30/03/2009

Roadside distractions


 A couple of photos from my recent trip to Tonopah.


Still standing. Still for sale.
Opening late 2006


Lovely, downtown Tonopah



Local news at 8:24


How's your day going? It's 8:23 AM and I am already overwhelmed. Ah well. This too shall pass.

Window in the sea

29/03/2009

Road to Tonopah


Just got back from my bi-annual Tonopah, 12th in row. Here's a few photos from the trip down. Nevada's a strange place.










24/03/2009

Stolen for Fashion


Royce on Fashion




Stolen for Fashion
I dare you to watch it all the way to the end.
I did and it made me cry. Have you got the guts
to have a heart? Open your eyes and see.


"Stolen for Fashion"—Learn More at PETA.org.


15/03/2009

Words in the dark 3.15


The floor of my mind is littered with crumpled, scribbled out, scrawled and often illegible words, some strung together, some adrift on their own. They are like leaves running before the wind and the next time I look they are spindly sprouts growing in the fetid dark. At other times they appear to be like bugs skittering by and I shudder. Or they are annoying the way sharp rocks are to bare feet or threatening like broken glass. Some of them are frivolous like photos in a collage, interesting only in relationship to something else, or provocative like the preview of a film and some are merely blobs of paint that didn't make it to the canvas, perhaps the best part, but dried and beyond recall. I hear them mumbling and whispering. I kick my way through them, sweep some aside, pick others up and place them under the light for a closer look. Observed they change. They have strange magnetic properties that do not obey the rules. They erratically change poles, attracting then repelling one another. Some are lurkers, suspect, shifty and resistant.

Local news at 9:13




I begin this post at 9:06 yet, if you noticed the title, the deadline is 9:13. The question, will I meet it? I say no. I say yes. Bets are down. I win.


Then again, I lose. I corrected a misspelling at 10:38 and fiddled with the placement of sentence for two more minutes.

12/03/2009

Elmo n Ricky


Life can be pretty bleak when you stare it in the eye. Who knows? Maybe I'm just bulldozing through the last muddy patch before enlightenment. Whatever. I've gotta lighten up. My kids have been telling me for years. They outta know. It wasn't easy for them being raised by a proto-punk mom. Recently, after one particularly dark post, my daughter demanded I write her a happy kitten poem. (It's on the list, darlin', but I have to work up to it.) The point is, everyone agrees, even me. Must _*_ lighten _*_ up. So I've added a new category to the list, mirth, or some word to that effect. Whatever describes Elmo's attitude.

I have done posts that are, in some way, humorous but they're not labeled and these days I need ready to go upbeat humor, not the schadenfreude gallows black ironic variety which I'm generally fond of. I love Ricky Gervais but, like me, he tends toward dark. Elmo must lead the way because, as he says, it's time to "get it back"...


Elmo and Ricky




04/03/2009

Snow day crow day


Scenes from the Bird Park this morning.


There was tasty peanut butter oatmeal. Good for a snow day.






03/03/2009

The Darkling Thrush

It's cold and gloomy outside and the world at large seems fallen to rack and ruin, so this morning I warmed my hands around this poem.


The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy


I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

courtesy poets.org