I bribed Güino. The first time I put this on him, he filed a complaint against me. For some reason, this morning he allowed me to put it on him and then began speaking in a Belgian accent.
.
Güino &His Hat
Until
People move in the manner to which they are accustomed.
Silence is not stability. A river’s turbulence conceals obstacles.
The merest word or the most slight of tone often pushes a lever past its fulcrum.
“The last drop makes the cup run over” matches the thesis of the picture.
Theo Of Thought
After considerable internal revelation, it occurred to me incrementally and then as a hammer upon anvil. Greater even than the aroma of bitter coffee on a cold morning, the glimpse of unadorned physical beauty, and even the prickly skin of a glimmer produced by unfathomable music.
It is murmuration of thought.
Much like the massive flocks of birds that exhibit a murmuration, I feel most alive and myself when the zone of previously disconnected ideas becomes a force majeure of a new idea, thought, or joke derived from the deceptive simplicity of words for action.
Too much time raced past me before I realized I did not need to summon or conjure this feeling by force. It is the ‘me’ that needs no provocation.
The click of words and ideas slithering into their proper places makes me as happy as damn near anything.
Reading a book that provokes the same reaction as the first time I read Pat Conroy has honed my pursuit of imperfectionism. None of us are maestros where words or grammar reside. We are mimics. When I find a truly unanchored display of expression, I find myself rereading it, feeling the unnatural groove somehow resonate.
I’ve squandered my delight.
You shouldn’t reduce or amplify because of an imagined audience. A shotgun should be your funnel for expression. Filtering is at best misguided self-censorship, almost certainly propelled by the fear that only ego can bring.
In a perverse display of contradiction, society shuns outliers. But it also capriciously rewards some and there is no discernible reason that separates the criticized from the praised. It must be familiar enough to feel personal, while simultaneously pushing the fringes to generate the feeling of newness.
Ecclesiastes may have been right stating that there is nothing new under the sun, but it is the metamorphosis and recombination of the old that can bring the delight of discovery.
Joke #3,387
I took my car to the dealership for electrical work.
The technician had me get in and test everything.
When I pressed the steering wheel to test the horn, a loud voice said, “OUI.”
“What the hell is that?”
“We installed a French horn.”
.
Susurrus
The weary and tested among us felt the skitter of the susurrus in the early morning. Unlike two years ago, we didn’t stare vacantly into the nothing.
Him.
Again.
F***.
This susurrus brought the most dangerous of things. A possible lifting of dread, the merest reflection of a glimmer of hope. Its whisper derives from the collective disquiet of those who’ve recently benefited from the usurper summoning all manner of power. And it only happened because the inevitable consequence of the unqualified with a blunt hammer ripping their pocketbooks.
We’ve been kicked with entropy. No matter what progress is made, it can be wrenched from us and stained. Entropy in nature describes the inevitability of order to disorder. In information theory, it describes the amount of uncertainty or hidden information inside a system. People can be fickle, guided by enrichment, and distracted by the loudest and dumbest voice in the room.
We cannot easily slip comfortably back to assuming that the absence of visible snarls equates to kindness or benevolence. Chaos sits behind us, unseen, ready to justify all manner of things we label as heinous.
He who knocks once shall knock again. If we drop our guard, there will always be another “he.”
Those who would say, “It was another election, one among many, bearing no particular significance,” are wrong. The rise of an unqualified power monger gave similar license for people to put aside the veneer of civility and embrace the chaos. He brought frailty to the balance of power, and he did so willingly. Using the shield of adopted and false faith, he pushed the banner of infringement. His interests, his money, his power – all in a way that surpassed even the most brazen of predecessors. Erode the media, implode the infrastructure of government, vilify with intent to subvert, and cash in.
The danger was not his presence. It was the lack of systemic controls to hinder such a person. His most ardent supporters were not created by him; they were revealed. Those who stayed silent through benefit declared their allegiance toward economy over people resoundingly.
This election is largely a referendum on direction and economy.
But those who shake their heads in denial that it was also a rebuke of such men are attempting to deviate the narrative toward normalcy. Taking time to understand your complicity in his emergence and dominance will cost you a sliver of your humanity.
This was not normal, not even by the standard of a country once warring with itself over its existence.
The susurrus of yesterday might well swell to a crescendo of change. It might easily falter and evaporate, too, creating more apathy in some and cynicism in others.
Taken as a whole, this election was a “No.”
As strongly as you might continue to object, this election was either a way station on the road to democracy’s ongoing erosion, or a slap to those responsible to remind them what governance must look like.
Assuming we manage to extricate ourselves from the lunacy of this type of governance, he will be forever remembered as failure personified.
This election came away with orange-stained fingers, after having slapped its rebuke.
Firsts
I just put myself down for two genius points.
I went to Harps to buy a few things. (Because that’s what I normally do there.) I popped out of my car for a second to say hello to someone I knew. When I came out with my bags of groceries, I realized my car was running and the keys were locked in it.
After updating my payment information and battling the glare of my phone, I ordered an Uber. The driver was there immediately and that confused to me. Since I usually park at the end of the lot, I looked up to see him waiting for me at the entrance, as if he had teleported. He drove a Tesla, so I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t just more crazy technology they threw in there recently.
As soon as I got to my apartment, promptly ordered a return Uber to Harps. It immediately indicated that another Tesla was less than a minute away. By the time I walked down the stairs, he pulled in.
I assumed it was the same driver. It wasn’t. Just another Tesla.
So I rode in a Tesla for the first time and the second time technically within 3 minutes of each other. I’d always imagined my first Tesla ride would be in a high-speed pursuit.
{ I stopped on the way home for gas. One reason I stopped was that it’s difficult to put gas in while still driving. The other reason is in case I try to earn another genius point and duplicate my feat of stupidity for the second time in one day. It’s almost worth it, just to test the theory that my next Uber will be another Tesla. }
Before The Storm
The bad stormfront hasn’t reached here quite yet. But the winds are intermittently powerful.
I’m used to seeing some strange things in the dead of the night.
Had the balloons been red when they flew across, I would have looked around for Pennywise. I had no idea what was floating and caught in a wind vortex in the gap valley between the big buildings.
It was only spitting a little rain, so I stopped and watched the arch of balloons float around and finally land.
Gone
How bizarre it is to wander barefoot in what was once my favorite backwoods. Huge expanses now visibly surrender due to the recent clear cutting and brush hogging. On the inside edge where it once required nerves of steel to traverse the brambles, there are gaps that force me see the unsuspecting people on the trail.
The immense tree that I climbed much too high to get the picture of the hawk completely caught off guard as it looked across in shock at seeing a human right across from it and taking its picture…that tree is a memory.
On a day like today, the cloudy October sky flying by due to the approaching rain, it’s beautiful. A red-tailed hawk flew by and acknowledged me. But the dozen variety of other birds that always welcome to me here, they are absent. The gap in the canopy overhead is an offense to me.
Convenience of access holds no advantage because people will not take the time to walk through here. The clog of foliage that once stood here was barrier enough to keep it private for me and provided the sanctuary of the birds and animals that I used to watch and listen to.
Maybe if the brilliant engineers erect the proposed steel bridge that will overpass the slippery and often submerged water dam, I will have fingers crossed that almost no one will deviate from the new concrete trail. They’ll pass through and eventually the foliage will reclaim its territory. I will, of course, find a new path, one that ignores the modern convenience of a direct dry walk.
The old long-buried sidewalk to nowhere takes offense at being exposed and replaced.
The trees that surrendered to gravity but kept growing, the overreaching and tangled branches, they have been truncated after decades of winding their way almost horizontally across the land. Not even the worst storms could suppress them. Blades could.
My gaggle of crows sits along the creek bed, shouting and screaming. Though I’m sure their screeches derive from something mundane, I’m blaming it on this new absence.
What once was mine now belongs to everyone. Which is to say, no one.
It’s possible to walk through the beauty once all of this is done. That’s all it’ll be.
Passing through, rendered as observers only.
Nothing beats feet uninterrupted on the ground, surrounded by the mess and chaos that nature offers.
Maybe one day I’ll stop bitching about all this.
Time heals wounds but salts memories.
Dark Wit
By 2:30 a.m. I looped back into the cacophony. I had fled from the urban streets. It was a crescendo of raucousness, both of loud vehicles and people who had declared war on bedtime – and sensibility. Maybe daylight savings granted them another hour, but most of them were not advocating for carpe diem. The only thing they will be seizing is ibuprofen whenever they crawl out of bed later. I’m accustomed to aberrant traffic and people after midnight on Sunday morning, but this was wild.
The rain had departed, leaving a beautiful, mist-filled 60° landscape. I found a couple of my favorite canopied and streetlightless neighborhoods. The trees dripped and pinged against the carpet of leaves the weather brought down. No truer Halloween smell of childhood could have been found.
Around 3:15, I took a detour on Leverett from Poplar. I saw and heard a couple approaching. They discussed the relative paradox of seeking social interaction while simultaneously imbibing to such a degree that they would have no recollection of it. That’s not me paraphrasing in my particular way. They were obviously educated and accustomed to speaking like spilled thesauruses. I burst out laughing when I saw them and they loved my reaction. They were both pirates, except they had gender-reversed their costumes.
“Are you out walking for leisure at this hour?”
I knew I had to repay their conversation with wit. “I’m currently investigating anecdotal reports of piracy.”
I went on to explain to them that I had heard their conversation way before I could see them clearly.
“Ah! Yes, that’s true. We don’t drink but we do partake of the giggle smoke.”
Me: “Of course. That’s precisely why they refer to it as the high seas.”
They both laughed. The man, dressed impeccably as a woman, snorted. “How is it that such a pun didn’t occur to me?”
That’s how it came to be that I stood on the wide sidewalk at 3:20 a.m., having one of the most humor and pun-filled conversations I could possibly imagine. In another life, those people would be my tribe.
It’s interesting to me that I deviated hard to get away from people, only to have my best conversation upon my return to the relatively busy streets.
Today would have been my brother’s 61st birthday. If he were still alive, I would call him: “Happy birthday. How’s my favorite head-up-his-ass conservative doing?” He would make an obvious comment about Obama and then do his best Bill O’Reilly impression.
PS did you know that Tom Cruise was born as Thomas Mapother IV?
Fair
This warmer October weather also brought a resurgence of the stingers. I’m the self-appointed pest control worker for the apartments.
Foolishly, I assumed we were past the possibility of these bastards. I knew better, but I let my guard down.
How I avoided getting stung earlier is a mystery that rivals the heads on Easter Island. My crime was walking by as they hid inside the mounting fixture of an outdoor door light.
I returned after a brief bit of calisthenics and windmilling stupidly as they buzzed in on me.
I left a warning for any of their counterparts who would try to attack me without warning.
I don’t mind so much if I can see them or have a fair chance. All this sneakiness on their part is simply unacceptable.
