The Old Mule

Brazil

Of interest, of course.

Federalists

Though bothersome to get through, this site, courtesy of  the Adbusters group (in grips of perpetual identity crises), is well worth investigation.

And yes, the promised yarn is forthcoming (though no yarn at all).

Signed,

Your Old Mule

Cold Swamp

I am headed into the wilderness. All weather outlooks are foreboding and I have lost my gloves. In older times, with my persistent frailties, I imagine I would be trusted to maintain the fire, reminisce on history or mediate marital unrests. The well set men would venture forth with grunts and vitriol. I might hang back and tend a covey of scribes. However, off I go.

On return, I shall recount the journey to an earth-warmed pool beneath the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental.

Flowering Apricot

We have purchased a home. Now, I assure you, this is a terrifying step towards adulthood. I can hardly comprehend the amount of money we shall owe to the bank. I have trouble conceiving of what I might do next week, much less 30 years from now. But, I must admit a grand sense of excitement.

We have been ravishing home design magazines and décor digests, prowling depot stores and wondering how we might furnish the fine habitat. We looked at a fine three-leaved maple dining room piece, but I sense we might have to make do with a card table.

I have been planning the landscape, and I am thrilled to undertake my long-standing vision of the yardless garden, with daphne, obtuse conifers, plenty of color, and, without doubt, a Prunus mume.

The home inspection is tomorrow. I plan to crawl beneath the thing, and really see what it is that will be holding us up.

Ten Degrees

Every so rare often, I stumble upon a poem so perfect it demands to be shared. This must be read aloud, in a drafty room, beneath covers:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/docs/2005/01/17/#wednesday

The Untrodden

Kinsey roamed the lumbered hills of the Pacific Northwest. The excitment must have been ravishing.  

The Memory of Battle

We strode upstream at an anxious pace,
Bracing for a foul rationed winter
And ungentle men.

Botanical etchings,
Pistols, memories of fecund women
With swollen breasts –
Headstrong keepers of sanity,
At a home now far gone.

Each edge must be transgressed
In order to understand the horror
Of gravity. Forward we pull
With methods of mind-numb vigilance;
Pride too early spent –
The leavings: survival and fear.

It is August now, my forbidden month.
I climb one last hill
To survey the unknowable.
There bends the crooked trace of battle.
In a dust of years, we too shall be cast
Among the valley’s growing pines.

Our children climb
On lawns lain green with rain.
A gift, the reason to move on,
Survives each inquisition.

Beyond infernal battles,
The ghosts of family bind back
Into pleasant music, or memory.

Hiroshi Watanabe

If you have a moment, I recommend Hiroshi Watanabe.

Winter

The nomads wander south
As ice breaks and limbs bend
In heavy breezes.

Is this the year of the bear?
Calendars conflict and the wisdom
Of fire and history
Is born down into
Scattered and modern minds.

Ruthless artic. The chill
Of miscommunication.
The solid freeze that is rendered
Fluid and sent upward.
Our spirits rain on us.
Great tragedy, almost, would there
Not a new beginning.

Lorca

Tonight we gathered around a fine meal. What gifts I am humbled to have: health, friends, plenty of fine food and clean water, a home and so much more. We spoke poems and shared stories – really heard each other, and listened to an old Cole Porter record. The room was filled with camellias, cut from my grandmother's garden. She turned 92 yesterday, and she supervised my harvest from a huge beveled glass window, cracked enough to command me in my search.

There are momentary grasps of time which are truly lived and felt. Oh how I wish to could hang on tight with my fingers, greedily clutch those moments and keep them ever-present, sequestered, smooth like a pocket-stone. My heart is free and then confined and then free again. In moments I live, in too many I pass time. Tonight was a night of noise and silence, fish and vines; or, told different, Thamar and Amnon.