Reptiles

Reptiles
Silly Grins

Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Read Pill

The 'red pill' is not read. In it's natural state, it looks quite green, and muddy brown after it's been boiled down for a few days. As a crystal, they say it has a yellow tinge. What do you think?

Friday, October 4, 2013

33 Days: Day 15 - 33


Friday, August 23, 2013

The Way Some Things Work

Games and Puzzles: The Way Some Things Work

This post serves a number of purposes in that it is 'designed' to address the people who have commented over the life-cycle of this 'blog'. Yeah, the tenth stage of a life-cycle that I have only recently learned about through interaction with a beloved elder who, despite the medication, was well aware he was at Stage X, the transitory phase that includes mottling and cyanosis... his extremities had begun to cool.

We said goodbye.

Talk about...
GRACE

under pressure
(and morphine).

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Jane Doe 183



Jane Doe? That means she’s dead, right?

“No, that’s not her posthumous ‘name’. She’s been off the radar for quite some time now. An intentional move. A choice. She could possibly still be alive... maybe in a shelter.”

You’re talking about one of your aunts?

“Yeah.”

Not the one who married the Fro…

“No. From the other side... from out of the light, not the shadows.”

Go on.

“What I still find peculiar is the way things have kind of just happened. Like the last time I saw her, I don’t remember her even speaking to me. I could hardly recognize her through the window. Not that the fasting had changed her looks other than making her appear painfully thin, almost skeletal if it weren’t for her healthy color.

You see, she still was good about nutrition. Very careful in fact.

The 'her' I didn’t not recognize didn’t acknowledge me. We had no conversation that I can recall.

But, as it turns out, she’d remembered me because she left this…




Here’s her writing on the inside cover. 




Her message... her ‘recognition’ of me comes mainly from a time before I was even ten years old. And she still pegged it. Even after all that time... and this time.

When she first came to visit, before I was ten, her presence was discovered quite by accident. Behind a closed door of the spare bedroom was a steady and indecipherable voice that, to a child’s mind, at first sounded like some kind of alien.


"Pasted on the inside of the book was 'everyone'"


Despite being scared, we opened up the door anyway. Kneeling on the floor, hands on in the ‘prayer position’ on the bed, was a woman with her eyes closed and speaking in tongues. She was kind enough to explain that a little later when she had finished her communion or whatever it was.

During her ‘visit’...”

Wait, I thought you said she was homeless?

“Yeah, she’s been homeless for as long as I can remember. Homeless in the sense of having no fixed address and no more possessions than what she carries with her. Admittedly, she has taken advantage of shelters from time to time. Or a family’s hospitality. She knew people.”

About that visit?

“Okay... yeah… that visit. That was probably the first time I met her. Or even knew that she existed. Definitely different. Different for a number of reasons. But before I get into those, I have to thank her for taking the time out to recognize who I was, even at that age. I mean, nearly ten and with no brother around, I had no one to wrestle with. Wasn’t about to try that with Step-dad-one. At that age, most adults wouldn’t rough house with kids. But she would. Tough and strong. Now that I think about it, her survival routine would have kept her in very good shape. At least when she wasn't 'sick'.”

You once said she’d taught you things?

“Yeah. She taught me about carob and how to sing הבה נגילה.”

But you are גוי?

“Yeah, I guess. But there was other stuff.”

Like what?

“The big words that named the problems. Kind of like the art she left, pasted on the inside of the book.”

And she left you that book the last time you met?

“Yeah, the last time we met. When she didn’t even acknowledge me, so I thought. But she was speaking to her little sister, the one who ended up taking care of everyone. And I still haven’t got the stories straight.”

Stories?

“Yeah. Like how nervous breakdowns seem to run in the family. 183’s father was 160, or somewhere around there. He’d actually belonged to the club, that roundtable where ‘intelligent’ people are supposed to sit. Only thing is, people were waaay too far into their own heads to really know how to communicate. No one would listen. Not where he was.”




That’s funny.

“Yeah. Peculiar. 183 was even brighter. Which is somehow related to her idiosyncrasies, her choice to ‘not belong’ to society. Now, her navigational skills may seem fairly remarkable to some, but when you live on the streets, you pay attention to when libraries are open where there is plenty of time for reflection. And she could and did read. Areas with mild climates allowed her to ‘live in the hills’ with nothing more than maybe a tarp.”

You’re laughing.

“Yeah. Just remembered how her younger sister said we weren’t to use the plastic blue sheet when we were painting. 183 had complained we were messing up her home. Apparently, that was her shelter for the hills. Where she lived.”

Why now? Why all these thoughts and memories?

“If I could answer that question… no… it doesn’t need answering. What’s important is that I am able to have these thoughts and memories. I hadn’t seen that book, really opened it, in quite some time. Only now am I able to kind of understand where everyone was coming from.”

Because everybody’s clock keeps a different time?

Yeah, and maybe this one too:

BECAUSE GOING NOWHERE
TAKES A LONG TIME

Something in the climate of a hammer
Struck him when young. Call a
Sparrow a lamp, you’ll still need
The liking of chairs to settle
What is at bottom only painted over
Cloth; and that flat cunning of plates,
How little it speaks above the soup’s
So roundly directional bravura. Count the sky
A pan, you’ll still be hard put to find
Any flash in its like. But ah, alas, alas,
Lottipo . . . the mushy marshes, those tree-lined woods,
The so-small journeying, and the trivial occupants thereof . . .
There, too, and all else, alas, are only real. So may we
Remember once again how the grasses cause the wind to move . . .
Ah, alas, dear Toppilo, what then is this realm that seems
So like a cell, without jail or judge, or witness even . . .?
And that we love! Is this not proof of something?
No, I admit – not necessarily of heaven . . .

 And now, for that song..."
 



Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Sid was not vi[s]cious...

 
Their once was a Rottweiler named ‘Sid’
A pure-hearted dog
With the heart of a kid

When he’d make his rounds
He’d put on that sad and lonely frown of his


You could hear his plea
As if to say
‘What about meeee?Aawwwe’


As he sat by the back door
And begged for just a little more

But not too much

He’d get a few pieces meant for the table
A scratch behind the ears
And pat on his fat back
Then he’d be off again

Places to go

To the next place
Wherever that was

He was the neighborhood bum
And we all sure enjoyed enabling that one

Man, that dog sure could eat.


Living in a kind of more rural area where your neighbor might be an acre or so away, most people had the habit of leaving their doors open. Doesn’t really make sense to lock anything when you spend most of your time outside anyway.

In the evenings, before the bugs came out, the top part of the door was usually open when dinner was being made. Last minute salads were picked from the garden throughout most of the year. Miss those Such a nice place.

Anyway.

Well, usually near dinner time, this big thug of a dog who could’ve probably afforded to loose a bit of that extra weight… Sid, he’d kind of slowly find his way up onto the back porch and stand there for a few minutes.

If no one was giving him any attention or at least pretending not to notice, he’d start to whine a little, kind of lettin’ folks know that he was stopping by and would sure appreciate one of them special dog biscuits we’d somehow not forgotten to picked up just for him.

Nobody really remembers when he first started showing up. We never really knew where he lived. And it’s not like he wasn’t well fed. He was kind of known for making the rounds in a way that made you smile when he came by. He’d hang out for just a little while, long enough to charm his way into your heart for those few scraps of whatever you might not really need.

No, never did figure out where he lived.

But we know where he died.

There was a school not too far away where people really should have been minding the speed limit when they drove by. No matter how big those yellow signs were, people just couldn’t slow down.

Funny thing about Sid, he wasn’t shy about holding up traffic even after he’d left a dent or two.

Word was, someone heard another screech from the wheels of a pickup truck that really should have been going a hell of a lot slower.  Instead of the usual follow up of profanity, that final day, the skid marks were punctuated with a pretty solid thud.

Yeah, Sid was a good dog.

Remembering him still brings back a smile.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

F*cking Fathers' Day

 F*cking Fathers' Day: Axes to Grind

 

Let the good times roll...


Let them knock you around...


"Good evening."
 

"Good evening Lloyd." 

 



"What will it be?"

"The usual."

Let the good times roll...

Monday, June 10, 2013

Amphibious Approach

Guided by decades of seasons
Meekly approaching
Only under the cover of night
She lands




Her last obstacle overcome
Her clutch deposited


 



She returns to that big blue forever
Her solution






Some say
Going by the sheer 
weight of numbers 

alone 

The odds are
STACKED 
QUITE  
HEAVI-
LY

A
L
L

T
H
E

W
A
Y

D
O
w
n
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.