Zuihitsu

[judih]

so zuihitsu lives here.
knock, knock, knocking
no door, no problem

[stilltrucking]

no ears a
silent fall
senses fade
a little deafer every year
listen to the music while I still can
I would trade my head of hair to hear the other half of what I been missing
this old age ain't for the weak, it makes me meek
Have you noticed how fat Trump is getting? Going to look like president Taft before he leaves office in 2025
hells bells
Old Kurt is right about music

I was listening to music and thinking about mouse droppings


funny how a word, image, music or a pan of frying bacon can bring back such sweet memories. I thought of her when I heard this.
Grey Owl

[the mingo]

I miss mouse too, Jack.

[the mingo]

Hi, judih

[the mingo]

The Bike

I remember my first bike. I was 5 yrs old. The bike came to me via my great-grandmother. Out of the mysteries of her dark basement which was like a cave. A hand-me-down in the classic sense. It was dark blue with white accents. It was covered in coal dust. I was excited by it and scared of it at the same time. It was heavy, had balloon tires and probably made sometime following World War Two and 1950. It had been made by the Columbia Bicycle Company. 20 inch wheels which seemed enormous to me at the time. I practiced in the driveway which was a dirt surface and short and also in the grass of the yard which was a lot harder, to say the least.
I remember the feeling the first time I actually exercised enough control over the bike that it went not only in a straight line but also went where I wanted it to go. The memory I have left of that now seems like it happened all at once. It also seems like it was only a short time after I learned to ride that my folks let me go out on the road on my own which was not such a big deal then because the road was still gravel-surfaced & out in "the country" as used to be said then. The road was not thru-road in those days, the state road to the south carried the bulk of east-west traffic, our road local traffic only and not much of that. It was quiet.
I remember the first time I went out of the driveway and down the hill, rolling over the railroad tracks at the foot of the hill, past the pony pasture, past the next neighbor's house all the way to where the next road joined ours just beyond the creek, turning around there coming back past my folks place to the top of the hill where I stopped and followed the course of the road with my eyes to where it seemingly disappeared around a bend. I stood there in wonder with that little bike between my little legs and that indescribable feeling leaving tracks in my heart of the power of going.

There is one part of us that enjoys the benefits of a stay-in-place life. A comfortable life. A convenient life. A settled life. But there is another part - the part stirred by wonder and dreams and excitement - the restless part - the nomad - that yet haunts many of us.
Our kind has spent much more of its history in motion than in place.

Before I was 7 yrs old I had stood on a rise straddling a boy's bike and gazed into a distance where a road disappeared. Today I ride a man's bike to the top of another glacier-made hill gazing into a different kind of distance and wondering what may lie beyond the valley of the shadow of death.

[stilltrucking]

Going to top that hill with the eyes of a child
I was afraid of shadows for over thirty years
terror lurking in the shadows
that stopped in 1972 with a little help from friends
"death is no problem. only life is a problem: ZtheGreekk"

I was missing you

[stilltrucking]

all I got is a picture of my paternal great grandmother
I wish I knew my maternal great-grandmother whose daughter took such loving care of me when I was just a little jackster.

first bike a three-wheeler salvaged from the junk/scrap yard next door to her house at Eastern and Caroline streets

thinking up jokes about bicycle spokes
there was no basement in her house, but there was a third-floor hallway running the length of the building at one end was a doorway to nothingness
it had once led to the roof of a house next door
but the junkyard bought it and tore it down, at the end they owned the whole square block, the only building left standing was my grandmother's house.

that door fascinated me, I was always snooping around for the key because it was always locked except for once when I saw it open.
I was always scared of heights, that is why I wanted to learn how fly
but got grounded due to being unfit for service
unless you have walked the streets of bakersfiel
Steve Earle & The Dukes - Nowhere Road

[stilltrucking]

nomads on a nowhere road
i have nailed my shoes to the kitchen floor
and haunt the world wide web
disembodied communication
in spontaneous HTML
jack would have loved that shit.


I should be looking down at the road now, as the yellow stripes disappear beneath my wheels,
my bike has a dashboard\

G
Some folks say, if you keep rollin'
F
And keep it on the yellow line
C G
It'll take you to the big highway
G
But there's a toll to pay, if you're going
F
The keeper of the gate is blind
C G
So you better be prepared to pay

[the mingo]

That locked door would have fascinated me too. I can imagine that long hallway pretty well. I ain't a big fan of heights either but they fascinate me with fear. When I was a kid out to my grandmother's lake camp Nine Mile Point was just up the shore - The Point was where the bedrock was exposed, there was no shore there, just high stone bluffs they dropped straight to the water - I would go up there and crawl to the crumbling edge of the bluffs and look over to see the water far beneath. It was a stupid thing to do but the danger and the thrill of it were seemingly irresistible to me. When I think of it today I want to hit myself in the head with a hammer. Hard.

My great grandmother lived just long enough so that her final years overlapped my early ones. The last house she lived in was down in town built during Victorian times - two full stories and a huge attic which I was never in. She had rooms she rented on the upper story, drunks mostly according to my father. She had raised him, hadn't been for her my father would have spent his formative yrs on the streets. Then there was the cellar. Dark down there and almost as spooky as the men she let rooms too. And filled with stuff of all kinds. Enamel top tables (remember them?) just piled with boxes of clothes and other things. Coal dust everywhere from the coal she used to heat with. It was down in that cellar where I first saw that child's bike I spoke of. I asked about where it came from but I no longer remember what she told me. Next thing I know she brought that bike out to where we lived. It was my first bicycle. We did have a tricycle but I didn't remember that until you mentioned it. I remember my sister on it. The bike after that was new with 26 inch wheels, a cantilevered frame, red. I can't for the life of me remember the brand and I don't know how my old man swung that deal. New anything just didn't happen. My father favored my sister but she never got a new bike.

[the mingo]

Holy Clutter Critters Jack - you got a lot of stuff on those handlebars! Well, me too to tell the truth. Lights and bells and shifters and wingwhams of all sorts - I use an app on my phone to track mileage and distance and shit - it was just updated recently - shows elevation gained and lost for any single ride - I thought that was cool.

[the mingo]

You got an electric bike ? I think there may be one of those in my future. I've been looking at them this year. Been a lot of changes in my body this year and that pedal assist feature is singing a siren song to me -

[stilltrucking]

changes between DOT Physicals
I got to take them every year at my age
so that you don't read about incapacitated senior citizen drives 15 wheeler into a day care center—
hearing worse, vision worse, other than that okay
I got 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next three months, do whatever I want, even sit here a fritter away a fine Warm Humid October Day before the first cold front hits around midnight. Road late last night watched a big red ball sink into the road ahead.

changes
old age ain't for sissies
oh my Attica my sciatica
My next bike going to be a walker
talking to my homeboy about family and history and genetics, brittle spines run in our family

for some reason I am thinking about a line from a billy joe shaver

On a rainy ,windy morning that's the day that I was born on
G D
In the old sharecroppers one room country shack
G C
They say my mammy left me, same day that she had me
G D G
Said she hit the road and never once looked back
G C
And i just thought i'd mention, my Grandma's old age pension
G D
Is the reason why i'm standing here today

G C

I hope I got my grandmothers amygdala too
anatomy is destiny I guess

[stilltrucking]

I remember the feeling the first time

like my
first Zuihitsu
holy shit this is it
like the first time I saw the world end
and thinking "this is it"
and Peggy Lee was singing "is that all there is"

my little sister could make big bucks being a "clutter counselor" she is ruthless on clutter. She keeps coming over to fix my Feng shui.

Zuihitsu lightens my karma

[the mingo]

On my windowsill is a stack of three plastic pumpkins operated by a solar cell - they wiggle when the sun comes up. When they do that they make a sound like a ticking clock. Next to them is a photo of my cat soon after I found her by the side of the road and brought her home. Next to the photo is a plant from South Africa. Then another plant from South Africa. Then a teapot. The last thing is a photo of two smiling dudes.

I think it all has something to do with sex. Mine, yours, or anybody's. Buddha-buddha-buddha.

I need to go check my fire.

4:15 a.m.
35 degrees
barometer through the roof

MENTION OF YOUR SISTER AS CLUTTER-COUNSELOR CRACKS ME UP. I got clutter too. But no one to ride me about it. I went for a bike ride yesterday afternoon. The rain caught me out. Cold rain. It stopped just as I made the hill just east of my camp. I said: Son-of-a-bitch.

[stilltrucking]

sister, mother, aunt grandmother, great-grandmother, cousins
the XX conspiracy for world domination
they are all in on it
they got a double dose of XX
and we only got an that broken Y
and a lonely X
that seeks companionship

all about Sex?
breakfast with Uncle Freud this morning

Freud's breakfast
two over easy
one makes too much sense

looking at picture of my baby sister and her son

just because she had the some mother as me
she thinks she can talk to me like she is my mother too

or so it seems
when she tries to ride me
I don't mind
all I can do is maintain equanimity and wait her out,
she is smart, she moves on and we get back to being brother and sister in a heartbeat
family,
hearing Eleanor Rigby on the broken radio in my head as I write this.

Zuihitsu there is no substitute