Tag Archives: humour

Egg Case on Hickory Leaf

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The calendar tells me today is the first day of May, often celebrated in honour of those who labour for others.

Having mown lawns, cleaned toilets and performed similar labourious tasks, I qualify as a labourer, one who set aside desires of instant gratification to invest in the companies and ideas for which I and others laboured.

Now I relax on this day, a holy one to many, and meditate with thoughts turned into recognisable symbols.

I wait for an interesting topic to hold my mental gaze while floods, fire and famine ravage our species.

What else is new?

If I do not think or write about a topic – person, place, thing or idea – then it does exist with me in this moment.

A single-engine plane flies overhead, perhaps an enterprising person piloting.

Have you ever watched ants pass data through a distributed network-based processing unit represented as an organic biological set of states of energy?

An aquarium heater will warm a tub of water overnight.

Sometimes meditation morphs into a nap. Now is such a moment.

Thanks to Beth at Carson’s Grille; Richard C., Chris and Whitney at Lowe’s.

Time to dream, envision our species 1,000 years from now again, when we and our current form of civilisation will appear barbaric and unenlightened.

“Be yourself – everyone else is taken.”

What have predictable orbits, with six planets in one section of the visible sky, got to do with the life of a carpenter bee or a luna moth?

If nothing, then why do you think they have anything to do with your life?

Sanity check. One, two, three.

Your eyelids are getting heavy. You can taste sleep at the back of your throat. Your head is nodding.

Now, repeat after me, “If my body can’t sense it, it does not exist.”

A Late Comment

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Without power for a few days, my wife missed the British big, fat royal family wedding extravaganza.

Watching a replay of the wedding ceremony on her iPad, we both joked about how the video made the wedding look like a cheap English soap opera, complete with bad lighting (in comparison to the overbright lighting of American soap operas), but no longer the bad teeth.

Just another case of reality TV blurring the line between sleazy actors pretending to be “real” people and real people looking like the sleazy actors they are, I guess.

Your True Colours Come Shining Through

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A word of thanks to those who provide the backbone of civil society – safety/peace officers, firefighters, petrol/gas/power/water/sewer/phone/road/refuse utility workers, postal/delivery employees, hospital/first aid crews – and in emergencies, the many volunteers who go above and beyond their comfort zones to aid those in need.

Crises are part of everyday life and we respond the best way we can.

My wife and I saw that yesterday when we stopped at the local baseball stadium named after a former mayor, Joe Davis, where local restaurants had donated food being cooked free for the community, with donations taken up for a local charity; Gigi’s Cupcakes handed out free samples for a donation to the Red Cross; and many stores operated with a full complement of employees on-hand to provide them an income during tough economic conditions.

Speaking of which, in the George W. Bush and now the Obama presidential years, as millions of jobs have been added to the employment roster, are we in the U.S. truly seeing not only a loss of “good” jobs to low-wage countries/regions, but a dragging down of the living wage for the majority of Americans?

In other words, as an investor, if I want to maximise my profits, would it make sense for me to invest in a company employing workers who are offered no benefits other than an hourly wage?

I’m putting aside social responsibility at this point and looking solely at the benefits I derive from living with people around me who, for no one reason, are happy to find any job offered to them rather than create their own companies/legal business entities, or manage an investment portfolio that works for them.

While Obama and Trump and all the other political pundits jab each other jovially in hopes of getting the attention of potential voters in the 2012 U.S. legislative/executive election (as well as increase advertising revenue which hopefully translates into higher earnings for entertainers and the producers/agents they work for), I wonder about the truth.

What types of aircraft and from whom is India buying them?

While the rich get richer in an easy-to-make-money global economy, what value is rhetoric?

Is there such a thing as a safe investment?

If the U.S. government lives primarily off the backs of workers whose living wage is less than livable, what about those who live off the U.S. government – are we on an upward or downward spiral?

As long as other governments and NGOs rely on the U.S. as the world’s nonimperialistic police/military force, we’ll be okay?

And after it’s no longer okay, then what?

Questions, questions, questions…

My service to the community is small – while regularly paying taxes via sales, investments or income (except in cases like Amazon.com online purchases, it seems – a good reason to buy locally), and donating to charities I and/or my wife deem worthy, I recently gave platelets to the Red Cross via apheresis on Tuesday.  Is it time to give whole blood again or schedule another apheresis appointment?

This is the only moment I have in which to live.  How I choose to live it with you is in the guise of a regular guy – the Wandering Wonderer, the Invisible Hermit – doing my part to help us live together in relative peace and quiet…the loud 7250 watt generator in the driveway notwithstanding (thanks to City Lumber).

A final thanks to Lowe’s, Huntsville Stars baseball team organisation, Little Paul’s BBQ, Publix, Mapco and Walmart for their service during the regional power outage.

Our prayers, positive thoughts and meditation to those in need and those serving them during the emergency crisis in this part of the North American continent; also to those in wartorn regions of the world; and the woman I saw who stopped on the side of the road to help a turtle get to the other side with the chicken that didn’t know why it was there.

Off The Grid

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“If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.” – Proverbs 34:10

“…and by his light/ Did all the chivalry of England move/ To do brave acts.” – Shakespeare: II Henry IV III.ii

“Put all your eggs in one basket, and — watch the basket.” – Mark Twain: Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

“The goal of war is peace; of business, leisure.” – Aristotle: Politics IV

“Four be the things I’d been better without-/ Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.” – Doroty Parker: Inventory

“I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries “Give, give!” – Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams, 27th November 1775

Be careful, Rick, of that which you ask for yourself.

A hermit living with a person well-connected to the modern workforce, and with whom one shares a refrigerated upright box and a freezer chest will discover that waiting in a queue for hours to purchase a portable generator, petrol and oil occupies leisure time more suited for looking at a clear night sky, seeing meteor light trails above one’s house for the first time in decades, light pollution absent during a regional power outage.

Living on word-of-mouth, relying on my folks in Florida to tell me via mobile phone that the powers-that-be have imposed martial law…uh, I mean a dusk-to-dawn curfew in north Alabama.

Solar power, other than fueling the dome of trees keeping this house cool in summer, is not going to energise chilling compressors very well through the light-filtering leaves, but it will recharge batteries for radios, portable TVs/computers, and mobile phones.

A parabolic/trough solar water heater will produce hot showers on a cool morning.

So, I ask myself, with this opportunity to observe life in the moment without nuclear/coal power plants pushing electrons, what of a family’s daily existence is truly essential.

Don’t need an automatic dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer, microwave oven, toaster, refrigerator and/or freezer.

Don’t need a lawnmower, hedge trimmer, vacuum cleaner or electric screwdriver.

Convenient, yes. Need, no.

Clean water, absolutely.

Don’t need a doorbell that chimes electrically, a phone answering machine, videogame system, large-screen tellie, home intrusion alarm, or clothes/hair iron.

Don’t need an electronic piano/organ, ebook reader, electrified light bulbs, record/CD/DVD players, or AC-powered clocks.

Want them but don’t need them.

Of course, a hermit’s needs differ slightly from a family’s needs.

A hermit doesn’t need a baby monitor, or oxygen machine.

A hermit can create an ant-powered supercomputer to gauge and predict patterns whereas a technology-challenged family can make do with basic mobile phone service to track changes in personal networks.

Enough chatter. Time to reprogram an ant colony and then scavenge for the fuel-hungry monster keeping our frozen/cooled foods at optimally-safe longterm storage conditions for delayed eating gratifications.

Windmills aren’t useful in dead air space.

Meanwhile, sun tea brews in the sunroom and a solar cooker is ready to make a delicious meal. Where’s that Mylar camping hot water shower bag? My wife says she’ll heat water with our coffee pot, electric, o inspired by college dorm hot water problems.

“I’m glad you two are still together: it helps me save on postage.” Ashleigh Brilliant: Pot-Shots No. 528, Marriage series

How many entrepreneurs in this power outage will inspiringly invent and successfully market an efficient home heating/cooling system that is self-contained and/or scalable to efficient neighbourhood levels?

A Life Without Words

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As my life’s end draws closer, I review my life through thoughts organised into symbol sets that many of my tiny species’ members could comprehend.

But the storm that reorganises life on this part of the planet cannot speak a word.

I cannot tell you what I know because what I know has no words.

Untranslatable.

And that’s too bad (“that” being the Internet which cannot express life in real terms, only limited communications in the forms our species is familiar with (and various species partially understand in their unique ways)).

My sister and I sense/see/speak without words. I believe that Monica and I did, too. Very few people have I encountered who’ve communicated with me in like manner.

The moments in between are dry deserts of abject loneliness.

Do i object?

It is the only life this body has known.

Comfortable in the relative silence of an atmospheric disturbance, a natural phenomenon as regular as a lifetime partner’s sleeping/breathing patterns.

All I’ll ever know. Silented SETI listening stations, religion-based persecution/discrimination, intelligence/military leadership swaps and child slavery the forgotten wallpaper of the life I share with you.

The invisible hermit returns to his home unpowered by nuclear technology…humless.

May take a few days to watch my species continue digging an early grave for the current civilisation before I write here again…

If I could simply/easily tell you how …

But it makes so little difference to the galaxy that it hardly seems worth explaining what you already know in your wordless thoughts.

“This, too, shall pass.”

A limb fell from a tree onto the front yard

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On this planet, many activities in the moment.

I do not exist except in the moment.

I walk on well-paved thought trails today, not interested in pushing envelopes or developing new art states.

I cannot tell if anyone reads these words or if everyone who can read reads these words.

No storylines to perpetuate.

The happiness of silence will do.

A voice drowned out by the greenness of new leaves after a lot of water fell from the sky.

Numb.  Ignorant.

Existing with no timescale or socially-interactive technology advancement that matters.

Being, not doing.

One of seven billion will do.

Most of us are amateurs giving away advice and sharing opinions about the work of professionals.

I grew up worshipping warriors in the arena.  Who is now growing up worshipping women with advanced degrees in the workplace, warriors of the word rather than the sword?

I have no place in the modern world.

My time, my set of thoughts given to me by my sub/culture, is gone.

The cycle of life catches us all in its spokes.

We innocently flirtatious middle-aged men are fast becoming relics.

Time to sit back in my forest haven and watch the vines grow up around me, which feed off my breath while I feed off the labour of unseen hands.

The invisible hermit is in his element.

The imaginary sense of balance is settled.

My dream is alive.

Sic as ye gie, sic wull ye get.

May the best ye hae ivver seen be the warst ye’ll ivver see.
May the moose ne’er leave yer girnal wi a tear-drap in its ee.
May ye aye keep hail an hertie till ye’r auld eneuch tae dee.
May ye aye juist be sae happie as A wuss ye aye tae be.

The Scottish Emigrant’s Farewell

Fareweel, fareweel, my native hame,
Thy lanely glens and heath-clad mountains!
Fareweel thy fields o’ storied fame,
Thy leafy shaws and sparkling fountains.
Nae mair I’ll climb the Pentlands steep,
Nor wander by the Esk’s clear river;
I seek a hame far o’er the deep-
My native land, fareweel for ever!Thou land wi’ love and freedom crowned,
In ilk wee cot and lordly dwelling
May manly-hearted youth be found,
And maids in every grace excelling.
The land where Bruce and Wallace wight
For freedom fought in days o’ danger,
Ne’er crouched to proud usurping might,
But foremost stood, wrong’s stern avenger.

Though far frae thee, my native shore,
And tossed on life’s tempestuous ocean,
My heart-aye Scottish to the core-
Shall cling to thee wi’ warm devotion.
And while the waving Heather grows,
And onward rows the winding river,
The toast be “Scotland’s broomy knowes,
Her mountains, rocks, and glens forever!”

Meaning of unusual words:
shaws=flat piece of ground at the foot of a hill
ilk wee cot=every small cottage
wight=vigorously
broomy knowes=hillock clad in broom

Caught in an eddy today

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Thanks to Stephanie and others at Publix last night.

Today is a meditative state, one’s will spinning in a side swirl off to the side of the main current.

Laughing at myself for making up conversation to fill a future story’s chapter excerpt about clicking sounds on a telephone and pretending someone would care enough to record both the conversation and discussion on the telephone.

Making retirement entertaining for self, if not anyone else.

Watching the forest canopy grow dark under thick clouds.

Remembering friends from the past.

Establishing new memories.

Keeping reality to myself, seven letters to call my own.

Feeling rhythms and wondering which ones are worth writing about.

A-U-M-A-U-M-A.

Seeing the Sight of April during April sightseeing

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An elephant in a bull shop – that’s me.

Soliciting funds over the landline for the children’s canine teeth rehabilitation association of psychological dental health associates.

Between requests from the Committee and the MORTIE network, I barely have time to meditate on making my heart skip beats in order to vary the syncopated rhythm that body uses to record these words.

A thanks to Veronica at Hale Springs Inn’s McKinney Restaurant, James at the Acropolis Four Stars Grill and a Citgo petrol station.

I wonder about a white Ford E250 van with Georgia state/Gwinnett county tag BLU 8683 – why did its wheels/tires seem so wobbly?

Do you forward your landline phone to a mobile phone in order to track outside callers who think they can hide behind unknown/fake Caller IDs?

Time to rest my brain behind the flat screen that displays this blog to me.

My wife and I are emotionally drained, with more to go.

One of us needs to maintain a modded, modern modicum of sanity.

I’m glad you can’t see my correcting of bad typing today – otherwise, you might believe my wife is the sane one.

Of course, I know she is.

Congrats to our flower girl (25 years ago), Rachel, for her fifth child getting baptised by sprinkling yesterday, as well as the young man who did, and the young people who made their public confession of faith in my wife’s hometown church.

Hard to believe Hannah’s little brother, Daniel Boyd, has grown into a church elder leading the Sacrament, and raises a little boy of his own now.

Silence today, listening to the echoes of extinct beasts prowling nearby primordial boreal forests.

Meditation, sleep – what’s the difference?

For one example, recent dreams have been a lot more vivid than recent meditative thoughts.

To be – that is the difference.

Why is Doonesbury endorsing Donald Trump for U.S. President? After all, we know the veil of satirical reverse psychology is a hidden means of promotion. Guess we know who Trudeau will vote for in 2012.

April, we want our egg bread in two weeks. Have we known you for three years now? How is it we grow old und you stay young like Stella?

Dragonflies and leafed-out trees call my name.

G’day, mates!

Up next: the April 1975 church newsletter of Rogersville Presbyterian Church…

Black Vulture Doing Time

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My sister and I can jump out of a perfectly good airplane flying thousands of feet above the ground but we can’t walk to the top of a rickety old fire tower.

Rhonda pines for the wolf that died of stress, she told us while feeding the deer, one which gored another to death, nature being what it is, even in locked pens.

Dinner at Amis Mill Eatery, served by Michelle, finished the day’s funnery.

Then back to my mother in-law’s house to spin a metal snake down the washing machine drain pipe to clear out a linty/muddy clog.

My sister almost stepped on a green snake as we hiked to the top of Bays Mountain and the radio tower trail turnaround.

A mother and daughter wore “Emory & Henry” T-shirts after they drove 30 minutes all the way from Virginia.

‘Tis fun to be ignorant touristy day hikers, chatting about life and photographing nature in spring.

Raspberry moonshine with the alcohol content “cooked” makes for safe and delicious dessert syrup, I’m told.

The planetarium show was great for kids, sparking my wife, sister and me to use iPad/Star Walk to look at the night sky in a field between the Amis Mill and my wife’s old home place.

My homemade/DIY daypack made of plastic bags and blue ribbon worked well today, reminding my sister to say there are a lot of homeless people in Asheville, NC. Heightwise, she stood on the Rock of Ages at Holston Presbytery Camp just fine this week.

As midnight approaches, I can say I’ll sleep well before rising for Easter service, sharing pews with regulars and C&E members.

G’nite, Anne Elizabeth. G’nite, Janeil Ann. Good night, John Boy. Good grief, my sore feet, which broke in a pair of Columbia hiking boots.

Thanks to everyone working at Bays Mountain Park and Planetarium, keepers of Kingsport’s precious jewel.

Thanks to David for the loan of an electric drill and Melinda for the offer of turkey, ham and dessert for lunch – sorry, my dear, but we didn’t get back until 9:30 p.m. tonight.

Time to get the clothes out of the dryer, fold/roll them and go to bed.

Today was a good day to die but glad I’m alive and well enough to talk about what happened.