Sun, 30 Nov 2014, 05:10 PM (-06:00)
It was a beautiful day.
Although the wind was windy, the sun was warm, and the sky was blue. In the afternoon, the leaves of the Monterey Oak glowed in the slanting rays of the lowering sun.
An amateur brush such as this can’t hope to render the tree as it stands outside the window. But than it can paint out the street and the garbage cans along the curb. And it can paint a two-fer … um … of sorts.
I am thankful this weekend for the fair and industrious Trudy. And for my mother who travelled great distances to visit. And I am thankful for a son who is … well … somewhere not sure where, but who did visit for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day. (I envy his ability to stay incommunicado for such long periods of time, I really do. … No, what am I saying … I don’t.) And I am thankful for my father far to the north who undoubtedly has the same complaints about his son as I do about mine.
Ok, and so that’s karma. No sooner do I write that whine and the prodigal son calls. “Are you up for a visit?” he asks in a chipper voice. So he’s on the way. And I am so busted, because now it’s only my father who has grounds for whining.
Sat, 22 Nov 2014, 12:55 PM (-06:00)
Because methinks one can never have too many leafez.
(Your mileage may vary.)
Fri, 21 Nov 2014, 09:17 PM (-06:00)
1.
Manny stopped by my desk on his way out of the building. It was Friday. Not many people were left.
“I remember the interview,” he said. Manny told me that he had wondered if the guy was for real. “Could anyone really be that chipper, that optimistic, energetic? He talked non-stop!”
I was tempted to confess being on the other end of the spectrum. But then, he surely knows that.
Eeyore comes to mind, perhaps? My mother called me loose lip. Let’s just say that I lost my rosy glasses.
2.
I’m sitting in the study on a dark and rainy night. The fair and industrious Trudy is far away. It’s very quiet here.
iTunes helps. Bob Schneider, The World Exploded into Love. Bryan Ferry, Love is the Drug. And now there’s another Bob Schneider song. And Mr. Guinness is staring around the corner, alternately sitting and standing wagging his tail. And Miss Izzy is curled up cozy in her bed.
I take out a pen and scribble a little something. Some green. Scribble. Some yellow. Scrabble. Some more green. A little orange. A crooked line around the periphery. Some initials. And… Send!
Within minutes an email hits my in box.
Like! says Trudy.
Wink! I reply.
And oh look, I think I have found those rosy glasses.
Fri, 21 Nov 2014, 07:12 PM (-06:00)
Ursula Le Guin stands at the podium to accept her award.
“We live in Capitalism,” she says.
She looks out at the audience and raises her eyebrows and shrugs just a little.
“Its powers seem inescapable.”
Here she pauses a moment and looks up again folding her arms on the podium. She leans forward.
“So did the Divine Right of Kings.”
And here she stops for just a moment to let her words sink in.
Watch her.
Mon, 17 Nov 2014, 08:05 PM (-06:00)
Look hard. Do you see it? Over there behind the fungus peeking up from the mould at the base of that tree. Do you see it? Look harder. Squint your eyes. Do you see it? There’s a forest in those trees.
photo: david hasan | central michigan | summer 2014
