Month: September 2022

What do I do today?

Same thing I do every National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Pinky, reread the report recommendations, give thanks for the Treaty 6 source of my family’s health and wealth, and financially support Indigenous heritage language learners.

I’m certainly not flying up into Indigenous people’s timelines and asking for cookies.

(‘same thing I do every night Pinky’ is a quote from Pinky and the Brain, a cartoon)

walk in the Park

Paul and I went to Fraser Foreshore yesterday, first time in ages. The park was practically deserted. Although I was quite tired, we went slow and did a full walk. After I brought Paul back here and fed him Mac and Cheese and constructed a salad for us. For dinner I fried pork chomps (very very slowly) and nuked taters and made another salad. It was really good.

Today I hope to drop off some Yorkshire Gold tea at Peggy’s place, pick up additional bp medication and meditate on Reconciliation Day. I also hope to finish Sam Cooper’s “Wilful Blindness” which is a simply terrifying and disgusting read about how Vancouver has been completely screwed up by the international (mostly Chinese) drug trade and the rapacity of the CCP, paired faithlessly by the fucking idiots running both Vancouver and Victoria, and the ludicrously incompetent RCMP.

I’m saddened by how I care more about what’s happening in Florida and the coast than I am by the poor folks in the aftermath of the floods in Pakistan (it’s going to take more than the rest of this year for the waters to recede.) So I went to the internet to see if there’s any good news from there and found some.

As of this morning, there are 1500 dead in Pakistan – at least – and 11 dead in the US from Hurricane Ian.

Coolio, the somewhat shameless misogynist who penned the hip hop classic “Gangster’s Paradise” is dead at 59 of a heart attack.

Lizzo, the equally shameless (but for other reasons) recording artist has played a 200 yo crystal flute while twerking, and on the internet, you would think she had injured white manhood to the core. IF YOU THAT FRAGILLY STAY HOME BUB

visitation dream

I dream but never remember, so waking up with a dream is a good thing.

Jeff and I were living in an old house full of beautiful panelling. A whole bunch of guys appeared IN OUR HOUSE as if they were having a meeting. They were all settled in with their papers on their knees and joshing with each other the way people do before they settle in to business, I said, “Well you’ve come to the wrong house, I’ve got COVID, you all have to leave.” Then I realized it was ALL guys from Beacon, and one of them was Tom. He gave me an amused but guilty look. There were a couple of other of Beacon’s dead there too, so I got a package deal. Hi Dennis, Hi Ralph. You were so loved.

So the visitation dream is me kicking Tom out from a church meeting because I’ve got COVID. We never spoke, but you don’t normally in visitation dreams. I find it really weird that I wrote that poem the Sad Enterprise and a day later, boom. We’re coming up on the anniversary of his death. The anniversary of his diagnosis has come and gone.

Did a load of laundry and ran the dishwasher, did a shop, worked on The Sword That Cries Ruin! Got the wordle in three tries today. I can sort of feel my brain under all the cottonwool.

Time to do some shopping

I’m in a decent mood, finally, after all the damned EMOTIONS I’ve been having had forced themselves into poetry. I’m not saying it makes the poem better, but I sure wept hard writing it. Absolutely tip top night of sleep though!

I think I asked Jeff if we could shop today and if that’s going to happen I need to get up, take my pills and get dressed, because we usually leave for that about now.

New Poem – The Sad Enterprise

Yes;
I was wanting to talk to you about the sad enterprise
of writing poetry.

How downcast one is, seeing all the parts for it
enlimpened by advertising
et all the new Malaprops. one toes English
hoping it staggers to its feet once more
as with the pugilists of old, one drunken wager from renown
one butterfly from glory
one stolen kiss in a library doorway closer
to a skald’s dearest wish

A bard gets tired, in a world eating new words
faster than it can understand the effects
of the old ones
neogollyism newspikke and an endless
scrolling déluge of porn, puppies and punditry
it only seems so bad because there’s so much of it
but indeed, it is bad, because there is so much of it

I do not need to search for topics. The particular
presents itself, most insistently sometimes
‘RESPECTFULLY, I AM BEAUTIFUL.”
disrespectfully, I have the attention span of a house fly
and a variable crock of enthusiasms and illnesses
I LOOKED AT YOU AND YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL
But I ain’t writin’ a poem about that.

I am scraping blueberry pie filling from the counter
and that’s quite enough
i do prefer love over sinks
and the enthralment of learning and insight and connection
over the technic that gets us all here
whoosh
in the company of our peers
being the being that watches our species crash into an asteroid

I am saying this way is an old way, and it works for me
those beings who relent and strike the rock that is my forehead
then hoot with laughter as i bleed and swear
they are old beings and they do not have names
they don’t care about pretty moments
sing for your people, they yell, they babble and yell
trying to make themselves heard above my tinnitus

another field of verse – this body will lose this form
i remember holding you and thinking that these bones
inside these bones will be gone some day
you didn’t feel like a skeleton
no poem could contain my situation
and I was forced by my own breath into song

Other pens hover over those long bouts
of helpless, isolated weeping. it’s grim
and effortful and being uncomforted
is the whole point of it

I write poems about death because my friend died
there’s nothing complicated about that
it would be uncanny if I didn’t
poems are not edifices
they are tattoos
I’ve left a space here (pats chest)
for you, for when the word comes back
No.

accomplishments

Totally Boned 5165 words

advised Jeff of the rent increase amount – goes up in January.

Watched Dart

restrung the busted d string on the resonator. I will leave it for a couple of days before I try to tune it. It has a split bridge, which made restringing it more challenging than usual.

Advised Suzanne by email about the camera equipment.

Collected a lot of reddit karma points by liking Oysterhead (a band, actually a supergroup which still tours even though they only really ever did one album)

tossed some M&M lasagne in the oven for supper – it’s so tiny the two of us ate it all, so I am bordering on leftoverless!!! this will nevah do. Feel like making a trip to M&M today though, we’re out of their prepped meals and we do like their chickety-pie.

Stayed alive, staved off yucky feelings, made tea.

Since I don’t think I’m going back to bed I’m going to make coffee…. it’s 2 in the morning here.

 

 

I said it on twitter

As my dear old Onty Mary says, “I’ll quit wearing a mask and self-isolating when they quit trying to kill me.” Closest I’ve been to her in three years was 3 m and we were both masked.

This in response to a friend IRL commenting on the events she is not participating in because of the cavalier attitude of the organizers towards masks.

Now I know Mary never said those exact words, but the sense is correct.

Eggs over easy on sourdough muffins for brekky. NOM

 

another perfect day

Around noon went for a walk with Paul in Everett Crowley Park. First we drove all over hell’s half acre trying to find a decent parking spot at one of the usual parks. That’s how we ended up on the garbage dump park. It’s a good place to go if YOU NEED TO PET SOME DOGGIES. I got very very tired and couldn’t walk any farther very fast. Then we got home and I nuked up some chicken vegetable rice for Paul, and then he hung around. I did his toenails (they weren’t scandalous, like the last time, but they needed to be done). Then I checked my blood pressure which was 105 over 71.

Morty Face by KushMastaFresh on DeviantArt

This is 30 points lower than normal. What in the actual hell is going on. I don’t actually feel good at that blood pressure – I sure don’t feel like DOING anything. Picture shown above is Morty, from the sci-fi animated modern classic Rick & Morty. It’s okay fOlks! you are not expected to watch it or like it; it has machine gun delivery of multiple concepts, not always in the best of taste (that’s one way of putting it, check that face shown above). But I love Morty because he’s grown a spine over the last seasons.

Paul long-term-loaned me John’s resonator guitar.  <—- this after he realized at Peggy’s that he can’t even pull a guitar out of a case without fighting it. I have to add a string but it looks like all the bottle slides I bought attracted a guitar I can use them on. They’re the kind of guitar with a big perforated metal plate attached where the soundhole usually is.

Mike called and released himself from self-jail; he brought his unbelievably sweet new parlour guitar and played nothing but songs Paul knew, which was deft of him, because Paul has happy and enthusiastic about singing along.  He also gave Paul the long anticipated tour of the Delica. Long about five I kicked Paul out (nicely) but he got to have all that social contact and stay the hell out of his own house for the afternoon, which has a crying baby in it. Ryker has a cold and he freaks out when he can’t breathe and so there is much screaming. STILL NO FUNCTIONING FREEZER AT PAUL’S PLACE!! JFC landscum, you need a blunt punt.

above-noted picture is almost 15 years old. That’s Mike and Paul at a minimalist costume party, back in the day

I had ONE Fat Tug last night ENJOY MY ABSTEMIOUSNESS.

Mike finally got to look at Suzanne’s friend Richard’s bag of photography equipment. JFC IT’S A NIKON FE an absolute classic manual camera with one of the first built in digital light meters. AND THE MANUALS for it and the lenses. Cash on the barrelhead it’s worth no less than $250, but Mike doesn’t want it because he’s not a Nikon user. I am currently considering my options, but I think I’ll advise Suzanne before taking action.

Spoke to Keith on the phone. He appears to be doin’ okay.

Currently running a 12% kudos to hit ratio on Landslide – the number’s actually going up. This never happens so I’m finding it weird.

Found out that the Seagull (the one that isn’t Smokey) was put away in E minor tuning so I noodled away on that for a while and I think I may have the core melody of some soundtrack stuff.

Mike said he used to wear a special watch with a pulse ox monitor but he said he had to stop, since it kept telling him that he was dead every night. (Thought pOp would find this amusing.) It came with his new Samsung phone. His new Samsung phone is incredible, the camera alone is goggleworthy. I don’t care, I’ll probably get a simple-phone if I ever live alone again but I’m never having a cell phone again, otherwise.

Mike says his project – his Sisyphean work project – six times now he’s tried to set up a customer service department off shore and six times an internal shift in priorities has moved it. It was in Spain, it was in the US. It was in Costa Rica. This time he just sent his luckless lead tech into the mouth of a typhoon in the Philippines. Anyway, he hopes he survives all the corporate bullcrap long enough to get laid off, with a package, (word is as a French company they’re used to making big payouts to make employees who are now surplus to requirements GO AWAY) and then he’s going to take the Delica and drive across this country and dip a toe in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Please let me know if you want him to come visit you after he’s laid off, because he IS AWESOME. HE’S SERIOUSLY THE BEST.

Jeff keeps having interesting dreams. I imagine I dream every night, but I sure don’t remember them. I guess I keep it all for waking life.

Then, a stunning variety of products, after which we watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is a good movie to watch while impaired, and Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong are absolutely amazing in this. I believe I raved about it on my blog the first time we watched it, but it really is a trip to set a wildly inventive and ecstatic movie amid the drab exigencies of Chinese immigrant life. Mike was impressed as hell and said some variant of (with amusement), “It’s a damned good thing they’re speaking mostly Mandarin, if it was Cantonese it would be triggering.” This with respect to the ghastly way Michelle Yeoh’s character treats Stephanie Hsu’s character in the movie. THEN I FOUND OUT THAT Yeoh, Quan and Hsu are going to be a family again in a Disney action comedy tv show? WHO’S WRITING, ALLEGRA YELLS & chomps popcorn impatient-wise.

At some point Mike went home. IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE HIM.

Worked hard on Totally Boned yesterday; couldn’t stay hydrated. Didn’t practice enough. That will change lol. I need to drink 16 oz of water RIGHT NAOW

I had another perfect day, y’all. I’ll be checking my blood pressure again for sure though. Whatever is wrong with me, it can’t kill my good mood.

it was ‘the last perfect day’

Peggy has completely recovered from COVID – her second bout according to her, but without an antibody test we’ll never know. She was certainly well enough to feed me and Paul roast chicken, spaghetti squash, the least bitter radicchio+tomato salad, and boiled new potatoes with butter, with homemade plum meringue tarts and storeboughten pumpkin pie and ice cream for desert.

A filk never got off the ground. We’re coming up on the anniversary of Tom’s death (a year goes by like nothin’, once again) and Peg’s house is a warren of piles due to trying to get Tom’s excess after death into the correct place and also due to the internal construction (just barely replaced the floor tiles upstairs to learn that every potable pipe in the house had to be replaced. MANY HOLES. HOLESINWALLS HOLESINCEILINGS holes… holes)

The dead wizard in the poem is Tom, of course. He’s been pressing for remembrance, so I’ve been having crying jags thinking about him. The ‘chromatically’ is a musician’s joke, to put colour on a word that is sound.

I was thinking in bed how if I died in my sleep that it would have been the last perfect day – weather good, peace at home, saw friends, peace in the family, got some writing and practicing in, ate yummy food. Don’t know how many days more like this I’ll get – statistically around 7000 – but yesterday was a good one and nobody has to be thankful but me. And I am. Undeservedly lucky and content.

walked with Paul, fed him lunch

Then walked to and from the pharmacy to get my booster for COVID. Everything went very smooth. Stopped at the Liquor store that’s just opened up the street from the pharmacy and got Fat Tug and drank THREE of them and enjoyed that so much I picked up a guitar and started practicing afterwards.

Weather has been wonderful, smoke from fires variable, lower today.

Slept exceedingly well, woke up this morning with my arm sore af, (no surprise there, almost everyone reports it, and it’s sore right up to the side of my neck) but I can also tell that this will lift over the course of the day. And I walked a whole bunch more, on concrete, yesterday, so my legs and ankles are whining.

That picture of Neptune, whoooooeee.

Jeff is taking me to IHOP this morning.

Look what arrived in my mailbox this mornin’ SQUEE > Book*hug preview.

Russian women are being comforted regarding overseas vacations that they can now no longer take their husbands on, since men 18-60 are subject to an international travel ban, with the deathless advice “Swap him for your granny”.

They can ATTEMPT to mobilize 300K new recruits but since the Russian military has already demonstrated that it doesn’t have enough UNIFORMS, RIFLES, FOOD, FUEL AND AMMO for the men it’s already putting in harm’s way in Ukraine, I don’t know what will happen. Russian client states are getting restless; Azerbaijan has already started a brush fire war against Armenia. 300 people dead already, both sides pointing fingers for the continuous breaking of the cease fire.

A couple of kudos overnight, 160 hits on the new story.