Sunday Funnies

Sentimental; lost, found, whole, broken. The spin of the planets shifts from solstice to solstice as it has for millions of years, and here I am still astounded. Just remember that everything is transient, even the planets. Where will we be in another million years, it's been a brief four million in comparison to the giants that once lived hundreds of millions years ago. Uh oh, I think I am giving myself a headache, and that's not why I am here.

So what is the big deal with a Rembrandt, a Dali, a Durer? Squishing color around on a canvas is not earthshaking, so what were these men up to? I say creativity coming from the spirit, from a source imbedded as sturdy as their vascular systems, put before humanity as a preconscious effort in rattling our sense of who we are and offering a perception of where we need to proceed.

Dali was nutty as an oak tree full of mean squirrels, but he is quoted as having said that "You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life." (1980). He would stand on his head so that the hallucinatory images which formed became inspiration for his work; who thinks of these things, of putting the body into a vortex of physical effect as a way of exposition? Not with drugs or alcohol, but by using a kind of excess that changes blood flow to the brain in order to induce euphoric visuals. Like a child spinning till vertigo takes over. Not physically dangerous, but temporarily altering.

How does this relate to anyone? Well, maybe we need to try things that are foreign to most of us, like sitting in a tree, walking over a bridge, attending an unfamiliar event, learning to stand on our heads.

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,

"And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again."

Go and try something, but let me add, record it somehow whether in conversation, journal, art, or online social website. We would like to know; no, we won't tire of it as long as it isn't one incessant cock-a-doodle-doo, but that you teach us something about what we don't know. Keep moving, for heaven's sake. It's a human speciality, and it is welcome.

Off you go, take an unscribed book to write in, draw, or prop against for balance. It has been a busy day at this end, and I am so excited for the prospects of another one tomorrow. Have a bit of supper, latch the door, slippers on, think of something new for yourself to try. Oh go on, it doesn't have to be big at all. It might just be going down into the cellar and then turning off the lights and staying there for a minute in the dark. Don't know if I could do that one, but that means I should try it and then look back at the results as fodder for reflection.

Night is coming this early winter afternoon, you know I am waiting for the solstice in two days. Until then, tuck under the covers and let the dreams come, the knowing dreams that tell you where to plant your gardens, turn your pages. Deepening night, lamps of the city alight. Supper now, lighthouse sounding over the lake. Sleep well, it has been earned. Good night.

Buyer, Be Wary

I went to the franchise eye doctor for the once-a-year today, in the Land of Things, the big arse-whuppity Mall. Floored, I was, positively floored. The Mall is not for me in any language. I don't think there are enough people to buy all that stuff, what the heck are they thinking? Where does it all go? The stuff that sells, the stuff that doesn't sell; it has all been put into existence and will be here for the next how many thousand years? The most uncomfortable feeling is that after it is discarded in favor of newer items is that it goes to a landfill, or more likely, our ocean. I mean, open your eyes, people! What the hell is going on that there are over one hundred styles of watches in several six foot long glass cases in the larger department store alone! Is this fun? My lord in the sky, it is frightening.

The shoes, the sneakers, the clothing, is any of this worth the prices asked? Don't even get me going on store display, for all that goes into the trash as well. What has this become but a never-ending Merry-go-Round for humans needing a constant high from achievement measured in bags of loot? And every single bit of it eventually hits the garbage. Where else do you think it goes?

Look, I know there are items designed for fun, like the barbeque spatula I almost picked up at Brookstone for my son. One side was a wide spatula, the other a smaller spatula to clamp down atop whatever food was being picked up. Not for the $20 price tag. There were spurlings of metal along the edges, the wooden grippers were too thick and heavy making it awkward, and the whole thing was a once in a while convenience. Crappy quality for twenty dollars.

Women seemed to be the worst offenders, buying up bags in a hurry like hens before a rainstorm. Is it the nesting instinct mismanaged into pretentiousness? You have money for all this crap? Could you not be accomplishing something better? And when will you tire of it, what do you do with it? Even if it becomes a donation to a thrift shop, eventually it will go to the same place, the garbage. Not into thin air, but some unseen landfill. Forgive me if I am not thrilled with your alleged prizes. After being discarded, the many, many shoes are on their way to poisoning some aquifer, adding to the dead zones slowly gyring in the ocean, or traveling the highways in the tractor-trailer world of shifting garbage. Do you see it or have to deal with it? Before the end of your lifetime, I would imagine that you will be experiencing some sort of consequence to the planet as a result of all this wasteful, self-centered consumerism.

Shopping is fun and a great stress reliever, but the end of all things doesn't happen, and we need to slow down. Greed is ugly; without foresight, it is deadly. I promise you won't have to hear this again at least for another year when my eyes get rechecked. If I have offended anyone, I am not sorry and you can go jump. Do something rewarding for other people, and then I will retract the pincers. This is just from visiting one Mall, good lord, just think of all the places that sell items in this country, from the most exclusive to the dollar store. Unless you are building a collection of well-made, useful heirlooms to pass on, get a grip. What you're looking for isn't in your purse.

My god, maybe I am tired. Trotting through Macy's almost put me into a seizure of nausea from the sheer amount of materialism set to the sound of bouncy jingles designed to make you stay in the store longer, so you shop more. "Armani is on sale," intoned one sales clerk settled in the the middle of the aisle so she could offer this earthshaking news. Blow it out your ear, lady and outta my way. My eyes are dilated and this whole affair reeks of poor value, simply because Chinese manufacturing has superseded our own and we don't need all this fake shit as a substitute for avoiding feeling whatever shortcomings handed to us.

Bed. Time. Now. I am sleepy, and the eyes are tired. Can't wait to crawl in. This month, a total lunar eclipse is scheduled, allowing the constellations to temporarily outshine the moon. How fun, but I will be asleep. Maybe the foxes will notice, the foxes out in the woods who live by night searching for mice and rabbit pie. I will let you go on ahead without me, and find the moon when it returns from it's blood-red journey, the moon, the moon. Yip. Sleep well.

Hear and Attend and Listen, O Best Beloved...

This salutation-command originates from the beginning of one of my favorite stories by Rudyard Kipling, "The Cat Who Walked By Himself". It begs attention in rhythmic calliope, drawing the brain into the lulling call typical of Kipling who had an ethereal knack of cadence. Like ocean waves, or the sound of rain slapping on a forest of fallen leaves, his words soothe and remind you of the beat of our hearts. Luh dub, luh dub, luh dub, luh dub. We are us: fin, finger, feather, fur.

What comes to me this Sunday in December? I tentatively have finished the final project of the semester and such a sense of resolution has fallen, like a shawl Grandma has placed round my shoulders. Once I get the okay to bind, I run off four copies and get them signed by my professor. My reward is to write a bit, push things around some, and work on a drawing. At least for today.

I am restarting artwork, it will be the sixth creative stage of life and may become my most productive. Inspiration comes from a qualitative article stating how a number of women have come to eminence past the age of 60 and produce successfully well into their nineties; since I will be 59 very soon, I have a head start. Now what is meant by eminence? Nothing remarkable, just as widespread as I can make it.

I have to tell you, I am tired in such fashion that the doctor has ordered up a stress test for Wednesday along with a heart monitor which is mildly alarming, but the more I talk to people, the less frightening it seems. What comes will come, I'll be here.

Tonight the temperature is to drop and the wind to rise. Lay out the blankets, make sure your mittens are ready. Sleep curled in wool, knowing that the wind traverses from lake to foothill, an atmospheric sleighride from above catching in the eaves; hear the bending branches, say a small prayer for the birds. Socks and gown, flannel and friend. Good night.

L M N O P

The crush of paperwork and reading from college has precluded any. thing. else. during this semester, much of it accountable to a dedicated lack of organization. My television isn't working, the cell phone has not been seen in two months, and the windows on my car are up, forever. Thank goodness for the sun roof, which I take as an overall commentary on life. When it gets tough, look up.

Today has been declared a snow day for the school system, so before the finishing polish is added to the master's project, I am visiting Dreamville.

The snow fell continually on the first day of my second-favorite month of the year, in pretty, circling flurries, a postcard from Mom Nature. The kids appreciated it, and would emit squeak noises from time to time when the flakes thickened, look, look, look at that (no, look up HERE, singular possessive nouns, hey!). It subsided until after dark. If you put a spoon under your pillow, it is rumored to affect the outcome of having a snow day from school. Thank you, Spoonster, where ever you are.

I woke around four to silence. This is a Sign. Living next to an elevated highway is clamorous unless there has been snow, which muffles running tire treads, this was quiet, no traffic whatsoever. I blinked hope and upon opening an eye, noticed the room was glowing orange. This is also good; similar to reading cirrus clouds and knowing that they bring precipitation soon, the orange is reflection of the sodium-vapor street lamps upon the airborne snowflakes,which then haunts the room with a surreal vision like you are living next to a huge warehouse fire. Snow was still falling; a plow blade scraped by, the early train sounded it's horn before entering the tunnel. It looked messy outside, but not impossible.

As much as NPR is a mainstay of the morning alarm system, they don't report school closings like the local rock station. and it is there that the news was broadcast first. That is also where the first description of what was happening elsewhere came to vision, that people no further than a stone's throw away were socked in, stuck overnight on the thruway, complete with jack knifed semis. I am grateful to be safe home.

Sleep well, sleep warm, sleep knowing that you are.

Open Windows

The heat is on here in the apartment, and you don't realize how warm it is until you toss donated bags of clothing into the car outside and then re-enter the building. I flipped a few windows open to release the stultifying stuffiness; Min has taken her post on the sill and is yelling to Buffalo, New York all the cat news and opinions she thinks it needs. She is my talker, once a stray who ran the porch at the back of another building. Meow meow meow. Rawr. She misses her cat boyfriend Martian, who we lost last summer to heart failure. Big orange guy. Last year was a sorrowful year of combined losses.

I am doing brief research regarding intuition for a final project, and find that this work is taking me into a paranormal arena of extra-sensory perception. Tread carefully. I can't stress that enough. There are fine lines between this world and the unknown next, bordering on things that have little to do with any savior. People fall into traps of their own making, some plummet into a world of illusions. I have a relative from a generation ago, who heard voices in lonely train whistles, who thought the vacuum cleaner was inhabited by demons. I can see how that happens, especially when hearing the call of the train that goes by in the night, a long, lone, wavering banshee which pulls you into the distance. To me, it's now a friendly sound of progression and exploration, to someone on the edge tormented by thoughts of saints and penance, it can become less so.

Before the age of nine, when we lived out behind the woods laced with cricks and swamps where catkins grew, a train track ran through the trees at the back of the far boundary. The whistled warning as the freight came to the crossing on Gunville Road scared me for many, many nights, reminding me of the ghost from a Disney movie. The movie was "Darby O'Gill and The Little People," and it was listed as forbidden by The Catholic Union and Echo, which also forbade Tarzan movies because Tarzan and Jane lived together in sin. My beloved Protestant cousin took me into the city, to Lafayette Square to see it, very hush hush, my also Protestant Mom in cahoots. Afterwards, I suffered the confabulation of the young, and ascribed it to heathenistic choices of the willy-nilly. My sin. My penance.

Gosh, I was a nutty kid. Certain planes flying over the house, especially the C-119 twin boom tails scared me, the frequency of their sound lit me up like a Christmas tree. No other plane, just the double-tailed ones. They traveled slowly, and the low sound of the engines was a cascading rrrwir rrwir rrwir that searched over every hillock and moraine for human essences, particularly tender, juicy, six year old girls. But this is the point, that those who are susceptible to suggestion can take the hoodoo part of science and run with it, like a dog with a frisbee.

What can I say? My phobias were fed by sneaking into my other cousin's stash of fifties monster magazines, and being horrified yet fascinated with the walking casserole-faced people of black and white cinematic fame that preyed on the living and well-coiffed. God, I paid for that. They lived under my bed for years, and I slept with a night light until I got married.

Now, the night is for sleeping. Period. No monsters or hands are waiting to grab any body part hanging over the edge of the mattress. Peaceful, silent sleep of the innocent, both human and animal. Lovely. Purple edged night, solace for the weary. That's us, all around. Sleep well, sleep secure. Good night. Good, good night.