Last week i did some waiting room duty for my sister who was having surgery. another sister was there with me. Mercy Hospital now has a new coffee shop right
next to the waiting room area. My sister remarked about the high cost of the coffee. I said thats why they call it starBUCKS (is that *$'s in TM?). Since i didn't have any caffeine in the previous 3 weeks and having had 2 cups
of the "Bold" Xmas blend, I found myself awake in the wee hours that night with the night owlies ( which if i made it up is a condition in which one wakes up and is unable to go back to sleep).
My thoughts restlessly came in and out of focus when i realized the Clapton song Cocaine (1st track on the Slowhand album) was wormlooping thru my brain, only "cocaine" was replaced by "caffeine":
Cocaine Lyrics
Artist(Band):Eric Clapton
by J. J. Cale
If you wanna hang out you've got to take her out; caffeine.
If you wanna get down, down on the ground; caffeine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; caffeine.
If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; caffeine.
When your day is done and you wanna run; caffeine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; caffeine.
If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; caffeine.
Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back; caffeine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; caffeine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; caffeine.
(Did Weird Al Yankovich already do that parody?)
Besides giving you an opportunity to worry about your health the night owlies provide you time to think of things to put on your blog. Remembering having read "One day in the life of Ivan Densonivich" in college it occurred to me to blog "one day in the life of art dunbar". Coming Soon to a Blog near you!
(One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, originally published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir. It is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day for an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Its appearance was an
extraordinary event in Soviet literary history—never before had such an account of "Stalinist repression" been openly distributed. ).
Only i thought i would use the format of one of my favorite Galway Kinnell poems .
MIDDLE OF THE WAY
1. I wake in the night,
An old ache in the shoulder blades.
I lie amazed under the trees
That creak a little in the dark,
The giant trees of the world.
I lie on earth the way
Flames lie in the woodpile,
Or as an imprint, in sperm, of what is to be.
I love the earth, and always
In its darknesses I am a stranger.
2. 6 A.M. Water frozen again. Melted it and made tea. Ate a
raw egg and the last orange. Refreshed by a long sleep. The
trail practically indistinguishable under 8' of snow. 9:30 A.M.
Snow up to my knees in places. Sweat begins freezing under
my shirt when I stop to rest. The woods are filled, anyway,
with the windy noise of the first streams. 10:30 A.M. The sun
at last. The snow starts to melt off the boughs at once,
falling with little ticking sounds. Mist clouds are lying in
the valleys. 11:45 A.M. Slow, glittering breakers roll in on the
beaches ten miles away, very blue and calm. Odd to see it
while sitting in snow. 12 noon. An inexplicable sense of joy,
as if some happy news had been transmitted to me directly,
bypassing the brain. 2 P.M. From the top of Gauldy I looked
back into Hebo valley. Castle Rock sticks into a cloud. A cool
breeze comes up from the valley, it is a fresh, earthly wind
and tastes of snow and trees. It is not like those transcendental
breezes that make the heart ache. It brings happiness. 2:30 P.M.
Lost the trail. A woodpecker watches me wade through the
snow trying to locate it. The sun has gone back of the trees.
3:10 P.M. Still hunting for the trail. Getting cold. From an
elevation I have an open view of the SE, a world of timberless,
white hills, rolling, weirdly wrinkled. Above them a pale
half moon. 3:45 P.M. Going on by map and compass. I saw
a deer a minute ago, he fled touching down every fifteen feet
Or so. 7:30 P.M. Made camp near the head of Alder Creek.
Trampled a bed into the snow and filled it with boughs.
Concocted a little fire in the darkness. Ate pork and beans.
A slug or two of whisky burnt my throat. The night very
clear. Very cold. That half moon is up there and a lot of stars
have come out among the treetops. The fire has fallen to coals.
3. The coals go out,
The last smoke weaves up
Losing itself in the stars.
This is my first night to lie
In the uncreating dark.
In the heart of a man
There sleeps a green worm
That has spun the heart about itself,
And that shall dream itself black wings
One day to break free into the beautiful black sky.
I leave my eyes open,
I lie here and forget our life,
All I see is we float out
Into the emptiness, among the great stars,
On this little vessel without lights.
I know that I love the day,
The sun on the mountain, the Pacific
Shiny and accomplishing itself in breakers,
But I know I live half alive in the world,
I know half my life belongs to the wild darkness.
GALWAY KINNELL
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Sicko
i'm sick of going to the doctors.( I wonder if there is a medicine for that). Everytime I think I have my last appointment and begin to think i can resume a "normal" life for awhile a Doctor suggests another test to "rule out" some remote disease or another which entails a lab test (with fasting of course) and 3 or 4 more appointments.
i've learned that i have a moderately servere case of peripheral neuropathy from an undetermined cause. my neurologist predicted i would be disabled within 10 years. there appears to be no cure though there are drugs with ugly side effects can mask the pain.
the doctor suggests getting as healthy as possible to delay the inevitable which i guess is what we all try anyway. i intend to try harder.
What is peripheral neuropathy?
"Peripheral neuropathy describes damage to the peripheral nervous
system, the vast communications network that transmits information
from the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system) to every
other part of the body. Peripheral nerves also send sensory
information back to the brain and spinal cord, such as a message that
the feet are cold or a finger is burned. Damage to the peripheral
nervous system interferes with these vital connections. Like static on
a telephone line, peripheral neuropathy distorts and sometimes
interrupts messages between the brain and the rest of the body."
or put it another way, basically the nerves die and then the muscles atrophy.
it usually starts with the feet and ascends up the legs.
the hands are also often affected. in my case my feet have lost feeling
and the muscles in my ankles are atrophied. i often stumble already.
in short my feet hurt.
I think i will turn to poetry for healing vibrations- medicine has failed . it isn't
universal enough.
one of my favorite poets is Mary Oliver :
"An intense and joyful observer of the natural world, Oliver is often compared to Whitman and Thoreau.
Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon and humpback whales. Maxine Kumin calls Oliver "a patroller of wetlands in the same way that Thoreau was an inspector of snowstorms" and "an indefatigable guide to the natural world." "
and one of my favorite poems is Wild Geese :
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
i've learned that i have a moderately servere case of peripheral neuropathy from an undetermined cause. my neurologist predicted i would be disabled within 10 years. there appears to be no cure though there are drugs with ugly side effects can mask the pain.
the doctor suggests getting as healthy as possible to delay the inevitable which i guess is what we all try anyway. i intend to try harder.
What is peripheral neuropathy?
"Peripheral neuropathy describes damage to the peripheral nervous
system, the vast communications network that transmits information
from the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system) to every
other part of the body. Peripheral nerves also send sensory
information back to the brain and spinal cord, such as a message that
the feet are cold or a finger is burned. Damage to the peripheral
nervous system interferes with these vital connections. Like static on
a telephone line, peripheral neuropathy distorts and sometimes
interrupts messages between the brain and the rest of the body."
or put it another way, basically the nerves die and then the muscles atrophy.
it usually starts with the feet and ascends up the legs.
the hands are also often affected. in my case my feet have lost feeling
and the muscles in my ankles are atrophied. i often stumble already.
in short my feet hurt.
I think i will turn to poetry for healing vibrations- medicine has failed . it isn't
universal enough.
one of my favorite poets is Mary Oliver :
"An intense and joyful observer of the natural world, Oliver is often compared to Whitman and Thoreau.
Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon and humpback whales. Maxine Kumin calls Oliver "a patroller of wetlands in the same way that Thoreau was an inspector of snowstorms" and "an indefatigable guide to the natural world." "
and one of my favorite poems is Wild Geese :
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
Sunday, November 25, 2007
gobsmacked
one cold and drizzly afternoon last week I decided to
spend the afternoon reading. I was sitting in the lazyboy
listening to music and perusing CLAPTON ( eric clapton's autobiography) when he really grabbed my attention by using the term "gobsmacked". the
dictionary states it is British slang meaning flabbergasted or being struck dumb with awe or amazement. The book is mostly the story of clapton's
recovery from drug and alcohol addiction with his love of music providing the staying power to pull him thru from
sucidial despair to a peacefull and happy family life. Besides being a successfull musician he founded a
drug and alcohol rehabilation center called Crossroads
in Antigua. After finishing that i read Into the Wild. I had
recently seen the movie which i was gobsmacked by.
It may be my favorite film of the year.
Robert Hass won the National Book Award for poetry .
Happiness
Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek
eating the last windfall apples in the rain—
they looked up at us with their green eyes
long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things
and then went back to eating—
and because this morning
when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad
to coax an inquisitive soul
from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter,
I drove into town to drink tea in the café
and write notes in a journal—mist rose from the bay
like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention,
and a small flock of tundra swans
for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass
in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose,
they are also called whistling swans, are very white,
and their eyes are black—
and because the tea steamed in front of me,
and the notebook, turned to a new page,
was blank except for the faint idea of order,
I wrote: happiness! It is December, very cold,
we woke early this morning,
and lay in bed kissing,
our eyes squinched up like bats.
On a more personal note my neurologist's tests showed nothing conclusive but
ruled out brain problems. he believes the seizure was caused by pacemaker failure
but he said he could not prove it. He said I can quit the anti-seizure drugs and apply
for exception to the 6 months legal limitation of no driving. However he said the application
would probably take several months to process. So I probably won't be driving till march.
spend the afternoon reading. I was sitting in the lazyboy
listening to music and perusing CLAPTON ( eric clapton's autobiography) when he really grabbed my attention by using the term "gobsmacked". the
dictionary states it is British slang meaning flabbergasted or being struck dumb with awe or amazement. The book is mostly the story of clapton's
recovery from drug and alcohol addiction with his love of music providing the staying power to pull him thru from
sucidial despair to a peacefull and happy family life. Besides being a successfull musician he founded a
drug and alcohol rehabilation center called Crossroads
in Antigua. After finishing that i read Into the Wild. I had
recently seen the movie which i was gobsmacked by.
It may be my favorite film of the year.
Robert Hass won the National Book Award for poetry .
Happiness
Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek
eating the last windfall apples in the rain—
they looked up at us with their green eyes
long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things
and then went back to eating—
and because this morning
when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad
to coax an inquisitive soul
from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter,
I drove into town to drink tea in the café
and write notes in a journal—mist rose from the bay
like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention,
and a small flock of tundra swans
for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass
in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose,
they are also called whistling swans, are very white,
and their eyes are black—
and because the tea steamed in front of me,
and the notebook, turned to a new page,
was blank except for the faint idea of order,
I wrote: happiness! It is December, very cold,
we woke early this morning,
and lay in bed kissing,
our eyes squinched up like bats.
On a more personal note my neurologist's tests showed nothing conclusive but
ruled out brain problems. he believes the seizure was caused by pacemaker failure
but he said he could not prove it. He said I can quit the anti-seizure drugs and apply
for exception to the 6 months legal limitation of no driving. However he said the application
would probably take several months to process. So I probably won't be driving till march.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
my neurologist said....
my neurologist said seizure was most probably heart related.
If caused by pace-maker we will probably
never know. He cut back anti-seizure med dosage
and thinks it will lessen some side effects.
He suggests two more tests
and if they show brain normal then he would
take me off anti-seizure med and send me back
to heart doctors ( from whom i'm still awaiting
results of tests ).
Iowa law says if you have seizure and pass out
you must go 6 months without another before you can drive again.
If cause is determined then you can apply for
exception. However the application process takes
several months so bottom line is i probably won't be
able to drive until March.
News so discouraging that it gave me a bad cold and
put me out of commision for a few days.
not that it has anything to do with anything but i 've
always liked the Mad Gardener's Song by Lewis Carroll
...
He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'
-- Lewis Carroll
the subject of this post "my neurologist said..." reminds me
of a Hal Sirowitz poem. Here are some samples:
Hal Sirowitz
Don't Talk Back
(from My Therapist Said)
There are two sides to every story,
Mother said, but since I'm the adult
& you're the child, only my side counts.
Yours will count, too, one of these days,
but right now your job is to listen,
so when it's your turn to be a parent
& your child tries to interrupt youwhile you're speaking, you'll know what to say.
Psychology Books
(from My Therapist Said)
Some therapists don't let their patients read Freud, my therapist said. But you can read as many of his books as you like. You can read Horney, Adler, & Jung, too. I read some of their books. I'm not afraid of the competition. They can never be as good as I am at telling you what you need to do. They never knew you.
Girlfriend Over for Dinner
(from Mother Said)
She's very pretty, Mother said, but she's going to leave you.
She was talking about her future, & you weren't in it, so I asked her to tell it to me again, just in case she made a mistake & left you out, but you weren't in the second version either.
She talked about going away to school, & when I asked her what she was planning to bring with her, she talked about her coat, her boots, but she never mentioned you.She says she's fond of you, but people say that about puppies they're about to give away.
If caused by pace-maker we will probably
never know. He cut back anti-seizure med dosage
and thinks it will lessen some side effects.
He suggests two more tests
and if they show brain normal then he would
take me off anti-seizure med and send me back
to heart doctors ( from whom i'm still awaiting
results of tests ).
Iowa law says if you have seizure and pass out
you must go 6 months without another before you can drive again.
If cause is determined then you can apply for
exception. However the application process takes
several months so bottom line is i probably won't be
able to drive until March.
News so discouraging that it gave me a bad cold and
put me out of commision for a few days.
not that it has anything to do with anything but i 've
always liked the Mad Gardener's Song by Lewis Carroll
...
He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'
-- Lewis Carroll
the subject of this post "my neurologist said..." reminds me
of a Hal Sirowitz poem. Here are some samples:
Hal Sirowitz
Don't Talk Back
(from My Therapist Said)
There are two sides to every story,
Mother said, but since I'm the adult
& you're the child, only my side counts.
Yours will count, too, one of these days,
but right now your job is to listen,
so when it's your turn to be a parent
& your child tries to interrupt youwhile you're speaking, you'll know what to say.
Psychology Books
(from My Therapist Said)
Some therapists don't let their patients read Freud, my therapist said. But you can read as many of his books as you like. You can read Horney, Adler, & Jung, too. I read some of their books. I'm not afraid of the competition. They can never be as good as I am at telling you what you need to do. They never knew you.
Girlfriend Over for Dinner
(from Mother Said)
She's very pretty, Mother said, but she's going to leave you.
She was talking about her future, & you weren't in it, so I asked her to tell it to me again, just in case she made a mistake & left you out, but you weren't in the second version either.
She talked about going away to school, & when I asked her what she was planning to bring with her, she talked about her coat, her boots, but she never mentioned you.She says she's fond of you, but people say that about puppies they're about to give away.
Monday, October 22, 2007
retirement is great
retirement is great: you can worry obsessively about all your health issues without
distraction. nothing new to report. still awaiting results of tests and waiting to see neurologist.
i may be becoming a bit of a pain but so far i haven't got tired of replying to anyone who says " gotta run, i've gotta go to work" . "oh, i don't have to go today" .
I finished an excellent book last week. I enjoyed it alot and i may not have been the only one who liked it since it won the Nat'l Book award last year:
by Richard Powers
The Echo Maker
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
About the Book
Set in Nebraska during the Platte River’s massive spring migrations, this novel explores the power and limits of human intelligence.
About the Author
Richard Powers is the author of eight previous novels, including Operation Wandering Soul, which was a nominated for a National Book Award in 1993. He has received numerous honors including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.
Not everyone liked it i guess. here is an excerpt from a not so glowing review in the NATION:
Richard Powers has a lot of ideas: complex, articulate, deeply informed ideas about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, relativity, genetics, music and much more. But poems, as Mallarmé told Degas, are not made of ideas, and neither are novels. The Echo Maker will tell you a great deal about neuroscience, environmental degradation and the migratory patterns of the sandhill crane, but like Powers's other novels, it won't tell you much about what its laboriously accumulated information and elaborately constructed concepts have to do with what it means to be alive at a particular time and place, or what it feels like. And that, crudely put, is what novels are for. .....
distraction. nothing new to report. still awaiting results of tests and waiting to see neurologist.
i may be becoming a bit of a pain but so far i haven't got tired of replying to anyone who says " gotta run, i've gotta go to work" . "oh, i don't have to go today" .
I finished an excellent book last week. I enjoyed it alot and i may not have been the only one who liked it since it won the Nat'l Book award last year:
by Richard Powers
The Echo Maker
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
About the Book
Set in Nebraska during the Platte River’s massive spring migrations, this novel explores the power and limits of human intelligence.
About the Author
Richard Powers is the author of eight previous novels, including Operation Wandering Soul, which was a nominated for a National Book Award in 1993. He has received numerous honors including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.
Not everyone liked it i guess. here is an excerpt from a not so glowing review in the NATION:
Richard Powers has a lot of ideas: complex, articulate, deeply informed ideas about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, relativity, genetics, music and much more. But poems, as Mallarmé told Degas, are not made of ideas, and neither are novels. The Echo Maker will tell you a great deal about neuroscience, environmental degradation and the migratory patterns of the sandhill crane, but like Powers's other novels, it won't tell you much about what its laboriously accumulated information and elaborately constructed concepts have to do with what it means to be alive at a particular time and place, or what it feels like. And that, crudely put, is what novels are for. .....
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Thoughts on turning 60
i don't consider it a great accomplishment. millions do it.
It just reminds me of the old days which seem to keep getting better.
When asked when my birthday was I once thought it clever to reply
that it was the day before Friedrich Nietzsche's so every October 15th
I would remember my birthday was the day before. Thus employing the
logic of one of my favorite grooks on Timing Toast by Piet Hein:
TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There's an art to knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.
(A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem. It was invented by the Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein. He wrote over 7,000 of them, most in Danish or
English, published in 20 volumes. Some say that the name is short for "GRin & sUK" ("laugh & sigh" in Danish), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin
air. His gruks first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. The poems were
meant as a spirit-building, yet slightly coded form of passive resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. The grook are characterized by irony, paradox, brevity,
precise use of language, sophisticated rhythms and rhymes and often satiric nature.)
Speaking of the 60's on my birthday we saw the nostalgic musical film "Across the Universe".
Sort of like HAIR only with all Beatles music. I really enjoyed it though it brought back some
painful memories of when it seemed "events were in the saddle and ride mankind" (Emerson)
and Yeats "Second Coming" was truer than ever :
...
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand...
It just reminds me of the old days which seem to keep getting better.
When asked when my birthday was I once thought it clever to reply
that it was the day before Friedrich Nietzsche's so every October 15th
I would remember my birthday was the day before. Thus employing the
logic of one of my favorite grooks on Timing Toast by Piet Hein:
TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There's an art to knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.
(A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem. It was invented by the Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein. He wrote over 7,000 of them, most in Danish or
English, published in 20 volumes. Some say that the name is short for "GRin & sUK" ("laugh & sigh" in Danish), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin
air. His gruks first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. The poems were
meant as a spirit-building, yet slightly coded form of passive resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. The grook are characterized by irony, paradox, brevity,
precise use of language, sophisticated rhythms and rhymes and often satiric nature.)
Speaking of the 60's on my birthday we saw the nostalgic musical film "Across the Universe".
Sort of like HAIR only with all Beatles music. I really enjoyed it though it brought back some
painful memories of when it seemed "events were in the saddle and ride mankind" (Emerson)
and Yeats "Second Coming" was truer than ever :
...
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand...
Friday, October 12, 2007
doing ok
new pacemaker seems to be working ok. i'll go over to fitness center today and give it a test drive around the block.
the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. David Kirby was nominated in Poetry. He is a poet i think is noteworthy. The other nominees were:
Poetry
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Robert Hass, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St. (Louisiana State University Press)
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart (W.W. Norton & Company)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (W.W. Norton & Company)
here is a sample :
Broken Promises
By David Kirby
I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;
I have seem them playing cards under a single light-bulb
and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,
knowing I would only let them win.
I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,
coming back late from the interval
long after the others have taken their seats,
and in deserted shopping malls late at night,
peering at things they can never buy,
and I have found them wandering
in a wood where I too have wandered.
This morning I caught one;
small and stupid, too slow to get away,
it was only a promise I had made to myself once
and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me
and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach
in their long, sad faces.
When I drew near them, they scurried away,
even though they will sleep in my yard tonight.
I hate them for their ingratitude,
I who have kept countless promises,
as dead now as Shakespeare's children.
"You bastards," I scream,
"you have to love me—I gave you life!"
David Kirby, "Broken Promises" from Big-Leg Music (Washington, DC: Orchises Press, 1995).
the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. David Kirby was nominated in Poetry. He is a poet i think is noteworthy. The other nominees were:
Poetry
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Robert Hass, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St. (Louisiana State University Press)
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart (W.W. Norton & Company)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (W.W. Norton & Company)
here is a sample :
Broken Promises
By David Kirby
I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;
I have seem them playing cards under a single light-bulb
and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,
knowing I would only let them win.
I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,
coming back late from the interval
long after the others have taken their seats,
and in deserted shopping malls late at night,
peering at things they can never buy,
and I have found them wandering
in a wood where I too have wandered.
This morning I caught one;
small and stupid, too slow to get away,
it was only a promise I had made to myself once
and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me
and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach
in their long, sad faces.
When I drew near them, they scurried away,
even though they will sleep in my yard tonight.
I hate them for their ingratitude,
I who have kept countless promises,
as dead now as Shakespeare's children.
"You bastards," I scream,
"you have to love me—I gave you life!"
David Kirby, "Broken Promises" from Big-Leg Music (Washington, DC: Orchises Press, 1995).
Thursday, October 11, 2007
smooth as a sow's ear
The pace maker change out went smoothly (or as the iowa heart referred to it the "generator change out"). I had to ask because they kept saying generator and not pacemaker so they explained the terminology to me. The pacemaker is the generator aka
battery plus the wire leads that connect the "battery" to the heart's electrical nodes.
Since they did not have to replace the wires they call it a generator change out.
I have to take it easy for a couple of days to let the incision heal but i plan on
excercising tomorrow. I had been feeling extremely lethargic for awhile so i'm anxious to see if the new "battery" helps. i think it includes a new computer too.
I was unsure if the tiredness was due the battery being low or the anti-seizure meds or both.
I just heard Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Litature :
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing
battery plus the wire leads that connect the "battery" to the heart's electrical nodes.
Since they did not have to replace the wires they call it a generator change out.
I have to take it easy for a couple of days to let the incision heal but i plan on
excercising tomorrow. I had been feeling extremely lethargic for awhile so i'm anxious to see if the new "battery" helps. i think it includes a new computer too.
I was unsure if the tiredness was due the battery being low or the anti-seizure meds or both.
I just heard Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Litature :
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
pace maker
my pace maker check today showed that my battery is low so they will replace it October 10th at 12:30 pm. I shouldn't have to stay overnight. So i guess i'm getting a new pacemaker for my birthday.
the staff at Iowa Heart couldn't tell if that had anything to do with my seizure but
they did not think so at least there was no information that indicated it did. I will have to see what the neurologist says October 31st.
My sister pointed out to me that my neurologist name is not Dr. Feelgood as i first optimistically thought but Dr Freedgood.
the staff at Iowa Heart couldn't tell if that had anything to do with my seizure but
they did not think so at least there was no information that indicated it did. I will have to see what the neurologist says October 31st.
My sister pointed out to me that my neurologist name is not Dr. Feelgood as i first optimistically thought but Dr Freedgood.
shine
Joni Mitchell's answer to "what to make of a diminished thing?" was to create a new album called SHINE.
Solomon said "There is nothing new under the sun". Gerswin said "It ain't necessarily so".
Here are the lyrics to the song SHINE on Joni's new cd:
Shine
by Joni Mitchell
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on Wall Street and Vegas
Place your bets
Shine on the fishermen
With nothing in their nets
Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas
Shine on our Frankenstein technologies
Shine on science
With its tunnel vision
Shine on fertile farmland
Buried under subdivisions
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on the dazzling darkness
That restores us in deep sleep
Shine on what we throw away
And what we keep
Shine on Reverend Pearson
Who threw away
The vain old God
kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven
And fresh plowed sod
Shine on good earth, good air, good water
And a safe place
For kids to play
Shine on bombs exploding
Half a mile away
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on world-wide traffic jams
Honking day and night
Shine on another asshole
Passing on the right!
Shine on the red light runners
Busy talking on their cell phones
Shine on the Catholic Church
And the prisons that it owns
Shine on all the Churches
They all love less and less
Shine on a hopeful girl
In a dreamy dress
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on good humor
Shine on good will
Shine on lousy leadership
Licensed to kill
Shine on dying soldiers
In patriotic pain
Shine on mass destruction
In some God's name!
Shine on the pioneers
Those seekers of mental health
Craving simplicity
They traveled inward
Past themselves...
May all their little lights shine
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2007; Crazy Crow Music
Printed from the official Joni Mitchell website: JoniMitchell.com
Solomon said "There is nothing new under the sun". Gerswin said "It ain't necessarily so".
Here are the lyrics to the song SHINE on Joni's new cd:
Shine
by Joni Mitchell
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on Wall Street and Vegas
Place your bets
Shine on the fishermen
With nothing in their nets
Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas
Shine on our Frankenstein technologies
Shine on science
With its tunnel vision
Shine on fertile farmland
Buried under subdivisions
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on the dazzling darkness
That restores us in deep sleep
Shine on what we throw away
And what we keep
Shine on Reverend Pearson
Who threw away
The vain old God
kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven
And fresh plowed sod
Shine on good earth, good air, good water
And a safe place
For kids to play
Shine on bombs exploding
Half a mile away
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on world-wide traffic jams
Honking day and night
Shine on another asshole
Passing on the right!
Shine on the red light runners
Busy talking on their cell phones
Shine on the Catholic Church
And the prisons that it owns
Shine on all the Churches
They all love less and less
Shine on a hopeful girl
In a dreamy dress
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on good humor
Shine on good will
Shine on lousy leadership
Licensed to kill
Shine on dying soldiers
In patriotic pain
Shine on mass destruction
In some God's name!
Shine on the pioneers
Those seekers of mental health
Craving simplicity
They traveled inward
Past themselves...
May all their little lights shine
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2007; Crazy Crow Music
Printed from the official Joni Mitchell website: JoniMitchell.com
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
random thoughts - lemonaid
there are a couple of Robert Frost poems I encountered
in college that keep rambling around in my memory:
A two line couplet :
The Span Of Life
The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
and
The Oven Bird
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
when hopes falter, expectations fail and dreams
suddenly realizing the lack of wings
feel their weight and fall
when metaphors grow old and bite
what do you make of a diminished thing ?
The answer? take a bus, take a train, make lemonaid?
in college that keep rambling around in my memory:
A two line couplet :
The Span Of Life
The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
and
The Oven Bird
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
when hopes falter, expectations fail and dreams
suddenly realizing the lack of wings
feel their weight and fall
when metaphors grow old and bite
what do you make of a diminished thing ?
The answer? take a bus, take a train, make lemonaid?
Sunday, September 30, 2007
unpacking
still working on unpacking. Bob made it home on Friday and had a successfull openhouse on Saturday. I forget how many retirement condos he had built there in Bellingham but i was very impressed with that town which unlike seattle operated at
a calmer pace. Bob got to visit the family while he was here. I still feel bad for disrupting his schedule but he claims he was getting an escape from the grind.
They put me on some anti-seizure medicine which is making me feel very tired most
of the time not to mention foggy- it seems to affect my short term memory...
what did i just say??
I have a heart doctor appointment for Wednesday to check the possibility that the seizure may have been caused by my pacemaker battery wearing out. Because of a shortage of neurologists in DM i couldn't get an appointment until october 31st
so i will have to stay on med at least until then.
On the drive home we stayed overnight at my brothers cabin in beautiful Wintrop WA.
Then while here we drove over to Iowa City for some much needed Thai food with
my other brother and two of our three sisters.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
back in DM
Arrived home after exhausting drive- left washington friday afternoon and got in des Moines at 5 pm monday. Bob is a real champ for doing the long drive- he has to head back friday to be there for a Open house on a construction project he just finished-
he built some condos in Bellingham.
its going be a real pain to avoid driving for 6 months. i have dr appt today and i suspect i will have some follow up tests sometime soon.
he built some condos in Bellingham.
its going be a real pain to avoid driving for 6 months. i have dr appt today and i suspect i will have some follow up tests sometime soon.
Friday, September 21, 2007
heading home
my brother Bob will be driving me home to DM starting this afternoon. We will driving across the North Cascade highway to Wintrop WA today. we probably won't get to DM until Monday? he will stay and visit for a week. i have to schedule some Dr appt. to try to determine what caused my seizure. This will probably be last blog entry for a while.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
my brain visits the neurolgist
Dr Venema the neurologist concurred with the ER doctor and concluded that I had a seizure. He wants me to do some additional tests to try to determine the cause. I opted to have the other tests done in Iowa because he said they might take 2 or 3 weeks to schedule and perform here. The catscan showed a dark patch on my brain which he said looked like an old injury rather than a tumour (but further tests would give a better look. He wondered if i knew what caused it. The only thing I can
recall was a concussion i received playing sandlot football when i was a freshman in
college. I was briefly knocked out and had several hours of distorted consciousness
but seemed fine the next day. It may not turn out to be the cause but it boggles the
the mind(in more ways than one) that a bump on the head could cause a seizure 40 years later. The dr gave me some anti-seizure medication and advised me not to drive for 6 months. In Washington and Iowa it is deemed legal and medical advisement but in California they actually take your drivers license away. Not driving puts a real
crimp in my travel plans for the next few months. I feel really bummed out and feel very badly that i have to disrupt my brother and his family life so much. He has been a great sport about it and claims he is looking forward to an iowa visit. Aimee has been a wonderful support.( note there is something wrong with this keyboard and though i am a bad typist this keyboard is exaggerating my flaws).
Monday, September 17, 2007
travel travail , or bad news for this blogger !
The word “travel” comes from the old French word “travail” which means to work. That word, is thought to have come from “tripullare”, which is the three sectioned whip that Roman soldiers used to strongly encourage productivity out of the laborers in their expanded empire. They associated the act of moving from one place to another with hellish torture. ok so far i had a wonderful visit in washington, visiting relatives nd seeing the sights, eating great food especially the fish and chips and clam crowder. i got we also went to a musical in downtown seattle Lone Star Love with Randy Quaid that will open on BROADWAY in NOVEMBER - Itwas exciting and and amusing. NANCY got to visit some exeptional flower stores and nurseys. by the way she arrived home safely as scheduled on SEPT 15 . Unfortunately she missed the Etta James and BB King concert Aimee and i saw sept 16 th - quite the show it was outside but the rain was barely noticeable - they gsve us ponchos! we were on the 2nd row - not soon to be forgoten. Now the bad news: It seems i fainted in the bathroom sunday morning getting ready to go to church with Aimee. evidently i blocked the door when i fell and she had to call 911 to come take me to the emergency room. The ER doctor thought i hsd a seizure and insisted that i see a neurologist before i try driving. i have an appointment tommorrow . there is a possibility it could hsve been a stroke or it just could have been a fainting spell - anyway my brother is going to try to drive home with me and visit the rest of the family . so we may not be starting back until friday. Bob will probably stay until the 26th or 27th. in short i may be at that dreaded slope.
Friday, September 14, 2007
washington state fair at the end of summer
we went to the state fair in Puyallup Wa. yesterday. It was remarkably like the iowa state fair yet completely different...
AND now for something completely different:
Poem: "Three Songs at the End of Summer" by Jane Kenyon, from Collected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2005.
Three Songs at the End of Summer
A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.
Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.
Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven't.
Sounds of the instructor's megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. "Relax! Relax!"
Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.
Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.
*
The cicada's dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.
Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?
*
A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket...
In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.
The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.
I had the new books—words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.
Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.
AND now for something completely different:
Poem: "Three Songs at the End of Summer" by Jane Kenyon, from Collected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2005.
Three Songs at the End of Summer
A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.
Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.
Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven't.
Sounds of the instructor's megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. "Relax! Relax!"
Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.
Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.
*
The cicada's dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.
Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?
*
A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket...
In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.
The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.
I had the new books—words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.
Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
bellingham
spent a nice day exploring beautiful bellingham. it has about 70,000 odd people (so not nearly as many odd people as DM). It was being marketed as a great place to retire until they had a string of bad winters - rain, snow and no sun. it is near the ocean and the mountains has great parks and great weather - at least while we were there. next we will go to Everett to help niece Aimee celebrate her birthday and get washingtonized.
Monday, September 10, 2007
from the evergreen state
nancy arrived as scheduled on friday 9-7 and we immediately embarked for Olympic Nat'l
we found scenic camping spot at the staircase on the elk river. much more fun traveling with nancy then alone- better company i guess. saturday we drove to the ocean and found campsite at Kalaloch near the beach. we hung out on beach then had a nice dinner at lodge- the best clam chowder ever. we sit on the beach and watched the stars- the dark sky was great for gazing. our campsite was near road but surf drowned out any traffic noise. warning the following is an attempt at haiku and may not be suitable for all viewers:
Towering hemlocks, ocean beaches
Nature beckons-
go away! Campground Full
sunday drove to bellingham to visit brother Bob
Thursday, September 6, 2007
this land is my land...
greetings from Washington:
this land is your land from the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters...
After driving thru Redwood natl park i took a detour over to Medford oregon to get
a maintenance check on ol Blue- then back to the oregon coastal scenic 101 highway.
then i drove on to washington. need i mention besides the scenery the oregon coast has great seafood opportunities- i couldn't resist the halibut and chips with clam crowder.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
from sea to shining sea
in oregon now- been chalking up the nat'l parks: Arches, Canyonlands, Great Basin and
Lassen Volcanic. drove highway 299 across N. California- that was some tightfisted two-handed driving. then went down coastal 101. pictures are ocean from 101, wheeler peak in Great Basin and Lassen Peak. (no wi-fi or cell signal at Nat'l parks)
Friday, August 31, 2007
heading west
battery running low got to rush . travel and travail are derived from same root.
picture taken by couple from boston that i saw on hiking trail
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
from Moab Utah
staying at a KOA campground in Moab with WI-FI. unbelieveable! weather was great yesterday. its suppose to be a dry 93 today. toured Colorado Nat'l monument yesterday.
here are a couple pics.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
update
i've discovered WI-FI is not always easy to come by- also i could not find any cell phone signal within rocky Mtn nat'l park. i never had a cell phone or a laptop until this year so i can't complain - oh i guess i can but it shouldn't count. anyway i will
to do a summary update since this is the end of first week of trip.
August 22nd: re-visited Wichita where i grew up and attended school thru college at WSU and then moved to DM in 1974. a driving tour by my friend (and school mate from 4th grade thru college) Clark Ensz revealed that Wichita has really been revamped and is now a very attractive city. We ate at a very nice Indian resturant called Passage to India.
After spending the night i headed west stopping at the Lincoln Perk coffee shop in Hesston KS. I told the woman working there i had heard it was the best coffee shop in the Kansas. She said she had just returned from Seattle and they didn't have any better there. i told her i would check that out for myself.
August 24th:
castle rock colorado.
We (thats the Royal We , me and ol Blue- the prius is now named Blue by default)
made to friend Vladimirs arriving in thunderstorm with hail. I had to
pull off road because i could not see anything. The pea size hail
didn't seem to do any damage to ol Blue contrary to the evidence of
the terrible pounding I heard.
My friends have been treating me Royally- I hesitate to point out that
i'm not The King Arthur as they seem to think. Oh well maybe i can
tolerate just a little more guilt in that respect.
visited the very impressive Denver Art Museum(DAM) . Its newly completed extenstion
is totally futuristic. We ate at an excellent Indian restaurant called the Clay Oven-
(do i detect a theme emerging on this trip?)
August 25th:
drove to Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park on a beautiful colorado day. drive thru Big Thompson Canyon evoked memories of first travels to the rockies in 70's and 80's.
had a pleasant day seeing the sites and doing a couple short hikes though the altitude did not show me much respect. it was a very crowded day in the park so
vladimir and i dodged tourists in estes park until we found place to eat. he headed
home to castle rock and i settled in at aspenglen campground. it was very quiet and
the clear sky made for some good star gazing.
August 26th:
Hung out all day at the park. found a quiet pinic area with a mountain stream running
thru it, read and lazed about. typical afternoon rainstorm moved in and out suddenly.
August 27th:
decided to go to Moab and see Arches and Canyonlands Nat'l parks- add 2 more to the list- i bought an annual pass for $80 - its a $20 entrance fee for each park so i will soon get my money's worth. it was cloudy and overcast as i packed up and
remained so as i drove over Trail Ridge road. It started to rain as i left the park
and rained almost all the way to grand junction where more rain was forecast for the night so i got a hotel with WI-FI so that concludes the 1st week of the blog.
The only insight(and certainly not a great one) that i recall is when i broke a finger nail and wondered "what did Lewis and Clark do about fingernails?" but then i
bit off the broken piece with my teeth and said "Ah Ha!
to do a summary update since this is the end of first week of trip.
August 22nd: re-visited Wichita where i grew up and attended school thru college at WSU and then moved to DM in 1974. a driving tour by my friend (and school mate from 4th grade thru college) Clark Ensz revealed that Wichita has really been revamped and is now a very attractive city. We ate at a very nice Indian resturant called Passage to India.
After spending the night i headed west stopping at the Lincoln Perk coffee shop in Hesston KS. I told the woman working there i had heard it was the best coffee shop in the Kansas. She said she had just returned from Seattle and they didn't have any better there. i told her i would check that out for myself.
August 24th:
castle rock colorado.
We (thats the Royal We , me and ol Blue- the prius is now named Blue by default)
made to friend Vladimirs arriving in thunderstorm with hail. I had to
pull off road because i could not see anything. The pea size hail
didn't seem to do any damage to ol Blue contrary to the evidence of
the terrible pounding I heard.
My friends have been treating me Royally- I hesitate to point out that
i'm not The King Arthur as they seem to think. Oh well maybe i can
tolerate just a little more guilt in that respect.
visited the very impressive Denver Art Museum(DAM) . Its newly completed extenstion
is totally futuristic. We ate at an excellent Indian restaurant called the Clay Oven-
(do i detect a theme emerging on this trip?)
August 25th:
drove to Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park on a beautiful colorado day. drive thru Big Thompson Canyon evoked memories of first travels to the rockies in 70's and 80's.
had a pleasant day seeing the sites and doing a couple short hikes though the altitude did not show me much respect. it was a very crowded day in the park so
vladimir and i dodged tourists in estes park until we found place to eat. he headed
home to castle rock and i settled in at aspenglen campground. it was very quiet and
the clear sky made for some good star gazing.
August 26th:
Hung out all day at the park. found a quiet pinic area with a mountain stream running
thru it, read and lazed about. typical afternoon rainstorm moved in and out suddenly.
August 27th:
decided to go to Moab and see Arches and Canyonlands Nat'l parks- add 2 more to the list- i bought an annual pass for $80 - its a $20 entrance fee for each park so i will soon get my money's worth. it was cloudy and overcast as i packed up and
remained so as i drove over Trail Ridge road. It started to rain as i left the park
and rained almost all the way to grand junction where more rain was forecast for the night so i got a hotel with WI-FI so that concludes the 1st week of the blog.
The only insight(and certainly not a great one) that i recall is when i broke a finger nail and wondered "what did Lewis and Clark do about fingernails?" but then i
bit off the broken piece with my teeth and said "Ah Ha!
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
did i make this up?
How many retired people does it take to change a lightbulb?
Nevermind, i'll do it tomorrow.
So far so good i'm in Kansas City at the downtown public library using thier free WI-FI
its 95 degrees fortunately i'll be staying at my friends Galen and Maries and they have
air-conditioning.
picture of parking garage across the street from KC public libray :
Rocinante, Ghost Dancing and the Prius
it occurred to me this morning before i hit the road that there is a tradition of naming the vehicle that you take on any extended road trip. Steinbeck named his pickup camper Rocinate after Don Quixote's loyal horse and least Heat-Moon named his van Ghost Dancing to reflect his native American heritage. What should i name my blue prius?
Toyota choose the name prius from the Latin meaning "to come before" or "precede" to
indicate i guess that the hybrid technology would precede the next generation of new
energy resource innovation. maybe something like fusion ( i heard a story about that on NPR yesterday- the joke is Fusion is the energy resource of the future and always will be) . Maybe i should call the blue prius BLUE with a nod to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell who have great songs Tangled up in Blue and Blue ( a favorite album of mine).
or how about Maggie from "I'm not gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more" hinting at a true embracing of retirement. Not to forget the Beatles how about LIBby from (Let It Be -a stretch?) a suggestion of the "winging it" nature of this trip with an implied acceptance of things as they are. or leaving music i kinda of like WALDO after Where in the world is Waldo and the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson because i like his worldview or the great pantheist SPINOZA. I won't name it Arthur after Schopenhauer though i like his Eastern influenced philosophy where he references the Brahman phrase Tat Tvam Asi meaning Thou art that or You are that too suggesting the unity of all things. It reminds me of the Buddhist phrase "where ever you go there you are". Calling the car Arthur may cause me an identity crisis. Or i could call it Walt after Song of the Open Road Whitman.
The pruis is what they call a smart car. It has key less entry, shuts the gas engine off when stopped and (if you name it) will come when you call. So being that i could call it Edison or Einstein (famous smart guys). Is there a joke with the punchline "any more bright ideas, Edison?"? Hopefully not.
Maybe I should follow the native American way of waiting and watching then let the prius choose its own name or perhaps i should follow the contemporary fashion and decide by Internet polling.
OK! Here are the choices :
1) Blue
2) Maggie
3) Libby
4) Waldo
5) Walt
6) Einstein
7) Spinoza
8) open for suggestions.
note: i immediately dismissed Roy Rodgers side-kick Pat Brady's car name because i can still hear his annoying voice cry " don't fail me now Nellie Belle".
Toyota choose the name prius from the Latin meaning "to come before" or "precede" to
indicate i guess that the hybrid technology would precede the next generation of new
energy resource innovation. maybe something like fusion ( i heard a story about that on NPR yesterday- the joke is Fusion is the energy resource of the future and always will be) . Maybe i should call the blue prius BLUE with a nod to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell who have great songs Tangled up in Blue and Blue ( a favorite album of mine).
or how about Maggie from "I'm not gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more" hinting at a true embracing of retirement. Not to forget the Beatles how about LIBby from (Let It Be -a stretch?) a suggestion of the "winging it" nature of this trip with an implied acceptance of things as they are. or leaving music i kinda of like WALDO after Where in the world is Waldo and the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson because i like his worldview or the great pantheist SPINOZA. I won't name it Arthur after Schopenhauer though i like his Eastern influenced philosophy where he references the Brahman phrase Tat Tvam Asi meaning Thou art that or You are that too suggesting the unity of all things. It reminds me of the Buddhist phrase "where ever you go there you are". Calling the car Arthur may cause me an identity crisis. Or i could call it Walt after Song of the Open Road Whitman.
The pruis is what they call a smart car. It has key less entry, shuts the gas engine off when stopped and (if you name it) will come when you call. So being that i could call it Edison or Einstein (famous smart guys). Is there a joke with the punchline "any more bright ideas, Edison?"? Hopefully not.
Maybe I should follow the native American way of waiting and watching then let the prius choose its own name or perhaps i should follow the contemporary fashion and decide by Internet polling.
OK! Here are the choices :
1) Blue
2) Maggie
3) Libby
4) Waldo
5) Walt
6) Einstein
7) Spinoza
8) open for suggestions.
note: i immediately dismissed Roy Rodgers side-kick Pat Brady's car name because i can still hear his annoying voice cry " don't fail me now Nellie Belle".
Saturday, August 18, 2007
PeeWee's Big Adventure
the day of PeeWee's Big Adventure is rapidly approaching. I will be leaving DM Tuesday August 21st. We got the famous Iowa State Fair under our belts(literally). I ate enough porkchop on-a-stick,funnel cake, rootbeer float and drank beer enough for anyone who might read this. i ate my very first porkchop on a stick
ever and it was so good that i had to have a second one (a few hours later of course). the 2nd one was not as good. i wondered if that was pyschological or if there is some existenial condition that prevents us from recapturing the moment( law of diminishing returns- maybe its economical). The ancient greek philosopher Heraclitus said it best " you can't eat the same porkchop twice". (he may not of said that exactly -college was a long time ago- but i'm sure that is what he meant).
ever and it was so good that i had to have a second one (a few hours later of course). the 2nd one was not as good. i wondered if that was pyschological or if there is some existenial condition that prevents us from recapturing the moment( law of diminishing returns- maybe its economical). The ancient greek philosopher Heraclitus said it best " you can't eat the same porkchop twice". (he may not of said that exactly -college was a long time ago- but i'm sure that is what he meant).
Sunday, August 12, 2007
more influences
Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind — filled with a strong desire to wander. . . .
Basho(1644-1694) Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
(The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Among my many probably ephemeral ambitions as i travel through retirement is to learn how to compose haiku hence i quote from one of the japanese masters Basho.
My first trip is now taking form. It looks like i will leave DM on August 21st
and pass thru Denver on 23rd then spend a couple of days in Rocky Mtn Natl Park
before continuing west thru Utah and Nevada. I hope to stop in Great Basin Nat'l
Park, Lassen Volcanic Nat'l PArk and Redwood Nat'l Park before driving up the oregon coast into Washington and then stopping at MT Ranier. Nancy will be flying to Seattle on September 7th so I just need to be there to pick her up then. Otherwise
i'm pretty much "winging it". By the way I learned from CarTalk that the term "winging it" was derived from the theatre. Actors on stage who didn't have all thier lines memorized would rely on queues from prompters behind the curtains in the wings.
The unplanned aspect of this trip leads one to expect many errors and wrong turns. Error I learnt from Least-Heat Moon comes from the middle english word erren which means "to wander about" such as a knight errant. It came to mean "going astray" and then evovled into mistake which is derived from the old Norse and once meant "to take wrongly".
The annals of scientific discovery are full of errors that opened new worlds . . . If a man can keep alert and imaginative, an error is a possibility, a chance at something new; to him, wandering and wondering are part of the same process, and he is most mistaken, most in error, whenever he quits exploring.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).
Basho(1644-1694) Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
(The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Among my many probably ephemeral ambitions as i travel through retirement is to learn how to compose haiku hence i quote from one of the japanese masters Basho.
My first trip is now taking form. It looks like i will leave DM on August 21st
and pass thru Denver on 23rd then spend a couple of days in Rocky Mtn Natl Park
before continuing west thru Utah and Nevada. I hope to stop in Great Basin Nat'l
Park, Lassen Volcanic Nat'l PArk and Redwood Nat'l Park before driving up the oregon coast into Washington and then stopping at MT Ranier. Nancy will be flying to Seattle on September 7th so I just need to be there to pick her up then. Otherwise
i'm pretty much "winging it". By the way I learned from CarTalk that the term "winging it" was derived from the theatre. Actors on stage who didn't have all thier lines memorized would rely on queues from prompters behind the curtains in the wings.
The unplanned aspect of this trip leads one to expect many errors and wrong turns. Error I learnt from Least-Heat Moon comes from the middle english word erren which means "to wander about" such as a knight errant. It came to mean "going astray" and then evovled into mistake which is derived from the old Norse and once meant "to take wrongly".
The annals of scientific discovery are full of errors that opened new worlds . . . If a man can keep alert and imaginative, an error is a possibility, a chance at something new; to him, wandering and wondering are part of the same process, and he is most mistaken, most in error, whenever he quits exploring.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).
Friday, August 3, 2007
influences and inspirations
while imagining what retirement would be like i spent much time dreaming of road trips to National Parks and of waking up in a tent in the open air amidst scenic vistas. I believe that three of the greatest attributes of America are the National Parks system, national public radio(NPR) and Public television. my wife nancy and i made a goal of visiting as many of the Nat'l parks as we could when we went on our honeymoon to Rocky mnt Nat'l Park in 1980. While she was an art teacher for 21 years summer vacations were the highlights of our year. We planned so as to visit different parks every year. In the process we visited every state and nearly 50 parks not to mention many Nat'l monuments. Now I want to relive some of those memorable visits.
So i'm taking to the open road like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley and William Least-Heat Moon in Blue Highways.
(The sub-titles of which are In Search of America and Journey into America.) i plan to reference both these classics as i go.
What is the goal of these trips? is it just to check off a place from a list? been there done that? is it to discover , find or learn something about nature? about self? is it for adventure, to satisfy the urge for going? is it a spiritual quest? a journey to find the source or to learn to accept our existenial condition? or is it to go away and return to better appreciate home? I don't know i'm just asking.
Whitman's Song of the Open Road has inspired many travelers . For years every trip of mine has been initiated by rereading from that great poem:
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 5
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them. 10
...
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all great poems also;
I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles;
(My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road;) 50
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me;
I think whoever I see must be happy.
From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute, 55
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
So i'm taking to the open road like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley and William Least-Heat Moon in Blue Highways.
(The sub-titles of which are In Search of America and Journey into America.) i plan to reference both these classics as i go.
What is the goal of these trips? is it just to check off a place from a list? been there done that? is it to discover , find or learn something about nature? about self? is it for adventure, to satisfy the urge for going? is it a spiritual quest? a journey to find the source or to learn to accept our existenial condition? or is it to go away and return to better appreciate home? I don't know i'm just asking.
Whitman's Song of the Open Road has inspired many travelers . For years every trip of mine has been initiated by rereading from that great poem:
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 5
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them. 10
...
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all great poems also;
I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles;
(My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road;) 50
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me;
I think whoever I see must be happy.
From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute, 55
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Biography notes for 40th high school reunion 2005
Bio for 40th High School reunion
I daydreamed my way through Jr. High with game winning homeruns and last second
jump shots. Then in high school Sergeant Streetwise of Worldly Wisdom fame
handed me paper route bags and yelled that if I didn't haul ass and go to
college I'd end up sipping wine from paper-bags in downtown alleyways. Even
though Jesus whispered not to fear that there are things more important than
money and fame.
In college rock music caused my hair to grow long as I dodged bullets while
Saintly Philosophers convinced me that the world was hostile and life was doomed unless
Justice and Equality were elected. I voted for both but they lost in a
landslide. I vowed never to give in to middle class apathy and to run free with the wind in my face
like the lion in the songs. Then someone told me the lion had been shot. So I impostered at some
jobs for awhile until I was captured. I've spent 25 years in a cubicle computerizing the
logical arrangement of numbers that justify the status quo. Soon I'm suppose to be
released into retirement, which is allegedly a good thing. But I no longer have any hair for
the wind to blow through so it won't be the same as freedom. The world I hear is still a
hostile place but my wife of 23 years helps me not to dwell on that and meanwhile life
outside goes on all around me.
I daydreamed my way through Jr. High with game winning homeruns and last second
jump shots. Then in high school Sergeant Streetwise of Worldly Wisdom fame
handed me paper route bags and yelled that if I didn't haul ass and go to
college I'd end up sipping wine from paper-bags in downtown alleyways. Even
though Jesus whispered not to fear that there are things more important than
money and fame.
In college rock music caused my hair to grow long as I dodged bullets while
Saintly Philosophers convinced me that the world was hostile and life was doomed unless
Justice and Equality were elected. I voted for both but they lost in a
landslide. I vowed never to give in to middle class apathy and to run free with the wind in my face
like the lion in the songs. Then someone told me the lion had been shot. So I impostered at some
jobs for awhile until I was captured. I've spent 25 years in a cubicle computerizing the
logical arrangement of numbers that justify the status quo. Soon I'm suppose to be
released into retirement, which is allegedly a good thing. But I no longer have any hair for
the wind to blow through so it won't be the same as freedom. The world I hear is still a
hostile place but my wife of 23 years helps me not to dwell on that and meanwhile life
outside goes on all around me.
retirement announcement july 12
After several false starts I'm finally retiring July 26th 2007.
I cannot remember all the dates I may have told various people.
I think the earliest I considered was July 2005. Then I changed it
To December 2005, then April 2006 and again to July 2006. I got involved
With some interesting work projects and decided to postpone till December 2006
But then was persuaded to work on another project so I finally drew a line in
The sand and July 26th is my last day. It turns out there is no end
To new projects and like my mother used to tell me a day's work is never
Done.
I'm winding down now, trying to clean up my office files. I went thru my email
And found there are several people I had not communicated with in some time.
So you may be one of those people.
I've been told the best thing about retirement is waking up and not having to go
To work so I plan on doing that several times a day.
I hope to do some traveling so if you are unable to be here and help me celebrate
Maybe I will show up in your town and we can celebrate there.
Hope to see you , Art Dunbar
I cannot remember all the dates I may have told various people.
I think the earliest I considered was July 2005. Then I changed it
To December 2005, then April 2006 and again to July 2006. I got involved
With some interesting work projects and decided to postpone till December 2006
But then was persuaded to work on another project so I finally drew a line in
The sand and July 26th is my last day. It turns out there is no end
To new projects and like my mother used to tell me a day's work is never
Done.
I'm winding down now, trying to clean up my office files. I went thru my email
And found there are several people I had not communicated with in some time.
So you may be one of those people.
I've been told the best thing about retirement is waking up and not having to go
To work so I plan on doing that several times a day.
I hope to do some traveling so if you are unable to be here and help me celebrate
Maybe I will show up in your town and we can celebrate there.
Hope to see you , Art Dunbar
Saturday, July 28, 2007
My retirement speech
My Retirement Speech - given at a reception at the Hoover Building in my honor July 26, 2007
Contrary to what some may think I have not always thought about Retirement. I remember well the day it seriously occurred to me. It was in 2002. After a six month remodeling project to fix the flood damage caused by burst frozen pipes on the Hoover building south side was completed, our software support team was moved into spiffy new cubicles. The only negative was that the new air-handlers were so quiet I could hear voices from several aisles away which I found somewhat distracting. After a few days I was learning to block out the sounds and one morning as I was typing I was vaguely aware of a conversation off in the distance between a man and a woman which I wasn't really paying attention to until I heard the guy say ...” do you know Art Dunbar?” then I heard this young woman's voice answer "you mean? the old guy?". At that moment two things occurred to me: 1) retirement and 2) earplugs.
Retirement is bitter/sweet , happy/sad affair but in the IT business you have to learn to bounce between the positive and the negative. It’s sometimes a roller coaster ride between optimism and pessimism. First the glass is full, then it’s half full then its empty, then it’s full , now it’s empty. Full, empty... I saw that happen a quite a few times the other night.
I’ve often been asked "What will you do in retirement?". To be consistent I try to give everyone a different answer. One of my favorites is "they say the best thing about retirement is waking up and not having to go to work so I plan on doing that several times a day". But I have been warned that if you don't have anything planned for it, retirement can be a slow death. My response to that is "hey, I’m not in a hurry!" .
How to answer the question "what are you going do in retirement?" brings to mind the story about a Buddhist Monk in Chinese occupied Tibet who every morning on his way to the dharma house to meditate walked by a Chinese guard. One day the guard asked him "where are you going?' . The monk quietly replied "I do not know." The guard angrily arrested the monk and took him to jail for interrogation. He asked the monk "why did you lie, you know you were going to meditate like you do every morning?"
The monk answered " it was not a lie, I really did not know I would be going to jail.". So I guess the truthful answer to "what will I be doing in retirement is " I don't know". But if I do end up in jail, please come visit and try to bring a file.
Actually I do have some plans which include traveling . My favorite trips are car camping visits to the National Parks and en route I hope to visit friends and ex-coworkers who have moved out of state. There are also many hobbies I want to try. Everything from bird-watching and Frisbee golf to bike riding and yoga. I also have a very long reading list. You gotta have dreams. Speaking of which I did have a dream the other night in which I was returning to the Hoover building to meet some friends for lunch but I could not find the Hoover building I seemed to forgotten where it was. So I had to find a telephone and call for directions but no matter what number I dialed I could only get vital statistics.
(note: for probably the last 10 years my work phone number was 281-4949. Vital Statistics is 281-4944. Sometimes as many as 3 or 4 times a week I have gotten calls from people mostly wanting birth certificates who somehow dialed the wrong number.)
Working for the State has been a great job for me. It has been rewarding in many ways. I have worked for and with some wonderful people. I have made some good friends who I hope to keep in touch
with into the distant future.
Contrary to what some may think I have not always thought about Retirement. I remember well the day it seriously occurred to me. It was in 2002. After a six month remodeling project to fix the flood damage caused by burst frozen pipes on the Hoover building south side was completed, our software support team was moved into spiffy new cubicles. The only negative was that the new air-handlers were so quiet I could hear voices from several aisles away which I found somewhat distracting. After a few days I was learning to block out the sounds and one morning as I was typing I was vaguely aware of a conversation off in the distance between a man and a woman which I wasn't really paying attention to until I heard the guy say ...” do you know Art Dunbar?” then I heard this young woman's voice answer "you mean? the old guy?". At that moment two things occurred to me: 1) retirement and 2) earplugs.
Retirement is bitter/sweet , happy/sad affair but in the IT business you have to learn to bounce between the positive and the negative. It’s sometimes a roller coaster ride between optimism and pessimism. First the glass is full, then it’s half full then its empty, then it’s full , now it’s empty. Full, empty... I saw that happen a quite a few times the other night.
I’ve often been asked "What will you do in retirement?". To be consistent I try to give everyone a different answer. One of my favorites is "they say the best thing about retirement is waking up and not having to go to work so I plan on doing that several times a day". But I have been warned that if you don't have anything planned for it, retirement can be a slow death. My response to that is "hey, I’m not in a hurry!" .
How to answer the question "what are you going do in retirement?" brings to mind the story about a Buddhist Monk in Chinese occupied Tibet who every morning on his way to the dharma house to meditate walked by a Chinese guard. One day the guard asked him "where are you going?' . The monk quietly replied "I do not know." The guard angrily arrested the monk and took him to jail for interrogation. He asked the monk "why did you lie, you know you were going to meditate like you do every morning?"
The monk answered " it was not a lie, I really did not know I would be going to jail.". So I guess the truthful answer to "what will I be doing in retirement is " I don't know". But if I do end up in jail, please come visit and try to bring a file.
Actually I do have some plans which include traveling . My favorite trips are car camping visits to the National Parks and en route I hope to visit friends and ex-coworkers who have moved out of state. There are also many hobbies I want to try. Everything from bird-watching and Frisbee golf to bike riding and yoga. I also have a very long reading list. You gotta have dreams. Speaking of which I did have a dream the other night in which I was returning to the Hoover building to meet some friends for lunch but I could not find the Hoover building I seemed to forgotten where it was. So I had to find a telephone and call for directions but no matter what number I dialed I could only get vital statistics.
(note: for probably the last 10 years my work phone number was 281-4949. Vital Statistics is 281-4944. Sometimes as many as 3 or 4 times a week I have gotten calls from people mostly wanting birth certificates who somehow dialed the wrong number.)
Working for the State has been a great job for me. It has been rewarding in many ways. I have worked for and with some wonderful people. I have made some good friends who I hope to keep in touch
with into the distant future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
