Zuihitsu

[the mingo]

Today is Sunday?
no matter, its happened before
and will happen again
it is not dawn yet, electricity is my fire

Well, big deal, if the Cascadia fault hasn't given way yet ... that's what I'm really waiting for. Meantime a photograph of a wire fence alone beneath the sky somewhere in Wyoming haunts me at least to a seeming. All things pass but what could be done without it? I avoid philosophers and hope never to fall in love with one - I'd rather binge on episodes of "Bate's Motel". O that Norman!

I downloaded Grammarly.
Cool.

I shall post a poem this morning. I can't believe the things I write. The hinge on my chair has developed a deal of play. Sign of wear. The cat is out in the living room, I can't see her from here but know where she is because of the addition of a collar with a bell on it. The cat went nuts at first fitting, jumping up, spinning around, doing backflips & twisties trying to get the collar off. I laughed like hell. She wouldn't stop though which concerned me to the point of calling an exorcist or the boss Jesus Christ. She finally settled down about it. All those histrionics over a tiny bell. I was proud of her though, all that effort
in resistance to the rush of events.

No end to the things that make us crazy.

[tinkerjack]

so today is the sabbath some say
yesterday others say

but for me today is Sunday, the sun is shinning
but black clouds in the distance
I gotta ride this morning or my bike is a pumpkin

But first—
I got to check that grammarly out
i got to constantly back edit to fix things done
in the heat of the spirit animating my fingers as they jitterbug across the keyboard to the tune of a different drummer
Yes Sunday a day of rest
time to check out the beautiful people of studio eight

[the mingo]

Yeah, I'd say check it out, Jack. I only downloaded the free edition but it covers a lot of territory and works fairly smooth. I got the same problem as you with hyperspace jumping brain - never want to think about even the basics of punctuation & such when I got my fire on. Just want to write.
Lazy of me, I know.

[stilltrucking]

I installed the grammarly extension
I went with school and intermediate
English I hardly know, took a couple of college courses
hell I took a lot of college courses, in a college career that streched form the fifties to the seventies
then the road for twenty years
and then litkicks and now studio eight

[the mingo]

I took to the woods as a kid. Never went to college. Joined the Navy instead. I thought about that earlier today. I might be self-absorbed.
I wonder if it's too late to change. Maybe I should eat more honey. I've always liked Copperhead Road by Steve Earle.
It wouldn't be hard to eat more honey.

[the mingo]

Disclaimer: I do not own this poem / Nor have I care of it.

Only 94

I'm from America, please die
I mean it's weird
but I like it
and I'm the oldest patient here
about 102
there's a real Nazi in here
who's still got his SS dagger
nobody knows it but me
he worked for Josef Goebbels
and told me, "Goebbels was a bona fide nut case
but with a brilliant mind."

one day my night nurse tells me
"If you were 40 yrs younger I'd let you be my deluxe pony."

which is a hell of a thing to say
to a 102-year-old man
that knows a secret Nazi in here
what still has his SS dagger
who once worked for Josef Goebbels
and is only 94

Dear Night Nurse,
____________ You can just call me Daddy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHffJ0qC9Ko

[stilltrucking]

A perfect education for a truck driver
12 years of college, yes I am the eternal sophomore
a victim of the Faust syndrome
could never pick a major, took a smorgasbord of courses
nothing fit together for a degree
but it was fun
I wanted to see the big big picture
to understand the world around me
and within me

a college sophore emiritus these days
this grammarly is starting to anoy me
another layer I got to deal with before I can even fix typos and mispellings

I hope you can still folllow this

I was a city kid, wondered the back alleys and the waterfront

I was a little perfesser for my first five years of pjublic shcool
then as a prepubsecnt I lost interest in sitting in a class room

felt claustrophic constanlly gazing out the windows, then I started playing hookey
a perpetual truant, crazy mike got a letter from the school board threatening to fine him a 100 bucks a day if he did not send me to school. He started driving me to school, let me off at the front door—I would go in walk all the way through the school to the other end, and go out the back door but there was crazy mike waiting for me, he knew me, how does that grateful dead song go about "the father sat down and cried the day I was born""

I love the stars at night in the arizona desert\

I feel a part of it

oh verdant green texas
the weather so fine here
a zuZuzzzzzzZU kind of day

[sasha]

All through grade school I was the little puhfessah, too - even found out much later that was my nickname among the snarky girls in my class - didn't wear glasses yet, but was chubby, shy, & bookish, all sins worthy of punishment by exile. Did well in high school, went on to college knowing I wanted to be a physicist - but I there I learned I wasn't nearly as smart as I'd come to think I was, and if Vietnam hadn't been aflame, I might have dropped out. Pulled out of my sophomore slump, but not enough to haul my GPA back up to 3.0.

Got my degree in '72, and learned another lesson: A BS in Physics doth not a Physicist make. After kicking around in temporary construction gigs, I landed a job as a forklift driver. Stayed there for 2 years, sending out resume after resume, cover letter after cover letter - even answered a full-page ad in our college placement directory for a GS-7 position with the CIA. All for naught. Never heard back from the Naval Observatory, though.

Made my escape to become a (mainframe) computer programmer at a machine-tool manufacturer, beating out a more qualified applicant because I'd been paying my dues on the shop floor. Another 2 years. Fell in love - one-way - and got laid off in '76. But now that I had programming chops, I was hired a few weeks later by an insurance company. DREARIEST.APPLICATION.EVER. I became The Rebel. The Troublemaker. The Complainer. Came this close to getting fired, and wasn't only because they'd made the mistake of making me (temporarily) indispensible. Used the grace period to exit on my own, & took a job across town with another manufacturer, as an engineering technician. Less responsibility, 20% more pay - a no-brainer.

Stayed there over 20 years - had my ups & downs, but mostly ups. Worked my way up to staff scientist, earning a reputation as The Math Whiz, & another nickname: "Doc". I liked that. Had my own lab (well, shared with our optics guy), played with lasers while Mahavishnu and Anonymous 4 blasted from our homemade sound system - but all good things come to an end, and it did on Jan 9, 2002... another layoff. Twenty or more of us from R&D handed our hats. Never bodes well for a company's future when they start laying off R&D. That's the seed corn. But I had 10 months severance, and used the time to learn a new lesson - age discrimination is Real.

Finally got a job as a QC Tech at a medical supply company. Up to then I'd have said the insurance company was the worst place I'd ever worked. This place could have given seminars in medieval labor practices. But it was a steady paycheck - meager though it was - and I was coming within striking distance of retirement - so I gritted my teeth, coasted along, took all the bullshit I could stand, and in 2014 was granted early release in the form of another layoff. Six months shy of turning 65 - with six months' severance. Another no-brainer.

And that is Roy's (aka Sasha's) thumbnail bio. Thank you very much, you've been a beautiful audience.

[stilltrucking]

10-4 on
Asperger's syndrome and
"all that David Copperfield kind of crap"

Have you ever taken one of those psychological profile tests as part of applying for a job?

My favorite true-false question was this
"People can often feel my power" true or false

Too broke to retire
spent my future like I was running out of time
the last time I tried to add up the number of jobs I had the list was around 200, but that was thirty years ago when I was applying for a job as a cartman and needed a clearance from the US Customs service so I could go into the marine terminals in Baltimore to pick up trailers.
that was over thirty years ago, not sure how many I have had now. among my favorites were a projectionists at a drive-in movie, a commercial fisherman on the west coast, driving the elephant truck for a circus and being an elephant groom
lots of jobs, lots of homes
and a few women
and now these forlorn old rags
I say bring it on

good times bad times gimme some of that

[the mingo]

They taught me to read. For that one thing, I will always be grateful.

[the mingo]

Everybody is so human. It must be the God-made-man-in-his-own-image thing.

Should a poem sport a conclusion? Even metaphysically?
Should a poem wear a shirt? Should the shirt have a pocket?
Should the pocket have something in it?
Or be empty?
________________________________________

I saw a photo once of a wheelbarrow filled with bones. There was a hand-lettered sign on top of the bones.
One word on the sign: Promises. Here's to you, Frank Van Zant aka Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder -
hey hey ya hey hey
hey hey ya hey hey
hey ya hey ya
__________________

My bootprints and the cat's pawprints
mingle on the snow along the path to the house
this hardly ever gets remarked
new snow fills them in
then the snow melts and its secrets
are carried by the water it becomes
deep into the earth
__________________________

The vernal equinox is 13 days off as of this writing. It is snowing. Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder has been quoted as saying, sometime in 1973, 16 years before he shot himself, "The average American is incapable of knowing what’s valuable and what isn't." A shotgun statement for sure but not without truth as a target. Puts it on the plus side of the ledger for me.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

We always fail to write down what would most shine on us.
________________________________________

Everbody should have a zuihitsu. Out on my bike, every time I pass an old graveyard whose stones have been felled by frost-and-freeze cycles and the names & dates upon those stones worn to illegibility, I think everyone, as a matter of course, should practice zuihitsu.
Listen to music.
Dance.
Eat good food.

There are people I want to salute. I better get busy.

[the mingo]

Jack,
- - - - I never realized until I discovered zuihitsu for myself as a literary form that you have been writing zuihitsu for years, long before I got to Litkicks and then here. I've done a lot of reading of other zuihitsu over the past two years and your writings rank right up there with the best I have read elsewhere. No lie.

Jack Tillis - Salute !

[sasha]

A former mahmout, how cool is that!

When I was laid off from the scientist job, most of us had been with the company for decades, so we were directed to an outplacement service that helped us write our resumes, and coached us on what to expect in an interview. ("So tell me, what would you consider your greatest weakness?") We also took a personality test to help us identify other careers we might not have ordinarily considered. One of mine: Zoo Veterinarian. I wasn't interested in going back to school for the time I'd need to get all the qualifications, but on reflection it definitely would have been an appealing career path!

At the time I was in it, I hated the forklift gig - but time has rendered the memories in soft focus, and I have to admit it really was fun at times. I had my own special moves, and could transport a skid of loosely-bound books without losing the load - most of the time. I had my own spectacular disasters, too, but they're all part of the movie that is Me.

My dad hammered fiscal discipline into me at an early age, and I reduced it to practice during the lean times following my divorce. Even while paying an obscene amount of child support I was able to build up a healthy 401k and managed to pay off my mortgage 7 years ahead of schedule - but a whole lot of peanut butter and mac & cheese went down in the process. I'm comfortable enough now, but I won't be taking any ocean cruises any time soon.

=====================================================================

WHY NO ONE HIRES OLD GUYS

30something interviewer: "So, Mr. Larson, this is a very impressive resume, highlighting your strengths. But tell me, what would you consider your greatest weakness?"

60something applicant: "My greatest weakness?" (thinks for a second) "I guess that would be my honesty."

30something interviewer: "Your honesty!? I would think that to be one of your strengths!"

60something applicant: "I don't give a rat fuck what you think."

[stilltrucking]

Rosie used to tell me I am honest to a fault
I am twisted that way, I think I have Aspergers syndrome
my dad hammered into me the fact that life is heaven and it is hell
and it is all right now right here
I am dressed to ride
Any day I ride is a good day
Heaven is dry run and sunshine
and bicycles

Big Chief flew over the cuckoos nest

[sasha]

1:30 pm. Snow continues to sift ever so lightly downward, but the storm is over. Maybe another 1/2 inch has accumulated since 7 this morning. And it's edging up above freezing, so much of what falls will melt anyway.

The lights stayed on. I have learned that as long as I prepare for an outage, none will occur. Yesterday I moved the car to the end of the drive, feathered the blades, took the plastic shovel from the trunk & leaned it against the driver's door. Inside I set aside water for drinking, washing, and flushing. I went to bed secure that these talismanic acts would keep electrons flowing through the wires. They did.

Now the driveway has been plowed. I've cleaned up the edges, dug out the mailbox and car, and moved it back up to the house. The car, that is, not the mailbox. The mailbox still stands vigil by the road.

Kane sleeps on the couch, and I happily wank away with MathType. I've derived the polar form of an ellipse centered at one of its foci, and had the rare pleasure of watching an equality explode into bloated complexity until suddenly terms begin cancelling one another out, and the whole thing collapses into a neat, compact form - this one conforming to the orbital equation I worked out yesterday. Now to evaluate the constants of integration. This is fun! Nerd heaven.