Zuihitsu

[sasha]

5 degrees (-13, for those who employ more sensible units of measure) - the chill instantly freezes my nose hairs and wrings tears of shock from my eyes, but my gloves are still warm from their overnight repose on a hot air register, so my fingers easily work the key to lock the front door behind me. The dog is already halfway down the driveway, a treacherous, icy river of frozen rain-soaked snow. By skirting along its very edge I can find secure footing atop the leaves and sticks at the base of the stone wall, and make my way to the road where he happily waits for me to attach the leash and slip him his first treat.

The road too is a slick, potholed glacier of icy hardpack, but well-sanded, justifying my decision to leave the Yak-Trax behind. Bursts of early morning sunlight peek intermittently through the eclipsing trees as we pass by, but it isn't until we reach bare pavement that the woods recede far enough from the road that it spills unimpeded across the ground. Following some primal, pagan urge I stop and turn to the southeast to worship the blazing golden Thing hovering above the treeline at the far end of Bill's field. Despite the brutal cold, I can feel its warmth on my face. I raise a gloved hand to shield my eyes - and when I do, I unexpectedly see snow sifting down onto the frozen grass, even though the sky overhead is an icy crystalline blue.

Snow - sparse, nearly unnoticed, like those first tentative flakes heralding a storm. I happen to look up into the bare branches of the hickory tree at the edge of the road, its twigs a filligree backlit against a matte of blue. They sparkle, coated with a delicate layer of rime - individual crystals refracting the incident light into tiny rainbows when illuminated from just the right angle. Higher up, where my angle to the incoming rays is greater, they shine white. The "snow" is coming from the tree, tiny bits of frost jarred loose by the impinging sunlight.

The scene's ethereal, irridescent beauty, its primitive Druidic appeal to my pagan soul, the insight it provides into the physical processes that drive the world we inhabit (and those we don't) - I find myself smiling, and when I do I can feel that my exhalations have frozen into my mustache. I am of this world, a creature of the boreal forest, that cruel landlord who this morning has unexpectedly offered me a tiny gift.

The dog is unimpressed, and stares expectantly at me. I give the leash a shake. "C'mon, Kane," I say. "Let's go."

[the mingo]

I walk among the photographs. A bicycle leaning against a wall. Trees reaching for sky. An eyeball on the railroad tracks built by prisoners of a terrible war. A girl falling from a swing.

A man walking a covered alley. In Egypt or maybe Morocco. His shadow on the wall. Motion made to stillness.

Now that the river has frozen over the ducks I was feeding seem to have disappeared. A boat cocked to one side, rests on dry ground. No one around to tell me how it got there. I do wonder.

Dice thrown - a perfect seven. Silhouette of a cat, slightly blurred.
A woman carrying a bag crossing a street.

Sometimes the lightning looks like it was coming from the earth
shooting up into sky.

[stilltrucking]

My first thought after reading what you wrote = I walk among shadows.
What the hay do I mean by that? it sounds so glib? Memories cast like shadows on the brain. Most of all wanted to write/say something that might give you a satisfying reading experience. Am I blowing smoke? Oh yeah. Me and my brother used to play a game called shadows, it had to do with the way the headlights of the cars passing by outside our bedroom windows would through a rectangle of light that raced across the walls. Human families are strange, we are big sad apes Vonnegut said. He was speaking of his experience as a combat scout during that 31-year war that lasted from 1914 to 1945. Truth be told it lasted a hundred years cause every bleeding hell hole on earth the past seventy-five years had their origins in "The War That Ended Peace"
my sleep tape this week has been "The Romanovs" one weird fucking family Sometimes when I go back and edit a text box I think of Clay. He wrote so clean and concise, nary a wasted word.

Publisher's Summary
The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface for three centuries. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all?
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Romanovs ... B01D21QN86

[the mingo]

Hell, Jack, your stuff always a good reading experience, always has been, ever since I ran across you back on Litkicks. You were writing zuihitsu all the time, still are and God bless ya for it.

And I fell in love with Tatiana Romanov first time I saw a photo of her.

May her butchers never know peace.

[the mingo]

Sasha, I have made a note on my bucket list to win the lottery and go to the Great State of New Hampshire to ride every rail trail you guys got over there twice.

[sasha]

Better start buyin' them tickets, 'cause you gotta lotta miles to cover!

[the mingo]

It would come off as a bit of heaven to me.

[gypsyjoker]

not so much raining cats and dogs as it is snake weather
I am no nature boy, the back alleys and cobblestone streets with railroad tracks down the middle and the occasional boxcar that's my meat jack
Kesey, Snyder— Kerouac eyes for the natural world
as I lose my night vision to the forlorn rags of
and my hearing too
There is time enough for me to be aware of this best of all possible objective fact worlds around/about
me .............
I feel like a babe in paradise

72 yesterday, and at 11 am CDT it is up to 37F and I feel like a cold-blooded reptile waiting for another 15 degrees more sunshine before I venture forth on a day off the struggle to survive and a day on my bike to do my best to keep on trucking for the long haul

please pardon sock puppet as if I knew what I was writing on studio eight, that is why I dig Zuihitsu, because whatever I am doing, it is my fondest wish that it is

[still.trucking]

My dog predicts hurricanes
She can smell a storm a mile away
That's all the news we have today

"The Lonesome Friends of Science"

I am so happy I should have been a clam.
Back in the USSR boys
bitter laughter
that's alright mama
never meant to last
warm night light rain, going to make 80 degrees on Saturday
it is a
late night for me but tomorrow is a day off
so I turn on
If I make it tomorrow it will be three days I rode my bike this week,

[stilltrucking]

from my brain to my hands to this screen and return
how I write
and the user names to create strings under the search tool on studio eight
a crude workaround for HTML
but its all I got

Spring has sprung today, is like a day in May
April showers
I go riding in the rain, I don't think so, not with a pedal assisted bike, someday if I am lucky I will still be riding it when I am living an assisted living home.
I don't ride so much for the scenery as I do for the breeze
fill my lungs with fresh air
that bike is the only thing I got going that is improving my chances of making it happen
cause happiness happens too
even if it is a warm gun
search.php?author_id=620&sr=posts
lord lord lord
my sisters a nun
hotdog bun on the run
pardon me while I kiss the breeze

[sasha]

so cold
eight below
the snow squeaks underfoot as I follow the dog
down the driveway to the road
his nose to the hardpack
reading the stories written
by the deer
or whoever penned them during the night
...
so goddamned cold
already my fingers ache
while attaching the leash
he stops again
to sniff a hemlock sapling
he's always been fascinated by hemlock
maybe the resin is an intoxicant
to dogs
...
so fucking cold
shadows long and blue stretch before us
we pass Big Rock
wearing its mossy toupee
but by Adam & Kelly's house
he's already limping
favoring first one leg
then another
toes clenched like a fist
I hold his paws with ungloved hand
icy cold
fuck this noise, he seems to say
and turns back toward home
before we're even out of sight
of the mailbox......

[the mingo]

The dog was right of course

[the mingo]

Art “makes forms the imagination can inhabit,” wrote Robert Hass

5 degrees below zero - the continental ice sheets changed every landscape they moved over then retreated from -

Winter sets a certain mood. Man sets fire against winter's mood to keep from freezing to death.

At 0548 I begin talking to one of the cats. I am the only poet in the room. She pays no attention to me but goes on sleeping. Poetry does not pay in more ways than one.

[sasha]

Mom's dementia has taken an unsettling turn - auditory hallucinations of loud music, which she insists is coming through the wall separating her bedroom from that of her neighbor. Twice she has called the staff to complain, and, naturally, they hear nothing. She thinks the staffers are in on a conspiracy to keep her awake at night, in retaliation for requesting that the neighbor's effigy of the Energizer Bunny not block her door. No one - not me, not my sister (who because of her nursing background handles the medical issues), not the staffers - can dissuade her from vilifying That Woman next door, despite our warnings that continued complaints might earn her a one-way trip to the Alzheimer's floor.

Yesterday Karen brought Mom to the gerontologist, during which time Mom swore she could still hear the music, not only in the car but in the examination room. She was visibly shaken by this, frightened and confused, and is finally ready to admit that the sounds just might be coming from inside her head, not next door. She's been prescribed antipsychotics, has begun attending the exercise classes held in the Common Room, and when I saw her today she was upbeat - even excited - by the prognosis. I told her about my "exploding head syndrome" (yes, it's a real thing - Google it) and how everyone gets earworms now and again.

I can't begin to tell you how good it will be to see her get out of that damned apartment once in a while to participate in some constructive group activity. I mean, I'm a recluse - but at least I get out into the woods once in a while.

[judih]

to be released from the prison inside one's head, is a cause for celebration. Each one of us dwells in a prison for some of our lives, even if for fleeting seconds. Escape is sweet.