Zuihitsu

[sasha]

A breezy day. Strips of loose birch bark flutter like so many flags on the tree outside my window . A yellow leaf just flashed past. I thought at first it was a bird.

I know warm weather is on the way because wasps have begun raining down from the skylight. I've killed three in the last two days. And little tiny ants have begun making experimental sorties onto my kitchen counter. Locusts, ticks, and black flies, oh my!

A friend of a friend's father just died. I sent a brief note of condolence, and got back a reply that I think was meant for somebody else. What do the rules of etiquette advise? Gently point out the error, or let it slide, assuming he already has enough to deal with? The latter, I think. I'm real good at doing nothing.

I'm a little over a week shy of turning 70. How in hell did THAT ever happen??

[judih]

as sixty crawls up there, the disbelief increases. On the other hand, I begin to accept the fact that I'm no longer in my twenties - so there's that.

[the mingo]

"Then they burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious possessions."
II Chronicles 39:19

'Man don't pluck those dirty notes at ME,' ~ The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac

Cat sits outside the door looking into darkness. Inside on the stand in the corner, an old red glass saucer on which dust has gathered holds a strand of green Mardi Gras beads. The beads had been there for a long time. Since last autumn, maybe longer. I don't remember. I used to twirl them, holding them in my fingers. Sometimes doing it so fast they would make a whistling sound. They make no sound today. I do not pick them up.

[the mingo]

Every time I hear these guys I want to join in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuqGYM2L60

[judih]

another gorgeous song
"Ma ani, ve ma li
Geshem shel brachot nafal alie"

What am I and what do I have
Rain of blessings fall upon me

[the mingo]

* *

[the mingo]

Thx for the translation, judih - I appreciate it

[judih]

Thx for the translation, judih - I appreciate it

yeah, I'm lucky they sing slowly and clearly - if you asked me about Hebrew rap, I'd have to watch my kayak-brain tip over the waterfall

[the mingo]

if you asked me about Hebrew rap, I'd have to watch my kayak-brain tip over the waterfall

* *

[the mingo]

"An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties." ~ Djuna Barnes

My mother was one of those women who preferred Dean Martin over Frank Sinatra. I like listening to trains sounding off as they approach crossings at 4:20 am.

I have too few teeth anymore to argue stupidities.

Now Ray Charles, there was a guy with plenty of teeth.

[the mingo]

#234
"cobblestone streets" ~ Anais Nin

3:35 am - two flying insects dead in my coffee, one bigger than the other - it is summer, it will be a challenge now to keep the bugs out of a standing cup of coffee - they will get in there with their little bug dicks and little bug vaginas and swim around until they die - neither their DNA or any philosophy will be of help - insects are not equipped to deal with such situations -

weather forecast is given by image - today's is big sun followed by little cloud

trimming fingernails and pulling dried boogers from our nostrils in private moments - our lives have meaning perhaps, just not the meanings we are apt to think they have -

4:07 am

[judih]

may i not fall into a standing cup of coffee
may i remember to wear a life jacket
may i breathe freely without a mask

5:57 a.m. may 29th

[the mingo]

On my bike rides I pass rural cemetaries. Cemetaries where no one has been buried
for 60, 80, 100, years. No flowers are left on the graves in these places because there is no left who remembers.

7:00 am

[sasha]

On my bike rides I pass rural cemetaries. Cemetaries where no one has been buried
for 60, 80, 100, years. No flowers are left on the graves in these places because there is no left who remembers.

I wander through those cemeteries sometimes, reading the stories written on the stones. Two unrelated children in Royalston MA killed on the same day by lightning... two empty graves, one in Phillipston MA, the other in Peterboro NH, both marked "burial unknown"... a brand-new granite stone in Barre MA, erected to commemorate the 6 children murdered by their mother in 1901 so they would not become wards of the state... a stone in Warwick MA, crudely carved by hand to honor the pastor of a church too poor to commission a professionally-carved marker... another in the same cemetery for a young glass-blower who died without any family, "erected by his brother workmen"... all disconnected bits and pieces of everyday life from long ago, glimpses of clarity without any context, like finding on a Dead Sea scroll a detailed account of a man who bought a goat 3000 years ago...

[the mingo]

like finding on a Dead Sea scroll a detailed account of a man who bought a goat 3000 years ago...

Thx, Roy - that is exactly what it's like