http://whalesbreath.blogspot.com/

The new blog, 'whale's breath', is up and running. You can find it here: http://whalesbreath.blogspot.com/

Thank you, and happy new year!

linda

afterword

yesterday, i labeled my post with three hash marks (# # #), the traditional writer's symbol for the end of a manuscript. Barring a series of afterwords, this entry marks the end of the blog Grandfather's Shirt (pleatedmile.blogspot.com). The adventure leading to that last post felt like the culmination of a chapter in my life, and, in a parallel way, the chapter of Grandfather's Shirt.

Now, i'm ready to take some time off as the year closes; I'll post word as another blog comes to birth, perhaps with the new year.

My missing yellow pencil found its way back to me, and i press it furiously to paper in many of my works of art. i press it here with the same love.

# # #

'I don't believe,' the traveler said to the statue. He heard a reply. 'You don't have to believe. You just have to show up.'

receipt novellas

A few months ago, I mentioned here the fabulous paper receipts that come from pharmacies and groceries and the like. The lengths of the receipts are so generous, one could write a novella on the back.

I sincerely believed this. It was as though I'd laid a challenge for myself on the table.

Well. This week, I not only completed a 7th paper receipt novella, but this one was a 3-parter.

for Mr. Rodrigue

the monstr cloud
one eye glaring through
foggy swaths of steely gray
grins
with ferocious gaping teeth.
i will remember you

love for the bugs

it is difficult to get your soil outdoors to produce natural foods without insects and mites and worms and grubs, all the fascinating life forms we used to say 'Yuk!' at when we were kids digging in the dirt with sticks. To help the earth nourish your little garden plants, your tomatoes and okra and raspberries and peas, it makes good sense to be hospitable to the critters that support the plants and their roots and pollination. Water and compost (especially including gooey eggshells and fungal mushrooms and active yogurt and moldy breads decomposing into the dirt) can help say 'Welcome!' to life.

I've been looking up different versions of the legend of the poinsettia. The gist of the story is this:

Long ago, a young child in Mexico looked forward to the village's annual Christmas celebration. One year, the child was worried. Other kids were bringing gifts to lay at the manger, and the child was poor with nothing to bring.

On the way to the celebration, the child saw some green weeds along the roadside, and felt an impulse to bring these to the manger. The child lay the weeds there and left.

In the days or minutes that followed, the weeds took root and grew into beautiful bright red plants. The villagers called the wild blooms 'Star of Christmas' and 'Flora de Noche Buena'.

i i i i i i i i i

I dotted some i's and dotted some more i's.
Rows of i's, like candles on a cake.
I had asked myself what I should write about, but there was no answer.

new and green
or crumbling on the twig
leaves maintain
their plucky outlook

One tradition my parents kept each year was sending Christmas cards to friends and family. Across almost sixty years of marriage, they may have missed only two or three holiday seasons. From a kid's perspective, it was a great tradition. There was a payoff to their efforts: we received holiday cards in return. Through the month of December and part way into January, fetching the mail from the mailbox was a treat. Any envelope addressed with a 'Mr. and Mrs.' that included 'and family' or 'and children ' or 'and daughters', we were allowed to open without parental presence. Inside the envelopes were pictures of the Nativity, or Three Wise Men trimmed in gold. There were glittered illustrations of snow, bells, holly, Christmas trees, angels, stars, ornaments, partridges and Santa Clauses.

Despite my notoriously bad penmanship, I was allowed to address the cards our parents were sending out, and that way got to know the names of their distant friends. (When I was grown up, I finally met some of these mysterious folks with the very familiar names.) My parents over time became sensitive to the different cultures their friends belonged to, and sometimes bought Hanukkah cards, or cards with more inclusive 'season's greetings'. As I addressed envelopes today, I thought about what a great tradition this is: the colorful stamps, the remembering each friend and family member with ink against paper.

Anyone who has worked in an institution for those with psychiatric disorders knows there are other ways to control a person's behavior besides physical force. Such methods have been called 'chemical restraints'.

Certain pharmaceuticals, used judiciously, can help persons who are psychotic, confused and/or anxious become calm and lucid. Some can keep a person who is distressed, noisy, dangerous, or just awake at inconvenient times knocked out. Regulations in the United States have prohibited their use without the permission of the client except when the individual is documented by more than one person to be a risk to self or others. Such medications - they are mostly prescription drugs - are used in facilities for the elderly, and with kids without psychiatric disorders who are more active than is convenient. The elderly may be given such medications for symptoms associated with dementia or other neurological and psychiatric issues. However, they too are sometimes treated just for being more active than is convenient. Persons who have been imprisoned at times are also administered such drugs.

when things are awry -

i helped an aluminum can on the edge of my path find its way to a recycle bin.

i like the idea when you come upon some little thing awry, take a moment to set it right.

there is feedback like reflection off a pond, and there is feedback with an agenda, aimed to manipulate behavior. I like the first.

there are designer relationships, and there is love - and I like the latter.

short-short story

'I'm turning off my freaking TV,' she thought,'and I'm going to freaking knit another freaking scarf.'

the right journey

we walk the right journey
but the wrong road -
the good firm earth
turns spongey -
with every step
the destination shifts.
the trusty north star
is lost behind
a patchwork of clouds -
we stride to a faint and distant melody -
our aching feet in touch
with the transforming path.

heaven

my idea of heaven
is skeins of yarn
near a sunlit window
and a little green tractor

my idea of heaven is
a flock of little birds
of many colors

do you remember parakeets?

my idea of heaven
is lots of marbles
in a drawstring bag

my idea of heaven
is a madras shift
with sandals

my idea of heaven
is the feel of a man's dress shirt
on a man's back

a box of painted wood blocks
a toddler dressed in washed cotton
a plate with a slice of cake

beer in a glass that's sat in the freezer awhile
or a glass of iced tea
leftover potato salad and
a cold slice of cantaloupe

the old couch
with the dark green floral fabric
the wood floor
and a cat on my bare feet

my idea of heaven
is goldfish in the horse trough
and my mother's old watch

my idea of heaven
is glaciers in the sunlight
open windows as the light fades
on a quiet night

cicadas singing
stars peppering a black sky
a silent friend in a coffee shop

In 9th grade, part of our English class included Greek/Roman mythology. Brutal, brutal stories! Three-headed dogs and ladies with snakes for hair! Goddesses changing young girls into spiders and men into grasshoppers! Gods throwing temper tantrums and flinging lightning bolts into the earth. Kings killing off their daughters' suitors. Jealousy, infidelity, and revenge around every corner. I felt deeply grateful that this was mythology, way far back in an unlikely past, and that nothing that powerful and capricious was in our realm of experience.

But now sometimes I wonder.

bulbs

Image of painting by Vincent Van Gogh via Wikimedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VanGoghIrises2.jpg


as we inch into winter temperatures, and the outdoor plants wither and droop without memory of the promise of spring, i think about bulbs. Lilies and tulips. Irises and onions. Daffodils and amaryllis. They come back year after year, and they actually depend on a freeze or two to get into the mood to bloom come spring. Fall and early winter are thus good times to plant bulbs - like, now for instance!

Irises tend to show up early. There was an oak in central Texas along a rural road. Each spring, irises would shoot upward in a circle around the trunk. What a spark of cheer after a drab winter to see the deep purple petals swaying and waving above the fresh green stems.



Onion bulb.
Image
via Wikimedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Onion_growing_shoots.jpg

My expectation was that I'd be a mother of daughters. That's where my experience lay: one of three sisters, 12 years of all-girls schools. Daughters would be companionable and familiar. Little Women in the 1990s.

I didn't know a thing about boys. Yet when the time came, two baby guys showed up, and I had a lot to learn and it was great. Boys are a lot of fun. I'm generalizing here, and it's not true for all kids, but girls like to talk and the boys tended to be more action. As a mother of sons, though I was curious about their friends and teachers, I never was told who said what at school, or who was no longer a friend of so and so because of this or that. The boys spent their time after school throwing a Nerf ball back and forth over the roof, or speeding down a hill on trikes they'd long ago outgrown or crashing through the house with phony swords and firefighter hats. They're grown up, but they haven't changed so much. It's been a good life, being a mother of sons.

Om

phrases from a Wikipedia article on 'Om':

'the basis of all uttered sound'

'The Sanskrit name for the syllable is praṇava'

'from a root nu "to shout, sound" '

' "to make a humming or droning sound" '


Happy Thanksgiving -

Happy Hanukkah

Baseball at Beekman's

the gentleman at the table was talking about when he was a kid in the 1930s in New Orleans, Louisiana. There was a store that sold men's goods called Beekman's. This is where he was fitted with his first pair of long pants, around age 7, for First Communion. Before that, he wore knickers. The transition from knickers to long pants represented a giant step toward manhood.

There was an overhang over the front of the store and when there were baseball games, a couple of fellows would man the canopy. They were able to receive data via telegraph from distant games in progress. As information flowed in, reduced to Morse code, one of the men at the New Orleans storefront would call the plays, like an announcer at the game. Because the information by telegraph was terse and limited, they filled in the blanks with action, with their own wild details of what could have led to the reported run or strike out. The people below loved the show.