moss!

I made a terrarium today.  It was quite a lot of fun to make--finding the items for it, putting it all together, and then watering it and looking at the miniature world.

It reminds me of something my mom and I made years ago when I was a kid.  We used a larger container--an aquarium, I believe.  And we used more plants than I did today.  But it was pretty much the same idea.

This one has two plants I bought at the mall, two varieties of moss I found outside (one growing on a tree and one on the ground), a large rock I found near the tree with the moss, two pieces from a geode that Aida smashed open awhile ago, a couple of twigs, and a metal D&D figurine.  I'd like to paint the figure at some point, but I like it as is, too.

It's very simple, but I like it.  It was fun to make, and I like looking at it when I'm sitting at the desk.  Having some vegetation in this room is a nice change.

equal night

Well, it is spring.  And it is very beautiful.  I listened to a chickadee calling this morning, reminding me of lying in bed in the early morning at home.  I took a walk and saw the brightness of some tulips and the dark green leaves of black-eyed susans.  Now, later in the day, the sun is warm and there is a light chill on your bare arms.

I was back home a couple weeks ago and there was quite a snowstorm.  The snow was wet and heavy, and several limbs broke from trees in the yard.  The Russian olive, silver maple, and juniper all had branches break.  The day before the storm, I was playing outside with my daughter in a short-sleeve shirt.  I guess it’s that time of year.

missed connection

A few minutes ago, I was lying in bed listening to a radio adaptation of James Blish’s Surface Tension*, when I noticed a small, rather quick spider moving across the ceiling.  I was reminded of a time a few months ago when Aida and Jen were visiting…we were lying in bed, watching a spider on the ceiling.  It suddenly began rapidly descending on a web, right for my head.  I barely avoided a head/spider collision.

As I was just now lying in bed, remembering my previous spider on the ceiling episode and watching this particular spider crawling from one spot to another, I realized it was coming closer and closer to a location directly above my head.  Two or three times it dropped down an inch or so on a strand of web, returning, after a short time dangling, to the ceiling.  After each descent, it repositioned itself closer to my head.  Then, when it was directly above my head, it began a quick fall, supported by its web.  I rolled out of bed, and it returned again, perhaps reluctantly, to the ceiling.  Now, as I write this, it is crawling away from the spot above the bed to some other part of the ceiling.

I think it wanted to make friends by dropping onto the surface of my eyeball, or exploring the depths of my cavernous maw.

I just looked for it again, and can’t find it on the ceiling.  Maybe it lowered itself down somewhere, offended that I didn’t remain lying on the bed, my forehead a beckoning landing-platform.

*I read Surface Tension a few years ago as part of a collection called The Seedling Stars, while visiting my family in Minnesota.  I liked it a lot, and thinking of it makes me think of my parents’ cabin and being there with family.  It’s a very good thing to feel.

yes

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune but this is reality, so give me some room!

Billy Bragg, Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

tires on the pavement in the rain

I am listening to sad songs.  I'd like a bottle of wine.

I'd like to be home.

a few thoughts in february

The more infrequently I post something here, the easier it becomes to forget this little space exists on the internet.  It is kind of ridiculous, anyway.  What kind of a world do we live in when something like a blog constitutes communication?

I guess we all know what kind of a world we live in, don't we?  I hope so.  And I mean that both in a positive and a negative sense.

My hands and fingers are dried out from the dry, dry Colorado weather.  I had many dreams last night, and can't remember most of them.

I read a few comic books recently.  Old comic books afford me a wonderful paradise that I can slip into for a little while.  It's really like nothing else.  And I am thankful.

If you stop and slow down for a minute, lots of things come crowding in....or move away...depending, I suppose, on your experiences and frame of mind.

can-opener

Like most everyone, there are innumerable thoughts in my head throughout a day. Sometimes I want to write about one of them, but mostly they just come and go and, like many of my dreams at night, I can only remember a vague shadow of them when I try to recall them later.

 I guess it's pretty much summer now. I know it is still spring, calendrical-speaking, but the sun is overhead and hot here.

 I pretty much cannot fathom time at all. Some things I can get my mind around. For example, the evolution of the can-opener. I was on an archaeological dig once and, while excavating a deep latrine, we found old, rusted metal circles with a hole in the center. Eventually, we realized they were lids from food cans that had been opened using an earlier incarnation of a can-opener. Anyway, I can kinda understand the way can-openers developed and changed over time, at first as a response to the new practice of preserving and packaging food in tins and, as time went on, fine-tuning around concerns of ease-of-use.

 But the passage of time...that I do not understand.

 It just happens and it goes.

 One minute it is now, and the next it's not. Or it is, but it's not what it was.

 And you can't put your finger in the dike. You can't turn off the faucet. All these water analogies makes me think of dams. If time flows like water...what is a time-dam...? I suppose maybe time-dams aren't "things" but, rather, periods of time when life and everything seem to pool out into a larger era. The difference, though, is that dams are meant to stick around (although, in the long-run, of course, they'll be nothing more than a dusty memory), and time just can't do that, even if for certain periods in our lives it feels like time dams up and widens instead of simply flowing inexorably forward.

 Maybe time is death. In certain ways it is, I suppose. From beginning to end. Or from one iteration to another. I think in physics time is a component of space. Like matter and everything else. But our lives span more than can be reckoned by any particular means of measuring the universe. 

Time is also life, I guess. Probably it wouldn't even be around, if it weren't for that. So, I guess maybe it breaks even at the end.

 Maybe we should live in a world that breaks even at the end.

thumbs

I'm at the downtown library. Not much I feel like writing about, I guess. But it's always so long between the posts here. You could say it's like trying to hitchhike on a small county road in southwest North Dakota--you have to wait a long time for anything to come by, and after all the waiting it might not be worth a damn.

some people say it's the most important meal of the day

I sat on the couch this morning and ate a very decent breakfast. It is not too much to ask for a decent breakfast. I wish everyone had a decent breakfast most every day. I mean once in awhile it can be rather adventuresome to not have a decent breakfast. Perhaps you are busy sword-fighting on a Spanish galleon or meditating in the Himalayas. I am confident there are numerous good reasons for not having a decent breakfast. But for all other mornings, I hope everyone has a decent breakfast.

seasonal

It's a Wednesday night. It's also autumn and very beautiful. I pretty much always love this time of year. Memories of childhood and adolescence are intricately wound up in this season for me. The smells, the feel of the air, all the little indications that fall is here and winter is coming connect in my mind to events and emotions of years past.

I came across a little garter snake today. It was really tiny and so cute. When you pick up a garter snake they let off a stinky scent--it must be an escape tool. I remember this from when I was a kid. I can distinctly recall the smell. I caught hundreds of snakes. In the swamp below where I lived, at this lake I used to go to, all over the place. Garter snakes and bullsnakes. Sometimes snakes got loose in our house, and my Mom would find them a few days later, curled up by the fireplace.

Some thing are different now. But fall is still crisp and falling leaves and cottonwoods.

yeah

I love reality--someone's always got it figured out, while no one else does.

this morning

The weeks just keep on sailing by. It's like someone turned on a faucet and left it running, not full-blast but just a steady flow.

Maybe I got stuck. Kinda like when a floating leaf or branch gets pulled into an eddy along the shore of a swift stream and either spins endlessly or becomes entangled in some roots from the bank or a fallen limb.

conturbat

[The scene is a small living-room with the sunlight of late afternoon falling through the paned glass of windows. It is late winter, and the winds of a cold front blow against the house. A figure is seen sitting in an armchair.]

I need another beer if I'm gonna write anything here today.

[The figure rises from the chair, walks to a table and retrieves a beer.]

I'm kinda sad right now. You know, it's that kind of sadness that I think there's some German word for, or something like that. I don't know. Probably not the best time to drink beer. I rarely drink these days, which is good I suppose. For a short while I tried drinking to ease the pain I have in my leg and foot. It mildly helped, but I really, really dislike being hungover. It feels like a waste of existence. And I get semi-hungover very easily these days. So, I don't drink much.

Nice little caveat there. Speaking of Latin, I just recently encountered the Latin phrase that means "I am disturbed by the fear of death." I read a translation and collation of the Epic of Gilgamesh recently. It's really, really good. In the introduction to this particular version, the Latin phrase is mentioned as a sort of theme to the epic. And it is. A theme of the epic, I mean. The fear of death disturbs me. I mentioned that to someone and they asked "whose--their own or someone else's?" I guess that's a pretty good question.

[The sound of vehicles on the street outside can be heard. A light has been switched on inside the house. The sun is not yet down.]

a great war leaves the country with three armies...

I read a quote somewhere--supposedly a German proverb--and I thought I'd put it here. And then I got to thinking...you know, pretty much everything is fucking bullshit.

morning

What a beautiful morning! I went outside around seven. It had been raining during the night and an odd lighting illuminated leaves in trees and the sides of buildings. Off to the east, the sky was orange and small clouds were bright with heavy shadows along their edges. There was the smell of rain on sidewalks and enough of an autumn chill to make a hooded sweatshirt just right.

This all made me feel like I had slept through the last couple of years.

photos and life

Yesterday I looked through old Life magazines from the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was at one of those flea markets down south of town. One of those places that have antique furniture mixed with porcelain roosters, mass market paperbacks, cheap plastic crap from ten years ago, and about a million other things.

I was pretty immersed in these over-sized Life magazines, looking at articles and advertisements and sinking into that era, at least as depicted in popular media of the time. There were articles about famous models and actresses, ads for vodka and television sets. And articles about the war in Vietnam.

Do current magazines ever have stories about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? I know television every night has some soldier on some show, talking about how they are a great spouse and a loving parent and then there is an American flag waving in the background. But never anything about the actual wars. Just feel-good propaganda.

One issue I was flipping through had a photo essay of the US war in Vietnam. One photograph stuck out for me. It showed a small area covered with the prone bodies of dead Vietnamese, killed by Americans. Three officers were standing off to one side. One Vietnamese looked like he was 15 and his eyes were open, staring off into the sky that you couldn't see in the picture. Most of the bodies looked like they were just asleep or something--there weren't visible wounds--but one person close to the right-hand bottom corner of the photo had a large portion of his head blown away.

In an advertisement in a different issue, two white men in suits and ties with partners in dresses were floating in space drinking vodka.

another morning

Summer is on it's way out. I had that surgery back in the spring, and thought that by now I'd be running around, feeling good. That's not the way it's turned out so far. I'm trying today to get a better attitude about all this. I think it would probably help in a lot of ways. So, I'm working on that.

My folks were here for a long weekend and we had a lot of fun. Played a lot of cards, too. Does anyone know how to play the game Whist? For some reason I'd like to learn how to play it.

Speaking of learning--I took a hunter's education class over the last couple of weeks. There was a lot of information. And I learned quite a bit. I'd put money on me being the only vegan in the class. Probably ever. I hadn't taken an official test for some time, but there it was--like high school or something--a fifty question test. The class covered a lot more than what was included on the test, and all in all, I'm happy I took the class.

Jen has started teaching another semester. That really makes it feel like summer is soon to be a memory. The mornings have a distinct autumn chill that makes me think of flannels.

an interview

interviewer for the microcosm of people who occasionally check-out this rarely updated blog (impwoctrub): Welcome back to this blog.

me: Thanks.

impwoctrub: What have you been doing recently?

me: Not much, I guess. But I did just get back from a trip home to see my family and some friends. I got to see my mom, dad, sister, and brother, my niece and nephew, and my gramma and several cousins, an aunt, and uncles.

We had a family reunion with lots of hanging out, playing games and cards, eating, drinking coffee, and talking. After the extended family left, my immediate family stuck around awhile and we did more of the above. And played with my nephew. That kid is one cute baby. I even changed a couple of diapers.

On my way to Jen's folks' place, I stopped and saw some old friends in Fargo. It was really fun and I'm glad we still see each other, even though it's not nearly often enough. Plus, I got to play some video games with a great 3 1/2 year old and meet his little brother.

After spending some time with Jen and her folks we came back home; we just got in last night. Now I'm trying to readjust to being here. It's always a strange transition coming home from a trip.

impwoctrub: What else?

me: I don't know.

impwoctrub: Excellent. Can't wait for the next interview....Well, thanks. As always, it's been riveting.

rainy

What an incredibly beautiful morning. The sky is grey and it's been raining and raining. This makes me feel really good.

It's interesting how weather is often so closely involved with emotions and state-of-mind. I guess most physical things are. Sun, rain, snow, clouds are just easy ones to identify.

Now that I'm thinking about it, other examples of physical things--physical realities--influencing mood, thought, and perspective come to mind. Injuries, poverty, music, another person's touch.

I suppose the list is as long as experience.

well

"Very well, then, let us live while we live, and enjoy to the fullest whatever of adventure or pleasure each new day brings, since any day may be our last, and we shall be dead for a considerable while."

Well, as is usual, it's been sometime. Not only that, it's been a long time for some things...the cold water of the Missouri, a snowy night in a sleeping bag with toes cold and not much sleep, my friend teaching me how to not be scared witless by a horror movie...

Anyway, here I am now--in front a screen (it seems like there's a hell of a lot of screens most everywhere) with a window just above it letting in the lowering light of evening, of a spring evening when the days lengthen as the sun warms.

I had surgery on my leg a few weeks ago. I could say that's one reason why it's been awhile here, and I suppose it's true but maybe I wouldn't have written anything anyway. The surgery went well and now I'm recovering. The first couple of weeks I was pretty much reclined in a chair with my leg elevated. After I was over being nauseated, I read books and old comics and watched a couple of terrible--terrible--movies from some 50-movie-dvd-set that some friends passed off on me.

Speaking of books, I've been on a bit of a pulp sci-fi kick recently. I read some Edgar Rice Burroughs (the first couple of books in his Martian stories--publishing beginning in 1912, and Beyond Thirty, written around 1915)--he seems like a crazy nationalist, but if I get around that (and some of the -isms that bleed from the prose) I enjoy some of his books, or at least parts of them. And I read another old science fiction book--Triplanetary--by E.E. Doc Smith, most of which was first published in 1934. So, yeah--old school science fiction, comics, and other stuff, too.

I started writing here with a bit of an idea about something; then I got a phone call, and now I don't really remember what that less than half-formed thought was.

I've been listening to music the last couple of days. That sounds less than mentionable, I am sure, but it's really kinda different for me, recently. I just haven't listened to much music for some time. But I've really been enjoying doing so lately.

So, now I am quite a bit more mobile than the last couple of weeks. I'm still using crutches, but it's getting better every day. I started going to physical therapy, to help address this nerve thing I've gotten as a reaction to the surgery and to work on basic range of motion stuff. I think it's helping and, like I said, it's getting better and better. So, I'm pretty happy about that.

It was a crazy warm day here--very, very springish, indeed. I guess it's that time and all.