End of Year Game

I don't really think I like this game. I don't know if it is actually fair. Maybe it is. Randomness of break followed by the suck of the month of Febuary that slowly builds up to the goodness of Summer and then all of the sudden my life explodes into traveling. Hmmm...

Go into your archive and copy the first sentence from each month of this past year. Skip pictures and memes. Only copy sentences which you actually wrote. This will give you a miniature review of your year:

January
A story by request. Among other things it includes: An East Coast Beach Resort, A Washed-Up Anchor Man, and something similar to water melon rinds.
February
What exactly am I quitting you ask?
March
Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.
April
So I spent most of yesterday in a sewer pipe.
May
(The first thing was a poem about dead some deer and a car and a smattering of pictures)
As much fun as scheduled events and parties and dances are...sometimes those spontaneous ones are just that much better.
June
So as a part of class today we were asked to write for a bit about something along the lines of Salt Marsh Elegy by Aldo Leapold.
July
-I should be sleeping but I cannot
August
My head crunchified then fireworked and now its pretty stellar.
September
I got to play miner today. Sort of.
October
It's good to be home.
November
Um. Life is nuts and I am moving around so much that my muse keeps getting lost.
December
But can I have puppies???

Mini-Pig

So anyways I got a llama for Christmas. Llama does not live with me and I don't get to name him/her though I am hoping they name it Elmo. I was under the impression that Elmo was going to live in Peru but after some research I think Elmo gets to chill in Bolivia. That is fine with me. Elmo can help herd the guinea pigs. While I am on the topic...would you consider eating a guinea pig. If I have a guinea pig roast in the future would you attend. I mean think about it. You could try several different flavors of roasted pig sauce. Think about it. Also think about the heifer project. They are a solid program that works at a grass roots level. They not only provide animals; they provide training in animal husbandry and veterinary care and also how to provide the best food for the animals. That sort of thing. They are also big on gender equality and they like to turn the programs over to the people as soon as possible so it isnt some overstuffed american college student telling Sancho how to raise his chickens. It is neighbor...and brother, Pedro. My favorite part is that they require people to pass on animals. They frequently give pregnant animals and the first offspring of a heifer animal is passed on to someone else in need who lives in the area. So really when you buy one llama...its more like you get two...or at least 1.5. And in all honesty who doesnt want a llama?

Forget Hippopotamusseses

I got a Llama for Christmas! I don't think I hate Christmas. These things a vaguely related in ways other than they both feature Christmas. More on that later...

Magnolia

There is so much but so very little. When your whole life has become one big exercise in procrastination the little bits of procrastination that used to be so relieving sort of drag on you. Hence the spate of unblogging. And you would thing that simply not posting is really something neutral except that I would think things to write, even start to write them…and walk away consigning them to never-never land. For words this is not a happy place of eternal childhood nor is it like limbo. It’s the slow eating deathof beyond apathy sadness. Poor words. I wish that I had cared more…kind of.

So I am coming and going and never quite slowing, the bodies starting to wear and clothing to tear and someday soon I will crawl home again. Or I will run out of places. This is more like it. My plans end after Christmas. Normally these black holes of future bother me but I’m so mellowed and road bumped by the past, oh, six months, that nothing just might be a 4 dimensional place where I can visit for a while and then continue passing through. I still want a puppy. Eventually I will learn how to sit still. Promise. Then I can get the puppy and teach him the same. I want a dog that can do the cool flip the bone off the nose and catch it trick. I tried it with Spanky but it never worked. Iguanas and hermit crabs are nice but they are a little too endothermic to take hiking with you. It will eventually need to be a dog.

So while I’ve been running helter skelter and inadvertently refusing to stay in my house for more time than I spend elsewhere I’ve settled in a little sea-side town in MA where I can cook amazing things and bake nothing. That’s not entirely true because I have baked masterpieces. The problem is that I have to hire out mercenaries to track down things like flour. There is no flour in this house. (Nor are their flowers in this house but that seems like less of a staple.) So baking takes place in stages in several places with borrowed equipment. I forgot how much I enjoyed cooking for me and not worrying about others tastes and letting experimentation rule in the kitchen. It doesn’t ever seem to work this way at home. I have a great idea. How about post-christmas when I am destinationless you invite me over. Fill your kitchen with pre-foodstuffs and I will cook for you. In a few days I will wander elsewhere to others with well stocked kitchens and in such a way I won’t really have to settle. I can car train my wee pooch as I go. Sounds amazing. Lets do it.


(eventually I will poem again. Stagnation is the rule right now)

But can I have puppies???

House Bouncing

Something more pathetic than most things: A declawed cat trying to sharpen its claws on the corner of the couch.

Where's Waldo

Um. Life is nuts and I am moving around so much that my muse keeps getting lost. In the past 23 days I have been in 13 states, some more than once. I think what happened is that (s)he fell off the truck in South Dakota because I seem to have picked it back up on the train in to Chicago. I am guessing it would take a muse about 2 weeks to make it from South Dakota to Chicago in fair weather. It is still a little bruised and shaken. Hopefully it follows me home from here and doesn't get lost on the way again because as far as I am concerned the states between here and there are something like a black hole on non-existance.

I did the Idaho thing, the grad school search thing, the leisurely drive home thing, the madly unpack and repack thing, the MA thing, and now I am doing the Chicago thing. In my travels I have I have committed to alpacas and guinea pigs, seen lopes loping, created an extensive list of reasons why Indiana is patently wrong, galavanted through cemetaries, delivered hermit crabs, and been snuck into the bowels of a building.

One hundred people moving to the sound of the train on the tracks
Far off stares, distant cares, not quite unhappily bored
There is work, there is worry, and hurry and hurry
To the train, and the rythmn that idle thoughts mask.
Doors will open, Mind the tracks, tickets ready, Click-clack,
The steady approach to the city thats calling
Each stop adds one more to the rythmn that goes
Children on foot, bags in hand, on the tracks on the tracks on the tracks

Waldo lives in coconut bark on Haskel Street...I think.

Sad Things

My car hurts. I don't want to talk about it.

I leave for ID tomorrow.

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.






...I may not come back.

Good things...

So I got in a letter in the mail...

Chestnuts are falling

The Last Holyhock
Pears that never get ripe
Some Plums
An afternoon's foraging
It's good to be home.

-Jn

hehehe...

Lz sent this to me today. Reminicent of the death by cheese-grater days. Mmmm those were good days.
-Jn

Back

I don’t know that I realize it before I start but every time I come home from a while away I play the same game and I think something similar before I leave. And I always look for the same things first though they aren’t the same any more. When I spin into my driveway I am waiting for a spunky puppy to come tearing around from the back of the garage or when I am not met there at least a stiff old one to sheepishly haul her arthritic self off of the couch. But there is no dog. Instead there are puffball kittens and half cats and a lithe and lanky yellow eyed wee-beast waiting for me mowling. And I wander around back to check on the trees I know and the garden growing things. The pond is nearly empty and only has 3 frogs and no ducks. Strange. There are chickens. There are always chickens. Sometimes more sometimes less always different colors. Chickens. Check. And then I look to the last patch of sun on the back porch for the orange tripod that never really quite acted like a cat anyways. But of course he is not there. These two are buried side by side like they slept near the rock pile at the edge of the woods. If you were some how wondering, this is what I meant (It’s like coming home in the twilight when everyone else is gone.) though I suppose there were twinges of amber and orange. Let's call them ghosts. Welcome Home. -Jn

Caryatids are not Katydids

A Beast Called Sorrow (9/22/06 RRC)

Deceptions become repetitions
To perpetuate the hurt received.
Never finding peace
But searching all the while
In a style recognized by gangsters cowboys and the like.
It’s an open mic.
Tell me your fears and dreams and then
I’ll share mine
Just like every time.
Except I don’t expect a solution to the problem
I’ve come to love as me,
And what I do and what I see is
Tainted by the sorrow I claim only as my own.
It’s like coming home in the twilight
When everyone else is gone.
Slightly bruised pride purple splashed against the walls
And an echo in the halls,
But though you want to run,
It’s where you need to be.
Please don’t try to take from me
This beast that I have tamed
Even named
For sorrow is sweet,
purposed,
meet
When the leaves have fallen away
And on special gray days
When the flowers mourn
Because they’re not quite as bright
And on those nights when the hurts are remembered.
They’re dying embers,
But child still don’t touch.
Meddle in the fire too much and
You will be burned in the self-same way.
Maybe then we can share this pain.

-Jn

I forgot about her

A Daughter Of Eve
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:--
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.

Hehehe...

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Antigone

Coal Miner’s Daughter (9/12/06 - RRC)

Pondering what it means to be a coal miner’s daughter
I can’t help playing in the water
And I like to watch it as it goes
Coming down in rains and snows
And piling up in pools behind a beaver’s master piece
Filled with water-weeds for the geese
And I like to watch the trees turning red
Before they are forced to disrobe in the cold
It shows what you know
When you name them by feel
Makes them real
And I like their hidden rings
Because there’s beauty in seldom seen things
Like the dark bands round the earth
That fuel the lights of the night
Globe round and in your town
And the water shouldn’t turn rust-brown
But you find a better way
It’s not to say that I don’t care
I know what’s there
And what it means to take away
I know how red blood can be
When you fell a beast
But in the least I’m thankful
For the chance to understand
For these hands to know the textures of a life
And the colors to be seen beneath the skin
Maybe it’s a sin to dig to the earths black
But stand back and tell me
How you keep your hands clean
When you tell them they can’t cook
Or have lights to read
Because there is no steam
Have you ever thought it through?
And what do you do to make acid rain?
We’re all stained- guilty for living
And for passing around the blame
Really we all stand the same
Though you choose to look away
Or shake your fists at my father
But what do I know
I’m just a coal miner’s daughter

-Jn

You mean I don't live here?

Interesting....I like the Beverly house. I dont think I want to leave ever. It is prudent that I leave on Thursday as that is the day that my itty-bitty lease runs out. Maybe if I buy them some beer. Work is bouncing between overnights and days and split shifts which are just my gosh awful favorite. It's getting about time to go home. Pitty. I have lots of people to play with up here. I'm around for another week or so, then this homelessness business will end. I do miss PA. I just wish there was a more direct route from Boston to my end or that maybe it wasn't quite so far away. I should visit ALL the time. I should get a car that runs on H2O while I am at it. Silly financial instability. My Saturday went like...taking a nap after work then making blueberry pancakes and having uber stimulating discussion over breakfast with one NP moderated and mediated by Tybo then meeting up with MelKel to play in the tide pools at her "cute little beach." I got to ride on the shiny but yet unnamed bike and we found critters of all types. When we couldnt catch any lobsters the 8 year old kids got us some to play with. Those kids were awsome and this is not to say that Tybo is not awsome because he could not catch the gianormous lobster. He put in a damn good effort and he still earned himself a beer because he caught me a fish barehanded. The ride home was something like stimulating because we were in a slight hurry to beat impending death and large coastal thunder storms. We only got a wee bit wet. Then we went to Kitty's and met up with some other just-happened-to-be-in-town types and had a spectacular night. Sunday we made ammeretto french toast and hit up church then they let me watch football ALL day yesterday!!!! By they I mean the networks and the oldschool tv and the boys. This is not to say that the boys watched football with me all day as well, just that they didn't complain. I even get to watch my Steelers play on Monday because they are going to let me come back. Must make sure I am not working that night. That would be tragic. Hmmm....

Things you dont want to hear while I'm eating

I mean while you are eating.

Normally when your mucus makers kick into overdrive this is a bad thing. You spend your days woah-is-me-ing (woad-id-me id more what id souds like) and nose blowing. However, in my uniqueness, this seems to be my bodies way of telling me that I am quickly approaching better.

See evil guerilla germs infultrated my mucus factories in force in an attempt to change my personal autocratic government into a dictatorship bowing to the whims of the head germ leader. All factories were forced to close and production ceased, crippling the traffic infrastructure. The coup was nearly successful as the powers that be were too stuborn at first to call for help and unwilling to admit that Immune System First-Strike had been overwhelmed and colapsed instantly. But when militia armies of Chicken Soup and OJ made were ineffective and Na-Cl monoxygen-dihydride gargle-bombs were scoffed at, RN peace keeping troops were called in. After a mere 24 hours of constant battle the guerilla forces have been pushed back. A monitoring RN force is in place to ensure that the rebel forces are irradicated and there is no chance of a second attack while militia units are brining relief to the state forces. The mucus peasants are showing their support by redoubling their efforts in mucus production and outside critics are wondering if this was all staged by the government to receive support from other nations. What remains to be seen is how many other nations have been infiltrated by escaping rebels as the nations borders could not be sealed during the initial irradication.

(I worked ~20 hours and attended a recital while contagious...oops)

In other news I am moving away from the cat house and into a princess suite this evening. Whilst there I will be waited on, hand and foot, by 4 strapping young gentlemen....or something like that anyways. Who ever said it was bad to be homeless? -Jn

I didn't take pictures

I got to play miner today. Sort of. I was helping 105 dig a basement with a ragtag crew of some pretty random people. I like this idea of friends helping friends do things like build decks and basements and whatever. People should do these things and friends should help them. Free sweat, dirt, and well worked muscles with pizza, beer, and pop for lunch. Yes. This is why the Amish can do those cool barns and houses and quilts.

I learned fun things too. Like dirt comes in all colors, textures, and even smells. When you are all shoveling from different places into one big pile its beautiful really. Rocks are the same way even if all the rocks were granite. But regardless of all the myriad cool things about geology all rocks and dirt are heavy. And man is mortal. And my arms dont work anymore from betwixt the shoulderblades and decreasing in functionality down to the finger tips.

This is a good tired. Not like those other tireds I have been this week.

-Jn

(Tybo can come too)