Toasted ham and cheese is a real breakthrough

I haven't blogged since Friday night. There is a reason.

(Anyone with tender sensibilities should stop reading now--I'll give you some blank lines to go somewhere else online....)








(OK, don't say I didn't warn you....)


Saturday night we when to dinner for Jack's birthday. It was a great time. But I think I got some bad shrimp. I blame it on the shrimp (which was in a fish stew of sorts) because I was the only one who had shrimp in any form and others had calamari and clams--the other two things in my stew--and no one else got sick.

I went on a website that diagnoses your abdominal distress by asking you questions about your symptoms. WHAT ISN'T  ON LINE THESE DAYS? What I had might have been a stomach virus (but I didn't have a fever, which most viruses give you) or food poisoning. Food poisoning was a complete match for my symptoms (which I won't share even though since you're still reading you have claimed to have rock-hard sensibilities. No one needs a description of what food poisoning does to you.

I ate nothing all day Sunday and warned the people at Emmanuel that I might bolt for the bathroom with no warning so they should carry on without me....

I could drink liquids (a sip or so at a time) to keep hydrated.

I ate some grits and a soft-boiled egg and an Italian ice on Monday.

Just to show you what a 'hail fellow, well met' I am--if you don't already know--I grilled tuna, corn on the cob and red and yellow peppers on Memorial day for Bern, Mimi and our friend, John...and did it, they said, to perfection though I couldn't take a bite. Mimi eats tuna as rare as it would be if you ran it over a candle for a while, but even she said I got hers right.

So, the toasted ham and cheese for Tuesday lunch was a real break-through. I ate it before I drove Mimi to Fairfield for a dentist appointment. Since she was coming to CT she came to us on Monday.
What joy to have her around. She's extremely comfortable to be with--very low maintenance--but engaging and charming in spurts.

We got to see her engagement ring up close rather than on the Internet and it is gorgeous. Young Tim has real taste.

It's the first Memorial Day in my memory when I didn't eat and drink too much. I was just glad I lived through it....

(I did have left-over tuna and corn for dinner tonight, so things are definitely on the mend....)

I must say this: food poisoning makes you face your frailty and mortality....even long to discover your mortality, like NOW!

Bern is painting, I am going to movies....

Bern is painting our living room. I did look at paint samples and even went to Home Depot--a place that unnerves me more that Dracula's Castle would--to help her buy all the stuff...or at least help her carry it all out to her truck.

I am banned from painting because I don't paint up to Bern's standards. (Just as I'm banned from yard work and house cleaning for the same reason--I just can't do it to satisfy her.)

So she's going to be painting for quite a while now--I have a vague idea of which rooms she is painting but wouldn't trust myself to be accurate about it. A couple of bedrooms for sure and maybe the dining room, though I hope not since it is this funky yellow-orange with a gold ceiling that I really like. But we'll see how extensive this painting will be. All I know for sure is that I am banned from taking part.

(Just a note to the wise and lazy: if you prove yourself incompetent at stuff around the house, you will be banned and can go to movies while the other person in your household does those things. Not a bad deal, I'd say.)

I went to see the new Star Trek movie, which was amazing visually and in making 'what happens next' even more dangerous and exciting that 'what just happened'. I'm a sucker for Star Trek stuff, no matter what generation of the show it is. Problem is, these recent movies are supposed to be Kirk and Spock and Bones and Ohura and Sulu and Scotty as younger versions of the people--Leonard Nemoy and William Schatner (et al)--who were in the original TV series when I was much younger than I am now. And if you'd watch an episode of the original after seeing this you'd think it was when people drove star cruisers that were Model T's to the Lexus models of the new movies. It's jarring to realize that what Spock and Kirk had to work with in the beginning was like light years away from the special effects and computer generated stuff their younger selves had....

One of the amusing things is that the Starship Enterprise crew come upon some folks who were cryoginically frozen several centuries before and they don't understand the technology, as one of the characters says 'it's too ancient' since there was no need for cryogenics any more!

The whole thing gives the lie to 'progress' since Spock and Kirk have such wondrously more advanced technology as young men in the present as they did as older men in the past.

Time, in Star Trek, at any rate, seems remarkably relative.

For all the strum and drang of the newer incarnation of Star Trek, I wouldn't trade it all for "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode of the originals. Since it won't spoil anything if you go see "Into Darkness", there is a dead Tribble in the movie that is the key to a resurrection worthy of the New Testament....

So, if you aren't competent to paint--you might go see it....

Thinking your pets are like humans is always a bad idea....

Often, when I'm sitting at my computer typing (as I am now) Luke, our Maine Coon Cat is laying on the table where all my junk is--folders, calendar, books, papers, note books, Jack Parker's black leather prayer book, files, a tennis ball (for some reason), CD;s, my mother's butter dish (for some reason), one of those dolls with smaller dolls in it of Hedici Matsui, paper clips--you get the idea: junk.

Lukie has a tail that may be longer than his body (I've never measured but will and let you know) and fluffier than a raccoon tail. He has that odd 'm' on his forehead and huge (I mean huge!) yellow eyes. He watches me and rolls over to get my attention and I think, "Luke loves me". That is anthropomorphising a cat--which is never a good idea. What  he is actually thinking, I believe when I'm not attributing human emotions to him, is something like "do you have a pork chop or chicken thigh on you? Or some of those duck treats I like so much?"

I talk to my dog, Bela, a lot. I keep waiting for him to talk back, which, rationally, I know will never in a million years, happen. But I keep waiting anyway. He looks like he would like to answer me, tilting his head to one side and trying to see me through the  hair over his eyes. When I'm honest, I know he's just waiting for me to say one of the English words he recognizes: 'go out', he knows; 'bowl', 'breakfast' and 'dinner' are in the same category, 'treat' he knows for sure; 'upstairs' and 'big bed' he responses to, running upstairs to jump on the big bed for the night.

Does Bela 'love' me? Bern tells me he does. Often when I'm gone, she says he lays on the 'big bed' and watches for me. Or sometimes lays on the floor at one of the 6 foot floor windows in the front of our house and watches for me. (The other day, when she knew I was coming back soon, she laid on the floor with him to see at what point he saw me and ran to the front door. But I'm not sure we should use the word 'love' for what animals feel for us.)

I think he probably thinks of me as one of his 'flock' since he's a Hungarian sheep dog and when I leave he feels he's failed at keeping the flock together and is happy when I come back because now he has me to guard. I don't know, all this seems silly to ponder.

Maybe I should just give you a poem I wrote about Bela.

If I've posted this before, I apologize, but it just occurred to me and if I try to find it I'm afraid I'll lose what I've written so far. So, for the first or second time:

Puli Dreams

So, I'm standing on my porch,
deep in a January night--
19 degrees Fahrenheit, partly cloudy, full moon--
smoking one of the cigarettes almost everyone I know
warns me not to smoke.

Then I notice the dog--less than ten months old,
a Hungarian sheepdog--black as anthracite coal
and at least that stubborn--
lying on the deck in the snow
with his snout and one front paw
through the gate
that used to keep young children (how long gone?)
from falling down the stairs.
Cleverly, I put the gate on the deck
to keep the Puli from running away.

I realize, still smoking, that he would run away
in a heartbeat if the gate weren't there.
To what? I wonder.

To a place where he'd be fed better?
Playing with more?
Adored greater?
There is no place like that.

So maybe he's just dreaming of running away
to the place he dreams of running away to:

that place we'd all run away to,
happy as we are,
if no gates stopped us.

jgb--1/17/06

The fox I saw on Cornwall Avenue

A week or so ago, I thought I saw a fox on Cornwall Avenue as I was taking my dog for h is morning walk. It was crossing Cornwall about a block future down than Bela and I were.

But I didn't say anything about it because I thought Bern would think I was slip-sliding away and start calling nursing homes about vacancies. Plus, the dog didn't react, but he was mostly thinking about peeing and pooping and it was a block away.

Then today, in the back yard, Bern and I were talking to Naomi, our next door neighbor about the baby robins in a quince tree in our yard that leans against the fence that divides our yard from Mark and Naomi's yard. And two of Naomi's kids--Phoenix and Eva were there along with a girl from the next house down (Linda and Scott's) whose name I can't think of and she was saying that her mother (Linda) saw a fox in their next door neighbor's yard.

So, at last I could claim to have seen a fox myself on Cornwall Avenue since Linda is probably under 40 and no one would think she had dementia because she saw a fox on our street.

(All this is significant because I did get out of my car while it was still running today and was walking toward our front door until I remembered I had heard WNPR as I was walking away from the car. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't be in the home. Getting out of your car and walking away while it's still running makes me ponder about my faculties a bit....)

However, I'm glad to know someone besides me had a Fox Sighting on Cornwall Avenue. Yea!

I can't park any more....

Here's something I've noticed and have been pondering: I can't park any more.

Not that I can't do parallel parking, I do that just fine. But when I pull into a parking space, head-on, I don't pull in far enough.

It's a mystery. I've notice over the last few months that when I pull into a parking space in a strip mall or anywhere, when I get out, I'm no where near the line in the front and my car's butt is sticking out too far. Several times I've gotten back in my car and pulled up and then gotten out and noticed I still wasn't far enough up in the parking place.

What does this mean, I ponder.

Why can't I pull fully up into the parking space?

Does it have to do with not being able to 'make a commitment' or 'follow through on a promise'? Am I being overly cautious or have I begun to lose my sense of space?

Is this the beginning of dementia, not being able to locate in space?

Have I become tentative in my aging--not able to go all the way forward, holding back, stopping short?

Who knows?

On the other hand, maybe I've always parked short and, in my dotage, have started to notice this short-coming for the first time.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm gaining insight as I grow older.

Getting more alert, more introspective, noticing more about my life.

Well, yeal, that and over two dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks any where. Even if you don't pull all the way into the parking space outside....

Another unread poem

When I tell my granddaughters about Junkos

“Let me tell you about these little birds,”

I'll say, “that I saw in Seattle....”

(There will be lots of questions then:

“Where's Seattle?” “Is it far?”

“Can we go there?” “How'd you go?”

They move along a story

the way they pump the swings

in the park down from their house--

quickly, rising higher, full of wonder.)

Then I'll tell them how the cook

in the conference center where I was,

saw me watching the little birds.

He was smoking a cigarette,

watching me watch the birds

while I smoked as well.

(I'll leave out the part about cigarettes.

Let their parents deal with that someday....)

“They're called Junkos,” he called to me.

“The little birds?” I asked.

He nodded and blew smoke.

I jerked my head as one flew by,

almost skimming the grass.

He told me there were two kinds.

The ones with gray heads were just Junkos

and the ones with black heads were called

'hooded Junkos' with their black hoods.

Junkos are small and quick.

Swallow like, with long splashes of white

on their wings when they fly.

Curious birds, a couple hopped

into the meeting room we used,

craning their necks and watching us

for a while, wondering about us,

I suppose, then hopped back out

the door we left open

because of the heat.

I told the cook about Junko visits

and he replied they came in the kitchen

from time to time,

then left.

I imagine Junkos

live in the East, as well,

and my granddaughters

could see them some day

in Baltimore.

I could look it up

before I tell them

in the green bird book

my friend John loaned me,

mostly forever, because

I love birds.

I could show the girls

the color plates of birds--

a multitude of them--

which I sometimes just

look at without reading the names.

But I don't think I'll research Junkos

before I see the girls.

I'd rather just wonder if I'll

ever see one here, in the East,

or if they live only on the Pacific

side of this wide land.

I like to wonder about stuff like that--

even stuff I could Google and know.

So I'll just tell them how much

I loved watching the Junkos

and leave it at that.

Let them wonder about the birds.

It's always good, I believe,

to wonder about things.

I pray those little girls,

wondering-machines,

will never stop wondering.

That is what I pray.

JGB 7/11/11

unread poems

Last night was the Middlesex Cluster's talent show. It was great fun and very funny. I read three poems and was supposed to read more but the show ran long and I gave up my second slot. So, I thought I'd post the poems I didn't read here. They're longish so I'll just do one at a time.

The Trouble with Finitude

I try, from time to time,

usually late at night after one too many glasses of wine,

to consider my mortality.

(I have been led to believe

that such consideration is valuable

in a spiritual way.

God knows where I got that....

Well, of course, God knows,

I'm just not sure.)

But try as I might, I'm not adroit at such thoughts.

It seems to me that I have always been alive.

I don't remember not being alive.

Granted, I have no personal recollections

of when most of North America was covered by ic

or of the Bronze Age

or the French Revolution

or of the Black Sox scandal.

But I do know about all that through things I've read

and musicals I've seen

and the History Channel.

I know, intellectually, that I've not always been alive,

but I don't know it, as they say,

“in my gut”.

(What a strange phrase that is,

since I am sure my 'gut'

is a totally dark part of my body,

awash with digestive fluids

and whatever remains of the chicken and peas

I had for dinner and strange compounds

moving inexorably—I hope!--through my large

and small intestines.)

My problem is this:

I have no emotional connection to finitude.

All I know and feel is tangled up with being alive.

Dwelling on the certainty of my own death

is beyond my ken, outside my imagination,

much like trying to imagine

the vast expanse of Interstellar Space

while living in Connecticut.

So, whenever someone suggests that

I consider my mortality,

I screw up my face and breathe deeply

pretending I am imagining the world

without me alive in it.

What I'm actually doing is remembering

things I seldom remember--

my father's smell, an old lover's face,

the feel of sand beneath my feet,

the taste of watermelon,

the sound of thunder rolling toward me

from miles away.

Perhaps when I come to die

(Perish the thought!)

there will be a moment, an instant,

some flash of knowledge

or a stunning realization.

“Ah,” I will say to myself,

just before Oblivion sets in,

“this is finitude....”

jgb