If It Is Tuesday...

Cape May During Hurricane Sandy

If it's Tuesday, then Monday must be over.

Anyone wishing to argue about space and time continua or parallel string bikinis may simply go take a dip in the moat.

Because, damn it, Monday is over.  We start fresh.  All devices have been charged.  The Manor is pristine, the grounds are pruned, raked, and -- where absolutely necessary -- mowed.  Sven Feingold putters about giggling, so something is up with the latest ManorFest Maze design.  La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore stays on her cell, when she can get reception, because she is *this* close to garnering a position as spokesperson for a major weight loss company that specializes in busty divas.  Just the exercise and muscle toning from running up and down turret stairs and sprinting around Captain Haddock's miniature submarine wormhole gateway will make her lose a few dozen dress sizes.  Should Marlinspike Hall ever successfully be enveloped in a wifi bubble, the Milanese Nightingale may well gain back all the fat she's discarded chasing a phone signal.

Our various herds and fruit orchards are all in their proper states.  The monks next door are reworking their Christmas Catalog of Wasted Calories and the Abbot, Fred, and I have been designated taste-testers.  Life is sweet.

But Monday.

The Mother-Unit that actually raised moi decided to need emergency surgery.  In a test of the emergency surgery system in the coastal backwaters of her slice of paradise, she encountered the requisite number of idiots at the local beach bum hospital over the weekend.  So, in a way, Monday was her salvation, as it brought an influx of actual medical practitioners leaking grains of sand onto the spit-shined checkerboard hallowed hospital halls.

I was a tad bit worried when I looked up her surgeon's credentials to find that he also enjoyed the practice of ophthalmology.

I've not seen her in decades but every description begins with her diminutive stature.  She has everyone and everyone's brother worried about her weight -- no busty diva, she.  I want to scream sometimes.

Oh, about what?  I need to particularize my need?

I want to scream at the "but she's so tiny," "she can't take it, she has no... reserves!"

Puh-leeze.  This is a woman who was a fierce ballerina.  I watched her employ many tricks of the dancing trade as she guarded her lithe status through the years -- as if it mattered once she was no longer expected to enter rooms via a grand jeté.  She is not anorexic in the strict definition of the malady.  Nor is she an alcoholic, nor does she abuse prescription drugs, in spite of a lifelong celebration of Happy Hours and a honking bottle of bazillions of phenobarbital kept in the last drawer of her dressing table.

Anyway, she survived the weekend, and made it through a scary surgery with style.  And got -- with us -- to Tuesday!  Yay, Mom!  Point your toes and twirl, twirl, twirl!

Equally wonderful about this day?  Grader Boob gets his first doses of chemotherapy!  His story has become so sad, beset with that ogre of physical pain and the great deceivers of the mind that pain welcomes. If you're a Dedicated Reader, you've seen me act out that drama, o'er and o'er.  Therefore, rejoice in Tuesday, for shrinking those tumors will result in less pain, and less pain will allow sleep, and sleep will further decimate the pain cycle.

All together now:  "Shrink, tumors, shrink!  Shrink, tumors, shrink! Shrink, tumors, shrink!" I have an accompanying tune in mind, but don't want to limit your creativity as you dance your way through this Tuesday, chanting, cavorting, and casting Grader Boob tumor cells into Tumor Cell Inferno.

Use any musical genre that works.  Though I have to admit that "country/western" somehow doesn't fly. Feel free to prove me wrong. Something in a Texas Two-Step, maybe?  Just be stylish.  This is my brother we are talking about.

He's simply riddled with cancer, the reprobate.  His new oncologist, who seems a very good dood, is starting the meds today whether he is admitted to the clinical trial or not.  And no, I am not stupid.  Prevailing winds, insight, what is not said -- I'm on it.

Given that it's been over 6 weeks since the official diagnosis, it is fair to say that the new oncologist's very life may have hinged on that decision, as I was gathering weaponry to bring down on his toupéed head if something were not done this week.

Would I kill to improve Grader Boob's Quality of Life?  Let me see.  Hmm. Yes, of course I would.

Wouldn't you?  If I were willing to personally extrajudicially execute Pinochet, Jesse Helms, and various other errors, an attempt on the life of someone impeding the life of Grader Boob is one of those famed "slam dunk" decisions. The weird problem with my Kill List, and this has been the case since roughly the 1970s, is that once penciled in for an extrajudicial execution, my Listees just... drop dead.  Or are taken out in the wrong fashion, a tragedy equal to the horror of their continued existence.  If you have any insight into how I might stem the tide of these unworthy deaths and promote the karma-cleansing of my efficient Kill List, the comment section is all yours.

If you're lathered in a cold sweat and thinking of calling the Interwebs Keystone Kops, relax. I was voted the Family Member Least Likely To Commit Murder.

So, it is Tuesday.  The Mother-Unit may yet gambol along the edge of her watery front yard, scotch and soda in one hand, the other arm gracefully indicating the vastness of the Atlantic.  The Brother-Unit may get to drop the F-bomb on another set of undergraduates, or he may be granted furlough to gambol alongside the Mother-Unit, leaving now and then to swim out past the breakers.

Have I told you lately, Dear Readers, that I love you?  Particularly You... That's right, You.

Instructions for Tuesday:

• Point your toes and twirl, twirl, twirl!
• Shrink, tumors, shrink!  Shrink, tumors, shrink! Shrink, tumors, shrink!

© 2013 L. Ryan

They're back...

The lovely literates over at American Idyll are back from their pilgrimage, and with beautiful  evidence.  I will steal two photos from ruuscal and two photos from TW to whet your whistle.  Wet your whistle? Rev up the appetite?

Hold the breath.
Laugh.
Imagine.

CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS TEMPLES FROM WHITES BUTTE

-local flora

whipple cholla

elvis, doing his thing

The Canyon and the River are not theirs to own, of course, and both might argue that the images begged taking -- still, credit them their eye, their availability, their joy, their fun, Elvis, and Poncho.

Give the boys their due, is all I'm saying.

Smooches galore, you two (three, four?).  Cheerios and fruitloops!

Love from the Marlinspike Hall Gang

To Wet (Whet) your Whistle : Origin and Meaning

What does it mean if you wet your whistle?
The most common interpretation is to have something to drink, usually something alcoholic. More polite to say you are off to wet your whistle than to say you are going drinking.
Most references relate to a custom quite a few hundred years ago when drinking mugs had whistles that one would blow to indicate you needed a refill.
Some say the whistle was attached to the handle and became wet after the drink had been poured, hence to wet your whistle.
Other sources say the whistle was part of the mug, built into either the rim or handle. The result in both cases being a wet whistle. I went digging on the web and could find no example of Ye Olde Whistle Mug. Maybe I did not dig deep enough. The only examples I could find were replicas of whistle mugs on offer as curios.
By the way, the whistle part. It would appear in times past ones mouth and or throat were referred to in common talk as your whistle, which makes sense to me. To wet your whistle was to have something to drink. There is documentation that this was in use during the 1300’s. ( Maybe one wet ones whistle before you whistled, hard to whistle with dry lips. Maybe one wet your whistle before talking, something like a glass of water on a speakers table)
So, the way I look at it, is that to have something to drink preceded the whistle on the mug concept. Maybe the one morphed into the other.
You will also find references to “Whet your whistle”. My immediate reaction was that whet morphed into wet over the passage of time. This is not necessarily true.
Whet per definition means either to sharpen something on a grindstone (whetstone) or to excite or stimulate a desire, interest or appetite. Starters at a meal are there to whet your appetite in stimulating the desire to eat more of something else. This is also a saying in its own right, first documentation however quite a few years after the Wet your whistle.
I did a very unsophisticated test on the Internet and Googled “wet your whistle” and had 426,000 hits, the majority directed towards drinking. “Whet your whistle” resulted in 421,000 hits, the majority of the answers related to stimulating further thought or experience processes.
Now you have a good basis to go scratching around for more information and draw your own conclusion.

Come aside, and rest...

As I often do when my denatured brain cells overheat, I spent some time this evening enjoying the photographic evidence of nature's brilliant calm as captured by my oldest brother's camera.

You can enjoy more of his work, and his friend ruuscal's photos, as well, over at his American Idyll blog. TW has a longstanding love affair with the Grand Canyon, in which he has lived, loved, worked, and played.


When he and I reunited after what seemed a lifelong time apart, TW was quick to realize that I often needed "armchair" access to Anywhere Else, and gave me the first (of his many) gifts -- my own Late Night Insomniac's Pass that lets me traipse about the canyons, smell the flowers, and worship at The River's edge. 

Brother-Unit TW chose to add some of Chopin's Nocturne in B flat minor and lush videography to offset his triptych of "the beautiful Butte."  There is also a bit of good advice, for good measure, tacked onto the end.

Older brothers just can't help themselves.
I love you, Tumbleweed. We're gonna get you to The Manor once Linda at the Lone Alp Home Depot gets our flooring order straight. We're having a test run on Brother-Unit Visitation next weekend, when Grader Boob is flying in, provided he can successfully elude the Dean of the English Department, who is already dicking around with The Boob's grades. The poor boy is overwhelmed:

Been dealing with a cold, grading, and the final plagiarists/collusionists (?) of Fall semester.


Each equally aggravating.

It's important to remember, on days like today, that "the beautiful Butte," Chopin, and even freezing, stormy weather are as much "reality" as the shootings in Tucson or that nagging pain sitting right behind your eyes.

Breathe deep:

Take long walks

in stormy weather

or through

deep snows

in the fields

and woods,

if you

would keep

your spirits up.

Deal with

brute nature.

Be cold

and hungry

and weary.

--Henry David Thoreau

(journal entry for December 25, 1856)

* Please don't reproduce TW's photography without securing his permission -- just leave me a comment here and I'll hook you guys up!

nothing you can think that is not the moon

it's been a messy day here in marlinspike hall, deep, deep in the tête de hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs). the mess has involved miscommunication atop fatigue, and the way back seems to be along introspective paths.

instinctually, i turned to my brother-unit tw, man and photographer extraordinaire. a superb brother-unit, too.

sometimes a sister needs a brother, needs a god.

please remember that while i steal with impunity from one of his blogs, American Idyll -- *you* must write and ask permission for any reproduction of his work.

the photographs that spoke to me today were published monday, december 7 and do bear remarkable semblance to moonscapes. at least, the moonscapes that *i* have seen.








i'd rather learn
from one bird
how to sing
than teach
ten thousand stars
how not to dance.
--e.e. cummings



there is nothing
you can see that
is not a flower.
there is nothing
you can think that
is not the moon.
--basho

Of being numerous

Photos of and by Brother-Unit Tumbleweed, from his blog American Idlyl.











POEM from Of Being Numerous
by George Oppen


6.
We are pressed, pressed on each other,
We will be told at once
Of anything that happens

And the discovery of facts bursts
In a paroxysm of emotion
Now as always. Crusoe

We say was
‘Rescued’.
So we have chosen.





7.
Obsessed, bewildered

By the shipwreck
Of the singular

We have chosen the meaning
Of Being Numerous.

9
‘Whether, as the intensity of seeing increases, one’s distance from Them, the people, does not also increase’
I know, of course I know, I can enter no other place


Yet I am one of those who from nothing but man’s way of thought and one of his dialects and what has happened to me
Have made poetry


To dream of that beach
For the sake of an instant in the eyes,


The absolute singular


The unearthly bonds
Of the singular


Which is the bright light of shipwreck



25
Strange that the youngest people I know
Live in the oldest buildings


Scattered about the city
In the dark rooms
Of the past—and the immigrants,


The black
Rectangular buildings
Of the immigrants.


They are the children of the middle class.


‘The pure products of America—’


Investing
The ancient buildings
Jostle each other


In the half-forgotten, that ponderous business.
This Chinese Wall.



26
They carry nativeness
To a conclusion
In suicide.


We want to defend
Limitation
And do not know how.


Stupid to say merely
That poets should not lead their lives
Among poets,


They have lost the metaphysical sense
Of the future, they feel themselves
The end of a chain


Of lives, single lives
And we know that lives
Are single


And cannot defend
The metaphysic
On which rest


The boundaries
Of our distances.
We want to say


‘Common sense’
And cannot. We stand on


That denial
Of death that paved the cities,
Paved the cities


Generation
For generation and the pavement


Is filthy as the corridors
Of the police.


How shall one know a generation, a new generation?
Not by the dew on them! Where the earth is most torn
And the wounds untended and the voices confused,
There is the head of the moving column


Who if they cannot find
Their generation
Wither in the infirmaries


And the supply depots, supplying
Irrelevant objects.
Street lamps shine on the parked cars
Steadily in the clear night


It is true the great mineral silence
Vibrates, hums, a process
Completing itself


In which the windshield wipers
Of the cars are visible.


The power of the mind, the
Power and weight
Of the mind which
Is not enough, it is nothing
And does nothing


Against the natural world,
Behemoth, white whale, beast
They will say and less than beast,
The fatal rock


Which is the world—


O if the streets
Seem bright enough,
Fold within fold
Of residence ...


Or see thru water
Clearly the pebbles
Of the beach
Thru the water, flowing
From the ripple, clear
As ever they have been



29
My daughter, my daughter, what can I say
Of living?


I cannot judge it.


We seem caught
In reality together my lovely
Daughter,


I have a daughter
But no child


And it was not precisely
Happiness we promised
Ourselves;


We say happiness, happiness and are not
Satisfied.


Tho the house on the low land
Of the city


Catches the dawn light


I can tell myself, and I tell myself
Only what we all believe
True


And in the sudden vacuum
Of time ...


... is it not
In fear the roots grip


Downward
And beget


The baffling hierarchies
Of father and child


As of leaves on their high
Thin twigs to shield us


From time, from open
Time

This Blog Is In Desperate Need Of Big Moose Pictures

Roxana, who also claims to go by the unlikely moniker of "Nanny," has given me permission to publish these unshopped photos of a moose. She is the photographer. I would have not been able to hold the camera steady as I would be very busy trying to adjust my location to a point much, much farther away...

In any event, I find that pneumonia and friendship drama both respond well to the distraction of big moose pictures.

This is Roxana's commentary on The Creature:


They grow them big in Manitoba ! Man! What an animal.....his hind legs are like tree trunks !!

By the length of his beard and the grey legs, I figure he must be over 10 years old. He looks to be well over 8 feet at the top of the shoulder hump,and with his head up the height to the top of his antler must be about 12 feet .This guy is king of the forest, no bear or pack of wolves would dare come after him when he has this rack.

Considering that a dirt road can fit 1 1/2 cars across ... this fellow is HUGE. THIS IS ONE BIG BOY!

THE PICTURE WAS TAKEN IN ELLIOT LAKE
Yes it is a regular size dirt road.

The Serendipity of TumbleWeed

I'm claiming serendipity. When a sister needs a brother needs a God, she finds one. Thank you, TW, for your photographs of Beauty Wild.



How she loves you!

"This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call serendipity, a very expressive word which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called “The Three Princes of Serendip”: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."
(Horace Walpole, Letters 1754)

"--- you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously." (John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor)

"To put the matter differently, "play" (and its associated behavioral variability) is not purely entertainment or a luxury to be given up when things get serious. It is itself a highly adaptive mechanism for dealing with the reality that the context for behavior is always largely unknown. (Paul Grobstein, Variability in behavior and the nervous system, IN Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, Volume 4, Academic Press, 1994)


from outside Agate Canyon (top)

Tower of Set (bottom)

*please... i feel [almost] okay about ripping off my brother's blog photos... but i'd appreciate it if *you* would ask him first for permission to republish or copy. thank you very much!

RT @mergyeugnau

It's a day of technological "firsts" here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle. Earlier, I hosted quite a diverse crowd for the premiere of live blogging, as I tiptoed through the tulips of refilling scads of medications -- online!

As Walter used to say: "and you were there."

Hard as it is to believe, what you are about to read almost eclipses that achievement.

This post marks the occasion of the first blog entry derived from a Tweet.

Here it is:

mergyeugnau This makes me tear up w/ joy RT @meara76: RT @NPRPictureShowBiggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever http://su.pr/1EJPgS That is one BIG Tree!

If you've not been deflowered by tweetering twits, or twittering tweets -- whatever -- a minute of unpacking the message might be in order.

"mergyeugnau" is the screenname of the author of the tweet. We are "following" each other, meaning that we've got sort of a hitchcockian Rear Window set up going. According to her public Twitter profile, her name is Deborah and she lives in Tehran. In the brief history of our Following Fellowship, I have found her to be an insightful, if occasionally snarky, person.

Occasional snarkiness is a good thing, of course. Anyway, if Twitter is of interest, you might consider reading some of her observations.

RT @meara76: RT @NPRPictureShow -- "RT" refers to a ReTweet. You are rebroadcasting to the tweeting community something that you find worthy of another look. The user names after the ReTweet equate to the requisite hat tip of acknowledgement. Of course, problems arise when the alloted 140 characters start to erode before you've even gotten to the heart of the message.

mergyeugnau has a good eye. Not only does she manage to make TWO ReTweets, she also succeeds in a pre-ReTweet remark ("This makes me tear up w/joy"). This is proof positive of mastery. Not even meara's exultant "[t]hat is one BIG Tree!" gets lost.

So, are we all on the same page?

Finally, we get a link to an outside article from the NPR blog, The Picture Show and certainly, by now, you've both a headache and rancid body odor.

If the link appears odd to you, as in shorter than usual, this is another function of the limited space for tweets. I use a very helpful site called bit.ly, "a simple url shortener." Go ahead, give it a try.

And there are more tweet-enhancing sites and endless widgets and rapidly expanding means of meta-communication.

Most of the time, of course, it's a bunch of jabber, as not too many people have anything new to say. Hence the inordinate amount of time spent trying to say it new, while saving space.

mergyeugnau, being a good egg, passes on something lovely:

Biggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever
By Claire O'Neill

National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols is one of the world's foremost wildlife photographers. But he recently said that he'd happily spend the rest of his life photographing trees. Of course, the folks over at National Geographic would almost certainly never hear of it. Nichols' newfound love developed after a serious, yearlong relationship with redwoods. [cont.]

Sometimes A Sister Needs A Brother Needs A God (III)

Widforss Point

For reference, see the Turn Your Head Sideways Project.

Stolen, lifted, 5-fingered the discount, the lock, the stock, the barrel, all from TW's various balms over at American Idyll.

More from the canyon

To give the mind a rest, I traveled, courtesy of the Elder Brother-Unit, TW, whose photography and lovely, adventurous, and framing mind is responsible for American Idyll.

Perhaps
you have
noticed that
even in the
slightest breeze
you can hear
the voice
of the
cottonwood tree.
This we
understand
is its prayer
to the
Great Spirit,
for not
only men,
but all things
and all beings
pray to Him
continually
in different ways.
--Black Elk

Je trouve très raisonnable la croyance celtique que les âmes de ceux que nous avons perdus sont captives dans quelque être inférieur, dans une bête, un végétal, une chose inanimée, perdues en effet pour nous jusqu'au jour, qui pour beaucoup ne vient jamais, où nous nous trouvons passer près de l'arbre, entrer en possession de l'objet qui est leur prison. Alors elles tressaillent, nous appellent, et sitôt que nous les avons reconnues, l'enchantement est brisé. Delivrées par nous, elles ont vaincu la mort et reviennent vivre avec nous.

--Du Côté de Chez Swann, Marcel Proust

[With apologies to TW for "piling on" an additional commentary -- but -- and I swear this is the truth -- I was clearing my accumulated drafts and had copied the passage above -- the hopeful genesis for something I now cannot remember. Did I tell you Fred is a druid? One thing is sure: I. need. to. pay. attention. The cottonwood is so beautiful. Here, the dogwoods are starting to turn. Night time coolness has kissed their leaves with faded purples.]


Cottonwood Canyon (left top)
Haunted Canyon (right top)
Hance Canyon (below)

Sometimes A Sister Needs A Brother Needs A God (II)

Stolen, lifted, 5-fingered the discount, the lock, the stock, the barrel, all from TW's various balms over at American Idyll:

Grand Canyon photos
Sockdolager Rapid (top)

Haunted Canyon cottonwoods (middle)

Clear Creek Canyon (below)

There are ghosts out in the rain tonight/High up in those ancient trees/Lord, I've given up without a fight/Another blind fool on his knees/And all the Gods that I've abandoned/Begin to speak in simple tongues/Lord, suddenly I've come to know/There are no roads left to run/Now it's the hour of dogs a-barking/That's what the old ones used to say/It's first light or it's sundown/Before the children cease their play/When the mountains glow like mission wine/And turn grey like a Spanish roan/Ten thousand eyes will stop to worship/And turn away and head on home/She is reaching out her arms tonight/Lord, my poverty is real/I pray roses shall rain down on me/From Guadalupe on her hill/But who am I to doubt these mysteries/Cured in centuries of blood and candle smoke/I am the least of all your pilgrims here/I am most in need of hope/She appeared to Juan Diego/She left her image on his cape/Five hundred years of sorrow/Have not destroyed their deepest faith/But here I am your ragged disbeliever/Old doubting Thomas drowns in tears/As I watched your church sink through the earth/Like a heart worn down through fear/She is reaching out her arms tonight/Lord, my poverty is real/I pray roses shall rain down on me/From Guadalupe on her hill/But who am I to doubt these mysteries/Cured in centuries of blood and candle smoke/I am the least of all your pilgrims here/But I am most in need of hope/I am the least of all your pilgrims here/But I am most in need of hope

--Tom Russell, Guadelupe

tumbleweed, tumbleweed, my
love, my love, the need,

the need, fits
like the glove.

Rock me on the water

From American Idyll, TW's blog dedicated to the river and the canyon, to his loves. There is no rhyme or reason to *my* selections below -- whereas he carefully presents his pictures, narrates them, knows where they're from.

Water drove me.

It gives, it's velvet; It endures, it grinds us down, rock to silt. It blesses and tickles and soothes us. It swirls and does what it wants, following and breaking the rules.

I miss him, not knowing him.
(Also, every other permutation.)

Oh people, look around you
The signs are everywhere
You've left it for somebody other than you
To be the one to care
You're lost inside your houses
There's no time to find you now
Your walls are burning and your towers are turning
I'm going to leave you here and try to get down to the sea somehow

The road is filled with homeless souls
Every woman, child and man
Who have no idea where they will go
But they'll help you if they can
Now everyone must have some thought
That's going to pull them through somehow
Well the fires are raging hotter and hotter
But the sisters of the sun are going to rock me on the water now

Rock me on the water
Sister will you soothe my fevered brow
Rock me on the water
I'll get down to the sea somehow

Oh people, look among you
It's there your hope must lie
There's a sea bird above you
Gliding in one place like Jesus in the sky
We all must do the best we can
And then hang on to that Gospel plow
When my life is over, I'm going to stand before the Father
But the sisters of the sun are going to rock me on the water now

Rock me on the water
Sister will you soothe my fevered brow
Rock me on the water, maybe I'll remember
Maybe I'll remember how
Rock me on the water
The wind is with me now
So rock me on the water
I'll get down to the sea somehow

--Jackson Browne, Rock Me On The Water

Of Bookies and Grader Boobs

My eldest brother and I were lost to one another for almost 40 years. I had concluded that he was dead and stopped searching for him in mid-2007.

Just before Thanksgiving that year, I decided to get back in touch with my Mother and her preferred litter of kids. Rather than struggling to connect with my half-sister and half-brother -- with whom I had probably spent a total of two weeks -- I planned to get gifts for my nieces and nephews, and through the great goodness and graces of children, insert myself into the clan as Super-Tante.

This necessitated finding stuff out about the four kids in question -- like, umm, their names and ages, likes, dislikes, needs, and wants. It was working out well, since the emails and phone calls back and forth were not as clumsy and nervous as they'd have been otherwise. Give the adults an agenda -- don't offer up too much unattached information, too much free air, space, time.

And then there was the day I thought I would never again be able to catch my breath.

My half-sister is a lovely woman, and quite possibly the most outgoing person of my acquaintance. Tossed into the seven or so sentences making up her note to me was "Oh, I have [your eldest brother's] snail mail and email address if you want them..."

I couldn't breathe.

I touched the computer screen as if it were the face of my most beloved.

Then I grew cold, could not get warm. I wanted to cry, and couldn't.

She is lovely and animated -- but she can also be a little "off" sometimes. I know her better now, know her extreme goodness and the wildness of her heart. She simply did not know, did not understand. Her family never lost its nucleus.

It probably won't occur to you -- but what gave me back my breath, what warmed me, was a burning thought: But Mother... surely you would not have done this to me?

Oh, if you could see the smirk on my face. Mother is a snake in the grass, capable of more meanness than I can even imagine. But she is old now, and sad, and as she wrote to me: "I can no longer do penance over and over..."

Which was news to me, of course, having never heard her even come close to saying she was sorry for anything. But she is old now, and sad. I must make that my mantra, and understand it as true. The man for whom she left me and my brothers -- oh, and the original Father-Unit -- was, it must be said, a remarkable, wonderful person. I have said, ever since I matured enough to understand all that happened, and is still happening, that were my fondest wish to come true, my parents would be constituted from the step-parents who blessed us with their love, caring, and guidance. But Mother is old now, her Wonder Husband dead, and she is sad.

I wrote my... sister (it does not roll off the tongue, nor type easily) back within the half-hour. I was inchoate, insensate. In that selfsame interval, she apparently shared with the Mother-Unit what she had done and been rudely chastised. She was trapped in "I-didn't-know-it-was-a-secret" Land.

There was now no denying me and I demanded, using language that was direct and clear, what we came to call his "contact information."

He ran away from "home" at the age of 15 -- definitively, that is. He ran many times. The last time, we surmised that he went to San Francisco. Not long afterward, we moved from California to the Philippine Islands. My father told us that he was fine, was staying with our grandparents, and would join us in three months -- when, in truth, he had not looked for his son, had no real notion where he was, and did not care. Did Dad really think that my remaining brother and I would forget about him in three months -- he who was dear to us?

I took the contact information and copied it everywhere. Every type of address book I own. On the refrigerator. In my checkbook. The Emergency Card no one ever looks at that comes with wallets. In the computer, on the Palm.

Calling him seemed wrong. I wanted him to have the chance to not respond, to refuse. In all these years, he could easily have found me, us. Somehow, though, I knew what he must have thought. My brother Grader Boob (he's an English prof) and I were surely part of that family that abandoned him...

I emailed him, trying not to fall into all the tangles.

And so began one of the greatest conversations of my life. Some days, most days, when I am in pain, fatigued, depressed -- and cannot see beyond these small adjectives -- I think of him, write him, and am reintroduced to joy.

He is a bookie in Vegas. He is a poet and wondrous writer. He paints houses in Tahoe. He is a photographer and naturalist, leading clients into the wonders of the Grand Canyon during the half-year he works as a guide. He became a naturalist, I believe, due to all he learned during the years he was homeless and lived in concert with trash cans and nature. He was shot once and almost died. He has a daughter but is out of touch. Her mother made porn films and now lives in Thailand. He is kind, witty, and always battling against his reserves of depression and fear. I love him so.

I have taken to surreptitiously posting his photography here ("Surreptitiously"? Ha!) whenever I need it. It has become a need.

I detest the telephone and have never enjoyed long chats -- except with people I know very well and with whom I share a history of sufficient detail to fill a phone conversation. So we have spoken only once and that shames me. Maybe today? Maybe tomorrow?

For some reason, he is on my mind today and I find myself wondering if there is anything at all that I will ever be able to do for him, give him.

Grader Boob decided long ago that he did not want to be a part of any of these pseudo-families, that were his brother ever to surface, alive, he did not want to participate, thank you very much. Nor does he speak to the Mother-Unit. He visits yearly with Dad and his wife. I like to think that we are very close but may be deluding myself.

Since rediscovering my older brother, Mother has fallen and broken a hip, had some serious heart problems, and apparently is desperately trying to waste away. She won't go that way, though. No. Not her.

Yesterday, the bookie poet posted the following quote from H.D. Thoreau's journal on one of his blogs:

January 6, 1857/

A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of such unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content.


“Why!” said I, speaking to his condition, “the stones are happy. Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, the form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness. The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt’s Island, if it had not been happy,-—if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that it sprang?”

This was the photo he chose as illustration to this entry, "The Stones are Happy."

Flowers in the Canyons

There are times a sister needs her brother -- and I think we all could use the memory of flowers in the canyons. All photos by TW, selected text from his December 14, 2008 entry over at American Idyll.




what i'll
give you
since you asked
is all my time
together.
take the
rugged sunny days,
the warm and
rocky weather.
take the roads
that i have
walked along
looking for
tomorrow's time,
peace of mind.
as my life
spills into yours,
changing
with the hours,
filling up
the world
with time,
turning time to flowers,
i can show you all the songs that i never sang to one love before.

we have seen a million stones lying by the water.
you have climbed the hills with me to the mountain shelter.
taken off the days one by one, setting them to breathe in the sun.
take the lilies and the lace from the days of childhood,
all the willow winding paths leading up and outward.
this is what i give.
this is what i ask you for.
nothing more.
--judy collins ("since you asked")

Hilary Lister

I confess that I rolled my eyes, and swore.

Jim Broatch is at it again, leaving salient little e-news report thingies in my already overstuffed inbox. There is, thank God, no stopping the man. He's always shamelessly trying to promote that rag -- the RSDSA Review.

Still, as I read the first few lines of his e-alert, I could not help but think how tiring it is to be exhorted continually by tales of Super People. This time? Some quadriplegic yachtswoman. First of all, she doesn't even have CRPS, she is a quad, that is something totally different! Second, I don't take well to language such as "yachtswoman." Such appellations make me want to cry "[H]ow piquant!" and dig out my jar of capers -- after replacing all my onions with shallots. (I haven't had breakfast, lunch, or brunch, yet -- although afternoon tea in the gazebo is looking providential.)

Iceberg lettuce is much maligned, you know, you friséed arugula freaks!

(Pssssssssssssssst! Nasturtium seed pods make a nice replacement if you can't put your manicured hands on that jar of capers.)

(Did I type my schizophrenia out loud?)

What... oh, yes! I remember. A quadriplegic. Who "yachts." And Jim Broatch.

I felt totally manipulated without even subjecting myself to a reading of the article. What? Me, sitting here in my wheelchair, in more pain than I care to express -- what am I? Is CRPS not a pitiable disease? Hasn't Jim heard that we're on the map now -- that our wee little brains are white instead of grey proper, and smaller than the brains of your average bear?

In other words, what am I, chopped liver? (One day, I will have to extol my readership with the tales of my many famous malapropisms... "What am I, chopped suey?" comes to mind... so wrong, on so many levels. And my well-known version of The Turtles lyric: "No matter how they toss the tights... it had to be...")

I almost feel sorry for little Miss Quadriplegic Yachtswoman, trapped as she is in her dry, humorless life of leisure, her private pinky-up. How would she like to be stuck in a wheelchair on dry land, in too much severe and constant pain to zip on down to the marina? I don't even get to float in the bathtub, for Christ's sake!

Okay, so it was kind of humiliating to have my eyes trip and fall near the end of the rich bitch's story -- "progressive neurological disease, reflex sympathetic dystrophy..." Oh. Ohhhhh! Major oops. How faux is my pas!

Still... yachtswoman?

Am I supposed to conclude that CRPS/RSD occurs in a demographic other than my own? Am I supposed to be shocked that the condition of quadriplegia even *happens* in CRPS patients?

Whatever. What I resent the most is the continual exhortation to be extraordinary. To stop whining "I caaannnn't! It huuuuurts tooooo muuuuccchhhhhh..."

Yeah, well, I'll show that sadist, that Jim c'mon-you-can-do-it Broatch. I'll publish a copy of Hilary Lister's show-off of a story. Geeez, can't a person be a person just by waking up in the morning?

[Shhh! Way to go, Hilary! I can imagine the frothy spray, the smell of sea salt, the blues, the greys, the many kinds of white, the clang and flap of the sails, and your beautiful happy face...)

Disabled sailor to attempt record

A yachtswoman is to make a second attempt to become the first quadriplegic woman to sail solo around Britain.

Hilary Lister, who is paralysed from the neck down, plans to embark on the journey next May using a "sip-and-puff" system of straws to control her yacht.

Her first attempt was abandoned in August because of technical problems and bad weather.

Mrs Lister, of Faversham, Kent, said she was "confident" she would succeed.

She spent six months preparing for the first record-breaking challenge, which was expected to take three to four months in her specially-adapted vessel, an Artemis 20 called Me Too.

It has been designed to be operated through three "straws".

One works the tiller and one the sails while another allows her to select five different functions to help control the craft.

Mrs Lister became the first quadriplegic sailor to sail solo across the English Channel in 2005 and two years later was the first quadriplegic woman to sail around the Isle of Wight.

Her round-Britain attempt started in Dover in June and ended in Cornwall two months later.

Mrs Lister, a biochemistry Oxford graduate, said: "I'm confident that with the experience gained this year, we will achieve my round-Britain dream in 2009.

"Despite terrible weather, this year we sailed the entire length of the South Coast, which is further than any female disabled sailor has achieved before."

'Light switched on'

She was wheelchair-bound at the age of 15 because of a progressive neurological disorder, reflex sympathetic dystrophy.

Mrs Lister lost the use of her arms and hands in 1998, aged 27, but in late September 2003 she was taken sailing on a lake by a friend and fell in love with the sport.

She said: "Sailing came along when life didn't seem worth living any more.

"Within seconds of being on the water, a light switched back on inside me. I knew that I had found what I was going to do with the rest of my life."

Parkour and Free Running

My brother offers me armchair travel -- one of the few insightful people who recognize the need to get *out* of both this body and this place. He shows me the large and the minute of canyons and flowers perfect in a rocky crack.

The internet is, of course, an incredible gift. I can go, virtually (if, alas, no longer virtuous)anywhere, anytime.

I thought my need for compensatory movement would eventually die out and disappear, and simply rededicated my efforts at mental tennis mimicry... but it becomes less and less satisfying.
Fortunately, I discovered the world of parkour and free running. Sweet relief. A conduit for challenge, joys, and tears. If you've not yet had the pleasure, go check out some of the marvelous videos over at YouTube:

And fun is good

I continue to be graced by TW's photos (and his channeled thoughts) over at American Idyll.

If you

never have,

you should.

These things

are fun,

and fun

is good.

--Dr. Suess

American Idyll: We Continue our Journey

(la photo, elle vient du photographe tw qui dirige un blog qui s'appelle American Idyll)

It is necessary that to you I whisper. It is perhaps possible that you alone do not know of my deep sorrowful suffering with the mal de tête terrible. Yes, my adoring public, moi, I am a migraineuse. After all of the médicaments and the careful avoiding of the light and of the sound, it is an addition good to look at the pictures merveilleuses of this place the Américains call so correctement the Grand Canyon. This blog, it is become my blog the most favorite when La Belle Bianca Castafiore, moi, or I am in the pain très profond or I am not making the sleep. Quelquefois, simply the looking at is a cure.