MYSTERIOUS GARDEN

I  found a message on the garden slate. So far as I could translate, it read: "For we already sing of highest adventure, a newly paved main road and gate-lights" --then trailed off into flowers and earth. 

 I walked south into our woods and scanned for clues, saw some suspects then sat down on a log. "There are lots of lovely creatures
out here, but which of them is capable of attempting French graffiti?"                                          

                                                     

                                           "Mwah??!!" I exclaimed.

  "No, 'Moi'..."

  "E(a)rnest? Is it you?"

  "Mai oui, cher humain...Un instant..." He adjusted a tiny dial on his  chest. "There! I'm set to English again."

   "E(a)rnest, what is that dial attached to?"

   "To moi --I mean me. We squirrels have brains about the size of thimbles. Couldn't learn languages so we developed technology to do the job for us."

   Something didn't sound right but I didn't pursue it. I decided to learn more. "Why change languages in the first place?"

   "Well, because in case you hadn't noticed, a thousand acres across your road has got subdivided and crowded with housing tracts and apartment buildings and it won't stop there. We rodents are getting forced out. Bunch of us are going to France --otherwise, it's war."

   I answered with a sigh,"Ah, c'est la guerre."

   "Luh Gare?" he asked. "Why should I say that?"                                       

TIME CANYON

 

                                         [Normaphoto: Sacramento Valley]

 

 In the canyon, roars

Of dinosaurs still

  Echo --will always, I

         Guess --in temporal      

       Hills and clefts, quicken,

  Pitch and fly apart

       As hearts, stricken, break 

   In an echo's wake.

 

ORNITHO-PAREIDOLIA

 

[Normaphoto]

 

 

 

 

I am using backlog Normaphotos here and elsewhere because google seems to have completed modification of their (once free) image-storage-retouching site. I could be wrong because it happened while I was in hospital for brain surgery and since release I have improved mainly from just forgetting to forgetting what I forgot. Is anybody working on this? 

Incidentally, human brain only weighs about three pounds but contains about 100 billion neurons. Those cells are in constant congress with one another, which is why we might see a birdlike face in a peeling piece of eucalyptus bark. That's pareidolia fer- all-a-ya.

 

 

 

Monumental Inaccuracy

 

As can be seen in this Normaphoto, the figures of ... 

                                         [Normaphoto in Golden Gate Park,San Francisco]

 ... two Weimar "sturm und strang" luminaries in poetry/dramatic arts, Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, have been updated. 

 

Unfortunately, the modification has proved less than successful. As the photo shows, Schiller is depicted as shorter and older than his friend, Goethe, when in reality he was 19 centimeters taller and 10 years younger.

 

 

 

Turkey Day

 

 

Dawn of the Romantic Era

  

[page: Mr. Rexroth's book "100 More Poems from the Japanese"]

[geodoodle:  Masaoka-san looking up at Kenneth Rexroth's translations] 

[geopoem: with Masaoka Shiki's poem in mind after snow trip in Sierras around 40 years ago]

I suspect it would be useful to send and receive thoughts back and forth trough time in positive and constructive ways, sort of like a cultural climacteric. A good example would be Austria, around year 1800, when Classical music went through Schuberty.

 

Anthrozoology and Football-Origin

 

[geodoodle]

Illustration over this text is an x-ray of a mummified football found recently in Rome. A team of anthrozoologists was called in and determined the specimen in excess of 2000 years old. Signs of skeletal trauma suggest the poor creature had been repeatedly kicked and thrown --modern science refers to it as Peditesphera.

Exhaustive research of surviving Greco-Roman sports literature supports the theory that p.-sphera replaced earlier, solid marble balls after centuries of goal-kicking and pass-receiving injuries to players. 

Later, Ius Animalis Actisvarum (animal rights activists) developed a method of inflating rubber sheaths with compressed air and modern footballs appeared. The immediate predecessors were free to rejoin the evolutionary pageant, grow wings etc. and are now known as ducks.