I normally don’t splurge for things like this beautiful hummingbird feeder. It doesn’t look as dazzling right now because the storm apocalypse is rolling over toward me. This time, I bought the special nectar that apparently hummingbirds devour like the last french fry in the bag. My first year here was a delight with a hummingbirds. I need more beauty like this. Practical beauty is a thing onto itself. Assuming my building will remain standing once the storms roll past, I’ll look out the door or window frequently in an attempt to catch my first hummingbird visitor.
What goes up must come down. I laughed when I thought of that. Because the way down lacked any attractiveness compared to the sense of adventure when I started up the tree and pile of brush. I dare not say how high I went. My age allegedly begs for restraint. There is a shimmering word in our language that attempts to describe the realization that you might not know it could be your last time. I reached the pile of brush and the trees jamming up from it because I had seen a hawk flying low upon the creek bed. At the end of its run, it elegantly rose up through the canopy and disappeared. It was my guess that it had a perch somewhere nearby and above. I followed the narrowing and disappearing dirt path until it was no longer. I pushed through the brambles and vines to reach the most likely tree that would serve as a candidate for ascension. Though I sometimes regret being barefoot, I also miss the connection with the dirt, rocks and water when I choose to protect my faith. I was barefoot today. I leaned against the tree trunk and waited. Watching the birds and squirrels. A shadow went above me and I could hear the woosh of wings. And the bird of prey sat across from me, adjusting its wings and feathers while keeping an eye on me. I slowly reached for my phone in my front left pocket. Just as much to avoid dropping my phone or hurling myself from the exposed safety of the tree trunk. The moment was enough but I felt compelled to take a picture. For just a moment, the bird and I were at the same level. I was a little bit jealous that it would be able to jump, spread his wings, and skim along the cold water of the creek below. It would be two seconds of glorious freefall. As we all know, it’s not the fall that hurts. It’s the ending. Some people question others for their elaborate planning and effort for short bursts of pleasure. To that I would say, the best one-off moment so far this week was making an effort to see SpaceX blaze across the sky above me early one morning. Or to point out that you spend hours to shop and cook for the tastes sensation of eating that sometimes only lasts a few minutes. Or you rush for the singular goal of pleasure, when it is the journey and process that makes the sensation what it is. I managed to get out of the tree and brush. The hawk probably laughed at me, wondering why I took the long way to get out of the tree. I left him there, scanning the creek. When I looked back along the creek and realized how far I had climbed, I reminded myself that I have a picture. And that one day the digital picture would still be here, long after the memory attached to me would be gone.
Yesterday morning, I watched an older lady painfully collect her bags from the EZ Mart counter. When I left, I rolled down my window and offered her a ride. I could see the look of distrust in her eyes. She said thank you and immediately turned away. She struggled with the bags as she walked.
Today as I left the worst convenience store in the history of mankind, another older lady seemed to be talking to me from a distance as I drove away. Because my car has ancient roller windows (even though it’s a 21 model), I leaned toward the passenger side and rolled down my window. She asked me if I could give her a ride. Honestly, assuming she wanted a ride to a nearby location, I had time. It’s rare for me to hesitate. But something about her seemed off. I told her I could not. She smiled and said thank you. And then she added that she loved my purple glasses. Something about her saying something nice and adding a smile after she realized I wasn’t going to give her a ride banged a gong in my head. I’ve given plenty of rides to questionable people if I’m alone because the risk is only to me. Or them, if you know me well enough.
Love, X
PS The picture is unrelated to my story. I took it Saturday. My cat was rolling around under the tree debris as if it were catnip. He’s on lockdown again after yesterday’s shenanigans. .
I took a great picture of… Nothing. I was wandering around, thankfully with shoes firmly on, oblivious. Something behind me crashed through the brush. It wasn’t instinct. I decided not to turn around because whatever it was would have already been on me by the time I turned. The unseen thing went up over the rise before I let myself pivot. It’s more fun imagining what it might have been. Perhaps a creature from Where The Wild Things Are. Even dangerous magic is sometimes worth it. X .
It’s lovely that the goats recognize me now. I brought them both healthy and trashy treats. And this time I remembered that there would be a tumult of birds. All of us were happy. When I left, I heard the distant roar of the tourist train approaching, so I stopped at the corner and got out and leaned on the hood of my car. A small silver car passed driving erratically. The driver was angry and screaming at the passenger. The kind of anger that easily results in danger. That guy needs more goats in his life.
On the heel of using some of my lottery winnings to replace the windshield of my car, today I went in for an oil change. For my car, I mean. My oil seems to be fresh. A young tech entered the waiting area where I was busy doing shenanigans. He told me he thought I had a chipmunk problem. When he came in, I expected odd news about my car. To hear the word “chipmunk” was near the bottom of the list for expectations. He went on to say that when he pulled my air filter assembly apart, he ran into a problem. I figured I was going to have to replace the air filter. Or worse. He told me that there were 50 plus acorns in there and that he used a special vacuum nozzle to get them all out. It was at that point I realized he was referring to squirrels! The lady in the waiting room with me looked up in surprise. Because the conversation was probably one of the weirdest and most rapid-fire ones she’s heard in a long time. I thanked him, after noting that whichever squirrel that was using my air assembly as a nut hoarding place was going to be plenty pissed when he returns to find his stash missing.
I’ll keep an eye out for an angry squirrel for the next few days.
This isn’t a vaguepost. It’s an observation about how I interact with the world, which evidently runs afoul of many people’s attitudes. We need a ‘pass’ sometimes, wherein we can just stand and shout, “WTF, dude? Explain this to me.” Sometimes, the person in question might apologize and say, “I needed to get my entire foot in my mouth. I am so sorry. That was stupid and petty of me.” People are going to misbehave, have a bad day, or just suffer the same affliction of quickness and not thinking twice that I do. If we did have a ‘pass’ option, at least we’d know if they react angrily that we aren’t dealing with someone interested in communicating authentically. Ain’t nobody got time for that, much less the sanity of long-term exposure.
We can’t know someone’s intentions most of the time. That’s why it’s more important to observe behavior rather than words. But there are times when “nothing” actually happens, but someone has consciously or unintentionally demonstrated a horrific outlook. In those cases, words have significant power. Last week, I heard a story about an example of this. Anger flared inside me righteously and briefly. The person being treated poorly and demeaned will never know about it. But I do. And I’m stuck with the knowledge, knowing that the person and people involved revealed a sliver of the “real’ them in their behavior. It wasn’t mere pettiness. It was hostility on a basic level. They pulled back the veneer and let their mask slip. Witnessing or knowing such an attitude is inside a person fundamentally shifts my ability to trust such people. This is so much of the reason that I have lingering problems with people I know to be racists. If they gossip to you, they’ll gossip about you. If they treat others with subversive hostility, they’ll do the same to you. It’s just a question of when. Most prejudice stems from the false idea of superiority. Superior arrogance lends itself to a lot of rationalization regarding behavior. In most cases, we never hear about it because they recognize that such behavior or words are reprehensible. They conceal and camouflage the “real’ them. I’d rather deal with outright hostility in most cases. You can avoid a snake in the open field or when it announces its presence; the ones hiding in the grass at your feet mostly can’t be avoided.
Love, X . PS That’s my cat judging me for not kicking the heat up to maximum. He ain’t 7 feet off the ground for the view.
I was wading through Scull Creek, standing in the natural sluices created by falls and narrowing rocks. The water moved with such speed that the resulting splashes against my legs created a spray that hit my face. Though it was lightly raining when I started, the rain faded, leaving an odd, somber pallor in the air. Walking barefoot in such water where I couldn’t see the stone under the water was hilariously precarious. At some point, I heard chattering above me. It took me a minute to find the source: a squirrel about six feet above me, leaning down and watching me. I talked back to it a few times as I made my way back and forth and up and down the creek. It dawned on me that the squirrel was moving in a pattern following me. When I was done in the creek, I carefully climbed the rocks back up onto the bank and picked up my sandals. The squirrel came down out of the trees and scampered ahead of me as I walked on the greenway trail. I walked past it as it sat about ten feet from the trails edge. When I turned off the trail to head to my car, I looked back to see that the squirrel had moved to be relatively close to me. By the time I made it to the parking lot edge, the squirrel ascended a tree and watched me through the corner of its eye. I chattered back at it. There was no doubt It had followed me from the creek. As I opened my car door, I looked back one more time to see that the squirrel was sitting facing me. An unusual squirrel, one probably wanting to have a polite conversation.
Evidently, today is the day for feline revolution.
I got up super early as I always do and went into Erika’s living room in darkness to fetch my clothes from the back of the couch. As I put on layers, something seemed off. By the time I threw my shirt on, I realized in horror that I felt wet. I stood there about 30 seconds, my mind attempting to correlate the wetness. And then I realized that either Acorn or Meatball (or both?) had taken advantage of one of their night time perches to disgorge on my nearby clothes. I evaluated my options and finally stripped down. Skulking around in the dark, I retrieved my haircut towel from the laundry hamper, loosely held it around my waist, and retrieved the ball of wet clothing. I scurried across to my apartment feeling like the cats were laughing at me.
It gets better! Once inside my apartment, I dropped the towel and my clothes. Because my cat Güino has me trained, I walked over to give him treats before anything else. And realized I had walked through clear cat vomit in the darkness of my kitchen apartment. I put down paper towels temporarily. As I attempted to walk away, the paper towels stuck to the bottom of my left foot like industrial glue. Extricating myself from that, I threw my clothes in my laundry and walked back to the living room. I bet you can guess what happened next? Going in front of the cat tower, I stepped in my cat’s other offering in the middle of the living room floor. And then repeated the same stupid fly trap dance with more paper towels. No need for stretching this morning. The paper towel dance limbered me up nicely.
The cats sometimes occasionally vomit. How in the world they all aligned perfectly for my early Monday morning is anyone’s guess.
Before I left for work, I asked my cat if he had any other surprises for me or if perhaps he got my extra car keys and threw up in the driver seat.
Since the cat revolution has already started, It will be too late for you by the time you read this. I apologize on behalf of all the cats for your sticky feet. We’re lucky they do not have opposable thumbs.
People aren’t familiar with axolotls. (Unless they do a lot of hallucinogens.) They’ve probably seen Pokémons based on axolotls or salamanders. It’s a beautiful creature native to a couple of lakes in Mexico. They have no eyelids, are deaf, and don’t undergo metamorphosis like their salamander counterparts. (Much like incels. PS The word “incel” is a portmanteau of “involuntarily celibate.”) Axolots can be induced to replace their gills with lungs and become land creatures. They also are intensely studied because they can regenerate literally any body part.
The word axolotl is derived from the Nahuatl language. I find this fascinating because it’s the perfect example of people arguing about how to say the word “axolotl.” Most people say “AK-suh-laa-tul.” But that’s not actually how you pronounce the word if you’re saying it like a native. It’s supposed to be more or less pronounced “ah-sho-lote.”
The Nahuatl language considers the “tl” as an odd single sound that’s not comfortable for English speakers. Much like any polysyllabic word for that matter – such as “compassion.”
As for me, I’m not concerned with pronunciation. It’s just another branch of the pointless navel-gazing about language that frustrates me. Language is not static, everyone has their own set of rules about spelling and pronunciation, and it’s idiotic to me to worry needlessly about it. I LOVE it when people mispronounce words, especially when it results in the purists shrieking and running from the room with their armpit hair on fire.
More often than not, the grammar police and purists are wrong anyway.
