After several long years of personal solitude, I have finally grown sick of being alone.
Which is disconcerting because I've always admired the hermit and the recluse.
I've envied those who could venture off into the great distances and live humbly and alone.
But I do not live in a cob cottage out on some long-forgotten barren moor.
I do not live in a quiet cabin on the shores of a lake in the middle of the nearly impenetrable forests of the Alaskan Range.
I do not dwell in stone huts tucked away from the winds on St. Kilda, or on a lonely, unnamed river somewhere in the Great Slave Lake's basin.
I live amongst people. In a hamlet near a village outside a relatively well-populated post-Industrial city on the shores of a large lake across from one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the World. And I am lonely.
So I held my nose and signed on to a dating site.
A popular free site. And waited. And waited. For nothing. I was actually anxious for a while. But for no reason, really, because nobody said hello. No women in the vicinity were interested.
But I expected that. As a fat guy, I am used to that. You are not seen as being a sexual entity when you are fat. You are there. People like you, maybe, and think highly of you...but there is hardly any notion that you may have romantic potential; the thought is probably disturbing.
Then the other day, after months of nothing, I received a message. The woman was attractive and shared many interests with me. We've made small talk over the past couple days. And I am locked into the mindset that this can't happen because she will not come to see me as a sexual being; she will not recognize or acknowledge and chance for romance. Layers of fat will distort her view. And I can feel the negativity flowing. Pessimism. Rampant self-doubt. I am now more worried that she WOULD be interested and then that, upon meeting, she would be horrified or completely let-down.
Foolishness.
I have to punch myself back to normalcy.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Turning the dishes toward Aldebaran in a hopeless attempt to receive any transmissions from lonely Pioneer 10 (some 8,463,000,000 miles distant from Earth), nothing but the yawning static of the deep cosmos is heard. But always in the back of the mind is an image of the nearly dim instrument panels of Pioneer 10 blinking slowly while ramming through the Heliopause and slipping quietly into Interstellar Space.
What's the point of it all?
Fireworks, I suppose. A multi-colored crackle against the deceptively fathomable night sky. Walking outside and smoking underneath the branches of a dormant Maple. Listening to the muffled dispatches come across the World Band on strange and easily forgotten frequencies.
Drinking coffee and trying to imagine distant geographies.
Willing those geographies into familiarity.
Dropping off into sleep and not thinking about tomorrow's work day.
...
What should have been written:
You would be welcomed like Persephone after deepest Winter. The greening fields would be painted brown with the plow and planted with the thickest of crops, the better of which would grow to such density that Hades himself would never find you hidden amidst the foliage.
...
Every blade of grass is blown across the soundless space
Between the hill and the farmer's lazy wall
Where forever the battle-lines are drawn on chalkboards
Behind which directors dictate long and laborious lists
Of dog breeds. Of couse, it is all unimportant.
All of it completely inane.
I know, because I signed up for a class ten years ago
And forgot to attend. I walked across the road and entered
The swamp from its most accessible point. The weather was
Fair, but I still knew enough to bring along a rucksack. Or
Maybe better to call it a Haversack.
When you finish your classes and take your evening walk you
Will remember to tell your associates to dig the well as far
From the barn as you can. Keep the blueprints for future reference.
Maybe at first you will want to get an old-fashioned bucket to lower
Into the well while the water fills in over a month or so.
There is something to be said for submergible pumps,
But that is a topic for another day
...
It's a good life if you don't weaken.
My shoulders hurt as if someone were punching them repeatedly and causing a charley horse (though, I am aware that charley horses are an 'ailment' of the thigh).
I have been reading about experiments and trials being conducted on the feasibility of growing 'exotic' grains such as Quinoa and Amaranth in colder, northern climates. I read the germination and soil culture descriptions for Quinoa in a seed catalog and it strikes me as completely feasible. What isn't feasible is me being able to devote enough time to the cultivation of grains in my gardens. I would like more time to pursue such experiments; to grow Amaranth or Quinoa, to vastly enlarge the herb garden and even cultivate heirloom or ancient herbs like Mandrake or Valerian.
The sap is starting to flow in the Sugar Maple trees. You can almost hear it coursing up and down the phloem and xylem tubes.
I was going to construct an elaborate metaphor involving a lumbering, difficult steering ship trying to navigate short routes through narrow passages. But it was too foolish and too bland.
It's a good life if you don't weaken.
...
It's an echo, but it's a good life if you don't weaken. Really. Even today, with relief emerging like a Vernal breeze in March, I am kicking over frost mounds and unstooping my shoulders underneath the half-lit sky. An armistice, a pact, with details to be hammered out later with much scrutiny. But a cessation all the same.
Last night I recalled a story written by Wallace Stegner that had a businessman travelling through rural Alberta during the Wintertime. His car breaks down and he is forced to walk a mile in the bitter sub-zero temperatures to the nearest homestead. In that house was a very old man being cared for by an eight year-old boy. The boy was furiously trying to keep the woodstove stoked and the room heated enough to keep out the relentlessly creeping cold. I don't remember what happened, exactly, but I think the old man dies only after the travelling businessman attempts to get the old man into town using a horse-drawn sleigh. But I remember the eight year-old boy struggling to fight off the cold, how much work must have gone into that, and how nice that warmth must have felt. Again, a good life if you don't weaken.
How long does one wait for that brief moment of shared silence when thoughts are being generated for the next round of conversation? I can wait for years, actually. I am able to wait years for half-smiled 'hellos.' I've patiently waited three years for the perfect Asparagus to grow to its full potential. I've let the Chamomile establish itself over the course of four years so that this year I may enjoy the strongest of teas.
...
Squinting Sun all day.
Bitter cold carried on a slight wind like a freezing breath or the displacement of chilled air when the freezer door is closed quickly.
Snow cover is thin and, in the unencumbered Sunlight, the matted yellow turf shows through, despite the chill.
Loam is a very earthy, composted and humus-y soil, but in the waning days of Winter and the fledgling days of Spring, Loam is also what you call the gravelly detritus scraped across with the snowplow and deposited on the lawn all Winter.
Loam is like an incredibly short-term glacial deposit.
There are Cardinals clamoring somewhere in the distance.
I begin to imagine seven-feet tall stands of Joe Pye Weed and dense patches of Wormwood.
I can listen to at least five conversations at once, understand the gist of what is being talked about, and follow the progress all while I sit quietly and stare at a distant television showing the day's highlights in a sport that I do not much care about or follow.
I have a difficult time hiding my amusement when someone is being pretentious, especially when they are so completely sincere. Saving the world with your art is simply too naive in this day-and-age.
I respect music from the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s because so many popular musicians were popular despite being quite unattractive. Some bands, like the Scorpions and Quiet Riot, were downright ugly. Ronny James Dio was both old and ugly. Seals and Croft were ugly with a sinister disposition and - yet - 'Summer Breeze' was beloved. Millions of Americans made sweet love with that song playing in the background. Today, of course, none of these musicians would be anywhere near the popular charts. Some call that progress.
Quark-Gluon Plasma - I am interested enough to have spent several hours last night reading about it. I came away with very little other than it seemed to have existed shortly after the Big Bang and may be a new phase of matter. High temperatures, ions smashing into each other, dogs and cats living together...Mass Hysteria. I'd post some links of the CERN website I was reading, but who cares, really?
I recently acquired an anthology of ancient Tamil poems translated by A.K. Ramanujan and called, simply, 'Poems of Love and War.' I highly suggest it. Here is a taste from the Purananuru:
Waterfalls sounded
one one side
and on another.
the clear liquor
spilling over
when poured into the bowls
of minstrels
would turn the stones in its stream
as it flowed,
on the hill
of that sweet man
bitter only to enemy kings
with elephants
and many spears.
But no more.
There is much talk of jasmine, Sirissa petals being cool and soft, aruku grasses having roots like a Mandrake's while its leaves are fragrant and as blue as a washed Sapphire. There is talk of hair being as lustrous as the petals of un-named plants that live in shallow pools and that the fresh-picked flowers that hide her private parts still attract bees. Of course. It is dense and aromatic and completely alien.
Fuck it.
...
I like an economy of words.
It makes sense to me to keep it as short as possible.
I also like a few terse descriptions and a quick little simile or metaphor.
Quick. Taut. Climbers on belay. A garage door's tension cable.
With that all that said, I admit that I respect verbose, purple, almost graphomaniacal writings that use torrential downpours of words to hammer the point away. Again and again. It strikes me as effective. Affective. If there is one sparkling Sapphire in that mess of shit-brown clay and muck, then it is almost worth it.
Almost worth it because some writers tend to strip-mine and use water-blast pits for lack of patience. Bulldoze the top of a mountain rather than lay-out an elegant scheme of shafts and causeways, elevators and vents. They would rather create debris fields the size of Lake Erie than give rise to an entire working-class sub-culture. They would rather choke the skies with diesel smog and the roar of a Cat D11 than give rise to Molly Maguires, Coal Miner's Daughters, and muffled booms. But that's their choice, obviously. It worked for someone, I'm sure.
I bring this all up because I happened upon some music by Kraftwerk. It's just horrible. It is music made for people who really, despite their pretentions, secretly hate music but want to keep up appearances. It is technology being choked by the limp hand of people who bought an Apple IIe with the intention of creating awesome BASIC-based games, but got caught up in the TV dramas of Scarecrow and Mrs. King or the A-Team. That's Kraftwerk. That's a lazy writer.
Plus I wanted to be able to mention the Caterpillar D11 Bulldozer because an old fellow who does some courier work for our warehouse was talking about them today in the dispatch office.
What's the point of it all?
Fireworks, I suppose. A multi-colored crackle against the deceptively fathomable night sky. Walking outside and smoking underneath the branches of a dormant Maple. Listening to the muffled dispatches come across the World Band on strange and easily forgotten frequencies.
Drinking coffee and trying to imagine distant geographies.
Willing those geographies into familiarity.
Dropping off into sleep and not thinking about tomorrow's work day.
...
What should have been written:
You would be welcomed like Persephone after deepest Winter. The greening fields would be painted brown with the plow and planted with the thickest of crops, the better of which would grow to such density that Hades himself would never find you hidden amidst the foliage.
...
Every blade of grass is blown across the soundless space
Between the hill and the farmer's lazy wall
Where forever the battle-lines are drawn on chalkboards
Behind which directors dictate long and laborious lists
Of dog breeds. Of couse, it is all unimportant.
All of it completely inane.
I know, because I signed up for a class ten years ago
And forgot to attend. I walked across the road and entered
The swamp from its most accessible point. The weather was
Fair, but I still knew enough to bring along a rucksack. Or
Maybe better to call it a Haversack.
When you finish your classes and take your evening walk you
Will remember to tell your associates to dig the well as far
From the barn as you can. Keep the blueprints for future reference.
Maybe at first you will want to get an old-fashioned bucket to lower
Into the well while the water fills in over a month or so.
There is something to be said for submergible pumps,
But that is a topic for another day
...
It's a good life if you don't weaken.
My shoulders hurt as if someone were punching them repeatedly and causing a charley horse (though, I am aware that charley horses are an 'ailment' of the thigh).
I have been reading about experiments and trials being conducted on the feasibility of growing 'exotic' grains such as Quinoa and Amaranth in colder, northern climates. I read the germination and soil culture descriptions for Quinoa in a seed catalog and it strikes me as completely feasible. What isn't feasible is me being able to devote enough time to the cultivation of grains in my gardens. I would like more time to pursue such experiments; to grow Amaranth or Quinoa, to vastly enlarge the herb garden and even cultivate heirloom or ancient herbs like Mandrake or Valerian.
The sap is starting to flow in the Sugar Maple trees. You can almost hear it coursing up and down the phloem and xylem tubes.
I was going to construct an elaborate metaphor involving a lumbering, difficult steering ship trying to navigate short routes through narrow passages. But it was too foolish and too bland.
It's a good life if you don't weaken.
...
It's an echo, but it's a good life if you don't weaken. Really. Even today, with relief emerging like a Vernal breeze in March, I am kicking over frost mounds and unstooping my shoulders underneath the half-lit sky. An armistice, a pact, with details to be hammered out later with much scrutiny. But a cessation all the same.
Last night I recalled a story written by Wallace Stegner that had a businessman travelling through rural Alberta during the Wintertime. His car breaks down and he is forced to walk a mile in the bitter sub-zero temperatures to the nearest homestead. In that house was a very old man being cared for by an eight year-old boy. The boy was furiously trying to keep the woodstove stoked and the room heated enough to keep out the relentlessly creeping cold. I don't remember what happened, exactly, but I think the old man dies only after the travelling businessman attempts to get the old man into town using a horse-drawn sleigh. But I remember the eight year-old boy struggling to fight off the cold, how much work must have gone into that, and how nice that warmth must have felt. Again, a good life if you don't weaken.
How long does one wait for that brief moment of shared silence when thoughts are being generated for the next round of conversation? I can wait for years, actually. I am able to wait years for half-smiled 'hellos.' I've patiently waited three years for the perfect Asparagus to grow to its full potential. I've let the Chamomile establish itself over the course of four years so that this year I may enjoy the strongest of teas.
...
Squinting Sun all day.
Bitter cold carried on a slight wind like a freezing breath or the displacement of chilled air when the freezer door is closed quickly.
Snow cover is thin and, in the unencumbered Sunlight, the matted yellow turf shows through, despite the chill.
Loam is a very earthy, composted and humus-y soil, but in the waning days of Winter and the fledgling days of Spring, Loam is also what you call the gravelly detritus scraped across with the snowplow and deposited on the lawn all Winter.
Loam is like an incredibly short-term glacial deposit.
There are Cardinals clamoring somewhere in the distance.
I begin to imagine seven-feet tall stands of Joe Pye Weed and dense patches of Wormwood.
I can listen to at least five conversations at once, understand the gist of what is being talked about, and follow the progress all while I sit quietly and stare at a distant television showing the day's highlights in a sport that I do not much care about or follow.
I have a difficult time hiding my amusement when someone is being pretentious, especially when they are so completely sincere. Saving the world with your art is simply too naive in this day-and-age.
I respect music from the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s because so many popular musicians were popular despite being quite unattractive. Some bands, like the Scorpions and Quiet Riot, were downright ugly. Ronny James Dio was both old and ugly. Seals and Croft were ugly with a sinister disposition and - yet - 'Summer Breeze' was beloved. Millions of Americans made sweet love with that song playing in the background. Today, of course, none of these musicians would be anywhere near the popular charts. Some call that progress.
Quark-Gluon Plasma - I am interested enough to have spent several hours last night reading about it. I came away with very little other than it seemed to have existed shortly after the Big Bang and may be a new phase of matter. High temperatures, ions smashing into each other, dogs and cats living together...Mass Hysteria. I'd post some links of the CERN website I was reading, but who cares, really?
I recently acquired an anthology of ancient Tamil poems translated by A.K. Ramanujan and called, simply, 'Poems of Love and War.' I highly suggest it. Here is a taste from the Purananuru:
Waterfalls sounded
one one side
and on another.
the clear liquor
spilling over
when poured into the bowls
of minstrels
would turn the stones in its stream
as it flowed,
on the hill
of that sweet man
bitter only to enemy kings
with elephants
and many spears.
But no more.
There is much talk of jasmine, Sirissa petals being cool and soft, aruku grasses having roots like a Mandrake's while its leaves are fragrant and as blue as a washed Sapphire. There is talk of hair being as lustrous as the petals of un-named plants that live in shallow pools and that the fresh-picked flowers that hide her private parts still attract bees. Of course. It is dense and aromatic and completely alien.
Fuck it.
...
I like an economy of words.
It makes sense to me to keep it as short as possible.
I also like a few terse descriptions and a quick little simile or metaphor.
Quick. Taut. Climbers on belay. A garage door's tension cable.
With that all that said, I admit that I respect verbose, purple, almost graphomaniacal writings that use torrential downpours of words to hammer the point away. Again and again. It strikes me as effective. Affective. If there is one sparkling Sapphire in that mess of shit-brown clay and muck, then it is almost worth it.
Almost worth it because some writers tend to strip-mine and use water-blast pits for lack of patience. Bulldoze the top of a mountain rather than lay-out an elegant scheme of shafts and causeways, elevators and vents. They would rather create debris fields the size of Lake Erie than give rise to an entire working-class sub-culture. They would rather choke the skies with diesel smog and the roar of a Cat D11 than give rise to Molly Maguires, Coal Miner's Daughters, and muffled booms. But that's their choice, obviously. It worked for someone, I'm sure.
I bring this all up because I happened upon some music by Kraftwerk. It's just horrible. It is music made for people who really, despite their pretentions, secretly hate music but want to keep up appearances. It is technology being choked by the limp hand of people who bought an Apple IIe with the intention of creating awesome BASIC-based games, but got caught up in the TV dramas of Scarecrow and Mrs. King or the A-Team. That's Kraftwerk. That's a lazy writer.
Plus I wanted to be able to mention the Caterpillar D11 Bulldozer because an old fellow who does some courier work for our warehouse was talking about them today in the dispatch office.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Profoundly sad.
In so many ways.
For different reasons.
I let hope swell. I left my rational mind at home.
I didn't want much, but I know better. I should be happy with allotted goods. To ask for more is to seem ungrateful. But only in my convoluted little wedge of the universe.
Seeking shelter from the rain in a wet cave.
Fire impossible. Just have to wait it out and move on from there.
With wet shoes.
With no compass save for Sunny days and clear nights.
In so many ways.
For different reasons.
I let hope swell. I left my rational mind at home.
I didn't want much, but I know better. I should be happy with allotted goods. To ask for more is to seem ungrateful. But only in my convoluted little wedge of the universe.
Seeking shelter from the rain in a wet cave.
Fire impossible. Just have to wait it out and move on from there.
With wet shoes.
With no compass save for Sunny days and clear nights.
Monday, February 9, 2009
- Pyrethrum can either be called Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium or Tanacetum cinerariifolium. There is some argument about whether the plant belongs with Chrysanthemums or with Tansy and Feverfew. I am leaning toward the Tansy, which is to say that I am leaning toward Tanacetum.
Tanacetum seems like a promising Genus. Tansy (C. vulgare) and Feverfew (C. parthenium) are two of the major species, and I recently read about another, Costmary (C. balsamita). Costmary (also called Alecost) grows as a wasteground weed around here, I believe. Culpepper mentions its help in aiding the body to "digest the raw humors gathered therein."
I will hopefully start seedlings for a couple different species of Nicotiana.
-Yesterday at work: The clouds in the Northern sky over the Lake, a stone's throw from the warehouse, were piled together and dark purple with impending Lake Effect. The Southern sky was a vast saucer of skim milk with a pale Lemondrop floating around aimlessly.
I dispatched drivers to Syracuse with Xerox machine parts and contemplated the many varieties of Nicotiana. I have seeds for N. tobacum (Russian Red Tobacco) and N. rustica (Mohawk Tobacco), but I am looking into a few cultivars that have been grown successfully in the short growing seasons of Wisconsin. I imagine it will be an investment in the future to be able to produce my own tobacco. Someday, though, I may have to plant it in my basement, in between rows of corn, or in anonymous glens and ravines underneath a thick canopy of deciduous trees so as to avoid the Sheriff's attention.
-An Arctic vortex centered near Yellowknife has spread itself out over the region. You can hear the air tighten; any movement of air sounds like an invisible set of chimes.
In this chilly evening, the play of the driving and bitter snow in the dull glow of yardlights and houselights seems almost like countless Alka-Seltzer tablets dissolving in a vast aquarium.
Somewhere, in the cold distances beyond the Sun's termination shock, a lifeless Pioneer 10 floats on toward remote Aldeberan.
Tanacetum seems like a promising Genus. Tansy (C. vulgare) and Feverfew (C. parthenium) are two of the major species, and I recently read about another, Costmary (C. balsamita). Costmary (also called Alecost) grows as a wasteground weed around here, I believe. Culpepper mentions its help in aiding the body to "digest the raw humors gathered therein."
I will hopefully start seedlings for a couple different species of Nicotiana.
-Yesterday at work: The clouds in the Northern sky over the Lake, a stone's throw from the warehouse, were piled together and dark purple with impending Lake Effect. The Southern sky was a vast saucer of skim milk with a pale Lemondrop floating around aimlessly.
I dispatched drivers to Syracuse with Xerox machine parts and contemplated the many varieties of Nicotiana. I have seeds for N. tobacum (Russian Red Tobacco) and N. rustica (Mohawk Tobacco), but I am looking into a few cultivars that have been grown successfully in the short growing seasons of Wisconsin. I imagine it will be an investment in the future to be able to produce my own tobacco. Someday, though, I may have to plant it in my basement, in between rows of corn, or in anonymous glens and ravines underneath a thick canopy of deciduous trees so as to avoid the Sheriff's attention.
-An Arctic vortex centered near Yellowknife has spread itself out over the region. You can hear the air tighten; any movement of air sounds like an invisible set of chimes.
In this chilly evening, the play of the driving and bitter snow in the dull glow of yardlights and houselights seems almost like countless Alka-Seltzer tablets dissolving in a vast aquarium.
Somewhere, in the cold distances beyond the Sun's termination shock, a lifeless Pioneer 10 floats on toward remote Aldeberan.
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