Perspective

Tonight, the word that keeps rising to the top of my consciousness is Perspective. Last night, sitting in the backyard, the stars seemed so bright even with all the light pollution of north Hobbs. The Perspective of timelessness reigned. Looking outward centuries into the past. The light from the nearest one leaving its boiling, atomic surface several years ago. The faintest pinpricks in the night sky, millenniums ago.
                                                                     An observed Perspective of awe.

Tonight, clouds moved in, tying Perspective to the immediacy of the back yard with its slight, cool breeze flittering the prayer flags, snapping a piece of metal somewhere in the distance back and forth. A siren sets the neighborhood dogs to a primeval howling that chills the marrow. Afterward, watching the dogs, more shadows than definite images, running here and there. Ages back, nature prepared them better than I for prowling the night. Endowed them with a different Perspective.

At one point, one of the smaller ones, who normally doesn't retrieve, proudly brings me a chew toy and places it in my hand, tail wagging, a slight glint of light catching her eyes and making her momentarily more visible.

Joy. Her perspective is joy at this simple act.

                                                                           My perspective humility,
                                                                                               with a touch of  awe.

Waiting...

A THOUSAND WORDS

A THOUSAND WORDS

                                             A THOUSAND WORDS


                                                                                            A THOUSAND WORDS

Absinthe and Artists

Absinthe was banned from import into the US until recently, the excuse being that the wormwood was toxic. Even though it was used as the main ingredient in many stomach ailment drugs. The unique ingredient, wormwood ,mixed with the alcohol was thought by many artists to release an almost hallucinatory experience. Writers who partook of the Green Fairy included Ernest Hemmingway, Guy de Maupassant, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and Vincent Van Gough. Today, Marilyn Manson is probably its most famous devotee, according to Absinthe101.com.

 One of the causes for absinthe’s popularity was the Great French Wine Blight. The catalyst for the loss of thousands of French vineyards in the mid-1800’s was the phylloxera, a parasitic aphid carried over at some point in the same century from its native North America. The aphid fed on grapes and ravaged French vineyards for as long as a decade. Wine production in France hit a standstill. French soldiers who had been using absinthe as a cure for everything from malaria to migraines found the drink to be a worthy replacement for the lacking wine. (Absinthe101.com)

There is a popular custom of preparing absinthe by pouring it over a sugar cube into chilled water which makes the water turn a milky color.

The artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made it famous as he imbibed of the Green Fairy as he produced his art while partaking in the bohemian lifestyle of the darker Paris streets. 

A toast to finer syntax and diction....

Philosophers In Plain Sight

Tonight, homage is paid to a philosopher that lived so close (his daily comic strip) that he hid in plain site, as the old saying goes. Shultz delved into a myriad of life's quandaries in his simple vignettes. They say you don't know something until you can explain it. Charles must have known quite a bit about life, because he explored some of our most vulnerable life questions in his little strip. He revealed the various archetypal characters we all must deal with. We've all had our Lucy, a Linus, possibly a Woodstock, hopefully a Snoopy, and likely a Pigpen or Peppermint Patty, and some of us may feel we're Charlie Brown.

We were discussing today, at school, how writing may be cathartic, how it can help one investigate the past, sometimes providing the clarity of seeing it write there before you in the black and white of your particular syntax and diction. And, if one gets really good at putting it down on paper, they might momentarily compare with Shakespeare, Nietzsche, or Charles M. Shultz. 

Studying Seagulls

               

                              Studying Seagulls

Father and his son measure the lake’s slopping shore.
The boy suffering two steps to the man’s one,
shot-gunning questions to his father’s plaid shirt.
“Why do birds fly?  Stones skip, Daddy? Fish jump?
Waves mess up the shore with driftwood and foam
and empty clam shells?”

Over them---a seagull rides the afternoon’s air current.

“Pa, what’s that? The youngster inquires.
The obliging parent raises arms skyward.
                        (Pop! Pop!)

It is then I notice the .310 shotgun discharging,
its cigar puff of smoke from a blue-black barrel
above the polished stock. The bird    

    drops

            akin to a single

                     floundering

                                      melting

                          snowflake,

Lying broken at their booted feet.

“A seagull, son.” The father flips
the bird’s lifeless head from side-to-side
with the rifle’s barrel. “Flown all the way
from the coast probably.”

Physicists relate, the action of examining mass
changes it. Substances (indeed) may appear                           
altered:                                    close up.  

ME and Indra's Net

First, if these presentations ever sound like lectures, let the emphasis be that they apply to (me) as well as to anyone else who might be reading them. I'm ruminating with the idea that sometimes the topic may hit on something that seems common ground to us both. Thinking in public so to speak. Like speaking in public, it may be a scary pursuit, but may further an investigation for both of us that hardens or softens one of our opinions on a particular subject or other.

My concern tonight is the ease of ME promotion. Thanks to the internet and sites like this blog, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter ME promotion has risen above most editors. (We) all have immediate access to (ME) promotion. 

Mindfulness thinking, as this me observes it at this time, involves meditating on ego and the isolation and examination of SELF. SELF might be found to be a fabrication that humans created over time. A fabrication that helped preserve our race across the expanses and challenges of natural selection. Preserve the I from bodily, mental, spiritual harm. Preserve the I and send our genes forward into future time.

Yet, meditation on "these thoughts" may find one discovering there is no (one) having them. One is not his/her thoughts, despite what Jimmy Carter thought in his Playboy interview. Oldsters will probably recognize the reference---youngsters may have to do some research.

Freud wrote on the members of the trio he believed existed in the human ego. Scientists are researching the two sides of the brain that---though connected---control various functions of what make us human. Within those two sides, separate sections divide the work of governing our bodies and psyches even more specifically. Driving a car, one part of our consciousness can be mulling over the impending work day while another part controls the car, another our bodily functions, other parts other tasks---all a balancing act to control that creature we are habituated to address as ME.

Some fear, our culture, in time, may have become too focused on the ME and not the US or THEM. Just as our bodies and mind enclose a multitude we imagine is ME, we are also part of the universal HUMAN race. Our genes were fashioned over millenniums by our ancestors to forward our contribution to the human race. We are one, but we are many, only a facet on Indra's Net.

In Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979), Douglas Hofstadter uses Indra's net as a metaphor for the complex interconnected networks formed by relationships between objects in a system—including social networks, the interactions of particles, and the "symbols" that stand for ideas in a brain or intelligent computer. (Wikipedia)

In closing, there is a danger in social media to concentrate too much on ME promotion. Advertising and promoting merely ourselves. How often do we utilize our recently obtained freedom to promote US? It might be as easy as checking our Facebook pages, blogs, and other methods of internet, instant communication to observe how often we utilize those self-promotional pronouns: I, me, we, and us. Are they the only ones we use? Are we becoming a nation of ME? Do we include the other pronouns that contribute with us to form Indra's net?

 

 

Alfred Hitchcock Birds

Took this pic and now for the life of me having trouble remembering much about it except I found all the birds in the tree fascinating. Sort of reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. This was a scary movie in our day, but with all the stuff the kids are exposed to now they think it's funny. It scared us. But then I was scared by Grandfather Clock on Captain Kangaroo when I was a youngster. The Captain would say, let's go wake up Grandfather Clock and I would shout NO! NO! Let's NOT wake up Grandfather Clock. In fact, I scare very easily. In college, a favorite activity of my roommate and suite mates was to scare me in one way or another. I'll just chalk it down to a very good imagination. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Back to the pic. I just thought there was something ominous about it? I'd like to say I planned the great additional image in the side view mirror.

I've been organizing some pictures in my DROPBOX, and as I mentioned in a previous post, they all have the specific dates on them. Apparently, I loved to take pics in 2013. Lots from that time period. That's three years past, and I wonder where they went. Many of the pics, it seems I just took days ago.

Good Night Moon

Tonight I took the time to just lie in my hammock and stare at the moon. Of course, it looked a little bigger and better than it does here in this iPhone pic. I watched the breeze flitter and fluff the prayer flags. A breeze that might have once filled the sails of a Phoenician ship on its way with a load of trade cargo. I felt the cool kiss of that gentle wind against my skin, listened to the neighborhood dogs barking and the night birds singing, exchanging greetings and salutations, possibly flirting. It is spring. Felt the comfort of the enveloping canvas of the hammock.

And, because we're almost always thinking, pondered the poor souls who deny we've been to the moon. In my time, I've met several of the people who walked on its surface. The proof is in their eyes. They've been there.

It rides the night sky, a faint golden glow surrounding it tonight, like a fortune teller's crystal ball. As though, if one stared at it long enough, they might glimpse the future, or merely remember the past. And upon leaving the hammock recall a childhood storybook.....goodnight Moon.

Alone Together

I just lack a few pages finishing this book. Technology advances so quickly that the first half of the tome is already more history than anything else. The second half, though, does address the Brave New World that technology keeps creating in front of us. For Boomers, it's a world where we remember how things "were before", but for many younger people it's a world where they have grown up being alone together.

If parents don't restrict their phone access, they can text friends at two in the morning. In our day, we might have been totally alone at that time. We might have been bored. We might have arisen, restless and written a poem or read a book. But the complicated relationships woven into the fabric of their modern society are shaping problems that will effect us in ways not totally imagined yet---technology always ahead of ethics, law and culture.

Technology was supposed to provide us with more free time, but it has chained many of us to our careers 24/7 putting us always on call. Vacations with the office hovering over your shoulder. It is creating generations of children that have never truly been free of the shadow of their parents. Mom and Dad just a text away. Call? Actual voice phone calls are becoming rare.

Students and teachers at school walk around campus holding their phones ahead of them almost like dousing rods, frequently oblivious to the surroundings. Parents drive kids to school hidden behind tinted windows to avoid being seen. The kids inside watching digital, onboard screens or mincing away on the phone keyboards, white earbuds tucked squarely in place.

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive

       Imagine Dragons

Russell Edson

If one cannot accept failure and scorn, how is he to make his art? It's like wanting to go to heaven without dying.

Russell Edson

Russell Edson was an American poet, novelist, writer and illustrator, and the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson. He studied art early in life and attended the Art Students League as a teenager. He began publishing poetry in the 1960s. Wikipedia

Russell Edson was a marvelous poet who wrote prose poetry that can easily be recognized as his even without his name on it. He established a prose poem style that was uniquely his. His, above, quote always comforts and inspires me when my knees get shaky.

If you've never sampled his work, do. It's sorta like getting to go to heaven....without dying.

The Burden of Possessions

These items were Gandhi's inventoried possessions after a zealot murdered him. I feel most of our lifestyles would not reflect thus. We acquire a lot of detritus along the way. George Carlin lamented our need to acquire storage space, so we could accumulate more STUFF.

Everyone gathers physical and emotional baggage along our chosen path: be it the road less taken or its alternative. We covet precious items not yet acquired and later cherish possessions which will only burden our successors. And when we are absent, those emotional and psychological problems we pulled from the drawer each night and ruminated over to the detriment of a good night's sleep will just be willowisps floating in Night's sky.

Horsehead Chess

It seems a little strange, people congratulating me (I have to think for what, but then I remember I'm retiring next month after almost 24 years in education). This pic was taken three years ago in our gifted classroom in the 300 wing. These guys are seniors now getting ready to graduate. They were sophomores here, pretty fresh to the high school. They probably wouldn't do something like this now, too mature. 

That topic ranks high on the items I'll miss about teaching: the kids keep one young. You can't stay around hundreds of immature minds and bodies daily and not have some of that much desired fountain of youth rub off on you.

I remember the summer following my own graduation at Socorro High School, Class of '72. We drove around that summer playing hide and seek in cars, driving through Shirley's Drive In with the windows down and our music blasting, or plowing through the salt cedar in the Bosque, or maybe actually meeting up with a carload of girls and flirting, trying to blow off a little steam before we joined the workforce, went off to college, or took a suggested south Asian vacation courtesy of the government.

We vowed that summer that we would never get old and stodgy like many of the "adults" we dealt with daily. Remember, this was back in the times of: never trust anyone over 30. Of course, we thought it would be an easy vow to keep: doing silly things from time to time to break up life's monotony, but then we hadn't seen life from "this" perspective yet, most of us nearing leaving the workforce, or at least thinking about it, because I doubt we'd sit down to a game of horse head chess at this point in our lives if we got together. And there's probably a wisp of sadness in that.

Ft. Davis

This is a scenic pic in the Davis Mountains I took (and played around with in Photoshop a little) when down there researching my unpublished (so far) western novel about the Buffalo Soldiers. The Butterfield Stage route went through here on its way to El Paso, TX--once known as Franklin.

When we were down there studying the history of the area, it was the middle of a drought and everything was tinder dry. Must have been over fourteen years ago. This area, and the region north of here, our own Llano Estacado, were two very wild regions with Ft. Davis assigned to protect the area from hostiles. The Buffalo Soldiers were a troop of African American, Union soldiers who fought bravely to protect this region and its peoples.

I hope to release that novel in the near future.

Spring is now officially here

Looking back at the last few days, it appears I've gotten a little gloomy. So, earlier in the day, I decided when I sat down to write tonight's blog entry I would make it positive and cheerful. Pour a hot cup of matcha and as Monty Python said: Look on the Bright Side of Life.  I'm happy to report I can do that.

Small blessings. Barbara and I noticed today for the first time this spring it appears the swallows have returned from their winter vacation and appear to be ready for a summer of work raising their broods. Seems they're a little late, so don't know if they'll get as many raised this summer before the fall chill, but it seems they are preparing for the task ahead.

It's always cheerful to witness the little victories of mother nature amid what seems the overburden of negativity in the air of late. Enough. I promised to keep it upbeat. Last night's shower came with some free fireworks, but it was a shower and even left a couple of puddles to appreciate come this morning. Gave me a hankering to search for Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and "give it a spin" as we used to say back in the day. Or if you prefer, que up The Four Seasons "Let's Hang On" if that's more your cup of tea, and maybe you even prefer that black.

Backyard Chimes

These backyard chimes remind me that our universe plays an eternal symphony, and we are but one instrument (some woodwinds, some brass, some percussion, sometimes only a lowly triangle in an orchestral suite, tuba in a marching troupe, or possibly the most dissonant chord in a punk rock band).

Several incidents have occurred over spring break to remind me and mine of something that we prefer to keep tucked away on an infrequently dusted shelf. Stashed away like an unfamiliar piece of sheet music that touches us in an uncomfortable way: our tenuous mortality.

We arrive here crying---pushed unwilling into the music of the spheres. We serve a brief stint here (Volti subito--the page is turned quickly) forming the notes of our fate's individual path: eighth, quarter, whole ones. We place them on the forward moving F clef and the G clef path---Andante at times, Moderato at others, sometimes Allegretto. 

We build them to a refrain and coda, if lucky. Sometimes though, the music stops as it did for us in high school when our band director wanted to leave us frustrated, snapped shut and silent with a quick downward twist of his baton and a dismissive shrug. One is abandoned to the silence of John Cage's 4'33'' for piano with no comforting coda or outro---

                                               for us writers, no consoling denouement.

Digital pics

Digital pictures contain so much more than just the pic. Also, storing where and when it was taken. This allows me to know I took this one a year and two days ago to capture the blooming of this front yard plant. I also captured the nearby lilacs with the temporary blue-violet blooms. Their window is quite short, filling the yard with their flowers and perfume for only a few appreciated days.

Last year, by this time, I believe our spring break and prom were already over with. At least, it seems the way I remember it. I could probably check a couple more pics and correctly relate THAT timeline also. Kids nowadays do not have the "luxury" that we had of letting some actions and performances of life fade away into comfortable nostalgia: once it's on the internet, it's there forever...somewhere. (Only a couple of us know about your digression, J&^%) Many are placing their thoughts, acts, triumphs and the occasional fopaux  "right out there" daily, forever? etched in the world's electronic memory. Where one mistake counteracts all the "good" deeds one has done up until that point.

 Many young people now may have never been truly "alone". They've always had the looming presence of their friends and enemies right there in our electronic umbilical cords. A friend related a student Twittering? texting? Messaging? that she was bored. Studies show boredom can be a good thing. Many times poems get written, projects get planned, quandaries get solved, crafts are developed, thoughts, sometimes lofty, form...when one is bored.

We older ones, who still remember a time before computers and technology laced through almost every aspect of our lives, might sometimes appear like those "natives" of movie and TV lore who feared having their picture taken would capture their souls. Humor us. Even we have to admit the positive aspects of progress should outweigh the negative---most of the time. But we all must also remember  scientific advancement always surges ahead of  eventual stabilizing, necessary ethics. As the coaches say: no pain, no gain. Which puts us back at this picture of a blooming plant, easily taken and (beneath the surface) catalogued with the data that, moments ago, instigated my four paragraphs of extrapolation which I might have just etched on the earth's electronic memory somewhere...permanently.

Prayer Flags

Tibetans string prayer flags to flap and fly in the wind believing that their prayers will thus be issued into the sky. These prayer flags in my backyard are seen frozen stiff on a cold winter day past, holding their remaining captive prayers until a warm breeze can help them supplicate their hanger's needs to earth's considerations.

Michael

My lifelong friend Michael shown here in the hospital in treatment for his cancer that eventually took him from us over a year and a half now. Here visiting with his doggie friend. I met Mike (that's what I always called him) when we were both about 12 and the friendship spanned almost half a century. Sometimes, it seemed we almost had a "psychic connection" with each other. I could wish nothing more for anyone than that they have or have had a buddy like Mike.

Mike had one of the kindest hearts I've known. Patience. He had oodles more patience than the person writing this post. It made him exceptional at his job fixing computers and computer networks, building about anything, training dogs, and being a good, loving, faithful friend. When we were young and built models, mine always looked sort of like the picture on the box, with a little glue dripping here and there, a few painted brush strokes showing through here and there. His always looked like miniatures of the actual car, plane, etc.

When we were in high school he had a motorcycle accident and was left a paraplegic. That never slowed Mike down and he never complained or felt sorry for himself. Once again unlike the present blogger. He exemplified a successful man's triumph over tremendous odds.

All any of us may ask for when we're gone is for someone to think about us from time to time and the impact we had on their life (hopefully in a good way: we can all work on that while we are still here).  I'm certain that his memory comes up in a lot of minds on numerous nights and days. I read somewhere recently, that contrary to previous scientific speculation, all snowflakes are not individually different. Maybe even a lot of people aren't, but then to every rule there are those special exceptions, and Mike was one of those.

A Leaf in Time

If one looks carefully on the sidewalk near counseling at HHS you'll notice this modern fossil. When workers poured the sidewalk, a solitary leaf fell unnoticed, or maybe it was noted, and the individual laying the concrete left it on purpose. Sort of an inside joke. A subtle signature.

So, there it lays. The tree like a mischievous, adventurous child left its imprint for time. We all leave impressions on life, however subtle or direct they may be: in the forms of our children, maybe a major or minor work of art, a kind or telling act, a few memories set in the minds of those we encounter on this life's journey, a few escapades or interactions remembered fondly or with a shudder by family, friends, and others we interface with daily.  As minor as it may be, or as fleeting, we all change the flow of time during our brief journey.

Perfect People

  Perfect People

The parade of perfect
people has begun. Soon, there
will be few faces, traced
with the leavings of acne
scars from youth. Soon,
all teeth will compare
to the white of pasteurized
milk, straightened
past the charm of a gap, or twist.

The parade of perfect people
is growing. Botox tightened
foreheads, devoid of  reaction.
Scalpel tightened throats
swallowing age.

The parade of perfect
people issues from outside
the third world countries—
where HIV isn’t pilled
away by pharmaceutical
achievements and insurance allotments.

Where accomplishment can mean
discovering wood or dung for an evening meal
without walking five miles
                      to discover fuel for a cooking fire.

Archer City, Tx

This is the Spur Hotel in Archer City, Texas north of Dallas. Larry McMurtry grew up there. The writer of Lonesome Dove fame and The Last Picture Show. I went there as sort of a pilgrimage. McMurtry owns a score of buildings there crammed with books. Barbara and I stayed at this hotel. We were the only ones staying there that night, so we sort of had responsibility for the place. We walked around town and through the various buildings where one could find books of all sizes, shapes and genres. It was a bibliophiles paradise. I believe I was working on my novel manuscript Fort Davis. Archer City is a small Texas town with a café or two and, of course, a Dairy Queen. The movie theater sits around the corner from the hotel but I believe it's only a landmark now.