Cry Song

Let’s get personal . . . I’m not what is too often referred to as a “Native American” . . . Oh . . . yeh I’ve got the brown hued skin and my hair used to be black but I am a member of the Big Pine Band of Owens Valley Paiute . . . not Oglala Souix or “Apache” or Dineh . .. . I added the “h” cos you pronounce “Dine” dih-neh . . .

Anyway this morning at approximately 10:00 hours I witnessed my mother’s burial. The “deacon” delivered the catho-holic/Christian Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead rhetoric and a black & yellow swallow-tail butterfly flew over the casket . . . it was just checking out the flowers nothing symbolic or significant . . . just a butterfly doing butterfly thangs.

When my dad’s mother was being interred we were standing off to one side . . . and he said, “. . . that little rain yesterday washed away her footprints . . .”

Oh shit! . . . and yesterday there was thunder and it was cloudy and rained a little . . . just enough to stipple the dirt erasing tire tracks footprints etcetera . . . you draw your own conclusions.

I’m an “old” Indian . . . not just chronologically but culturally . . . a traditionalist . . . one rooted in the material and cultural practices of the Owens Valley Paiute lifeway before Cristoforo Columbo and the Euro-American intrusion . . .

When I knew my mother was dying I began singing a “cry” song . . . as my cuhnu said, “. . . a song over death . . .” in this case a pending death . . . I sang a short version of the cry song over her casket after it had been lowered into the grave symbolically finalizing the funerary aspect of her death.

I shook hands with relatives and friends . . .

Being of Pima ancestry (akmil o’odam) as well as OVP heritage, the handshake is a Pima funerary custom . . . and I told them (friends & relatives) that I was acknowledging their condolences on behalf of my Pima tribal traditions.

A mantra from the Buddhist Heart Sūtra . . . tadyathā gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā . . . a simple translation is: gone gone gone away gone far away to the other side . . . in essence the cry song says the same thing . . . it’s closure.

Ciao . . .

Wind

. . . and the wind blows up . . . and the wind blows down

vinyl storm window flexes . . . smooth skin belly rise ‘n fall in silence . . . storm window breathing . . . tuned to the pulse of the wind . . . blowing straight up the wall ‘n down the other side . . . night light dim light radiating low wall socket energy from doorway . . .

. . . the wind blows across . . . across the ground over the roof . . . a vent open ‘n close . . . finger of wind probing . . . smothered metal flap flapping alarm . . . the wind is blowing . . . sandpaper fingers . . . window screen noise in pale room light . . . feels like midnight blanket of seamless sleep.

Fast Forward

He could hear the sound before he saw it . . . the flyer . . . little silvery distortion just barely visible over the dark green creosote brush prolly 1 or 2 klicks out to the south . . . it was over the old asphalt track about 60 meters up moving slowly . . . anti-grav . . . solo civvy craft . . . what fuck was it doing way out here?

The sun reflecting off something shiny distracted him . . . he turned his head . . . and he saw the beater transport on the road tracking the flyer . . . trouble.

They might try to shoot its generator to bring it down . . . but it was too valuable so they would wait for it to settle and then attack . . .

Rewind rewind . . .

So . . . wat I been up to you probably wondering . . . well it be like dis . . . 2/3 months ago I caught the omicron bug it rather it finally tracked me down ‘n laid some funky juju on my body . . . It was like a bad cold a mild case of influenza . . . nose was dripping . . . fever (sweats) one night and I felt like shit! Lasted about 5/6 days and on day 10 the test came back negatory . . .

When I first suspected I might have the bug that test thingy lit up “positive” after one freaking second . . . dint have to wait for the 15 minute time period to elapse . . . so I settled in for 10 days of quarantine madness.

What I’m getting at is I’m still feeling the effects of my bout with the virus . . . fatigue and a lack of motivation . . . got the sails up spinnaker out but no breeze . . .

I dunno . . . idk . . . is it just me or is there lethargy in the atmosphere tainting the world? Might be coz some modern aircraft carriers don’t have catapults . . . really! I thought it was only the country that started the covid pandemic was using ski jump technology to launch their jet engine fighter aircraft . . . then I found out the Bolsheviki Russian flagship carrier was also using the ski jump . . . I thought all aircraft carriers had catapults but I was wrong . . . even the British are still employing the “ski jump” to launch aircraft.

WTF?! I’m probably going to find out that the U.S. is the onliest country that have the old reliable steam driven catapult onboard their carriers . . . China say they gonna have sum kine high tech electromagnetic hyperdrive catapult on their new carrier . . . prolly gonna tear the nose wheel out it’s socket . . .

Ukraine sold that there ski jump marvel to the Chinese back in the day . . . Good bargain basement deal my commie brethren comes with state-of-the-art upturned nose ski jump flight deck . . . would I lie G.I.? . . . say what?!

The mind wanders . . . Oh yeh Trump nixed the idea of switching to electromagnetic catapults on U.S. carriers . . . uh huh right on.

More from the sci-fi channel later.

20:12 . . .time for some dinner . . . miso soup with wakame.

DIDUNO

Did U no China is going to have a catapult on its newest aircraft carrier . . . uh . . . well . . . uh . . . WTF?! I thought all aircraft carriers had catapults . . . no, not China the tech giant . . . they got the Wuhan virus but no catapult.

So how they launch their fancy fighter jet planes?

Oh . . . I get it . . . they built a ski jump on the front end of the flight deck . . . it looks like a l-o-o-ong skateboard with no wheels mounted on a canoe . . . lol . . . I saw something similar back when I was doing contract work . . . it was called a “jump strip” kinda like before . . . a precursor to the Harrier launching and landing vert (VTOL) . . . the jump strip allowed jets to get airborne from a short landing strip.

They would start their takeoff at the very end of the tarmac brakes on engines whining airframe vibrating . . . then the pilot released the brakes and shot down the level section of runway . . . at some point he lit the afterburners and the jet “jumped” off the end of the jump ramp and was off into the blue yonder . . . just like Doolittle’s B-25s heading for Tokyo.

The B-25 transport ship (aircraft carrier) dint have no ski jump on the end of the carrier deck they launched from . . . instead they waited for the bow of the ship to elevate coming out of the trough of a swell and timed their takeoff to coincide with the maximum elevation of the flight deck . . . the twin engine B-25B Mitchell medium range bomber was “tossed” into the air off the end of the deck . . . or maybe the bow fell away from under the plane and left it to use its forward momentum and subsequent lift to fly like a pelican skimming just off the surface of the ocean.

O-M-F-G!!

Anyway . . . yeh . . . word on the street is that the next new state-of-the-art Chinese aircraft carrier gonna have some kine electromagnetic rubber slingshot mechanisms to launch their jet powered fighter aircraft cos that ski ramp on the bow of the ship is so yesterday . . . just saying.

I couldn’t find any visual evidence that any of the U.S. aircraft carriers ever utilized the ”jump strip” deck feature . . . just used the old reliable high tech steam catapult.

State-of-the-art Soviet Russkie military war machine prompted this babble . . . Putin is so yesterday.

If you want to better understand what’s going on with Putin’s Soviet Russian politics, lookup H. Makinder’s work on Heartland and the World Island (Democratic Ideals and Reality, 1919.). Inches

I

Mind Warp

Storyworth’s question of the week this week was: What have you changed your mind about over the years?

Hmmm . . . I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking . . . rewind stop rewind pause . . . yeh I got it . . . I used to be a hardcore “cowboy” . . . not the horsey kind . . . a renegade . . . a singleton . . . you know . . . like the Lone Ranger or Buck Rogers . . . self sufficient. . . had all the bases covered.

Mind change? Nothing actually . . .

But . . . at some point I realized that it was important to have backup . . . assets that I could source when the need arose . . . like equipment . . . info outside of my field of endeavor . . . like the man from Harvard said, “You need a goombah . . . a godfather.”

Enter TCAP . . . not the dragon (Bruce Lee) but The California Arts Project . . . T-C-A-P . . . the task of the Project was to develop a measurable curriculum for the 4 disciplines of “art” . . . dance theatre music and the visual arts . . . yep . . . no problem! EZPZ.

Wait a minute . . . there’s another aspect of the story . . . four more letters of the alphabet . . . R-I-M-S . . . acronym for Riverside Inyo Mono and San Bernardino . . . counties in the eastern ESE region of California . . . mountains desert and the “inland empire” (densely populated semi-civilized area).

So like I said, “EZPZ” cos I already had a lesson plan that addressed the issue . . . the abc’s of drawing.

20 educators representing the 4 artistic disciplines were selected from the four countries to develop measurable curriculum for the California Department of Education . . . the post hole diggers were of the opinion that you couldn’t measure the “arts” academically . . . you either “had it” or you didn’t . . . John or Jane Doe couldn’t be “taught” how to dance act sing or “draw” . . . they only could do things like spell read add subtract multiply divide cos we have “tests” for that! Proficiency tests . . . alphabetical A – F . . .

Around 1995 I developed a lesson plan to “teach” kids how-to-draw . . . my methodology was based the use of shapes lines the alphabet and color . . . Hokusai and a book published in 1940’s titled “Anyone Can Draw”.

Well anyway . . . on to what change occurred or dint . . . fast forward to the next to to the last session of the RIMS t-cup collaboration . . .

The FINALS!! . . . we had to present our academically measurable and scalable lesson plans . . . the lesson had to be adaptable for grades K thru 12 and for college level nerds.

Then came the “commercial” . . . part 2 of the “final”. . . we were divided into 5 groups of 4 people each . . . 5 X 4 equals 20 . . . right?

Well we weren’t “separated” into 5 groups we got to pick or choose a group . . . everyone scattered like chickens squawking and stepping on one another until we sorted ourselves into the necessary number of groups of people . . . my group consisted of me ‘n Julie . . . a guy in a wheelchair and another guy . . . . kinda like outlaws . . . social lepers . . . I don’t remember seeing the guy in the wheelchair during the meet-ups but there he was . . . then “they” . . . the review panel . . . they gave out the products that we would use for the “commercial” . . . we got box of Arm and Hammer baking soda . . . the other groups got detergent or household items . . . everyone was acting flustered and flapping about . . . but not us . . . theater guy in the wheelchair said, “I got the words . . .” Julie was just standing like a kindergarten teacher on yard duty and the mystery guest he dint say nothin’ kinda like the “tar baby” . . . y’all remember Uncle Remus? . . . so I said, “I got the song and dance.”

There was a time limit . . . 5 minutes to come up with an appropriate “jingle” . . . a bit of choreography and the voiceover . . . for a 60 second commercial . . . stage left . . . enter the song of the Volga Boatmen . . . duh . . . what else?

We had arm & hammer why not go for the hammer and sickle?

I substituted “arm and hammer” for “yo heave ho” and we (the chorus) raised our fists mimicking the big muscled arm logo the product box then swung our arms down like we were hammering . . . meanwhile the theater guy was spewing words touting the product.

We finished “designing” our commercial in three minutes . . . I raised my hand to let the panel know we were finished . . . theater guy was timing himself . . . the panel said, “You’re finished already?” looking a bit astonished . . .

When you got you got it and we had it by the short hairs . . . tight!

5 minute time period expired and the other groups were kicking and screaming for more time . . . needless to say since we had finished first we got to go first . . . yep . . . smoked those detail loving green jackets . . . our commercial made it in the 60 second time limit then we sat back and watched the show.

Funny how the four of us “knew” we were so compatible . . . but after being around each other or close proximity to one another we musta picked up the “vibe” and when we had to pick and choose it was like those magnetic dogs . . . positive negative polarity nose-to-tail no thought we just fucking “knew” where we belonged.

When you surround yourself with people who are assets and not Ph.D’s or CEO’s . . . the sky has no ceiling so it can’t fall . . . that’s what I learned . . . you can’t always do it all y’sef . . . of course . . . you still might have to take charge . . . be a cowboy like Rowdy Yates on that t.v. show “Wagon Train”. . .

You know “. . . head ‘em up move ‘em out.”

The RIMS TCAP experience gave me a new perspective on how to conduct “business” . . . changed my approach on how I handled situations . . . but like I said . . . you still gotta be a cowboy . . . sometimes . . . and nothing’s really changed ‘sep my POV.

Slava Ukraini!!

Inventions

Q: What inventions had the biggest impact on your day-to-day life?

This was the question of the week on Storyworth.

Duh . . . this is a no-brainer . . . CELL PHONE !! I don’t mean the “smaht” phone . . . I’m talking about the original palm-size send/receive device no camera no apps just talk and listen . . .

Saved my bacon back I in the mid-1990’s . . . “how so?” you ask . . . we-e-ell . . . I used to go exploring up in the mountains to the east of town . . . drove my dad’s old 4-wheel drive pickup . . . and on this particular day I was heading out to have a look-see at some archaeological sites about 15 miles out . . . paved asphalt road for approximately 7 miles then a dirt track to my destination.

Harkless Flat was relatively easy . . . climbing through the piñon trees where the Owens Valley Paiute people gathered pine nuts . . . terrain gradually becoming steeper . . . and then the road became really steep and I shifted into first gear . . . low range . . . I was bouncing around violently in a rocky section . . . creeping along when suddenly there was a thump in the engine compartment . . . and the truck stopped . . . what appeared to be steam emanating from under the bonnet . . . the hood.

So I didn’t have turn the ignition off . . . some malfunction having done it for me . . . I set the parking brake opened the door and climbed out to see what had happened . . . walked to the front of the vehicle opened the hood and saw that the battery had been jolted out of its fastenings and one of the terminals was broken off!

Bad news . . . good news . . . BAD news . . .

First of all the truck was pointing uphill on steep incline . . . second the battery was kaput and I was was in the middle of nowhere 15 miles from civilization . . . broke down.

What’s the plan? Hmmm . . . if I can turn the vehicle around and get it pointed downhill I can use the weight of the truck to gain enough momentum to “coast” back to the paved road and hitch a ride back to town . . . maybe.

I won’t bore you with the details of getting the vehicle in position to start the powerless journey back to Harkless Flat . . . Oh! . . . did I mention that the pickup had power steering and power assisted brakes? No?

As you may or may not know when the engine’s not functioning the brakes and steering become analog . . . yep . . . old fashioned muscle powered . . . yippee ki yay!!

That’s right . . . I was going to have to wrestle 2000 pounds plus of inert metal downhill all the way to wherever I could manage to drift the monster . . . hopefully to the paved road and salvation . . . then I remembered that roller coaster dip at edge of the asphalt . . . oops . . . game over.

I was rockin’ ‘n a-roll in’ about halfway to paradise when I remembered my cell phone! . . . little thing . . . ‘bout the size of a pack of cigarettes . . . Motorola if memory serves me right.

I got a firm grip on the steering wheel and stomped down on the brakes . . . I was still on a relatively steep section of road so I wouldn’t have a problem getting back up to speed after stopping . . . I got the beast stopped and switched the phone on . . . I had stopped where I had a clear line of sight into the valley . . . I was at about 9K feet in elevation . . . checked to see if I had a signal . . . yep . . . 3 bars . . . who do you call?

Sho’nuff ain’t ghostbusters . . . I called Mom! . . . ‘splained I was in dire straits . . . in need of a 6 volt batt-ry and that I was using inertia to get to the Saline Valley road . . . could we meet-up there?

Emergency crew was at the designated rendezvous point with necessary assets . . . after intervention by technology and innovation . . . situation was overcome. Never did get to the archaeological sites but no matter . . .

What would we do without cellphone technology?

p.s. 4G is killing the Russians in the Ukraine . . . Slava Ukraine!!

Die-ree

Deer die-ree . . .

Well . . . the last day of December turned into the first day of 2022 at 00:01 past midnight . . . my smartphone acknowledges the ano nuevo as do my Apple products.

Fornication! . . . tomorrow is “leap foward” sundy . . . move the big clock hand clockwise ‘round passing the little hand moving it forward one hour . . . lost 60 analog minutes of dreamtime . . .

Like I was saying . . . everything seemed to be in the positive except for saving daylight . . . Year of the Tiger trending positive . . .

Then . . . a fucking wildfire threat . . . evac of the east side of town . . . fire specialists descend like locusts to squash the fiery beast . . . big leather hotshot boots stomp down . . . 10 day stomp ‘til the fire coughed its last smoky gasp . . .

We-e-ell . . . then my wife complains . . . bad allergies . . . after about three days sneezing & nose drip she asks for home covid test! MERDE!!

The fire didn’t make its way into town but the omicron bug slipped past hitching a ride from the neighboring town . . . yep! she’s Positive . . . 10 days ago . . . and it gets for “better or worse . . .”

I test myself last Saturday . . . negatory! . . . but I share the same airspace and so the following Monday I’m feeling something is awry (?) wrong . . . not right . . . go to bed @ 20:00 to sleep it off I say . . . wake up at 01:30 take a leak and say to myself “test for covid . . .”

After wrestling with whatever the fks wrong with me ‘til 06:30 the alarm goes off and I untangle from bed . . . no fever just feeling like crap . . . ears snap crackle ‘n pop sinuses feel like little balloons slight headache . . . o-o-oh fucking hell . . . this don’t add up to anything good . . . and as icing on the cake it looks like Putin got his White Russian KGB hand up Ukraine’s skirt.

Now I’m five days into this omicron adventure . . . tested positivo on Tuesday . . . spraying sanitizer wiping doorknobs since last Friday . . . looking like a medic ready for doing surgical stuff . . . eating . . . drinking water . . . fighting the good fight . . . my wife’s due to test tomorrow to see if she still has the bug . . . for me . . . I’ll brew more barley tea do some qigong watch the war on YouTube and fight with myself . . .oh . . . the tortoise emerged from its long winter nap two day ago . . . spring must coming soon . . . don’t pay no mind to the stupid groundhog back on the east side of the U ess of A . . . it’s a pilgrim thing . . . like the Loch Ness dinosaur . . . Bigfoot . . . aliens . . . herd mentality . . . oops . . . I meant herd “immunity” . . .

It ain’t about “Freedom from Fear” like the selfish “no face diaper” patriots be whispering . . . it’s about wearing a mask so’s I don’t have to look at yer pasty-ass face!

Low yield nuke to Moscow!

Blockbuster

Blockbusters . . .

How to write’m . . . duh . . .

What the hell are they ?

block·bust·er | \ ˈbläk-ˌbə-stər \

Definition of blockbuster

1 : a very large high-explosive bomb

2 : one that is notably expensive, effective, successful, large, or extravagant

3 : one who engages in blockbusting

Need some them blockbuster bombas over on the Russia/Ukraine border.

Ramen . . . raw – men . . . if you say it in Japanese it sounds a bit more like daw-mehn . . . the letter “R” kinda sounds more like a “d” . . . go watch Tampopo . . .

How do I come up with a topic . . . subject . . . for a post on the blog . . . hmmm . . . good question . . . well . . . I look around the room thinking about whatever I do whenever I’m wandering through the room . . . like I was thinking about how I come up with an idea for . . . when I was teaching school I taught “art” in elementary school or more specifically I taught discipline . . . how to “see” . . . like there are things surrounding your visual focal point . . . the “gestalt” . . . the relationship between the obvious subject and it’s surroundings . . . something like that or better yet . . . topology . . . how things are related to other things.

I get a lot of ideas . . . subject matter . . . from YouTube videos . . . little kernels . . . sprouted seedlings waiting to feel the sunlight . . .

If you expand or increase yer depth of field you’ll see more . . . don’t limit yourself trying to find your niche . . . the world is gonna blow by and you won’t even notice.

So while scanning the room I realized I felt the need for some nourishment . . . soup . . . I have a supply of “instant” soups . . . miso wakame soba Pho (fa) . . . all well and good but somewhat lacking in flavor . . . no ‘natchul character . . . I decided on miso with tofu . . . sound good? Yeh . . nah?

Sounds good to me but I had a plan to make it less mundane . . . went to the refrigeration unit and extracted a green onion some sliced mushrooms (generic) cut the soup packet open boiled water and the result? . . . tasty!

Contents of the dry soup mix: dry tofu miso powder & dried kombu (seaweed) . . . the kombu expands into wide pliant strips when rehydrated in boiling water providing a chewy goodness that goes well with the green onions.

The same formula for enhancing the dry soup mix can be the foundation (idea) . . . the methodology for writing a blog post.

Dig into those old gray cells . . . ars memoriae . . . watch some t.v. . . .the list goes on and on and on . . . ad nauseum.

Time for a pb&j snack . . . y’all have a good one.

The Horns

The Dilemma: Who’s in the audience?

“Building an audience is one of those anxiety-inducing terms, especially when you’re just starting out.”

Really? . . . let go of the idea of building an audience . . . it will build itself.

This ain’t YouTube or TikTok or Twitch . . . its a blog . . . written word . . . take a look at your stats. “Which articles are getting you the most traffic? Probably only a handful of them, less than 5% of your total output.”

Personally . . . when I started my blog 12-15 years ago I was concerned with why people who were reading my posts weren’t commenting . . . then I red . . . past tense of “read” . . . a blurb by a blogger who said that comments and likes didn’t really matter if people were reading yer sht . . . all you have to do is check the stats . . . EZPZ!

“. . . most bloggers feel the need to constantly produce new content, as a way of increasing social shares . . .”

What the fk are “social shares” some kine disease? . . . . u-u-uh . . . and “The more lottery tickets you buy, the more chances to win.” Not necessarily. I used to buy the “scratchers” and had good days and not so good days . . . even got in a “pool” and bought a whole freakin’ roll of tickets . . . bad idea.

“The basic formula tells us, in order to grow an audience, we need to continually attract new readers through a constant input of content.” Should that be “output” instead of “input”?

Oh . . . wait-just-a-minute . . . there’s a goddam formula? . . . “a basic formula” . . . you mean like E=mc squared or a+b(2-1x)(xy) = z+1 . . . zat wat yer sayin’?

My basic formula or premise . . . my raison d’etre is chaos . . . the big “C” . . . K-A-O-S . . . Chaos . . . Change . . . if yer readers can’t accept change . . . well . . . hard cheese.

The “audience” should be fans . . . cos fans be loyal . . .screaming ‘n bellerin’ . . . “Take me up! Take me up! . . . Don’t leave me here all alone!. . . Take me up!”

J.K. Rowling have beaucoup fans (Harry Potter) . . . if they like your stuff they will come . . . and they might become “fans”!

My wife is a fan of the “Cormoran Strike” detective novels . . .

She was telling our 9 year old grandson how much she likes the stories and she was wishing that the author would publish another book . . . our grandson asked her what the author’s name was . . . she said, “Robert Galbraith . . .” and he replied, “. . . that’s J.K.Rowling granma, she writes Harry Potter.”

Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling . . . so-o-o you can blog as someone else . . . a different voice . . . you know . . . let yer alter ego be a “guest” writer on yer blog . . . no one gonna know but you.

And yes . . . “your oldest readers will probably outgrow your blog.”

Shit happens . . . they finally found a girl friend . . . they win the lottery get rich . . . buy a yawt (yatch) . . . waterski like a virgin . . . naked girl on their back . . . die . . . or something . . . adding new content is not bad from a creative standpoint.

“As you write and establish a presence within your niche, you’ll almost certainly gain traction because of your constant input of content rather than in spite of it.” . . . kinda confusing contradictory statement . . . neh ?

Think of the times you searched Google. What were you searching for?

“Search engines force you into an unsustainable creative output mode” . . . search engines are crap . . . fkn’ algorithms . . . “search engines supply a constant stream of people looking for specific content on a certain topic.

(pause . . . take a deep breath)

Problem-Solving

Q: Is PROBLEM solving a blogging responsibility? Should you be concerned with/about people’s “problems”?

I don’t blog to solve people’s problems . . . I’m a storyteller . . . I tell stories . . . I share my life experiences . . . that’s all . . . I’m an informant . . . explaining high-context stuff . . . poeta.

. . . people surf the web because they want a solution . . . to know how-to-do something . . . people who read my blog stumble on it thanks to a search engine . . . keywords . . . I know cos I check . . . I want to know . . . I need to know.

Some people might read previous posts . . . I hope . . . sometimes I talk about cooking . . . telling a story about my experiences cooking . . . packaged prepared food . . . adding extra ingredients . . . innovating . . . tossing ideas around like salad . . . but I don’t solve problems . . . I just add new flavors . . . I think of myself as a catalyst . . . a spark generator.

“Creating derivative content for social media, podcasts, and YouTube channels.” Don’t waste yer time . . . focus on what truly matters – the blog . . . quality content.

Your brain platter can only hold so much noodle before the pile starts spilling over onto the floor and you find yourself in the middle of big squirming puddle of food . . . . a toe-jam mukbang . . .

“Rather than feeling pressured to produce more, the best course of action is to produce less, but of higher quality.”

Research . . . research . . . research . . . even if you know the story firsthand start-to-finish . . . like “been there, done that” . . . enrich the story.

Enrichment . . . and I hate that w-o-r-d . . . grant writers use it a lot.

In closing . . . might I be so presumptuous as to remind you again of what my photography instructor at UCLA said to me, “Don’t let your photography become precious . . . if you do it will turn to shit.” Same goes for blogging . . . writing.

Thanks Barbara . . . I’m keepin’ it fresh . . . thinking of the Polaroids.

Haiku . . .

Five seven five

‘Merican English haiku sometimes miss the target . . . maybe the syllabic meter be wrong . . . or . . . or it miss th’ point.

When I was working graveyard at the P.O. there was this girl who sat beside me casing mail . . . “sticking the nails” . . . putting letters in the little square holes . . . “pigeon holes” . . . memorized locations based on subliminal data . . . which street went where . . . which letter carrier (mailman) got what . . . human letter sorting machines (LSM).

The letter sorting process was so mechanical . . . muscle memory . . . Oh yeh . . . we had the mechanical LSM’s . . . computerization human operators at the helm . . . “Stu . . . take the con while use the head . . .”

Carol and I used to indulge in haiku competitions while we worked . . . she would compose and recite then I had to compose something based on the content of her poema . . . and so it would go . . . continuing until we ran out of words or had our fill.

Japanese gentry in Edo period times used to have poetry gatherings . . . tea-n-crumpets . . . compose waka scribble . . . drinking cha make chawan . . .

In 21st Century Cali-forn-eye-ay . . . throwing it down . . .

Super Bowl . . . yeh man

Valentine Day tomorrow

Got a candy-gram.

Shit . . . wait . . . wat yu write is s’posed to suggest the season . . . anyway that’s what I heard.

So it’s seasonal

Writing the five seven five

Cold wind haiku . . . man.

‘Nother one . . .

In the cold stillness

Pull the blanket tight to me

Bright morning sunlight.

Go read some Basho . . . take the high road take the low road . . . hilly nakasendo or tokaido down by the sea . . . red pill blue pill . . . got me?