Cider

There were six of us sitting on the porch last night drinking a fancy bottle of English cider or some such drink that Beth had brought down. The weeds growing in the second story rain gutter across the street caught my attention and led me into a series of day dreams about birds and great fields of wheat. When I snapped to again, the people on the porch were going on and on about work and politics and themselves. I took a sip of cider and looked back to the weeds in the gutter. From behind the bushes leapt Hayden, a neighbor's six year old son. Hayden is the only child I know and I only get a glimpse of him twice a month when his dad gets him for the weekend. He was like a mad man, throwing balls, rolling around in the grass, screaming for attention, declaring grand epiphanies and discovery almost every moment.

"Matt, play Frisbee with me. Mike look at this. Nicole why are you smoking? Daddy measure me. Beth will you play Frisbee?"

We all were too tired or too lazy, or to grown up to even get off the porch and play catch. After repeated pleas for me to play catch I got up and played catch left handed for a while but not even close to as long as Hayden intended the game to go on. I went back up on the porch to have another go with the cider where I watched in amazement as Hayden tore around on our shaggy sun-baked lawn.

Mike's phone rang and he disappeared only to reappear a few minutes later all flustered and stressed out. "Beth, I've got to go. They want me there at sixteen hundred tomorrow." Mike got called up to go fight the wildfires in Oregon. Beth freaked, "Oh Michael!" and they both looked panic stricken. Everyone else on the porch got silent, bummer. I looked over at Hayden, he was swinging his Frisbee at the stalks of grass and humming. I saw him look up with a bright expression that recognized the change of mood in the people on the porch. He ran up the porch stairs, "Beth play soccer with me! Play soccer with me!" "Not now Hayden!" Beth snapped. "Why?" he wanted to know. Mike chimed in, irritated, "We are in the middle of an emergency Hayden, not now." "Hayden was still in hyperactive play mode and seemed to be completely unphased but aware of all this weirdness. "Daddy, what is an emergency." "Mike and Beth have to go fight fires in Oregon Hayden." "How far is Oregon?" "If we left here at breakfast time we would be in Oregon by lunch time," his dad calmly explained. "Dad, look at this," he was already focused again on playing. I sipped my cider. Mike and Beth burst apart at the seems like a shack in a hurricane...like a dry tree trunk swallowed alive by wildfire. Suddenly I wanted nothing to do with adulthood.

Handle Bar Stash

It's Friday night. I was bored earlier so I shaved off chunks of my beard until I had a graphically designed handle bar mustache.

I walk over to the refridgerator for the third time in the last twenty minutes hoping I've missed a hidden treat. Sadly, the stale neon innards of the fridge are still as barren as I remember: a can of black olives, an ancient bottle of apple cider vinegar, a bottle of mustard with a scabbed spout, and beyond the limits of my comprehension, yet as real as a pig in a pen, a tin of spicy hot spam--half eaten. I'll be back in ten minutes.

Sim

I was sitting where I am now, early this morning, enjoying coffee, the sun rise, and a radio program. There was a mantra going through my head last night from old Ben (Franklin, not Kenobe): Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. I doubt that is the final word on health, wealth, and wisdom, but there is an element of truth in it. I feel like I can conquer the world when I breath in the dawn air and if there was ever a day to harness the power of dawn it would be today. (Pliers, Doctor's office, Whisky.)

A bit later, hours after sunrise, I hear my brother's door creak open and a moment later watch him stumble into the hall in his underwear. He limps down the hall with a sheen of grease on his skin and two days worth of stubble growing on his face. Good mornin' I say. Hmmm, he responds. How horrifying this sight was to me. I feel responsible, like he is a sim that I haven't been feeding, or put on the wrong career path, or have over looked his love life.

Perhaps someday, proverbs will be of a quite different form. The Poor Richards Almanac of 2105 might read: Up, Up, Right, X, X, Y, Up, Right Trigger, Start, Select.

Cave Men

In G.K. Chestertons book, The Everlasting Man, he points out something that even me with my puny brain have often wondered about--those fanciful stories "scientist" tell about the life of early man. We have all heard it on the radio, read about it in our school text books, watched it played out on the stage of the discovery channel: a hairy man with a slanted forehead beating a dirty hairy woman (ussually played by an underwear model or generic super model with a few patches of hair glued here and there to make her look primitive)and draging her off to his cave. You'd never guess, Chesterton says, that this rich tale was built upon a fragment of skull or a chunk of leg bone. When we actually look in the caves, we find not a neat row of female skulls with signs of head trauma but instead, expressive cave paintings--art. His point: the material evidence doesn't back up the cave-man-with-a-club theory, it actually shows that "primative" man had the gift of the spirit, that which drives men to paint and show reverence for the natural world. When we look in the tombs of our most distant ancestors, we do not find evidence of dull brutes, rather, we find men very much like ourselves.

I stumbled upon some bird watchers on a path through the wetlands on a recent day hike. They had thier binoculars out looking for birds, I was enjoying the way the shadows were playing in the branches of the low trees. If I lived in a cave, I would paint that couple of birdwatchers under the trees on my cave wall.

CAVE is to PAINTING as INTERNET is to ???

Too All the Girls I've Kissed Before

This weeks issue of New Scientist Magazine has an article that fascinated the pants off of me. The story is of a girl I, along with millions of people around the world, have locked lips with. The story goes that at the end of the 19th century, many people of lost hope committed suicide by jumping in the Seine River in France. The authorities would drag the dead bodies out and display the unidentified bodies to the public in the hopes that someone would be able to identify them. Well, Anne was one of jumpers and as it turns out her face was cast as a plaster mask and strangely enough circulated around France at the turn of the century as a sort of pop art piece. This inspired many artist and poets to imagine what her life must have been like and write about it. Long story short, when the guys that made CPR dolls needed a mold that wasn't to sexy but beautiful, they choose Anne. So, now you know that the CPR mannequin is the image of a woman who cast herself off a bridge over one hundred years ago.

Orcas Whale

What a strange dream I awoke from this morning. In my dream I was in Egypt, browsing through a market. I came upon the shop of a fabric merchant and went in with, for some odd reason, the intention of buying a length of cloth for a quilt I was going to make. He took me to the back of his little open air shop and unrolled a large roll of fabric for me. He unrolled it further and further and as he did so, the fabric became more strange and lively with embroidered images of people and landscapes. The first images (which I don’t remember) made me sad but a later image in particular grabbed my attention and excited me. It was an image of island people at the beach, sewn in bright oranges, pinks, reds, and greens. And in the water, past the beach, was a great slippery whale. I begged the fabric merchant to stop unrolling the fabric so that I might look closer at this new scene. The image was inexplicably luminous and I noted that the aquamarine stitching of the water was waving and splashing on the silk, that the Mattissesque sunbathers and fisherman were moving on the yellow sand--that in fact, I was no longer in a fabric merchant’s shop in Egypt at all but on a tropical beach under a blinding white sun. Everything on and around the beach was of overwhelming fascination to me, especially the Orcas whale splashing about before me. The atmosphere of the beach made me glad until it was disturbed by a hillbilly of a bayou man who arrived loudly with an alligator on a leash. The terrible man, who I took to be a hunter of some sort, and his gator, clamored down to the shore and into the sea. The gator which was now at least as big as my friend the Orcas, thrashed out after the whale and they fought each other. Surely the whale has no chance against the gator with his long snout full of razor teeth, I thought, looking on in a panic. The whale proved to be more of a fighter than he looked and after a long struggle, the whale defeated the gator and I woke up.

?

I have never understood why some men, especially young ones, when going to the theater with other men, refuse to sit next to each other and if they do communicate with each other at all, have to speak so loudly that every one in the thearter can hear them.

The Disadvantages of Being Poor

"Yes, Yes. Things are progressing nicely. I am happy with these X-rays. Well how does next week sound?"

"It sounds wonderful. I can't wait to get these pins taken out and start lifting wieghts again."

"Well let's not get ahead of ourselves, you won't be lifting for a few months. Let's schedule the procedure in for next week then. Good good."

"Now doctor, what does the procedure entail? How do you take them out I mean."

"Ok. Good. We'll be doing the procedure in the operating room over at the hospital. You will be mildly sedated. Oh wait, wait. It says here you don't have insurance. In that case your probably going to want to go cheap aren't you."

"Yes. As cheap as possible."

"Right. Good. Let's see, why don't I have you instead come here to my office and I will use the pliers. We'll try and get these out with out sedation, which I warn you, will be painfull. Are you ok with that?"

"Yeah, I'll have to be."

"Good. Good. Well I'll see you next week then. Take care."

"You too doctor."

Melody

My thoughts were turned to my bruises and scabs only partially healed as I walked home from the doctor’s office this morning. I turned a corner downtown and was struck by the sweet sound of a man’s whistle, which, being both a cheerful and well employed melody, at once lifted my mood. Being the aspiring whistler I am, I greeted the man and introduced myself. "Pardon me sir, I couldn’t help but admire your skills as a whistler. I’m myself an aspiring whistler, though my tunes are less spirited than your own and often bring pain rather than gladness to those that hear them. Would you please honor me with a lesson in the art of whistling."

He smiled at me warmly, “Nothin' too it really. I wouldn’t much call it an art at all. But I think I see where your goin wrong lad.” He reached towards my face and quickly, but in a very nonchalant manner, ripped a scab from my upper lip. “Have a go at it now why don’t you.”

I pressed my lips together and without effort blew the most melodious tune my lips had ever sung. The man began to harmonize with my own tune and we chatted in song for a while before we waved each other goodbye and continued on our way.

The rest of the way home, as I whistled, I wasted no thought on my bruises or my scabs.

Jazzed About Summer Reading

Ok, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas finally got boring and my arm is feeling much better (getting the pins taken out next week hopefully) which has allowed me to start reading again. I read the Alchemist and The Screw Tape Letters this week, both wonderful books, especially the Alchemist which made me want to travel in the desert.

The Library is a remarkable public service which I never use. I am addicted to buying books, not a good thing when your on welfare. I couldn't wait to wake up and visit Henderson's Bookstore which I've been waiting for all weekend. They didn't have the book I wanted but I ended up buying three completly unrelated ones. I just like the smell of that place, the smell of stale yellow paper. I am blessed to live in a city with amazing bookstores a walk away.

When I got home with my three new books I checked the mail and was totally jazzed to see that the book I ordered from Amazon came in. I have a suspicion that the same force pushing me to fill my shelves to overflowing with books is the same one that got me so excited about playing with and collecting GI Joes as a kid.

An American Past Time

Baseball is such a popular game because it mimics life so well. I have always found baseball to be the perfect metaphor for life, probably because I grew up on the diamond and learned how to interact with people while spitting and getting dirty and saying things like, "Hon now babe. Whadya say?"

People are getting ever more violent, illustrated by the coach at the ball game tonight assulting the umpire. The parents in the stand, instead of cooling down their coach, booed the umpire.

The game on the field seemed secondary to the drama in the stands and I think that says a lot about parents today, about the misplaced focus on politics and celebrity in an American culture which fails to study the game, distracted instead by the drunken fans dancing shirtless in the left field bleachers.

Baseball--life--only works when you respect it, try and perfect it through attention to detail. Small ball. Back up the pitcher when the catcher tosses back to the mound, advance the runner into scoring position by hitting behind him. Yes, making sure your shirt is tucked in.

Root for your son when he's out on the field instead of flirting with your buddies wife, instead of gossiping about the well fed parent sitting in the corner of the bleachers.

Old Mormon Juice

This morning was just like old times out in the back yard with an old friend and a few of the nieghbors. We went through two pots of coffee talking about fishing, aliens, religion, and the poor cat next door who just got spade and was staring at us from the window with a cone around her neck.

A fertility fantasy: Having twenty children and a big farm in Alaska. Keep them isolated from humanity, taught the art of war, poetry, and sewing. Write up a family code of laws and design a family crest. Emerge from the wilderness decades later, after the children have all had 20 children of their own, a tribe of genetic material ready to conquer the globe or at least city hall.

I really believe the mormons are on to something.

Another thing I noted, sitting in the sun this morning, was that the pear tree is producing fruit, not very much but a few small, tart pears. The year before last, we only got one pear. Think of it, all summer that overgrown tree reached skyward soaking up untold giga watts of solar energy only to produce one lonely pear. What a ripe piece of fruit though, bursting with sun juice.

Nebulous

I was seventy five percent asleep when I had a thought that would revolutionize the world, transform humanity's infrastructure, and initiate the next leap forward in human evolution. The damned thing is, I can't articulate it in language or even fully remember the impression it made on me. I do know that my clock radio alarm was going off which startled me a quarter the distance away from dreamland. In my dream I turned off the alarm but to my dismay, the noise of the morning news report persisted. Perplexing. Again, in my dream I hit the snooze button: still no result. It was then that I realized I was dreaming, and in more of a God like way than an engineer's, rewired the alarm clock to my mind and thought away the noise. In an instant, I had sewn, with mind thread, the quilt that is the world togther with the fabric of dreamland. A telepathic Clapper. I lived an eon in silence before I was made aware again of the morning news and my duty to wake up and partcipate in civilization.

The Old Woman With Bright Young Eyes

I haven't much felt like writing lately, more in a mood to listen than talk. Thanks go to Jessi for recommending Phantastes, a wonderful listening book. This morning in the waiting room of the docters office I read about the old woman with bright young eyes and the song she sang of Sir Aglovaile. It was so beautiful, I thought I'd share it here. Reading long posts especially long poems can be annoying but it is worth it here I think.

Sir Aglovaile through the churchyard rode;
Sing, All alone I lie:
Little recked he where'er he yode,
All alone, up in the sky.
Swerved his courser, and plunged with fear
All alone I lie:
His cry might have wakened the dead men near,
All alone, up in the sky.
The very dead that lay at his feet,
Lapt in the mouldy winding-sheet.
But he curbed him and spurred him, until he stood
Still in his place, like a horse of wood,
With nostrils uplift, and eyes wide and wan;
But the sweat in streams from his fetlocks ran.
A ghost grew out of the shadowy air,
And sat in the midst of her moony hair.
In her gleamy hair she sat and wept;
In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;
The shadows above, and the bodies below,
Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.
And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind
Over the stubble left behind:
Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
Alas, how hardly things go right!
'Tis hard to watch on a summer night,
For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay,
And the summer night is a winter day.
"Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes
To see thee weeping and wailing so.
Oh, lovely ghost," said the fearless knight,
"Can the sword of a warrior set it right?
Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild,
As a cup of water a feverish child,
Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood
To sleep the sleep a dead lady should?
Thine eyes they fill me with longing sore,
As if I had known thee for evermore.
Oh, lovely ghost, I could leave the day
To sit with thee in the moon away
If thou wouldst trust me, and lay thy head
To rest on a bosom that is not dead."
The lady sprang up with a strange ghost-cry,
And she flung her white ghost-arms on high:
And she laughed a laugh that was not gay,
And it lengthened out till it died away;
And the dead beneath turned and moaned,
And the yew-trees above they shuddered and groaned.
"Will he love me twice with a love that is vain?
Will he kill the poor ghost yet again?
I thought thou wert good; but I said, and wept:
`Can I have dreamed who have not slept?'
And I knew, alas! or ever I would,
Whether I dreamed, or thou wert good.
When my baby died, my brain grew wild.
I awoke, and found I was with my child."
"If thou art the ghost of my Adelaide,
How is it? Thou wert but a village maid,
And thou seemest an angel lady white,
Though thin, and wan, and past delight."
The lady smiled a flickering smile,
And she pressed her temples hard the while.
"Thou seest that Death for a woman can
Do more than knighthood for a man."
"But show me the child thou callest mine,
Is she out to-night in the ghost's sunshine?"
"In St. Peter's Church she is playing on,
At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.
When the moonbeams right through the window go,
Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,
She says the rest of them do not stir,
But one comes down to play with her.
Then I can go where I list, and weep,
For good St. John my child will keep."
"Thy beauty filleth the very air,
Never saw I a woman so fair."
"Come, if thou darest, and sit by my side;
But do not touch me, or woe will betide.
Alas, I am weak: I might well know
This gladness betokens some further woe.
Yet come. It will come. I will bear it. I can.
For thou lovest me yet -- though but as a man."
The knight dismounted in earnest speed;
Away through the tombstones thundered the steed,
And fell by the outer wall, and died.
But the knight he kneeled by the lady's side;
Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss,
Rapt in an everlasting kiss:
Though never his lips come the lady nigh,
And his eyes alone on her beauty lie.
All the night long, till the cock crew loud,
He kneeled by the lady, lapt in her shroud.
And what they said, I may not say:
Dead night was sweeter than living day.
How she made him so blissful glad
Who made her and found her so ghostly sad,
I may not tell; but it needs no touch
To make them blessed who love so much.
"Come every night, my ghost, to me;
And one night I will come to thee.
'Tis good to have a ghostly wife:
She will not tremble at clang of strife;
She will only hearken, amid the din,
Behind the door, if he cometh in."
And this is how Sir Aglovaile
Often walked in the moonlight pale.
And oft when the crescent but thinned the gloom,
Full orbed moonlight filled his room;
And through beneath his chamber door,
Fell a ghostly gleam on the outer floor;
And they that passed, in fear averred
That murmured words they often heard.
'Twas then that the eastern crescent shone
Through the chancel window, and good St. John
Played with the ghost-child all the night,
And the mother was free till the morning light,
And sped through the dawning night, to stay
With Aglovaile till the break of day.
"Show me the child thou callest mine"
And their love was a rapture, lone and high,
And dumb as the moon in the topmost sky.
One night Sir Aglovaile, weary, slept
And dreamed a dream wherein he wept.
A warrior he was, not often wept he,
But this night he wept full bitterly.
He woke -- beside him the ghost-girl shone
Out of the dark: 'twas the eve of St. John.
He had dreamed a dream of a still, dark wood,
Where the maiden of old beside him stood;
But a mist came down, and caught her away,
And he sought her in vain through the pathless day,
Till he wept with the grief that can do no more,
And thought he had dreamt the dream before.
From bursting heart the weeping flowed on;
And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone;
Shone like the light on a harbour's breast,
Over the sea of his dream's unrest;
Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon,
That the heart seeks ever, night or noon:
Warnings forgotten, when needed most,
He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost.
She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank.
With upturn'd white face, cold and blank,
In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale,
And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile.
Only a voice, when winds were wild,
Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child.
Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.

Thank God I Am Not A Pirate

I've been consumed by this bothersome injury of mine. It is very uncomfortable and at times painful and yet a is proving to be a valuable lesson in patients. I imagine there to be a stat bar hanging above my head, as if I am an avatar in the game of life and with each blunder I make it fills a little more, strengthening my character.

I was clumbsily shoveling the last of a delicious chicken and rice dinner into my face the other night at dinner with my parents, when it happend. As I struggled to scrape the last grains of rice on to my fork, I happened to look over at my mom who was using the fingers of her left hand to push the last of her food on to the fork held in her right hand. It really made me want to hug her. How lucky and fortunate she is to have two healthy arms. I sat there staring at my family eat without the slightest thought given to how they were effortlessly minipulating thier limbs and digits and how smooth and invisible the joys of life are.

Another thing I can't help but notice is that people are curious about injured people and sympothetic and kind, perhaps for the very reason I have stated, that it makes the invisible blessings visible. Everywhere I go people ask me to tell them the story of my arm and then share with me tales of their own injury. It seems as though just about everyone has had thier bones crushed, stapled together, fractured, their skin ripped, burned, or sewn closed up again. These people's stat bars are full indeed. It makes me wonder, without modern medicine, how many limbless people would be rolling around in wheel chairs or wearing hooks where there hands should be?

Harmonies

I came across this quote by Leos Janacek, a Czech composer: "Whenever someone spoke to me, I may not have grasped the words, but I grasped the rise and fall of the notes. At once I knew what the person was like: I knew how he or she felt, whether he or she was lying, whether he or she was upset. Sounds, the intonation of human speech, indeed of every living being, have had for me the deepest truth."

I'm sitting in my swivel office chair, in the corner of the kitchen, the grey clouds outside are getting darker as night approaches. The composer, John Williams, and I are having a truthful conversation, agreeing with each other completely. His words are built out of the London Symphony Orchestra, mine of the whistles from my wine stained lips.

What Happen?

Feet of beauty, firmly planting
Arches white on rosy heel!
Whence the life-spring, throbbing, panting,
Pulses upward to reveal!
Fairest things know least despising;
Foot and earth meet tenderly:
'Tis the woman, resting, rising
Upward to sublimity,
I sprang to her, and laid my hand on the harp
Rise the limbs, sedately sloping,
Strong and gentle, full and free;
Soft and slow, like certain hoping,
Drawing nigh the broad firm knee.
Up to speech! As up to roses
Pants the life from leaf to flower,
So each blending change discloses,
Nearer still, expression's power.
Lo! fair sweeps, white surges, twining
Up and outward fearlessly!
Temple columns, close combining,
Lift a holy mystery.
Heart of mine! what strange surprises
Mount aloft on such a stair!
Some great vision upward rises,
Curving, bending, floating fair.
Bands and sweeps, and hill and hollow
Lead my fascinated eye;
Some apocalypse will follow,
Some new world of deity.
Zoned unseen, and outward swelling,
With new thoughts and wonders rife,
Queenly majesty foretelling,
See the expanding house of life!
Sudden heaving, unforbidden
Sighs eternal, still the same --
Mounts of snow have summits hidden
In the mists of uttered flame.
But the spirit, dawning nearly
Finds no speech for earnest pain;
Finds a soundless sighing merely --
Builds its stairs, and mounts again.
Heart, the queen, with secret hoping,
Sendeth out her waiting pair;
Hands, blind hands, half blindly groping,
Half inclasping visions rare;
And the great arms, heartways bending;
Might of Beauty, drawing home
There returning, and re-blending,
Where from roots of love they roam.
Build thy slopes of radiance beamy
Spirit, fair with womanhood!
Tower thy precipice, white-gleamy,
Climb unto the hour of good.
Dumb space will be rent asunder,
Now the shining column stands
Ready to be crowned with wonder
By the builder's joyous hands.
All the lines abroad are spreading,
Like a fountain's falling race.
Lo, the chin, first feature, treading,
Airy foot to rest the face!
Speech is nigh; oh, see the blushing,
Sweet approach of lip and breath!
Round the mouth dim silence, hushing,
Waits to die ecstatic death.
Span across in treble curving,
Bow of promise, upper lip!
Set them free, with gracious swerving;
Let the wing-words float and dip.
Dumb art thou? O Love immortal,
More than words thy speech must be;
Childless yet the tender portal
Of the home of melody.
Now the nostrils open fearless,
Proud in calm unconsciousness,
Sure it must be something peerless
That the great Pan would express!
Deepens, crowds some meaning tender,
In the pure, dear lady-face.
Lo, a blinding burst of splendour! --
'Tis the free soul's issuing grace.
Two calm lakes of molten glory
Circling round unfathomed deeps!
Lightning-flashes, transitory,
Cross the gulfs where darkness sleeps.
This the gate, at last, of gladness,
To the outward striving me:
In a rain of light and sadness,
Out its loves and longings flee!
With a presence I am smitten
Dumb, with a foreknown surprise;
Presence greater yet than written
Even in the glorious eyes.
Through the gulfs, with inward gazes,
I may look till I am lost;
Wandering deep in spirit-mazes,
In a sea without a coast.
Windows open to the glorious!
Time and space, oh, far beyond!
Woman, ah! thou art victorious,
And I perish, overfond.
Springs aloft the yet Unspoken
In the forehead's endless grace,
Full of silences unbroken;
Infinite, unfeatured face.
Domes above, the mount of wonder;
Height and hollow wrapt in night;
Hiding in its caverns under
Woman-nations in their might.
Passing forms, the highest Human
Faints away to the Divine
Features none, of man or woman,
Can unveil the holiest shine.
Sideways, grooved porches only
Visible to passing eye,
Stand the silent, doorless, lonely
Entrance-gates of melody.
But all sounds fly in as boldly,
Groan and song, and kiss and cry
At their galleries, lifted coldly,
Darkly, 'twixt the earth and sky.
Beauty, thou art spent, thou knowest
So, in faint, half-glad despair,
From the summit thou o'erflowest
In a fall of torrent hair;
Hiding what thou hast created
In a half-transparent shroud:
Thus, with glory soft-abated,
Shines the moon through vapoury cloud.

--George MacDonald, 1895

Girl, you looks good, won't you back that ass up
You'se a fine motherfucker, won't you back that ass up
Call me big daddy when you back that ass up
Hoe, who is you playing with, back that ass up
Girl, you looks good, won't you back that ass up
You'se a fine motherfucker, won't you back that ass up
Call me big daddy when you back that ass up
Girl, who is you playing with back that ass up
Girl, you looks good, won't you back that ass up
You'se a fine motherfucker, won't you back that ass up

--Juvenile, present day

Back Home

I am home again. Havn't been home much lately and it shows. Summer has soaked in, taken over with her smells, with the grass growing over the walk ways, the crawling bugs eating the thick air, the birds lecturing their young with screeches, no longer whistling thier love songs. This old house is saturated in summer froth and I dog paddle from room to room trying to stay busy while growing a mossy beard.