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Sunday, July 14, 2013

Brain-Kink Sermon


Sometimes Norma will compose a veggie face from her garden. Here is today's:
It brightens up our sideboard on this disturbingly hot Sunday. My job is to compose the sermon. And I am working on it, though with indifferent success. Nothing I have said to myself today has left any profound feeling behind it. This, and the heat and one thing and another results in brain-kink. I am reminded of gardening.

When I gardened for a living, sometimes my friend Rogelio would drive round and help me with big projects. One day, he was climbing out of the truck and stepped on a flattened aluminum can. Flattened aluminum cans on pavement are different  from littered leaves and paper wrappers. They are deceptive. When stepped on, they will skitter energetically away, bearing any amount of weight --indeed, converting it into horizontal acceleration-- ignoring all protest and this is what happened to Rogelio.

To his credit --or double credit to a man half his age-- he kept upright. One foot remained on the speeding can while all other limbs fought centrifugal, centripetal, gravitational and universal forces, known and unknown, that rule our lives.When he found his way back from whatever unseen distant place he'd slid and managed to dismount at, poor Rogelio was holding his side.

He said,"Iiiieeee! MygoddamnBACK!"

For several weeks I heard this exclamation repeated whenever Rogelio moved wrong. It became a kind of mantra, to which I responded by suggesting we sit down together. He refused to take a break of any sort while I continued working, so I had no other option.

Then I forgot to bring beer. "Are we in trouble?" I asked.

As a gang-mower roared by, I heard,"Es fácil salir...rumble rumble... de algo que...rumble... no está en." I took this to mean one has no difficulty getting out of something one was never in, or something is easy with rumbles, or rumble rumble rumble --which I accepted as a personal axiom that always gives me brain-kink.

Iiiieeee! MygoddamnBRAIN!

Go in peace.

16 comments:

  1. Well, at least you're blessed with wonderful veggies and a delightful face of them to face the brain-kink.

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  2. LOL Brain-kink. That's a good one. A little ironic coming from you!

    I love the veggie face.

    I enjoy your posts so much...even if sometimes I have to look up some words (!), and reread them two or five times (!!!).

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  3. "Centrifugal, centripetal, gravitational and universal forces....."

    Hell, even when you're experiencing brain-kink you astonish me.

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  4. Over here it's hot and humid and I'm in the middle of 'brain melt' which is probably a close relation of 'brain kink'. The universe is out to get us.

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  5. As in Guiseppe Acrimboldo's paintings: here the material (body) wins over the brain, at least in the case of your gardener-friend Rogelio. If he eats the spinach you show on your photo he will gain protecting (back) muscles like Popeye.

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  6. If you find out how to unkink it, please let us know. I have found myself in that condition also many times, Geo.

    Loving lettuce face; it makes me smile and sometimes that can unkink some of those brain cells.

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  7. Do you remember 'kick the can?'

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  8. It's funny, the older I get the more trouble I think I would have composing a sermon. My perceived perspicacity level seems to decline with each year. I guess as time passes we begin to understand what we do not know.

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  9. I love the veggie face! When my kids were little, they were obsessed with the books of Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann, especially "How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods."

    I hope Rogelio's back eventually got better.

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  10. Brain kink, huh? That sound much more dignified than the brain farts we usually suffer at our abode. Ya know, when you can't for the life of you remember something you should by-God know as well as you know your own name... uh... dude...

    Cute veggie face.

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  11. Your garden guy has a fat lip!

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  12. I love the final words of your sermon in your last Amend.

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  13. Just had a lovely catching up- I thought your sermon was superb and I am gently envious of your espresso cups :-) x

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  14. We all have to have something about which to swear.

    Love the veggie face. Love the veggies, perioud.

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