Tag Archives: wooing

Love, or Something, Conquers All

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Is there something else you want to tell me, sir? You say you are a musician, yet I distinctly recall that on evenings around the campfire you’ve always strummed off-key and your songs are always unrecognizable to your fellow players. You tell me that you are a skilled horseman, but I have known you to fall off every mount you ever met and the way you’re always sneezing makes me pretty sure you’re more a specimen of the allergic type than a cowboy of any real sort. As for your claims of being a king of the romantics, they strike me as far more hopeful than strictly factual, considering that you cannot read, write or dance, never remember to comb your hair or wash your face, and are cowed into stammering and foot-shuffling when actually in the presence of anyone even slightly ladylike.

Forgive me, then, if I tend to take your claims with a certain jaded skepticism. I am fairly certain I do not want to listen to you bash away on your two-stringed guitar, to watch you topple out of the saddle the instant your horse makes a move, or to wait for you to wrestle up the courage to make small talk while I dream of my escape from your company. And if you should persist in attempting to convince me that you are the master of the Wild West, I shall be reduced to the expedient of dispatching you with a hefty branch of mesquite laid across your noggin, stuffing you into a handy gunny sack and slinging you over the back of a mule headed toward some terribly remote corner of the prairie.

Other than that, though, I suppose I don’t mind your company. A girl can’t be too choosy out here on the frontier if someone offers her his family fortune and she has her eye on a particular set of acres for ranching. Business is business, after all.digital illustrationOn Closer Examination

A fella whose flaws were prolific

And both manners and taste quite horrific

Filled my soul with alarm

But still had one great charm–

His inheritance, to be specific.

Rancho Romantico

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digital painting from a photoIn a Sentimental Mooed

Oh, pretty little heifer cow, I think you’re cute but know not how

Appreciation paid in full to such sweet charm could seem but dull

Poor compensation for my plain bland bullishness; am I a drain

Upon your dewy calf-eyed ways; am I so silly in my craze

For you, adorable and fine, that I’m a fool to wish you mine?

Nay, let us frolic and cavort and caper ’round for joy and sport,

Let us delight in being calves and neither shrink from fun by halves

Nor ever find we’re short of hay in pasture, or get sent away,

Or be penned up, for these things, too, would make a poor calf cry Moo Hoo!

No tragedy besmirch our wooing and leave us sadly this way mooing;

Let us, instead, just take a vow to stay together, bull and cow.

My Train of Thought is Always Derailing

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photoWhen I’m out and about, I find my little brain spinning around and fiddling with every inspiration that appears before me. Since I’m such a visually oriented person, that often means that any random object appearing before me might suddenly spur a train of thought that is tangential to the previous one–sometimes to an extreme. Sometimes that simply gives me some screwy ideas in a general way, good for a laugh but soon swatted away like a loose bit so I can return to my more purposeful track. Sometimes it just plain sends me off a mental cliff into worlds of frivolous, unrelated thoughts. After my many years of this, I’ve fully embraced the process: it’s entertaining in and of itself, as long as it’s not horridly disruptive of important stuff, and occasionally, it brings truly useful things into play and finally into focus.

Mostly, I don’t let this wackiness out fully in public. Ordinary sane people might be quite bemused by it, if not frightened. But in good company (y’all), it can be fun to share the wordplay that, often, becomes invention. Lately I’ve found myself seeing a lot of things that inspired me to wonder at the meanings of words one might ordinarily attach to them.photoIs a person who brings constant frivolous lawsuits a suer? Or is that person a suitor, because he loves to sue? Or is a person who sews suits for the wearing: is that a suitor? Maybe a suitor instead would be a person who has romantic feelings about clothing (you clotheshorses know who you are). What, then, is a sewer? Is it a person who sews? Is it a place where excrement flows? Maybe it’s both: a person who sews crappy stuff?photoWhat is an iron maiden? Is it a person who irons, or is it a tough woman? Is it a strong lady who wields an iron? Or is it, in fact, a powerful female who uses an iron to smooth out the spiny coffin wherein she resides? Perhaps it is, ironically, a superwoman who (despite being both strong and pure) is a rotten seamstress who only comes out of her spike-lined residential case occasionally to iron her handiwork.photoI suppose it’s just possible that all of this is silly and convoluted speculation. That would be true, but you have to admit that those objects I saw did invite some sort of speculation. And hey: pointless ridiculousness is my gift. You’re welcome.