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para todos todo

a tale

He began life living on a chondrite meteor. How he came to be born, no one knows. But there he was one day, astride a meteor deep in space.

What is the nature of my existence, he asked. Here I am, one day awake and aware. I know not from where I came or what it is I am to do.

Looking around the meteor, he saw what he had always seen. The same landscape; the same ridges, valleys, and shadows. True, the distant scenery changed a little. Stars faded past into obscurity. New celestial bodies slowly came into view. The pinpoints of light changed their patterns, their positions altered, their brightness oscillated. And always he was beneath their brilliance and awed.

Time went on. His name was Alethe. He ate and drank and lived and grew and aged. His dreams were beautiful, terrible, meaningless, trivial, and vital. His fingers were his own, as were his thoughts. In his isolation he created friends, companions. With them he sought communion. In the valleys between the crested, stony ridges lived small insects. With them, too, he sought communion. Gazing into the multifaceted eyes of a dragonfly, he felt his spirit moving between his body and that of the winged insect and he felt the presence of the dragonfly moving in that same space.

He drank water from shallow, shaded pools and was thankful for his thirst. Once for a reason he could not name, he built a low wall of metallic stone. It stood for two days, a short, squat shadow on the landscape. He awoke during the night and walked out to where he had built the wall. Looking at it through the starlight, he suddenly felt regret and anger and remembered a dream he had tried to forget. He slowly took apart the wall, stone by stone. The stones were smooth and angular, like ice or some kind of deep hued glass or steel. A few were rough and full of conglomerates. They felt good on the skin of his hands. He tumbled the stones down the slope, where they scattered and nestled among other rocks.

Alethe slept and dreamed, ate, and drank the cool water from shadowy pools. His life went on. And then one day, for no apparent reason, he died.

The meteor still travels through space, on some uncalculated trajectory. The stars are bright and the nights cool.

-sw

brewing coffee over a gipsy fire

Under the open sky the light was clear, with a reflection of cold red on the eastern hills. The clumps of trees in the snow seemed to draw together in ruffled lumps, like birds with their heads under their wings; and the sky, as it paled, rose higher, leaving the earth more alone.

--Edith Wharton, from Ethan Frome

You be the Soccer Judge!

A very interesting question, indeed. Here are the choices, folks. Choose wisely--it's quite possible that the fate of smoking soccer players lies in your decision.

A. Of course a player can smoke during a match, so long as they keep the cigarette away from other players' eyes.

B. No. The referee is required to caution the player for an act of ungentlemanly conduct.

C. Yes, provided the player has enough smokes to share with everyone on the field.

D. It depends upon the legality of the substance being smoked. The referee must use personal judgment based on a sound understanding of current drug laws pertaining to the region in which the match is being played.

E. No. If the player does not voluntarily throw out the smoke, the team captain must physically stop the player from smoking to avoid a forfeit (see illustration below).

rambling update

The snow is really coming down. It's heavy, big flakes right now and I can see the neighbor's roof thick with snow. It's a beautiful day!

I've been gone from home a bit, beginning with a trip with Jen out to the northwest for a wedding and hanging out with old friends. We had a great time with friends and it's always wonderful to see people happy and in love.

We took our time coming back, camping on the Olympic Peninsula in the rain and driving with a storm just about the entire trip. Rock Springs, Wyoming became an unexpected destination--all the roads were closed because of the snow storm and ice and we ended up staying there for two nights. So, we didn't end up getting to the canyons and cottonwoods near Dinosaur and camping like we had hoped, but we had a really fun time anyway. The Cody Motel was the spot to be--it even advertises color tv! And on the last day of the trip, we found a free hot spring--it was hot and wonderful and something we had wanted to do on our trip.

The day we got back, Jen roasted an eggplant in the oven to make some babaganoush. When she took it out the eggplant exploded, with pieces of it hitting her face. Jen got second degree burns on her cheeks, chin, and nose. It was really scary. We went to the emergency room, where she got cold compresses and anti-bacterial cream put on the burns. Jen had gotten the eggplant off her face almost immediately and also flushed her face with cold water until we left for the emergency room and that all seemed to help a lot. After the emergency room, she continued at home with the cold compresses and anti-bacterial cream and then saw a burn specialist a few days later. The blisters looked pretty painful. But they started healing quickly, and by the time I got back to town a couple of days ago, they were healed well and very difficult to even see. Jen has pointed out that she probably has a mutant healing factor, which is pretty cool.

A few days after Jen's encounter with exploding, burning eggplant (the remains of which are still pasted on the walls and ceiling of the kitchen), I left for Chicago to meet up with my brother. We hung out for a day there and then headed for Tennessee with my brother's daughter and a rented car. My folks are living there now, in a cabin by a little creek. We stayed for about a week and I had a lot of fun hanging out together with family. Our folks showed us around and took us to some beautiful places, we played with the dogs, and just spent time talking and being together. My brother's daughter made a great treasure hunt for us, too!

My brother, his daughter, and I headed back for Chicago and got into the city late at night. I ended up staying there for a few more days, hanging out, playing dice with my brother and niece, walking through Chicago alleys, and playing darts in the bar downstairs one night (where my brother's dog joined us!), before getting a train to Denver. And then it was a quick ride with an electrician who had just gotten out of Sterling prison and then with a guy who worked for a vehicle rental company and I was home.

And now it's snowing beautifully. Which is a lot more interesting than this post. But that's okay. Besides, I'm gonna post something here soon that will ask a very important question, so be sure to check back.

resistance

lukewarm coffee
lots of roads
birds under stars
dark shapes against a sky

with a pencil and scrap of paper
you record your thoughts
like a grocery list

it's like a spring in my heart
these days
i'm so in love
how do you like that?
sounding like some record
with a needle on a lovesong
it's true
even though it's not a commercial
it's like a spring
and i'm so in love

it's not just love that this
culture kills
but, surely, it is one victim
so love and be warmed in the knowledge
of resistance
so love
and feel the echo in the cedar trees
up and down the cottonwoods along
the drainage ditch
within the sand and gravel
so love and know and unknow

beneath the stars at night
i hear the movement of wings
as birds fly out across the field

B.E. Rasir