Here, It Is Friday, and There’s Haze in the Air

I’m sitting in my car; it’s going to be 106 today.
What is the trajectory?
When does my age intersect with bulbability
I used to think my age an advantage with the declining world;
So we’ll all gang together…
But now I’m seeing, unlike past elders who had to test their life alone,
Now it is confused/conflated with the end of times.
My window is open (it’s going to be 106 here, today; what will it be next year? The year after? I’m 72, if I last till 75, what will it be then? 80? Shall I have my end-of-world drugs ready by then, lest my age outlasts my comfort?)
After the previous to last sentence, a dried leaf flew in my window, resting companionably now against my arm; I shall grow old; whether or not trousers rolled.
Outside two men hold a discussion, a little girl playing with chalk on the sidewalk at their feet; on the radio (to counterbalance the convo outside?)a discussion of race with the producer of a movie on Rodney King: Let it fall, Los Angeles: 1982-1992.
Outside, there is haze; more wild fire? We are burning; we are flooding; we have been discovering the very clay feet of our heroes; maybe end times is no time for heroes. Stand on your own clay feet! Heroes inevitably remind us of our own.

Is there authority?

I am in my car, listening to the radio, desultory typing, resisting entering the coffee house at the shore where it serves those entering / leaving town by water.
What a privilege to sit here, you have no idea, with a soft breeze dancing on my shoulder; what a breeze to sit here, listening to the radio in a car whilst typing on a machine that is so beyond the original edition I banged on, over 50 years ago!
The coffee house has coffee, and lovely views, but no breeze, and people; hard to focus on writing with swirling people energies. Ah, the ferry is just pulling away! And what a privilege the thought that I could board that ferry and, in an hour, be in the city of delights and dreams! (If you ignore the homeless and the desolation in the quarters where they dwell.)

It is now 3:24 p.m.; it is now 107 where I am (in the Bay Area); someone in Spain, close to the Atlantic coast, reported 117; I remember 117 from a brief dip into Baja California in the late ’60s; I cried; that’s all I was capable of: crying.
I just walked outside to see what 107 felt like; it was okay, especially in the shade…for the three minutes I was out there. I don’t have to work out there, unlike the two fellows I saw digging a ditch or some similar work, a few days past. Is it legal to make people work out there in this temperature?

I hear people saying: bad, bad humans! You are not a good boy! Yet, I repeat, is there agency? I mean, we didn’t all gather together and decide to be bad; it takes a lot of chutzpah to take credit for how bad we (meaning the earth and those that dwell within) are; where, exactly, do you throw the spanner in the works? Believe me, if I knew, I would! But, seemingly, we don’t know; we just blindly show up, from moment to moment.

More thoughts, I’m sure, to come.

Addendum:
En tout cas: Who do we think we are, that we can resolve the mystery of existence so as to prolong our life here, because we are so special? Maybe we are special, but that doesn’t mean we escape disintegration; end times; extinction; whatever colorful name you like to give it…. Or that we know when, and how. Sorry youse all who anticipated our earth growing older and wiser under an ever-more-yellowing sol. It will be how it will be, independent of “us” human be-ins. And then again, who knows?
Be at peace: Nothing is under control.

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it was the beginning

of a poem, she said.
half-worn clothes.
of all the things to have in common
we should have found each other sooner
she said.
yeah, like 38 years sooner, i thought.
she thought maybe
she’d like me.
bitter pills bitter to swallow
bitter to expel
leading to a clenched, blaming
mouth.
who writes for the hard?

and yet
who was she
now that i’ve outlived her
age?
oh, i know, and
i’ve looked
but
one sees no further
than one’s own
heart of
darkness

 

you are strange
in what u-verse
do we intersect with
demands, stated and un-?
the rules complicated + moving
gaslight a zeitgeist that will
toss us to ruins.

i falter
i submit i clench
dare to mention the handmaid
though really the cuntmaid
so sublimer realms
are visited
through
veils of sensate
impingement
opinions
formed
words
used
.

 

it’s funny

my form(s) of avoidance. literally. i watch funny clever stuff to keep my boat from sinking (metaphor: my boat = my emotional state; sinking: falling beneath the miasma that our apparent world situation seems to place us in). i watch until i can’t watch no more. that is actually my approach to life; it’s why i don’t worry about facebook ‘addiction.’ people think you should do less of a thing, but my experience is that if i do more of a thing that really sucks me in, i get spit out the other end. sure, facebook, that shiny new toy, that impenetrable obelisk in 2001 that brings us all knowledge (factual or not), well, of course, the internet, i mean. but really, for me, filtered through facebook, the most provocative thinkers (friends; when i find them, i hang on for dear life, the most amusing, intelligent, gifted beings whom i collect like baubles. sorry, if you thought this was gonna be more uplifting. i intently treasure them, the absurd ones, the divine ones; even though i collect them, i don’t undervalue them; who knew that, ultimately, the universe consisted of friends, or memes, or whatever you want to call the wormhole i just crawled into….and popped out of! seriously, i read an article on memes and understood them more deeply than i had before. the universe is really our mind, and our place in it. an echo chamber, it can be, but, the memes. this actually triggers me. when i was a child i had a visceral experience of a screaming mimi; it involved a gross pea in a can and the tiniest beans in multi-bean soup; i think those were what i perceived to be screaming mimis, with a fractal, endless, multiple-dimensioned ancillary afterimage. so, you can see how peeling away from consensus reality implies a deeply caring pov, with a willingness to drop breadcrumbs, should they prove to be helpful for the perigean voyage.

gad, did i take off! what i was trying to say was that humor serves to remove me from the current apparent global / national realities, to a certain extent. after a while, even colbert pales, er, so to speak. between distraction and denial (i’m really good at denial) plus the blessing of where i live, i keep myself (somewhat) sane. the current heat is getting to me, however, even as a cool breeze wafts my shoulders. it was 99 yesterday; i don’t think it was 99 on this day a year ago, and next year? and the next? as with others my age, i’m affected by the heat where i had to leave a pleasant meeting at the farmers market because, really, i could have swooned had i not. don’t get me wrong, sitting here in this breeze (created by a blessed fan), i love the heat! i, of course, don’t ‘love’ going out shopping (as we don’t live on a self-sufficient farm, here), etc., etc., as this heat continues. heck, i don’t even mind that, that much. what is preoccupying me is wondering what the curve looks like if we continue this trend. what will the temperature be next year? the year after that? surely, there is a graph for that. so, how hot will it be by the time i die? or, looking at it another way, how soon will where i live be too hot for me to live?

even if somehow you don’t buy the line from the doctor of doom who says we have maybe 10 more years here as a species, what difference does it make? even if donald trump is too stupid to look at the evidence and declare there is such a thing as global warming and we hecka ought to do something about it, well, you and i have been through that, and this is not our fate…. when will stupid us get to the actual business of mitigating the shit out of what we are left with? it seems patently obvious that it will not be long now before we are too hot for comfort maybe except for the very rich who have staked off their terrain, i assume. gad, i got off track.

currently watching ‘kimmy’ on netflix, enthralled by tina fey’s genius, another really really bright woman who cracks through stereotypes with alarming wit. in lieu of coming up to some intermediary response to the above, ill-described dilemma, this, and other places where i spend the time, sometimes writing, sometimes reading, looking at greenness, sometimes painting, living this life, moment by moment, sometimes liking it, sometimes, really angry, sometimes, moments of being it. namaste, y’all.

well, dang! word press commanded me to write

…and who am i to refuse.

plus, i’d already thought about what i was going to write about, this evening.

i am going to write about my female lineage, and i’m going to cross-post on facebook, seeing as no one actually reads my blog anymore.

so, in the beginning, was sarah, and i’d have to begin with tales of sarah. you see, sarah was my grandma, the only one i knew, actually, well my adoptive dad’s mom was technically one, but she made it clear to me, as one can to a child of 4.5, that she was too young to be a grandma.

and yet, she took me to outrement park; where we sucked on lifesavers, butterscotch i particularly savored, but even wintergreen could be tolerated, and we sat in the coolth of a montreal evening and watched those young (mostly) men hitting the ball back and forth, back and forth. a mesmerizing timelessness.

so, i was going to write about sarah, and end up writing about annie, first. how odd 🙂

so, sarah, well, i’m tired now, she’ll have to wait. simply, she was a grandma amongst grandmas, a treasure, her own children were dazzled by her. she was blind. but, really, that will have to wait. adios, amigos y amigas. todo va mejor.

it’s a faint

neapolitan sky

the ice cream

not the location

 

 

are you serious?

why is it not patently obvious that obama is as much part of the democratic machine as is hillary? with all due respect. the republicans are great at the lizard-mind thing, but the shifty democrats got quite good with obama at making a list of what most of us libtards desire (self-declared libtard, here) and putting it out with a most handsome, actually quite pure (likely) and wholesome face that most libtards drool over. yes, promise us gmo-labeling, etc., etc. (i’ve mercifully forgotten all the goodies we were promised and that were conveniently reneged on). so cynical am i. of course, he had the most obstructive legislature in history, but we also knew that going in. his political appointments told us the truth.

the tide has turned; the days of vision and intelligence will drown as we go down, and going down we must, from our high-living daze. i begin to muse ironically at the gods who have put this new buffoon in charge of what must be the glory daze of our descent. hail nero!

so now, listening to ‘the young turk’ calling obama out, i see how fooled i am (once more!): obama a cog in that same machine; it’s all the same machine. i way cut back on facebook once i saw, nothing new under the sun. it took me 70 years, and facebook, thanks mr. zuck, to see our interminable human nature and the lizard nature of progress: is there such a thing as progress? the wheel turns, churning out more and more ‘gizmos’; our very advantages turn against us; we cure childhood death and end up in overpopulation. but it’s true, we then cure overpopulation (thank you, dr. pincus). our ‘progress’ is the old story of ‘good news/bad news,’ and here we are.

canada’s contribution to the final daze? hockey sticks (thank you, james creighton and mcgill) on our pi charts! out of control usage of the last gasps of gas! i will make a confession here: i’ve done my best, usually, to be conservative in how i live, now i question this illusion, the illusion of how i live, life, and conservatism. because, my lifestyle includes the expenditure of gasoline. yesterday i read, somewhere, the story of some famous or rich person, not a bad person, who unconsciously wastes a half glass of water without considering what labor had been expended (she was in some remote region) to obtain that water. well, that, less famous and waster of much more than that half glass, is me. and i’ve represented myself otherwise. yes, thus and so entangled am i in this miasma of wastefulness of life. you could nearly call every aspect of my life a waste, including my last breathe, as would be acknowledged by any jain in our midst.

especially, and maybe you can get it, hard to admit, my wastage of gas. i waste gas, to go to my work, such as it is, to spend time with friends. i know, you are all living more frugally than me in this respect, but i am not. and i finally just wished to admit it. (i’ve censored the swear words in that last sentence; feel free to sprinkle them back in.)

so, how do i feel about all this? as you may imagine, in many ways. if you are reading this, please nod your head in agreement: one way or another, you are as deeply yanked into this system as i am. i am choosing my life, my lifestyle; i’ve chosen many in this lifetime, as maya would have me believe, or they’ve chosen me. in this current hallucination, i’m 71.5 years old (just about today, i think), and there are things i can and can’t do. i have deepest admiration for my farmer friend, jonathan, for so many reasons, but the main one being he is capable of farming, in as sane a manner as i’ve ever seen, and hats off to any farmers who are similarly engaged.

i grew a tomato two years ago; it died. i figured out it was about water, and last summer grew one more successfully, shared the last of the four that showed up with what i presume was a hungry deer, in my fantasy, she nibbled one day, then returned the next and a few more nibbles, then it sort of got old and i tossed it to the side. so that’s my success so far in growing my own food, oh, about seven raspberries from the raspberry plant i nurtured. no complaints; she is pretty.

and a coyote got my cat, i believe, though that is another very sad story.

i live a complicated life. it takes me hither and yon. it’s how it is; it’s not your life, i know, you have a different life; mostly more interesting, with deeper, more beautiful relationships, and that’s okay. i bet you think i do too. 🙂

i depend on the largess of the government plus an assist from the detritus of a marriage; i am most grateful. both of those dependencies come from a source that is less pure than i’d like you to perceive me as being, i.e., the gov’t and a ‘fund.’ don’t worry, i won’t be sucking these tits for too long, age and all. 🙂 😦 🙂

so, i am thrilled to be writing this, and addressing any other belief systems i may hold dear whilst trying to cling to this life-form, tenuous though it may be, amigos! ❤ hasta la hasta!

 

 

 

i need to write

of the human delicacy i experience, as a human, reaching out. i’ve done little reaching out in my life, for this reason; i’ve assumed i would be bruised if rejected, for any reason, and i am right! and i was! and i am!

and in that tiresome writer’s way, i get to write about it, about my commitment to feel all my feeling, especially my challenging ones; not particularly “explore” them, as i’ve done in the past, oh, i’ve explored my feelings, simply physically experience them, as fully as i am able. breathing, counting one to ten at times.

i get to have this privilege, being human, and especially so  having chosen so late in life to move out, just a little. facebook has helped, reaching out to people, communicating with people, actually meeting some of them in person.

then this opportunity and choice to travel, having found my perfect roommate/kitty care, and me tentatively reaching out to others, those who have interested me for different reasons, and receiving various levels, mostly positive, of response. a few and far between, and challenging what i mentioned at the beginning, my sensitivities. and then, a minimal response followed by what i experienced as a non-response and my too-quick gemini response to that! gawkkkk!!! i truly am capable of being a social elephant in a china shop! no wonder i have chosen not to blunder there!

that all got me thinking of what i’ve read recently of how lonely we all are, and how it’s okay to be around few people if you are smart (haha); yeah, smart. quien sabe? for, this rejection sank deep in my heart, and i watched its trajectory. i watched it say, well, why are you even traveling, why have you made any plans with anyone, you know you don’t like people, you know you will only get hurt and have other difficult emotions, are you crazy. admittedly, yes.

because, guess what, it really hurt. it hurt and changed shape and i looked at it and have now written about it. nothing protects me from my feelings, and that’s the way it is. i often succeed in not prolonging them by spinning out a story about them, prodigiously helped by the instructions of john sherman (justonelook.org), but there are those feelings/circumstances that get under my skin, this one, for example, for i am still here, aren’t i? and to learn.

very gently i interact with every day people whom i meet, whether shopping or at my doctor; i have my now grown sons hither and yon in our constellation, and my younger son’s new wife and my older son’s significant friends; i reluctantly acknowledge i have become strangely rich in spiritual and other community. however, it has never been easy, and i’ve gone through much pain to become who i am, in and out of such community.

and there are the very few whom i have been blessed with connecting with; they say if you have had as many of such deep friendships as the fingers on one hand, or so, you are blessed. and, perhaps if it is intended in your life, there is even one closer than that, with all its gifts and challenges, or a relationship of that nature with the all in all.

hmm…., where am i going with this? i wish you the degree of intimacy you require in this life, and if it is less than to your liking, i recommend you lower your standards for a while 🙂

yes, your feelings, even affecting you at the neurochemical level, may be ‘bruised,’ but who knows what wisdom may also arise from this?

wishing you well.