Answer #142 - I see a yacht in your future

I've seen two psychics in my life.

One by accident, because a friend introduced me to him in a bar. One on purpose because I was in college and all my friends said I should because she was amazing. In those days, I succombed to pressure much more easily. Which is not to say that some folks aren't actually psychic - and maybe 'psychic' ability is in fact part of the evolution of the human brain - I'm open to possibilities. And I've seen and heard some amazing stuff.. It's just that many folks who say they are maybe aren't.

Further, the succombing to pressure does explain why, in college, I learned to roll a quarter off my nose, bounce it off a table and into a glass of beer.

Anyway, the psychic in the bar asked if I'd been in some terrible auto accident.  He had a British accent, so was convincing. That's just the way it is with us Americans.  We succomb to the power of the British accent. It's true. If it's spoken with an authentic British accent, we believe it, and it really doesn't matter what's being said. That's why we believed
Tony Blair when he prattled on about the 'weapons of mass destruction' - and though I hold him personally responsible for every bad thing that's happened since*, I'm still not immune to it. The accent, I mean.

Anyway, when I said I hadn't been, he went on to tell me that I would.  The psychic. Be in a terrible auto accident, that is.

"Will I survive?"

"It would seem.  More or less."

He didn't elaborate, and couldn't be cajoled into revealing more information. And there's me, imagining the worst, as is my tendency.  Life in an iron lung, for example.

What an ass. Him, I mean.

With my penchant for drama, this of course led to years of me fearing the 'terrible auto accident' - and thus turned me into the world's worst back seat driver - what with seeing the spectre of death at every fork in the road... just hanging out there, on the side of the highways.. scythe in hand, black-hooded and looming, waving as I drove past... and then me kicking myself for being such a chump.  Damn it, like a hundred more IQ points and I'd never think on this crap...

The second one asked me if my brother was terminally ill.  When I answered, "I don't think so," she insisted that I insist that he see a doctor.  I remember broaching the subject with my brother, and I remember him laughing, and I remember me laughing nervously in response to his laughter, and I remember me remembering that she (the psychic) told me I should eat more yellow squash.

So, of course, to this day, every time I eat any kind of yellow squash, there she is, long black witchy hair and the sweet, viscous cigarette/incense mix lingering on the curtains and china red tablecloth.

It's conceivable - I still could be in a terrible auto accident.  Eventually, my brother, like all of us, will be terminally ill, and yes, we all should eat more yellow squash.  Just because.

But were they psychic?

And if so, then where's my yacht?  Because, damn it, she said I'd have one.


*No, I actually don't.

Answer #141 - You get it ginger ale and beg it to stay

The tinted photo of my parents hangs in my hallway.  Color saturations of bright blue in the eyes and pink on the lips. Taken when color photography was everywhere, but painted black and white portraiture was stylish.

You can't know what will grab your attention until the the thing is swirling in the air, just out of reach.  So you stop what you're doing and write it down.

Or do you wrestle it to the ground?

Honey down a string

Sun on wheat against the Autumn hillside
just about a mile wide- about a mile a way
are tinted lips and a pale blue shadow
in a little photo
in a silver frame -
Lovers speak the untrue and promise someone I do
that someone never was you

Ginger ale left out on a walkway
probably been there all day- warm as morning tea
smooth and sweet like honey down a string, oh
that's all that I can think of
thick and sweet must be -
Lovers speak the untrue and someone hopes it will do
that someone never was you

In the muddy mile, in the rutted bend
maybe sit a while til the scarlet sky is blue again
and stars come out

Don't  you go carrying on so carelessly
when you are so close to me- when you are so near
cause someone somewhere's singing Autumn Leaves, oh
outside someone's window
darling, can you hear?
Lovers speak the untrue and someone hopes it will do
that someone never was you

glassy-eyed in the scarlet light
just like the photograph- not a trace of pride
Wishing on star

Someone's singing Autumn Leaves, oh
outside a window
darling, when they fall
smooth and sweet like honey down a string, oh
that's all that I can think of
when I miss you most of all - k. detor

Answer #140 - Robert Service told me to do it.

Wine Bibber

I would rather drink than eat,
         And though I superbly sup,
Food, I feel, can never beat
         Delectation of the cup.
Wine it is that crowns the feast;
         Fish and fowl and fancy meat
Are of my delight the least:
         I would rather drink than eat.

Though no Puritan I be,
         And have doubts of Kingdom Come,
With those fellows I agree
         Who deplore the Demon Rum.
Gin and brandy I decline,
         And I shy at whisky neat;
But give me rare vintage wine,--
         Gad! I'd rather drink than eat.

Food surfeit is of the beast;
         Wine is from the gods a gift.
All from prostitute to priest
         Can attest to its uplift.
Green and garnet glows the vine;
         Grapes grow plump in happy heat;
Gold and ruby winks the wine . . .
         Come! Let's rather drink than eat. - Robert Service

What can I say?
As Adventure Boy heads off to an overnight with his buddies

(I like to call it Guns & Beer), involving horseshoes, blow darts, knife throwing, and much libation - well, it's just a Robert Service weekend.  Cheers!

Answer #139 - It's called the Art of Deception

The Madonna


I hiled me a woman from the street
Shameless, but oh, so fair!
I bade her sit in the model's seat
And I painted her sitting there.

I hid all trace of her heart unclean;
I painted a babe at her breast;
I painted her as she might have been
If the Worst had been the Best.

She laughed at my picture and went away
Then came with a knowing nod,
A connoisseur, and I heard him say,
"Tis Mary, the Mother of God."

So I painted a halo round her hair,
And I sold her and took my fee,
And she hangs in the church of Saint Hilaire,
Where you and all may see. - Robert Service

Isn't it funny, how easily a lie can be perpetrated - and stands, with the blessing of history, for all time?

There's a painting on my kitchen wall, mixed in with all of the religious artifacts I've collected (my homage to Roman Catholicism in all it's splendiferousness). It's of a young boy, near the turn of last century. When people ask, I've taken lately to referring to it as my 'grandfather.' Though I bought it in a Goodwill in Florida years ago for $3 bucks, I believe that, over time, the painting will be passed down, generation to generation, as an ancestor.

It doesn't matter that I'm no relation to the tyke. It's a representation, is all. A tangible chunk of history on a wall. Maybe not mine - but someone else was willing to give it up - so I take it now, and make it my own.

It's an experiment. Don't tell anyone.


Besides, he looks happy on my kitchen wall. Almost as happy as the
Mexican marionettes in the living room.

Answers #137 & 138 - Dig a well, Fry a Zombie

Question #137:

Should I dig a well?

I keep mentioning this to Adventure Boy. The well-digging proposal, I mean. It just makes sense to me, in light of the rapidly changing world.. er.. situation.

My contention is that water is becoming a premium and will continue to be as such, since greed and avarice seem to be human traits that override many of the worthier traits, and well, won't be leaving the monkey brain anytime soon. So - while everybody else is walking around throwing handfuls of monkey poo, in the form of right-veering or left-veering poo, screaming about the Constitutionality of greed and avarice as basic American (I mean Corporate Personhood) Rights! and as the last tree is turned into a surfboard for some boy billionaire, I'll have a well. And a shotgun.

My contention, further, is that when all of the poison that the Corporate Personhooders have dumped into the ground (of course well within their legal and constitutional rights) finally hits critical mass and leaches into all of the ground water and food supply, it's entirely possible that some folks will become zombies.


Which leads me to my next Question #138:

Should I build an electric fence?

Zombies are notoriously slow-witted and singularly-focused. I've considered this.  They're always walking into electric fences and frying themselves in big bursts of light and AAARRRUUUUUGGGHHHHHHs.

On the other hand, there's the guy who's developed the first synthetic dna strand (dubbed 'Synthia.It's true). He could turn his attention to the zombie problem, and basically just develop gigantic vats of synthetic brains, which could then be distributed to the zombies by whatever Nat'l Guardspeople aren't fighting for those last few precious drops of oil that aren't in the Gulf of Mexico at the time, and thus keeping the zombies satiated and the non-zombies less frazzled.

However, should the synthetic brain vats be too long in coming, the electric fence would come in handy. And better yet, I have my neighbors.  They all have shotguns and axes. I live at the top of the hill, and all along the way down it are the first, second and third lines of defense. These are people who've lived on the land and in the country for generations. Zombies will not make it past the stop sign a mile below.

I also have a gun. I know, for those of you who aren't Corporate Personhooders, this is appalling. But, well, I live in the country and I have a .22. Yes, I could kill a squirrel (not that I would, unless of course his furry little tail would make a fetching bracelet!), and if I hit it just exactly right, I could maybe slow down a zombie.  Mostly, I just kill cans.

And not very easily.  Cans are wily.  Especially if you have crap aim and undiagnosed issues.

But, well, guns and issues aside, I think you can see that the answers are clear.

So, if you need a cool drink down the road a ways, and you can prove you're not a zombie, give me a call.  
I'll power down the fence.

Answer #136 - you buy a puppy

What do you do when the past comes back to haunt you?


I mean,

What do you do when the past comes back to haunt you?


Let's just say you're given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you choke.

Choke hard.  Because you've been driving for 15 hours, flying for 6, haven't had any sleep and look around and everybody else on the starting line is 16.  Or maybe 20.  But not older than 20.  And suddenly, you know, you've choked and you're drowning your sorrows in rot gut back stage, and calling Upper Slobovia to at least hear the Slobovians sing your praises... Even  though you don't speak Slobovian, they claim to love you...

cough. sputter. ack.

Do you acknowledge the choke.. do you cry yourself to sleep... do you pretend it didn't happen... do you set it aside, somewhere out of the 'once in a lifetime' category, and instead minimalize it and tell yourself that everybody chokes once in a while - except, you know, Olympic athletes and people who are destined never to choke - and that there are more important things in life than success? 

Well, damn it, there are.  Lots of things. 

 Like puppies and moonbeams.  Like rainbows and wishes on stars. 

Like warm guns and the heady smell of revenge.. er...
 

No, I mean, like sunrises and the heady smell of Vic's vapor rub from your hiding place in the bushes.

NO.  I mean, like puppies and moonbeams... like...

ah...

You suck it up.  You plod on.  You avoid mirrors for a while.  Then you buy a puppy.

Answer #135 - Not much.

My aunt had a small, lake cabin. I spent a few summers there. There was a swimming platform just past the dock. A conversation, years later, when the big houses filled the shoreline.

Call my mother, tell her I will be late. Give whatever is still warm on my plate to the dog or the orphans - I won't be home until morning.

Walk with me, he said, out to the water and we'll dangle our feet off the dock and the fish will come by. Just this time, let's swim out to the platform and we'll lay on our backs and we'll stare at the sky.

We marched to the tree line and found the old path - painted with berries on our face and our hands - and sat on the branches, building bridges for ants.

We declared war on an enemy state- across the lake where the houses were bigger and the children jumped from high rope swings, and mothers looked on, happily, and served them lemonade on sailboats of their own.

Sometimes after that, you and I didn't even go home.

Walk with me, he said, out to the water and we'll dangle our feet off the dock and the years'll blow by - one more time, let's swim out to the platform and we'll lay on our backs and we'll stare at the wild black sky -

- and we'll never ask why the stars blink out all at once - and why the sun goes down like it does - and why we did what we did, growing up like we did, and why we fell for the ones that we did.

Because here in the real world of blood and charades, where right moral men deal in slavery trades - what little I knew of the good and the bad is a lie, and most days, it was all that I had.

Now my dinner is always cold. And now I always do what I'm told.

But I would, if I could, I'd march to the tree line and find the old path and I'd paint with berries with my face and my hands - and set fire to the shadows that block out the view of the glassy black water and that's what I'd do.

He said, that's what I'd do.

The line between here and there.. would you have changed any of it?

Answer #134 - That and the voices. Oh, the voices.

From Kafka's diaries - on bad writing. The best description I've read of a failed writing session. 


My feeling when I write something that is wrong might be depicted as follows:  

In front of two holes in the ground a man is waiting for something to appear that can rise up only out of the hole on his right.

But while this hole remains covered over by a dimly visible lid, one thing after another rises up out of the hole on his left, keeps trying to attract his attention, and in the end succeeds in doing this without any difficulty because of its swelling size, which, much as the man may try to prevent it, finally covers up even the right hole.

But the man - he does not want to leave this place, and indeed refuses to at any price - has nothing but these appearances, and although - fleeting as they are, their strength is used up by their merely appearing - they cannot satisfy him, he still strives, whenever out of weakness they arrested in their rising up, to drive them up and scatter them into the air if only he can thus bring up others; for the permanent sight of one is unbearable, and moreover, he continues to hope that after the false appearances have been exhausted, the true will finally appear.

For my own purposes, in those times when inspiration is met with handfuls of nothing, I keep a file on my laptop called 'bullshit.' Every once in a while, I go back to it and grab a piece of something that floated up out of the hole on the left and snap into a piece of something that fleetingly floated up out of the hole on the right.

And you wonder why writer's drink?  Always standing around, watching holes in the ground, praying for something or another to float up?

Answer #133 - Can you hum a few bars?

I'll 'share a stage' with Loudon Wainwright later today, for the 2nd time in my life.

Will he remember me?

Transcript of our first interaction a couple of years ago:

As I stand at the stage entrance, near the back door of the theatre, waiting to go on to open for Loudon Wainwright, there's a knock knock on the door.  I open it.  It's him.  Loudon, I mean.

'Hi!' I say, exuberantly.  'I'm Krista.  Your opener.  Er.. opening act.. um.. and door opener.. heh...(cough)'

'Hi!' He says back, equally exuberantly.  'You getting ready to go on?'

'Yep!'

'Have a great show!'

'Thanks!'

It was a really good show.  Afterward, I come off the stage, he's nowhere to be found.  Not in the green room (backstage area for performers) - hm...  oh well... I go out front and sell some CDs.

After his great show, I walk up and say, 'That was remarkable.  You're such a great writer!'

To which he responds, 'Thanks so much!  Sorry I missed your set.  I was upstairs tuning my guitar.'

And I laughed, out loud actually.  Because that was funny.  Even though it was probably true.

It was also true when we opened for Kevin Bacon (who has a band called the Bacon Bros.) and he said,
'Sorry we missed your set.  We were napping in the tour van.'

And I laughed then, and told him about Loudon's comment.  To which he replied, 'Wow, Loudon, how long does it take to tune a guitar?'

I wish I'd thought of that.  And I laughed again.  ho haaa.  oh yeah, good times.

But when Kevin Spacey, who was supposed to come to a London show, texted my friend John with 'Sorry I missed the show.  I was catching a flick.'

Well, that was just rude.
Heh... kidding.  That made me laugh, too.
Movie stars are like that.  Funny guys...

For today, I'm praying for the Sun to come out. (it's an outdoor show, and Loudon doesn't hold up well in the rain) heh.

Answer #132 - Dorky Delusions of Grandeur get me through the day

The song that fell out of the poem.
Maybe never make an album,


But if I go outside
with my electric guitar and blast it at the sky
maybe the sun'll come out?



 In the middle of the night
Comes falling
A Long hard rain
And you’re lying - Rain
You’re lying - Rain

Out by the barn
They’re standing
Side by side
Overflowing - Rain
Overflowing - Rain

and I don’t have enough barrels
For all this water
Ground is muddy and it’s getting softer
And up to my knees I’m sinking
Gotta find an arc I’m thinking

Don’t wear my shoes
Doesn’t matter
Don’t need my shoes
It’s no better - Rain
It’s no better - Rain

The sun won’t shine
And you’re laughing
Sun won’t shine
I Keep forgetting - Rain
I’m Forgetting - Rain

and I don’t have enough barrels
For all this water
Ground is muddy and it’s getting softer
And up to my knees I’m sinking
Gotta find an arc I’m thinking

Once upon a time
That’s when it was
Once upon a time
What’s left of us - Is Rain
All that’s left is rain - Rain
Nothing left but rain, rain

Answer 131 - A-Flutter is the new A-Twitter

The pickins are slim.

Sex in the City 2 tickets on sale now, says the email that I inexplicably get from Fandango.

Robin Hood's been re-made.

Again.  Even with Cate Blanchett, I don't think I can make myself do it.


The Prince of Persia?  Er... I suppose this is in some way meant to ease tensions with Iran?  I liked Jake Gyllenhall so well in Donnie Darko.  Action figure? er..I dunno...

I missed the season finale of House, the only TV show I have ever cared to watch for any length of time (well, I was a big fan of Green Wing and Spaced, both on BBC, but, with good sense, the shows only ran 2 seasons... for whatever reasons, the BBC doesn't like to drag things out across generational lines and through multiple reincarnations of dead characters and plot lines the way we like to.  but I digress), but have been a little annoyed with the lengthy analysis sequences betwixt he and his therapist.  Liked him better as an unapologetic, vicodin-popping, call-girl patronizing ass, rather than someone who opens up about his feelings and looks off in the distance, soulfully.  Character development, schmaracter development... Bah...


This coming from me.  Funny.

I think there's another vampire movie out.  This one involving a werewolf and a plot twist.  And possibly Joan Jett.  I think...


I'm waiting on The Deathly Hallows.  I'll admit it.  Alan Rickman may be the sexiest actor to grace the screen.  When he puts on the long black cape, seriously, my knees get weak. Don't get me started on his wand. Also awaiting the BBC's production of Pratchett's Going Postal.  I've seen the trailers.  I'm all a-twitter. (just realized that means something else entirely now, doesn't it?).

"Why don't you just move to England if you like the BBC so much?" any number of my neighbors up here on Fulford Holler might ask.

"Cause they drive on the wrong side of the road, Virgil," I'd probably quip.  "You know that, buddy."

"It ain't right," Virgil would probably acknowledge, as he tossed me a PBR.

"Come on, let's go see Robin Hood," I'd probably concede.

"Hey! That's another movie about England, idn't it?," he might notice.

"Sure, Virg, but Russel Crowe's playing him." I'd console.

"Least an American'll do it right," Virgil might pronounce.

"It's playing at the drive in," I'd offer, unwilling to shatter his illusion and clue him into Crowe's Aussieness.

"Yeah! That way we can throw beer cans at the screen if we don't like it."

 A swank new housing development's going in just a mile up the road.  This isn't good news.  I like my neighborhood just the way it is, and don't want to see a bunch of shiny black hummers replacing the rusty pick-ups.

After the movie, Me and Virgil might sneak out there and shoot up the 'for sale' signs with my .22.

Don't tell anybody.

And no, those weren't our PBR cans.

Answer 130 - All that's between

All that’s between

Barrels filled with rainwater
Stand alongside the barn
Dead ragweed between them
All in a row
Barrels separated by the commas
Of ragweed,
Sectioned into first, second, third
The weed between
Like the words between


Like the first, second and third words
Our children spoke,
Separated by the commas
Of the first coo and giggle and wail
the wails between
the words
between the songs sung
by two year olds
about birthdays and Bingo
the claps between the letters,
out of time, out of rhyme,
dogpaddling between the rocks of the
wondrous mysterious river of rhythm,
B, I, N clap, G, O clap
And then, the car rides between piano recitals
And trips to the airport;
Or just home from first days of school,
The rides between, the roads between
The words


In between the day they are born
And the day they wake up,
Really wake up,
Wake up and look at us, eye to eye, human and daring
Individual and
Apart
And write their own words
On surfaces we’ve never seen
In the spaces between
The words between
The rides and roads,
The wails and wonder and weeds between
Are row upon row upon row
a million barrels of sweet, blue rain
where we’ll drown in their waking
and we’ll drink forever   -           k. detor


Is it the drops of rain, or what's between them?

Answer #129 - No. They'll outlive us and become the Borg

It's rained so long I can't remember when it wasn't raining.

I think it was Bremen, Germany.  In March.

Yeah... there was the carnival at night...


It was sunny that day and Dave got his hair cut by a girl with bright pink hair.  There was no toilet in the shop that customers could use.  I had to go to the 4th floor of a nearby shopping mall and walked through the sqaure afterward.  I bought chocolates and ate them before I got back to Dave and the pink-hair girl.

Guilty pleasures... nice even in recollection...

I'm back in Indiana and it's rained forever.  The grass is long again, the dog is lost in it again, Gracie, the neighbor dog, has taken up permanent residence on my living room rug, where it's dry, and the ants have found a hole in the window trim.  Little tiny black ants.

Every time I see ants, I think of the film Angels & Insects... wonderful film.  Dark and wicked eye candy -
    with much in the way of viable information on the workings of ant colonies.  Fascinating, organized, war-like creatures.  We'd be doomed if they began rapid evolution.

Or are they doomed because we've managed it?

Today, they're alive and well, and happily hauling bits of  raspberry jam off my counter.  Warm and dry.

Answer 128 - tattoo it on your arm

 The Dali Lama was in Bloomington this week.  He visits frequently, as he has family in town.  He also happens to be one of my personal heroes.  In spite of the darkness that continues to engulf Tibet, in the form of the Chinese government, he continues to fight the good fight, in the form of love, compassion, and above all, kindness.


A handful of quotes for a Sunday morning. 

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.

Sleep is the best meditation.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

How do I remember this wisdom when the next shiny object attracts my attention and some snotty grocery clerk gets my goat?

 

Answer 127 - Because they're pretty and make a pleasing sound

I don’t like martinis. I occasionally drink martinis because the glasses are fetching, however impractical. Vermouth is a nasty concoction and only a real-deal alcoholic could possibly enjoy the taste of chilled straight vodka, no matter shaken or stirred.  No, it’s the glass and the stuffed queen olives from Spain. It’s a statement. It says I’ve probably seen some college, can quote at least one Dorothy Parker quip, know the names of the members of the Rat Pack, and may or may not have at some point or another watched an Audrey Hepburn film. Whether I consider myself a fan is inane; it’s the knowledge of her position in the pop culture/fashion pantheon that counts.

The martini says I know cool. I may not be cool, but I know what it looks like.

For one thing, cool is taller and thinner than I am - with the dubious distinction of being utterly enigmatic, in that, the second it acknowledges its existence, it ceases to exist.

Though you may be white-hot cool, you can't refer to yourself as cool, nor can others.  Once the press or any public figure actually refers to you as cool, it's over.  You suddenly become un-cool. 

Ultra-cool involves absolute apathy toward outside opinion of any sort, while walking the perilously fine line of never, ever in any way, considering yourself to be the thing that you are.


   That's where the Hipster contingent failed and faded - the exterior appearance of cool firmly in place, because no self-respecting Hipster would ever make the aggregious error of the cool self-reference - but they somehow forgot that, with ultra-cool comes responsibility.  Though Audrey Hepburn was and is about the hippest, coolest thing walking, in and out of her time, she acknowledged the existence of the uncool - and not in sullen and disdainful condescension (ala Hipstereeze), but rather, in the way the Queen acknowledges her subjects - with genuine affection.

Further, she could put a full, coherent sentence together that didn't involve pop culture kitsch, and if she did spend hours a day looking at herself in every reflection - she most likely didn't spend hours a day pretending not to look at herself in every reflection.  The Hipster contingent announced, proudly, in sullen silence, it's ultra-cool, while apathetically refusing to acknowledge the announcement, nor the ears upon which the announcement fell.  And then, all in an instant (cup of Sanka) lost it.  The cool, that is.


Why are we so completely drawn to this house cat sensibility?

To complicate matters, everyone knows that house cats dislike most everybody, and are, in turn, only drawn to the people that dislike them, ignore them, or pretend they don't exist. 

I have to believe that cool is a step in the evolutionary journey that is human civilization. To where, I don't know.

But then again, Glenn Beck is gaining popularity.  It's conceivable that the Evolution button is on pause.

Still.. once in a while, I will drink a martini (two at the most. three I'm under the table and four, I'm under my host).  And pretend I'm Dorothy Parker, lounging like I just don't care...

Answer 126 - Fish, boots, and buttonholes

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.


I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
-  From 'Words Under the Words' by Naomi Shihab Nye

What are friends for?
Poems like this.  Thanks, Carrie..

Answer 125 - to New Mexico, where the hippies are.

And on the subject of squirrels...

I want to be hopeful.  In spite of Arizona, I want to be hopeful.

But damn it if I don't live in a country where people dress up squirrels with weaponry and take their pictures.

Are Cletus and Bubba giggling themselves silly in a backyard somewhere as a squirrel attempts to remove its taped-on paws from a toy bazooka? Yuk. Yuk.

I have to assume this is against their will(s). The squirrels, I mean.  Even if it is photoshopped. I think they'd object, on ethical grounds, with slightly larger brain pans.

Where do I go with this information?

Where do any of us go with this information?

We live in a country where education is invariably in the first round of budget cuts, where oil has bled black death and war all over the world (and yes, powers my computer... but blow that for a lark, because there are many alternatives.. we just happen to be in the clutches of the icky-sticky big oilers and their oozing economic stranglehold. egads, don't get me started)-

and, in their spare time, folks are putting little tiny guns in the hands of squirrels and snapping photos for little Billy's Christmas card?

I want to be hopeful. I really do.

I suspect all these squirrel photos may come from Arizona.  Apologies to the handful of folks in Arizona who are aghast at their wacky Governor and her attempts at birthing a wacky little oligarchy. Yea! McCarthy's back and this time he's wearing a dress in PUBLIC!  Oh wait, that was J. Edgar Hoover...
                                                     
ah, it just gets so muddled - all these boys in dresses... Not that there's anything wrong with boys in dresses!  Love me some Eddie Izzard for Governor.  But then again, he's a brilliant political and historical mind.. er.. qualifications we don't so much look for in leadership these days.     
Sad really... he'd be the best dressed governor ever.

Sad, too, about Arizona these days.. the Grand Canyon's so darned pretty... I have some good friends there. Still.. I feel okay about cracking on The Grand Canyon State because we've got Mitch Daniels here in Hoosierville. And by golly he represents comic relief for days! Just ask all the teachers he just fired and libraries he's shutting down! yuk yuk.




Think I'll write a song...

I met a squirrel in Mesa
while bathing in the sun.
And oh, my heart did skip a beat
when he whipped out his gatling gun...

Probably be on the next album.