It’s deep winter in the San Juans; madness lurks like a clown in a van outside an elementary school.
With few breaks, snow falls for a couple of weeks in February here in Siberia With a View. I’m grabbing my ankles, El Nino is ripping me up; I’m suffering mental roids from a meteorological fisting.
Things are not pretty. Continue reading
Thought for the day: When tracking coyotes, leave the Peekapoo in the car.
My daughter, Ivy, calls me to tender advice, push a plan.
“You need to renew your recreation center membership,” she says. “Think back to when you worked out in the weight room nearly every day; you were obsessed with lifting heavy things and putting them down again. You were a sturdy old guy. Remember?
“Now, “ she continues, “you’re obsessed with cheese, alcohol, weird weed tinctures, Czech porn, and pork shanks. It’s time to get back in shape, Dad, re-target your obsessions, hit the iron, pack on some muscle. You weigh the same as you did ten years ago, but the bulk relocated to a different neighborhood — around your midsection. I have to be honest, it’s sad. More than sad, but I can’t come up with a better term at the moment. I need a thesaurus.” Continue reading
I mine hypnopompic interludes for gems, remaining in bed for a quarter hour or so each morning while I wake fully, bedcovers pulled to my chin as I sift material from post slumber hallucinations.
Most mornings, I’m unable to retrieve the better ideas and images once I am awake and alert, though I sense them as they recede and dissolve. I know they are better because what I manage to recall is of little use once I sit down at the keyboard, or stand before the easel in the studio.
One morning, however, debris of value appears, keyed by my viewing of a news network program: “The Year in Review.” I snatch it up, hustle it to the surface, and kick-start an amalgamation of what, at other times, would be unrelated ideas and images. Not so, this day: I detect a pattern, elements dovetail neatly together; the pattern develops with distinctive, albeit unusual, internal logic. Continue reading
I’m watching television and, instead of studying repeat episodes of Live PD or Policewomen of Dallas as part of my ongoing investigation into oppression of the underclass, I have my set tuned to a “news” channel. The host discusses an interview with our current president, noting the number of lies our fearless leader tells per minute.
The chief executive outrages my liberal friends, but I like to remind them his behavior is not unusual. Most politicians of all stripes are grifters, hustlers in service to ready sources of money, nearly all of them bottom feeders and liars whose contrition when their cons are discovered issues not from a moral awakening, but is born in an attempt to conceal their frustration at being temporarily thwarted in their pursuit of funds, fame, and flings.
That said, there’s no denying the oaf in the Oval Office has set a standard that tinplate dictators, zealous ideologues, and oil-rich despots will be hard-pressed to top.
It’s like the time you hire an entertainer for Bitsy’s sixth birthday party. The doorbell rings, and you open it to find a grossly obese parolee in full clown makeup, drunk, vomiting in the flowerpot, and naked from the waist down but for a pair of grotesquely large shoes. Continue reading
