The Funambulist

 As a tightrope walker I have valued balance

As a dancer regards glissade, or cellist choosing

Unfretted notes as mountains range in parade. 

Equilibrium is all we ever had, balance in grace.

A song of freedom keeps us from going mad.

In this place, a bell of liberty tolls inside us,

In balance, seasons, summer to autumn sussurus,

The whole beautiful orbit and year around yet,

Beyond our balancing souls, makes no sound.

in progress

I don't know what to do with this post; don't know what to title it. Over the past week it's been a blank draft page labeled "in progress" but I am brave and foolish enough to proceed at random. Let's look at photos. These are Normaphotos of her kitchen counter. I'm behind the silver teapot on the right. My glasses are on the table, so you can't see me.

I don't know how this 2nd photo got in there but getting persistent pop-up declaring "update failed". It's another Normaphoto so I'll leave it because, for some reason, I can't knock it off the draft. Anybody else having this problem?

Oh, ok, I'll proceed with or without success to post a Normaphoto of our south-east porch and see what happens:

Ok, that came through pretty good. I'll try one more. For 3 or 4 years we've had a night-vision camera mounted by our back door.  Images go automatically to Norma's tablet. Last night I tried to sneak up on that device. I held my hands in the universal position of "being sneaky". The result:

It is how I look without makeup. Is anybody working on this?

The Enigma of Incoherence

 I'll begin with a favorite photo:

      As sandstone and shale succumb to the sea,

      Our souls' erosion forms what we will be. 

I believe we will become beautiful and full of mystery. Norma is. She telephones our San Francisco kids then predicts our valley weather. She says, "We get their weather when they're done with it." 2nd-hand weather. I don't mind. In 1967, two figments imagined each other, dreamt each other up and fell in love. We are still together. She is always right. Her cousins are never wrong. When they all visit, I run like hell. 

There are times when I am needed --when one appliance, waterpump, vehicle, toilet or another is churning in disrepair. My talent with such events is mirific. I excite wonder and astonishment among relatives. They mainly leave this hick alone.  However, a wooden fence I built 40 years ago recently showed signs of wear. It ran about 90 feet down our lane back to the barn I built 35 years ago. Norma wanted to rebuild it. Because I too was churning in disrepair, I suggested she hire it done. She emailed her brother, Bill:"The fencers are here planning to fence all morning!" 

Bill replied, "En garde!"

I sure like Bill.

 

 

Ensemble and Job Safety!

Here I am on the day election resolved into conniption, or vice versa. I am happy --perhaps I never look down. My forearms are mostly scar tissue now, after outdoor work in 2 strangely connected centuries. Yes, off and early on, I worked indoors and suffered 10 years of jumps, tyrants, subterfuges, people crying "out damned spot!" (Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 1), which causes Spot to dash out onto the street, get run over and likewise does damage to humans --even those not named Spot. Ergo, "Now thrive the armorers..." (Shakespeare, Henry V, prologue Act 2). This brings us to Don Santino:

It is not Spot. Don is an early 21st century gift from a beloved occupational-safety consultant. Despite my having retired from gardening public places in 2009, we have kept this outfit. As a wearable collection of hinges, levers, inclined planes and other safety devices it is unparalleled. I should have worn it oftener.

 

Looking For Answers Above

The enigma of mind that seeks information and guidance above and beyond one's own perceptions puzzles me.  I try to reply to such questions with respect, compassion and rely on what suave elocution a man of my age ought to have.

"Duh, hamina hamina hamina." I reply suavely. Then Norma sends me a photo:

It's as if we are in submarines, needing to see what's on and over the surface. We want periscopes. Cats already have them.

There are admittedly some puzzles we can solve with guesswork and logic. Example: What is the chief commercial export of the Arctic?

Frozen fish, of course.

But other questions need Science: like what happens when sunlight strikes an atmosphere of water, methane, ammonia, in combination with molecular hydrogen and atomic helium floating around a rockbound planet?

Why, it causes Uranus to turn blue.

 For all other speculation, spiritual and otherwise, I confidently refer readers to one of my favorite C&W performers, Slim Whitman:

"When my life is through, and the angels ask me to recall

The thrill of it all... I'll tell them I remember you." 

[I'd like to dedicate this post to all who have suffered loss]

 

Mysterious Movements Afoot!!

There are mysterious movements afoot! They are social, political, individual and seldom, if ever, addressed by news media. Surely we have all seen this sign protesting road work:

Add caption

When I was young, we used to contract dinosaurs to discourage unfair excesses of highway maintenance. It worked until their tails fell off and their teeth grew to where I couldn't tell them from relatives. It's getting rather late and I ought to include at least one more event  anent this subject. It is a demonstration conducted by strangely-dressed foreign people concerning Baron Geo.-Eugène Haussmann's 1853 urban renewal program in Paris. He retired in 1870 after snapping the curly streets straight but the work wasn't complete until the 1920s --which, as we were all taught in grammar school, touched off the French Revolution in 1789.

Their sign reads, of course, "END ROAD WORK!!!!!" 

Strange thing (enigmatic thing even) is I approve of road work. I mean people are safer without potholes and but sometimes I have to try looking at the other side of a thing and...well, it's getting on to 2 a.m. and I need to go to bed.  Anybody else going nuts in quarantine?

 

Devil In The Details

I'll begin with a Normaphoto taken last week. Somehow it captured my theological posture toward existence. It shows how I look from behind where horns hold my halo up. Hopefully it confuses demonic attackers who strike from the rear, or avenging angels above. A personal detail.

I don't begrudge this confusing feature.  I accept surreality, and yes reality , even though I don't always approve of it. A detail. Let us consider another detail: paper towels and the 20th century:
 Caption: He's one of the few physicists who has
                     conceptualized  Black-hole Theory:

I drew this on a paper towel many years ago --during my 1/2-hour lunch break at someplace I worked, possibly in the early 1970s. It may easily be the last surviving paper towel of the 20th century. I never made a fair copy of this doodle to submit to a periodical, as I sometimes did. It is just a detail. 

Then there's the big detail of the California sky. It has been brown again, very brown. It turns brown every summer and every fall brings out a tremendous amount of painters and scaffolding. Here is a photo over the Vineyard:

It usually consumes 8 or 9 months for crews to get the sky blue again, but this summer's been bad. Could take 2 or 3 coats. So our taxes go up. Small price to be penniless under blue sky.

Point is, Brain sometimes yields a pleasant, fun memory or constructive fantasy, even in these hard times. It's Brain's way of saying, "Just details. We got this." Don't forget to thank your Brain when that happens.