Baby watch ll

No baby yet. It's two days past the due date.

Baby watch

Kooskia Idaho, wide spot in the road between a mountain and a river.


We left home about 7 am this morning. It's a two day drive from where we live in Nevada to Great Falls Montana. Mr. Lee is driving and I am reading Pound's Pisan Cantos to us over the engine and road noise. The combination is mind altering. I nearly finished them before we got to Kooskia where we are staying the night in the town's only motel. Our youngest son and his wife are expecting their first child any day and, if we're lucky, we'll get to Great Falls before the Big Event.


Kooskia was very lovely this evening. Twilight made it seem more like a stage set than a "real" place.


We ate at the China Cafe, one of Kooskia's two restaurants. I highly recommend it. We had a surprisingly good vegetarian dinner there. Even the fortune cookies were delicious.


My fortune read: "A pleasant surprise is in store for you in the near future."

Reflections

Here are a few more photos from Chinatown in Oakland. It's nothing but I enjoy photographing the layered perspectives caught in window reflections.

Bottom of the Barrel

The most recent Bird Park member of note is a fellow named BoB (Bottom of the Barrel). You could say he fell from hell.

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My guess is that BoB, being a feisty little dude with catlike bounce, managed to wiggle out of the talons of a passing hawk, fall from the sky and (luck upon luck) land in the soft dirt of the Bird Park. In any case, I found him chirping his long string of shrill prayers and curses from the woodpile at the top of his voice with excruciating, ear-rending fury. He became deathly still when I lifted the boards. I wish I'd remembered my camera but, for all the anxiety I caused, I tucked a few peanuts in and let him be.

This morning I heard what turned out to again be BoB, or more exactly the sound of his head hitting the locked lid of a barrel from the inside. It would have been BoB's Last Stand because, after clawing and wiggling his way into the barrel, he did not have the leverage to scratch and chew his way back out. Thump THUMP.



At first I didn't know where the sound was coming from. I looked out the window but, seeing only a few birds walking around, I went back to my computer. Thirty seconds later....

THUMP THUMP THUMP...

I leaned to the glass and looked up and down the way. Nothing. I sat back down.

THUMP THUMPTHUMP!!!

I looked again. Again...nothing.

Then, just as I was turning away I saw from the corner of my eye, the bird seed & crow kibble barrel rock wildly back and forth. This time I took my camera.



About 20 minutes after getting poured out of the barrel and scampering under the house, BoB sauntered back out into the Park for a leisurely sip from the pool.

Willy, the first Bird Park squirrel,
making the most of his brief tenure.

I don't know what happened to Willy but I do know that this is not the best place for fat little guys without wings. Even the cats are potential hawk snacks, the gods forbid. Those bastards better stay sharp. As we know, everybody is food for somebody.

Poetry: lost & found

I was dinking around online this morning, yeah searching for myself. So what? Who hasn't? Geeze.... the voices in my head are so rude! Anyway, I came up with this. I had not only forgotten I'd written it, I'd forgotten about the blog I posted it on (IndieWriters) and the google group of the same name. Well, I actually haven't forgotten about the google group of the same name. It just made for better sentence flow to add that. I haven't forgotten about the group but I never go there. But I'm not giving it up. It's a good and appropriate name, one I thoroughly identify with but it joins a host of other online entities I have launched and abandoned, space junk, ephemeral moons sharing my orbit. In my mind's eye they are covered with glittering space dust, a pretty sight out here where earth night fades into deep space.

Excerpt from an unfinished, unnamed collection

Reconstruction

One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. I've written it before on countless scraps of paper. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. It is composed of a seemingly endless succession of beginnings. The original order of the words has been lost. I rely on you to supply the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost but I promise to stay true to its drift. That is not a matter of memory. It is a matter of being. One world at, one word at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does not exist. One word, one sentence at a time, this is its drift. This is the drift. The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The notes were never collected. Jotted. Scribbled. On scraps, in notebooks, on flaps. They have never been collected. They have seldom been re-read. Or read. The words, disjointed, have been set down and abandon. No, not abandon. There is much thinking between them, the phrases, the paragraph and elimination of words. And ideas. "Why?" I am telling a story. Build the house. Paint it later. And later still introduce the particulars. Each letter reverberates but ... I digress.

asha

Rant revisited

Cartoon by Gary Larson


Last week I went on a rant about the old saying, "write about what you know", blasting people who cling to the idea as though it were their salvation, stray and be lost forevah. Anyway, once again I overdid it because I did not give much of a nod to the times when sticking to what you know results in smoking hot writing so I'm back, hashing it out. It's what we do out here along the language barrier, hash things out. And I don't expect this will be the end of it either but then ending it is not the point, is it?

The point is, can I say that? The point is... I doubt anyone who has given it half a thought believes that subject is any more than a place to start. Otherwise, why bother? It's what you do with it that matters, and more importantly, what you let it do to you, where you let it take you that makes the difference.

And not to belabor the point but, on the flip side, those of us who think that rules are made to be broken need to keep in mind that there are no guarantees breaking them will automatically lead to extraordinary writing.

But back to the thing about sticking to what you know...

Here's a guy who has put it together. He writes about what he knows and kicks ass. He is a teacher/performance poet who bills himself as the man who "wants to create one thousand new teachers". I found his video at a Reno Spoken Views site but I don't know if he ever read here in Reno. My friend, if you haven't heard Taylor Mali before, you are in for a treat...