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Thursday, June 18, 2020

That Blue Thing

12 years ago I posted a poem without a photo. There was a NASA photo of  the Blue Thing, but I didn't know how to extract and transport it, so I didn't, until now. I've been using public-domain photos for years, but this time the result included a vertical white line which I covered up by smearing white down its left side. Is anybody else having this problem?

                                                                                    Nasa Image, Spitzer, Star Vega 
 Here is the poem:                                      

Saturday, November 1, 2008


That Blue Thing

Darkness spills downhill,
Pools under trees and
Earth turns me to stars.
I locate Venus, Mars,
And that blue thing,
Then head home.
Doppler effect and
Some old ricochet you see,
Astonishingly old,
It or us rebounding,
Heading here, this garden--
A bridge of light sounding
Blue notes to this
Transpontine eye.
I don't know why, but
I think of love under
The blue thing,
Cross the shadows
And always head home.
********************************

Blue Thing is star Vega, which served for billions of years as the North Star, until she retired and the job was awarded Polaris --who apprenticed as handle tip of one of the dippers; forgot which one-- who is 400 lightyears more distant than Vega. Why am I telling you this?


I don't know! I'm  just sheltering in place. Brain's wandering in time and space --you know the feeling. We've already been invaded by beings from star Vega. They are called Vegans and they're ok. 

We have endured worse. In 1967 all the boys in my high school got called into assembly for a pitch from a member of the U.S. War Dept., Public Relations, General Staff.  At question time, I stood and asked how conscription could be reconciled with the 13th amendment. He said the president's power to raise armies took precedence over the 13th Amendment.I considered this a general Staff infection. But we mainly got through it.

Somewhere over this closing paragraph is Norma's view of the globe right now. She recently had a birthday that started with a dental appointment to get a crown installed. I consider it her coronation day, and suspect the handmade mask indicates regal defiance of corona virus. Let's all mainly get through it and be OK, like the Vegans.




Saturday, June 6, 2020

Odds, Gods and Cephalopods

I have been pondering in lockdown --as have we all, but it's still a lonely deal-- and have reached a point where memories intrude upon the present. They are fragmented things, but claim to have lessons  of continuance and triumph in them. Let's begin with government in a nutshell. I mean, everybody comes to Rick's. Metaphor: a place of odds, tin gods, possibility, chance that sometimes gets shut down by Inspector Renault when it suits survival (https://youtu.be/SjbPi00k_ME):


One finds oneself in a strange position of authority and disadvantage, obeying tyrannical orders versus personal equilibrium in state of awkward imbalance.

One finds oneself. Happily, many of us have never had to find ourselves because we were never missing. Others simply weren't careless enough to lose themselves.  However, too many settled their allegiance to 8-legged psychic monsters that clamped down their brains.

Some wait in Casablanca ("White House", en Espanõl) and wait and wait for the plane to Lisbon. My Portuguese Grandma Filamina would wag her finger and say, "Não fàceis!" And no, it is not easy.

As I've mentioned, the tenor of this post is a product of  lockdown, and not my finest work. I have been clearing my house of octopi -- 8-legged godless brain mollusks that get in through old plumbing.

What're the odds, eh?