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O Bury Me Out On The Lone Prairie
Shabbat sort of snuck up on me today. There six periods of labor between Shabbats, but they have disappeared in my dotage. Not that I miss them all that much, put it does speed up the passage of time. The day speed by in a frightening blur of anniversaries and holy days.
I do like my transition into a lark, however. I have been an owl most of my life, and chose careers that required night work. Sitting here sipping my coffee and watching the sun burn off the condensation on the window panes is a special time for me. Even Kippur da budgie gives me a little peace at that time. I hope it dries out soon enough to do some communing on the porch.
Today is my cooking day. I am thinking of hash brown potatoes with onions, biscuits, eggs, sausage and grapefruit this morning. Lunch will be an every man for himself affair, and Snooks Shabbat matzah ball soup for dinner.
[Delete paragraph on how this generation will be the last peaceful one in the US]
[Delete rant on how we have abandoned boys, emasculated men, and how women are decrying the loss of ‘real’ men in a world they created]
[Delete a couple other thoughts … ]
But for the moment, there is coffee, a cloudy sun, warm weather, and green as far as the eye can see. Life is good out here in the once untamed Texas prairie.
Good morning!
Alexander the Lesser
A sunshiny morning returns to Texas. It is a bit too soggy to be comfortable on the stoop or back deck, and the high humidity has the windows fogged up, so we content ourselves with the gorgeous yellows, golds and green hues of light streaming in.
I am not too certain what is on the docket today. For sure, I have to gas up and prepare Bucephalus[1][2] for a dog run tomorrow. 40 minutes down to Round Rock, Texas, an hour and 15 minutes back up to Waco, Texas, and another 50 minutes back home. With the stops, it should be around two and a half hours. Not bad, and it has become the standard run for me.
I might add a trip to the feed store to my gas run today. They have some really good wasp spray, and some red wasps have taken up residence in my hose reel. Not that I have needed the hose for awhile, but I suspect that things will soon enough dry out, and I’ll return to mowing and watering. I love the smell of feed stores. It takes me back to my early years in the remote reaches of the Sangre-de-Christo Mountains in New Mexico.
My new WiFi internet provider left a message on the recorder this morning with an “emergency” call. I was curious as to what kind of emergency an internet provider could have other than un-throttled access, so when my eyes were finally opened fully, I called them. Seems that Snook dated their monthly cheque “2013” instead of “2015” and they need a new one. Good, I guess. I was thinking they had to go to the hospital or something.
A tragedy occurred in our little village because of the rains. A young boy was idly watching the raging water in a drainage canal and was sucked into a flooded culvert. What a ghastly way to end your life. That was a true emergency, but alas, a heartbreaking one.
And our search for a spiritual home continues. The hour commute to the latest one became such a burden. I am not certain how I am going to solve that one unless I am willing to bend a little in my theology.
So … the cup needs refilling. The sun climbs another 15° in the summer sky. The mist burns off the windowpanes, and the day moves inexorably into late morning.
Good morning!
[1] Alexander the Great’s favorite horse, from Greek Boukephalos, literally “Ox-head,” from bous “ox” (see cow (n.)) + kephale “head” (see cephalo- ). Men called [him] Bucephalus … of the marke or brand of a buls head,which was imprinted vpon his shoulder. [Pliny, I.220, tr. Holland,1601]
[2] Bucepalus, or sometimes Blue Bucephalus: Bucephalus is a venerable ten-year-old Dodge Grand Caravan, with two kennels in the back, and a barrier behind the driver’s seat. I add kennels or take them out as needed. At 20/22 mpg, she is quite the gas hog, but a comfortable one.
Tropical Storm Bill
Wednesday arrives gloomy, wet and windy. My favorite weather if I can enjoy it indoors. Water off the eaves beats an irregular tattoo on my front porch, and Jenna the big white moose of a mutt helps me type this morning. She was such a cute little puppy … who knew I was going to get a saddle dog then?
It is a classical music day, but since I beat Snook out of bed this morning, I’ll have to wait until she rises before putting it on.
As the day lightens, it reveals a long dormant green succulence. Texas plants are very hardy, and even after a severe drought, can spring to life seemingly in an instant after the rain bands pass over on their way north.
It is a bit breezy and the pecan and acacia trees outside my studio window are heaving billows of greenery. Tropical storm Bill and a couple of numbered tropical disturbances are all working to make us the soggiest State in the US. Nevertheless, I am not ready to complain yet, though there are a few spots running from Houston to Dallas who have certainly had enough.
I am not ready for the news or heavy reading yet. I am just sitting here in the gloom, sipping coffee, and going through the posts of friends. I don’t have many enemies left online. The few I do have are squelched. And that works for me. Some days I just want fluff mixed with a modicum of personal pain. I’ll save the hard hitting stuff for the newsfeeds.
Well, it is mostly blather from me today. The soft fogginess of sleep still lingers even though the coffee gently pushes against it. Oddly, it is a pleasant sensation, and maybe I’ll savor it for a little bit.
Good morning!
Dripping Drivel
Monday dawns wet and drippy from last night’s rains. I arose early today, staggered into the kitchen to flip on the coffee maker that Snook set up yesterday, and staggered on down the long hall to the studio and await the fruit of the coffee pots wheezing and gurgling labor.
There will be no stoop setting today. It is way too damp on the lawn chairs for my delicate bottom. The weatherman says about three days of rain as tropical storm Carlos and Invest 91L pump huge rain bands into the area.
We don’t care what makes ‘em. We are just glad to get the late moisture, although those to the south of me in Austin and San Antonio are probably not so happy. More flooding is in store for them.
Not much on the newsfeeds today. Muslims are killing Muslims. Muslims are killing Christians. Muslims are bellyaching about the bias against them. Obama isn’t killing Muslims in Syria or Iraq.
I see that the deadly little tin-pot dictator in North Korea executed a general for napping while he lectured. Such disrespect deserves the harshest penalty! I wonder how he was executed. Perhaps he was eaten alive by dogs or fed alive into a wood chipper. Bleah! Maybe I won’t wonder about that after all.
Among the blogs that I follow: Life in an elephant sanctuary, a son who used to play with military toys now graduates from advanced infantry training with honors, and one is deleting and making pages in a flurry of creative re-arrangement. I’ll try to catch up with her when the smoke clears …
I have had to thin back some of my animal feeds. There is so much pain, cruelty and suffering there that I can do so little about. I deal with one canine at a time. I can’t save ‘em all.
*sip!* >refill
I have started writing a little, but no grand plots are firming up yet. Maybe I’ll go to a formula format. Boy finds girl. Boy loses girl. Boy saves girl. Boy ruins it all by marrying girl.
Kipper da budgie keeps trying to get me to entertain her this morning. However, on rainy mornings I just like to listen to the dripping of the water running off the roof. Maybe a bit later, I’ll play some classical or Celtic tunes to amuse her. She accepts them, but her favorite is still 50’s rock ‘n roll. Jerry Lee Lewis is her favorite, followed by Little Richard. Nevertheless, they are a little too raucous to me to listen to on serene rainy mornings.
Out the window, the skies are lightening, the tempus is fugiting, and I must be about my daily routine.
Good morning!
A hunt for Lillith
I have been working on this tale some years now. It is one of those ideas that continues to ferment, and each time I rewrite the intro, a new aspect pops up, and most of the old work becomes useless. Still, I love this legend for some reason, and maybe I will finish it ..
He groaned with desire at the soft touch of her lips caressing his chest. She was in estrus, and the scent of her sex enveloped R’amet’s thoughts. She gently pushed her body against him, silently mouthing the words “NOW!”, and R’amet rolled over to pin her to the ground and woke with a start as she vanished from under him. Gone was the Succubus, having stolen his seed, and left him unsated. He knew she was near, but she still surprised him again.
R’amet sat back against a fossilized tree trunk that poked out of the ashen greyness, and looked around his resting spot. After all the æons, he had found her ancient garden. Her ærie had to be near. All that remained of her garden now was ossified obsidian like tree trunks stretching endlessly from horizon to horizon. The branches had fallen off long ago, leaving twisted boles pushing out of the ashes.
But R’amet had no interest in the ruins. He was close to his prey now. Resolutely he stood and began walking, letting the thrill of the hunt start coursing through his veins. Then he began to run when his instincts located a vague image some distance away.
There was no daylight on this interstellar planet. Just pinpricks of starlight in the vacuum. But R’amet was not constructed of interstellar stuff. He was formless in the universe, but substantial in the spirit world. Still he ran on in the interstice between spirit and matter. She would not escape him this time!
Her ghostly image in his head grew more distinct with each passing parsec on the interstitial arc. Her scent was now leading him. He indefatigably sped on, her presence now touching him.
A bright flash broke on the horizon, and leapt across the stellar horizon. She escaped!
R’amet sank to his knees in exhaustion. She escaped again. One day he would find her, and when he did, he would kill her.
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Empiricism, Rationalism and Gloom
It is overcast and threatening rain on this Sunday morning. The weatherman says in about an hour, I can look for a deluge for another hour, then tapering off as the rain bands roll majestically over this tiny spot on the map.
Today is was spicy sausage, chopped bell peppers and yellow onions in a scrambled egg hash, and reheated biscuits from the fridge. Yeah, nuked biscuits are a tad on the chewy side, but we waste not so we want not. Put enough strawberry jam and salted butter on them, and they go down fine. The spicy sausage is still pleasantly burning in my tummy, but I am certain that I will pay for the pleasant feeling later.
I was going to attempt a short story, but when I sat down to write, a coffee post spun off my fingers. A friend’s loss of her beloved dachshund of 16 years has me pondering about life, loss, grief and joy. It seems so odd that as a specie we mourn death when death is such an inevitability. However, we do. Moreover, our pets appear to grieve as well.
In addition, of course, such pondering leads me to wonder about such things as an afterlife. The rational side of me (as in rationalism as opposed to being sane) finds no evidence of an afterlife in nature. The empiricist side of me does. I am conflicted. How many coincidences does it take before one declares a miracle? Is life simply the sum total of my experiences? That I do grieve is empirical evidence that life does not continue. Then was that profound spiritual experience I had in 1973 negated?
Such thoughts remind me that I am still a depressive. They darken my soul in gloom and despair. And I cannot write fables when I am in such despondency. Therefore, I write coffee posts. And my universe completes one full circle again.
Good morning!
Mourning dove …
A blog friend of mine posted that she went out to work in her garden, then was washing up and going to meet her best friend for lunch.
I marveled. I am a snail in the morning. One cup for waking up, and one cup to ponder. I marvel at people who have half a days work in before I even try. I did get out on the porch for a little communing this Shabbat, but on weekends, food prep is my chore. We have a good system. I like to cook, but hate cleaning. Snooks hates figuring out menu’s, but doesn’t mind cleaning. So I cook, she cleans on the weekend.
It was already hot and very humid when I went out on the stoop with my second cup. The mocking birds and cardinals had already sang, and only the mourning doves lonesome dirge, wooeeewoo woo woo filled the air. They usually call out most of the day.
But the reverie was cut a bit short by having to go in and whip up some pecan waffles. One of my morning staples. Usually it is a Sunday thing, but I forgot to get potatoes for hash browns this morning, so my usual Shabbat country breakfast of eggs, spicy turkey sausage, and hash browns with onions was postponed. Nevertheless, I do not get many complaints with the waffles either, so I am good for the day.
Yesterdays rescue run went well, and I managed to get them handed off to the next relay before they pooped. Glad I missed that one, because they weren’t traveling with a grain scoop.
Not much happening on the religion front. I am still uncommitted to an assembly. I seem to be more content and spiritually fed when I am with a group. Very odd for an anti-social curmudgeon. Yeesh. Synagogues got just about all that annoys me. Children, mothers, save-the-whalers, do-gooders and cloying sweet speech. They bleed for everything, and aren’t shy about telling you so.
So I just smile back benignly, knowing that you scratch anyone deep enough, the ugly comes out. They can be very sweet and loving if not challenged or forced to spend an extra couple of hours with the needy. I find that to be true more often than not. The arseholes in life seldom give me the problems that God’s children do.
I am still on a creative hiatus. We old knights need a fair lady to dedicate ourselves to. All that tension and stuff that tales of valor and romance are built with. The agony of understated, unrequited love. The rose we hand to the princess is quickly tossed aside and trampled by the masses as the fair maiden rides off to the easy comfort of her castle. The prose and dragons we slay lie covered in dust, now objects of disgust rather than gratitude at their vanquishing. The lady turns into a fickle, self-centered [bleep], and the battered old knight retreats to the fresh clean air and honesty of a waterfront bawdyhouse and the loving arms of the slatterns within.
Let the reader understand.
Anyhoos, so’s it goes … the sun set, the sun rose. The meal was consumed, the dishes washed. A line of prose and poes here, a line of prose and poes there. A sun at 15° past noon bakes the greenery. And a little Shabbat snooze is next.
Good morning, good afternoon.
Bill Grogans Goat
Bill Grogan’s Goat was my earworm on rising this morning. How that happened is a mystery. I am not a big fan of barbershop quartets. I suspect most of you may have missed that era too. It is a throwback to the good old days when barbershops where the hub of manhood. I was born a few years after their slide into obscurity (thank God!). But barbershops were still the hub of town activity when I was a boy.
It is a glorious morning here, the fields are green, the temperatures are mild, and other than two chigger bites behind each knee, I am well and good. One thing I do miss about city living and Colorado is the absence of chiggers.
It has been a crappy week on the social sites this week. Two individuals wanted to pick my friends for me, and when I would not comply, they unfriended me. I think I will go into cyber sorrow and weep some cyber tears.
I have never wanted to visit any of my cyber friends. I think they would disappoint me, and I would disappoint them. I am much more effusive and caring in script than I am in voice. I do not even like calling them. The few I do have numbers for, I text rather than call. I am a conversational dunce.
I have only met one cyber friend, and while it was not a disaster or anything, I left wondering why I wasted my precious time driving to a coffee shop and making small talk for an hour. Another one I came close to meeting, but something always seemed to get in the way of the meeting. I think it was a good thing, because it was one helluva train wreck when the cyber relationship ended. I cannot imagine what it would have been like in real life.
I am a bit sore this morning. I am reasonably strong as long as I am erect, but when I get down on my knees to work, it just kills me. I pressure washed the tractor and push mowers yesterday, changed the cutting blade on one, pressure washed the sidewalk and birdbaths since I had the washer out anyway, and now I am eating Ibuprophen like it is candy.
So unfolds the day. A request to haul two mastiffs from Waco to Austin this Friday is now being scheduled. I am sure to get this one because of their size. I am waiting for the final schedule to emerge from the chaos. The coffee cup is empty and I need to go refill it. And the tomato plant and citronellas on the stoop need water.
Good morning!
I sits me down
So I sits meself down to write a simple little coffee is good post. It has been awhile, mostly because I have been residing in my nothing box the last few weeks. Down my once quiet little lane, a housing development is drawing endless dump trucks, cement mixers and other construction vehicles. The city folk I fled have followed me. They striped the pavement. Little yellow signs now tell you where the bumps, curves and children are playing. A green sign tells people the name of the street I live on.
I can no longer wander out the back door with my coffee cup until I put some pants on, and now I must put up some visual barriers so that I can enjoy sitting out on the front porch. Nevertheless, there still is a pasture across the road, and trees to block the view as teens rumble by with their oh so cool subwoofers rattling the window panes. I take a little schadenfreude in their misery of having to go to work each day, and having to eat peanut butter for breakfast because they blew all their paycheck on cool.
But the dawn today was still gorgeous in spite of all the post millennials encroachments. Birds of various varieties flock to the two birdbaths for a furtive sip and dip. The front porch is hidden behind sweet potato vines and citronellas. And Snooks coffee is at its usual perfection. So what if I can’t go outdoors in my skivvies or pee off the porch? No one promised me a perfect life.
Good morning!
After the storm, there is coffee …
Sunday, the first day, dawns sunny and dewy. The big rains have moved off to the East, leaving a lot of Texas real estate under water. It was a tragedy for so many, and a boon for so many. The rains fell on the just and the unjust, so did the floods. So many lost everything and have to start over again.
*sip!*
I feel a bit guilty that I escaped the misery, sitting high and dry on the escarpment at the junction of Salado Creek, the Leon River and the Lampasas River where they merge into the headwaters of the Little River. The little Rivers then flows into the Brazos River, which eventually flows out to the ocean, carrying all the floodwaters with it. There is a parallel of life in all that, but I am too groggy to wander down that avenue.
*sip!*
My yard is lush with the moisture, and long dormant grasses are pushing out runners over the bare spots and the trees are pushing up suckers. Much, much work this week and I am not sure where to begin.
*sip!*
Many volunteer organizations stepped up to the plate this year to mitigate the disaster. Animal lovers showed up at the flood threatened kennels of one of Austin’s shelters, each ‘adopting’ a pet for the duration. I hear that happened at several shelters. Disasters have a way of being especially hard on domestic pets, and many of the animal lovers worked tirelessly rescuing abandoned and lost pets.
*sip!*
I think the muse is ready to start writing again. I have begun to receive suggestions and hints at several writing projects, and when I sit down to write, the words flow. I don’t know whether to pick up an old project, or start a new one.
*sip!*
But while that is all swirling around in my head, there is coffee. A warm mug helps banish sleep-swollen fingers, and gives me a moment to compose as I draw from its rich dark contents. This will be a two cup meditation morning.
Good morning!
Rusty's Armory 