Category Archives: Humor

Crawling & Leaping

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photoDo or Die

I am not brave, not big and strong, and change gives me the creeps,

But when the moment comes along, my crawling turns to leaps,

Because my innate sense of time and self and hope, my drive,

My dreams and aspirations, climb and make me feel alive–photoSo much so that I can’t keep still, must jump right up, arise,

And spring to action, and I will push onward to the skies,

For all that lies ahead is unknown, hid, but what may be

Is great and magical and fun, is grand and wild and free–photoIf I don’t take that daring chance and forge ahead at speed,

How will I, short of happenstance, find anything I need,

Or grow, improve, achieve, emerge? How can my sorrows sleep?

I know I’d best just fight the urge to crawl, and rather, leap!digital illustration from a photo

Foodie Tuesday: To Market, to Market

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photoFarmer’s markets are a joy. The magnificent and munificent ‘food halls’ of many countries and cities are an abundant and slightly less-seasonal delight. I grew up with a father who, in turn, was raised by parents who had, so to speak, groceries in their blood–Grandma having grown up in her father’s grocery store near the turn of the last century, and Grandpa having been employed by a major regional grocery producer and supplier. So Dad was not only accustomed to a childhood spent roaming and critiquing every aisle of every grocery store his family passed on any given expedition but later also to having his own children cajole him into being the parent taking us on the weekly family shopping trips because with his genetic grocery cred we thought he was the more easily swayed into buying the weird and possibly deliciously bad-for-us stuff.

What this all leads to in my case, is the appreciation I have, deep down, for farmer’s markets and food halls and all sorts of grocery stores.

But the real source of that love is, of course, all of the grocerrific goodness found in said worlds of wonder. The ingredients for infinite feasting are all there at hand, arrayed in an artless or artful arsenal of endless recombinant recipes, and it’s not easy to spend any real time in the midst of such wonders without at least stumbling over a good number of fine meal, snack or menu inspirations.

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Some fruits of the shopping expedition are worthy of eating in their purest natural state and deserve no less respect and admiration.

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Even the best can be deliciously Prepared, though: why not the simplest of preparations. Steamed green beans with butter, for example. How can one improve on that?

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An uncomplicated recipe can also be a pleasurable way to showcase a beautiful ingredient. Here, caramelized Bosc pears–gently sautéed in salted butter and maple syrup with cardamom, then reduced in Riesling and vanilla.

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The occasional grand ingredient can be appropriately preserved for multiple happy uses. Diced fresh ginger root, for example, lives a good, long and productive life of transforming one dish after another when it’s been diced and saved in a jar full of vodka. Which, in turn, can be a delightful treat on its own later, this sprightly ginger infused vodka.

And what do I learn from all of this? I don’t change all that much. I always did rather like going to get the groceries. I still do. Living and lounging among the comestibles is a grand pastime and so often leads to good eating and drinking, doesn’t it. I do believe I hear the siren song of a grocery cart beckoning me for a little outing, or is that the gentle rumbling of my empty innards? No matter, one leads to the other, leading right back to the first, in an endless loop of hunger and deliciousness, craving and satiety that I hope won’t end for a very long and very slightly fattening lifetime.

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Fresh, alluring and beautiful. It’s never too much, but always a lovely temptation.

Reading the Classics or Writing Them…

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There’s this little spot inside my skull that gets kind of itchy. Pretty sure it’s not dandruff, seeing as how that’s usually external, from what I’ve heard. Can’t be an excess of brains, something no one’s accused me of having in that nice cobwebby attic of mine.

I think it’s a bit of me that wants to Make Stuff. Specifically, to write things. I can’t say there’s any legitimate or meaningful purpose to this writing, or even the slightest logic to the motivational itch. But I write.photo montageWhether any of the scribblings comes to fruition beyond becoming letter-shaped specks on the ethereal pages of my blog or typed or scrawled word-like objects spilled all over my notebooks, concert programs, receipts, paper towels and shoebox lids–further polish or publication remains to be seen. Memorable, respected or classic status is improbable to within the neighborhood of outrageous fantasy.

But I’m a first-class fantasist at heart, after all. By my own admission. photo montageMeanwhile, several friends whose work I respect have put their longtime writing itches to good purpose and published, recently. I’ve been writing to scratch my inner itch for a number of years now. If I’m going to make anything out of it other than random scratching I suppose I had better take heart from my predecessors’ bravery and get serious about putting my writing into something a little more challenging and concrete than my lifelong style of clinging to the safety of the familiar land of personal sharing and blogging.

Uh-oh.

Time to suck it up and nerve myself. I suppose I should warn all of you to shore up your own nerve as well. It seems that this particular kind of itch might well be both dangerous and contagious.photo montage

You are So Strange!

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digital illustrationI don’t mean to be rude, but it’s hard not to recoil at the unknown. What?! No shoulder gills? How can you use your nose for smelling things if you’re busy using it to breathe at the same time? No horns? Oh, dear, where are your radar sensing structures housed? And my goodness, those awful, blind blue and brown orbs where your eyes should be! How in the world do you manage without proper infrared vision, you poor thing? What’s with having ears awkwardly positioned, so low and flat against the head that they can’t rotate and bend to follow every sound?

I realize that we’re not all made the same, but sometimes it shocks me that anyone so odd looking and freakishly ill-equipped as all you other sad creatures out there can survive at all. I don’t hate you because you’re pitiful, but still I can’t help being sad at your obvious plight. It’s difficult at times not to seem patronizing, disgusted and repulsed that you’re not all as sensibly made and beautiful in your correctness as I am. Please forgive my involuntary condescension. It’s not your fault that you weren’t born or trained to be as nearly perfect as me.

Haunted Youth

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digital illustration from a photoThat House on Our Street

The doorway was a toothy maw, the casement was an eye,

and all the children crept in awe each time they must pass by,

regardless what they heard or saw; they knew that they would die

if anything at all should draw them in, no matter why,

For bogeys, fiends and ghastly ghouls inhabited the place,

entrapping and devouring fools, and set on them apace;

those children who had left their schools and homes without a trace

now lay decaying in deep pools as dark as outer space,

Dug in the basement deep below, a catacomb of holes

filled up with youth who’d tried to go into this cage of souls

and found, not fun adventures, no, but rather, evil moles

of spirit-kind hid here–and so, for them the town bell tolls;

Lost children wail twixt yonder walls at night while moonlight creeps,

and roam like mists down endless halls while all around them sleeps;

no knowing parent ever calls again; the mansion keeps

its secrets tight, and silence falls, far as the deepest deeps;

At least, the children’s fears said so; the legend kept in thrall

the children thereabouts, who’d go timidly past it all

at anxious speed along the row, lest they lose their recall

to safety. As grownups all know: life’s scary when you’re small!

Halloween can Drive You Batty

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photophoto + textReal Vampires Never had it so Good

Dracula had an excellent agent,

Publicist extraordinaire,

Selling the masses on his glamour

And his wicked savoir-faire;

Modern undead rock-star heroes

Fascinate and rake the bucks,

But for ordinary vampires,

Sans PR-men, life still sucks—

We’re just rodents to the public,

Flying hair-snags, guano kings,

Rabies-ridden, squeaking, dog-faced,

Lots of other rotten things,

Never mind we were the first,

The inspiration for the rest—

Love to give usurping phonies

Juicy stakes for every pest,

Take back our eternal midnight,

Sip the hemoglobin wine,

Fatten up our hard-earned bloodlines,

Back in place as night’s divine.photo

Enter Two Figures, Stage Right, Smoking

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It’s weird, downright bizarre, to watch vintage film and plays and see hospital scenes where the doctors and nurses and orderlies are all puffing madly on their unfiltered cigarettes while earnestly counseling and tending their patients to make them all as healthy as they, their caregivers, are. To see those marvelously odd advertisements of yore with the top athletes of the day touting the energizing and strengthening effects their favorite brands of smokes give them. I watch such things with the same sort of astonishment I feel on observing the freakish footnotes of science as the pendulum swings back and forth with abandon, belying the idea that scientific discoveries lead to indisputable fact, or that even more outlandish concept, that once something is accepted as fact it would change how we behave.digital collageBecause what’s sincerely weird and bizarre, odd and freakish is that there are still millions of people, even many who will say outright that they believe smoking has been proven to be a health hazard, who smoke cigars, cigarettes and pipes, use snuff, or chew tobacco. I get the older folk who’ve been smoking since well before it was generally considered a given that it was a bad idea and likely to shorten or worsen one’s lifespan, knowing what a deeply addicting ‘treat’ tobacco is. A friend who was both a smoker and an alcoholic long ago swore that giving up drinking was absolute child’s play compared to kicking the nicotine habit. It’s those who, growing up in generations that predicated their smoking views on the premise of its outsized dangers, still choose to start smoking, that mystify me utterly. But then, I am amazed and flummoxed and otherwise mystified by anyone wanting to ride motorcycles without helmets, imbibe hallucinogens, run with the bulls, free dive competitively, juggle chainsaws, charm cobras, or any of that other adrenaline-junkie stuff.photoThen again, millions of people are bound to be equally agog that I would risk my health eating the way that I do, waste my time being an artist and writer, or be so stupid as to like any number of the things I enjoy and admire. Perhaps one day there will be a play or movie of my life, made for the sheer entertainment of people who like being shocked by my great idiocy and strangeness and find it hard to believe I survived to the great old age of fifty-two (or, hopefully, much more) with my inexplicable bundle of psychoses masquerading as the stuff that charmed me. I bow to you and take my leave, friends. I know that I shall die, but we can only guess which of us will get there first.

Who’s the Real Pest around Here Anyway?

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photoNo fan of squirrels am I. In the abstract, I can enjoy their wild gymnastic athleticism and pranks and admire their elegant plumy tails and all of that, yes I can. But when I hear that familiar thud on the roof when they’re jumping from the red oak to the shingles and holding their miniature NASCAR events up there, what I’m thinking is not ‘how cute’ but ‘rats’.

They are, after all, rodents. The little scarpers have nice sharp claws that scrape bits off of our roofing (see: roof confetti in gutters) and nice sharp teeth that chew chunks off of our siding (see: bare wood fringe appearing on siding near where only birds or squirrels could possibly reach) and not-so-nice habits of eating every bit of bird seed that I put out if they can reach it (see: squirrel hanging upside down by ankles from gutter like trapeze artist while he stares longingly and calculatingly at nearby-but-not-near-enough bird feeder, then dashing back down to the patio below to scarf up every seed, nut, pod and shell left below said feeder before dashing back up again for another recon) and of ‘recycling’ said bird feed onto patio, porch, garage perimeter and paths for me to sweep up after them (see: squirrel excrement scattered decoratively hither and yon).

But there are as many fans of squirrel-dom as there are less sympathetic critics like me, and there are certainly many, whether among squirrel friends or not, who think many other creatures more dirty, pesky, or persistent than I do. Take pigeons, for one. I’ve heard them called ‘flying rats’ more than once, and know that they are at least as frequently cited as disease carriers and civic troublemakers as are squirrels. Other than the remarkably tiny headed (and I confess to thinking them remarkably tiny brained in equal proportion) mourning doves that visit our place occasionally, there are rarely pigeons around there, so it’s probably simple arithmetical odds that make me like them perfectly fine when I’m so prejudiced against squirrels. As long as you don’t swing by for the seemingly sole purpose of eating my food and then expelling it back out upon me and mine when you’ve had your fun with it, I guess I’ll give you a free pass.

I should very likely just cut the poor squirrels some slack, too, in exchange for the hijinks they provide as compensatory amusement. After all, they, along with all of the other critters that call our garden, yard, ravine, neighborhood and planet home, must surely look on me as a dirty, self-centered, gluttonous and destructive interloper on their home turf, and they would not be wrong. And I sure don’t expect to be able to repay the affront by amusingly hanging by my ankles from the gutter anytime soon.

Something Fishy about That Girl

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digital illustrationThe Return of Dorinda Beecher

Restless sailors far from shore seek in the stars, and furthermore,

In deepest seas, hoping to sight some change to break the endless night,

The ceaseless day, the infinite long year’s dull drone, for what’s in it

To charm the man who’s been abroad and has forgot his native sod,

Who knows no home and has no friend, just sailing, sailing to the end

Of Earth, the seven seas, the Known? Yet one such sailor, one alone,

Found in the foamy waves that dream the others sought, caught in a beam

Of phosphorescent, moonlit flash: the slightest bubbling roll and splash

Betrayed the presence of a maid; he started, would have leapt to aid

Her but that she was smiling wide, dolphin and otter at her side

Bearing her up in playful bounding swoops. He did not make a sound,

But smiled back, struck by her grace; and when she saw this on his face,

She beckoned gently, drew him on. Another splash! The sailor’d gone

And dived into the depths to meet this mystery, so grand, so sweet.

Could he? Would she? He fell in love, quite literally, from above

Her water empire, and he went full willingly, no accident

Of fate or fearsome, deathly wish: he’d rather fade among the fish

Than risk to lose this chance he’d seen to meet and mate his mermaid queen.

Once in the water, swift he sank, quite full of joy, and glad to thank

His lucky stars; he saw her swim in swiftest darts to rescue him;

She laid a soft hand on his brow–he thought it felt quite different now–

And gazed on him, and in her eyes, he saw reflected, with surprise,

That he’d become an otter, too. Yet not affronted with this view,

He thought their states a pleasant match; his mermaid queen was quite a catch.

Off, then, they swam, mermaid and men, her willing slaves not seen again.digital illustration x2This post is especially for Lindy Lee, who requested on Dorinda’s first appearance here long ago [see the link in the post title] that she might revisit us sometime.

Ironclad Alibis

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photoYou may think I am obsessed with rusty stuff, and you may well be right about that. I like all sorts of things that look like they have stories behind them, and it doesn’t matter entirely whether they are animate or inanimate. Odd creatures are surely just as likely to have their tales (or tails) worthy of the attention, but all the more probably going to get my imagination geared up if they are in the context of marvelously creaky and rustic and grubby, grimy, weather-beaten, broken-down, scabrous places and things that in themselves invite all manner of assumptions and guesses and fancies.

photoIf I haven’t mentioned or shown you pictures of such wonderfully decrepit and strange objects and oddments in a while, you can be assured that it’s not for lack of interest or for my not having a multitude of such images, visual and verbal, on file and in process. I do try to vary my posts at least a smidgen [Hi, Smidge!] so as to not put myself into a blog-induced coma, let alone every one of you out there who stumbles into my cave of wonders. Then again, the urge rises and I must let some of my pet images out to play.

photo montageDo I get repetitive and predictable anyway? Why yes, of course I do. I can’t help but ramble down favorite paths just as much as anyone, and even when I do have a modicum of willpower in that regard, you can be certain that I’ll give in to my sensationally short attention span and return my focus to its standard grooves soon enough. Most of us do operate that way. I’m not even particularly apologetic about such crass and lazy behavior, as long as no one’s paying me to share what I put up in my little window here in the ether.

photo montageSo if you think it borders on the criminal, the way I manipulate you into thinking I’m veering off into sincerely new and exotic territory at times or the fact that I have such small and narrow interests and opinions and loves, I wonder at your fortitude (or stupidity) for not just trotting off toward greener pastures, at least less rusted ones. And I’ve admitted to this and many other of my faults, so I don’t really think I owe you any further apology or explanation. What you see here is unshakably the real me. Except when it’s straight-up fiction, because I do have a propensity to lie, too.photo