Two Emails: Mostly to the Beloved TW [*Already* Revised!]

Sorry for messing up the time, older sibling.  It seemed necessary. What's terribly luddite o'moi, though? I have four Playlists that go with it, all the same, meant to differ, meant  to include some of yours, some of Kathryn's, Hank's, an amazingly creative musician friend of his Aviva (and the Flying Penguins ) -- but really all I desire is to figure if, when, and, approximately, where, you'll ever stop trying to figure out which number of personality disorders to limit me to. I'm thinking an ODD number (ar ar!) -- knowing the six most close, both genetically and environmentally, to my family:

Antisocial personality disorder 

Avoidant personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder 

Dependent personality disorder 

Histrionic personality disorder 

Narcissistic personality disorder

          Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

Paranoid personality disorder

          Personality disorders

Schizoid personality disorder 

Schizotypal personality disorder

So close your eyes, cross five out.  Not fair! They've one labeled "Personality Disorders," as if the APA could BE so powerful.  Harrumph.

I figure that's gotta be -- forever, wherever, however -- after the quiet and the music -- to send Robert one a'them greetings from Tête-de-Hergé home-drivin' Lisa-Irene-Bianca-Fred-Aunt Louisa-Uncle Haddock-my real ass' kickin' friends Alicia Harden, a cowgirl, and another real one who sends those tart lemon cookies from Cape Cod, as real a cow girl as I am, Eljay Nayr ---- WAY!  Then, if it is not taken, by too many crowds of floating, wifting, laughing folk, could I have dibs on a colorized Elvis? One of yours maybe?

Bob's attempt, and the fact that he never deigns to read this blog ["Too many words, kid."] is appreciated by his other siblings, mostly, [probably only] TW, maybe Kathryn and her attached, very "sweet" Joe X; $ those rude genetically sub-related siblings, who read without any talent for irony when needed, and with an excess of it, when a dearth would barely do$.

TW an I unnerstanz, az well az miz kathryn an mister Joe X, with more 'n more clarté 'n clarté, 'n laffter 'n laffter, those whose Appalachian ways wez thanks 'n wez refletz 'n giggelz..

By the way, we can call "Joe X" sweet because it's a direct quote from Sweetie/Grader Boob/Lumpy. Then I had my one-and-only conversation with Joe, and Lo! He is hysterical, and sweet.  He is wise, and sweet. He is understated, and therefore beats my funny to death, and I so enjoy the change. He and Kathryn are like -- I've got nothing -- not oil and water, not peaches and water -- just Joe and Kathryn, and they like to keep it that way.

And the Birth Mother, Jeanette, You Young SRA Readers, is NOT included in any of this, by ANY of you, got it?  For:  There does come a time...  She's earned it, raised her due, now has complete dementia, essential emotional and financial embezzlement, and all the nursing care that I do... and so I know how it sucks and is coopted (except in our house!)  

I look under my TV and I see happy gifts from both my brothers -- the complete Marx Brothers, Deadwood, all the Harry Potters (HANK!), all the LOTR (Bob, one twice!), The Wire, and many other things I watch over and over without admitting. To Anyone. One of the greatest plays we've ever seen (Hank loves plays, whistlingwhistling): The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade (or Marat Sade)* Don't compromise and get Marat / Sade first.

Separate from the boxes of books, tapes, pictures, patches, wonders I wonders at, and prisms -- I receive TW's tomatoes, peppers (several sorts, textures, heats, respectful seeds, a new way this coming year), but there's nothing like those tomatoes, organic, sun-dried; one comes to know them, as one can, by their tint and translucency.  One is sometimes wrong. Chewiness. Suckiness (What's the positive gardening word?) I'm only in my third year. I soak and pick. It's been great fun, and delicious, so slow we've eaten slow, in complement, compliment.  Then I discovered banana beans. And heavy, and light liquors.Vinegars.Ghee. Polentas. A krap load of sauces, with garlics, and mixed tomatoes, and nuts, cilantro, basils, cumin seed, cumin leaves, oh, and lettuces, lettuce leaves. Oh, we had fun. Not always together. A silly idea doesn't seem so dumb at 3am when there is no one to mock you at the cuisinart, art, art, heh, heh, heh. And a little pesto on the toast ain't so funny after all, eh?  For his part, Fred has become a cauliflower disguiser or presenter, at will, given an in-law-of-sorts' provisions. We keep ém, for safe keeping, in their original boxes.

Back to Brother Bob's email of last week:

Those of of us who recommended the suit remember the face, the voice sincerely asking mostly, okay, only, the Mom, who gave good, not out-of-date advice. It was short, sweet, followed by a "Good luck, Sweetie, we love you. Let us know how it goes."

Clink.
Two icy cold Diet Cokes.
A Christian Brothers Chablis.-- quite possibly the last put to barrel, then bottle.

It's of the mid-70's, I think of, also, even earlier, back in Miami, swimming, water polo, Bob breaking away, me the only one I knew was cycling, playing tennis, softball, loving language, maths.  It was Phillipines-N.C.-Miami-N.C.... then a fairly happy split up. Bob to USF. Kathryn to Peace College. Me stuck in G'boro alone with Mom; Dad in Vietnam.  It was, I've said, without shame, the happiest year of my life. The end of the decade was not so happy. I shipped off to an insane little private college where everyone had too many words, and, that year, great basketball!  Then I decided to live in the mountains with true loonies, addicts, alcoholics, people on parole who drove stick-shifts up mountains, and weirdos. Carrot juices, and steam baths. Other amenities! Then I went back to school(s). Eight, to be exact. One, to be exactly worth it.

In case you were wondering, yes, we knew how not to accumulate, how to pack, quick and well, and how to stay out of each others' way.  Except me. And my "[t]oo many words, kid."

Later separations proved, proofed, punched back down, rose again, a little less, a little more, depending. Lacking stinky mother proofs, that bell jar, some jar stinky talent! (A reference to sourdough proof, don't freak out.)

Bob, before he gave up the moniker "Grader Boob" for "Lumpy," currently a contest too heavy for moi to elaborate, between Lumpy One and Lumpy Two--well, I'll present the little that I know, soon. Not my kind of contest.

I would imagine it was about the time one of Bob's students left this fetching review.  There are  worse. We've ALL received worse!  What "tickles"me, in the Southern sense, is this student's goldarn consistency.

Ryan is a bit harsh on grading and he can be a bit moody sometimes. He will help in anyway he can though with your essays. He does explain everything clearly though. He also expects you to do all the readings he gives. He will get very mad if you don't do that readings.

**********          ***********          **********          **********          ***********

From:  Robert Ryan

Mar 2X, 2015 (X days ago)

Howdy--

Ric just sent some pictures from way back, mid 70s.

One, with me and Steve in front of our vending step van, shows the shift changeover from one driver to the next. He did coffee machines; I did coffee, candy, sodas, and so on.

The other, with the vest and tie, has me in part of the suit I wore on a date with Teri to Bern's Steak House, a well-known eatery. And it was on that date, in that suit, that I horrified a waiter by asking for a well-done steak.

Visibly flustered, he stammered at me, "Sir, I'm not even sure that our chef will cook it that way. May I recommend at most, at most, medium or perhaps medium well."

The horror... the horror.

Who knew that the hair would go and...

Well, no more anecdotes today!

Love,

Bob

[Lisa, here: I believe this is "the suit," bought to take one Teri to dinner to ask her hand in marriage.
Teri declined. Her reason? He lacked sufficient ambition. Repeat after me: the phrase of your choice,
because this is a family blog. I know that, well, Jesus wept, but hardly least of all, for Kathryn, Mom,
and Moi, as well, huddled around the phone, weeping and cursing.The photo, so free of well-done steak
 juice (prob'ly the young Ryan's plan, the man lookin' so unfed, and ain't he got the hood up?)
Lisa, years gone now.]

We'll go with Bob's explanation!  He and Steve were vending machine hippy-dippy
machine refillers, which is where I guess that $+%;;@!) Teri got her ideas about
Ambition.She never followed him as he followed him into his classrooms in 
2015, I guess, the !@)(;;^$.
oops.

*by Adrian Mitchell (Adapter), Peter Weiss (Author), Geoffrey Skelton (Translator)


© 2015 L. Ryan

From Stealing to Flying and Back to the River: "They find freedom being part of the elements"

Something lovely stolen from American Idyll. -- it's hard to just steal one thing.  So a tip of the hat and an index alongside the nose to the proprietor for introducing us to Jesse Hall.  I assume he is the poem's author but am not sure.



One minute poem of the Grand Canyon from Jesse Hall on Vimeo.

From the beginning to the end, 

everything changed. 

They dismounted the surge of prominence, 

and earned a rock-steady heart. 

Thats where their rhythm is found. 

They know the role of a trickle in the creation of a masterpiece. 

They row into the abyss of being, 

adrift in endless time, 

hearing ancient echoes. 

They find freedom being part of the elements, 

traveling to where all worlds merge. 

Life's knowledge drifts down onto them, 

and blows right into their skin.

Now, a wonderful, airy tangent:

Jesse Hall was the "winner of the first season event of the ProBASE World Cup Tour 2011."

BASE jumping is the activity of parachuting from a fixed object as opposed to skydiving, which is parachuting from an aircraft. Fixed objects can be buildings, antennas, smoke stacks, bridges, power towers, cliffs, cable cars, dams or any other object high enough to jump from.The acronym B.A.S.E was coined by Carl Boenish and stands for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth which are the 4 most popular objects BASE jumpers practice their sport from 

Of course, it's the wingsuits that are the stuff of my flying dreams! In the beginnings of my loss of mobility, I watched dancers and gymnasts, then parkour and free running. Now, it's wingsuit BASE jumping, waking with scraped and bloody knuckles from skimming mountain walls.





Parkour and Free Running still give me relief from gravitational stasis, the release necessary to then be able to turn, smile, and be a gracious gimp.  But the BASE jumpers have taken over top dream billing,

Back to the River for tonight's ending -- I hope to end tonight in official "wee" hours, instead of the 7:30 AM bedtime of the past few days.  This is a poem written by Kevin, of Kevin's Meandering Mind, published there on April 20, 2014, in a post titled "Wonder Poem: Grand Canyon Vertigo."

Some Favored Message Artists

I love it when my eyes act up.

Having a Ulysses kind of day, I recalled a post of the same title, here on the imitable elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle.                                                                                                                                                                                 (Yes, I've reached the end of all things new, and am having to repeat the various endings of the interwebs.)

Yes, it was a jaw-drop of a coincidence to see that this previous post had been writ almost two years ago to this day, excepting and accepting the six day gap!  O, synchrony!

I doubt that anyone else in the history of reading typeface has confounded "perils" -- a good, solid,
Ulyssean, er, Odyssean poetic word -- with "penile," and did not miss a beat, a meter, a sound, a meaning!

But what really launched my ship?

The comment section!  

Honorable mention, with a musical interlude midway through the sonorous reading of the citation, goes to the belovèd TW and his learnèd reference to tumblr's #whatshouldwecallpoets.

But she who takes the cake is Mary and a rant that you can tell will never be totally excised from her system.  My assumption -- go ahead, buffoons, and snicker! -- is that Mary's reaction was born, not of Odysseus and Merwin, but of  Anaphylaxis, Ulysses, and Tennyson, for Mary is of the Isles, and therefore inopportunely allergic to pretense. 

Should she be reading THIS post, she's likely absented herself briefly for a go at a cuppa tea, despite her disabling stiff upper lip, as she waits, as patient as Penelope, for her emergency epinephrine injection to work...

Hoping Mary will again join us, and repeating the promise of a freshly-made-up guest suite here at Marlinspike Hall, decorated in her obvious preference for Victorian shabby chic!  (I learned that on my final whirl around the internet, at Pinterest!)

emmaroydsSeptember 15, 2012 at 3:05 AM

I love poetry, although I must admit my taste is not as classical as yours. I like the English poets, Wordsworth's "Daffodils" Betjeman's "A Subaltern's Love Song" are 2 of my favourites, mostly because they are about places I know very well. The children had to learn a poem over the weekend when they were 8, which pi**ed me off considerably as I worked full time. I had more than enough to do in my free time than teach little children in my down time. So each child recited to the school on the Monday morning, Spike Milligan's (do you know him, a British legend) poem here copied in full.
They don't have any stones,
they don't have any pips,
they don't have any bones and that's why I like chips.

Regards,
Mary

And so now, today, a whole six days in advance of the anniversary of the post, and seven days before Mary's own comment (the account may settle if we take heed of the time differential), here are Betjeman's "A Subaltern's Love Song," and Wordsworth's "Daffodils," neither used with Anyone's Permission.

 A Subaltern's Love Song

 Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
 Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
 What strenuous singles we played after tea,
 We in the tournament - you against me!

 Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
 The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
 With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
 I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

 Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
 How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
 The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
 But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

 Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
 And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
 And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
 To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

 The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
 The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
 As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
 For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

 On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
 And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
 And westering, questioning settles the sun,
 On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

 The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
 The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
 My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
 And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

 By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
 She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
 Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
 And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

 Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
 I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
 Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
 Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

 Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
 Above us the intimate roof of the car,
 And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
 With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

 And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
 And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
 We sat in the car park till twenty to one
 And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

-- John Betjeman

******************************************************************

DAFFODILS 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

--William Wordsworth


And, to honor the Honorable Mentioner, a choice at true random from Tumblr's #whatshouldwecallpoets:

How I feel when readings insist on live music in the middle

* a tip o'the hat to all of y'all (my mixed medium contribution to today's art)!


© 2013 L. Ryan

The Villanelle Walks A Labyrinth

Labyrinth, East Hardwick, Vermont

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go. 

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go. 

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go. 

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

 -- Theodore Roethke, from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.

The Garden of Forking Paths 

Jorge Luis Borges, 1941

The World-Wide Labyrinth Locator

The Labyrinth Society

Veriditas

American Idyll

Therefore, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. 

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Holy Water or Moonshine

It's been an eventful time around here.

I was going to regale you with a comedic chronicle of my trip to the ER/ED on Sunday, but am still feeling the excess pain which sent me there, so the usual bad jokes and finely honed sardonicism have not shown up to play Muse.

Fred has returned to the Board of Divinity at his congregation of primarily militant lesbian existentialist feminists.  More importantly.  No, not "importantly." (See?  This is the problem of working, not just without a net, but without prancing muses.)  More like... "earth-shatteringly."  What action do these top heavy adverbs modify?  That would be Fred's decision to undertake ministerial training.

That's right.  At some point in the next few years, I'll be living in sin with Pastor Fred.  Minister Fred. Fred, His Holiness.  I haven't hit on the right honorific.

His motivations shift between murky desires to set Those Women straight, so to speak, and a saintly urge to promote a humanist outlook, informed by existential psychology, with overtones of Christianity and, unbeknownst to Fred, himself, Buddhism.  

My role is dicey.  I am dedicated to supporting Fred in any endeavor he chooses to undertake, as well as trying to lead him down various paths of unexpected passions and occasionally pushing him into dark, dank alleys of... 

Excuse me!  I must interrupt to share Miss Phryne Fisher's best line of the evening:  "I wonder where you have to go in this town to find a Latvian anarchist."  

As do I, Phyne, as do I.

Back to our eventful week.  And yes, I have the television on, as, lacking whispering muses, I need the noise.

This is the time of year when the frequency of correspondence between me and my Brother-Unit Grader Boob increases dramatically. (He's an English prof and dubbed himself "Grader Boob" several years back.  It is an odd moniker, but strangely fitting, as he sheds blood, sweat, and tears in the grading of his collegiate writers' scribblings.  I know, as only a sisterly prof can know, that he spends more time on his marginalia and end-of-paper commentaries than the students do in composing their texts.)

We're both tennis fans, and the pent up fervor of the Australian, Spanish, and French Opens bursts into outright fanaticism by Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.  

But, frankly, he's been kind of pissy these past few years, my Grader Boob.  The stress of being strung along in poverty by university administrators abusing their instructors -- keeping them just shy of full time employment, without benefits, but with a surplus of students -- seems to be taking its toll on his good nature.

Just between you and me, Grader Boob is such a... guy.  Throughout the years, he's suffered his share of physical ailments but tended to choose his buddy, the chiropractor, over the medical school on campus.  For the longest time, his greatest problem seemed to be some arthritic changes in his knees due to wearing cheap ass tenny-pumps when he passed every spare minute on outdoor racketball courts -- whose composition was primarily asphalt.  He was quite a talented champion.  Hmm.  He may also have invested in acupuncture, as well as having his spine adjusted, or whatever it is that chiropractors do.  The short version;  Grader Boob is, generally, averse to mainstream medical practitioners.

I don't blame him and admit to possibly influencing him in this matter.  He's often the first I notify of bad medical news, to the point, I think, that his eyes may have rolled back in his head a few times, from frustration.  Or boredom.  Or fear.

Once, the idiots in the ICU allowed me a telephone, so that I could call him to say "Thanks!" for having landed a helicopter on the hospital roof, rappelling down to the unit, entering my cubicle via an intricate channel of vents and weird tubing that let out through one of the ceiling panels over my bed, and extricating me from... wherever the hell I thought I was being held by white-coated fiends. Then, as the story went in my addled mind, he found me a nice B & B in which to recuperate before flying off with his Delta Force friends. I had MRSA pneumonia, had died and been resuscitated twice, was surrounded by staff outfitted in disposable, baggy, yellow gowns, with gloves and scary masks.  To which I responded with a whopping case of ICU Psychosis.  But, as I said, the nurses, who were delighted by my apparent return to sanity, brought me a phone so that I could make a long distance call to this dear Brother-Unit, who did not even know I was hospitalized -- a call which opened with me crowing:  "Grader Boob, I did not even know you knew how to pilot a helicopter!" 

He's a humble person, a loving sibling, and terrific friend.  His sense of humor is such that, no matter the circumstances, I am reduced to puddles of mirth within minutes of our obtuse exchanges.

He's also a wounded man with low self-esteem and an undiagnosed, untreated case of clinical depression.  Okay, well, *I* made the diagnosis, but no actual medico.  Some of his innate sadness comes from what happens to us all -- a lost true love, a troubled childhood, the pain of absence, the burdens of an intellect weighed down by a hypersensitive soul.  Which makes him being a total hoot such a wonder!

Whereas the rest of my family express our genetic trait of moral intransigence by waging war -- on injustice, on unarmed civilians, on anything easily sorted into black, into white, on each other -- Grader Boob turned on himself.  He's never tasted alcohol.  Never tried a cigarette, never tried a joint. He shuns those things that whiff of sin.  After moving every two years or so as a kid, when he landed in a sunny city by a lovely bay to attend college, he vowed to never move again -- and didn't.  Even when the teaching jobs dried up and the hurricanes raged, he stayed put.

As I unleashed my tightly bound memory late last night, I recalled the many instances in the last few years when Grader Boob mentioned being exhausted, yet plagued with insomnia, catching a cold that he couldn't seem to shake, and becoming a bit fed up with fighting plagiarism and indifference to subject-verb agreement. I joked in response, once sending a box full of easy soups, crackers, decongestants, Vapor Rub, and a Harry Potter muffler.  Okay, and a coloring book with a box of 64 Crayolas.

He never told me about going to the ER/ED last October when his shoulder caused him such enormous pain he couldn't stand it any longer.  At least, I pray he did not tell me, because I don't remember hearing it.  As I heard the story this week, they were somewhat dismissive, as health care professionals in emergency rooms can be when faced with what they don't consider a true emergency and in an uninsured patient, no less.

So this overworked and uninsured professor decided to wait until he could afford health insurance via the Affordable Care Act's Market Place.  As he waited, and he waited until March, the shoulder became essentially frozen, and he said it was painful just trying to dress before heading off to demonstrate demonstrative adjectives and the more egregious logical fallacies.

By the time he saw an orthopedic surgeon, there was a visible lump, very painful to the touch.  By the time he had the MRI on Wednesday, the inconsequential "calcium deposits" posited by the ER doctor last October, had become a fairly large tumor.  Oh, and the surgeon noted that there was a problem with his rotator cuff, before sending him to the Sarcoma Clinic of the nearby Cancer Center.

Everyone claims they "had a feeling." I had a feeling, but it was fed by the knowledge that only something serious would drive my recalcitrant brother into the realm of conventional medicine. 

But what's weird is that I had an appointment already scheduled with my fabulous Dr. Shoulder Man for today.  Grader Boob had been tossed into the chasm of confusion that comes with health insurance -- the Cancer Center's Sarcoma Clinic was not in his "network," and he somehow found himself with an appointment for JUNE.  He was, of course, in shock.  He quickly pulled himself together and began working the phones like an insured pro, comforting himself (and me) by remembering that he had his first meeting with his new Primary Care Doc on Friday... and surely he would be able to find him an orthopedic oncologist.  Before JUNE.

Dr. Shoulder Man's PA, a wonderful man named Bob, was immediately helpful, as I assaulted him with Grader Boob's situation before his hand left the door knob of the exam room.  Bob is a good'un, as are all of Dr. Shoulder Man's team. He managed to scoot my ass over to get x-rays before bringing in Dr. Shoulder Man.  I was able to wait until he was injecting me with Magic Juice before my second assault.

My God, there are kind people in this world.

"Do you know anyone in Grader Boob's town -- who is the very best, do you know?"

And what did my wondering ears get to hear but:  "One of the world's best orthopedic surgeons practices there, Dr. Wonder Worker..." He went on to explain the things I was afraid to ask -- how they'd go about the biopsy, how very little can be presumed without those results, as there are some dozen sarcomas common to adults, and his voice was crisp, clear, authoritative, but compassionate, too.  He was quite plain about the likelihood of this being a cancer, and the unfortunate consequences of how long Grader Boob had to wait before getting the MRI.

Smoothly switching to talking about my one prosthetic shoulder and my other shoulder region that actually has no shoulder, we had an exchange in which I proposed ignoring and putting off some decisions.  Slick as satin, Shoulder Man said, "So, I see that denial is a family trait," and grinned before sashaying out the door.

Grader Boob is completely capable of handling all this, of sorting through information, making decisions, and conquering this illness with panache.  I felt like a nosy, loud, interfering dolt as I shot off an email when we got home, complete with links to Dr. Wonder Worker's background, and a satellite map of his location, with his office, gym, and yacht phone numbers.  My hands were cold because I had no idea if Dr. Wonder Worker would prove to be in Grader Boob's insurance network, and my lips were cold because I wanted to touch him, hold his hand, and stroke his longish curly hair.

Wonder of wonders, I got an answer a bit later -- the good doctor, this *best* doctor, was, indeed, available to him.  Wisely, my brother said he'd take the information to his appointment tomorrow, and then would follow the winding trail of bread crumbs.

My two brothers are a wonder to me, a blessing undeserved and continually surprising.  

And they shake me, shake me to my core.  I love them without really knowing them, and do so cognizant that our very existences are a wonder, our relationships, so simple and so complex, practically accidental.

I would do anything, anything, anything to help Grader Boob, to help TW -- if only we three could defeat our inherited intransigence -- and denial, our "family trait."  But we have our wily ways, our shifty humor, words, and that shared ineffable something common to deaf-mutes.

Good night, Grader Boob.  Good night, TW.  I am holding your hands.  If you should need any ministerial services, Fred has set up his work room with beakers and copper tubing, pipettes and kegs 'n such, determined to transform our murky, algae-ridden moat waters into Holy Water. 

Or moonshine.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by Mandy Moore

beautiful redundancies: happy birthday season, sweet pilgrim

REPOST: john trudell, courtesy of the family blog whore

First published on 2/24/2013

Tip of the hat, finger aside the nose, to TW, as I steal from his Valentine's Day post: "They Didn't Listen" -- and thank him for the find, and kiss the very center of his forehead.

Uploaded on Jun 27, 2009 by NancyRedStar·

"These Memories"


In the reality of many realities
how we see what we see
affects the quality 
of our reality 

We are 
children of earth and sky
DNA descendant and ancestor 
human being physical spirit 
bone flesh blood as spirit

We are 
in time and space 
but we're from beyond time and space 
the past is part of the present 
the future is part of the present 
life and being are interwoven

We are 
DNA of Earth, Moon, planets, stars 
we are related to the universal 
Creator created creation 
spirit and intelligence with clarity 
being and human as power

We are 
a part of the memories of evolution
these memories carry knowledge
these memories carry our identity
beneath race, gender, class, age
beneath citizen, business, state, religion

We are human beings
and these memories are trying
to remind us
human beings human beings
it is time to rise up,
remember who we are
~ John Trudell


Lyrics: John Trudell 
Music: Mark Matson & Hayley Hutt 
Vocals:John Trudell & Hayley Hutt 
Additional Vocals and Harmony:Deirdre Radford
Keyboards and Drum: Mark Matson 
Guitars: Byron Roberts
Produced and Engineered by: Mark Matson
Executive Producer: Nancy Red Star 

i don't think he likes it one bit but that's just too doggone bad.  someone in this family must be shameless, and i volunteered long ago ----->> if you love the land, this country, the solid comfort of the amazingly real, the white skull recognition of all that you forgot.... go read, revel,  and rest at TW's american idyll.

Last Stand at Fukushima (Hat tip to TW)

Last Stand at Fukushima

My Brother-Unit TW is doing his damnedest to inform and cajole people into awareness of the Fukushima plant's Number Four Unit and the plans to just kinda yank those spent rods out.  From what this Luddite gathers, the spent rods are sitting somewhat strangely in the water... oh, and that water?   The condition of its all important neutron absorbers is basically unknown.

So maybe this is not another in that famous series of "What, me worry?" scenarios we keep dramatizing in matters concerning our home planet and our nuclear proficiencies.

I'm as ignorant as the next fool, so TW is teaching me lots, and yes, scaring me.  What's a brother for?

No, seriously.  What's a brother for?  [TW and Grader Boob:  Insert one wink, one nod, one finger aside the nose.]

So I pass on to you some of the informative links he's posted over at American Idyll, an amazing place. And as does that blogger, we at Marlinspike Hall, a nuclear free zone, serenade you with "Morning Dew," though we've sinned by replacing the Grateful Dead cover with The Jeff Beck Group (1968).

Not feeling like doing much reading? Here's the steno version, then:

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where those cores actually are.
Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site. Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake, releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific.
The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit Four.
More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.
Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl. 

 --Harvey Wasserman
Global Research, 9/20/13

Fukushima Forever
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN)
A Letter to All Young Athletes Who Dream of Coming to Tokyo in 2020:  Some Facts You Should Know About Fukushima
Webcast Portal:   ‘The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident,’ held at the New York Academy of Medicine, NYC, March 11 & 12, 2013, co-sponsored by The Helen Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
MoveOn Petition: The World Community Must Take Charge at Fukushima
Breaking Energy News

MORNING DEW

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,

Walk me out in the morning dew today.

I can't walk you out in the morning dew my honey,

I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

I thought I heard a baby cry this morning,

I thought I heard a baby cry this today.

You didn't hear no baby cry this morning,

You didn't hear no baby cry today.

Where have all the people gone my honey,

Where have all the people gone today.

There's no need for you to be worrying about all those people,

You never see those people anyway.

I thought I heard a young man morn this morning,

I thought I heard a young man morn today.

I thought I heard a young man morn this morning,

I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,

Walk me out in the morning dew today.

Ill walk you out in the morning dew my honey,

I guess it doesnt't't really matter anyway,

I guess it doesnt't't matter anyway,

I guess it doesnt't't matter anyway,

Guess it doesnt't't matter anyway.

Songwriters: DOBSON, BONNIE/ROSE, TIM
(or whoever the hell actually wrote it....)

Let's close, my brethren, with  Laurie Anderson, with balm and condolences to her on the death of her husband, Lou Reed.

["Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature," Anderson wrote. "He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air."]

The musical association is again stolen from mi hermano...

Mi hermano y yo... somos.  















© 2013 L. Ryan

ORANGES and SARDINES

Sardines, Mike Goldberg, 1955

found this on the always inspiring american idyll -- for which i'd be a pimpless blogwhore, even if its organizing genius were not kin.

as the marlinspike hall household is now clearly divided into the visual artistry and music of the fredster, and my own overwrought wordsmithing, this very much appealed to me as being... accurate:

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

--Frank O'Hara
Why I Am Not A Painter

Frank O'Hara by Alice Neel, 1960
The Paris Review

**********************

**********************

and i permit myself the luxury of adding one of my favorites in the ut pictura poesis game.  i am to be forgiven, as it was the basis for my thesis, though i was then confined to master diderot strolling from one gilt frame to another in the salons (1759 through 1771, 1779 and 1781).

The Painter
BY JOHN ASHBERY

Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: “Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
“My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

Take Ten

despite the current extreme funkiness of our world weather patterns, which have left some of us tired of rain, no one, i believe, denies the calming, trustworthy, mildly wild nature of the sound of falling rain.  it means something to us.  it's -- at least -- permission to be set apart;  it's -- at least -- permission to share shelter, be it a tent or a worn quilt.

a tip of the hat, once again, to TW at american idyll.

take ten minutes now, or bookmark it for some future arid day.

"I am not done with my changes."*

for the last few years i saw  

Outdoor Nation

the hat more than
you:
floppy, white, omni-
present.

no, not you floppy!
but yeah, white, though
more truly chesnut brown
like folks might pay
to have a tahoe
house blend
in.

you're always at the end
of the world, a stance
that is not defiant
like i thought,
but ready,
like i (already)
knew,
and stiff legged
well,
maybe, yes,
defiant: like i (already)
knew.

how i wish for the names
of every plant between
you
and the camera
lens, and loved
them as
you
do the earth
and all that dwells
therein, plus
the plant's
names.

i wish
you
could kiss
the lips of every
god-crier, heaven's-coming
love-offering believer.
i wish
you
could slip them
sweet nectar from the end
of the honeysuckle's
string hid inside
the petals,
you.

*I have walked 

through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle 

of being abides,

from which I struggle 

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look 

before I can gather strength 

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones 

dwindling toward the horizon 

and the slow fires trailing 

from the abandoned campsites, 

over which the scavenger angels 

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself 

a tribe out of 

my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart 

be reconciled 

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind,

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn.

I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact 

to go wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road 

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered 

and I roamed 

through the wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice 

directed me:

Live in the layers, 

not on the litter.

Though I lack the art 

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter 

in my book of transformations 

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

--Stanley Kunitz

Sumpin' Pithy Stolen From TW's Blog

A year ago, I was at a dinner in Amsterdam when the question came up of whether each of us loved his or her country. The German shuddered, the Dutch were equivocal, the Brit said he was "comfortable" with Britain, the expatriate American said no. And I said yes. Driving across the arid lands, the red lands, 
I wondered what it was I loved. The places, the sagebrush basins, the rivers digging themselves deep canyons through arid lands, the incomparable cloud formations of summer monsoons, the way the underside of clouds turns the same blue as the underside of a great blue heron's wings when the storm is about to break.

Beyond that, for anything you can say about the United States, you can also say the opposite: we're rootless except we're also the Hopi, who haven't moved in several centuries; we're violent except we're also the Franciscans nonviolently resisting nuclear weapons out here; we're consumers except the West is studded with visionary environmentalists...and the landscape of the West seems like the stage on which such dramas are played out, a space without boundaries, in which anything can be realized, a moral ground, out here where your shadow can stretch hundreds of feet just before sunset, where you loom large, and lonely. 
--Rebecca Solnit
Storming the Gates of Paradise

Wikipedia on Solnit

Solnit's media site

TW's Blog