Some of these events occur in the future

1. I have a job for the summer and I am super stoked. 2. Yesterday was seriously the best day ever. 3. I bought corned beef and company for St. Patrick’s Day and never made it because I joined a Pub Crawl instead. Today is try-to-make-this-meal day and I have included the recipes for your perusal and future use should you choose to trust my culinary skills. Like most of my recipes what follow are compilations of other recipes modified for my good pleasure.

Tonight’s Menu:
Corned Beef and Cabbage (Made following the Ideal or Real World recipe depending on your particular universe)
Horseradish, Chive, and Dill Sauce
Farm Fresh Marbled Rye Bread
Farm Fresh Whole Milk (from a glass bottle)
Dessert- Variations on a Mango

Ideal World Corned Beef and Cabbage:
5-6 Whole carrots cut in large chunks
10-15 Small red potatoes halved
1 Med onion cut in wedges
1 Small Cabbage cut in wedges
1 hunk corned beef (~ 3 lbs)

Enough water to cover the goodness
2 T apple juice

3 Garlic cloves minced
2 Bay leaves crushed (3 small)
3/4 T cracked black pepper corns
1 t Thyme
1 t Paprika
1 t Yellow mustard seeds
½ t Whole coriander
½ t Allspice
¼ t Celery seeds
Pinch of crushed red pepper

Wonk the beef into the crock pot and surround him in with the friendly carrots, potatoes, and onion. Mix the spices with the apple juice and about 2 C of water and pour it over the pot contents. Add enough water to cover the beef and most of the veggies. Cook on high for 2 hours then drop to low heat for 7 hours. Add the cabbage about an hour before you plan to eat (sooner if you like it mushy).
Prep time: about 15 Minutes
Cook time: 9 hours

Real World Corned Beef and Cabbage
(Same ingredients list as Ideal World Corned Beef and Cabbage)

Start preparation at least an hour late because of weird weather causing traffic and talking to your mother. Realize that you left necessary spices at home. Wonk the beef in the crock pot and add the veggies. Add 3 cups of water and turn on high. Make a shopping list (Bay leaves, thyme, paprika, mustard seed, whole coriander, allspice, celery seeds, rye bread, sour cream, chives, whole milk in a glass bottle). Go to Wilson Farms amid hail and rain. Stare at spices for at least 15 minutes. Fail to find yellow mustard seed. Marvel at the size of the snowflakes that are now falling. Discover that pickling spice is primarily mustard seed and coriander. Purchase contents of basket. Walk out of the store into freezing rain. Return to store to purchase a chilly, red tulip and save it from the nastiness. Walk out of store into non-freezing rain that changes to ice pellets half way across the parking lot. Drive home. Place tulip on the window sill between the sprouting white onion and the wee prickly pear cactus. Begin to mix spices. Have an Oh Shit moment over the mustard seed pickling spice dilemma. Dump half of the pickling spice into an empty bay leaf container. Remove the cap from a curry container because it has smaller-than-whole-coriander sized holes. Hold the cap over the now pickling spice container because it is too small to fit securely. Shake mustard seeds and other riff-raff spices into a bowl. Measure out the soloized coriander from the make shift shaker and dump the excess back into the package. Gently shake the bowl containing the remainder of the spices to group the mustard seeds. Tip the bowl slightly to take advantage of gravity and the round properties of mustard seeds. Scoop separated mustard seeds into a 1 t measuring spoon using an inverted ¼ t measuring spoon. Repeat mustard seed separation process until the 1 t spoon is full or madness ensues. Return the riff-raff spices to the original package. Finally add spices to the crock pot two hours after starting the heating process. Eat lunch. Mix sauce to serve with the beef. Type up “improved recipe.” Discover that the tulip is so pleased by its current company and the warmth of the kitchen that it has bloomed. Leave on high for 3 hours total then turn temperature to low. Realize you failed to add the apple juice. Add the apple juice. Add the cabbage just before leaving to pick up your significant other from the train station. Eat when you are too hungry to wait any more.
Prep time: about 2 hours
Cook time: approximately 7 hours

Horseradish, Chive, and Dill Sauce
1 carton (8 oz) of sour cream
1 T prepared horseradish
2 T chopped fresh chives (Use the kitchen shears. It is more fun and faster)
½ t Dried dill
Combine ingredients in a bowl and stir well. Chill. x1 Bonus Multiplier: Return the contents to the sour cream container for storage. (This stuff is really good. I have no clue how it will actually taste with dinner but if it is not a good corned beef pairing is makes one hell of a good veggie dip.)

Variations on a Mango
2 Large Ripe Mangos
.:I will get back to you with the rest of the details when I figure out what the hell I am actually going to do:.

It's quite sunny today by comparision

I ride the train. Other people ride the train. To note this fact is unnecessary. People have private cars, boats, jets, and even busses. Trains are for sharing. I ride the train.

I watch people. I listen. People interest me, their mannerisms, movements, modes of speech. In my opinion this is a better way of investigation than studying by nose. This is possible and it is done. Some do this as a vocation and call it research. Some have a passion. Some just have a misfortune.

Yesterday dulled the eyes and muffled sound. Yesterday chose to force scents. On train one a person nearby gave off the essence of cooked celery. Train two featured someone with the air of stale soup. Free Shuttle Bus air was overcome with the pungent and vibrant scent of ginger (as in fresh cut or candied- notably eatable, not a lotion or perfume). While this was a more pleasant olfactory gift, none of these smells mesh with the nature of a morning, albeit a bustling city morning. I think I would be more accepting or at least less begrudging of these intrusions on my personal space if the odors fit better with the time of day. Before 10:30 or maybe even 11 a day should have traces of syrup and coffee with perhaps some cinnamon or maybe citrus if it must carry a scent in the first place.

A home-bound train paused respectfully at South Station while another sluiced by on shared track. When I joined this train, one of my concomitants spread odors of soggy bread. I mention South Station specifically because during the wait at this junction a youth boarded the train and sat beside me. He deemed it socially necessary to cover whatever natural essences he might carry with his person in a cloak of cologne. The overzealous powers of his scent dampened the influences of any others in my vicinity for several hours afterwards. Perhaps he should be thanked, but at this point it can only be speculation. In fact, the only reason the prior soggy-bread air even remains in my memory is visual impression left on me by the smell bearer. It was unclear which of the people across from me actually held the mantle, but it was either the aged, nearly hairless woman with wan blue eyes or the aged Chinese man with mismatched leg warmers who was worried by the aforementioned woman. Both characters looked like they might be composed, at least in part, of moistened bread. Of all the day’s olfactory twinges, this one was not unnatural. It fit not only in excerpt (because of the physical presence of the bread beings) but also in the context of the whole day.

You may question my last assertion, for when does a damp loaf ever fit a day unless children feeding ducks is involved. Honestly though, it was just a soggy bread day. A cold but thankfully light rain came down on and off but always at a slant. People were walking in a stooped hurry with the speed of their bustle unrelated to the actual time and staring doggedly at the ground as if the concrete or pavement might share some secret of how to better resist the wind if their gaze pierced deep enough. The pigeons were also damp and malcontent, huddling in fluffed masses under eves amid the failed anti-pigeon measures. The only dry pair in the city, an iridescent and importunate groom and his antipathetic bride, reside in North Station and are therefore exempt from paying a weather tax. Surveying the day by eye, ear, and nose, one gets the impression that even a fine loaf of French bread would be flaccid at least in spirit and wonders if the crackers being tossed at the nuptial pigeons were really as crisp as their heritage scrolled on the package claimed them to be.

Some people need an IQ boost

Nick showed me this today.

Gravity: Doesn't exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that's just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it's not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn't the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is.

I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie

several million years for a monkey to turn into a man. oh wait thats right. monkeys dont live several million years.

For more check here.

No title. Bah.

As soon as I am healthy Ima buy myself some flowers.

Avoid the Plague

Warning: This post is largely about the Norovirus of Death

I am slouching here writing because I am afraid of my soup. I am slouching because I can no longer lay down without going crazy but if I sit up any further it will take much longer to catch my breath. I am also out of breath. I am out of breath because I heated up half a can of vegetable soup donated by my ever-caring neighbor, soup which I am now afraid of. It’s not exactly that I am afraid of eating the soup, it’s the re-eating that’s not so pleasant and more fear inducing. (If the thought of reeating soup makes you queasy you might want to skip to the last paragraph and save yourself some pain.)

If you would like some graphic back story, on Monday at almost exactly 1530 and without even a remote bit of warning I became violently ill in one direction and shortly proceeded to be violently ill in the other direction with little enough time in between to maintain body hydration at an even barely reasonable level. My friend Murphy was around to hold my hair back while I expulsed the contents of my stomach, which is to say that with a toilet and 2 garbage cans in front of me I managed on more than one occasion to hit none of these and had to change clothes and wash a few rugs today when I could finally stand for more than two minutes. (This also makes me out of breath.)

On a positive note I am no longer afraid of the substance that would normally make up 70% of my body and ice cubes are not the coolest and most life saving thing ever invented. I don’t need the crazy cat to wake me up every hour and a half to have a few sips of water lest I slip into unconsciousness (which he strangely, lovingly, and punctually did all Monday into Tuesday). I have conquered my fear of crackers and I will eventually try this whole soup substance. Right now I am content to glance at it cynically and suspiciously out of the corner of my eye.

I also managed to do something today that no one should really ever have to do. When you are a kid your mom or dad takes care of it and when you are in college you have a roommate and when you are old enough (but not yet smart enough) and get drunk enough there is usually someone there smarter than you or you are at someone else’s house and you sort of leave it in their shower for their mom to find and fix. I have a friend who found the rose bushes outside of the Whitehouse to be a convenient self-clean-up free location. I have cleaned up after sick friends, cohorts, and campers and oddly in this one instance of nasty ex-bodily fluids, I feel that it is so much more demoralizing to deal with your own than anyone else’s. You clean up mine, I’ll handle yours. No one should ever have to clean up their own vomit, especially if they are still sick.

By the way, the soup (and everything else that isn’t red bush tea) tastes awful. But I have Murphy tied up and gagged in my like-a-closet and so help me this soup will be properly digested. I am done with little virus demons.

Special shout outs to the neighbor who checked on me whenever possible, strongly encouraged the hospital (advice which I did not listen to mostly because I had no carriage to take me), gave me soup, etc. and to the friend who found me ginger ale as soon as he got off work and drove to the hinterlands to deliver it.

Currently

Currently bewildered
Currently unemployed
Currently enjoying the rampant honesty of the Burnside Writers Collective.

I wonder if they'd take me.

Special notice to the 151 psalm.

Reflections

I saw myself on the train yesterday.

I was taking the red line from Alewife in, sorta sitting to the front of the middle of a car. We weren't too many stops in so not many people. I was looking around reading what was posted for me to read because I figure me reading the ads keeps the prices down right? and people watching in such a way so as not to be staring at any one person and then mostly just staring off into space. (This is what I do on the T. I enjoy it. You don't have to. You can read your book or play games or music on your Ipod. Leave me be and I will pretend not to watch you.) I was staring frontwards and I could sort of see in the car in front of me and I realized that there was someone who looked shockingly like me staring back at me from that car but it wasn't a reflection because the person was wearing a blue coat with a fluffy hood and I had on my black wool coat. Now I took this in all in half a second and instead of locking eyes with the person staring I looked away slowly cause I am not an blatant in your face people watcher like some emo kids (just daring you to look them in the eye so they can think mean thoughts at you because you must hate them and you surely dont understand). And in an appropriate bit of time I looked forward again because damn, I am in that car. And that person was definitely still there but the car went around a bend as I looked up and I got to see the head, the shockingly me like head, detach from the blue coated body and hover staring at me beside a round Chinese face bundled in a blue coat. And to be truthful I sucked in a quick breath when my head got pulled off. It was me...but it wasn't me. And I know it was just reflections but it was still pretty creepy. Sigh...the existential.

I saw myself on the subway yesterday.

My clock says 8:20

Windshield wipers
…and on that account windshields
…but we will stick to the wipers for the moment.

The other day I was driving and the sun was shining and everything was going great…and unlike most stories that start with the sun was shining and everything was going great, everything continued to go great and I thought to myself…I am really glad that I have windshield wipers that work. Pause with me for a minute.

That was a pause for a swig of beer. Now think that through…why on God’s green earth does one think of windshield wipers when its not raining and they are in perfectly good condition but not needed at all. I don’t know.

But it got me to thinking…what else am I not using or not needing right now that still works and I take for granted? See its easy to complain about something when it stops working (like the other day when it was snowing and the wipers were part frozen and the part of the windshield right in front of my vision wouldn’t come clean) and when you are using something lots of times you still remember to be thankful about it (Like when I didn’t have good wipers for a couple of months and then I put new ones on and the next day it POURED). But what about all of the stuff that works and works well even when you don’t need it.

Like how about that clock. Yeah the one you just looked at. You probly hadn’t looked at it for a while until I just mentioned it and you probably didn’t need to look then. But it’s still working. And boy, aren’t you glad it works even when you don’t need it. Because if it stopped keeping time when you were in another room it wouldn’t be much good.

Windshield wipers.

More better than a cover letter

Not Every Café (Ipswich 12/04/07)

There is love and there is life and place to sit down and write and places that cant help but to be wrong.
I watch people walk and people talk and people watch each other going by.
And billboards scream commercial things. Did you know I can do anything if I just buy that lipstick cherry red?
Down the city streets a machine sweeps and discarded pink-orange cups go down the drain.
Meanwhile, my coffee cup keeps filling up by the window where I watch the rain come down.
And I think that maybe love and life dance upon a razor knife. It isn’t like a fairy tale at all.
Each step hurts and each spin cuts. Lovers, livers all are nuts, but they keep dancing lest they fall away.
And maybe to love true and deep you have to callous up your feet, walk barefoot nearly every single day.
But before I tease it in to sense my breakfast money is all spent and cream cheese clings to my finger tips.
Yes there is love and there is life and places to sit down and write, but as for this café, I’m moving on.

-Jn

From the chilly apartment

:::Editors Note::: Blogger keeps screwing up the formatting on the poem. It tells me there will be indentations and then it takes them away. Lo siento. Thats the way it its. ::End Note::

I fear this one is a little dark. Or a lot dark. I have been running around with a cadre of artists lately. Working for them rather. Raking leaves. Ripping apart quilts. Doing other peoples dirty laundry. Normal stuff. There are proper polished portraits in the studio. Children laughing on a bench together. A dignified gentleman. Normal stuff. Then there are the bizarre ones. Hubcaps with wires and a crucifix in bronze and black. A nude burgeoning attached to the roots of the earth. A portrait of a girl in a green dress who is beautiful at first look and second look and even fourth but the fifth shows her to be bound and blindfolded. Normal stuff.

This kept coming whilst walking back and forth from house to out buildings on one or another task. I polished from the poet throne. (Which is not a toilet- it's a longed for chair. Pictures eventually…when the cat lets me put the bed down)

While the Christ Hung Dying in Mid-day Night (Ipswich 11/26/07)

Two boys there (small)
With stones in hand
And cornered, a cat (cowering)
And the stones flew
For in the market they had seen it
Their fathers doing justice
Following the Law (perfect)
Purging the sinful from the world
Calling out the sins as sentence (stones) fell
And are not all guilty of sin
Thus this mother cat (unwed)
Must have secrets (lecherous)
Must be removed
But for the (troublesome) bent woman (ancient)
Who came cackling
Rebuking the boys
"Wanton killers
Untamed beast children
Fear you not God (omnipresent)
Or the Law (perfect)"
And they ran- but laughing
And they laughed- but also they ran
And they did not mock the hag
Away the (broken) cat limped
Into the alley (shadowed)
Where the soldier (former)
Deserter lurking
Watched the beauty (girl-youth)
About to pass by
As on previous days
Grabbed her (virginal) (screaming)
Fulfilled his deed
Ran
Fearing God (omniscient)
Fearing the Law (perfect)
Fearing the sobs (post virginal)
Fearing men (fallen)
All while the Christ hung dying
(Agonized) eyes closing at "finished" to mark the stop
God-Man (naked) perfect and dead
And the great God (omnipotent)
Closed His eyes impossibly– curtains rent
Counted to ten– children wailed
Ever so slowly– dogs howled
Opened them– (mid-day) night ended
And all could be forgiven
Though the cat (girl)– alone
Did not outlast the darkness

-Jn

Picture = Acadia

My world is working its way into rights now. I have a wee apartment and a parking space off the street. The front door is cranberry to match the juice in the fridge. I have laundry and dish cleansing machines for my personal convenience and I can make tea any time of day. My clothes have homes in drawers and on hangers which is better than suitcases because it is easier to find items and remember that they are owned and loved and should be worn more. I have pieces of me scattered everywhere to remind me of who I was and who I will be and the walk between the two places. I have a chair to sit in and ponder and write about the journey. Every time I turn around I find something new that I needed or wanted or missed that I didn’t even know was lacking but I can now claim for myself again. My soul makes little happy sighs and life is good. It’s like little waves brushing up against the beach of a cove when the tide is coming in, small push-pulls taking away the stress of hundreds of days homeless and leaving scattered treasures for a shell seeker. I know things now about what I can and cannot do and I more deeply know friendship, answered prayer, comfort, and love. And now I can scribble my collected know’s down for keeps in the battered yellow poet-throne that I have been waiting on for countless days. It’s coming back home though I’ve never been here before. It’s rebecoming human.

Look a penny!

Dirty Feet (Ipswich 10/31/07)

The world. The world. It swirled, the world, and white was black was white was color. And then the words in twos and fours impatient came and called names, laid blame. And the silence was violent and empty and the stillness was full of sounds. Alone was undone and I was the one put paid to for dirty hands.

Why? I didn’t understand.

And I righted what was left I thought and I begged and I bought but the prices were high and I couldn’t fly anymore. Dirty wings.

Oh the things I would sing and I would sing and sing and the people would bring flowers and gifts and children with fits would calm and give alms in the streets.
No.
There were taunts and jeers and I fled in tears. Streaked face, my face, my dirty face.

The colors used to dance for me in this magic book and the words would flow in to steady rows and salute. I’m destitute. I’m alone. And I go and I go. I’m trying to grow. To be bigger. To be stronger, branches get longer. Why can’t I just leave?
No.
Dirty feet.

Feet wont walk. Mouth wont talk. Eyes won’t see. Hands grope and hands touch. Hands sense and hands feel. “What is there? What is there Dirty Hands?”
Dirty hands.

“Be clean. It’s a dream. Wake up. Please wake up.” And I tear at my skin. Let me in. Let me in. Let me out. Get me out of this place. A well? A hell? A falling for sure. A down without out but not nearly the end. No final amen and a choir on high. I wont die.

“Colors stop coming! Where are your lines? Who stole the designs of this life?” A knife to the pages or better a torch. A threat in a flame. “Say my name. Say my proper name Words. I am good, though I’m sullied and not to be bullied and I know I know how to sing.”
Dirty face.
Dirty wings.
Dirty life dances in cold rain. Pleads for clean. And I spin and I spin and focus comes in for a moment, an instant and the tempos they match. Words line up as they hatch.
Exhausted.
I collapse. Still dirty. Now dizzy. But the bitter is sweet for my dirty feet.
Dirty feet washed little more clean.

Space

I have a place to live for 6 whole months…almost…and sort of…I can’t move in yet because its not done…but it will be…I hope.

Now I have to find the job that goes with the rent payments and the etc. that comes with actually living some place. That’s gonna be a bit tricky.

What I really want is a space that belongs to me. Kinda like the Ground Hog gets his own little old oak stump. I don’t have a place really…just bits of space in other people’s homes and bits of time when they might not be home. I never feel alone. I never get the type of rest that comes from sitting around in your favorite chair with a cup of tea or a beer with a worn out book or a notebook. It’s not the same when you are surrounded by other people’s comforts. Other people’s treasures don’t shine the same way. You can’t tell other people’s guests that they are ugly or ignorant and that they should leave because you are one too and maybe its better you step out.

I get weighed down by the fact that I am stuck living in places that don’t feel like home. I am tired of temporarily setting up shop and living out of suitcases, tired of lugging all of my food around in a laundry basket, tired of my car acting like a giant closet. I want a window to put plants in and I want a bed to put my quilt on. I want a closet for my stuff and a kitchen that I can keep my dishes and pans in. I want to be able to come home to silence…or to have people over or go out if I want. I am tired of being forced in to being social when I am not a social person by nature. The more stretched and stressed the harder it is for me to function like a person is expected to and the more often it seems to be required of me. I understand 5L a lot more lately. Space is precious.

Catch Up

A list I meant to post ages ago. We went up to Maine. We went to Acadia National Park. It is a wee little park compared to some of those other national treasures out west. It has a wee little tourist town associated with it known as Bar Harbor. We finally started keeping track of license plates we saw on the island when we were driving around because there were more other plates than Maine plates. I have included a map mostly so you can see who isn't cool. This is what we came up with…

States we saw:

1. California
   
2. Colorado
   
3. Connecticut
   
4. Delaware
   
5. Florida
   
6. Georgia
   
7. Hawaii
   
8. Idaho
   
9. Illinois
   
10. Indiana
    
11. Iowa
    
12. Kansas
    
13. Maine
    
14. Maryland
    
15. Massachusetts
    
16. Michigan
    
17. Minnesota
    
18. Missouri
    
19. New Hampshire
    
20. New Jersey
    
21. New Mexico
    
22. New York
    
23. North Carolina
    
24. North Dakota
    
25. Ohio
    
26. Oregon
    
27. Pennsylvania
    
28. Rhode Island
    
29. South Carolina
    
30. Tennessee
    
31. Texas
    
32. Vermont
    
33. Virginia
    
34. Washington
    
35. West Virginia
    
36. Wisconsin
    

Canadian Mini-Nations or whatever:
Quebec
British Columbia
New Bruswick
Manitoba
Ontario
Nova Scotia

And the outlier:
Washington D.C

i bid thee rise from thy indolent ass

There is some bad wiring between my ears. Most people I guess know this but it’s a certain sort of bad wiring in particular that we are talking about here. There is this little twinge that builds up as stress mounts and the increasing urge to move things around…like furniture for instance. And it triggers the reward center of the brain such that a sort of frantic calm or peaceful chaos becomes the dominant mood. However, like many other drugs the feeling wears off if doses are not increased and a melancholy, malaisc indolence sets in. This drive is a great tool to have in your closet for certain occurrences like moving out by the end of the month. Awesome, the closer I get to the deadline the more likely I am to pack and move and organize and scrub clean things because the stress grows. This is not so good around times like finals. When what is required is to sit down and pound out a paper it is less than helpful to have an urge to rearrange a room. This happened all too frequently in school. Sigh. At this juncture I am stressed but not the one project deadline stressed or the finals will be over in 2 days and it will be ok stressed. This is the sort of generalized, everything is unsettled stress that lingers about and pools in certain areas and generally coats the whole being in a thin film of slime. Solution 1 – Move in! Great that took all of 5 hours including unpacking and folding clothes. This is what you get when you fit all of your belongings into a car. I’m not complaining about the car sized amount of stuff…just the lack of doing it got me. Solution 2 – Have your boss place you in a small shed with cones and sandwich boards scattered about and myriad road signs hanging from screws in the walls and say go. Cones destapled, sorted, tallied. Sandwich boards destapled sorted and tallied. Road signs sorted, tallied, and organized via excel spreadsheet just for shits and giggles. Good thing that business only took 2 days…oh…wait….now what the hell am I going to do. Sigh.

After this overnight I am taking a nap, a shower, and a drive in that order. Then I might get to do something cool like smash walls. That would be exciting.

-Jn

Themes for the evening

Episodes from the evening that are asking for words but I am waning poetic.

There was almost no sun left and there was still a chunk of rainbow.

I took a walk with a pair of cats tonight. Grey cats. The only colors left in the sky were chasing the sun. Dirty orange and and purple fuzz. If you have ever walked with cats you haven't. Unlike dogs they don't actually check back in on you occasionally. They will chase after you when you get too far away but they maintain at least a 5 meter radius away from you at all times. By the time I was walking home it was nearly dark and I had to phantoms following me. Liquid shadows.

The wee cat wouldn't walk with us. He hunched himself down in the center of the driveway. When we came back he perked up and sauntered over to us. He really wants to be a dog. He tries.

A neighbor was burning something this evening. The air smelled something like the taste that lingers after cheap rum.

Quote: "I could hear the speechlessness" - Aunt Nora Lee

Go turtles go!!!

I've picked my turtle. Have you?

Months

Month- depending on which time frame you are using, a great deal of living and breathing and in this case far too long. I will skip on the apologies and go on with the writing. Note that I have been reading… just not putting my own thoughts down.

There is this sciency term, Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis, and it is very logical and important for eco types. It rambles around and comes back to this more or less. If your world doesn’t change enough things like predators or boredom eat you. If your world changes too much things like stress and too much fast food eat you. I planned on having a lot of free time after the summer after college and I thought that some travel would be in order and that I should work on seeing friends and getting my life sorted out so that I could start pretending I was a proper adult enough to fool most other proper adults, or at least those planning to hire me. Things went according to plan- meaning that what little plans I had scribbled down actually happened or at least I think they did and I can’t find the scraps of paper to prove otherwise…but I am not where I thought I would be. And it seems that I am either frantically on the road spending a few days in as many states as possible or…cleaning house and playing with cats. Everything from my love life to my future plans have either stabilized or exploded in a remarkably exceptional way. Too many things to write about with no time to do it or all the time in the world with nothing to say, which spins up a bit of irony into the moaning that maybe I was never meant to be a scientist, that I was after all these years in fact born to write great things. Yes. Moving on.

I saw an eagle a very few days ago as I was driving home from MA. I was not too far into PA, and the bird was not to far from my car. It looked, it lurched, and it lifted in front of, beside, then over my car. Everyone should have an eagle, except then they would not be as spectacular…then again if you have that type of wing span with that general mouth shape and claw length…you would still win a lot of bar fights on intimidation factor alone. It was either a baby bald or a golden eagle but I am not up to snuff in 5-second, freak-encounter bird identification so just know that it made my day.

I also got around to seeing the last on the list of people one graduated with that one must see in the year after one graduates or lose them forever in the abyss of time. This was also a freak encounter and also made my day…or my life as one wouldn’t want to loose a friend of this caliber to the abyss of time.

For those monitoring my progress...or progressions:

Yellow- States I have been in at one time or another
Blue- States I have been to at least once since September
Green- States I have frequented twice or thrice
Purply Pink- States that I inhabit enough that one might assume I live there
Red- The road-artery that connects me to the places that are most likely home and that I drive frequently enough that I can put Catsby on cruise and crawl in the back seat to make a sandwich
Extended stay states (1 week plus): Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri

Something else. One should always make sure ones compatriots are paying attention when one starts tossing the word subpoena around. It just makes things work better I think.

Also my fortune from last night: "If the cake is bad, what good is the frosting?" Lucky Numbers: 5, 20, 38, 40, 24, 8

It stopped snowing for a while

Anyone want a kitten. They are wicked cute.


Eternity of Days (02/02/07)

How long since I've felt your touch
The warmth of your body near mine
The scent of your breath when you speak an 'I love you'
It must be eternity
Maybe I can't tell time

I miss you like aching and always and final
I crave the contours of your face
The glint-blue of your eyes with a mischievous smile
The calendar says measure in days

I'd rather measure in miles
Those tend not to grow as fast
But any distance is to far to far
When this much time has passed apart

I don't know when I can see you
When I can escape this place
And the weather keeps coming to bar me from running
Damn this eternity of days

-Jn

The Quiz

As promised, a quiz on what you have learned. The answers are at the bottom but try and see what you can do without peaking. Let me know how you scored.
1. This one should be pretty easy...you tell me
2. This little guy is white but look carefully.
3. This one might be a little tricky because you can't see the head very well but you can do it.
4. Look at this face. She's all about eating the camera you can tell.
5. Don't think too hard.











Answers:
1. Sheep!
2. A cow
3. Black Sheep!
4. One happy goat
5. A Moose. Mr. Moose, my former basketball coach in fact.