This guy just gets his update digitally, being a digital fella himself. Variations on my themes always give me food for thought and inspiration for further adventure. In this case, it’s the most painless form of male prettifying I know. Hmmm. Maybe I oughta consider this form of plastic surgery for myself. See you later–but you might not know you’re seeing me!
Yep, it’s December. I know this from looking at the calendar, and various people have assured me of it as well. But the weather sure isn’t contributing any confirming info to the mix right now. It’s still been in the neighborhood of 80°F (26°C) nearly every day. This is December? My little old northern-born soul is mighty confused.
The garden is confused, too. It’s finally cool enough overnight that the tenderest greens have wilted back, but there are still roses blooming in the area, and the grass has only slowed its growth, not stopped. Even the migratory birds seem to dawdle in the air rather than hustling off to more southerly climes. Who needs to go to warmer places when it’s still warm here!
I suppose I should enjoy the option I still have to do things like garden without frying myself or paint the front door and know it’ll dry in a couple of hours easily. But what this old broad would really enjoy is getting back to weather that both keeps me from frying whether or not I garden and perhaps even lets me keep my cool indoors and while lounging around. Maybe I should just grab a popsicle, turn up the fan, and remember that life in Texas is a whole different universe of experience than any life I’ve had elsewhere. Not a bad thing in general, after all.
Becoming Gypsies
Freedom’s a romantic notion we imbue with pretty joys,
Dreamed escape from life’s commotion and the race’s worldly noise,
Endless travel, music, dancing, and the heat of thrumming hearts,
But though sweet, the dream’s entrancing magic’s only where it starts–
Gypsy life is what we make it, rich as fantasy can be,
Only when we reach and take it: yes, it’s up to you and me
To create this liberation and its joys for which we long–
Life becomes a celebration when we fully join the song
Ah, Shakespeare me boy, do tell me. I’m just curious: did Bottom have any sort of Fairy Fella epiphany after his little ass-hat adventure? Me, I am fairly certain that had it been me I would have felt smugly brilliant in my newly dawned state of knowledge the moment I was un-donkey-fied again, but I’m even more certain that I would have slipped right on back into my unwise natural state just about as quickly as twitches a donkey’s tail. Because I am so very much a silly, stubborn creature of habit.
Mr. Shakespeare, whatever his level of formal education or high culture or (if you’re of that particular school of thought) of being multiple persons, had a decidedly perceptive eye for ordinary human nature. The bard’s keen observation and sharp understanding are the fundamental reasons his plays and poems have so long endured–he had us figured out, my friends. I may sometimes wish that the characters in Shakespeare whom I resembled most were the heroic and compassionate ones, the witty, the powerful and the sage. But alas, it’s in Bottom that I recognize myself, in Shakespeare’s dolts and fools and in the obstinately self-centered and weak and wooly-minded characters.
I guess I should just thank Mr. S. for having raised my humbly mortal state to high art and sashay back over to perch in my little flower bower. I rather hope that one day these moments of revelation won’t need to be as frequent or as rudely transformative as getting me visibly turned back into the braying boob that represents my true inner being.
Yeah, I’m a big baby.
I’m past the half-century mark, don’tcha know, and yet the older I get the more I realize how much growing up I have yet to do, not to mention how much I am shaped by my genes and my formative years. And unlike many people, I find I am heartened and grateful when I look in the mirror and see my mother. There may still be hope I’ll turn out well.
It’s not just that I’m pleased to start looking more like Mom, though that wouldn’t make me sad in the least; I think my mother’s beautiful. But since we’re a pretty close-knit family, I like to think that enough of her more objectively wonderful qualities will have rubbed off on me over the years that I have a chance of continuing to improve with age in many other ways as well. To grow into some semblance of her patience and compassion, her grace and gentleness and big-hearted love is certainly a gift to be fondly wished.
Meanwhile, however, it’s Mama’s birthday. It’s she who should be getting gifts. But then, given my mom’s character, having her children turn out well ought to be just the sort of pretty good present she’d like most, and if my seeing her in my mirror confirms that the best I can turn out is as a good imitation of her, why then I’ll keep working and hoping and trying what I can to head in that direction. Hmmm. Maybe I should bring her a box of candy or something just in case.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
You know how much I hate politics. I almost titled this post ‘Friends don’t Let Friends Drink & Vote’, since it seems like a whole lot of people prefer to find a specific agenda that appeals to them on a visceral level and shape all of their votes around it willy-nilly, without either differentiating between candidates that do or don’t have any power to guide said agenda wisely or, worse, without first thoroughly checking their own facts regarding that particular point item of passion. Mostly, I hate that what I see and hear of politics is the brainless ranting of people who hang out at the various extremes, and very little of civil discourse and logical, reasoned thinking. Nothing would please me more than to believe that every person with the privilege of voting would not only do so, but do so after serious thought and careful consideration and with a certain amount of faith that the other voters and their points of view matter, too. But to be quite honest, I think we (at least in America where I’ve observed it in person, but I gather this is so in many other places as well) are mighty far from this my ideal.
So I tend to shy away from all things political as much, as long and as often as I can.
Yet I can’t help but wish, and sometimes a little peep of this pained wishful thinking leaks out visibly or audibly. Especially around election times. At least, given my particular bent, I’ll keep trying to publicly disguise my whines and rants in slightly more lighthearted forms when I get my own political itch.
![poem [typeset text]](https://artcoloredglasses.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/blog-11-05-2012-12.jpg "Dashing for Office")
Now that super storm Sandy is mostly past, those in the wake of the destruction are left to dig out from under all of the mayhem. As all natural disasters do, Sandy left behind not only massive damage brought on by the high winds, flooding, snow, fire and explosions that were part of the storm and its immediate effects but a whole swath of financial, social, political, logistical and definitely not least of all, emotional and personal damages that will take years to be mitigated, let alone resolved. Besides the losses of life and health that are such obvious costs of a massive storm ripping through, we all know–those who have been through this grinder before, anywhere in the world most especially–that there are innumerable other things once held dear that have been slashed away in a few hours’ time and many of them will never be recovered.
The homes blown down, stripped away by violent waters, or burned were filled with people and lives and the Stuff of those lives–in many cases, all gone. The businesses closed for a few days, often in crucial periods of their peak season, are eclipsed by those whose doors, if they still physically exist, will close forever and by the many owners and employees and customers who will have to find other resources for making a living or acquiring the services and goods they count on to shape their ordinary lives. They will all find, as my spouse said very quietly to me when I came down the stairs to find him waiting palely on the 11th of September in 2001, that ‘the world as we know it has changed.’
But we also know from long experience that disasters, whether natural or human-made, can bring unexpected goodness trailing in their wake. The immediate selflessness and generosity and heroism shown by those who rush into the maelstrom to save others and who pull the stricken into their waiting arms of safety and warmth and shelter and healing are, when we others take a lesson from their shining examples, only the first wave of light and hope to follow the darkness and despair. If we all, whether by the nebulous but potent means of offering support in our hearts, minds, prayers, and invention or by the more concrete ways of donating, digging, driving; of building stronger buildings to replace those lost, remembering those who have died with forward-looking perpetuation of their virtues, and taking up whatever tools we have to recreate a more closely knit community that can expand exponentially to bring in every person with every need and every gift that can fill that need–then every storm is not an irremediable horror and every battle is not the one that will end safety and sanity forever. We are bigger than the storms. We can be the rainmakers who rise up out of ordinariness and even destruction to build something real and new and extraordinary.
The Jitters
Remember the years when we were young
And captive among our babysitters?
Sheer terror would reign with its horrid thrill,
The unspeakable chill we would call the Jitters.
Under the bed or under the house,
A mouse isn’t safe when the Jitters gleam
Reptilian fangs and rhinoceros horns;
O! The scorns we would risk to release a scream!
Anything dark and anywhere doored
Could harbor a horde of Jittery creeps;
They hide under blankets and lurk behind stones:
The wrack in the bones that never sleeps.
Do I hear the wind? Did you hear an owl?
Or was it the howl of the restless dead?
The moan of a sailor just as he drowned?
All around are the sounds of the things we dread.
That flickering light! The curtains a-moving,
And both of them proving that something is near:
We’d writhe in our agonies, plagued by deceptions
And all the perceptions of what we fear.
This, you remember, was life with the Unknown,
And all of the fun known as children was moot
Whenever night fell or a stranger came calling;
Appalling how it never stopped its pursuit.
Now deep in adulthood, responsible, sane,
We scoff at the pain of those gibbers and twitters,
Yet get us alone, in a vulnerable state,
And sooner or late, we succumb to the Jitters.
Endless Falling
A whisper in the gloaming just pre-dawn
A shiver or a prickling on the neck
A flutter of the eyelid, quick, then gone
And hope of any sleep is now a wreck
Above me in the dark are broken dreams
Above my brow an icicle of fear
Above the awful emptiness, the screams
In silent agony are all I hear
And under all this brittle disarray
And under skin and in the bone and soul
And under some enchantment, night and day
I know this wickedness will eat me whole
Against the dangers present in this fright
Against the door of Death I’ll knock tonight
I Loves Ya, Cupcake!
I kiss your cherry-colored lips
And suddenly, straight over flips
My heart in loping, loopy leaps
As sugared-up as Mallo Peeps
Get kids at Eastertime to fly,
As ice cream piled on apple pie
And candy canes in cocoa make
Our livers strain, gallbladders quake,
Arteries cringe and capillaries
Bloat, collapse, and the Tooth Fairy’s
Rounds expand a hundredfold
When molars instantly grow old.
You get my drift: one little kiss
Of your sweet lips can lead to this
Extreme, near-paralytic dose
Of dearness, loveliness, and close-
Encountered expiration date,
But loving you is surely fate,
My cupcake, my delicious sweet,
And death of it the final treat.
If one’s not careful, trimming one’s waistline can lead to wasting away. There’s an art to eating well, after all. What you eat can kill you, but what you don’t eat can, too. What to do?! Think I’ll just lie down here in this quiet spot in the graveyard . . .
The Great Equalizer
Willowy or wallowing?
Slinky or obese?
Ma likes the taste of salad greens
And Pater thrives on grease.
What’s odd is, their cholesterol
And blood pressure and weight
Don’t seem to correspond at all
With anything they ate.
I can’t quite comprehend how one
Eats lard, the other, toast,
And both don’t change; I guess
Food matters little
To a ghost.
Inquisition
Her lipstick was of fiery red,
Her mane wild copper, and her nails
Lacquered in scarlet by which pales
The rouge of which the pious said
Was made civilization’s end,
And surely, in her crimson silk
Cut down to there, she and her ilk
Wore carmine on that downward trend
That would someday blood’s red require
As she and they leapt in that fire
In meantime, sanguine all were those,
This ruby dame and all her kin,
And painted red from cloak to skin,
Until the bloom wore off the rose
And in wine-tinged despair, demise,
They fell in desperate gasps for breath,
Plagued by their past like some Red Death
Infected them; to their surprise,
This day their bad blood did require
They leap in that eternal fire
Desolation
Way out west of Petaluma,
Where the streetlights cease to go,
Only weeds and broken concrete
And barbed wire in one hard row
Braiding up the roadside grasses
In a knotted wind-strung quirt
To whip out and give ten lashes
To the devils in the dirt
There are houses still beyond here,
Long abandoned, though, and shot
Through with rust and melancholy
And dead dreams long since forgot,
And one tough and stringy lady
Hanging on by fingernails
To a past she can’t remember,
Out here where the flat wind sails
* Today’s post is brought to you by: Zombies! Now 100% Recycled!
Art-Colored Glasses 