Bird Park East - update

August - The highly rhythmic pomba (pigeon) chant was the first sound I heard this morning. It's a great way to start the day. I highly recommend it. I'm now on the balcony with my morning coffee, listening and watching pombas crisscross between trees and apartment buildings. It's nice being out here again. Earlier in the summer, I did my best to leave the area to the mother sparrow. She raise two separate batches of babies in the roof tiles and was fond of resting on the railing between feedings. She was very determined to keep their location secret. Even a look her way was enough to drive her off. The Waning Gibbous moon is visible in the windy morning soft blue sky. Swallows zig zag by. Chickens are clucking in the grass below. Roosters are hard at their usual crowing competition or whatever it is. It goes throughout day and is my preferred alternative to the now-noisy-again-world surrounding us. The friendly neighborhood fellow and his two white dogs are just now coming down the sidewalk on their morning stroll. The younger dog, as always, is on a loose leash and the ancient one, held together only by love, saunters behind sniffing the morning news. A couple of squawking parakeets just dashed by, a flash of green only. They are always off to somewhere else in the greatest hurry. And, most notably of all, Barkie the Dog barely barked at all last night. I remind myself it's not the new normal but it was damn nice.

Hands up. Please don't shoot me

How many have died with these words on their lips? Portland's Black Lives Matter's eerily beautiful protest chant evokes a haunting, and devastating question.


.Hands up - Please don't shoot me - Hands up - Please don't shoot me.

.Hands up - Please don't shoot me - Hands up - Please don't shoot me.

Happy 4th of July, America - Mask up!

Republican Pres. Donald J. Trump
Flag humper

For the past 50 years, Republicans have chosen either oil men or actors for Presidents and mostly elected Senators and Representatives who are racist and/or evangelicals dedicated to shoring up the crumbling legacy of the King/Priest rulerships of yore. As a result, America is now isolated from all it's traditional Democratic allies, as it slides into a corporate dictatorship run by men indifferent to the millions of Americans ravaged by COVID-19 while the President gallivants around the country at the taxpayer’s expense doing photo ops to feed his insatiable vanity.

Yesterday, America had the world's largest daily increase of pandemic victims, 55,000 reported in all, with 10,000 new cases in Florida alone.

Happy Fourth of July. Be sure to wear your mask and keep your distance.

Note to self - Stop playing Divide and Conquer

#1: Stop arguing.
#2: Silence is compliance.
#3: Blend these and change the narrative.

Midsummer Eve 2020

Today is the apex of light in earth's northern hemisphere. Given the pandemic, I'm not feeling particularly cheery at the moment but best wishes and good luck to you—whatever year you happen by.

Was it a mistake?

Gen. Mark A. Milley, was it a mistake or, now that you've given Trump his photo op, is this just camouflage? You fucking hell looked like the tool of a repressive, fascist government to me.

Silly questions

There's a lesson here . . .

Spider

I'm currently sharing my work space with a spider. I've explained to him that it's not a safe place for such a little fellow but he insists. He's spun a line from the main table to the tip of a pallet knife in a jar of pallet knives on a different table and has been coming and going all morning. I'm trying to be a good neighbor but am worried  this won't go well for him. I'm not sure he can see me, or if he does, what makes of me but he did stop and look at me as I explained the dangers of hanging out in such a cluttered, always getting shuffled around place. I offered to move him out with Plantie on the balcony but he doesn't seem inclined.


—UPDATE—
Spider
is now
making his way
out from under the glass

Worlds beyond the glass

Blue Period

It's not done but I'm now far enough along on the project that this morning, Swami, Juan Carlos, Molly, and I are having coffee and viewing the four panel I've been working on for that last few weeks, illustrations for a poem I wrote called Blue Period. M. has not been invited to the showing yet as he must finish his morning porridge before, in his own words, he is fully human.

Gary's good-bye

"Same. Smaller. Quieter."

That's how my daughter described her dad when I inquired how he was doing yesterday then, this afternoon, to the same question she wrote, "He died this morning. About an hour ago."  I wish he'd lived a happier life but his death was not as lonely as it might have been—she was sitting beside him—had been all morning—nor was it particularly sad, coming as it did after a long illness, cancer not covid.

So . . . yesterday afternoon as the nest full of baby birds under the roof tiles chirped away at the top of their shrill little voices, and I was painting an illustration for one of my poems while listening to music with headphones on, Gary dropped in from America to say good-bye. He was wispy and floating and mostly transparent (imagine something between a whitish horizontal veil-like form with flagella and a thin floating, mostly transparent sea creature) and kind of stand-offish as always, but he was there.¹ My eyes got blurry for a bit but I saw him clearly in my mind's eye . . . he in thin air, me in afternoon light, us remembering what our dreams had been back then (did he chortle?) and who we'd been for each other. We forgave each other. He lingered a few moments more then said good-bye.

Portugal . . . about an hour ago . . .

¹· No. I wasn't stoned or drunk nor do I claim this moment to be a "Fact". Just sharing my subjective experience.

One world

Believe it or not, care or not, own up to it or not—we are making this planet uninhabitable, not only for us, but for life as we know it. If we don't quickly and radically change the way we eat, live, do business etcetcetc— the environment upon which we all depend will collapse beyond repair. This pandemic can be a preview of coming events or a lesson we learn from. Which is it?