Spring Melt

My Kai was nowhere to be found, having the cat knack of total disappearance.  She didn't come to the door to greet me, nor attended to my calling, she just plain wasn't around.  The first thing that jangles her nerves is the fire bell, which religiously sounds a hellbound clanging anytime cookies are burned in someone's oven, last perpetrator was 101 years old.  The engineer has the key which ends it, and sometimes it takes over an hour to locate him, as he is offsite.  I looked in every hidey-hole she frequents, my calls elevating into a worried pitch when no ruff or blue eyes lifted a head as if to say, what on earth are you flustered about?

Then beep.  An unnatural sirenic beep followed by the disembodied intonement that my battery was low.  This was it, this was why Kai was hiding and not escaped out the door into the stairwell or scooped up by someone thinking this was a free cat.  She hates the smoke detector, and will skedaddle ears back, low to the ground when it sounds.  Relief.  My job was to replace the battery, so the ladder came out, the casing snapped off, the battery removed, the replacement 9 volt ready to go, c'mon, snap in, snap in SNAP IN DAMMIT.  Nope.  It wouldn't.  I had not ever run into this, that one 9 volt would not fit in the snaps the same as the other.  Well, at least the detector was disabled, I'll get batteries tomorrow.  No more beeps.

Wrong.  Beep and robotic female voice.  Do detectors keep going after the battery is removed?  Is there a backup source of energy to sustain the reminder for hours after, a nervous system sensitive to human error?   Beep.  The cat would be terrified until this monster from under her bed was silenced.  Back up on the ladder I went, examining the contraption, looking for the source of sound; could it be muffled with duct tape?  On part of the guts was a sign familiar to every kid who grew up in the fifties; a black tri-foil on a yellow background indicating radioactive material.  What the heck, was this thing running on uranium?  Tape wasn't going to fix this, so I unscrewed the whole thing from the ceiling and wondered where I could put it to muffle the piercing desperation signals.

No closet would contain it enough to reassure Kai that the monster was gone, and a dresser drawer was no good either, for being trained by my mother, maybe radiation can start a fire, an angry, beeping imp up against my favorite sweater, smoldering till sparks ignited.  Where?  There is no where.  But I do have an insulated box that slows down time, extends the life of leftovers, and preserves a pseudo-fresh appearance of produce.  An upright, chilled coffin that stops animation, except for the living vegetables that sprout ghostly fingers and roots.  The refrigerator!  I have never heard of a refrigerator catching fire on the inside, have you?  The alarming device was put on the top shelf balanced on a dozen eggs, whom I expect will last into the year 3356, because they are now exposed to radiation, which was the miracle Invisible Ray of the Atomic Age.  Everything in that fridge should last a millenium.  We'll all have ray guns and saucer cars by the time the first egg goes bad.

Ah, the afterglow of a job accomplished, now to sit and check the email and....BEEP.  Am I hearing things?  Is this coming through the walls from a neighbor?  No, for it was inside my apartment.  I had just uselessly dismantled a radioactive smoke detector, possibly casting the shadow of a skeletal hand twisting a screwdriver on the wall.  The low battery voice insinuated that a chimpanzee would do better, and I searched the ceiling for another box, listened to doors that held hardware items within;  what else would complain about a defunct battery?  It had sounded from the back of the hallway, and there, hanging sideways, was the new carbon monoxide detector installed a year ago by management.  The ladder, a dispatch, removal of the three AA batteries and since I only had one new AA battery, couldn't be done with the job, but the beeps and nagging reminders needed to stop.  So I put that one in the fridge, too.  I don't want to hear anymore cries for electronic help, nor wish the cat to stay hidden till she mummified.  Everything goes into the fridge.  No, I don't know how these things work or if they can continue beeping after disassembly.  Refrigerator hibernation made sense at the time.

An hour later, blue cat eyes looked up at me as I sat on the couch; Kai was swooped up in celebration and the keel of semi-panic leveled to calm waters.  It would have been unlikely for her to run out, but I do allow her to explore the outside hall for a quick minute every once in a while, so she knows there is escape in that direction.  Too many horrific things can happen to her, especially if she got outside.

Bad news: the groundhogs, feral cats, and bunnies have been eaten by a coyote that has taken residence here, finding easy pickings.  A fox has come around as well, but more likely was interested in the cat food put out for the ferals by a neighbor.  She was able to catch the last of the feral cats, and has it in her home.  This morning as I trotted to my car, there was a flattened brown ball that turned out to be the one-eared head of a rabbit, poor thing.  Was it my little friend from last year, who would wait for carrots?  I couldn't leave it there, out in the open to be kicked or run over by tires, so I grabbed a plastic bag and retrieved it, putting it in the car as I had no time to deal with funerals just then, hoping that my passenger wouldn't ever ever ever find out she was riding with a dead rabbit's head.  After work, I said apologies to the rabbit that I had no place to bury it, explained I didn't want to just leave it on the pavement, and dropped it into the trash bin.

Nicely, the neighbors at the council meeting resisted calling animal control, as that entity would simply shoot the fox and coyote; instead, they put out a missive to the Department of Environmental Control who will catch and release the two far from this area.      

The remains of winter are clearing away, the spring rains will come with glorious worm-smell and pelting liquid cannonades upon the ground.  The water birds are returning, swans, mergansers, scaups, grebes, ducks, all flapping up the corridor of the Niagara River.  Follow the paths of the waterways; you will find a circulatory system running cities and the breathing earth; leading from lake to river to stream, flowing through intakes and ditches.  Life thrives on water, we drink oxygen, minerals, both which help the electricity of the brain connect.  If you don't drink water, you get both a headache and stupid quickly; I encourage students to bring in a water bottle, most are responsible with the only drawback being that they have to be excused more.  Get to the bathroom and back within a reasonable time, and you'll get to keep your water bottle.  Goof off, and abracadabra, it's mine.  And don't think I can't tell if they ran like gazelles down the halls; their chests are heaving, lungs gasping to replenish air.  Besides, nothing is more satisfactory in 6 year old human life than to turn in your accomplice, even if you were running as well.  Now, they are happy also that the melting snow has become water, rushing through gutters and culverts, pulling us from the depths of a cold winter.

The ice that is left is melting quickly, feet at a time, and you can see the marks of succession in the black residue on the sidewalks; there are many, many things being revealed concerning the toll this winter took.  First and foremost is the garbage that the troglodytes imagined disappeared into the drifts and released them of responsibility; out of sight, out of mind.  Second, it is a time to find small change; so far I have snagged eleven cents.  And then this, third.  Shrapnel left by cars, branches snapped from trees, pieces of broken jewelry, it is a trail of life returning to sunlight; a coffee table; oddly, bones; a disemboweled television, the shards washing down the street gutter towards the drain that leads to the lake.

The slow upheaval of seasons changing outside is mimicked with paper towels, buckets and sponges inside; time to shake out, replace batteries, find cats, make space.  Enough today; the clock spins hands over its flat plain, the sun has been hidden by planetary shift; someone is singing outside in the night, happy in a gentle way.  Sleep you, then.  Paddle through the waters of dreams, the layers which come and go and lap at the shore of thought then simply disappear into the wet sand, leaving foamy edges scalloped in memory.  Good night.

Chlorella vs Spirulina and Bees, Too

Where in green hell have I landed?  While looking for a yeast-based coconut flour bread recipe as I am dying for a regular slice of bread that I can toast, butter, and eat without tipping the carbs into the dangerous currents of Charybdis, I fell into the Hole of Green Gunk.  Yes, I have lost weight, yes, there is more to go, but I miss bread, potatoes, and the usual European staples that made up most of my childhood diet.  Do not eat too many carrots, watch the fruit, stick to above ground vegetables, more protein than fat, bacon bacon bacon.  I have honestly become adverse to bacon.  I do not ever want to see more bacon.  Don't mention pork rinds, cheese, or omelets.  But hold on.  It works for me, has lowered my blood sugar, and thus I scour the internet for recipes that disguise food and sort of make it look similar to ye olde sustainers.

Like cauliflower.  I haven't gotten tired of that, but don't try to pass it off as a substitute for mashed potatoes.  I roast it in a dish with olive oil, butter, and salt as this diet produces a diuretic effect and you lose sodium, drop blood pressure, and then maybe pass out so put a little salt on your food.  This is backwards from medical advice, and while my doctor was clapping her hands at the disappearance of  &% pounds, I related the how and her face went HEARTATTACK.  BRAINATTACK.  ATTACKATTACK.  I feel great, have more energy, and continue to lose and so have let up on the "induction" phase, added more green vegetables and the occasional chocolate.   She said ten more pounds and I can halve the blood pressure meds, so I'm continuing.  But need recipes.

During the search, I bonked into a debate as to which algae performs better chemistry for the human body, chlorella or spirulina; chlorella makes chlorophyll, which aids in processing oxygen, a wonderful characteristic; it detoxifies and absorbs heavy metals, being used in mining towns to strengthen the inhabitants' reaction to exposures.  Spirulina is not a true algae, but a cyanobacteria rich in complete protein whose blue color is a phytochemical, phycocyanin; this supports brain and heart health, the immune system, and bone marrow.  My brain will take all the help I give it.

But algae?  Are humans supposed to eat algae?  Well, look where we come from originally; it tweren't the cabbage patch, but the ocean of deepest blues in which cyanobacteria evolved 3000 megaannum ago, meaning 3000 million years ago.  It wasn't the first form of life, but it was the branch that snapped away from prokaryotes, cells without a nucleus or organelles, which released oxygen into the oceans in such amounts that iron ore was formed amid the thousand foot tides created by a much closer moon.  Winds of hurricane force whipped everything into a Archean smoothie, possibly churning the ingredients which began life on land.  Sorry if this is boring, but I am fascinated by the theories of beginnings, probably more than my recent fascination with making fake mashed potatoes.  So, yes, algae.

Now I admit, I got the Whirly-Pop out and made popcorn, which, according to these folks, is similar to injecting drain cleaner into your veins, making your pancreas look at you with exasperation.  I just cleaned you up, it says, and you do this to me.  But oh, it was the best popcorn ever.  Sidenote: I eat potato chips with chopsticks (or I used to), and popcorn with a spoon so my fingers stay free of grease, very useful when keying or working with paper.  Don't bother me with sneering, grease gets into pores and lodges itself there no matter how many times you sing Happy Birthday while scrubbing; it's a bane to artwork as paper loves grease and will argue in it's defense like your 16 year old daughter will about her boyfriend's penchant for stealing cars.

Eat your greens folks, the more ancient the better.  Kale, on the other hand, sends me into depression because, well, it's kale, and further is goitrogenic, which means that kale inhibits absorption of iodine and can worsen hypothyroidism.  Cook the stuff.  By the by, toss out that expensive sea salt and get salt that has been iodized; there is a growing amount of deficiency in iodine, first solved by putting it in salt.  It is the leading cause of mental handicaps in the world.  Just watch the sea salt, get some that has had iodine added.  Or, eat more seaweed, not a bad idea.

This is the weekend of the time change, a spring forward so you lose an hour of dear sleep.  But light is returning, and I will gladly give back twice that hour for a glimmer of the coming seasonal change.  Friends have seen robins a bit further south in Ohio and Maryland; right now there is nothing for the birds to eat here; the ground heaves and cracks, with subzero temperatures alternated with mild thaws, and neither worm nor insect could venture forth without a parka.  I do enjoy the smell of worms in the fresh rain; maybe I shouldn't have told you that, but now you know the chopstick thing and the worm thing.

Wet leaves, damp earth; first shoots, returning flashes of wing seen amid branches crushed in a perplexity of blossoms.  Months away; there is still snow and ice which by now appears as crystallized black moraines, the roads yawn and mutter with potholes that would hide a sled dog.  Lenten doughnuts, the fastnacht kugels, have appeared; with the warmish days and cold nights, the sap will rise for gathering and boiling into syrup.  Spring is in the works by the calendar yet mostly unseen, like a cat at midnight.

So dream of tendrils green winding up a pole, guided by a chariot pulling the sun towards meridian, truer than any dipleidoscope; someday you'll have peas for supper.  There are buds hidden deep under the earth, thinking of rising and bursting into thimblesful of nectar, making the bees go mad with industry and humans delirious with the essence.  Grow wings and hover above stamens, climb into cupped petals, anthers pollen yellow; imagine being inside a flower, surrounded by curtains of iridescent colors.  Count your walls of six within the honeycomb, number the orchards laden with rose-gold magnetism.  Oh bee,  merrily, merrily shall I live now, under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Trade Offs

You can't be a fussbudget in an apartment, it isn't a private residence and in an apartment building the clientele are mostly transient with a few who are stone still until someone hands them their walker.  Each family has it's quirks, and very often you feel as though you are right in the living room with them.  This evening, I hear two new voices in the rooms below, in a beginning argument.  A young man and woman, with her anxiety rising to a higher pitch while his voice is getting louder but more curt, each word snapped off like a military march.  The smell of something sweet is baking, so shortly I expect they will carbo-load themselves into a stubborn lethargy, still angry but sluggish from the serotonin with fewer volleys shot across the room.

This is far, far better than who lived there before, an unknown entity who I only heard through the pipes in the bathroom when he would call on the phone.  Jovial, no yelling, no smashing sounds, but he smoked cigarettes, I am guessing purchased at the Res, that were stuffed with toenail clippings from the nursing home and squirrel mange.   It was the second worst smell ever, the first being something I am not at liberty to easily say but could be persuaded.  My neighbor was relegated to smoking in the second bedroom unless the wife was out and then he roamed everywhere.  I stuffed the openings around the heating pipes to little effect, and though he wasn't a heavy smoker, the two or three a day most likely killed any mice in the walls.

Now I have the Arguing Bakers, which so far is fine, they are apparently settled and watching television while sedating themselves with slice and bake cookies.  Maybe not such a serious flaw, for this is the first I've heard dissonance.  On the other side of me is a couple that are nice people but the man spends roughly thirty minutes of his evening hacking and gurgling for air.  Again, smokers, but it doesn't waft this way.  Their dog is ugly, and has the look of someone who was just hit in the head with a mallet.  He doesn't bark much, if at all.  Not the sharpest knife in the kitchen, drawn by Tex Avery.

Above are also Mystery People, I believe there is a child whom I rarely hear, unless he has an itch that can only be cured by tap dancing on the linoleum.  Not even once a month, and not at ungodly hours.
I am lucky to have mostly invisible neighbors who are friendly but mind their own business as I do mine.  Previously previously below me lived the drug addled son of some Hottentot bigwig on the board, and so was able to slam doors and yell, YELL anytime he was displeased.  Three a.m. arguments with his put-upon girlfriend who would cry and say she was leaving but never did.  G'WAN, GET OUT OF HERE SINCE YOU DON'T LIKE IT YOU @#$*^$.  Once they had people over, and the young brat was showing off his guitar mad skills by playing the theme to The Dukes of Hazzard halfway through, messing up, scream swearing, and starting again.  I imagined everyone else was pinned to the furniture and trying not to move so as not to set off the crazy that was already leaking all over the floor.  The skills and the guitar hit the wall, and so the next entertainment was a loop of Allman Brother's Jessica ninety nine gabillion times in a row as loud as the speakers he most likely found in a dumpster behind RadioShack back in the seventies could pump out.  Wall of Sound, Voice of the Theater.  I EFFING LOVE THIS, MAN.  YEAH, I GOT THEM FOR NOTHIN'.

Well too bad, because a fight broke out when one of the guests suggested they change the cd to Boston or some such tripe and this was an insult to the host, his hospitality, the Allman Brother's, the bottles of booze, the Noonited States of Hamerica, and the neighbors who wanted to hear Jessica some more as it was only two a.m. and no one had to get up for work but if they did, they'd be smiling because that fine Southern fretwork would still be playing in their heads until they drove their car in front of a semi.

GET OUT OF MY EFFING APARTMENT.  GET OUT.  Thunk.  Struggling noises. "Let me get my cigarettes, man."  EFF YOUR EFFING CIGARETTES GET OUT OF MY EFFING HOUSE YOU EFFING EFFER MOTHEREFFER.  It was the second time I called 911 on this moron, they asked if there was a gun, but how the hell would I know that, my Superman x-ray vision couldn't see through the linoleum so most likely there wasn't a gun, but could you send someone over to break up the fight?  Slam, slamslamslam gutpunch.  People around the wrasslin' men were trying to pull the nutjob off of the poor sap who probably gave up smoking that very minute, and placate him with "It ain't worth it, man, let him go," while shoving the hapless guest out the door and into the hall where he wondered what the hell just happened.

The resident would be reprimanded, have a finger shook at him, and then quiet down for three serene months until the girlfriend really did leave, thank god for her safety, and he imploded, smashed up the apartment, slashed her clothing, and was put on a psychotropic milkshake of at least twelve syllables that made him as complacent as a Hostess cupcake.  He functioned, had not really been able to work anyways, and this allowed people to say hello without having a grip on the pepper spray in their pocket.  Life was quieter until ten year old Ricky moved in with his lopsided wigged Mom and promptly keyed all the car doors in the lot.  It took over a year to get them evicted, as management at the time was a group of glassy-eyed bikers who were running drug deals off of the office computers and wore t-shirts that said "Gas, grass, or ass" under their leathers when you went in to pay the rent.

Whoa.  The brownies must have worn off, just heard the eff word.  I'm going to bed, I don't imagine these birds will get that loud and if they are non-smokers, they can spout out profanities till the cows come home.  Trade off.  Swear words don't give you cancer or make your place smell like an ashtray.  If they drag out Neal Diamond singing Cracklin' Rosie, however, you may see that greenish curtain hanging over the lake, hissing with Coburnian indignation and a few f-bombs.

Sleep well, dream of the coming spring rains.  Good night.

Bits and Pieces

Been busy, been hiding, been looking for sunlight.  Yesterday, driving home from a Saturday workday down the lumped city street provided an archeology lesson in transportation.  The frothed waves of snow, once elegant in starkness, had melted into the brown-black ebb of winter accumulation, receding towards curbs and gutters, sides and rails bent from the plows pushing it to wherever it would go.  Not a day in this February rose above freezing, producing stratified layers of crystallized memory.  Artifacts began to appear from the temporary thaw.

Mostly pieces of car; black bumper shards, amber light housings, silver-painted ornamentation, and chunks of what I imagine were once exhaust systems now littered medians and roadsides.  So many fender-benders were the foundation of these histories, yet there were pieces laying on the asphalt that seemed to be plain tired and gave up the ghost; you go on, I'm going to fall off right here; no,no, it's all right, I just can't do this anymore, let me fall asleep on this ice floe, it is the time of ending, bye bye.

My door had clogged with ice inside the hinge, which expanded down towards the wheel well and pushed a piece of fender outward.  Intertwined as it was, I couldn't knock the ice out without possibly whacking the whole panel off, and it isn't likely the traffic officers would understand that much duct tape in reassembly.  Poor car, dear car, you are disappearing as though made of pie crust.  I would be happy driving this clunker the rest of days, but it won't be so; when I lived in Florida, it amazed me that there were Nash Metropolitans in Tweety Bird colors without a speck of rust.  Up here, the cars are eaten like salami sandwiches by the weather.

It had been a longish week full of tests and notes from parents telling me they didn't understand the math homework.  Me neither, at least, I know what to do, but the thinking process behind it is punctuated with the new mathspeak.  I've been on this Unit for four weeks, and I am going to print out directions for parents, which show what the language means and why the hell are they expecting six year olds to break apart a three item number sentence using the ten ones system.  If you know what I just said, please send a postcard.

But then there was the dismissal when another teacher came up to me after the kids were on the buses.  "They're looking for you in the office.  A parent is waiting."  Oh crap.  Now what did I do?

The father is from another country, and he and I are communicating daily in a written journal so that his son can see that the adults are going to win this one. The behavior and work habits have improved immensely, and the boy will be fine as long as he understands that he is not running my class.  The parent extended his hand to shake mine and said that he wanted to thank me for working with his son.  What?  You what?  I was hoping that the other people in the office were hearing this.

"I have noticed great improvement in my son's behavior, thank you for helping him."  I replied that his interest was a large part of the child's desire to please, and that the student was reaching his potential because of the parent involvement.  And you are certainly welcome.  He asked how he could further help his son; wonderful.

And there is more sun, we are up to 10 hours and 56 minutes of light this first day of March; the plants in the window are showing growth.  A fox has been reported hanging around the parking lot, a small flash of orange ribbon against the snow.  It comes during the evening; I have not seen the critter, but I hope that it is left alone.  

Moonrise came early yesterday, in mid-afternoon the half-sphere of ghostly white rose in the east, no more than the breath of a cloud.  I've been brushing up on memorized poems, for threads of lines change articles; but becomes yet, or too many 'the's' are inserted.  I have projects to begin, and will swipe up the remnants of others in anticipation.  Clean house, mind, ready for the coming light.  Drop into dreams of heartfelt wishes, put a foot out there, go someplace, engage each other, tell the truth to yourself.  I'm going to make soup for supper from the leftover chicken, something warm in a yellow broth.  Today soup is my truth.  Sleep well, the basket of unsorted things may spill, but so what?  No one cares about that.  Spiritus mundi.  Tuck in.