One of those days

 Like I was saying, you never know what the day will bring. (Was I saying that?)

The other day my boys were playing Frizbee and the disc landed on the roof of the stable next to the gutter and I got a ladder out to retrieve it.  One of the boys thought it would be funny to shake the ladder while I was on it.  I told him to stop, it was dangerous, but he only shook it harder, laughing as I swayed back and forth trying to keep my balance.

I tried to climb down but fell, landing on my side on the corral fence and rolling off it.  I was stunned for a second.  The pain was intense.  I couldn't move for several minutes.  No one was laughing now.  

I wasn't sure that I could get up, but I tried and managed it.  I told the boys to go get their sister, my mini me, who was keeping company with her grandmother, my mother.  My mother had fallen on the stairs some time before and broken her hip, had a replacement and was recovering slowly, using a walker to get around.  She couldn't manage the steps from the porch so she could not help me.  My husband died suddenly at the beginning of the year, so there was no one to help me, my boys were too young and unreliable.  Oh, and I was pregnant and desperately did not want to lose my baby, the last from my dear Jeff and the last I would ever have.

I knew I had to get to the hospital, and we being so remote, I was going to have to fly. I found that I could walk all right so headed for the air strip, about a half mile away.  My daughter, running, caught up with me and helped me along. My boys came, too, the one being very contrite, but to his sorries I did not reply. Maybe I should have but I was concentrating on taking steps, one at a time.  That was the longest half-mile I ever walked in my life.

I was thinking about flying the Baron because that's what I usually use for short trips,  but then thought the KA would be better because it has an auto land feature:  if it senses the pilot is incapacitated, it gets on the radio, declares an emergency, locates the nearest airport. lands there and shuts down.  And people say AI is "slop." Nuts.  I was afraid I might become unable to operate the flight controls or pass out from the pain so the KA was the obvious choice.

My daughter helped me get in the plane, did the walk around by herself and preflight with me.  I told her she was in charge while I was gone, responsible for everything.  I warned the boys not to be a bother and to obey her and their grandmother.  If I didn't see them again they were to respect her as head of the household.  They cried and protested when I said I might not ever see them again, but they had to face that fact, as I did.

Then I took off. I circled the field, watching them waving, thinking I might never see them again, nor my mother. I wagged my wings and turned for Destination City, shifting my attention to the business at hand, flying the plane.

When I landed, I planned to get an Uber but when I radioed the FBO, where I was a frequent customer,  they said they would take me to the hospital and also take care of my plane. At the hospital it was confirmed I had a broken rib and punctured lung as well as tissue damage.  A needle was inserted to aspirate air. Then they installed a Heimlich valve. I was more worried about my pregnancy than myself and was relieved to learn that everything seemed okay with that.  

I stayed in the hospital for a few days but then felt I needed to get home so checked myself out.  My doctor warned me not to fly or, jokingly, not to scuba dive.  I told him that shattered my plans to free-dive the Marianas Trench.  He didn't laugh, said he was serious, don't fly or do anything involving air pressure changes.  I promised I wouldn't.  When the nurse wheeled me out into the lobby she asked if a family member was picking me up and I said yes, but they were delayed so it would be okay to just let me sit on a bench outside to wait for them. When she left I called the FBO, as they'd promised to pick me up, the boss had even visited me to see how I was doing and ask if I needed anything.

I flew home, feeling much better than when I flew in.  I stayed low and didn't have too much trouble breathing. My thoughts meandering, I remembered that I hadn't scuba dived since I was in Guam.  There I dived on the only site in the world where you can visit a ship sunk in World War I which lies under a ship sunk in World War II. That's at Apra Harbor where the Japanese freighter Tokai Maru, sunk by an American submarine in 1943, rests against the SMS Cormoran II, scuttled in 1917 by its German crew when the US entered the war. I hadn't thought about diving there in ages. I wished I could wade out into that bathtub-warm water inside the reef and lie down and soak in the heat of the sun, relive those days without a care in the world. 

I thought about a lot of things from my past on that flight back.  But the reality was that here I was and it was now and I had to deal with the fact I was a widow before I hit 40, I had an ailing mother and four children, with a fifth on the way, to take care of.  And I had to learn how to run a ranch. God, how was I going to manage it all?  What was my life going to be like from now on? And why was Jeff gone?  Damn it, why did he have to die? Jeff! Come back! Come back.... How can I go on without you?  I've never visited the grave since the funeral because as long as I don't I could believe that he was just off somewhere doing something, like when he was still in the service deployed, and I would see him again by and by.  But if I visit his grave I would know he was gone forever.  And I couldn't deal with that.  I had been that way when my father died, the same month my latest had been born.  What a month that was.  It was worse for my mother, having lost her husband of 47 years. She's not been the same since. I thought then that I would have at least as long with my dear husband.  I guess God heard my thought because when I thought that I imagined I heard the faint, distant sound of laughter.  You know what they say about how to make God laugh.  Tell him your plans for the future.

 

 

 

 

 

A Dream

 November 21, 2006

Wanda ran through the darkness. Heavy clouds hid and bared a silver waxing moon.

ThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThump

Her heart beat like a hummingbird's wings. Her lungs were on fire. She couldn't get enough air. She was going to die, her heart exploding into her lungs.
Yet her body ran on, did not falter or slow. Her ten-year-old legs hopped over logs and dodged rocks, never missing a step. Her arms pumped by her sides like skinny wings.

Little Girl! It called to her...

Wanda heard its panting breath. It was breathing in and out heavily, evenly, like a huge machine. Though she ran as fast as her legs could run, it was gaining on her. In her dread she could feel how it would seize her, giant hands crushing her shoulder and neck, jerking her into the air.
Then she saw the tree, one low branch bent downward. The branch was broken at the base, but she had to try to grab it. She focused all her strength into her thighs and calves, kicked off the ground with her mud-spattered bare feet and, jumping as high as she could, seized the branch and pulled herself up.

CRACK crack crack CRACK

The branch was breaking.

Wanda scrabbled at the bark of the trunk, feeling for another branch to support her. She found one just as her feet felt the first branch snap and spin away to the forest floor. She struggled in a gasping rush up through branches she could barely see, scraping her face and arms, gouging her hands. Finally, she curled herself into a ball high up in the tree, balancing on a thin branch, pressing against the trunk, willing herself to melt into it. She scarcely dared breathe. She could hear...it... below. Sniffing at the base, trying to find where she had disappeared to.

Little Girl! Little Girl!

"Oh no," whispered Wanda. "God, please--please!--don't let it find me!"

Suddenly it looked up.

Why don't you like me, Little Girl?

It knew where she was.

Wanda screamed as the dark shape threw itself against the tree with a force that shivered it to the roots. Giant claws sank into the wood, ripping the bark and fixing in the trunk. It began to climb.
Shaking with fear, she eased farther out along the branch, away from the trunk, steeling herself to jump into the blackness if it came out after her. The branch bent, swayed. She crouched, balancing desperately, clinging with both hands.

Why don't you like me, Little Girl? I just want to show you something! It's made for pretty girls like you--You'll like it!
It laughed, low and guttural.

I want to be your friend!

It paused, listened. Then it growled in frustration. It was too heavy to hang on. It slid slowly down the trunk, it's claws leaving deep gouge marks in the bark. Down. Down. Wanda heard it stumble and fall heavily, snarling, when it hit the ground. Then it crouched at the base of the tree, staring up into the blackness. Waiting. Waiting with infinite patience to get what it wanted.

Little girl... It's voice was coaxing.

Wanda didn't move until sunrise. Then she climbed higher.



"He maketh my feet like hind's feet: and setteth me upon my high places."
-- II Samuel 22:34

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If You Say So

 I dunno, man.  I don't even know what most of these are, including No.1.  Some I ain't never heard of. I have an aunt who says she never thinks about religion except when trouble brews and she prays oh Lord save my sorry ass! Yeah. I guess.


Religion Test

My results:

Your Results:
The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.
Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1.	Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.	Liberal Quakers (86%)
3.	Mahayana Buddhism (81%)
4.	Neo-Pagan (81%)
5.	New Age (80%)
6.	Theravada Buddhism (79%)
7.	Secular Humanism (75%)
8.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (74%)
9.	Taoism (72%)
10.	Jainism (66%)
11.	Scientology (65%)
12.	New Thought (64%)
13.	Hinduism (62%)
14.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (59%)
15.	Sikhism (57%)
16.	Bahá'í Faith (55%)
17.	Reform Judaism (53%)
18.	Orthodox Quaker (52%)
19.	Nontheist (49%)
20.	Orthodox Judaism (31%)
21.	Islam (30%)
22.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (26%)
23.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (22%)
24.	Eastern Orthodox (22%)
25.	Roman Catholic (22%)
26.	Seventh Day Adventist (17%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (9%)

My mini-me and I have sung this song together since she was a wee one. Why don't you join us and sing along?

Childhood bliss?

  

I ran across this comment, or lament, somewhere and it touched a nerve with me because there sure have been times when I wished I were 10 years old again, when I've thought that nothing since puberty has been worth growing up for. To be eternally in the Garden of Eden of childhood would be heaven.

Oh, I know for many people childhood was hell -- they'll tell the world, you can bet on that.  But for me and many others it wasn't, and why should their unhappiness carry more weight than our happiness?

Anyway, while I was thinking about how pleasant it would be to live again those sunny childhood days, a light breeze rippling the leaves of the trees of times past, it occurred to me that when I actually was a child, maybe my parents were wishing they were back in their happy childhoods and would rather not be parents and dutiful adults, dealing with all the grown-up crap, the responsibilities, the necessity to just grin and bear it, whatever it was...you know how it is.  Some days are good, a few even very good indeed, but the older I get, the more I am likely to think as I wake up in the morning what's going to go wrong today? What disaster is awaiting me?  What am I going to have to deal with before I can slip back under the covers again?

So I think back to the best days of my childhood, forgetting all that was not so good, all the fears and anxiety and uncertainty of those days, most especially wondering what I would grow up to be.  But the more I think about those days, the more I remember of the reality of being a child, not in control of anything, not understanding a lot, being compelled to do things I didn't want to do....

I often spent summers with relatives, usually my grandparents, my mom and dad not wanting me to grow up isolated and unused to America, we living overseas for most of my childhood. I looked forward to those summers on the ranch, with my own horse and dogs, the freedom to roam the wide open spaces, the beauty and interest of nature.  I loved my grandmother and was always excited to see her.  I thought the world of her and I thought that she thought the same of me.

But one day I guess I was being especially rambunctious, probably got on her nerves pestering her, though I didn't realize it, just being a happy kid, and she whacked me on the heinie with her house slipper, telling me to settle down and behave and stop making a nuisance of myself.

Now the smack to my hind end startled me. It didn't really hurt physically, it just got my attention, as you might say. But her telling me that she thought I was a nuisance shocked me to the core.  I was stunned.  Something deep inside me broke.  I loved her unconditionally, as only a child can love, and I thought she loved me, too.  But that wasn't so.  She just considered me a nuisance.  She probably didn't even want me around and didn't like me coming to stay with her. What a fool I was to have thought she loved me.  But now I knew.  I was just a nuisance.

After that, my relationship to her, and my grandfather, changed.  I was subdued, rarely spoke.  The days of me chattering away at meal times, hanging out in the kitchen asking questions and trying to help, were over.  After breakfast I disappeared, saddling my horse and riding off, a couple of dogs running with me, and did not come back till well after dark, which in the summer meant  11 or 11:30 at night.  When I got home, my grandparents were both still up, though they usually retired around 10.  It didn't occur to me that they were worried about me, because all they ever said was it's about time you showed up, your supper's cold.

Other days, I would stick around but just do my chores, taking care to do them exactly right.  If told what to do, I would just do it in silence.  

I realize now that I was wildly over-reacting, pouting over nothing.  But to me at that time, it was not nothing.  It was everything.  And my grandmother had given me a valuable lesson about life: it doesn't center around you, and even with those you love and who love you, you have to be considerate, think how your behavior affects them.  Common sense for an adult, but a child has to learn it.  Eventually, I came to realize that.  But it took a while.

Another bad, to me anyway, experience of childhood was my grandfather teaching me how to shoot.  As I've written before, he was a stern man and I was a little afraid of him.  He wasn't mean, but he expected obedience.  He was a career naval officer, an aviator, had been wounded several times in the Pacific War, been shot down at sea and not rescued for 37 days, flew combat missions during the Korean War and the Viet Nam war as well, and had survived many harrowing experiences.  I didn't know all that at the time. I just knew he was a formidable presence you did not disobey in either word or action.

So anyway, he decided that I needed to learn how to handle firearms and use them effectively.  I didn't like guns and didn't want to have anything to do with them.  They were cold pieces of metal, they were loud, and people used them to kill animals with.  I hated them.

But gramps told me some day I might have need of a firearm and I should be adept.  So he taught me and I learned.  And not only did I learn to shoot with precision and accuracy at stationary and moving targets, I learned that the best way to get through a task you don't want to do but have to is not to delay and resist, be stubborn and recalcitrant, but to dive into it with your whole will and just do it.  Get it done.  Accomplish it and put it behind you.  That is the real skill my grandfather taught me, not how to use a gun.  And how valuable that skill has proven to be.

Where am I going with all this?  Oh, nowhere I guess, other than that the dream of a idyllic childhood is -- wait for it! -- a meretricious chimera. Haha. 

Oh, and that remembering it reminds me to be careful when dealing with my own children. A casual word spoken out of annoyance can have profound affects not only in that day but throughout their whole lives. I have to think what I am saying to them from their point of view. Not so I don't hurt their feelings so much as in what lessons my words might teach them.  I need to be aware of that.  I want their childhood memories to be as good as I can make them while I am also teaching them how to be adults and make it through this most imperfect, and often quite unfriendly world.

 

 

 

 

 

IM Flotsam

 

While noodling around in a bunch of old files I came across this exchange of members of a photo club I modeled for when I was in high school after I came back to the states.  I've mentioned before that I posed for both artists and photographers but I totally forgot that for some reason I saved this exchange. Reading it, I can't remember what it was all about but Stefanie sure was upset about something.  Just laugh about it now.  I'd completely forgotten about all of those people until I found this. Funny how memories are stored but not available to you until something prompts the recall.
But once those days were brought to mind a flood of other memories rushed in on me.  I was having so much fun discovering America after so many years overseas.  Yes, there were bad things that happened, as I've written, and I missed my old high school and my old friends, but it was wonderful emerging into adulthood in that time and place.  My mind lingers.... 
Can I still fit into the outfits I wore for those photo shoots -- or didn't wear! -- today?  Almost. No, really. My hips have spread a bit, thanks to childbirth but my waist has not spread equally so my waist:hip ratio is a bit better.  My boobs are bigger.  I work out regularly so I am more muscular, with stronger thighs and more defined calves. My arms are more toned and have some muscle mass, that sort of thing. A lot of women get pudgy as they get older, but I have become more toned. Someone once told me that I have ice skater legs. My boobs aren't saggy, either. I think that's genetic. My mother still has a great set of headlights.  TMI?
The other day some teenage boys I walked by called me a MILF they'd like to snack on. I had to consider whether that was a compliment or not.  I decided it was.  And I thought about going back and passing by them again, stopping and bending over in front of them pretending to adjust something, giving them a nice view.  But I didn't. What if my back went out on me when I bent over? Haha.
One time when I was a teen, my dad was rummaging through junk in the garage and I was hanging out with him yakking away while he pretended to listen, he came across a pile of oil paintings in the middle of which I had tucked away a nude painting of me that the artist had gifted me. When he saw it, he pulled it out, puzzled, then said, "Good Lord, is this you squirt?"  I said, "Uh...maybe...." He studied it for a minute, said, "Well, it doesn't do the subject justice." Then he put it back and never said another word about it.  I was sure he was going to tell my mother and certain death would follow.  But he didn't, as far as I know, because nothing ever came of it.
What's that? Hadn't I told my parents I was -- coughnudecough -- modeling? Are you kidding? Of course not.  Dad might have said okay but my mother would have put her foot down most firmly.  I knew that, and questions you know the answer to you don't have to ask. Right?

Yeah, I have been reminiscing a lot about my past lately, rummaging through junk from my childhood and teenage years.  Kind of an escape from the now, I guess. It ain't been a good year so far.

Anyway, here's the scrap of instant messaging from the great before.

***********************************

Wanda by Jimmy.

Stefanie: As Mike said, there have been MANY such topics. I posted my photos in the open forum, which clearly states 'Anything- so long as it's legal'. I honestly think Alicia was pissed off because Jimmy was taking ALOT of interest in Wandas thread as well as her pics. I am sorry if she is a friend of Bills, but I think it was odd that she posted what she did in my thread and not Wandas as well- since it seemed like her post was directed to both of us. I think that was in poor taste. I have seen discussions about all sorts of garbage- never has Alicia said a word...till now....odd.....sorry but I think she was being gross.

That's why I said "whatever", women who only object to other women really bug me. So long as Jimmy isn't interested it's ok.....

Peter:  Look guys, I am not totally sure why Wanda decided to leave. I think in time she might reconsider but regardless, she is a good friend of mine & I don't want to see her go but it's her decision. I must respect it.

In time, we'll see. It upsets me because she is my friend & I will miss her.

I keep my fingers crossed. There is a lot going on in her life as well. I mean we all have times when things R busy & priorities change. I hope this passes, that's all.

Frank: I don't think Wanda's leaving had anything to do with her photos because I remember she enjoyed posing for them, at least I thought so, she was always smiling and laughing.

Bill: I think Wanda is in France but I don't recall where I got that information. I wasn't a Wanda groupie though from what I have heard I really missed out. But remember this was just a job for her that she took to earn money for what she really wanted to do.  It was always going to be a temporary gig.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Quiz

This is a repost from August 6, 2009, from an old long-closed blog I had.

I really haven't changed in all these years. Even the writing style is the same. And I still like those books and feel the same way about reading and believe I have transmitted that feeling to my children. I had the habit of writing down favorite passages from the novels that most impressed me and I see that my mini-me has developed the same habit.  I didn't teach her; she did it on her own.
Oh, the book in the photo below is Wanda by the 19th century English authoress Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée), also one of my favorite books from my childhood. The novel popularized the name "Wanda" in the English-speaking world. The novel spawned a stage play and an opera by Antonín Dvořák. The protagonist is Countess Wanda von Szalras. When I was reading the book and talking about it with my grandmother, she told me that I was descended from the Countess.  I believed it.  For a while. Then it dawned on me that the countess was a fictional character.  Grandma! Haha.
Here's a quote from the novel that would get it banned today and Ouida canceled. It's about a lowlife bum who pretended to be a prince/boulevardier who charmed Wanda into falling in love with, marrying and bearing him children.  When she found out what he really was, she was devastated.

“She was like a queen who beholds the virgin soil of her kingdom invaded and wasted by a traitor.
Any other thing she would have pardoned: infidelity, indifference, cruelty, any sins of manhood's caprice or passion, but who should pardon this?
The sin was not alone against herself; it was against every law of decency and truth that ever she had been taught to hold sacred; it was against all those great dead, who lay with the cross on their breasts and their swords by their side, from whom she had received and treasured the traditions of honor and purity of race.
It was those dead knights whom he had smote upon the mouth and mocked, crying to them: 'Lo! your place is mine; my sons will reign in your stead. I have tainted your race forever; for ever my blood flows with yours!'
The greatness of a race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Its instincts are noble and supreme. Its obligations are no less than its privileges; it is a great light which streams backward through the darkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honor in your hands.
So she had always thought, and now he had dashed the lamp in the dust."

Anyway, on with the old post --

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Rules:  In no more than 15 minutes list 15 books that will always stick with you that you had read by the time you were 15 years old.

And don't go for the pretentious or have an eye to impress. The truth!

Hmm. Okay. This is harder than it seems, mainly because a lot of books I really liked I have forgotten about until someone mentions them and then I am all like, "Oh, yeah!" And, um, my picks are mostly stuff I read as a kid; books I've read later haven't had as much impact on me.
Well, the summer I was 11 I really read a lot, undirected and unsupervised. I spent most of it with my aunt and she had a shed behind the house that was absolutely filled with books. The shed was painted yellow, neat and clean, with a window opposite the door through which sunlight flooded the rows and rows of books in a bright light dancing with dust motes. Many of the books had been published around the turn of the 20th century, quite a few before, as well as stacks of paperbacks from decades later.
Anyway, mostly I remember books from that summer, for a lot of reasons. It was a unique time in my life, a kind of pause, an end of one era of my life, but not yet the beginning of the next, and all those books I read, read desperately, intently, trying to escape into them to avoid the reality I sensed coming, infused it with an aura of other-worldliness that remains in my memory still.
Okay, the books, those I remember the titles to, anyway, only in the order they pop into my mind.

*My Antonia by Willa Cather
*Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson
*Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
*Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev
*Why Gone Those Times? by James Willard Shultz
*Lost Island by James Norman Hall
*Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark
*The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat
*Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
*Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
*The October Country by Ray Bradbury
*A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
*Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton
*A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
*The Outermost House by Henry Beston

Oh, and two that I totally loved that I read when I was like 7 or 8 or something: "Dangerous Island," and, especially, "No Children, No Pets." No idea who the authors were or really what the plot lines were. But the ambiance, the feeling of them, remains with me to this day.
Then there was The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. That little book may very well have made me who I am. It is a precious and dear to me as anything in the world. It is my private treasure.
I could go all day listing books from my childhood that I totally loved or that deeply impressed me--The Wind in the Willows, Bend Sinister, The Big Sky, Coronado's Children.... Then there was poetry, history and nonfiction of all sorts....
Sigh.
The happiest I may ever have been--may ever be--was when I was nine or 10 years old, curled up outside on the grass under a tree on a summer day reading--reading raptly, intently, obliviously, joyously.

I really feel sorry for people who didn't become readers when they were young. Reading is far better than watching TV or movies. The experience you have when reading is total, because your mind is immersed in the story and you create the images from your own imagination, so they are much more real and stay with you as something you almost experienced yourself. The only thing that comes close to it is radio plays, because you do the same thing with them, visualizing what is happening with your mind.

August 6, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pet peeve

It makes me tired to have to read writing that uses the same handful of words everyone else uses to express thoughts, usually negative ones. Recently, I've noticed everyone is using the word "slop" to describe whatever they dislike.  I guess it replaces "shit," although that is still very much in use.  It's slop this and slop that all over the internet.

Shit does still reign supreme though -- get your shit together, what is this shit, I packed my shit, I ate some shit, I worked on some shit, he said some shit.

Fuck is a runner-up to shit -- fuck that fucking fuck, he's fucked, I fucking know it.

Then there is "cuck."  That's seems the modern day derogatory term of choice. 

If you use all four words you could probably get through most conversations.  What the fuck is that? Oh, it's just some shit. That slop is everywhere. Well, fuck me, that cuck slop is some shit.

Who needs the 850-word vocabulary of BASIC English when probably 100 words will do.  Maybe even less.  

I pine for the days when I wrote an article in a national magazine in which I said that something was a meretricious chimera and that someone had a dolorous mien. And my editor did not raise an eyebrow nor did any reader complain. Hah!

Yeah, yeah. I know that a good writer doesn't use sesquipedalian words because her goal is to be understood, not to show off her erudition. Never use a three-syllable word when a two-syllable word will do, and never use a two-syllable word when a one-syllable word will do.  And use the Anglo-Saxon word whenever possible. 

Actually, I strive to write so that anyone with a sixth grade education will have no trouble understanding me and can cruise through my writing just as if he were having a conversation with a friend over lunch.  Imagine if you were sitting by a window wolfing down a double bacon cheese burger and your pal pointed to a guy walking by and said he had a dolorous mien.  You'd swallow and say, "Huh? I never heard of that kind of dog." Well, I don't want some cuck reading my fucking slop to go "Huh?" Shit on that.  
 

 

 

 

 

 A Certain Swirl

by Mary Ruefle

      The classroom was dark, all the desks were empty,
and the sentence on the board was frightened to
find itself alone. The sentence wanted someone to
read it, the sentence thought it was a fine sentence, a
noble, thorough sentence, perhaps a sentence of
some importance, made of chalk dust, yes, but a sen-
tence that contained within itself a certain swirl not
unlike the nebulous heart of the unknown universe,
but if no one read it, how could it be sure? Perhaps it
was a dull sentence and that was why everyone had
left the room and turned out the lights. Night came,
and the moon with it. The sentence sat on the board
and shone. It was beautiful to look at, but no one
read it.

 

 Shame

by C. K. Williams

A girl who, in 1971, when I was living by myself, painfully lonely, bereft, depressed,
offhandedly mentioned to me in a conversation with some friends that although at
   first she'd found me—
I can't remember the term, some dated colloquialism signifying odd, unacceptable,
   out-of-things—
she'd decided that I was after all all right…twelve years later she comes back to me
   from nowhere
and I realize that it wasn't my then irrepressible, unselective, incessant sexual want
   she meant,
which, when we'd been introduced, I'd naturally aimed at her and which she'd
   easily deflected,
but that she'd thought I really was, in myself, the way I looked and spoke and acted,
what she was saying, creepy, weird, whatever, and I am taken with a terrible
   humiliation.

  

Amphibious

by Erin Murphy

My daughter wants to take
a framed oil painting to school,

a nude with loose breasts and a belly
ripe as the full moon. Why? Because

we're studying frogs, she says,
and it's a frog. I cock my head

to consider the angle of the draped arm
but can't get past the female form.

My daughter, though, is swimming
in amphibians, bringing home

scribbled pictures of tadpoles sprouting
splayed feet. At night, she sleeps

in the bedroom I painted pink,
her shelves lined with confectionary

teapots and cups. By day, she wants
to be her brother when she grows up.

Lately, she's morphed into
a creature who'd rather squirm free

than be held. O, how we see what we
want to see. My daughter, looking at

a nude, sees a frog for show-n-tell.
I look at her and see myself. 

 

  I was the victim of a street crime once. I was a victim because, having lived most of my life overseas as a service brat among professional naval aviation types, I was naive about many things.
It was not till I was back in the States as a civilian that I noticed that it was not wise to be incautious around certain races. My first serious experience was when I was in a civilian high school and was checking out various universities. In one instance, I was walking toward the USC campus south of downtown LA after getting off a bus a few stops past where I should have. A car pulled up and stopped ahead of me and a black man got out of the passenger side and walked directly up to me.
I smiled tentatively, assuming he was going to ask directions or something and I would have to say that I was not familiar with the area. But he punched me in the face and then landed a terrific blow to the side of my head, knocking me  unconscious.
When I came to, I was lying on the sidewalk, my purse gone. I got to my feet and, without a cell phone to call for help, and with no money or ID -- all in my purse -- I walked to a convenience store and asked the clerk to call the police. I must have looked a mess, bleeding, clothing dirty and my sleeve torn somehow. The Korean clerk just shouted at me, "You go now! You go now!" 
I stood bewildered for a moment then went out and, feeling dizzy, sat down in the parking lot. Customers came and went, ignoring me, until finally an older white man asked if I was all right. I told him what had happened and asked him to call my home and have someone come and pick me up. He also called the police and requested an ambulance, but they didn't show up before my brother did.
The upshot of that was that I crossed USC off my list of colleges to consider and my dad bought me a Lady Smith .38 cal. revolver and I resolved to have it ready for use anytime a black person I did not personally know came anywhere near me.
Suffice it to say that I learned why there is such a thing as white flight. A man might choose to risk getting into a street fight with violent criminals, but I chose simply to avoid situations where that might be necessary.

 

Ring! Ring!

 Have gotten several calls from folks I served with in Afghanistan.  Hardly more than kids then, now they have kids themselves, kids they are worried about having to advise whether or not to join up not too far down the road if -- no, when -- this Iran thing drags on and on.  Hope it doesn't, but if history is any guide....  We talk, remember where we were when the Twin Towers fell, what we thought about it. How it's affected our lives in ways we never would have imagined.  Talk about Tora Bora and how twenty years later we were still in Afghanistan having accomplished nothing at all.

Will these wars never end? 

By the way, the AV-8B+ in the photo to the left was destroyed on the night of September 14-15, 2012, by a Taliban commando suicide squad, along with five others and, I think, a C-130. 

Well, what can you do but dance away the days and forget the world? Might as well.

I suppose I should write something worth reading.  I will one of these days.  But not right now.

 Deja moo -- when you've seen this bullshit before.