges and flowers and signs that said that they were contributed by a variety of local florist shops. The entire field was filled up with these landscape barricades and after quite a while nothing much happened -- I had begun to read a book about the life of lobsters I had brought -- two old guys got in a black Land Rover and drove around the field. They stopped at each one of the barricades. I could not make out what the old guy said into his microphone... I could see that it was him that said something when they drove close to us. His lips moved. He seemed happy about whatever it was he thought he had to say. Used to be that I thought I had to understand, but at a certain point I just gave up and figured being there is enough without the need for me to understand diddle. It was about then I realized that the barricades had numbers. It had not occurred to me that there was a deliberate order to the event. I felt consoled in my heart and very much more reassured for there being numbers.<br />
<br />
It appeared to me that the hot spot was the VIP tent where we could view a gaggle of people who ate and drank and for all appearances had a grand old time at a picnic party. The week had been one combined with the North Fork wineries who host a marathon wine imbibe. I saw that it was a long party and we showed up at the end of it. You get what you pay for... and obviously it costs a bit to see a real horse in the Hamptons. We did not even see that many fake horses, no statues, no trees carved into horses, no leather horses... other than the pictures... I began to feel we should go get our picture taken in order to prove our adventure. But I had no idea how to get back to the photographer's tent. They may frown on two people to sit on a jump horse despite our willingness to wear helmets.<br />
<br />
I sat at the end of the row on our bench and it was difficult for me not to notice the people who milled around in the Grand Stands, particularly when once more I got whacked in the back of the head with a large purse. There is a need for helmets at a horse show.<br />
<br />
There were many kids... they did not seem to know where to sit, they did not wear helmets -- they hugged and crouched at the rail. There were many adults... they appeared to stand in front of us and pretend as if they were lost. They did not wear helmets, but many of them did wear hats. There were anxious husbands that showed up late and had to have the last fifteen minutes of inaction explained to catch them up. There were little babies who cried. There was one girl skinny as a rail that had to be seven feet tall. She did not wear a helmet, though if she fell over she might want one. Her small head floated around high above us. There were two older women with horsey faces and flowery hats dressed in what looked like brightly colored sack cloth. I assumed they were the misplaced literary set. I got the impression a Kahlil Gibran poem would bounce right out of them with the slightest nudge. I kept warily silent.<br />
<br />
Then a lady from Prudential Financial came along to sing the national anthem, we could not for the life of us see her but we did hear her -- twice for the delayed echo of the sound system -- and we all stood up and turned around to face the American flag. I took off my baseball cap -- it serves as my almost helmet. I then noticed that I actually wanted the two Mexican landscape laborers, they looked like they were on their way to somewhere important when they were suddenly caught out by their boss man to work in their dirty boots. They stood next to me and secretly I wanted them also to take off their baseball caps. I did sense that they would know where all the legendary horses had been hidden. Then it occurred to me, in a look around at the assembled crowd, that at least eighty percent of the hat population at the event were ignorant of the patriotic respect to bare their skulls.<br />
<br />
My wife often tells me that she would like to raise jackasses. She saw them on television and fell in love. I work on it. Like I said, this is a love story.<br />
<br />
After the national anthem was slaughtered I went to sip out of my water bottle. It was announced a period of silence to respect our troops in foreign lands. I had not got the bottle down from my lips quick enough and the silence was over.<br />
<br />
Then we got to see some horses. I think it was five, it may have been six. They had riders dressed in crimson coats. Second best to stand in a field I like the image of horses when they stand in a row, their heads lined up in a line, with riders who sit on them. When they move across a field with the horse's heads gently to bob up I'm reminded of ocean waves. We were told the horses and their riders were important for something they had done in South America. They paraded around a short bit while we were told other things over the speaker system that we could not make out. If you watch on television you may have better luck to figure out who they were and what they did that was so impressive.<br />
<br />
Then there was the show that may have been the show that we were there for.<br />
<br />
A rider and a horse came out and stood in the field of barricades a good ways off... but we could see them over there pretty well where they stood – it was not so distant and far off as at the Houston rodeo. There would be a horn blast and then nothing... then the rider and horse would move around the lot and come around to the corner at our left and then would sort of half charge and half hesitate until they were right there ten feet in front of us and then we could see the horse's head and see its eyes and see that it was either disturbed or mad or unhappy and then next thing you saw was the horse fly up with a jerk into the air over the barricade and the clunk clunk against the top pole and the rider held on as the horse went down the other side, hopefully we gathered with an idea not to take the top pole with them, and then they turned and were gone across the track.<br />
<br />
My wife told me there was a lot of drama in the horse and rider in a jump. I had to believe. I could not imagine anyone doing this with a riding lawn mower, and a monster truck would make hell of the flower bed.<br />
<br />
From there on out what we mostly saw was the helmet of a rider bob up and down across the field. We had to be particular to pick out the rider's helmet from all of the flowers as there was a slight and pleasant breeze. So we tracked the bob of the helmet and sometimes the horse's rump and the photographers that stood around with their equipment, or the men who snuck up to put the displaced poles back in place. I kept out an eye to see if I could see them put a pole back in place but each time all I caught was a backside that fled across the field. It was like a magic show. At one point there was a noticeable absence of rider as the poor chap had fallen off. The horse appeared to be relieved and went off in a new direction. A small airplane circled overhead. It dragged a long banner with red letters behind it to inform us to reinstate the local fire house. I could not help but read the banner as it was persistent with motion and buzz like a fly landed in the left eye.<br />
<br />
Mostly the event was one of sounds. Oddly, though you could not make out just what was being said over the speaker system -- if a horse’s leg so much as grazed a pole you could hear it all away across the track. You could also hear the crowd, particularly the VIP crowd who had the challenge of a triple jump in front of them, let out their occasionally dashed expectations of a fault in a tremulous, "Aaaaawww!"<br />
<br />
There would be three quick helmet bobs and flash of horse butt at gate number 8A, 8B and 8C in succession and then this gasp noise from the crowd. I felt with a spirit of the competition. I even saw the electronic sign board with a timer that told us the seconds and the fouls and the names of the riders and the names of the horses. I wish we could get this kind of score system on a pheasant hunt. And the names of horses, they are such wonderful names full of hope and promise: Cosequin, Edgar, Royal Kaliber, Freckles, Newport, Playtime, Wichita, Eskadeur, Claddagh, Gladiator, and Crickett, but these are all made up names I threw in here to show that I have a heart for horse names.<br />
<br />
I seem to recall that this run around and jump stuff on a horse happened fifteen times. It could have been fourteen. I lost track when I fell asleep. Though I like numbers I am not terribly good when it comes a need to keep track of them. When I play golf, another game that requires numbers, and where one time at a tournament I won a little statue of the rear end of a horse, which is my sole obligatory reason for mention of golf here, I tend to leave my clubs behind scattered across the yard. I always end up I have to go back to the keeper's house to ask for my loose clubs.<br />
<br />
It was fortunate for my wife, who had a stupendous time as long as I made no remarks that two nice ladies from Hampton Bays, the pre-Hamptons to our unHamptons, sat next to her so that she had someone to talk with on the topic of horses. I was no help. When she leaned over and told them what to look for in the horse that jumped around on the field they were able to make sympathetic noises of appreciation and understanding. When she told me that a particular horse over in the corner that was about to get started with the race looked like a thoroughbred I was caught with my mouth open, "Why that one?" It is the same when we watch the Triple Crown on television. The horses are led up to the gate for each of the races and she tells me what I am to look at. I like the colors. Jockeys and their horses are so colorful. Everyone seems so damned excited. Then they run around the track and it is over.<br />
<br />
We used to live above OTB, Off Track Betting when we lived in Brooklyn. The horses on the television there were too small and the quick announcers made too much noise and I could not understand the code they used. Now, the gamblers... now there was a lot of chums. Mostly old men with nothing else to go on in their lives, gray haired, overweight with their paunch bellies and not able to run very fast. It amazes me what modern medical science makes possible. I always thought of the guys that they were like police horses let out to the country, only they lived on the sidewalk in front of where we lived inside in our apartment. They used to taunt our little boy, pretend he was a tough guy and fake to box with him. Until the day he ran out of the door and briskly charged an old guy who had never seen him before and did not know what was going on until after he had been given a good solid punch in the groin. Life with horses is one of unexpected excitement. The old guys at OTB all look the same. I know they replace them year after year, but they always look the same. As with horses they have neat names: Benny, Luigi, Guzzler, Fritz, Sammy, Dirk and Bobby.<br />
<br />
I could no longer handle the excitement and decided it was time for me to inspect the latrine. Along the way to the facilities I saw the llamas and the goats and a pot-bellied pig up for adoption. I really do not like it when I find out that a pot bellied pig has suffered abuse and been confiscated by animal control and now is in need of a wonderful home. Llamas you can keep, I'd rather raise ostriches. By the time I returned to my seat it was intermission and I was jostled about against the tide of people who wanted to leave the grand stands.<br />
<br />
Intermission over it was then the long awaited Jump Off. At least some of the people were waited; others I noticed smoked cigars below the bleachers or inspected their surroundings or talked with their long lost friends. Mothers herded their children. Fathers followed their wives. Ladies ambled to hover towards the entrances to the VIP tents. The jump horses that did not jump with perfection or grace were being walked around and told sweet nothings before they would be put away for the day. And it was a distraction with all the adults, fresh ones that had replaced the last batch, who stood in front of us and acted as if they were lost.<br />
<br />
Six riders and their horses got to go around again, only this time with a different set of barricades. Bob of helmet, flash of rump and it was very quickly over and the grand stands emptied themselves. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was presented to present something to the winner, but it was so far across the field that we could not make out any of it. They may have been getting $250,000 but we saw none of it.<br />
<br />
There was confusion in the parking lot. We were motioned to stop and wait by an attendant dressed with a bright orange vest, we stopped, then we got honked at from behind, there were swear words in the air that were not ours, then four cars drove around us and cut into the line: a Range Rover, a Jaguar, a Mercedes and a BMW in that order. My wife had rented a compact car for this special occasion. On the way home we stopped at a fresh vegetable stand. We bought corn, chard, fresh dill, arugula, local tomatoes and white eggplant.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-70725794401420904012012-07-06T02:40:00.000-07:002012-07-06T02:43:20.899-07:00Fireworks 2012<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/I7D63Obi7Sg" width="480"></iframe><br />
<br />
from Peter Janko at Lumenelle Lighting RestorationAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-51225544551522787202012-06-12T04:03:00.001-07:002012-06-12T04:03:22.115-07:00Utah Phillips<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">From 5/21 to 6/3, 2012 I assisted in work on gravestones at the Pioneer and Catholic cemeteries in Coloma, CA at the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. While there we worked with a representative of the state who lives in Nevada County, CA. Several times Utah Smith, who lived in Nevada City, was mentioned. Though I was familiar with his name I had never invested any time to find out very much about him. This interview that he did with Amy Goodwin with Democracy Now in 2004, viewed here as a tribute on the occasion of his death in 2008 provides a good introduction.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">My personal comments are as follows:</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I never quite understood the IWW or why they were considered such a strong threat to the owners of capital. Utah in this interview makes clear the difference between organizing of united sectors of industry, as opposed to organizing along craft lines. In the perspective that he presents it is fairly clear that organization along craft lines, where separate crafts can be boxed out and then set in competition with each other, thus can be directed to use up their energy and resources to blunt their overall effectiveness for positive change. Organizing on craft lines seems very convenient to a corporate fascist dominance, just as public and private sector unionization is currently under pressure of divide-and-conquer. Note: Utah does point out that when workers (anyone who collects wages for their labor and does not own the means of production) lose they also win.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">The <a href="http://ptn.org/" target="_blank">Preservation Trades Network</a>, though not in any sense of the word a union, is organized as an educational non-profit along the lines to bring together a community of related but different traditional trades within a specific industrial sector. Along the lines of stone masons with timber framers with slate roofers. There is a good deal to learn from Utah Phillips of value to the community spirit of PTN.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Quite a ways into the interview Utah mentions a conversation that he had with Daniel Berrigan. For a period of time in the 1970s, when he was on-the-loose prior to his arrest and imprisonment. I knew and spent time with Daniel Berrigan. The subject of the conversation that they had, as to the pressure of industrialization of Utah's songs, reminds me that at one point in my life I got the notion that the aesthetic work of our lives, for me it is writing, is not a commodity meant for sale. If I need to be paid I would rather be paid to move stones</span>.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RoqaSqXc05M" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/U0f-mlwaGcE" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OrDPdRf4Qow" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ROlinQi-L1Q" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RoqaSqXc05M" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-47169521621552306062012-04-14T08:08:00.001-07:002012-04-16T19:04:04.258-07:00Local Politics<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
Our community recently became a Village and in the process suddenly there was such a higher level of scrutiny with 'code enforcement inspectors' that within a month they had issued 1,300 violations in a population of 12,000.<br />
<br />
I received a violation and a notice to appear in court that unspecified debris was 'noticed' in our yard. That was confusing enough, debris for one is a rock garden for another. There was nothing out of the ordinary as far as I noticed. What is the problem here?<br />
<br />
We did previously have two Triumph sports cars in the side yard, dysfunctional and with a hope to restore them, but no money for that since the recession hit us about the same time we threw a rod. D was called, I won't go into how they got his number, and told the Village wanted the vintage cars removed... Note: I was not contacted but someone that does not even live on the premises was.<br />
<br />
We donated the cars at a deep loss to Kids for Cars around Xmas, and thought that was the end of it... keep in mind in winter it is cold even on Long Island and messing in the yard, particularly when the whole world looks like brown crap no matter what is done, is not number one on anyone's pleasure list.<br />
<br />
We have lived here 22 years, we own the house in full, we are not non-resident owners... we look after our neighbors to the same degree that we ignore their occasional oddity. We are not under water, despite the hurricane floods that creep into our wetlands, we are not in foreclosure, we pay our taxes, we do not burn down the neighborhood nor do we go around drunk waving pistols in the air while riding on the hood of our friend's car, like some folks here about have done.<br />
<br />
In the past, just once, we had a complaint that coincided with one of our neighbors, a friend, the so-called functional schizophrenic, when he got hit up for 4-40 yard dumpsters worth of accumulated junk. It caused him to be one of the celebrity causes to push for the Village formation... "we need to clean up this village so that it will be the wonderful seaside community that it can be." Which is a sentiment essentially opposed to my desire to hide in a working and lower class neighborhood where we are reasonably left alone and free to leave others alone.<br />
<br />
Suddenly we are not left alone and we are given a violation without warning. In the one past incident we got a warning from the Town (a larger entity than the Village but now we are the smaller more special Village), and we cleaned up the yard within 15 days, and we went on with our lives in an attempt to avoid any more warnings. All was hunky dory.<br />
<br />
Court, the newly instituted Village Court, is in the borrowed hall on second floor of the volunteer fire department. I always wondered why they built that second floor and why all that exposed copper for flashing. We got to find out as K and I went there, it was a mad scene without any explanation, people lined up on the stairs all wondering what they were in trouble for. Metal detector -- now, mind you, for some of these folks the metal detector was either a novelty experience or a very normal one. I had to take belt and work boots off etc. just like in the Federal buildings in Manhattan. K when she walked away to sit down and put her shoes back on was asked to give back the one and only little yellow plastic tray as the presiding officer said, "We are on a budget, you know." The place was packed. People complained that they had been there previously and spent 4 hours only to be told they had to come back again. One woman worried it was the deflated Santa Claus in her yard that was her violation. Working mothers with their young children in tow. One shy little girl thought I was Santa Claus.<br />
<br />
Then we found out we could get an adjournment, and we quickly took it.<br />
<br />
D and I then over the next month went about to clean up the yard, in particular the really big dead oak tree that the electric company came around and dropped into your yard. They did not cut it in to convenient pieces, they dropped it in logs and left the scene, years back, and it had been a pain for me to deal with since then. Either my chain saw [Pull-on, yeah, right. You pull on the damned thing!] is a piece of shit or I am a mechanical moron. Cleaned up the fallen limb brush pile and spent another month just moving things around and visiting the Town dump, one of my favorite Saturday morning hobbies. I moved everything in the side and front yard that I thought could look like "construction project" into the rear yard behind the fence where the chickens could see it better.<br />
<br />
In the mean time Village politics got roused up over a plan to Re-Zone all of the waterfront areas as commercial for restaurant and hotel development. I noticed the purplish-blue demarcation on the map did not include our house. I was quietly disappointed that I would not sooner get a lucrative offer from a casino developer to sell out so we could move to a more insignificant hole on the planet than this one.<br />
<br />
That re-zone stuff got a whole lot of folk upset and there were a few public hearings.<br />
<br />
The one I went to we sat around for an hour before I overhead that someone had said something unpleasant about the Mayor's wife and he had gone home, instead of presiding at the public hearing. We were sitting there for quite a while because nobody knew what to do next. Then a whole lot of people got up and each one of them said three minutes of stuff into a microphone. I felt cheated when I realized there had actually been some sort of brawl at the last open hearing that I had missed.<br />
<br />
One lady went twice and then asked if anyone else wanted to use three minutes to read the rest of the stuff she had not gotten to tell us all about. Something about frogs eating invasive plants and how the Village should look into it. Look very deeply into it. A whole bunch of folk said how wonderful the Village is. Another bunch said it sucks.<br />
<br />
A week later the Mayor resigned. I never got to know him. The Deputy Mayor was not so much in public favor to replace him as he owns a significant chunk of the waterfront property with a lot of boats on it. Another person was chosen. In the mean time there was an election for trustees. One person we voted for reportedly lost by 6 votes.<br />
<br />
I went to the Village Hall, if it can be called that, and asked if I could see the section of Code that I had violated. I met the code enforcement inspector that had written the violation and he was nice enough to make a copy of the entire code for me, all thirty-six pages. I told him we were the yard that had the two 'historic' cars in it, he said he remembered us. I told him we had cleaned up the yard but wanted to make sure we understood and were in compliance. I don't like being noticed and will do what is needed to be left alone. But I want to know for sure that we will be not noticed and that we will be left alone... other than for the no-fracking sign, the colored lights for the night walkway and the highly territorial dog, I guess. It was a pleasant enough exchange and he said he would stop around and take a look and enter something in the file. I just love it when folks bring my attention to their having a file on me.<br />
<br />
So I go back to court the other night. First thing I enter a volunteer fireman guy at the bottom of the stairs says I have to sign in. So I, and everyone else that walks past him signs the sheet. Upstairs the prosecutor is talking and says that if we want a conference with him that we need to sign our name to the sheet at the back of the room. I ask him where is the sign in sheet, he does not know.<br />
<br />
I would like to at least know what I am in for because I really have no clue. I can think of all kinds of trouble to get into and it is all the excess speculation and imagination that tends to drive me a little bit nuts. After two decades is it time to move? Bad enough we have hurricanes, now we have a Village to deal with. We sit there doing absolutely nothing for an hour. Having a Village seems to mean we get to go more places in public and do nothing for a while.<br />
<br />
The court officer asks in English if anyone needs a Spanish interpreter.<br />
<br />
The prosecutor seems upset and runs around with what looks like a long list of names, several sheets worth. At one point asks if everyone present is waiting for a conference. Nobody knows what the hell is going on so we all raise our hands. Sure, why not?<br />
<br />
Some folks get up and get an adjournment. One guy is upset because he was given a violation that was not with his name on it.<br />
<br />
However it happens at least half the folks are now gone. Then the prosecutor starts to read off the list for people to line up for a conference. He does not seem to understand why nobody lines up as he reads the list off. Eventually someone stands up. By this time more time has gone by and the judge has finally come out to preside but the prosecutor does not move people up to talk with her quickly enough. I begin to wonder if the judge is paid on piece-work, so many supplicants passed along through the judicial funnel, or by the hour.<br />
<br />
One corporate lawyer for a bank goes up with like 10 files (10 properties) or whatever and the judge reads off the violation citation, same number as I have, $250 fine. I think, oh, crap, that is more than the Village property tax [supposedly with the vote for the Village we were not to get any new property tax, yeah, right].<br />
<br />
We have a new road crew that goes around and pours hot tar in the cracks in the asphalt road and the flagman holds up the STOP sign to us while he waves us through. I wonder whose idea it was to hire that nimnuts?<br />
<br />
Eventually the judge starts to call people to come talk to her directly. She is reasonable with folks, patiently explains to them what they can or cannot do. One fellow wants to go to trial instead of pay a $25 fine. His contention is that he should not have to pay for what he took care of. She talks him through that. One couple has two properties, one outside of the Village, the judge says, "Aren't you glad you have property outside of the Village?" Eventually after two hours there are like four people left in the place. I am called up.<br />
<br />
I still have no clue what is going on and I have had no conference with the prosecutor.<br />
<br />
The first test is that a court officer points at a bare spot on the floor where I am supposed to stand. I mean, bare spot that looks like anywhere else on the floor and this guy wants me to figure it out, which means you need to look at the angle of his arm and the arrow of his finger to determine just where the hell on the floor he actually means for you to put your feet. Trigonometry after a full day of work and no dinner yet. I go for it and snap my feet together... let him deny this I think, I have my feet on the only right spot, the only only right spot on this whole friggin floor. The judge says hello and asks me to state my name and address.<br />
<br />
I look at her and do so.<br />
<br />
Then I am handed a piece of paper and offered if I want it to be read aloud in the court. I think that may be of interest as nobody else before me thought to have it done when they were asked. Why not?<br />
<br />
But, while I read the paper to figure out, or in this case not quite figure out, what is going on, I hear the prosecutor talk with the code enforcement inspector (I think he got a new car with nifty signs painted on it this week) who tells the prosecutor that I had corrected the problem (this is where being the guy with the scraggy beard comes in handy, nobody can not remember they talked with me). The prosecutor says that they propose a $25 fine. I'm good with that, plead guilty, pay the fine with a crisp fifty and after they fumble around for change I go home.<br />
<br />
For entertainment value alone it was money better spent than if I had gone to a movie. In future I may go back to sit in for free. Up to the point that I got to pay for the cost of admission nobody had thought to challenge my business in being there in the first place.<br />
<br />
Now I need to deal with my lost truck keys.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-12775030311639299182012-03-10T12:28:00.001-08:002012-03-11T13:07:40.296-07:00Orthopedic Noir<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h89k_3R8F_8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-61986504858076708722012-02-12T11:25:00.000-08:002012-02-12T11:27:01.121-08:00Steve Reich, Different Trains<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is fairly interesting music, a combination of voice, sound recording and instrumental. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you have not heard it before then check it out.</span><br />
<a href="http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hsct101/pages/trains.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Steve Reich's Different Trains (1988) background text</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/JYEwsIW-zsQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Movement 1: America Before the War</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/hPjTkT0766M?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Movement II: Europe-During the War</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uhgr4HUykDI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Movement III: America-After the War</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-82973622833619366062011-12-03T06:36:00.001-08:002011-12-03T06:36:39.352-08:00Christmas Music<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wsqx2fwDGrM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-10206111887356455982011-12-02T09:15:00.000-08:002011-12-02T09:25:40.833-08:00Naked Son - Memoir of a Six Mile Creek Native<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I wrote this for my friend Hilary who is watershed steward at the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network. At the time that I wrote she was at work on a project to walk folks from the headwaters of Six Mile Creek to the outsource into the southern end of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, NY.<br />
</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">~~</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <br />
When we start out in life our maps are small. My earliest memory of 6-mile creek is from 55 years ago. <br />
<br />
We lived in an apartment in the old mill building next-door to the store in Brooktondale, across from the post office. At that time the store was an IGA (Independent Grocery Store) with an actual part-time butcher on the premises. The present roadway bridge was not there then and I remember when they moved the large house down toward the former trestle location at the curve where there was the ditch with quicksand for many years. It is also at this curve where I suspect a UFO abducted me one night. Then with the large house out of the way they built the present bridge. But where the bridge is now before the bridge was a place where we would play at the creek. What I remember are kids that would throw rocks down, glacial boulders of gneiss, limestone and sandstone from the upper bank onto us as we played down below.<br />
<br />
Further upstream from the lower bridge is the mill falls below the upper bridge and at that time the mill stood tall on the west bank. I remember we went in there in winter with my stepfather and the panted legs of men that would stand in close around the pot belly coal stove where they talked and smoked cigars. They were all into electricity and radio and tinkering with wires and tubes. Across the creek from there in a yellow house lived my first girl friend, Mary. It was a brief relationship.<br />
<br />
Though as kids we would wade and dip in the sedimentary flats below the falls we had always been warned sternly not to swim in the pool directly below the falls. We had leaches, black snakes and red water mites to contend with.<br />
<br />
Where the community center is now was the two room schoolhouse where I went to first grade before Caroline Elementary was built. Those were transition years when public buildings were built with concrete blocks instead of wood framing. My grandfather was a lay Congregational Methodist preacher and my mother a Fundamental Baptist, so one week I would go to the Methodist Church and the next week to the Baptist. Both churches were on the same street with a few houses between them. Once a year the Methodist church would have this certifiably insane man preach and it was the best poetry ever. Years later he found where someone had written a nasty word in the dust on the window of my Ford Falcon and he lectured me all about sin. My friends did not understand what the hell that was about out in the parking lot but I thought it was real neat to get the special sacred attention. Water and all that Baptism stuff of heavy words that flow from the heart.<br />
<br />
When I was in Boy Scouts that was held at the community center there was a kid name of Watson, as I recall, whose family lived up a ways from the mill falls in a house near to the creek. They were a hunt and trap sort of family, beaver and muskrat pelts out on the back porch. Watson was a star in the troop, very athletic, sharpshooter type, what we thought of then as a future leader of men. He drowned in the pool below the mill falls when he attempted to rescue two young girls from their drowning. He got some sort of posthumous presidential medal presented to his father.<br />
<br />
I went back there below the falls alone last year and the minute I smelled the water it brought a whole host of memories back to me. If I could make an incense that smelled like that I would burn it on the low days.<br />
<br />
Closer in toward the lower bridge lived an elderly couple in a house that seemed to perch out over the creek. They owned a purple Studebaker. One time the old man showed me a walking stick on a tree in his yard. It was the first time I had seen one and years later in the desert in Oregon where there was not very much water on a reservation I made a walking stick out of twist ties for the kids and they called me coyote with the socks falling down. I don’t know what happened to the elderly couple. One day they were just not there. I looked in their windows and the table was set for dinner. Blue table cloth with red flower prints, white china plates, knives and forks and glasses at the ready. Never saw them again. I see the house fixed up now, it feels different. I no longer want to look into their windows.<br />
<br />
We moved up onto Besemer Road just below Route 79. At the small creek there, a seasonal one that feeds into 6-mile, was a water stop for the steam train at Besemer Station. The same train line that went down south to the trestle with the quicksand ditch and the OOBE. Ruin of the concrete base of the tank tower is still there. You can go see it and you can stand there in the middle of Besemer Hill Road and imagine to see what I once saw. Just below the culvert there was a good outcrop of horsetail. That whole length of creek from the water tank down past the old cemetery on the hill up from Brooktondale Road, past the artesian well down to 6-mile was my playground. My first place mapped. I can draw you a map today if you would like one.<br />
<br />
One time I was thirsty and drank water below the Route 79 culvert. I was upset in bed with dysentery for about a week. This is the first time I have ever told anybody about how I got that. Afterward I stopped drinking fresh open water.<br />
<br />
Most of my time though was spent on either side of the culvert on Besemer Road. I built stone dams, packed them with sticks and clay, and made pools for the minnows and water skeeters. There is good blue clay in along there, particularly on the bank below the culvert. We would make ash trays and turtles and sun bake them on the rocks. In the bank below the culvert there were small springs from groundwater and we would fashion canals in the clay to carry the water down the side of the bank. At the time I was into hydraulic engineering.<br />
<br />
Further down the creek is a stand of Hemlock and there were many a day I hid there and read a book. I had most all of my exposure to Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw there under the Hemlocks. Nowadays I live on Hemlock Drive near to Pattersquash Creek in wetlands on the south shore of Long Island near the Atlantic where the world, the coastal muck and the water smell in their own unique signature.<br />
<br />
When the world hits me real hard this Besemer Creek is the place on the planet I need to go back to and remember myself and center. If you see some long-bearded bogey man out there one day then don’t get too worked up.<br />
<br />
The steep bank with all the trees was our favorite sled area. Winters we spent a whole lot of time stomping around on and to break the ice in the crick (that is how I sometimes call it, a crick and a crickbed). I will never forget the time I had to drag my wet soaked frozen younger brother back home on the sled. He was not quite into winter water sports the way I was.<br />
<br />
Further upstream from the culvert the flow splits and one branch goes off into a field and marshy area and runs along the elevated railroad bed. There was a very nice frog pond, masses of eggs in spring, and wild irises. The creek along in here was not rocky, all sandy with roots to overhang the deeper slow pools. There was a catfish lived in there I used to watch and play around with.<br />
<br />
That was my small tributary crick. The best American English is either from Besemer or Ohio, take your pick. <br />
<br />
And not to forget the crick and lazy lay of the landscape up behind the Nazarene Camp. That was up where the well driller lived. That is out past the lost trestle.<br />
<br />
Rachel Carson published Silent Spring along in those years and I read it and because of popularity of the book I took my Scout patrol, Fox, out and hauled trash up out of 6-mile in the stretch up above the mill falls. To tend the watershed goes way back. Some time out there clearing Adirondack trail.<br />
<br />
The land all round in there between Middaugh and Banks Rd. at the time was owned by a farmer the name of Locken or somesuch with a house down on the flat area on Brooktondale Road. The barn still stands there as an apartment house. I worked with my stepfather and grandfather to do the electric on that barn for the conversion. A lawyer had bought the property. Real quiet guy that worked alongside us had been locked up in Danbury Federal because he wrote a letter to a friend about what he wanted to do to Nixon. He told me about Tolstoy.<br />
<br />
For several years I had the Ithaca Journal route that went along that section of Brooktondale Road along 6-mile creek, a circular route of five miles that wound up along Route 79 back up to Besemer Road.<br />
<br />
An offshoot of the route was Middaugh Road with a bridge across the creek that in summer provided a good place to rest in shade. This section was mostly glacial till. Up the road a ways was the last stop on my leg where a family ran an ice-cream parlor. It was a sort of odd place for one. I liked the chocolate sundae. It is where I heard the Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. It was the first record I ever bought. The best part of owning that record was all the kids, friends and family thought I had gone nuts to listen to that stuff. It was my introduction to the allure of cultural contraband. Some years later I fell in love with Captain Beefheart and beyond.<br />
<br />
Where Besemer Creek came down under Brooktondale Road there was a small house where a single mother with kids lived. I delivered their paper for years for free, paid for it out of my own five dollars a week. Further up in back was an artesian well with a pipe near on eight inches in diameter. Water just kept to spurge up out of there like a city fountain for no good reason. I should have meant last year to go back up and look and see if it is still doing that. I never drank out of that one.<br />
<br />
Further toward north along Brooktondale Road past Banks Road lived an old guy alone in a very small house smaller than a 10-yard dumpster with a shed roof along the road. He had a large open field between the house and the creek. For whatever reason he spent his time to haul planks of wood up out of 6-mile and he laid them up against the trees to dry. It was like he had a field of teepee plank houses. Along the road he had hawthorn trees and when I would deliver the paper he would come out to see me with a handful of birdseed. I would watch the nuthatches land on his head and shoulder then jump down to his palm to peck at the seed. I wrote a poem about the bird man and my friend Dave Finn made a silk screen poster of it. I still got it here someplace. Yep, there it is.<br />
<br />
And out in Slaterville next to the first store you come across there used to be an artesian well. I don’t think it is there any more. Too close to the road it probably got noticed and capped off. Since we had a car, the Ford Falcon, we would go out there to get drinking water and bring it into our commune apartment of townies in Ithaca where we would tell our stoner friends that it had magic head powers. We would drink the water and everyone would pretend to get a contact buzz. It was cheaper than beer.<br />
<br />
Further out toward the far end of Slaterville was a woman that had a business to amber glass by soaking it in the water. I know she got writ up in the newspaper because I read about it, and I have seen the glassware. It was not much different to me than stuff I had won at the penny pitch at the Brooktondale carnival. I practiced a year to pitch pennies and got me a whole box of cheap glassware, ash trays and lacy edge candy cups. Then further out there was the dirt road we took every early winter with my mother and grandmother that went across the ford and then off we would go into the woods where we would collect ground pine to make Christmas wreaths. And when I go further out along Route 79 I remember another artesian well along the road where there was a small pull off and they kept a caged brown bear there. It is the place where I always imagined the gypsy pot-holder lady, the one that would show up mysteriously walking along the roads in the spring and knocking on doors to sell pot holders... I always imagined she came from where the caged bear lived.<br />
<br />
At Banks Road was another bridge. The farmer here kept Holstein cows. I always thought the cows were neat and I never messed with them but I remember people talked upset about cows that stood around all day and pissed and defecated in the Ithaca drinking water supply. Those particular cows that could be seen black and white from the road they talked about but I never heard anyone complain about the cows stood in the water up further along Central Chapel near Bailor Rd. I don’t suppose any of all of those cows are allowed to stand there now. It was organic.<br />
<br />
There was a back wash of an old loop here that would flood and hold water that did not flow steady and get replenished. It was mucky mud stagnant and arrowroot grew there. I delivered the paper to a farm worker out behind the barn who lived in an old silver trailer. On a Saturday morning I would have to bang on his door to get him to pay his weekly fee. He would always open the door, particularly in winter, in his underwear and there would be this intense waft of kerosene heater fumes and dead laundry hit me in the face. That was seconded only by the old lady up near Besemer Station opened her door stark naked. I think she expected different company. People that live near water can be a bit odd sometimes.<br />
<br />
My mother was raised on East Main Street in Ithaca between Bridge and Giles Street where her father, my grandfather the master finish carpenter, built the family house. The deal was that my grandmother from Dryden was not allowed to marry until he had them a house and so he wagered a model-T garage he built along the west side of the lake to buy what was then out-of-town land and he took a picture out of the Sears Roebuck catalog and built a house. Regardless, they lived up above that section of 6-mile. So from the large dam in the area with the reservoirs up to German Cross Road was a whole different territory of creek and for me a wider map bled into the family history. My mother with her young family had moved up-creek and as I grew older I explored down creek. I don’t know how many times I walked that distance along Route 79 into downtown Ithaca and back. Sometimes I would just not even bother to walk the road.<br />
<br />
My first business had to do with the fellow along the creek at German Cross Roads who worked at the artificial insemination lab at Cornell. His job was to handle all the bull manure and he had piled it up in his back yard for years into this giant fermented mound. Sort of like an Indian mound but mushy. My preacher grandfather lived near there and he worked a deal for me. I could haul out as many yards of manure as I could load in my truck. I sold them around the area at $1.00 per load. It was enough of a business to encourage me to do something else.<br />
<br />
In High School it was popular to swim in the lower reservoir above the dam. My mother told me it was where they went to swim as kids. That is a long time of swimming. When we did it we were naked, everyone was naked. I’ve never thought to ask my mother how they did it. For us it was fairly regular sport to jump off the upper levels of the cliffs into the water. Then to lay out on the rocks and soak up the sun. We were not exactly hippies, we were post-hip but messed up just the same. Everything exciting and living through history and all that happens on some other water body than the one we may particularly be going natural and pretending communal at the time. So keep in mind all water bodies are sacred.<br />
<br />
The upper reservoir though was harder to get to; you had to walk in from Burns Road. So if a group really wanted to be left alone they would go swim in the upper reservoir. Quite a few days I went in there by myself and fished for trout. A lazy day along the bank with the pole crocked up in a willow vee stuck in the shore muck and a book. I won’t say what else there was but the woods can throw off some really heavy vibes if you have a mind to spook for them.<br />
<br />
From the dam to the inlet the creek got for me more industrial and confined and claustrophobic with concrete walls to form a sluice channel and I never found it all that interesting to want to get into it. The police department along there we had one evening an odd adventure that I won’t go into here other than to say that I have a fondness for stealing cigarette machines and them being dumped in the lake in the middle of the night. There was always in town a whole lot of crossing back and forth on the streets over the creek -- as if it were conveniently not there. The city itself as a first city to map was way more interesting at that place for me than the creek, unless there was a flood. I like to see big trees float down and ram bridges.<br />
<br />
The inlet was a whole other world and best met with a borrowed canoe. It was years that I heard about the squatter community on the west side but it was only about fifteen years ago that I got to read Tess of the Storm Country (1909). For anyone that loves this place and likes to read early 20th century pulp fiction I do recommend the novels of Grace Miller White. <br />
<br />
I can’t end up, this end of the creek, without mention of the story that a young fellow who worked along with me when I did stone work and built fireplaces in the area that he and his father were down to fish in the inlet and they found the floater of a young college girl that had jumped into one of the stone gorges. I don’t mean to end on a macabre note, but one always needs to keep in mind that the water that brings life also tempts death.<br />
<br />
Keep it between the banks and keep it clean.<br />
<br />
###<br />
</span> <br />
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-55888564759817730112011-11-03T09:53:00.000-07:002011-11-03T09:56:27.508-07:00Revive the Draft<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">This was sent to me by my brother... it is too good of a farce not to steal and re-post.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKuxKbWhIXvewPiVOJZgpOQ9uDZhyz_HBQZIdPdr9hKDN3vgmuaRXTHSypsBH7bD2fZLnrzJ0LRIk8uFcb1D99eNPtvvW0M7sRLri6NNU8Jp2miX7tuwE41zDYuJZcdMZd4P1czZ281DM/s1600/bad+ass+guy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKuxKbWhIXvewPiVOJZgpOQ9uDZhyz_HBQZIdPdr9hKDN3vgmuaRXTHSypsBH7bD2fZLnrzJ0LRIk8uFcb1D99eNPtvvW0M7sRLri6NNU8Jp2miX7tuwE41zDYuJZcdMZd4P1czZ281DM/s320/bad+ass+guy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 42 to join the military. They've got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35. <br />
<br />
For starters, researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.<br />
<br />
Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry.' We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for awhile. <br />
<br />
An 18-year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10am. Old guys always get up early to pee, so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch. If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.<br />
<br />
Boot camp would be easier for old guys.. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we're used to soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling. <br />
<br />
They could lighten up on the obstacle course however... I've been in combat and never saw a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too... I've never seen anyone outrun a bullet. <br />
<br />
An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head (or that the top of his underwear should not be worn below his knees).<br />
<br />
These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way. <br />
<br />
Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons, who know that their best years are already behind them.<br />
<br />
Send this to all of your senior friends...</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-38537024910051048272011-09-15T07:22:00.001-07:002011-09-15T14:36:34.095-07:00Tea Party News: Improved UFO Disabling<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Soon real Americans will be able to shoot down UFOs without causing them to disintegrate and dump their alien occupants out all over our local county parks. This is good science what with the propagandistic left-wing unpatriotic lies about climate change, evolution, cancer prevention, death panels and all. Who needs a fence when we have photon beam weapons?</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1894610031"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxOpnACUEjjwcvdwUO9qAx2tI5p4hZBie2GnJdjMkfPpBArPrNzP37YlzSX0w6RArqjRgQCMjVnkwvd9BdNnvw95dTEtR9fgK6gzjabFB4mFLKr4SeId6tFH2qyeZgoLBaOdCaXRv09Pg/s320/synchroton+LS2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0?ui=2&ik=db2476c93f&view=att&th=1326d6704fb33b6c&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-4azBWbCMOVuus43-E86f5&sadet=1316095779787&sads=XCtJsmwQMh4P6Og2VeYRPGrpJWI&sadssc=1">National Synchrotron Light Source II</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bnl.gov/ps/nsls2/about-NSLS-II.asp">Meeting critical trans-galactic challenges with an increased light source at Brookhaven National Laboratory.</a></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_634002624"></span><span id="goog_634002625"></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-60332784392419876862011-09-07T04:53:00.001-07:002011-09-07T06:04:28.113-07:00This reminds me of a male squirrel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPORSueZ8MF-ocL62QkqR-t0DBWqTDrn6aIt5fPB2AobbbV_CrVQrN_nVqj8jx5lNj6pm-wUIcNRrDYazMIwxCEkuSKexl5N867U9RsXDwMZuAYgnyQ8tmpVFNnlV1aA7gH1Pfw9wBgY/s1600/poland+1146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPORSueZ8MF-ocL62QkqR-t0DBWqTDrn6aIt5fPB2AobbbV_CrVQrN_nVqj8jx5lNj6pm-wUIcNRrDYazMIwxCEkuSKexl5N867U9RsXDwMZuAYgnyQ8tmpVFNnlV1aA7gH1Pfw9wBgY/s640/poland+1146.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-104694561986208222011-08-26T12:02:00.001-07:002011-08-26T12:02:39.960-07:00The Battle of Chernobyl<br />
<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/82l57HfFaVc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LuY6-n_9jzg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QmJTQFtURqc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UjHRT1P6AU4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LYpDjjT-RfQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VlEc8o76-FY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-26491948442875724102011-08-26T08:09:00.000-07:002011-08-26T08:09:33.651-07:00Help to Keep Water Potable<div id="change_BottomBar"><span id="change_Powered"><a href="http://www.change.org/" target="_blank">Change.org</a></span><a>|</a><span id="change_Start">Start an <a href="http://www.change.org/petition" target="_blank">Online Petition</a> »</span></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://e.change.org:80/flash_petitions_widget.js?width=300&petition_id=64451&color=1A3563"></script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-16067428399642113122011-08-22T11:38:00.000-07:002011-08-22T11:38:38.766-07:00Foot Prints<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Outside the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_GASfthTf26x0IN5gD7fK5__n3ZWeTPTUjrShUjMb93DctXaVgfAnlQ6Z4LhwrjLd3Fl2VzHO6liX62_GAKt7iOIo6FRZyzxEgrAut6ws3QAggfQ7gBQwvhc7M9SGzhWi4qF8Oszkhc/s1600/footprints.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_GASfthTf26x0IN5gD7fK5__n3ZWeTPTUjrShUjMb93DctXaVgfAnlQ6Z4LhwrjLd3Fl2VzHO6liX62_GAKt7iOIo6FRZyzxEgrAut6ws3QAggfQ7gBQwvhc7M9SGzhWi4qF8Oszkhc/s320/footprints.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-90320880797203488342011-08-21T06:52:00.001-07:002011-08-21T06:52:58.582-07:00Mudslide Working<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYAVtdWbLPGbb4qEUkwtsgIF5XIEUYVTxC6CNIARYDiE-i8jHBnBs_Wq8pjQhTvzEcnyG6SlihyWj65mo_r8QIuuEY0HzF6wf3pfYHg3F8wRSimFvu7VLFwUCnRvjRBrbutjTlKBR5q_U/s1600/mudslide+on+porch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYAVtdWbLPGbb4qEUkwtsgIF5XIEUYVTxC6CNIARYDiE-i8jHBnBs_Wq8pjQhTvzEcnyG6SlihyWj65mo_r8QIuuEY0HzF6wf3pfYHg3F8wRSimFvu7VLFwUCnRvjRBrbutjTlKBR5q_U/s200/mudslide+on+porch.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-25825000070236052772011-07-29T06:38:00.000-07:002011-07-29T16:06:02.818-07:00Whale Sound: Tree Reader<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Whale Sound is an online project where poems of various contemporary writers are read aloud by Nic Sebastian.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">A few months ago I submitted my piece Tree Reader and this morning it came online. You can hear it read here:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">‘Tree Reader’ by Gabriel Orgrease « Whale Sound</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><a href="http://ow.ly/5QkqI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">http://ow.ly/5QkqI</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">A writer can write a whole lot of junk and every once in a while they will find a gem. This is a gem. When I hear the piece read it makes me shiver.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> Nic has captured nuances that I was not even conscious that I had writ. This for me is a most wonderful gift.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">The story behind the story.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">I had a new smart phone and I was riding on the Long Island Railroad when the scene occurred. One of the stops for the line is Pinelawn Memorial Park cemetery.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">I like the concept that at one time people were more sparing in their written words because they had to be set in type (or carved in rock or pressed in clay). In my case with this piece it was composed slowly on the smart phone, thumbs and all.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">It never touched pen or pencil to paper.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Uncharacteristic for me I submitted it to an online publication. It was accepted with one minor change. That felt good.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Subsequently I was contacted by a textbook publisher who asked if they could include the story in an anthology of American short stories. Like from Washington Irving forward to Gabriel Orgrease.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">I like the idea that HS students somewhere on the planet will get to read my story.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> Also I can imagine they would immediately go to the shortest story in the whole book then wonder who in blazes is this Gabriel Orgrease.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">When I first was contacted by the publisher I thought it was a joke. I got paid $200 for it. The fee paid for the smart phone.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />
It all goes along with my life plot to publish good writing in unexpected places.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-32067838180729745592011-07-27T03:09:00.001-07:002011-07-27T03:15:21.863-07:00One Remedy for When All Else Fails<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Sdn3O6aaMNc" width="560"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-38544215574039889922011-07-19T12:41:00.001-07:002011-07-19T12:41:00.515-07:00Men Walk on Moon<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiQ-Sj8IVr5c5Gv3fC-eEwB2wTUCnTlvxSYF9jh3b_48MTjLOqB94JuripA_bqb8_p5Pi-VT50clfD6yf0JFkwMk3p-EAFsmiM-7WQDna7SBL2HntWeZyY5RL35W_i5_f-YdEPNVPLkt4/s1600/men+walk+on+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiQ-Sj8IVr5c5Gv3fC-eEwB2wTUCnTlvxSYF9jh3b_48MTjLOqB94JuripA_bqb8_p5Pi-VT50clfD6yf0JFkwMk3p-EAFsmiM-7WQDna7SBL2HntWeZyY5RL35W_i5_f-YdEPNVPLkt4/s200/men+walk+on+moon.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David w/ the NY Times 07/18/2011</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-54988816053209976482011-07-16T03:56:00.000-07:002011-07-16T13:13:06.756-07:00SOS Gab & Eti 1.53<i>“Her head was tilted back and with closed eyes she faced the sky, her mouth gentle with the half smile that can only be shown by those whose joy is so private that they have forgotten that other people exist.” </i>-- Howard North<br />
<br />
Dear Mr. Falswater,<br />
<br />
As per our phone conversation last Wednesday we write you in regard of our business plan that since you have that fifty million venture capital that you got from those Nigerians ready to invest my brother and I have an idea how you can use it very quickly to good effect to help us start our chain of franchise stores. My brother wanted to start a sperm bank for endangered French hamsters but he has run into a snag as to how to transport them via trebuchet from the continent to Bullamanka. Everything is about logistics these days. Logistics, logistics, logistics, you would think it the start of a massive movement. So last night after we polished off seven bottles of Judge Yuro Peese Uckerknobb’s homemade red wine I shut him down and now he has agreed that this is a better approach to satisfaction of a market need that we present to you for your esteemed consideration and philanthropic titillation. We sincerely look forward to your support of our sales funnel. Oh, and before we forget, we have interested Booger King in an action figure set to support the ribbon cutting of our first thirty-seven retail outlets. They will also supply us with an electric brass band. And there is the young lady that used to work for Martha Stewart in laundry to assist us in the shop décor.<br />
<br />
Sincerely yours in connubial admiration,<br />
Etidorpha Orgrease<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~</div><br />
<b>As Swipes, LLC</b><br />
<br />
Toilet paper offers an opportunity to document an underlying trend in human history. With this intrinsic propensity for the value of mythic story in mind our focus in business development would be on the location of retail outlets in upscale historic districts near to the most prominent institutions of knowledge distribution.<br />
<br />
Harvard, Cornell, Berkeley, Columbia, Stamford, Liberty, NYU, University of Chicago, Yale and Princeton and such other high-minded repositories come easily to the fore. Places that are certainly in need of unencumbered escape and quick relief from mental strain with the ultimate convenience of novelty. Most likely we would seek a disposable target in off-campus ‘college town’ venues where there is also a high incidence of heritage tourism, independent surplus family wealth, a demonstrated need for the product in volume, and an appreciation for the simpler vagaries of the arts and crafts movement.<br />
<br />
In some respects the promotion of a specialized toilet paper store can be approached as a Rorschach test of various popular trends in retail consumption. We perceive models for the business along the lines of candle, incense and greeting card stores. Toilet paper represents an unexploited opportunity for marketing and sales along the lines of the ‘cult of candle’, for which there is a representative shop in every suburban mall in America. We also perceive a symbiotic relationship between the widespread marketing of smelly candles and the need to suppress the downside negatives that the contemporary public may unfortunately notice as associated in their use of toilet paper.<br />
<br />
Though toilet paper in the mass market has been highly commoditized and comes conveniently packaged off the supermarket shelf, and it may appear on first approach that there is not an opportunity for retail specialization, there is a great deal of nuance in the available solutions to the human situation.<br />
<br />
Toilet paper can be considered in a parallel to the sales pipeline of beer, for which up until the opening up of a deluge of micro-breweries the common assumption was that beer was a fairly mundane and watered down product of modest interest to the drinking public. Whereas now we understand that the pyramids would not exist without it.<br />
<br />
Toilet paper serves the need of a slightly different public interest, but serves an essential need just the same. It is unlikely that our modern civilization would have developed to the extent that it has without toilet paper being close at hand. Unfortunately the earliest Neolithic practices cannot be established as toilet paper has always been of a fairly biodegradable and ‘green’ nature. Though we are free to imagine what the first use must have felt like.<br />
<br />
As many historians make out that fire was an essential invention toward human progress we need to contend that once it was possible for early primates not to have to scoot themselves through the jungle abrading their posterior apportionments on bushes and tree leaves that it was noticeably the dawn of a new day.<br />
<br />
Though the invention of paper had to have come much later in the timeline of the universe, most likely from the Chinese who would have known right off what to do with it, in our study of the subject we tend to equate ‘toilet leaves’ as the equivalent predecessor of toilet paper. Therefore our retail stock would include a variety of heritage leaf selections. A common favorite of our immediate ancestors was catalpa leaves for their broadness of form and ability to hold steady until properly disposed.<br />
<br />
One variety of leaf, that of nettles, though not recommended for common application would be made available in our quaint shop as a little known historic curiosity of toilet leaves as a weapon of socio-political resistance for it being offered in the 17th c for free use to the Dutch by the Lenapes in their early exchange of the castorium trade. This also brings along the need for us to stock a variety of small-animal fur pelts to include those traditional of rats, skunks and rabbits. Neither should we not forget feathers, or hemp, or linen or cotton rags.<br />
<br />
A brief review of the international toilet paper scene awakens one to the fact that toilet paper is inanely wrapped in cultural aspiration. Whereas the American consumer anticipates a certain width, color, texture, rate of absorption and delicacy of texture in many countries the toilet paper is smaller in width, of a different color, and often rougher in texture. We should look to Brazil for their outpouring of success. These subtleties of national variety, particularly when offered to the market in blind tests through workshops and other promotional venues such as clubs and swap-meets, can make available an intriguing panoply of sensation for the erudite connoisseur similar to the refined sample of our very fine local homemade wines [Hobo's Last Choice].<br />
<br />
Toilet paper though it tends to be flat and is most often encountered in the American venue in rolls is not one dimensional in characteristics. It can be made available in designer colors, such as a humorous shade of tasteless brown, made suitable for display or disguise in the most upscale of interiors.<br />
<br />
A toilet paper shop would not be complete without an element of humor and we should keep in mind to stock Appalachian hillbilly toilet paper that includes a favored moonshiner slogan printed on every sheet.<br />
<br />
Designer toilet paper can also be adapted to floral decorations and highly-refined origami and when printed with a border of holly leaves or bunny rabbits can serve for seasonal celebration. The designer connection does bring in the potential for late night infomercials to be broadcast on cable television. One may even envision airing of a docudrama, “The Quicker Swiper” as a sort of George Simenon mystery take-off. Note that our utopian shop would also sport a back corner shelf selection of religious themed paraphernalia. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has on occasion been referenced as a substitute for the age-old standby, along with the Sears catalog. A free library of relevant literature along with comfortable places to be seated would suit the retail ambience and encourage browsers to linger and contemplate the merits of the proffered quality of merchandise.<br />
<br />
Any shop specialized in toilet paper would want to include assortments of corn cobs, for which there is a profusion of literature and opinion as to the appropriate selection of varietals of corn that provide both livestock feed and when thoroughly shucked the very best bum use. And no self respecting shop would be complete without an automatic electric corn cob cleaner with an auto-feed mechanism.<br />
<br />
As with an upscale coffee shop that also sells coffee makers and bean grinders a specialized toilet paper shop would also provide an assortment of accessories. For every bathroom in America there is a toilet paper holder and the extent of the variety of these utensils is staggering to behold. They can be made of a whole host of materials, natural and synthetic, double-decker and speedy unrolling, uplifting muzak chimes, pipes and gongs, to environmentally friendly dispensers connected to digital consumption meters with usb connection to your home computer. Design can range from the most utilitarian stewed-tomato can with a spindle to the heights of titanium Frank Gehry knock-offs.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">- end -</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-27250371550317697502011-06-24T05:43:00.000-07:002011-06-24T12:04:02.575-07:00SOS Gab & Eti 1.52<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8KCquvMjkjuqFMKdBqrxo6MjrbgkwYExVY-cPfAwT4TjbujDNfBXZhaQdqvo2vvczqGNApbxjkVoAFfLCZQ_YFlcsEEovXvVONSvCmbzXmGYm57FTbb4_5kkEVlJQ6wNhRXVu7zZ-LZk/s1600/bulfrog_home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8KCquvMjkjuqFMKdBqrxo6MjrbgkwYExVY-cPfAwT4TjbujDNfBXZhaQdqvo2vvczqGNApbxjkVoAFfLCZQ_YFlcsEEovXvVONSvCmbzXmGYm57FTbb4_5kkEVlJQ6wNhRXVu7zZ-LZk/s320/bulfrog_home.jpg" width="208" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustrations by Michael L. Johnson.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><i>“Who says we cannot know the future? We can, but it [is] always a matter of interpretation, that is, of imagination. If that seems obvious, I should point out something not so obvious: that knowing the present is also always an act of imagination.”</i> Lebbeus Woods<br />
<br />
Bullfrog GO is not bearded GO, is not the shaven GO. There are now three GO's, a triumvirate of commotion forward, on screen, behind the screen and off. There is three of them like birch trees in a wind storm, the grove a paladin of merges, the real gazookus. <br />
<br />
And I tell you to beware of the after taste of recycled cookies. The burp burned 'round the world.<br />
<br />
May there be more? Are they all one? Are they all me? Are they all you? Are they this other imposing guy that parades around his city apartment and appears in his summer windows naked with a self-reflexive camera? We do not know. Ask their mother Momma Orgrease, who sends a monthly check to their brother Viédaze at the ecology retreat in the Yucatan jungle in order for his honorable and upright excellence who in perpetual meditation communes there with Mother Nature for him to please, pretty please, pretty please with a cherry on top... continue to admit that he is related to the many virile GOs of the world.<br />
<br />
BF-GO: The sky room on rails was enclosed and overly stuffy, smelled of raw kerosene heat and moldy garments. The stage lights did not get any cooler as the climax lines of <i>Tomorrow</i> eased up and ended. The audience frittered in their undersized wooden seats. It was close in on the Radio Girl Squirrel to come onto the make-shift stage-in-the-round with her flaming baton and a yi yi yi ya ya ya! Then she would play a kazoo with her do.<br />
<br />
Red silk hankie in hand – printed with a white skull and crossbones so that it would just perfectly fit over his face to make him out a pirate thief when he rode his hog -- a trace of a farmed pearl welled up just beneath his left eye with impending readiness to roll down the slant of his amphibious face where it would bisect the groove of his cleft chin. How many bullfrogs do you know with a cleft chin? Does a dancing frog sweat? He was desperate for the revitalization of a cold shower with the nerve soothing of Etidorpha's duck weed concentrated body lotion with honey, grapefruit-rind pomegranate and lanolin, sloppy, slimy aroma therapeutics. But for now as his act approached an end on this evening, no lotion was availed for him just yet, no relief as it came up in the auditorium a musk of bullfrog overlaid the otherwise dank space of sheetrock walls (black mold for now hidden) and knotty-pine board floor. Does a frog fret? GO the bullfrog threw a sloppy kiss to the digital vids and croaked out a final, "Tomorrow in the morning light, don't let the sun catch you cryin'."<br />
<br />
In thrust of a genie's ass this small time performance was leapt and ascended in a tinkle to being cast in Meet the Depressed; only a pee-a-lot on a swing and an MP3 player as they always say repeatedly. Repeatedly as they always say. <br />
<br />
But then as his arc took off from the port of hopes and dreams and credit default swaps and dreams and free credit reports and dreams and rapidly gained subliminal attitude on the sky train, the yellow vest with ketchup and crushed Japanese beetle-grub guts and pepper stains morphed into a red power tie and just as he (GO the BF) junted outward into the anus of oblivion (in one episode it is written that the massive hemorrhoid that quickly approaches on a trajectory toward Staten Island would be met by a reconditioned weapon of mass destruction but the otherwise undaunted crew of the space ship Further-Again would be imperiled by a gustatory expulsion) then in a swept up motion spiraled downward to the loving estimation of the now massive audience of three-dozen trilobites. <br />
<br />
Shards of paper carnations of the very cheapest sort miraculously appeared humped up in a soggy pile at the stage door, little notes attached; and mutterings about "the next project" appeared in Rolling Stone all with the subtitle, "without really having a clue". No one could get enough of this odd little critter. "I'll thank you not to refer to me as a critter!"<br />
<br />
In his heart he knew that his sister Etidorpha's BFF, the Radio Girl Squirrel would make his heart go pitter patter thump thump . What hope is there to imagine in the future romance of this celebrity frog with the Radio Girl Squirrel? Somehow the trans-species amplexus simply releases when converted into an on-screen 3-D animation and none of the children seem to notice the disparity.<br />
<br />
But we live in a rapid world of industrialized artifice. Sex with robots supplants online experimentation with cats, dogs, Tolstoy, chickens and Thanksgiving turkeys in the suburbs of Middle America. Male robots barrage us with sextexts of their brass balls though nowadays replaced by titanium implants the size of trans-oceanic buoys. Female robots tweet us photos of creatures that plump their way into deep caves filled to the brim with lonely heart kisses. It is decades since BF-GO had first read in "The Fear of Frogging," ...this aerial switch is equipped with a moveable frog.” At the close of the act his legs twitch twitch in an electrified tap tap dance. Once again the suction cup balanced on his crown in a flash bang.<br />
<br />
Stage direction from 1474: <i>“Hell must be represented in the form of huge jaws which open and shut when needed.”</i> anon<br />
<br />
In an effort to make such and things not necessarily less crystalline clear, free of lees and dead dandelion wine yeast, we will elicit a spiritual dowser to drop a water melon seed pendulum hung from the web silk of a trap door spider. The diviner will say, "This is where we want the line to split between reality and play." to wit, shaven GO (S-GO) will respond, "And this here cut," as he slams down the sledge upon the basalt boulder, "...is where there is grain, true and right." To wit Bearded GO (B-GO) will say, "That seems less than fuzzy to me." To wit BF-GO will mutter, as he descends the back ladder (not to be confused with the ascending black adder) to his dressing room, how things that happen at one end of the universe happen instantly at the other end of the universe.<br />
<br />
“Howdy do it?”<br />
<br />
It behooves us educated ungulate to say straight out that the GO the bullfrog had accumulated too many fingers on his hands. Though he was somewhat consoled in the cosmic paranoia of his performance anxiety with reports of discovery of a star that shoots out water at 124,000 miles per hour.<br />
<br />
Meet the Depressed: A retro 1970's historical reproduction all shot in a tiny back room studio situated up the stairs and down the dark hallway, shot in super 8 (or maybe even seven) with a daily budget of what amounted to $8.43 mostly for an assortment of flies and sow bugs to keep BF-GO fueled up and forever hoping. One midnight clear the director Suddy Warthole called out, "That's a Wrap! Put it in the can," as the day’s work concluded. <br />
<br />
Critics complained periodically about the extensive editing involved in the production. Twit this, tweak that, adjust the volume, alter the hue, rejiggle the jaggle, shun the reader, by-pass the screenwriter, cut, cut, cut. All those cameo asides and the corny-copia of mop bucket be bop and altered off-tone slighting and clover-field crop circles not to mention the abundant gas track. Still, number one is number one; and that's in fact what it was. Number one. It was by no means not negative one. In fact, there was very little math involved at all. It was purely an overdone production. <br />
<br />
Moon eclipsed evenings in the masonry room on the sky train were altered without question. Eti's day hadn't changed dramatically. Lots of great cookie and tart eating to be done there. BF-GO asked almost daily about bringing her on, in hopes that it would get him an opportunity to spend more quality time with the Radio Girl Squirrel. A new cast member and all that. She could wear a purple wig and the Radio Girl Squirrel a fake mustache. Great duet potential! But it was not hard to read Eti's thoughts on the matter. Three simple words, "NOT MY THING," were spelled out clearly (here finally is the clear part) as she lay about recuperation from their reality withdrawal, nestled deeply in the softness of her shiny near black fur coat. She dreamed of the embrace of endangered French hamsters.<br />
<br />
To be continued: Shaven GO (S-GO) petitions the French government to establish a transnational sperm bank for endangered hamsters.<br />
<br />
Text co-authored by Gabriel Orgrease with guidance from Michael L. Johnson.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2283849717487961708.post-8964438943981308642011-06-03T04:24:00.000-07:002011-06-05T09:53:41.862-07:00SOS Gab & Eti 1.51<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"I found white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once.</i>" George Maltezos</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a stone menagerie of Robber Barons. I saw their leader in a movie fly off from the Hudson pier like he was a wetware helicopter to points north and east and wealthy on the early edge of a Friday afternoon. A fleshy little porker with ear flaps. It was balmy in a golden light which only seemed the more appropriate. We still watch those movies... I mean, of the Great Depression with song and dance, a banjo and minstrel black face though it is now the blue man group.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In our personal theater the lights are shut off and in a display of the cult of candle we forget what we forgot. Smells of apple-cinnamon, bayberry or the artifice of paper lilacs.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, we continue to dream the lotus blossom delivery dream but it is one locked into a closet in a railroad flat in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Aluminum sides the street walls, all sorts of faded pastel colors. Cookies and the super saturated sugar filler of cannolis, the smell of hot sausage juice and peppers and onions euthanize the street festival. Ferris wheel, the portable ferries a wheel of fortune to be a rotation of baby buns or skeleton cakes.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The old folks Grace and Doria on the floors below control the steam heat so hot that the Never windows in their aluminum frames not to close all winter the street grinds in our ears twenty-four hours. There are no bird noises. Barking unicorns inflate our sleep.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An uncloaked Gabriel in the desert, alone, naked in the sun on the orange and umber mesa he heard this urban... this urban scream, sirens, in search of silence it is not Odysseus strapped to his bully pulpit that yearns female forms or that gregarious earthworm sizzle on a Sunday morning but fire trucks, those highly expensive utilitarian well polished noisy blaring loud outlander outrageous and cared for trucks that pull us to come to the carnival. A very hard sadness in that when the firefighter at the medical center counter mentioned his herniated disc.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such bad things as tornados, unseasonal and displaced on our terrain, it was as if a plug had been pulled in the Gulf and the oil slick screwed us with the weather all really really badly. Nobody to admit to nothing.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I walked the dog in the rain. A few days past, nights too. The nights were tricky sometimes. Then one morning when the room as still dark. Dark is anything but a white elephant that squeaks when squeezed.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the rotating rapture hits I would rather be where there is beer and music. Give me oompah!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dawn was still three minutes away; Rufus Sandbank, Mink Zero and the bearded GO were gathered around a small twin bed in a little amber colored guest room aboard the Ryugyong Express -- up the stairs and off to the side of things down a dusty narrow hallway. There was a sideboard and plain old china pitcher made in China filled with water made in the cycle of heaven to earth. GO held a cool damp gray-green recycled cotton facecloth lightly to Eti's furrowed brow. There was a window sill next to the small bed, pungent with black mold beneath the green-gray paint. The old wood frame window sash, the lower sash was open eleven and thirteen-sixteenths inches to let in any cool air that would do so. The three men heard a slight groan and what might have been a sigh as Eti's eye lids began to stir and then very slowly open...... "Whah? Where am I?" whispered Eti. She began to breathe a little more fully, to take the molecules of cool air into her lungs."Easy now Eti. Take your time. Everything's okay now." said GO; then to the other two, "Here she comes boys. She's back with us now," feeling a warm tingle in his gut.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now there was a sepia glow about the room. If one were to put on their reading glasses and look closely then they would notice that the walls were of a roughly cut yellow-white brick and oddly resemble the interior of a masonry bake oven.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Time seems to pass and nothing happens or seems to be happening. I'd see one helicopter here, another there, but nothing else, and always far from me.' </i>Francisco Piedrahita</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[There needs to be an organizational chart, a graphic narrative placed here at this location in the book in order to separate out in the imagination of the reader the puppet characters from the real characters and from those characters who are in name only and those who are in fact dancing cookies.]</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A little tearful smile crept over Etidorpha's face as she peered up at the three men standing there. "Ah learned a little somethin' 'bout life after that screw up." She said in her closest approximation to "heartfelt". Yes, indeed. No lie. That there was somethin' else."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eti began to look a little further round the room and got a little choked up with her furrowed brow as she remembered the bullfrog. She also remembered acres and acres of bean sprouts poking themselves up out of the night soil. Where was he, clean shaved Gabe with his spiffy dress shirt and red power-tie? Was he still back there?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"What is it, Eti? Is something wrong?" asked the bearded Gabe, all the while gently dusting the odd short chestnut brown hairs off from the Amish quilted coverlet.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He half expected Eti's next words to be, "You were there, and you and you. And maybe Mink would be thinking he'd a tin peter, or maybe one of straw so ginormous it required a bamboo scaffold...”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Eti. Will you watch this -- I just nailed my thirty-second fly this morning. Come have some breakfast". Eti shook her little squirrel sized head. Now she knew. Squirrels dream just like people and dogs and white elephants. That might come in handy where they were headed. Who knew?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The train trucks of the car – the one that hailed this small room aloft into the milky melt of stars -- sounded a curragh like a wert unicorn unable to navigate to his navel, but as one moved forward along the yellow trails the steel to steel grind of bearings and shocks banged and popped the sound of white fireworks burst in the dark black night chitty chitty.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her lips murmured as her mouth held in place a small pool of liquid adhesives. The breath hummed a breen crenelation of her rodented teeth. She shook her furry little head and suddenly there were streams of laser glitter light splayed across the ceilings and walls of the room.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was fairly no linger what it may have been. Either it was June or November. With an ice age on the horizon little critters throughout the northern latitudes were frozen within a few hoots of morning with undigested buttermilk waffles and strawberries in their bellies. As things which stimulate and enflame the senses are not among the things that really are.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There lingered in balance on the cold air a scent of fresh cookie dough in the oven.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be continued... everything gets baked out very neatly and made perfectly clear in the next installment.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.com0