No events scheduled except the moon

Lovely moon last night. According to NASA, it was the Flower Moon and marked the fourth and final supermoon of 2020. It hit its peak this morning at 06:45 EDT but, like all full moons, also appears full the night before and after.

Image credit: NASA/Bill Dunford

Lovely day today. Lots going on here at the hermitage, aka apartment. I'm working on an illustration, based on Blue Period, a poem I wrote some years ago. It's written as four scenarios. I am currently doing the first one. It's tempura on cardboard and, at this point, it's become a conversation the paint and I are having. Yesterday was especially interesting. At one point, I realized I was just standing there watching the brush move across the page, leaving a new sky in its wake.

No events scheduled today

Bird Park East in general has been the happening place this spring. There are a couple of noisy nests nearby, one right above our balcony, one across the alley. It's great fun listening and watching the comings and goings. Also interesting, if not a bit shocking, I also saw about 10 roosters chase and jump one of the young hens the other day. Holy cow! Those guys are brutal as ducks. Poor girl. She was terrified. Not so, the seagulls I saw later that day. They were quite tender towards one another mating on the flat chimney top. Afterwards, they hung out together for about a half hour, nestling each other, nuzzling with their beaks, yawning, and looking around obviously relishing the quiet end of the day.

Kafka

The girl who waits and watches

I got back on Wednesday after three weeks in Oregon visiting family. We unloaded the car and then I put a few peanuts out in the Bird Park. Good old Maggie, the 7 o'clock magpie. She showed up almost immediately. I love that bird. She's always appears with the 24 hours after I get home, even if I've been gone for months.

—William Moore—
Murdered between
the 9th & 14th of Dec. 1900

The next day Minerva the crow and her magpie partner appeared and, as I was watching them, it occurred to me that Minerva's companion doesn't have a name which is odd because they've been coming to the Bird Park together for years. He should have a name by now. For two days I couldn't come up with a thing then this afternoon, while strolling through the local graveyard, it came to me . . . Kafka, Kafka the magpie.

Local news at 2:11

It's snowing. That explains why so many birds dropped by for breakfast this morning. Even Plonk's pigeon brigade stopped in, including one very lovely, all white bird. Nobody is there now as I write this but I'm sure the quail are cozy under the very bushy twin lilacs. Anyway, it's not very cold but it is sticking and kind of pretty.

Calving season and Paper Floor Update

Mr. Fancy Pants dining on a less fortunate member of the Bird Park

Word is out about the Bird Park. Mr. Fancy Pants must be talking. Lately a new hawk drops by to see what's on the menu nearly everyday. It's calving season and hawks come from all around for all the tasty afterbirth. In about two months they'll be gone though I suspect Mr. Fancy Pants is a local. He was here before the season started.

Bag 'o' floor.
Raw material for our new paper floor,
this and a whole lot of polyurethane.

I took three short videos of him devouring one the quail the other day but none are worth posting. They are all irritatingly shaky which irritates me all the more. Starting at the head, he ate the whole bird. One of the three videos jerks up and away just as he's pulling what looks like an organ out of the body. By the time he was done there was nothing left but feathers. About an hour later a covey of quail grazed through the scene but didn't seem to notice the carnage. However, since then, the quail have, for the most part, stayed away. Better they do for now but I miss them. The little birds still drop but don't stay long either. Without them, the bare trees outside my window look harsh and forlorn.

Emerging studio floor, formerly known as the living room

Inside the house is a different matter. M. Lee is plowing on with Project Paper Floor. It is the indoor fabulous Event of the Season. Currently, I am land locked in my office as he's papering the hallway and front entrance. If I want to get to the kitchen I have to go out the garage and around the house through the crunchy frozen snow, being careful not to walk on the door of the tool shed. Its three-sided shell still lays frozen to the ground across the yard where it was blown during the last wind storm. Redoing every floor in the entire house, including the closets, is a huge undertaking but it's looking great! And I have started dismantling my office, it being the Final Frontier. It is so overwhelming but little by little, right?

Studio done. Now on to the hall and entrance

Local News at 20:27 hours

Our time in Florida is running out. Everything feels different. I don't want to go but I am detaching in spite of myself. In fact, with all the travel we have been doing the last few years, detachment itself is becoming the normal mode. It's appropriate at this point in my life. I don't love less but with fewer conditions.

Local news at 11:59

Other than a very personal, spiritual observation, I'm not much into Easter. As far as rebirth and renewal celebrations go, I prefer the Spring Equinox and this year it was March 20th. But Thea Bella and Baby Leo are enjoying the day with candy, colored eggs and plastic ones, some filled with candy, some with quarters for college and that's good enough for me. My round about way of saying Happy Easter.

As for my friend Bill, unbelievable. Two days prior to visiting him this guy had had a a big juicy vein pulled from his leg like a worm, his sternum sawed open, his heart artificially stopped, all six blockages cut out and replaced with segments of the leg vein and yesterday he was FUCKING RED LETTER FANTASTIC. The giant slice through his chest is practically healed and he was cheery as ever. He did give the hospital staff a scare however because two days after the surgery he went for a walk on his own. He went to the chapel, I'm guessing to say thanks, but it was on an entirely different floor which was out of range of the heart monitors and set them clanging. You can't keep this guy down. Seems his Alzheimer wife entirely forgot he'd gone in for open heart surgery but even that didn't bother him. The three of us had a good laugh about it.

Other than that, I recently started using new hosting sites for the images I post here because they don't put a cap on uploads, Lafango for my own photos and Imgur for reposts of ones I find on the web. Seems I have exceeded my allotted bandwidth with this blog and after that Blogger canalizes older photo postings to make room for new ones.

UPDATE: Lafango sucks. Forget about em. They won't allow my own photos, which I upload there, to repost on my blog. They are useless to me.

Local News at 9:47 AM

I really don't have time to do a blog post right now. The moment I finished writing that sentence Mr. Lee leaned into my room and asked his most annoying tone, Are you doing a blooooog post, Ahhhhhh-shaaaaaaaa? WTF? Is the spiral collapsing in on itself?

No. Not to worry. More coffee will fix everything. This morning it must be sweet and delicious. I am feeling pressed. Too much to do. Too little time. My life is working in reverse from 4 AM this coming Thursday. Our flight to Hawaii departs at 6 AM for which I haven't packed plus I have a doctor's appointment right in the middle of tomorrow so, you see, I am already out of time. It will be nice being warm for a few days but it's a working trip so we will be inside most of the time however I do promise you a photo or two of leathery octogenarian lizards basking on the Waikiki beach, or at least photos of twenty-something who look like octogenarians because of sun damage.

Things are heating up all around. Today I have to go to Reno and in a couple more weeks my yearly spring trip to Tonopah is coming up. There I will do my best to grab a few new photos from my favorite graveyard and check up on how other around-the-ghost-town favs are doing in their long slow dissolve back into the desert hard pack. After that I must visit Thea and Ashley and the rest of the crew in Portlandia, Baby Leo in Great Falls and my Little Brother who dwells in the Land of Science all before leaving on the too fast approaching ERT (Epic Road Trip) across America, with a detour to Costa Rica because it's a hop from Florida, beginning in mid-May. Holy god! Must have more coffee.

My little brother needs rescuing but is damn resistant to distraction. All around him friends are retiring and calling to invite him to do frivolous things like meet for lunch so, one by one, he tells me he is having to let them go. They shouldn't take it personally. He's always been like that. Focused. When we were kids he spent most of his time in his little science lab in the basement working on designs for three-stage rockets and fiddling with the magic of crystal radios. These days seems the life of the Great Columbia River hangs by the thread he carefully calculates for the Bonneville Power Assoc. from his Den of Science overlooking Puget Sound and Pike Place Market but, other than that, nothing has change.

Okay. It's now two cups of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal past the hour. Now I really really really have to stop writing about things and start doing things.

New ride

Well, it's not a Tesla but we bought a new car yesterday and it is sweeeeet. We had to go to Oregon to get it as there was only one dealer on the entire west coast who had what we wanted, and he only had one, a white 2011 Hyundai Elantra Touring SE with 5-speed manual transmission.

There's still a lot of life left in our little 2000 Hyundai. It's a great car, it's just that we are planning to drive to Florida in the spring so this seemed like a good time to reup. Monday we decided on the Touring. We drove to Oregon on Tuesday, bought it on Wednesday and drove home on Thursday but it wasn't an impulse buy. Naturally, M. Lee had already read and digested all the reviews and hot threads on all the vehicles on his list. I had my own short list, another Elantra, but these things must be thoroughly discussed. We had pondered the Subaru, contemplated the Audi, took the Sportage for a test drive etcetera. We weighed all the factors till our heads spun, but all roads led back to the Touring. Hyundais are great cars. End of story. And no, they did not pay me to say that.

Then, once we were certain that the Touring was the best of class, we were left with the most agonizing, most mind boggling decision of all... black or white.

Peter, the cool internet sales dude, took this photo
and posted it on the dealership's Facebook page.

We like black. Black is stealth and cool, mysterious, powerful, maybe even a little bit dangerous looking. Diplomats, royalty, heads of state and other shady characters are chauffeured around in fleets of shiny black cars. The thing is, they have people to keep their sleek black cars looking untouchable but once a black car is dirty, the magic is gone. We tried to convince ourselves that we would keep a black car menacingly clean, but we knew it was a lie. We're slobs, so we got white. Plus white is better in the desert. We'll tint the windows.

We're giving the silver Elantra to our daughter. Baby Thea and Owen the Dog need a new ride. Currently poor Owen has to hunker down on the floor in the Saturn's scrinchy backseat space which he must share with Baby Thea's wiggly feet. Now, he'll get a whole third of a car to himself. Who's yer gma?

In my head

This was my to do list today.

This is what it felt like.

Day's end

Long day come to an end. Obama spoke at the memorial in Arizona today and he did a fine job but, like he said, "words cannot express". I did the moment of silence NASA held.

In his excellent article at Slate today (Palin Failed the Test), and indeed she did, John Dickerson linked a poem on grief by Philip Booth, "Sorting it Out". It's universal, not heavy handed. Just describes what we live with after everything is said and done.

Anyway, the flu/food poisoning whatever got bad for a while and now seems to be on the wane. Tonight I got to eat cheesy bread. It's that silver lining thing when you're sick, things you get to eat because you can't. Well, that's about all the news from out here along the language barrier. Next chance you get, be kind to someone in another species.

Oh, and in case you missed it, the score in the inter-species contest Man vs. Dog is

Dogs:1 / Humans:0

Moving on

Another bleak day here. Yesterday was one of those do a million things, accomplish nothing kind of days and today looks like more of the same. Plus I'm feeling a bit sick. Maybe flu. I dunno. Headache, slightly nauseous, no appetite, general malaise. I washed my hands with sandlewood soap this morning and the fragrance is bothering me. That heightened sensitivity is generally a sign that it's more than a slow start. We shall see.

Behind the scenes

Harry and Max have both been Invisible Theatre cast members for quite a while now but only recently, actually over the New Year's weekend, became new best friends. It's kind of nice as they are both, well, odd. Max was a total loner and Harry's only other friend until now has been Clown Girl and then awhile ago she started hanging out with the gorilla.

As for me, I re-shuffled shelving around in my office this morning. Everything is much more accessible now and the light is better. Plus I finally dragged myself to the gym. Woo-hoo.The new year is off to a roaring start.

Cheers

Today I checked all the links in the sidebar and updated or deleted wherever needed doing. New year's cleanup. My office is still in shambles and I haven't unpacked my suitcase yet since getting home on Tuesday but I do feel a wee bit better. There are so many things on my To Do list at the moment but at least I am picking at if from the edges. It's a start. I can't think about it too much or I will sag back into inertia so here's to baby steps and re-beginnings. Cheers.

Local news at 10:33

Today marks the end a three month period during which we've been gone more than we've been home. At the moment I don't feel like I live anywhere in particular but the 7 o'clock magpie will be happy to find the peanuts I scattered around the Bird Park this evening. She is faithful. It will take the others a few days to catch on. Until then, she will have them all to herself.

Merry Christmas

2010 Dec 25 7:58 UTC Christmas eve

Hello from the shadow.

Local news at 11:49

Got home last week and leaving again on Monday. I am totally dazed but no matter. I must do it. Must get to Portland to visit Baby T before she leaves for college which, at the rate she's growing, is coming up waaaaaaaaaaaay too fast.

But the birds in the Bird Park are none to happy about my travels. I've been gone most of the time since September but the 7 o'clock Magpie faithfully continued checking in. She's been doing it for years now. The gulp of magpies only figure out that I am home several days after my return. Until then, she pretty much has the place to herself although no one seems to be suffering without me. Even the one legged magpie is fat. They all have stomachs somewhere between the size of a large navel orange and a small (okay very small) grapefruit.


The latest Bird Park sensation has been blobs of sugar free cherry jam. Yum. And leftover oatmeal. Not so yum but gone by noon. Oh and apples. Everyone likes the apples. Magpies hog them so I have to put several out to keep everyone happy. As is their fashion, the quail share. Seems the Bird Park has settled into being their wintering ground and spring hook-up scene, the quail version of Maui at spring break. The evil neighborhood fat cats make it a less than hospitable place to bring the family, at least when the kids are still the size of golf balls. The cats eat them like popcorn. I should put a sign on the fence like the ones you see at carnivals. You know the kind only it would read... YOU MUST BE AS TALL AS AN APPLE TO ENTER.

Navel Gazing and Rambling at 8:38

Okay. I don't really want to be doing this but water has to go somewhere and we know it seeks the lowest level which, at this moment, translates into me slouched in my chair staring at the monitor, palms of my hands resting on keyboard, typing whatever comes into my head, the sounds of the house in background ... the squeaking of Mr. Lee's chair in the next room, the tapping of his keyboard, the whir of the fans in the laptop to my right and the quieter fans in the tower under my desk. There is also a low level hum in the walls. I don't know what it is. The heat's not on. Just a hum. Can you hear electricity in the walls? I sometimes think I can. Maybe it's just the tower. And then there's the infernal ringing in my right ear. When we were in Costa Rica recently, I realized that the ringing in my ears sounds exactly like the high pitched toneless buzzing of insects in the jungle. I don't know which insect, maybe some kind of jungle cricket, but the sounds are identical. That is some comfort actually because I like the sound of insects in the jungle and really don't like the ringing in my ear. I do my best to not obsess about it. Obsessing about it is definitely not a good thing so when I discovered the similarity between the buzzing in the jungle and the ringing in my ear, it was a relief. But enough about the ringing. Like I say, I don't want to obsess about it. I have that tendency. I am listening to the buzzing jungle.

Gustavo didn't seem to mind

So on to better things. What else grabs my attention this evening? I am too full, too hot and tired but it's too early early to sleep. I am too hot because the house is too cold so I have too many clothes on to stay warm. But now I'm hot. Which brings me to the thought that there must be a lot of people in the world who, in spite of the ringing in my ears, would be grateful to change places with me. People who are starving or cold or both. God. Life is fucked up. And this brings me to Catholic Guilt. I'm not a catholic anymore but seems most of us Xs never get free of the damn guilt. Which reminds me of my patron saint. You might wonder why I have a patron saint being an X catholic. Aren't saints basically a catholic thing? Actually, I'm an X everything. These days I don't trust any dogma. However, when we were in Oaxaca a few years ago I found a saint I can do business with. My son was in the military at the time and overseas on a peace keeping mission. The entire time he was gone I lived in an undertow of deep unrest but sitting with Gustavo in the corner of that old stone church gave me some comfort. I didn't use the kneeler. Gustavo isn't that kind a saint. I sat in the chair.

Gustavo helped me sit with it

Actually, I'm not sure his name is Gustavo. There was a tombstone looking slab set into the floor or wall, I can't remember which, with the name Gustavo Santa Ana caved into it so I call him Gustavo. I spent a lot of time there. I even wrote a couple of poem based on the place and named them both Contact Language although one is subtitled letter 611. I've been thinking about Gustavo on and off these last few days. I wish I were in Oaxaca. I feel like sitting in the gloom with him. I googled Gustavo Santa Ana just now and, although I found nothing on my Gustavo, I came across an article in the Orange County Weekly Navel Gazing section by Gustavo Arellano announcing that Jesus Christ Himself will be at the Santa Ana Artists' Village tomorrow to join the protest against the God Hates Fags protest Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church are waging against the Artists' Village because the theater is staging The Laramie Project, a gay-rights themed play. Just sayin.

Local news at 10:22 PM

I can't believe we are finally home. We've been bouncing around since the 18th when we left Puerto Viejo.... Florida, Nevada, Montana, Oregon, California, Oregon but tonight, finally, we are back in Nevada. Good to be home although that idea is pretty abstract at the moment.

Photo from the bus.
Lovely Costa Rica.
It looks idyllic but it's not.

In Montana we finally got to meet, cuddle and coo Baby Leo. He's now two months old but still young enough to be a real baby. They grow so fast I was worried I'd miss this part. He's a total sweetheart, very strong and cute as hell. Photos to follow of him and more of Costa Rica but not tonight. I have to sort though everything first.

Local news at 11:19

Packing is really hard and especially this time as all we are taking is carry-on luggage. As it is, I chase myself through the day, picking up after myself and trying to figure out where I put the damn thing and things and where the hell is it? and now I have to plan what I am going to be wearing and needing for a month and a half. ARG! One thing I did decide. I'm not bringing my bubblegum pink tshirt even though it does say COEXIST. Anyway, back to work. Time's running out.

Babies and Baglady Buddha

Reentry is hard. Extended travel changes the mind. In fact, I don't think you really ever quite change back or want to. I haven't, don't. I didn't leave the country this time but, being gone even a month, I felt pretty detached when I got home and now Mr. Lee is going through it. And he really went feral, I will say that. Reentry takes time. Easy for me to say. I get to go to San Antonio tomorrow for a few days. It's a drag that I am leaving so soon after his return but that's the way it is. And besides, a couple of days alone to sweat it out may do him good. And I will be home Sunday. BTW, he has promised me one last post, a follow-up and recap of his travels, so stay tuned. And yes, I am still waiting for some damn photos.


Anyway, the big news is that we have our first two families of quail babies, just hatched, still rumpled and fuzzy, just....just out of the egg. They are out running around as I write this and too cute for words so here are some blurry photos instead. More to come, unless (and until) the neighborhood cats eat them. These little guys are like popcorn to those bastards. If you have a cat, for god's sake, put bells on 'em. They kill everything in the vicinity, just because they can. By the way, those are not weeds you see in the photos. It's a wildlife corridor/cat baffle for the quail. And besides the quail, there are a couple of very noisy magpie babies and some young 'un crows in the neighborhood, all somewhere in their terrible twos (months) that squawk all day long. But I love it. It a bit of jungle here in the desert.


It just occurred to me I am very in the rears with photos myself. I haven't even posted anything from the Reno Spoken Word event I read at a couple of weeks ago. So here's one and a promise for more, redeemable at your local Language Barrier outpost trading company store sometime in the future. I call her the Baglady Buddha. Is that disrespectful? Would the Buddha mind? No mind.


WTF? What the hell back hand, left hand mudra is that, Baglady Buddha?