The post below is a recap of an actual evening's close, not just fantasy fiction - it's about real times spent in my driveway watching the weather.
The ranchito outside of Krum, Tx that is the scene of this evening is up for sale.
I fear I shall see few evenings like this from my driveway in town anytime soon.
==================
In my driveway, I stand under the traces of rain passed on. I feel wind rush from a high pressure front just rolled by, fading out. Thunderstorms recede miles, miles and more miles away on the prairie horizon.
They race to their next appointment for a hail drop. Quite an ambitious schedule they keep.
Spirits of Chaos revel up in the heavens and silent xeon lamps pop their flash. Might be cannon thunder of the gods but it's to far away to hear, barely felt. Too far away to hear? Yeah but easy to see by an unaided eye.
At night when driving home I've got to turn off the AC. Roll down the windows, and smell that fresh scrubbed air.
Lucky for me, I checked out a Maria Callas CD from the library. Popped that sucker in the CD slot as the silver sliver light show fires up the sky. Laughing, growling and barking I was like a coyote dog, as I drove north along I35.
I get paused at the railroad tracks, by this night train pulling freight, in the crossing way. I breath slow and easy, turn off all but the running lights. And wait for the train to finish rooooolllllling by. Gonna wait a while for a night train blocking the entrance to downtwon cosmopolitan Krum, Tx.
So then I watch the sky show but through trees by the roadside, trees yet to sprout leaves. Rosebuds and azaleas - they are in bloom but strange, these trees appear to have no leaves yet.
Rock-bam-boom, clacka-clacka-doom, train keeps going on, on, on.
As Maria Callas sings sumthin in eye-taliyun about some dying lover's broken heart. I see the show through fingers of tree trunks, smell the blooms, hear... nothing but CD and train. And the sky just rocks with silent ka-BAM on each explosion of finger light.
But they are .... Sssshhhhh - silent explosions. Voiceless ropes of cold silver dropped from sky to ground, jumped from ground to sky.
All I hear is the train at the crossing, and Maria Callas. Doing that classical wail, which is akin to a soul sister wail, just different. An earlier form of soul music, is whut them opery arias is. Nice stuff, opry - whut some folks call an acquired taste.
When not so very far away, sometimes the thunder you know is there by its lightning is just the softest of murmurs. Murmurs like a contented lover lying beside you. Sleeping away the night in a lazy semisnore, semislumber, semiwakeful way.
I hope that lover, she's dreaming down a concoction of storm drama. But safely in her sleepy head, and out the way of our waking lives. Get it all over there and then, darlin' -- all that stuff what German poets called "Sturm Und Drang". Keep that in your dreams and out of our walking, wakened lives.
Maybe that's what's going on up there. In the world of silent faraway storms. Somebody's lover (or everybody's) draining off all the day's disappointments. Sweetening their wakeup on next day of life, by dreaming the sour drama out, at night. Up there. Out of the way.
Silently, or just softly as a murmur. So as to wake up with more of those blues gone, gone gone. Gone into the inky black blue of the night, where them blues belong. Sometime around the 1:30's or the 2:30am's of the night. All done by the Oh Dark Thirty point of time before sunrise.
You'll wake up safer, saner, more ready to just do the day w/o sour drama hurled all over other folk if you dream it out up there. Sonambulent, that's the word for which I've been fumbling around for. Means a sleepwalker, or the likes thereof. Them's that don't dream it off, they's the sleep walking sonambulent types. The ones you avoid at the office water cooler next work day. 'Cause all they want to do is bitch and moan about stuff still stuck in their guts.
Maybe they don't have no one to lie down next to at night. Nobody to pat them on the rear real soft in the night, stroke their hair. Murmur in their ear, say that it's gonna be allright. Whisper to them to sleep it off, do all that drama in their dream times.
You can take it to the limit out there, up into the night storm sky. Let the ink-night write lines of blues way past your ledger pages' edges. Balance your books with chits from the land of who-cares-where, but do the math away from the two of us joined together, please.
Ain't got no witness to their lives, the water cooler people all soured up like that, the unwitnessed. They wake up sour and loaded for bear. Sleep walk through the day, as a thunderstorm that wants to be heard, up close and nasty real.
Rock-bam-boom, clacka-clacka-doom, the water cooler train wreck yet unhappened people keeps going on, on, on with their... "unresolved issues".
At the office, I'm gonna do me a double radar take on my next approach to the water cooler. Though I do feel sorry for such who sleep walk so sour during the daylight. Them what ain't got no night-witness to watch over them as they send it up to be swept away with the next passing storm.
Heck, I'm among 'em, the unwitnessed, I sleep alone now. Did so even beside that gal I married, towards the end of it at least before that train done wrecked all messy and expensivo-mente boy howdy. But now I take care of mine angst or sturm und drang or whatever in my driveway, and during that drive home to my little ranchito. I laugh, I bark like a coyote, I shout out the window at the silent murmuring thunder show. Thank gawd for rough prairie weather.
With the windows rolled down, I take in the ozone long before I wake up and smell the coffee the next day. I get it out of my gut, mind, feelings, right then and there. I wake up no more that half a bubble off level. Which is.... socially functional and thus acceptable and economically reinforced. It's a social duty for us to do this before we go out to meet the world. To get levelled up and all. At least enough to pass morning inspection at the water cooler.
I can hardly wait for the next storm front to blow through. I'll check the library for some of them other opera CDs, maybe something German. I will expand this new acquired taste of mine for arias. Get me some spicey batch of that German "Sturm Und Drang" stuff I heard of. I want to hear that kind of color, as my soundtrack to the next silent thunder-show. If it ain't too burdensome like that German opry with the fat lady holding a spear and wearing a pointy, two-horned helmet.
But if I must wait for that next thunder show to come, then wait I will.
But I won't wait to live while waiting.
That just won't do, nor will I.
Friday, July 31, 2009
How To Remain A Goddess In Good Standing
Can Hera remain a goddess in the eyes of her husband Zeus after he catches her clipping her toe nails?
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Go Down Knowing On A Chi Town Night
Asked I am why I ask so many questions about why.
I ask because a gap is how it is between you and I.
Between you and yourself, him and her, us and them.
And no one is asking the whys about wheres we've been.
It's what we know, and all we pretend not to know.
Because life is, thank God, still like it is in Chicago.
A town where everbody knows everything; and nobody knows nothing.
That's what cops hear in Chi-town, when they go sniffing around.
In Chicago everybody knows everything, and nobody knows nothing.
We know it all. We know it not, that's our story should we get caught.
And we' sticking by that to the bitter end. That's all folks, enemies and friends.
Who knows the deal on how it went, between you and me. Do I know?
Who knows how it went down between you and the mirror. Don't you know?
Who knows how it went between him and her, us and them. Do we?
All we know is the gaps separating the sides. Don't we, though.
Like it is in Chicago, on the north side and the south, suburb and city,
Indifference and pity, dark and the light, black and white, the living
and the closed mouth. Poor pretending rich, the high class go slumming,
Everybody knows ever thaing; and nobody knows nothin.
Know a popular tune? Whistle it when you walk past Graceland Cemetery
On Chicago's northside, not so far from the night life in Uptown.
Sing it to those lying in wait, their ears are cupped to the ground
Listening for songs the tongue-less want to but can't sing merry.
Gracelanders at rest lying where now they know so much,
No longer at last so troubled by all that they cannot touch.
While everybody around knows it all, knows ever damn thing;
Ain't nobody knows nothing about the coming night's sting.
Go down knowing on a Chi-Town night - step aside shadows,
Jump from pool to pool of flickered street lamp light.
What you do not know, what you do and deny as foresight
Waits for you, waits - makes you want to take flight.
I ask because a gap is how it is between you and I.
Between you and yourself, him and her, us and them.
And no one is asking the whys about wheres we've been.
It's what we know, and all we pretend not to know.
Because life is, thank God, still like it is in Chicago.
A town where everbody knows everything; and nobody knows nothing.
That's what cops hear in Chi-town, when they go sniffing around.
In Chicago everybody knows everything, and nobody knows nothing.
We know it all. We know it not, that's our story should we get caught.
And we' sticking by that to the bitter end. That's all folks, enemies and friends.
Who knows the deal on how it went, between you and me. Do I know?
Who knows how it went down between you and the mirror. Don't you know?
Who knows how it went between him and her, us and them. Do we?
All we know is the gaps separating the sides. Don't we, though.
Like it is in Chicago, on the north side and the south, suburb and city,
Indifference and pity, dark and the light, black and white, the living
and the closed mouth. Poor pretending rich, the high class go slumming,
Everybody knows ever thaing; and nobody knows nothin.
Know a popular tune? Whistle it when you walk past Graceland Cemetery
On Chicago's northside, not so far from the night life in Uptown.
Sing it to those lying in wait, their ears are cupped to the ground
Listening for songs the tongue-less want to but can't sing merry.
Gracelanders at rest lying where now they know so much,
No longer at last so troubled by all that they cannot touch.
While everybody around knows it all, knows ever damn thing;
Ain't nobody knows nothing about the coming night's sting.
Go down knowing on a Chi-Town night - step aside shadows,
Jump from pool to pool of flickered street lamp light.
What you do not know, what you do and deny as foresight
Waits for you, waits - makes you want to take flight.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Almost A Ghost But Not If I Can Help It
For a while I thought I was a ghost after I heard Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. But then after I gave it some thought, I know that I really ain't no ghost. Or ain't like any of the usual ghosts you ever knowed.
All this thinking happened while I was listening to one of Lyle Lovett's CDs - of him and his Large Band. In that CD's songs I heard crisp, bluesy riffs reach out of my truck speakers and slap me right upside the head. Early before dawn this morning, en route from the house to work, I had Lyle on the CD and on the brain. And the heart.
It came from his guitars, guitars tightly strung and precisely struck. Oh there were some horns and such, but mainly it was Lyle and his guitar. Singing and ringing together they were a twisted thread on a needle, a metallic strand-sound that sewed my mouth shut as it opened other things. It was a sound that only God-favored flesh tipped fingers can play. I've tried to learn how to play guitar like that, like Lyle and his bandmates. I can't. Maybe I ought say not yet instead of can't. It's been four decades of trying, so I can't easily just say someday soon. Oh I can pick one up, strum it a bit, rattle the strings - but not open anybody up with what comes out.
But that's against what I can imagine in my head, the exactly-so if what I want heard coming off my fingertips. Sometimes I can feel it, too - how I'd feel if I, I had God-favored flesh on my fingertips. Have you ever felt like that before? Have you felt like that many times? Like you knew what you want to hear out of your mouth when singing. Like when you need, not just want to, you need to wail like Aretha Franklin; but that's not what comes out.
Like knowing what you'd like to see come out from under the sweep of your hand. If old China is your locale, it would be an inked brush in your hand, flying across rice paper. If colonial America is where you stood, it would be a pinched quill pen scritch scratching across parchment underneath your hand. Either a brush or a pen, but under your eyes, under your hand, a beautiful thing would come to be. A poem or a love letter or a Bill or Rights or a portrait of someone, but something you loved would take shape.
And the fruit of those talent blessed fingertips, it would be alive with feeling. It would pour out like sticky honey. Sweetness licked by another's hungry tongue. Breath blown over hair above another's soft warm ears. It would flow, it would softly blow, like a whisper it would go.Surely the message would go down in after over someone's fleshy ear lobe. Go down into the bones of their affections, and grasp their senses by the roots.
And then you'd know it - know not just that they but you too, were alive. That you had lived and you had loved and that's how you'd know it. You'd know it by the warmth of the other person's reaction, know it by their in-kind responsive heat. Know it by their nighness, of their drawing nearer to you. By your audience you would know - lover or even enemy, by their reaction you'd know you weren't no ghost.
Know this you would by the slight curl of a lip. Or a smile so rightly accented by some crinkle-wrinkles around the eyes. That's the trick to reading truth in faces, did you know that? Which is reading those little squints around the eyes.When the smile is sincere, they will be there. When it ain't, you still may have 'em in your grip but in a different way - better that you know that.
But what to do if you can't pull those metal stranded strings like Lyle Lovett? What to do if you can't push the trumpet notes around like Miles Davis, as smooth as a speed skater on ice? It's all about what to do to get a closed door open, and not just rattle the door knob like ghosts do - make a reach but without effect.
Shake people up with appearances, like some ghost who can reach out but can't touch? I don't want that, I want what results in a felt touch, a smile, a real resonant reaction. A chill down the spine is good, if it's the right time; but not the spooky kind. How to guarantee a warm blooded response I don't exactly know. Not yet do I know.
All I know to do is try what I'm doing now, which is to point you at something that moved me. I will tell you about it, I hope that it rattles your senses to the point of your feeling it, or at least an itch that makes you go scratch it. A hand on the shoulder is good, but even a prick on the skin will do. All this I do in hope it opens a door that's between us, one that is closed.
So I point out how Lyle Lovett sounds coming out of the truck speakers. Or I mention the song "Moondance" by Van Morrison, how that can spin you around (sometimes at night). Or I say you gotta listen to Miles Davis and his "Sketches of Spain". Ear stuff works real good for that kind of shake up wake up call. I might exhort you to listen to "Spem in Allium" by Thomas Tallis; 40 people it takes to sing it, but when they get it right there's no words to describe the places you go on that carpet ride of choral swell. Or hey, playing some psycho rockabilly by Reverend Horton Heat could do it, to get you out of your chair and your toes a scootin' across the apartment carpet, maybe.
Sometimes I describe how trees look in a forest mural painted by Thomas Hart Benton - how they writhe like live snakes that got by magic spell and patient strokes turned into wood. Remind you I might about how sitting on the hood of a rumbling muscle car can feel. You'll feel the heat move through you starting where you sit with feet on a hot chrome bumper, while you ponder the horsepower; you'd want to smoke your tires, turn heads, burn rubber and screech, to get the whole block's attention.
There's no good sense in hearing, seeing, feeling all this good stuff and keeping it to one's self. Got to use it like tinder to ignite heat in somebody else, in their - oh, where to put it? In their self, their heart, their mind, on their tongue, in their guts? Words for these parts of us are just handles not screwed into anything, sign not mounted on posts - no the real thing itself, not the 'where' where the feelings go inside us to be combusted and burn into vapor. Smoke - real smoke that you can smell is air more dense than puffed words; though sometimes the right words can cause us to smolder and smoke inside.
Whatever. You name it, I'll try to put it aflame. In any audience - lover, enemy, friend, or noncombatant. Others lit my candle here and there; so why shouldn't I do the same for others? I must do so, I must. And so must you. Because if we can light somebody up, we ain't no ghosts, are not apparitions just rattling door knobs in vain. Or if so, then I will be the best dang ghost there is around, bar none like you never seen. Cause when that door between us done gets opened, who cares how I spooked it into happening, it's opened. And then we can cross the threshold of divided worlds to see, touch, hear one another; share our muse, dance and fuse.
It's all that matters.
All this thinking happened while I was listening to one of Lyle Lovett's CDs - of him and his Large Band. In that CD's songs I heard crisp, bluesy riffs reach out of my truck speakers and slap me right upside the head. Early before dawn this morning, en route from the house to work, I had Lyle on the CD and on the brain. And the heart.
It came from his guitars, guitars tightly strung and precisely struck. Oh there were some horns and such, but mainly it was Lyle and his guitar. Singing and ringing together they were a twisted thread on a needle, a metallic strand-sound that sewed my mouth shut as it opened other things. It was a sound that only God-favored flesh tipped fingers can play. I've tried to learn how to play guitar like that, like Lyle and his bandmates. I can't. Maybe I ought say not yet instead of can't. It's been four decades of trying, so I can't easily just say someday soon. Oh I can pick one up, strum it a bit, rattle the strings - but not open anybody up with what comes out.
But that's against what I can imagine in my head, the exactly-so if what I want heard coming off my fingertips. Sometimes I can feel it, too - how I'd feel if I, I had God-favored flesh on my fingertips. Have you ever felt like that before? Have you felt like that many times? Like you knew what you want to hear out of your mouth when singing. Like when you need, not just want to, you need to wail like Aretha Franklin; but that's not what comes out.
Like knowing what you'd like to see come out from under the sweep of your hand. If old China is your locale, it would be an inked brush in your hand, flying across rice paper. If colonial America is where you stood, it would be a pinched quill pen scritch scratching across parchment underneath your hand. Either a brush or a pen, but under your eyes, under your hand, a beautiful thing would come to be. A poem or a love letter or a Bill or Rights or a portrait of someone, but something you loved would take shape.
And the fruit of those talent blessed fingertips, it would be alive with feeling. It would pour out like sticky honey. Sweetness licked by another's hungry tongue. Breath blown over hair above another's soft warm ears. It would flow, it would softly blow, like a whisper it would go.Surely the message would go down in after over someone's fleshy ear lobe. Go down into the bones of their affections, and grasp their senses by the roots.
And then you'd know it - know not just that they but you too, were alive. That you had lived and you had loved and that's how you'd know it. You'd know it by the warmth of the other person's reaction, know it by their in-kind responsive heat. Know it by their nighness, of their drawing nearer to you. By your audience you would know - lover or even enemy, by their reaction you'd know you weren't no ghost.
Know this you would by the slight curl of a lip. Or a smile so rightly accented by some crinkle-wrinkles around the eyes. That's the trick to reading truth in faces, did you know that? Which is reading those little squints around the eyes.When the smile is sincere, they will be there. When it ain't, you still may have 'em in your grip but in a different way - better that you know that.
But what to do if you can't pull those metal stranded strings like Lyle Lovett? What to do if you can't push the trumpet notes around like Miles Davis, as smooth as a speed skater on ice? It's all about what to do to get a closed door open, and not just rattle the door knob like ghosts do - make a reach but without effect.
Shake people up with appearances, like some ghost who can reach out but can't touch? I don't want that, I want what results in a felt touch, a smile, a real resonant reaction. A chill down the spine is good, if it's the right time; but not the spooky kind. How to guarantee a warm blooded response I don't exactly know. Not yet do I know.
All I know to do is try what I'm doing now, which is to point you at something that moved me. I will tell you about it, I hope that it rattles your senses to the point of your feeling it, or at least an itch that makes you go scratch it. A hand on the shoulder is good, but even a prick on the skin will do. All this I do in hope it opens a door that's between us, one that is closed.
So I point out how Lyle Lovett sounds coming out of the truck speakers. Or I mention the song "Moondance" by Van Morrison, how that can spin you around (sometimes at night). Or I say you gotta listen to Miles Davis and his "Sketches of Spain". Ear stuff works real good for that kind of shake up wake up call. I might exhort you to listen to "Spem in Allium" by Thomas Tallis; 40 people it takes to sing it, but when they get it right there's no words to describe the places you go on that carpet ride of choral swell. Or hey, playing some psycho rockabilly by Reverend Horton Heat could do it, to get you out of your chair and your toes a scootin' across the apartment carpet, maybe.
Sometimes I describe how trees look in a forest mural painted by Thomas Hart Benton - how they writhe like live snakes that got by magic spell and patient strokes turned into wood. Remind you I might about how sitting on the hood of a rumbling muscle car can feel. You'll feel the heat move through you starting where you sit with feet on a hot chrome bumper, while you ponder the horsepower; you'd want to smoke your tires, turn heads, burn rubber and screech, to get the whole block's attention.
There's no good sense in hearing, seeing, feeling all this good stuff and keeping it to one's self. Got to use it like tinder to ignite heat in somebody else, in their - oh, where to put it? In their self, their heart, their mind, on their tongue, in their guts? Words for these parts of us are just handles not screwed into anything, sign not mounted on posts - no the real thing itself, not the 'where' where the feelings go inside us to be combusted and burn into vapor. Smoke - real smoke that you can smell is air more dense than puffed words; though sometimes the right words can cause us to smolder and smoke inside.
Whatever. You name it, I'll try to put it aflame. In any audience - lover, enemy, friend, or noncombatant. Others lit my candle here and there; so why shouldn't I do the same for others? I must do so, I must. And so must you. Because if we can light somebody up, we ain't no ghosts, are not apparitions just rattling door knobs in vain. Or if so, then I will be the best dang ghost there is around, bar none like you never seen. Cause when that door between us done gets opened, who cares how I spooked it into happening, it's opened. And then we can cross the threshold of divided worlds to see, touch, hear one another; share our muse, dance and fuse.
It's all that matters.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Dry Cleaner Pickup, Deferred
Gets tiring, all the gumshoe footwork to uncover Truth everlasting.
There are stories you want to be different, but they won't rearrange -
Cause they're history, old history. The right questions no one is asking.
Too busy paying rent to spare change for friends, much less strangers.
So many things that you still want to leave all the way behind you.
Like clothes you dropped off at dry cleaners, never picked up for weeks.
Didn't pick up for months. Didn't pick up for years. Don't have a mind to.
They wait for you, those old clothes; and so the bill whose loss you seek.
That same old suit, that same old dress, that same old shirt and slacks.
The outfit you paid dearly for with your first paycheck, what you had after tax.
Clothes that dont't fit so good like you hoped they would off the rack,
Make you look like you should to others and yourself. Past time to pack.
But they were all you could afford at the time, was the best you could do.
Can you afford the real story now about how you look, now? Look out now.
You know the skinny about how you wanted to look back then. Look in, then.
What will you do with the fact of difference between the two?
There are stories you want to be different, but they won't rearrange -
Cause they're history, old history. The right questions no one is asking.
Too busy paying rent to spare change for friends, much less strangers.
So many things that you still want to leave all the way behind you.
Like clothes you dropped off at dry cleaners, never picked up for weeks.
Didn't pick up for months. Didn't pick up for years. Don't have a mind to.
They wait for you, those old clothes; and so the bill whose loss you seek.
That same old suit, that same old dress, that same old shirt and slacks.
The outfit you paid dearly for with your first paycheck, what you had after tax.
Clothes that dont't fit so good like you hoped they would off the rack,
Make you look like you should to others and yourself. Past time to pack.
But they were all you could afford at the time, was the best you could do.
Can you afford the real story now about how you look, now? Look out now.
You know the skinny about how you wanted to look back then. Look in, then.
What will you do with the fact of difference between the two?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
An illegible highway sign says it all
An illegible highway sign
Hangs by one unsheared bolt
Upside down on a galvanized pole
Beside the only road out of town
Not heeded by the reckless
Not needed by the cautious
Hard to read and hardly read when legible
Seen while exiting the town's one lonely cafe
You may not be in the habit of reading signs
Signs of the seasons? Nope.
I got girly shop calendars for that on the wall
Signs of the times? Nope.
I got CNN news on the tube and they're on the ball
Signs of the cross? Nope.
Unless I'm on the ropes, not til Judgment day calls
Route drivers circle back to receive board special sacraments
Chew chicken fried steak silently in cafe booths built for four
Say nothing about alleged dangers down the road, nada
Nada about scenic overlooks or interesting strangers, nothing
At days end when twilight begins, night starts to roll in
A driver is on their own with maps of private publication
Hangs by one unsheared bolt
Upside down on a galvanized pole
Beside the only road out of town
Not heeded by the reckless
Not needed by the cautious
Hard to read and hardly read when legible
Seen while exiting the town's one lonely cafe
You may not be in the habit of reading signs
Signs of the seasons? Nope.
I got girly shop calendars for that on the wall
Signs of the times? Nope.
I got CNN news on the tube and they're on the ball
Signs of the cross? Nope.
Unless I'm on the ropes, not til Judgment day calls
Route drivers circle back to receive board special sacraments
Chew chicken fried steak silently in cafe booths built for four
Say nothing about alleged dangers down the road, nada
Nada about scenic overlooks or interesting strangers, nothing
At days end when twilight begins, night starts to roll in
A driver is on their own with maps of private publication
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday Daylight Be Wastin', Wastrel Wench
Introduction:
My grandpa for a while was a tenant sharecropper. Weekends before he got religion, he liked to go out to the dances. Granpa was your normal cowboy - played fiddle, carried a boot knife, got into fights. Lucky one dance night for him he forgot his knife the night he got into a bad fight.
Otherwise during the Depression instead of working as a prison guard ... He would have ended up one of the "guests" of Texas, "camping out". Might even have been a roommate with Clyde Barrow, who he bullwhipped once. Granpa bullwhipped Clyde because Clyde came short a few seconds of shooting Granpa. That was during a break when Bonnie killed another guard on the other side of the field. But that's another story and another poem for another day.
This ... "pome", of sorts, is for my Granpa - in his younger tenant sharecropper fiddling knife carrying dancing drinking fighting pre-prison guard cowboy days.
Friday Daylight Be Wastin', Wastrel Wench
Leave the low paying vineyards, find a better sharecropper camp
Thumb a ride where bands play weekends, no cover charge
Friday sun sets on horizon, good love luck forces be a rising
Moonlight soon to wash ironed blouses stiff from their sizing
Skirts soon to swirl swishing, boys and girls soon to be wishing
That tonight luck favors both the brave and coward alike
You've better things to do with your limited time and
Nights are for - well, somebody got to drink the wine
Why not play your best hand on those few hours off
But work the odds, best no bluff bets 'gainst the house
Oh Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight
Yes, Buffalo Gals we will come, come tonight and dance by the light of the moon
Years later we won't search for albums you put up on shelf
With pictures of you and me and your old vamp self
We won't resell old gossip and news tips long gone stale
I ain't one to drink bad water from just any old pail, hon
Oh Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight
Yes, Buffalo Gals we will come, come tonight and dance by the light of the moon
My grandpa for a while was a tenant sharecropper. Weekends before he got religion, he liked to go out to the dances. Granpa was your normal cowboy - played fiddle, carried a boot knife, got into fights. Lucky one dance night for him he forgot his knife the night he got into a bad fight.
Otherwise during the Depression instead of working as a prison guard ... He would have ended up one of the "guests" of Texas, "camping out". Might even have been a roommate with Clyde Barrow, who he bullwhipped once. Granpa bullwhipped Clyde because Clyde came short a few seconds of shooting Granpa. That was during a break when Bonnie killed another guard on the other side of the field. But that's another story and another poem for another day.
This ... "pome", of sorts, is for my Granpa - in his younger tenant sharecropper fiddling knife carrying dancing drinking fighting pre-prison guard cowboy days.
Friday Daylight Be Wastin', Wastrel Wench
Leave the low paying vineyards, find a better sharecropper camp
Thumb a ride where bands play weekends, no cover charge
Friday sun sets on horizon, good love luck forces be a rising
Moonlight soon to wash ironed blouses stiff from their sizing
Skirts soon to swirl swishing, boys and girls soon to be wishing
That tonight luck favors both the brave and coward alike
You've better things to do with your limited time and
Nights are for - well, somebody got to drink the wine
Why not play your best hand on those few hours off
But work the odds, best no bluff bets 'gainst the house
Oh Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight
Yes, Buffalo Gals we will come, come tonight and dance by the light of the moon
Years later we won't search for albums you put up on shelf
With pictures of you and me and your old vamp self
We won't resell old gossip and news tips long gone stale
I ain't one to drink bad water from just any old pail, hon
Oh Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight
Yes, Buffalo Gals we will come, come tonight and dance by the light of the moon
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
While Walking The Dog After Morning Rain
street curb gutters fill with sheened reflection
waving fresh news of a morning storm like paperboys
ditch water taught with tension and smoothed surfaces
impresses on itself a cross hatch diamond face
liquid ribbons cross hatched to run cuts of straight crinkle
tugging surface creases into line by curb and concrete underlay
storm gates are the winning receiver of merged raindrops
sprinting to finish downhill 5Ks to the greater liquid whole
like panting puppies eager to be first to the tossed ball
water comes to a corner turn, slows to stop by the choice
of which way to go? at corners things have time to settle -
tea colored leaves, sticks, soil and soaked grass clippings
if underlay softens, you break surface tensions
water puts on a new face of pure calm, spreads itself
too wide to step over easy so we return to our home
put the puppy away, adorn commercial armor, cease to play
now go earn pay for the taxes eating
your check boxed soul's labored endeavors
please don't let that be all what happened
if sight can linger, hang this aback in your mind
throughout the live long slug dog day
the morning breezes on your cheek,
what you breathed on the way home
a lover's kiss was blown at home's door
en route to your fray for impersonal profit
what compares to that cool and calm?
composure - the perfect perfume
you need some to soothe a jangled soul,
when it is crank yanked counterclockwise
by desk phones that shake it up baby,
ring and shout while you work it on out
waving fresh news of a morning storm like paperboys
ditch water taught with tension and smoothed surfaces
impresses on itself a cross hatch diamond face
liquid ribbons cross hatched to run cuts of straight crinkle
tugging surface creases into line by curb and concrete underlay
storm gates are the winning receiver of merged raindrops
sprinting to finish downhill 5Ks to the greater liquid whole
like panting puppies eager to be first to the tossed ball
water comes to a corner turn, slows to stop by the choice
of which way to go? at corners things have time to settle -
tea colored leaves, sticks, soil and soaked grass clippings
if underlay softens, you break surface tensions
water puts on a new face of pure calm, spreads itself
too wide to step over easy so we return to our home
put the puppy away, adorn commercial armor, cease to play
now go earn pay for the taxes eating
your check boxed soul's labored endeavors
please don't let that be all what happened
if sight can linger, hang this aback in your mind
throughout the live long slug dog day
the morning breezes on your cheek,
what you breathed on the way home
a lover's kiss was blown at home's door
en route to your fray for impersonal profit
what compares to that cool and calm?
composure - the perfect perfume
you need some to soothe a jangled soul,
when it is crank yanked counterclockwise
by desk phones that shake it up baby,
ring and shout while you work it on out
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Cheap Rhyme Answers A Fair Question
Asked if I wax and then wane or am always so deep
To answer that question cheap rhymes will I speak
Tides run with the moon, so I wax and I wane
As night next to day, I change and stay the same
Earth circles the the sun, same old seasons get spun
The road I am on is the road that I run
But bounce on waved waters or swim silent below
Where ever you are it's from there you must go
To answer that question cheap rhymes will I speak
Tides run with the moon, so I wax and I wane
As night next to day, I change and stay the same
Earth circles the the sun, same old seasons get spun
The road I am on is the road that I run
But bounce on waved waters or swim silent below
Where ever you are it's from there you must go
Saturday, July 18, 2009
En Route To Heaven's Gate, Next Stop - Bus Lobby Church
At a bus stop lobby I wait for my ride to Heaven's Gate. Poet WS Merwyn drops by. He gives me a personal reading of his poems. He’s got many poems with powerful one-line grabbers at the end. That Merwyn, he’s got a real good closer-trick going on there. Salespeople could make good money if they closed deals like he closes the trap on your attention.
While WS Merwyn reads, Country Western singer Trace Adkins glides by on a Rose Bowl parade float. He is playing "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk", with proper background dancers in sprayed-on bluejeans. He then starts playing his old hit, “Chrome” and points at me. Shooting a magic twitch into my fingers, Trace lets me play for 30 minutes.
Now I can play guitar like I always wanted. Versus "play at" which is mostly what I do with lots of things. But now I play so well that everybody including hardshell Baptists get up in bus lobby to dance. We all have a great time, even the hardshell Baptists - who figure after this gig is over, they will have to repent big time.
But not repent entirely, though if it was all up to them they would double pure, double sure. Before they can finish their explaining, St Peter at Gate would interrupt. St Peter would say what was the problem anyway, and why didn't they tip the band? 'Cause they wuz really smokin' that night, especially that guest guitar player. Is he with you, I want to talk with him.
Night drops into the bus dock and washes in deep blue ink in the sky above my head. My bus finally pulls up. Time to go on the next leg of my journey. Bus doors open with a hissing swish that could sound evil, but don't. Music from ZZ Top pours out of the overhead speakers.
As I get on board for my next destination, a Thomas Tallis 40-voice English motet is playing in my iPod earbuds. A bit of entranced enchantment settles on my face. Right quick before the final stage of trance I wake up and smell cheap coffee from the bus lobby diner. The smell of burnt cheap coffee is like the smell of burnt out souls, it keeps me from slipping too far into a vapid trance. Keeps me in the plain old here and now. Or what's left of it, this close to Heaven's Gate. Things get ethereal the further you get from Earth and the closer to Heaven. Ever try to hug smoke? Not an easy thing to do.
Down the bus aisle, I see someone reading the very same book I am carrying. One that I am planning to read; and I might even finish it this time (probably Don Quixote). Lotsa time to pass in eternity, so my stack of unfinished books will get whittled down soon. I take a chance to sit alongside this person. This time it works out great, I listen to her and finish one more book by hearing the cliff notes first hand. Before the night fades into day, one more friend is made on the multi-stop ride to Heaven's Gate.
I am hungry for some chow, but by music and friendly connection, my soul's been fed. That's bread that used to I knew not of and did not partake of near enough before I came to Bus Lobby Church. Those days of starvation by hesitation are long one, since now I am en route to the Diner of Heavenly Delight. Still, I wonder if deep fried Twinkies in Heaven hang from every tree, and if there are vending fees before you pluck one down.
Hey I did tip the band before I got onto the bus. Tipped them right good. Nothing for me to worry about come time to talk with St Peter.
Not that I know about, anyhow.
While WS Merwyn reads, Country Western singer Trace Adkins glides by on a Rose Bowl parade float. He is playing "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk", with proper background dancers in sprayed-on bluejeans. He then starts playing his old hit, “Chrome” and points at me. Shooting a magic twitch into my fingers, Trace lets me play for 30 minutes.
Now I can play guitar like I always wanted. Versus "play at" which is mostly what I do with lots of things. But now I play so well that everybody including hardshell Baptists get up in bus lobby to dance. We all have a great time, even the hardshell Baptists - who figure after this gig is over, they will have to repent big time.
But not repent entirely, though if it was all up to them they would double pure, double sure. Before they can finish their explaining, St Peter at Gate would interrupt. St Peter would say what was the problem anyway, and why didn't they tip the band? 'Cause they wuz really smokin' that night, especially that guest guitar player. Is he with you, I want to talk with him.
Night drops into the bus dock and washes in deep blue ink in the sky above my head. My bus finally pulls up. Time to go on the next leg of my journey. Bus doors open with a hissing swish that could sound evil, but don't. Music from ZZ Top pours out of the overhead speakers.
As I get on board for my next destination, a Thomas Tallis 40-voice English motet is playing in my iPod earbuds. A bit of entranced enchantment settles on my face. Right quick before the final stage of trance I wake up and smell cheap coffee from the bus lobby diner. The smell of burnt cheap coffee is like the smell of burnt out souls, it keeps me from slipping too far into a vapid trance. Keeps me in the plain old here and now. Or what's left of it, this close to Heaven's Gate. Things get ethereal the further you get from Earth and the closer to Heaven. Ever try to hug smoke? Not an easy thing to do.
Down the bus aisle, I see someone reading the very same book I am carrying. One that I am planning to read; and I might even finish it this time (probably Don Quixote). Lotsa time to pass in eternity, so my stack of unfinished books will get whittled down soon. I take a chance to sit alongside this person. This time it works out great, I listen to her and finish one more book by hearing the cliff notes first hand. Before the night fades into day, one more friend is made on the multi-stop ride to Heaven's Gate.
I am hungry for some chow, but by music and friendly connection, my soul's been fed. That's bread that used to I knew not of and did not partake of near enough before I came to Bus Lobby Church. Those days of starvation by hesitation are long one, since now I am en route to the Diner of Heavenly Delight. Still, I wonder if deep fried Twinkies in Heaven hang from every tree, and if there are vending fees before you pluck one down.
Hey I did tip the band before I got onto the bus. Tipped them right good. Nothing for me to worry about come time to talk with St Peter.
Not that I know about, anyhow.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Rabbits and Dillos and Deer, Oh My!
Summer Weekend Perfection starts with a Saturday morning bike ride along a canopied forest trail. A hot summer sun saunas you on those short breaks of canopy come some open meadow here and there. The pace you want to keep is barn burner fast. As fast as you can stand.
Along the way you see touches of wildlife bounding from edge of forest and meadow. Deer, armadillo, maybe a rabbit; things that get by on edges that demarque the tamely populated wild lands from savage socially ambitious suburbs. Real loner predators of the 1850s prairie range, like cougars and jaguars, they got edged out long ago by adaptive, more agressive non-native species - like packs of feral hogs (escaped after import by careless European settlers) and suburban tract developers (mere roadside dump by irresponsible vacationers from Hell who abandon unwanted pets before returning home).
So we got... Rabbits and Dillos and Deer, Oh My!
Whoop de poopy doo doo; but hey, that is all that is left, so that is what is; and we are where we are. But all is/can be holy if still in grace with the Creator or a sentient observer. At the ride's end is a spring fed river whose banks are lined with shade trees. Lucky you, the trail ends right next to an outdoor camp site with grill, and...
Omigod, archbishop's chamberpot Batman - the park is hosting an outdoor Egyptian belly dancer convention! Striped tents, thrumming drums, snake dancers, jackpot!
Looky looky at the wind, it too enchanted by the prospects of this event. See how it flows round those silken gossamer clad dancing does. See that rush of air over the skin and the slay of their hair spin. Who's the enticer and who's the enticed here? Wind whips gladly as it flirts. World and dancer each smugly believing they are the enhancer of this dance - but both act in concert to make the felt breeze as strong between as the two can stand and not unmake their embrace. In short: a whole lotta thumping jumping and writhing going on.
Coast your knobby tired ride to a stop, do a trick dismount to one foot on the pedal before step splashing down into the shock chilly water that is willy nilly crashing off rocks. Rocks that laugh wet and hearty, a laugh that invites you in. Go in and under all the way, go back to a womb of awakening water and hold your breath like before you were born. Practice bursting out into a new world using legs thrust up on unsure footing atop slippery gravel smoothed by eons of river time.
Walk yourself and your bike out to the river edge, soaked to skin and briefly shiver cold to look for campfire wood. Even if Glad Sandwich baggies leaked river water on your marshmallows and Graham Crackers, you can still stand tall to speak without apology to the wood gods living by this River. Declare your petition as you search for kindling: "S'more, Sirs. Can we please make S'Mores." If you are polite and firm you will find fuel to make the heat you seek.
For yet your stash of dark bittersweet chocolate remains unharmed. And while there is chocolate there is the bittersweet - hard bought wisdom and immanent joy. Think those Arabesque conventioneers at the camp site next door might trade for chocolate in exchange for dry graham crackers and fresh marshmallows?
Your day has started out right and the sun is not yet as high as you feel; so go forth on this gambit and ask brazenly, haggle. It's a venal sin if you hesitate. Worse if you balk. Mortal if you only talk in your head to yourself, and walk away without cutting a deal with the dervish devils next door. So go cross a camp site line into the world next door and ask, bargain, charm, be charmed. Offer to play by refusing lightly, but only temporarily. Time is wasting and there's no need to go fasting.
This ain't ocean front, it's the river and even if it were a beach, there's no way to gather sand underfoot and stuff it into your own drained hourglass anyway.
Along the way you see touches of wildlife bounding from edge of forest and meadow. Deer, armadillo, maybe a rabbit; things that get by on edges that demarque the tamely populated wild lands from savage socially ambitious suburbs. Real loner predators of the 1850s prairie range, like cougars and jaguars, they got edged out long ago by adaptive, more agressive non-native species - like packs of feral hogs (escaped after import by careless European settlers) and suburban tract developers (mere roadside dump by irresponsible vacationers from Hell who abandon unwanted pets before returning home).
So we got... Rabbits and Dillos and Deer, Oh My!
Whoop de poopy doo doo; but hey, that is all that is left, so that is what is; and we are where we are. But all is/can be holy if still in grace with the Creator or a sentient observer. At the ride's end is a spring fed river whose banks are lined with shade trees. Lucky you, the trail ends right next to an outdoor camp site with grill, and...
Omigod, archbishop's chamberpot Batman - the park is hosting an outdoor Egyptian belly dancer convention! Striped tents, thrumming drums, snake dancers, jackpot!
Looky looky at the wind, it too enchanted by the prospects of this event. See how it flows round those silken gossamer clad dancing does. See that rush of air over the skin and the slay of their hair spin. Who's the enticer and who's the enticed here? Wind whips gladly as it flirts. World and dancer each smugly believing they are the enhancer of this dance - but both act in concert to make the felt breeze as strong between as the two can stand and not unmake their embrace. In short: a whole lotta thumping jumping and writhing going on.
Coast your knobby tired ride to a stop, do a trick dismount to one foot on the pedal before step splashing down into the shock chilly water that is willy nilly crashing off rocks. Rocks that laugh wet and hearty, a laugh that invites you in. Go in and under all the way, go back to a womb of awakening water and hold your breath like before you were born. Practice bursting out into a new world using legs thrust up on unsure footing atop slippery gravel smoothed by eons of river time.
Walk yourself and your bike out to the river edge, soaked to skin and briefly shiver cold to look for campfire wood. Even if Glad Sandwich baggies leaked river water on your marshmallows and Graham Crackers, you can still stand tall to speak without apology to the wood gods living by this River. Declare your petition as you search for kindling: "S'more, Sirs. Can we please make S'Mores." If you are polite and firm you will find fuel to make the heat you seek.
For yet your stash of dark bittersweet chocolate remains unharmed. And while there is chocolate there is the bittersweet - hard bought wisdom and immanent joy. Think those Arabesque conventioneers at the camp site next door might trade for chocolate in exchange for dry graham crackers and fresh marshmallows?
Your day has started out right and the sun is not yet as high as you feel; so go forth on this gambit and ask brazenly, haggle. It's a venal sin if you hesitate. Worse if you balk. Mortal if you only talk in your head to yourself, and walk away without cutting a deal with the dervish devils next door. So go cross a camp site line into the world next door and ask, bargain, charm, be charmed. Offer to play by refusing lightly, but only temporarily. Time is wasting and there's no need to go fasting.
This ain't ocean front, it's the river and even if it were a beach, there's no way to gather sand underfoot and stuff it into your own drained hourglass anyway.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Dusk, Green Bikes And Tangerine Tea
Shells of spent July 4th fireworks on grass lie about
Cicadas make raspy chitter chirps from places of hiding
A weak tea orange sky percolates above my forehead's horizon
As I get out of my Bubba Big Butt Redneck Dually Dodge truck
NPR shining night star Teri Gross let a guest preacher testify
Preach to a radio pew where I was just sitting, service now let out
He taunted devils yet to strike us later tonight in the wee hours
We best watch out for their attack of the lonely 3am blues
By ringing heaps of praise on vintage 1975 Toni Bennet & Bill Evans CDs
The pulpit's guest slings his shot at the coming dark hordes
My own choir gathers, cicadas tsinging jazz scat like a soft brush on cymbals
Summer night wakes up and chains links a memory fence, stirs tangerine tea into ink
I walk my new dog and watch him chew his newfound drum stick
While I chew the fat with some of the alley cats, soul passers by
A tired father pumps up the tire on a fat tired green Schwinn bike
As my shrill shill cicada chorus pumps up their volume to the max
Without so much as a nod from me nor any gesture or tricks
Not a turn of any dial, like me it all just happens, like I happen
The father, he asks how I am as his son's bike takes off, my reply must be brief
"Cicada choirs, and tangerine tea with mint are what we lived for 20 years from now"
Cicadas make raspy chitter chirps from places of hiding
A weak tea orange sky percolates above my forehead's horizon
As I get out of my Bubba Big Butt Redneck Dually Dodge truck
NPR shining night star Teri Gross let a guest preacher testify
Preach to a radio pew where I was just sitting, service now let out
He taunted devils yet to strike us later tonight in the wee hours
We best watch out for their attack of the lonely 3am blues
By ringing heaps of praise on vintage 1975 Toni Bennet & Bill Evans CDs
The pulpit's guest slings his shot at the coming dark hordes
My own choir gathers, cicadas tsinging jazz scat like a soft brush on cymbals
Summer night wakes up and chains links a memory fence, stirs tangerine tea into ink
I walk my new dog and watch him chew his newfound drum stick
While I chew the fat with some of the alley cats, soul passers by
A tired father pumps up the tire on a fat tired green Schwinn bike
As my shrill shill cicada chorus pumps up their volume to the max
Without so much as a nod from me nor any gesture or tricks
Not a turn of any dial, like me it all just happens, like I happen
The father, he asks how I am as his son's bike takes off, my reply must be brief
"Cicada choirs, and tangerine tea with mint are what we lived for 20 years from now"
Monday, July 13, 2009
Episode Fourteen: PETA relax. No animals living or dead harmed on my behalf
Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Fourteen: PETA relax. No animals living or dead harmed on my behalf
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) true believers, relax. No animals living or dead were harmed on my behalf before, during or after my cardiac surgery. I'm not sure if there is a certification for "animal free" surgical procedures. But if so I'd pass all animal suffering tests with flying colors, like old times passing exams at my high school.
See I was good, sickeningly good, at taking exams in high school. More than a few types desired to cheat off my papers. Freak hippie chicks, not just dumb jocks. Hmm, dumb jocks - there I go, redundant again. Not so lucky at cards or at love was I mind you but the very floors in high school classrooms seemed to roll good exam grades over into my corner.
Yeah, the classroom floors must have been canted in my favor grade wise, in unseen hyper space dimensions. I'd say it was the 5th, 6th, and 7th dimensions jacked in my favor. Maybe more. Stephen Hawking says reality in toto might be as many as 11 dimensions in all. Our only big catch (and it's a big one, natch) is how curled up tiny would be the dimensions past # 4. The fourth dimension (time) is familiar and is most people's big worry. The time dimension and how we might be running short on what's in it is a big concern to most. Out of time is eventual, since time leaks out of the 4th but not back into it.
Yep, no reverse tidal flow on time as far as we know. Those who don't worry enough about time pass it like water. Those who fret to excess over time's one way flow just burn a lot of it up with nothing to show for the worry. Time? Not a dimension useful for controlling outcomes if put into the hands of the apathetic or anxious. Other dimensions work better for them than #4 time.
Got to be a better middle course way to deal with time besides ignorance or worry. But what higher dimension that path lies in, I dunno. Could be inside the 10th or 11th dimensions.
Usually I'd take the trouble to find out which dimension that is, before I wrote this, so's I can tell you. But after my divorce I don't get out much to travel, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, the stellar exam outcomes they rolled my way, maybe across the floor via these unseen higher dimensions. Whichever were the dimensional ones that affected exam grades. On tests for spelling, history, literature - never had much to worry about. Not to worry about like time, running out of time, anyway.
One might wish (as I did) that those tiny curled up higher dimensions past the golden #4 of time could have distilled something in high school more like rollicking good fun, versus just good grades. Yeah, something that works better like how coiled copper pipes do when they trickle out drops of moonshine. Or lines of sonnets, how they work to seep into pens of poets, scratching out lines that punch the gut and send the mind of writer and reader alike reeling.
What plumbing in what unseen dimension does those things I dunno, but I gotta find what dimension to go to, to get me some of that. How do I buy, where do I sign?
Just time trickled out of dimension # 4. Maybe choice or fate factored more in the outcomes of grades, love and luck at cards. But my twist to the old nature/nurture, fate/choice dilemma that I hope to market for profit is: Blame the unseen curled up dimensions of reality for distilling all your bad luck. Point fingers at action behind the curtained stage of the seen reality. Leap beyond the limiting restrictions of causality and personal responsibility. Don't blame yourself for anything. Blame the unseen dimensions.
In regards to PETA's animal suffering test, that old Unseen Dimensional mojo from HS was in effect, sputtering pennies from heaven down on me. There was no need to take parts for transplant from the innocent animals to keep me ticking. My chest crack to repair an aortic aneurysm involved no borrowed flesh. Not even a vein from my own leg had to change places.
Much like elections in Chicago and dead Texans voting in alphabetical order for Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, the fix was in and the fix was all artificial. Two inches of arterial real estate - all replaced by dacron tubing.
When your personalized Medical Prophecy of Deadly Aortic Diameters is 99.9 percent realized, you get medical religion and act pronto to get medically righteous. Not that in this newly gotten religion any repentance was needed.
Moral dilemmas about child labor practices, or ecologically destructive packaging need apply at the back door of this experience. And no repentance - this cardiac gift of the gods was not caused by what I did/didn't eat, smoke, shoot, sip or snort. So as Teddy Roosevelt might put it, it was merely time to "Get action". Some surgical action.
Honestly I'd have to force this to be a moral issue for me. Unless I want to unbless myself by subscribing to theologies of Original Sin, it's time to move on.
To anybody waking up in a bathtub of ice sans a kidney, a vein or a chunk of artery I say - hey, it wasn't me. Go over to the Unseen Higher Dimensions to round up your usual suspects.
Yours Truly and Ridiculous,
From Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Fourteen: PETA relax. No animals living or dead harmed on my behalf
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) true believers, relax. No animals living or dead were harmed on my behalf before, during or after my cardiac surgery. I'm not sure if there is a certification for "animal free" surgical procedures. But if so I'd pass all animal suffering tests with flying colors, like old times passing exams at my high school.
See I was good, sickeningly good, at taking exams in high school. More than a few types desired to cheat off my papers. Freak hippie chicks, not just dumb jocks. Hmm, dumb jocks - there I go, redundant again. Not so lucky at cards or at love was I mind you but the very floors in high school classrooms seemed to roll good exam grades over into my corner.
Yeah, the classroom floors must have been canted in my favor grade wise, in unseen hyper space dimensions. I'd say it was the 5th, 6th, and 7th dimensions jacked in my favor. Maybe more. Stephen Hawking says reality in toto might be as many as 11 dimensions in all. Our only big catch (and it's a big one, natch) is how curled up tiny would be the dimensions past # 4. The fourth dimension (time) is familiar and is most people's big worry. The time dimension and how we might be running short on what's in it is a big concern to most. Out of time is eventual, since time leaks out of the 4th but not back into it.
Yep, no reverse tidal flow on time as far as we know. Those who don't worry enough about time pass it like water. Those who fret to excess over time's one way flow just burn a lot of it up with nothing to show for the worry. Time? Not a dimension useful for controlling outcomes if put into the hands of the apathetic or anxious. Other dimensions work better for them than #4 time.
Got to be a better middle course way to deal with time besides ignorance or worry. But what higher dimension that path lies in, I dunno. Could be inside the 10th or 11th dimensions.
Usually I'd take the trouble to find out which dimension that is, before I wrote this, so's I can tell you. But after my divorce I don't get out much to travel, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, the stellar exam outcomes they rolled my way, maybe across the floor via these unseen higher dimensions. Whichever were the dimensional ones that affected exam grades. On tests for spelling, history, literature - never had much to worry about. Not to worry about like time, running out of time, anyway.
One might wish (as I did) that those tiny curled up higher dimensions past the golden #4 of time could have distilled something in high school more like rollicking good fun, versus just good grades. Yeah, something that works better like how coiled copper pipes do when they trickle out drops of moonshine. Or lines of sonnets, how they work to seep into pens of poets, scratching out lines that punch the gut and send the mind of writer and reader alike reeling.
What plumbing in what unseen dimension does those things I dunno, but I gotta find what dimension to go to, to get me some of that. How do I buy, where do I sign?
Just time trickled out of dimension # 4. Maybe choice or fate factored more in the outcomes of grades, love and luck at cards. But my twist to the old nature/nurture, fate/choice dilemma that I hope to market for profit is: Blame the unseen curled up dimensions of reality for distilling all your bad luck. Point fingers at action behind the curtained stage of the seen reality. Leap beyond the limiting restrictions of causality and personal responsibility. Don't blame yourself for anything. Blame the unseen dimensions.
In regards to PETA's animal suffering test, that old Unseen Dimensional mojo from HS was in effect, sputtering pennies from heaven down on me. There was no need to take parts for transplant from the innocent animals to keep me ticking. My chest crack to repair an aortic aneurysm involved no borrowed flesh. Not even a vein from my own leg had to change places.
Much like elections in Chicago and dead Texans voting in alphabetical order for Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, the fix was in and the fix was all artificial. Two inches of arterial real estate - all replaced by dacron tubing.
When your personalized Medical Prophecy of Deadly Aortic Diameters is 99.9 percent realized, you get medical religion and act pronto to get medically righteous. Not that in this newly gotten religion any repentance was needed.
Moral dilemmas about child labor practices, or ecologically destructive packaging need apply at the back door of this experience. And no repentance - this cardiac gift of the gods was not caused by what I did/didn't eat, smoke, shoot, sip or snort. So as Teddy Roosevelt might put it, it was merely time to "Get action". Some surgical action.
Honestly I'd have to force this to be a moral issue for me. Unless I want to unbless myself by subscribing to theologies of Original Sin, it's time to move on.
To anybody waking up in a bathtub of ice sans a kidney, a vein or a chunk of artery I say - hey, it wasn't me. Go over to the Unseen Higher Dimensions to round up your usual suspects.
Yours Truly and Ridiculous,
From Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
Sunday, July 12, 2009
2AM NIGHT TRAIN TAKE ME SOMEPLACE NEW
2AM NIGHT TRAIN, TAKE ME SOMEPLACE NEW
Trains pass through our town at 2AM, trains that wake village sleepers
Bind those that wake with spells and enchantments to listen immobile
Tracks are switched by invisible hands to derail dreams in progress
Dreams not to be remembered anyway come time to rise for work
The howling of locomotive horns holds back behind the stage curtain
The very understudies called up from the actors' union hiring hall
Understudies and their thoughts wait on tiptoe trembling, ready to leap
But remain unperformed behind the threshold lines taped on floor
Lines across which lies recognition and fame, action its own reward
Rented aspirations lay piled like discarded dressing room clothes
All put away unpurchased, unowned, unearned - unworn, saddest of all
As the ow ow owling night train howl bays, bleeds a last spurt of hot combusted breath,
A finale for the night concert, fading the cry to love new chances that ought be taken
And leaves in beds and heads of the gathered audience piled high
Dry leaves raked for dispersal, twirling counterclockwise in winds of sighs
That stir every morning a few steps, just a few steps more ahead
Of the planet's change from night watch to day labors
Twice, thrice each night the gypsy caravan rolls in
And sounds through each darkened block of our town
And every house in earshot can attend the show
All can open the gate between sleeping and waking worlds
Brittle leaves of still desire and dessicated hope swirl spellbound
Go green and supple if for only passing minutes while the call is heard
You need only be alive tomorrow night to catch the next sound drift
And not too tired, and troubled enough to not sleep too soundly
The passing 2AM train calls a number, your cardboard badge on the actors' hiring wall
If dues are paid, loyal union hands can stand ready to take the call and cheat Death
And taxes a little in lives imagined onstage, while the train horns call the village roll
Trains pass through our town at 2AM, trains that wake village sleepers
Bind those that wake with spells and enchantments to listen immobile
Tracks are switched by invisible hands to derail dreams in progress
Dreams not to be remembered anyway come time to rise for work
The howling of locomotive horns holds back behind the stage curtain
The very understudies called up from the actors' union hiring hall
Understudies and their thoughts wait on tiptoe trembling, ready to leap
But remain unperformed behind the threshold lines taped on floor
Lines across which lies recognition and fame, action its own reward
Rented aspirations lay piled like discarded dressing room clothes
All put away unpurchased, unowned, unearned - unworn, saddest of all
As the ow ow owling night train howl bays, bleeds a last spurt of hot combusted breath,
A finale for the night concert, fading the cry to love new chances that ought be taken
And leaves in beds and heads of the gathered audience piled high
Dry leaves raked for dispersal, twirling counterclockwise in winds of sighs
That stir every morning a few steps, just a few steps more ahead
Of the planet's change from night watch to day labors
Twice, thrice each night the gypsy caravan rolls in
And sounds through each darkened block of our town
And every house in earshot can attend the show
All can open the gate between sleeping and waking worlds
Brittle leaves of still desire and dessicated hope swirl spellbound
Go green and supple if for only passing minutes while the call is heard
You need only be alive tomorrow night to catch the next sound drift
And not too tired, and troubled enough to not sleep too soundly
The passing 2AM train calls a number, your cardboard badge on the actors' hiring wall
If dues are paid, loyal union hands can stand ready to take the call and cheat Death
And taxes a little in lives imagined onstage, while the train horns call the village roll
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Episode Thirteen: Vice Versa Vertue
Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Thirteen: Vice Versa Vertue
I prepared for my heart surgery by dropping 114 pounds, getting off two asthma meds, an acid reflux Rx, eliminating my sleep apnea, getting off high blood pressure meds and a severe anxiety Rx. And I did this by diet and exercise after decades of sedentary lifestyle. While undergoing an acrimonious divorce, to boot.
I promised in an earlier post to reveal to you my secret arsenal of strength that got me ready for heart surgery.
Below are the powerful forces that aided me in making huge life changes; these soliders of internal fortitude were the fighting force under joint command of myself and trainer ranger buddy Torkey the Terrible (aka Torquemada the Torturer). These are my Mighty Morphin Rangers of power:
1. Procrastination.
2. Laziness.
3. Fear.
4. A tiny dollop of will.
Note on #4: this is NOT what Nietzcheans call "Uberman Will To Power". Nah, just a lowercase 'w' snack portion sized chunka will, best labelled as tepid warmed over good intentions.
Great. This was my dream team of internal soldiers to fight for lifestyle change.
This was my army of invincibles, come time to make war within myself for a lifestyle change, for a shakedown makeover to prepare me for open heart surgery. To get me from living in a State of Inertia to a State of Readiness.
George Bush's secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said you go to war with the army you have, not the one you need. At least he was right about that one thing. Too bad about everything (and I do mean everything) else.
Well I had to use what soldiers I had inside to go to war with the Kingdom of Inertia. Inertia, our unofficial 51st state, and my State of Dissolution. And then it ocurred to me - the old kids game of rocks paper scissors. As a strategy for creating the Will to Fight.
Ends up Fear could overpower Lazy by whispering "You're gonna die if you don't get fit. Or worse, have a stroke and wear a drool cup strapped under your chin with duct tape to catch the spittle while you lie in bed waiting to die".
Yow, scary. Scary enough to scramble up some action.
Fine start, now that Fear had given a proper whuppin to Lazy. But that's only a start, not enough to get across the finish line. Evil internal Overlord Procrastinator still reigned and had to be trumped - but how?
Well turns out that an hour of exercise immediately on rising from sleep could burn off more fat than 2 or 3 hours at night. So somebody was going to whisper strategic disinformation into Lazy's ear. True information, just "dissing" type info, in street lingo terms.
Ever see a nasty barfight at a beer joint? Admit it or not, barfights they go on inside your head, at neural junction hangouts for pending decisions. They start with a whisper into some drunk jerk's ear.
So somebody whispers into Mr Lazy's ear saying "Hey, that dude Mr Procrasinator on the other side of the bar, he says he's Top Dog around here. He says you better not even whimper at doing twice as much exercise later tonight. 'Cause that's the timing Mr Procrastinator wants and what Mr Procrastinator wants he gets. He says way past time for Mr Lazy to suck it up and do a doggie submission display - lay down and bare some throat, roll over - capiche? Geez, what kinda guy says that to everybody in earshot 'cept for you? The ladies, they were sure laughing their butts off at your for that one. At least the hottie ones were laughing. Them coyote uglies, at least they was sympathetic for you. Hey Mr Lazy, no way would I call you a Total Loser - I mean not like, you know, a complete Total Loser."
And such is how seeds of productive intra-psyche conflict are laid into the soil of one's soul.
The reigning regions of your brain ought to be named not medulla or cortex or frontal lobe. Instead they should carry monikers like those blinking above the doorway of small town county line watering holes - beer joints as we call 'em down in Texas.
Call one of these joints in your head the "Hell No We Don't Go" tavern, which shares a common dance floor with the "My Way or the Highway" saloon right next door. These two areas of your brain are beer joints where two cliques of self-sorry stick-in-the-muds glare at each other through a shared cutout in the fire code wall that divides these establishments. Left and right lobes of your brain, as it were.
Enough to say that from such straegic whispers, a big barfight done broke out in my head every morning come time to rise shine and exercise. A dirty eye-gouging street fight between Mr Lazy and Mr Procrastinator come every dawn. Before dawn, actually - what time the military type folk call "Oh Dark Thirty", about 30 minutes before sunrise, the darkest time to the human eye and soul and the will to rise.
This daily barfight starts and spills over onto the shared dance-around floor. Then it goes from the original establishment of Inertial Resistance To Improvement over to the joint next door that is selling the same Elixir of Excuses. All this was goin' on in mah haid, come every mornin' time. A self induced hangover of sorts, but with a solemn purpose in mind.
Not always but more often than not, Mr Lazy busted a longneck bottle over the head of Mr Procrastinator. Jim Croce would be delighted were he around to see it. Jim Croce would have stayed alive just to write another song about it; I can almost hear in in my head, over the jukebox as these two start to fighting.
See, I decided that hard changes made on an uphill grade, they are all about egging on two skunk-striped stupid small town bullies into a right proper barfight. In the end, the village is all the better off once they finish each other off. Despite all the broken furniture and cleanup cost.
Or look at it like a rewrite of the Godzilla monster movie where King Kong stops Godzilla from stomping the crap out of Tokyo. Godzilla he gets all upset about Tokyo wanting to change a few things for the better. And the only thing on hand to stop Godzilla besides lotsa too-little people was King Kong, asleep on his island.
One ticked off Godzilla. One cranky, irascible King Kong wanting not to be bothered. And many Lilliputians of virtue wanting effective change, but drenched in hopeless despair. Sounds a lot like the American body politic and our Two Party System to me.
This ain't gonna end well 'cept as a chance for Home Depot and Lowes to open new stores for the rebuilding of a stomped over Tokyo. Not unless the right spin is put on it. But before the Japanese home remodelling industry can rebound, you gotta rightly pit monster against monster. Vice against vice.
Let Godzilla and King Kong wear each other out as enemies. Then my internal Lilliputians of good will and virtue can move in for the kill. Then it becomes as easy as cowtipping. Worked for me, can work for you if you spin it right. That's the trick, to trick yourself into doing the right thing at the right time.
If only all of life's sucky stuck scenarios could be so deftly managed into a funny cartoon denouement. Try this one out, and if it works there's no charge owed me 'cept to tell folks where you got the idea - from this side of Cardiac County Line Road.
Yours Truly and Ridiculously
From Across Cardiac County Line Road,
James Sullivan
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Thirteen: Vice Versa Vertue
I prepared for my heart surgery by dropping 114 pounds, getting off two asthma meds, an acid reflux Rx, eliminating my sleep apnea, getting off high blood pressure meds and a severe anxiety Rx. And I did this by diet and exercise after decades of sedentary lifestyle. While undergoing an acrimonious divorce, to boot.
I promised in an earlier post to reveal to you my secret arsenal of strength that got me ready for heart surgery.
Below are the powerful forces that aided me in making huge life changes; these soliders of internal fortitude were the fighting force under joint command of myself and trainer ranger buddy Torkey the Terrible (aka Torquemada the Torturer). These are my Mighty Morphin Rangers of power:
1. Procrastination.
2. Laziness.
3. Fear.
4. A tiny dollop of will.
Note on #4: this is NOT what Nietzcheans call "Uberman Will To Power". Nah, just a lowercase 'w' snack portion sized chunka will, best labelled as tepid warmed over good intentions.
Great. This was my dream team of internal soldiers to fight for lifestyle change.
This was my army of invincibles, come time to make war within myself for a lifestyle change, for a shakedown makeover to prepare me for open heart surgery. To get me from living in a State of Inertia to a State of Readiness.
George Bush's secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said you go to war with the army you have, not the one you need. At least he was right about that one thing. Too bad about everything (and I do mean everything) else.
Well I had to use what soldiers I had inside to go to war with the Kingdom of Inertia. Inertia, our unofficial 51st state, and my State of Dissolution. And then it ocurred to me - the old kids game of rocks paper scissors. As a strategy for creating the Will to Fight.
Ends up Fear could overpower Lazy by whispering "You're gonna die if you don't get fit. Or worse, have a stroke and wear a drool cup strapped under your chin with duct tape to catch the spittle while you lie in bed waiting to die".
Yow, scary. Scary enough to scramble up some action.
Fine start, now that Fear had given a proper whuppin to Lazy. But that's only a start, not enough to get across the finish line. Evil internal Overlord Procrastinator still reigned and had to be trumped - but how?
Well turns out that an hour of exercise immediately on rising from sleep could burn off more fat than 2 or 3 hours at night. So somebody was going to whisper strategic disinformation into Lazy's ear. True information, just "dissing" type info, in street lingo terms.
Ever see a nasty barfight at a beer joint? Admit it or not, barfights they go on inside your head, at neural junction hangouts for pending decisions. They start with a whisper into some drunk jerk's ear.
So somebody whispers into Mr Lazy's ear saying "Hey, that dude Mr Procrasinator on the other side of the bar, he says he's Top Dog around here. He says you better not even whimper at doing twice as much exercise later tonight. 'Cause that's the timing Mr Procrastinator wants and what Mr Procrastinator wants he gets. He says way past time for Mr Lazy to suck it up and do a doggie submission display - lay down and bare some throat, roll over - capiche? Geez, what kinda guy says that to everybody in earshot 'cept for you? The ladies, they were sure laughing their butts off at your for that one. At least the hottie ones were laughing. Them coyote uglies, at least they was sympathetic for you. Hey Mr Lazy, no way would I call you a Total Loser - I mean not like, you know, a complete Total Loser."
And such is how seeds of productive intra-psyche conflict are laid into the soil of one's soul.
The reigning regions of your brain ought to be named not medulla or cortex or frontal lobe. Instead they should carry monikers like those blinking above the doorway of small town county line watering holes - beer joints as we call 'em down in Texas.
Call one of these joints in your head the "Hell No We Don't Go" tavern, which shares a common dance floor with the "My Way or the Highway" saloon right next door. These two areas of your brain are beer joints where two cliques of self-sorry stick-in-the-muds glare at each other through a shared cutout in the fire code wall that divides these establishments. Left and right lobes of your brain, as it were.
Enough to say that from such straegic whispers, a big barfight done broke out in my head every morning come time to rise shine and exercise. A dirty eye-gouging street fight between Mr Lazy and Mr Procrastinator come every dawn. Before dawn, actually - what time the military type folk call "Oh Dark Thirty", about 30 minutes before sunrise, the darkest time to the human eye and soul and the will to rise.
This daily barfight starts and spills over onto the shared dance-around floor. Then it goes from the original establishment of Inertial Resistance To Improvement over to the joint next door that is selling the same Elixir of Excuses. All this was goin' on in mah haid, come every mornin' time. A self induced hangover of sorts, but with a solemn purpose in mind.
Not always but more often than not, Mr Lazy busted a longneck bottle over the head of Mr Procrastinator. Jim Croce would be delighted were he around to see it. Jim Croce would have stayed alive just to write another song about it; I can almost hear in in my head, over the jukebox as these two start to fighting.
See, I decided that hard changes made on an uphill grade, they are all about egging on two skunk-striped stupid small town bullies into a right proper barfight. In the end, the village is all the better off once they finish each other off. Despite all the broken furniture and cleanup cost.
Or look at it like a rewrite of the Godzilla monster movie where King Kong stops Godzilla from stomping the crap out of Tokyo. Godzilla he gets all upset about Tokyo wanting to change a few things for the better. And the only thing on hand to stop Godzilla besides lotsa too-little people was King Kong, asleep on his island.
One ticked off Godzilla. One cranky, irascible King Kong wanting not to be bothered. And many Lilliputians of virtue wanting effective change, but drenched in hopeless despair. Sounds a lot like the American body politic and our Two Party System to me.
This ain't gonna end well 'cept as a chance for Home Depot and Lowes to open new stores for the rebuilding of a stomped over Tokyo. Not unless the right spin is put on it. But before the Japanese home remodelling industry can rebound, you gotta rightly pit monster against monster. Vice against vice.
Let Godzilla and King Kong wear each other out as enemies. Then my internal Lilliputians of good will and virtue can move in for the kill. Then it becomes as easy as cowtipping. Worked for me, can work for you if you spin it right. That's the trick, to trick yourself into doing the right thing at the right time.
If only all of life's sucky stuck scenarios could be so deftly managed into a funny cartoon denouement. Try this one out, and if it works there's no charge owed me 'cept to tell folks where you got the idea - from this side of Cardiac County Line Road.
Yours Truly and Ridiculously
From Across Cardiac County Line Road,
James Sullivan
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Episode Twelve: Hiccup The Stoner Recovery Dog
Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Twelve: Hiccup The Stoner Recovery Dog
Small mistakes can expand, get expensive. Quickly. Violating a small pragmatic rule may have proven that recently.
In earlier posts I mentioned that for the first 4 weeks of recovery from cardiac surgery I was not yet 'condoned' for solo walks. That's sister or auntie or girlfriend lingo for what the CIA calls 'sanctioned'. Well one Sunday morning in recovery week 3 I was short my 7am walking buddy. I was in need of my morning recovery walk. As was Hiccup the Recovery Wonder Dog, the Pocket Beagle puppy whose (initial) mission in life is to aid my recovery as a cardiac patient (patients with pets recover better than those without; and I am all about improving my odds).
What to do, with no sanctioning walking partner?
I decided to be ambitious. Push it a bit, get a little burn on by walking Hiccup a mile's distance to the Jupiter, a favorite coffeehouse haunt. We'd get in our walk and Hiccup would enjoy meeting some of the early Sunday Jupiter House crowd. Share the love, share the puppy, play a round of "Je Ne Se Quais".
"Je Ne Se Quais" - this is a coffeehouse tasting game I invented. It pits the wits of Jupiter House barristas against my nose and taste buds. Barrista adds a shot of mystery syrup on top of a shot of vanilla in a skim milk steamer. Then I guess the mystery flavor.
Briefly the score was neck and neck until barrista David (marketing major at University of North Texas), pulled out trickier tactics - double shots of vanilla too plain to believe; or slipped a subtle demi-dash of pumpkin under a decorative Ghiradelli syrup swirl of chocolate flair. Sneaky, devious and entirely legal - truly David is well trained in the dark arts of advertising to distract the senses and mislead the appetites of consumers.
Marketing major barristas - coming your economic way to hypnotize your tastes and inflate conzumer desires once they matriculate. Caveat Emptor, conzumers - Buyer Be Very Wary. In all that you do, in all that you shop.
I think my hopes for winning a round of "Je Ne Se Quais" is what tipped over my judgment towards the stupid. See, David ain't barrista-ing on Sunday mornings. My chances for victory are better Sunday mornings. So I set out to walk uphill with Hiccup just 1 teensy mile's distance to the Jupiter House. Along the sidewalked way I take on a distracting cold sweat. A bit too much? Bah, press on!
This while I am too distracted to notice that Hiccup the Recovery Wonder Dog chews on anything he smells (he is a puppy and he is a Beagle to boot). And that chew list lines out as: a stick, a piece of bark, a chunk of pecan shell, a leaf, and - as we later find out - two chunks of hallucionagenic toxic mushroom.
I go back to the 70s when 'shrooms were considered an interesting, umm, day trip out of town. I didn't do 'shrooms but had some hippie friends at Texas A&M - chemistry and agronomy majors - who did such tripping. And boy howdy was my dog tripping, just like these classic psychedelic sea sailing trippers of decades gone by.
Hiccup barked at things not there. Standing transfixed and trembling, his head bobbled listlessly about before breaking into a manic sprint around the apartment. But his little puppy hind legs clearly were progressing towards a complete loss of motor control.That last observation was the clincher; clearly he was ill, in some kind of toxic shock. So off to the doggy ER we go, me and driver buddy Kenneth.
While on the exam table Hiccup up chucks twice. The emergency vet is not aghast, only more curious. We find amongst the goo two suspicious soft chunks of brown vegetative matter that later proves out the 'shroom hypothesis.
My ward Hiccup - he turns 17 (weeks old) and starts doing drugs under my distracted nose - and doing 'shrooms, of all retro things. At least my dog is not a crack head or meth junkie.
Things are better now, after getting Hiccup out of doggie rehab for just under $1K of vet bills. I am so much more vigilant now during our morning walks. Hiccup feels none the more free for this. Not since an ultra kibosh comes down from the heavens on his trailside tastings of cigarette butts, dirt clods, bird poop splatter, and ANYTHING that looks like a 'shroom.
I ain't dying 'cause I ain't lying, word up to the people.
Yours Truly and Ridiculously
From Across Cardiac County Line Road,
James Sullivan
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Episode Eleven: Turning Around the Ship Of State
Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Eleven: Turning Around the Ship Of State
There ought to be 102 members in the US Senate. Not 100.
Know why?
'Cause the most populous state in America is not the state of California. Nor Texas or Florida. It's the oldest and most congressionally unrepresented great State of Inertia. That is where most Americans live. The most non voting voters live there, too.
Inertia is definitely not a State of Grace, but it ought to be our State of the Union. Call it if you will our foremost Metaphysical State. I live in this State of Inertia. As do you. Let us not lie to ourselves or each other about this, please.
The motto for this State of Mind is "Fix It But Without Involving Me Too Much". This motto I applied at first to getting ready for open heart surgery. Fix me up, get me to a State of Readiness but without me doing anything too different or too hard.
In the end I gave up on that approach as I took more personal responsibility to make beneficial lifestyle changes. It was not easy to pack up and migrate from the Great State of Inertia but I did.
What internal qualities did I draw upon to effect a radical lifestyle reversal? How did I make the hard changes that led to my dropping 114 pounds? Not to mention getting off two asthma meds, an acid reflux Rx, sleep apnea, high blood pressure meds and a severe anxiety Rx? And how did I make these changes after decades of sedentary lifestyle?
My secrets, my arsenal of strength I will reveal to you on another episode of Recovery Escapades. Stay tuned and join me later to find out. That episode will be titled something akin to "Vice Versus Vertue".
Yours Truly in Contradiction
From Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Eleven: Turning Around the Ship Of State
There ought to be 102 members in the US Senate. Not 100.
Know why?
'Cause the most populous state in America is not the state of California. Nor Texas or Florida. It's the oldest and most congressionally unrepresented great State of Inertia. That is where most Americans live. The most non voting voters live there, too.
Inertia is definitely not a State of Grace, but it ought to be our State of the Union. Call it if you will our foremost Metaphysical State. I live in this State of Inertia. As do you. Let us not lie to ourselves or each other about this, please.
The motto for this State of Mind is "Fix It But Without Involving Me Too Much". This motto I applied at first to getting ready for open heart surgery. Fix me up, get me to a State of Readiness but without me doing anything too different or too hard.
In the end I gave up on that approach as I took more personal responsibility to make beneficial lifestyle changes. It was not easy to pack up and migrate from the Great State of Inertia but I did.
What internal qualities did I draw upon to effect a radical lifestyle reversal? How did I make the hard changes that led to my dropping 114 pounds? Not to mention getting off two asthma meds, an acid reflux Rx, sleep apnea, high blood pressure meds and a severe anxiety Rx? And how did I make these changes after decades of sedentary lifestyle?
My secrets, my arsenal of strength I will reveal to you on another episode of Recovery Escapades. Stay tuned and join me later to find out. That episode will be titled something akin to "Vice Versus Vertue".
Yours Truly in Contradiction
From Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
Friday, July 3, 2009
When I was young my heart was an open book
When I was young my heart was an open book. Still is somewhat.
But so many pages since my uncertain start have been inserted and bound, written and turned. Lived days written in a book.
Written? Too kind; absurdly vain even. Less a diary to remember days of wine and roses, more like pages of scribble and untutored doodling.
Starting out, the blank journal that is your Book Of Life is slender.
Its covers closed as eyelids joined and sleep shuttered the book tight each night.
So does my Book Of Life go to press each night.
So does yours.
What has been written so far?
And what will we write in it tomorrow?
But so many pages since my uncertain start have been inserted and bound, written and turned. Lived days written in a book.
Written? Too kind; absurdly vain even. Less a diary to remember days of wine and roses, more like pages of scribble and untutored doodling.
Starting out, the blank journal that is your Book Of Life is slender.
Its covers closed as eyelids joined and sleep shuttered the book tight each night.
So does my Book Of Life go to press each night.
So does yours.
What has been written so far?
And what will we write in it tomorrow?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Eposode Ten: Noticias And A Sitdown With The Mob Boss
Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Ten: Noticias And A Sitdown With The Mob Boss
So I end up getting an open heart surgical procedure that cracked my chest open like a walnut. Almost 2 years to the day from that fateful day of the 'Sit Down' to get the noticias from with a pulmonary specialist.
Doc Pulmonary he gives us the noticias about my MRI results (noticias being Mexican media speak for news; spicy heart burning news like a chest crack deserves spicier delivery so instead of the flat tasting gringo word for news I prefer to say 'noticias' - more dramatic, and oh how I do love drama).
And like most noticias, there's good noticias and bad noticias. The 'Sit Down' begins.
That Sit Down with Doc Pulmonary was not unlike a classic mob movie scene - you know, the old Sit Down with a Mob Boss. One who has much to say about your fate. You sit patiently while the Boss talks in a measured, businesslike tone. You listen more than you talk. You may plead some, but in vain. You might as well plead to the old Roman gods. Or pray to a new god; one more modern, and more sympathetic (what Catholics call a saint).
But baby, know what this in Italian (or is it Latin) means - Que Sera Sera.
The Sit Down took place in a small room, much as these things do. But white lab coats were the norm instead of garish pin striped suits.
And the Sit Down room was in a big medical professional complex instead of the back a small Italian restaurant. Walls were lined not with stacked cans of Uncle Vitto's Sincerely Scicillian Tomato Paste. Nah, it was cluttered with charts of hearts and arteries cut open in what graphic artists call an exploded view. Fancy medical models and illustrations - courtesy of Pharmaceutical sales reps.
These Rx sales reps are the Pharmaceutical industry's henchmen. These Pharm industry henchmen show you how you might buy the farm should you not ask your doctor about Framalan Bimbo-Bonic Bromolo Marzipan or whatever the hell it is they are so handsomely commissioned to scare you into buying. No 'dese, dem or dose' in their fancy talk, but for all their gloss they are much like the 'fuggedaboudit' henchmen that wish to teach you why you oughtta "invest" into some "fire insurance" like what his 'firm' offered.
But you, Mr Too Clever By Half, refused. Their offer refused? Hence the need for a "Sit Down" with the Boss. But hey, with me it weren't quite like that. Nothing refused, nothing. Honest.
See it weren't nothing I paid or didn't pay, nothing I did or refused to do. Doc he called it a congenital defect (birth/genetic condition), my bulging artery just happened. So it was not what I ate or didn't eat. Or exercise I did or didn't do.
Like good old Romance of pulp paperback lore, like love slow bloomed with the gal next door, it just happened over time, on its own. No offer was refused, just a creeping condition went unnoticed until by accident it was discovered on an MRI meant to diagnose some digestive trouble. Lucky me, I was hit with a good accident for a change.
See my error was congenital (not to be confused with congenial). Not my fault here. No "Told you so" called for here. Wow, congenially congential.
And what a MAAAJOR disappointment that fact was. Not the disappointment of a chest crack outcome instead of Romance happening under your nose. And not a disappointment to me. But what a disappointment to the wife.
Ever see Daffy Duck about to leap forward to shout "Ha Ha! Told you so but did you listen? NO!"? He says that just before braking to a halt, stopped short in his tracks by some ironic cartoon action.
The wife? Hearing of the dreadful cure needed (open heart surgery), she rose from her seat in the Sit Down room, raised her arm to strike home her point of "Aha, proof again how you don't listen!", prepared to wave a finger like a flaming "I told you so" sword of just desserts, tensed like she was a Tiger Woods about to swing her club to drive that golf ball down the fairway of victory at Augusta. About to chase me down the street with nothin' but the Truth, but she got yanked back to her seat, wordlessly deflated as Mr Pulmonary said "This was not caused by anything you did or didn't do".
That was the good noticias, at least to me. Maybe also the bad news to the (now ex) wife, but that's for her to say. For me the bad noticias was what I could do to prevent the surgery: absolutely nothing. Not by losing weight, not by lowering my blood pressure, not by changing my diet - nyet nyet ne ne no no nada nada ningun nothing. Gotta go under the knife in oh two to six years. Only a chance in a million to avoid, and would be with fresh MRI's every 6 months for the rest of your under the sword of Damocles life.
Oh I could definitely make things worse. High blood pressure, obesity, cholesterol - if these just stayed the same I'd be like a frog on the freeway with a busted hopper, in bad shape. "Six weeks or six months, it's all up to you" is what Doc Pulmonary said. My recovery from [pen heart surgery might take as little as six weeks to be back in my old life, or as long as half a year. Now that, that depended on what shape I was in at the time the surgery would occur.
A medical prophecy of future reality. Come 2 to 6 years, this would happen: lotsa sharp thingy cutter tools would be laid out neatly on trays, to work on me. I would be rolled into the back room for service, put upon the rack.
Too good a forecast not to bet the farm on, so that in the end I don't buy the farm. And it was all up to me, going forward, how I would lay down my money and my life so's I could take them both up again.
I know the Latin phrase for "Let The Buyer Beware" (Caveat Emptor). What's the phrase for "Your Fate Is Coming; Prepare Now And Prepare Well"? Is there one on the books like that?
Not knowing, it was enough motivation to remember this: Que sera, sera baby - what will be will be. The last train this side of an open heart chest crack is about to leave right soon; don't expect another chance in time for a ride to Wellville after this one, so get on board NOW!
But it would be a few more weeks before I decided to buy a ticket for a ride through Changeville to get to Wellville. It would take several more conversations - with a cousin and a famous writer to push me fearfully over the edge of inertia, to have a conversation with my change agent of choice. More on that in another episode.
More Updates Yet To Come From Yours Truly,
Living Que Sera and Serene Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Ten: Noticias And A Sitdown With The Mob Boss
So I end up getting an open heart surgical procedure that cracked my chest open like a walnut. Almost 2 years to the day from that fateful day of the 'Sit Down' to get the noticias from with a pulmonary specialist.
Doc Pulmonary he gives us the noticias about my MRI results (noticias being Mexican media speak for news; spicy heart burning news like a chest crack deserves spicier delivery so instead of the flat tasting gringo word for news I prefer to say 'noticias' - more dramatic, and oh how I do love drama).
And like most noticias, there's good noticias and bad noticias. The 'Sit Down' begins.
That Sit Down with Doc Pulmonary was not unlike a classic mob movie scene - you know, the old Sit Down with a Mob Boss. One who has much to say about your fate. You sit patiently while the Boss talks in a measured, businesslike tone. You listen more than you talk. You may plead some, but in vain. You might as well plead to the old Roman gods. Or pray to a new god; one more modern, and more sympathetic (what Catholics call a saint).
But baby, know what this in Italian (or is it Latin) means - Que Sera Sera.
The Sit Down took place in a small room, much as these things do. But white lab coats were the norm instead of garish pin striped suits.
And the Sit Down room was in a big medical professional complex instead of the back a small Italian restaurant. Walls were lined not with stacked cans of Uncle Vitto's Sincerely Scicillian Tomato Paste. Nah, it was cluttered with charts of hearts and arteries cut open in what graphic artists call an exploded view. Fancy medical models and illustrations - courtesy of Pharmaceutical sales reps.
These Rx sales reps are the Pharmaceutical industry's henchmen. These Pharm industry henchmen show you how you might buy the farm should you not ask your doctor about Framalan Bimbo-Bonic Bromolo Marzipan or whatever the hell it is they are so handsomely commissioned to scare you into buying. No 'dese, dem or dose' in their fancy talk, but for all their gloss they are much like the 'fuggedaboudit' henchmen that wish to teach you why you oughtta "invest" into some "fire insurance" like what his 'firm' offered.
But you, Mr Too Clever By Half, refused. Their offer refused? Hence the need for a "Sit Down" with the Boss. But hey, with me it weren't quite like that. Nothing refused, nothing. Honest.
See it weren't nothing I paid or didn't pay, nothing I did or refused to do. Doc he called it a congenital defect (birth/genetic condition), my bulging artery just happened. So it was not what I ate or didn't eat. Or exercise I did or didn't do.
Like good old Romance of pulp paperback lore, like love slow bloomed with the gal next door, it just happened over time, on its own. No offer was refused, just a creeping condition went unnoticed until by accident it was discovered on an MRI meant to diagnose some digestive trouble. Lucky me, I was hit with a good accident for a change.
See my error was congenital (not to be confused with congenial). Not my fault here. No "Told you so" called for here. Wow, congenially congential.
And what a MAAAJOR disappointment that fact was. Not the disappointment of a chest crack outcome instead of Romance happening under your nose. And not a disappointment to me. But what a disappointment to the wife.
Ever see Daffy Duck about to leap forward to shout "Ha Ha! Told you so but did you listen? NO!"? He says that just before braking to a halt, stopped short in his tracks by some ironic cartoon action.
The wife? Hearing of the dreadful cure needed (open heart surgery), she rose from her seat in the Sit Down room, raised her arm to strike home her point of "Aha, proof again how you don't listen!", prepared to wave a finger like a flaming "I told you so" sword of just desserts, tensed like she was a Tiger Woods about to swing her club to drive that golf ball down the fairway of victory at Augusta. About to chase me down the street with nothin' but the Truth, but she got yanked back to her seat, wordlessly deflated as Mr Pulmonary said "This was not caused by anything you did or didn't do".
That was the good noticias, at least to me. Maybe also the bad news to the (now ex) wife, but that's for her to say. For me the bad noticias was what I could do to prevent the surgery: absolutely nothing. Not by losing weight, not by lowering my blood pressure, not by changing my diet - nyet nyet ne ne no no nada nada ningun nothing. Gotta go under the knife in oh two to six years. Only a chance in a million to avoid, and would be with fresh MRI's every 6 months for the rest of your under the sword of Damocles life.
Oh I could definitely make things worse. High blood pressure, obesity, cholesterol - if these just stayed the same I'd be like a frog on the freeway with a busted hopper, in bad shape. "Six weeks or six months, it's all up to you" is what Doc Pulmonary said. My recovery from [pen heart surgery might take as little as six weeks to be back in my old life, or as long as half a year. Now that, that depended on what shape I was in at the time the surgery would occur.
A medical prophecy of future reality. Come 2 to 6 years, this would happen: lotsa sharp thingy cutter tools would be laid out neatly on trays, to work on me. I would be rolled into the back room for service, put upon the rack.
Too good a forecast not to bet the farm on, so that in the end I don't buy the farm. And it was all up to me, going forward, how I would lay down my money and my life so's I could take them both up again.
I know the Latin phrase for "Let The Buyer Beware" (Caveat Emptor). What's the phrase for "Your Fate Is Coming; Prepare Now And Prepare Well"? Is there one on the books like that?
Not knowing, it was enough motivation to remember this: Que sera, sera baby - what will be will be. The last train this side of an open heart chest crack is about to leave right soon; don't expect another chance in time for a ride to Wellville after this one, so get on board NOW!
But it would be a few more weeks before I decided to buy a ticket for a ride through Changeville to get to Wellville. It would take several more conversations - with a cousin and a famous writer to push me fearfully over the edge of inertia, to have a conversation with my change agent of choice. More on that in another episode.
More Updates Yet To Come From Yours Truly,
Living Que Sera and Serene Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
Episode Nine: Tattoo'd Tracks Of My Tears
Recovery Escapades: A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road
Episode Nine: Tattoo'd Tracks Of My Tears
In my 1st Recovery Escapades newsletter I sobbed "Mea culpa" for whacking y'all with TMI on the medical details on my recent open heart surgery. Details are the devil's brush, painting the scene with reasons for why Harley Davidson tire marks ought to run across my chest like a water mark on fine stationery.
Tire treads - a poetic mark for reminding me of my shaved chest skin being sliced, my chest bones sawn and split apart, then wire-stitched back together. Such poetic musing lead me to consider tattooing some motorcycle treads across my cute pink scar. To do that instead of my original idea, which was to put a rising lotus flower over my razor thin puckerline.
I first imagined a tattoo with a lotus bud snaking its way up my chest, playful and colorful. But my awakening experience of hospital ICU ‘bliss’ gave me pause on this. An awakening to bliss that inspired me to lean towards the meaner image of blackened motorcycle treads.
Yeah, a zipper pair of treads, partially undone to reveal a hint of skeleton underneath a re-fused sternum. Anatomically correct and as realistic as waking up after surgery felt surreal. But geez, that lotus flower I first had in mind was sure purdy and cute; more likely folks to be reading that like a poem instead of dismissing zippers and bones as garish and comic.
A tattoo is a fine fashion accessory for the soul - good for completing the closure of ripped sternum and wobbled psyche. After the hospital bliss fades, and its bills are all paid; then, a tattoo. Worth the time to choose it right, design it good and proper. But which choice - the zipper or the lotus flower?
Simple answer, silly boy – pick both. Make a zipper made from tire tracks, and open it halfway to reveal a lotus flower hidden below. Fuse the ideas together into one like your repaired sternum had done, you dumb Texas ‘dillo brain.
Hmmm, these tire treads, how to arrange them exactly? I prefer they make a serpent’s forked 'V' tongue, a tall – and split down, very skinnied down - 'V' like something taken from an old vertically stacked, neon Las Vegas marquee. A marquee of ambiguity.
I say make the treads a ‘V’ as taken off from some ambiguous marquee, because one letter above the 'V' would be burned out, gone dark. The marquee sign then could have been read as the 'LOVE' casino or it could have been read as the 'LIVE' casino.
Read it either way, no sweat - both are fine names for houses of chance. The exact meaning would depend on what fizzled out, would depend on what vowel done gone wrong, done gone where all fizzled spirits and bad bets go – into the cold dark of desert night. Into a Vegas chance-taking night.
But I wonder - what significance does one scorched missing vowel make on such a broken neon marquee, when the message was surely ‘LOVE’ or’ LIVE’? No more than the difference between six and a half dozen; less distinct than what remains after subtracting two from a pair. Read that vertical neon marquee any sensible way you want, I don’t care.
Choose exclusively between to Love or to Live? Best not to do. Do that, and all you get is pocket change, less than enough to buy a piece of penny candy. We are at our best when carry on with both, spending Life to get Love and Love to Life. Much insight comes with a sketched skinny little ‘V’ of tire track on my chest. To Love and to Live – to Love with a burlesque verve and to Live with a burly measure of strength. Neither a choice of either, instead I ought to be true to both.
So tatt me up, put some ink on that chest of mine. It’s the tire track ‘V’ I want on my chest and I’ll allow that marquee sign to have had an 'I' or an 'O', either one. Just steal the friggin’ ‘V’ off that sign and put it on me as a zipper of treads on my chest.
Make on me a sexy love sign that unzips (some) to reveal an unburst lotus flower. A lotus bud like my new artificial artery, one not yet unfolded into Last Glory. An artery not exploded into Finality. A flower rooted from down in my guts, rising up from mucky ground that was rumble run over by wheels turned with raw, internal horsepower.
And these wheels – be them those weary wheels of being? Not too weary, not yet at least. Too wary am I of what I might miss if I leave before my appointed time. So gimme both. Gimme juice to Love. Gimme juice to Live. Gimme some chest ink to mark down my desire for both.
I already have the canvas, it’s skin stretched over a mended frame. Mix ‘em together – all the needed colors, sketch it all down in outline to write a shorthand graphic poem about that inseparable pair, LOVE+LIVE. Ink me up. Gimme both. Gimme the mark of the tender flower and the mark of the mean wheel.
More Updates Yet To Come From Yours Truly,
Living Vivid Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
Episode Nine: Tattoo'd Tracks Of My Tears
In my 1st Recovery Escapades newsletter I sobbed "Mea culpa" for whacking y'all with TMI on the medical details on my recent open heart surgery. Details are the devil's brush, painting the scene with reasons for why Harley Davidson tire marks ought to run across my chest like a water mark on fine stationery.
Tire treads - a poetic mark for reminding me of my shaved chest skin being sliced, my chest bones sawn and split apart, then wire-stitched back together. Such poetic musing lead me to consider tattooing some motorcycle treads across my cute pink scar. To do that instead of my original idea, which was to put a rising lotus flower over my razor thin puckerline.
I first imagined a tattoo with a lotus bud snaking its way up my chest, playful and colorful. But my awakening experience of hospital ICU ‘bliss’ gave me pause on this. An awakening to bliss that inspired me to lean towards the meaner image of blackened motorcycle treads.
Yeah, a zipper pair of treads, partially undone to reveal a hint of skeleton underneath a re-fused sternum. Anatomically correct and as realistic as waking up after surgery felt surreal. But geez, that lotus flower I first had in mind was sure purdy and cute; more likely folks to be reading that like a poem instead of dismissing zippers and bones as garish and comic.
A tattoo is a fine fashion accessory for the soul - good for completing the closure of ripped sternum and wobbled psyche. After the hospital bliss fades, and its bills are all paid; then, a tattoo. Worth the time to choose it right, design it good and proper. But which choice - the zipper or the lotus flower?
Simple answer, silly boy – pick both. Make a zipper made from tire tracks, and open it halfway to reveal a lotus flower hidden below. Fuse the ideas together into one like your repaired sternum had done, you dumb Texas ‘dillo brain.
Hmmm, these tire treads, how to arrange them exactly? I prefer they make a serpent’s forked 'V' tongue, a tall – and split down, very skinnied down - 'V' like something taken from an old vertically stacked, neon Las Vegas marquee. A marquee of ambiguity.
I say make the treads a ‘V’ as taken off from some ambiguous marquee, because one letter above the 'V' would be burned out, gone dark. The marquee sign then could have been read as the 'LOVE' casino or it could have been read as the 'LIVE' casino.
Read it either way, no sweat - both are fine names for houses of chance. The exact meaning would depend on what fizzled out, would depend on what vowel done gone wrong, done gone where all fizzled spirits and bad bets go – into the cold dark of desert night. Into a Vegas chance-taking night.
But I wonder - what significance does one scorched missing vowel make on such a broken neon marquee, when the message was surely ‘LOVE’ or’ LIVE’? No more than the difference between six and a half dozen; less distinct than what remains after subtracting two from a pair. Read that vertical neon marquee any sensible way you want, I don’t care.
Choose exclusively between to Love or to Live? Best not to do. Do that, and all you get is pocket change, less than enough to buy a piece of penny candy. We are at our best when carry on with both, spending Life to get Love and Love to Life. Much insight comes with a sketched skinny little ‘V’ of tire track on my chest. To Love and to Live – to Love with a burlesque verve and to Live with a burly measure of strength. Neither a choice of either, instead I ought to be true to both.
So tatt me up, put some ink on that chest of mine. It’s the tire track ‘V’ I want on my chest and I’ll allow that marquee sign to have had an 'I' or an 'O', either one. Just steal the friggin’ ‘V’ off that sign and put it on me as a zipper of treads on my chest.
Make on me a sexy love sign that unzips (some) to reveal an unburst lotus flower. A lotus bud like my new artificial artery, one not yet unfolded into Last Glory. An artery not exploded into Finality. A flower rooted from down in my guts, rising up from mucky ground that was rumble run over by wheels turned with raw, internal horsepower.
And these wheels – be them those weary wheels of being? Not too weary, not yet at least. Too wary am I of what I might miss if I leave before my appointed time. So gimme both. Gimme juice to Love. Gimme juice to Live. Gimme some chest ink to mark down my desire for both.
I already have the canvas, it’s skin stretched over a mended frame. Mix ‘em together – all the needed colors, sketch it all down in outline to write a shorthand graphic poem about that inseparable pair, LOVE+LIVE. Ink me up. Gimme both. Gimme the mark of the tender flower and the mark of the mean wheel.
More Updates Yet To Come From Yours Truly,
Living Vivid Across Cardiac County Line Road
James Sullivan
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