But

The real issue is a difference between anything and everything when preceding that particular conjunction. Yet, we'll dwell a bit in that terse little sucker a while before we move on.

For one, it was a word to be avoided in advertising. "Too negative," the Creative Director admonished. "Use 'yet'." And so I do, still, like a bad habit (which treads too close to the 'things'), for otherwise, why bring two things together only to tear them apart again, all within a given thought. That's two.

(Oh, I don't want to... Two. I thank both of you, yet hasten to add that I mean no slight to others.)

The world becomes contingent and that in itself is contrary enough for some to be dismissive, a reliance on the latter the usual custom. Nor will I accept contrition: Crazy Eddie, the Puerto Rican, says, "White people, they step on your toe and say 'sorry', and then step on it again." I am certain I am guilty, although never exactly sure of how; at least it slows me down. One can only write between one's own lines and must leave it up to others to do the reading. (Ah, that's a keeper!)

Enough.

Everything but: See what I mean? Inclusiveness shot to shit. Something short of the entire picture, locked without a key, or pressed for a third image that just won't materialize. And one knows it. I suppose it cannot be avoided.

Speaking of which, anything might be more to the point, the bar set a bit lower to include distractions. Admittedly, the tasks set forth and those that demand attention overwhelm like a wound one won't let heal. If one looks at mountains in a certain way, they become gashes.

Again, enough. Were it that easy.

I will tell you a story.

We had been talking about a weekly hike. It is so beautiful here, and there is much to see beyond the road. And I knew of a place. I had been there a couple years ago at about the same time of year that it is now, yet we had been talking about going since May. Something always seemed to interfere, which is, if nothing else, a warning against planning anything in that month.

Yes, I had been there before. I knew it involved a steady incline for two miles. The grade had impressed me, though hardly considered steep; yet, you two too will recall that I may have needed to rest on several occasions toward the promised spectacle due to that unwieldy thumper. I am pleased to record that this time I was able to maintain a pace that kept astride a 36 inseam to my 31, even though it was not I who tread four miles four times a week for years now. I kept up with my younger wife, yes.

We reached our destination.

And then continued on, all uphill. We discovered new paths that, as a way to return downhill, took us through more of Nature's splendor. We stopped mid-stride and kissed.

About a quarter mile from where our car was parked she mentioned her father's jaw cancer. His surgery is next Monday.

"What else can he do but endure it?" I asked. "He knows that."

"But it will be so traumatic. He is going to be in so much pain."

"He knows that as well. He is eighty years old. He has had surgery before. He knows sufferings of other kinds."

"But he doesn't want to talk about it."

"He is being courageous."

Another reason to hate Full Tilt Poker

I had dinner with a Poker Academy friend tonight. We've played poker together for several years now, met a couple times in Las Vegas with the PA crowd, and visited when he has layovers up in the city. The conversations are always rewarding when we get the chance. And after a couple/three hours, we're talked out, perhaps because we cover a lot of ground, not all of it poker-related, and a good amount heart-felt. Guys can only handle so much of the latter, you know.

When I returned home, my wife asked me about my evening. I touched on the topics and somehow the PA Forums came up. To tell the truth, I hadn't given much thought to them since the PA plug was unceremoniously pulled.

"The forums are gone?" she asked. "All of the photos and stories from Las Vegas?"

A few PA players have found another site to play on with each other. It pales and is almost painful to play on the interface. The bots that seed the tables are absolute shit and play a fit or fold game with no calculations for pot odds. In short, it's a farce and I'll join a table only to visit with longtime friends. The contrast with what we had at PA makes me angry.

But the forums... Now I'm sad.

Fuck the owners of PA: Full Tilt. Sure, they stole money from their clients. Thieves. They also decimated a community. What does that make them?

Compromised

I turn around in my chair to find the outdoor/basement cat sitting on the chair behind mine. He does that quite often. I will talk to animals even though I suppose they could give a shit about something they cannot understand and I say, "Why, hello there!" I reach over to scratch his head, of which he is quite fond, and he takes a swipe at me. The scratch doesn't break the skin.

I might have let him dig in and draw some blood, for by 1630h this afternoon he will be dead.

The reasons and their details may not matter with such finality of an injection into a kidney like the proverbial light switch. I could merely write "quality of life," and leave it go at that. Yet, to look at him, you might be inclined to protest that the cat has some good years left in him. My response could very well be that we're not talking about just his life. The irony is not lost that a guy with a dog's name has made the decision.

Granted, the cat is old, has had diabetes for three years and is now in the early stages of renal failure. His tail hasn't work since he was shot by a neighbor ten years ago, and he is somewhat unsteady on his right rear leg. Although neutered, he still sprays, sometimes in the basement, and the litter box is frequently an afterthought.

Full disclosure would include the two injections of insulin I give him daily. The treatment for the kidney failure is a low protein diet and 50cc of IV fluid delivered subcutaneously daily in his neck and back, a diet not fit for a carnivore and a procedure I have refused to administer on the grounds that he need not be more of a pin cushion that does not understand why.

In that he and I spend a good deal of time in the same vicinity — the dungeon — he has become more or less my cat and my call. This has greater significance than one might think; yet, in that my outlook on such things as pets differs from the wife's, I will restrict my comments to my views alone, even though in doing so, the other is certainly implicated.

The cat has a name by which he is known. It was given to him by the people who lived here before us. As he was their cat, when time came for them to move up the road a couple miles, they took the cat with them. Twice he returned here and was retrieved. When he came back a third time he first stopped along the way to catch a vole, which he brought to me. He has not left since.

But his hunting days have been pretty much over for the last three years, due more to a restricted area to roam more than a lack of ability or desire. He fell seriously ill, his recovery was slow, and to keep an eye on him hence, I built an enclosure attached to an old shed, and this is where he spends much of his day when weather permits. Every once in a while a squirrel or shrew or vole makes a wrong turn, and it has been my wish the last few days that this happens one more time. But time grows short.

I've built a box and dusted off the Dremel. Brass tacks aligned in the shape of a single letter adorn a fir one-by-six that will be the marker. I have yet to dig the hole in the spot chosen, and the poor fuck gets to watch me dig it.

Elemental

Rain. Just a bit overnight and now there's some blue showing, which is good news for me, more an excuse to take a drive and finally, maybe, get some decent photos. Open my eyes like brain ozone.

It's getting more difficult to see the same things over and over and still see something special, but the dust on the washboard roads will be knocked down, and that's a start.

Which reminds me: I've owned my truck for almost four years and I had it washed for the first time last Thursday. Even hot-waxed to a dull sheen. Not that anyone but me noticed, which reminds me:

Small things to keep busy, stay active. My mom does the crosswords; I make stuff. That sense of accomplishment into the ether. For the most part, anyway. This is not to say that I am not grateful, indeed, elated like a fizzy bubble in cream soda making its way from the bottom of the glass up to the surface and freedom when someone pauses long enough to take notice. After all, there are so many little bubbles streaming their way.

*****

Funny thing: I wrote the above yesterday morning before breakfast. After breakfast I took all of my vitamins and supplements like a good boy and washed them down with a big glass of apple cider. Ten minutes later I was in excruciating pain and felt like my gut was going to burst. It was so bad that I felt the only thing I could do was lay down, so I did. And when I shifted from one side to another to find the most comfortable position, I started to belch. Big ones. And almost immediately I began to get relief, so I let a few more rip, got up and went downstairs to explain that I was feeling better. I let one last blast issue forth and a cloud of white powder came up with it. Here's what I think happened: I've started taking a new calcium and magnesium supplement as my wife suggested it might help with some preexisting gastric disorder. The cider is acidic, so I essentially created a fourth grade science project in my belly.

*****

Now, where was I headed?

The sun and a tank of gas. Making things that show for themselves. Getting a little notice and the corresponding gratitude. Oh yeah, that bubble's trajectory. It hits the surface and disappears. It doesn't really matter...

Truth be told, I'm in a little creative slump. The drawings I'm doing don't cut it; the photo series I've been working on for four years has come to an end except for post and cull, so a little distance is needed. And free-for-all poker has been filling the void. Sure, I win nearly every time I sit down, but so what?

I should be reading more, for there is always writing to be done.

The light bulb in the thought balloon will come on again soon enough.

*****

Powdery mildew has pretty much engulfed the summer squash. We have more cucumbers and cherry tomatoes than we can eat or disperse to neighbors. The basil and potatoes need harvesting. We're finally getting some ripe big tomatoes. New lettuce and mustard is planted. The plums are ripe. The scab didn't destroy all of the apples but the pears look like shit. The gopher from that golfing movie has moved in. I have to mow the dandelions. The compost pile is quite large now but very dry.

How about a picture?

Priorities

Vestiges

I woke up singing. It happens often enough. This morning it was a song about Baby Jesus that I made up as I went along. Don't ask me to try and recall the lyrics, but rest assured, the meter was perfect, the lines rhymed, and there was a sweet little flourish at the end that was marked by brilliance. Then I had a cup of coffee, the dream voices stopped and all was lost. Not in a sorrowful way, because the audience of one was once again soothed back into the comfort knowing she had married the right person and we could both now get on with our days.

I should add that my dialect called up visions of the hills of Kentucky. I could smell the Sassafras.

In the ways of blood I have never been yet never left.

No favors

The wood is put up, a full four cords stacked. I figure it took a good eight hours or so over the course of three days.

Yeah, that's a lot of wood. I knew this going in, so I thought I'd recruit some artist friends to come down from the city to help. Much younger than I and perhaps unfamiliar with such chores, I thought to ply them with beer while hinting at the adventure of a new experience. Silence. Then I tried to shame them. "Candy asses!" I cried. No luck.

The first day I felt like I made it halfway through the pile. Thing was, the change was almost imperceptible, at least as far as others who passed by were concerned. I though I might have worked through another cord on day two; and then with 3/4 of the wood gone, folks noticed and commented. And they did so again today. Of course. Now for the kindling. It's not done until the kindling is put in bins.

Oh, someone might be wondering what kind of wood. White Oak, well-seasoned with over three years on the ground. Hardly any bark left on it. Not a bit of it mooky, either. At $240 a cord, it better burn like Madrone.

Whoa! $240 a cord? That's a bit steep, no? As a matter of fact, it is. Last year I got oak from the same guy for $200, and the year before, $180. To adjust, I didn't help unload this year.

Why so much of an increase? Seems that the larger picture has something to do with a bio fuel plant snapping up all the dead they can find. Less construction equals less lumber scrap so they have to look elsewhere. Closer to home, my wood guy had to buy his logs from his father-in-law who is also selling firewood this year from the felled trees on his property. Usually, our wood guy just knocks on the doors of places with trees uprooted from the winter storms. Or, as I happened to see the other day, he steals it.

The little railroad that runs by here services the lumber mills further up the canyon. Over the last two years the company has been clearing trees and brush along the tracks and hauling it back on cars to a place they bulldozed especially for a place to dump it. It's a lot of wood, mostly branches and stumps with the roots attached. There's also a good amount of dirt in that pile. I'd guess the pile grew to be about thirty feet wide and tall, and around two hundred feet long. It's been an eyesore.

Now, with that much wood, there's going to be some sizable logs, and they have been placed in a separate pile. Let's say there are about fifty logs about twenty feet long and two feet in diameter. And not all of it is fir. Every once in a while, especially on weekends, I'll see a pick up truck pull into the area, maybe with a small trailer hitched up, and in the course of an hour or two, a log will go missing. This last weekend I saw my wood guy there with his wife and six kids and their three-cord trailer. Until this last Monday, the area wasn't posted.

If I were to guess (which I seem to be doing a lot lately), I'd say those logs are worth about four grand, which I mention only because I imagine they have plans for them other than chipping. The rest they have been chipping for two weeks now, and they're about three-fifths of the way through it. Maybe three tractor trailers have gone out so far, and another two loads are waiting.

The day before they started, I asked a guy who knows everything what he knew of the pile's future. He said the bark dust (for that's what they call it out here) was being donated to a local high school and somewhere else that I can't remember.

Dirt and all.

Keeping it simple

We again woke to the smell of smoke from the forest fires in the air. Sixty miles to our east is an inferno or three, and most likely it will remain so until the rains return.  We'll supposedly get some relief Wednesday. The sky is an LA blue/brown but it does make for interesting sunsets.


September is turning out to be the hottest month this year. Good for the tomatoes that sit green in the garden. We've had one of size for dinner, and none others save the cherries. Breezes come down from the higher elevations as the sun sets and nights still provide a comfortable temperature for sleeping.


*****


Another essay is in the can, just so you know. Sure do wish my editor did the root word verbing, just to save me a bit of embarrassment when peers and betters point out that need. Yet, I understand my responsibility as well despite the crossed eyes sixth rewrite. Oh, and not to mention he accepted the essay as "great' and then suggests the artist is merely mediocre elsewhere. He's seen better, so he says, and no doubt. But a scale for quality, being so subjective, is no place to seek a semblance of the meaning of others.

I come from the school of thought where transience is to be embraced. Easier said than done, or, for that matter, understood. Slippery little bedevil. Of course, or rather, in anticipation of a certain criticism, commitment is not necessarily relative, yet remains conditional; not an entirely disagreeable strategy (even though a sense of surety may appear somewhat easier), yet it often necessitates silence in the face of non sequitur and gross assumption. Who has the strength? For this reason I do not mourn the death of journalism, for it was always merely an idea. The same goes for integrity. However, it is wise to beware the proselytizers, for which one needs wisdom, not opinion, caution rather than conceit, and inquiry over received data.


*****


The notebook cover does not list how many pages it contains. I am guessing one hundred and will leave it go at that for I want to minimize any wear and tear from turning pages more than necessary to my purposes. Likewise, I may be a quarter of the way through the book.

I have several prospective titles for this group: It's Not Supposed to; Missing Parts; What Remains (for Derrida); The Place Where It Falls Apart; and, Stop Me If You've Heard This Before.


Now, here's the thing: I gave the last of what I consider to be my successful figurative drawings to my daughter last week.

It's time

The best game. Ever.

It may have been the very last day. It was close, anyway, when my dear virtual friend, Akileos the Antagonist, said, "This will be the best poker I'll ever play." He might have said "we," or intended the plural, for it took little reflection to know that yes, it was. And now it is gone. (It may be back but I'm not holding my breath.)

Black Friday was bad, yet, to be honest, I wasn't playing that much online for cash. I enjoyed the 8 Game quite a bit, but my overall interest in poker was waning and had been for some time. Still, to sit for an hour or so and chat with friends... I'll miss PA.

What I didn't take into account was that the members are an intrepid lot, not quite willing to give up the friendships that they've made over the years, and a good number of them have moved over to PS.net's Home Games. And I've followed them.

The games are very few and far between, so, having loaded the software, I have been hitting the play PLO and 8 Game there. Good for my ego, let me tell you, but I also know that if I continue to sit at the lower tables, my game will deteriorate. Yet, a day doesn't go by that I don't double, triple or quadruple up over a session (not every game is a winner), and when I've developed a sufficient roll, I'll see if the bigger rooms have any better play.

I'd like to keep my game, and to do that, I must play. The game at Mike's once a month won't do it, but I'm not flush with cash, so I suppose I have little choice but to continue on PS. I'll suffer the five calling stations who won't fold to the stone cold.

But there's a problem.

A week into it, I'm already bored. I miss PA, not only for the familiar nicks each night, but also because there was a handful of players that knew the game and played it like something was on the line. We played to get better and be better than most, even if in our hearts we knew we'd never be anything more than recreational players.

Gained perspective doesn't always come directly at you. Only once in a great while it's that light switch. Sometimes it's around a corner and you bump into it as you're hurrying to get to the bank before it closes. Or you find it like a sock statically clinging to a fitted sheet. Other times it's a wound that heals so slowly you have it checked out by a doctor for fear of something more systematic.

I was planning on going to Las Vegas this December but had to cancel yesterday. Had to, maybe not, but probably, so I did. I was looking forward to meeting some folks and seeing some friends. But as far as the poker goes, it wasn't the worst thing.

*****

As I've mentioned, we've got a load of vegetables. We can't eat them all, and we're too lazy to can, so we look to neighbors to share what I pick. The Young Farmers get most of them, but our neighbors to the southwest and southeast get some, as do the two women ranchers down the road. It was at the kitchen table of the latter where the conversation turned to the first.

We give them one more year. And yes, the two and a half year old son really should be weaned before that.

*****

Next week a couple and their seven year old son are coming for a couple days. The boy is home schooled and still can't read the simplest words. But he's pretty handy with housework.

Method

I thought it might be a clever thing to say: "Wondering about a sense of wonder." On the face of it, innocuous enough, not overly divulging, for what initiated the construction of the phrase was the notion that I had somehow misplaced mine.

Of course, I may be worrying unnecessarily, more an issue of impatience. Attitude may be the engine (or petrol?) of curiosity, yet imagine how exhausting awe would be if constant. Adjusting to the keener pitch, would it level out as if something akin to tinnitus took over all senses?

It may be depth of experience: Seen it; done it; paid the price. Not cynicism as much as weary with age, and a good day is when one is reminded of simple pleasures.

A walk around the yard and out by the barns (dog in tow) is in order. I could use the exercise: The jaybirds are once again harvesting our unripened filberts, using their heads and beaks as sledge and wedge against the roof or any other hard surface to get at the fruit of the nut. The yellow jacket hornets are doing their low-level aerial recon for carrion in the grass. It looks as if we might get some decent apples despite the scab. The ripe blackberries are thick and the handful I pick once again take me back to childhood summers with my grandparents.

Imagine, then, if you will, a camera as a similar mechanism for nourishment.

What one comes to expect one readily finds

Compared to the Illinois State Fair, this one pales. I don't care why in terms of larger issues; it just does. The barns have one third the animals, the Fish and Wildlife section is miniscule, and there are three times as many booths for mom and pop window installation companies hawking their double-paned vinyl. So, why do I bother?

Because I have a camera.

The parking lot was jammed and I had to park a good 1/3 mile away from the gate. Small matter, as some folks in a golf cart were ferrying people and I caught a ride pretty quickly and enjoyed the ride along with a cute, young couple. We chatted about throwing up on rides.

I suppose I could have directed the conversation in another direction, for it was I who more or less expanded on their comments about their least favorite, inner-ear-challenging rides. I could have kept my own counsel with a slight grin or short chuckle. But I was actually thinking of something else, fighting against my own little terrible thrill of being amongst others.

Willing

Writing is a lot like sex.

Now, before I attempt to draw analogies, let me say that I know this is not a new idea, as very few based in something approaching reality are, and add that it is too early in this piece to go off on a tangent.

Consider: After the interlude, one says, "That felt good. I must do that again, soon." And, although one has that intention, things happen to forestall (hence, "interlude"), and the longer that period lasts, the more diminished the need to act becomes. Mind you, when I was a young lad, I could fuck in my sleep. Now, I mostly dream, whereas I have a distinct memory not too long after the first "Star Wars" movie of doing a nurse co-worker while envisioning a legless robot.

Motivations change in response to abilities.

I am now left with the feeling that I have shot my wad, perhaps too soon, and having resorted to cliché as well, leave both the reader and myself wanting. Were it night, it might be convenient to roll over and excuse the awkwardness by feigning exhaustion. True, I am still waking up, the second cup of joe not yet finished, so there might be that. Idle chatter fills the void.

No, what we hope to hear is something quite different.

I need a shower.

Culpa

I could apologize for my absence, for I seem to do it a lot, that absent thing, mindedness, at least, yet I have not found an effective way to express remorse when I forget for the millionth time. (Yeah, there's a scoreboard.) But this isn't one of those times. On the face of it.

I could make a list. I thought of doing such. Not to-do but what is and was. But then I said to myself, "These are things that are happening —oops — have happened to me. Don't spoil the moment by composing." There's an old joke in that, which I won't repeat for fanning flames. Besides, the metaphysical often does not fly.

Still, I should mention that my name has seen ink two —no — make that three times this month. Four, if you consider proximity. Granted, not all of it rubs off; and, if it pays off, I will be mildly surprised. (Ah, future tense.)

Which reminds me (Admonition in the back of my head/voices from the past for an awkward paragraph transition.) of a moment of reflection I thought to share, when I first made the connection between hope and faith, dare and double-dare, if you will, which led to a bad decision despite a solid enough concept, for I neglected to take into consideration that b-buddy, Need. As in unmet. As in compensatory, that which distinguishes us from the apes, regardless of whether it is our fucking passion or passion fucking. It's a deep hole and therefore we concentrate on the light.

Or ignore it, like the sun, and keep on that path. Case in point: The Young Farmers. (Mind you, the rule stands that if I criticize another, I must lay a similar foible at my feet/feat.) So much we have given, gladly, for I see no reason for others to spend money on mistakes we have made, nor for past successes that, regardless, failed to produce more than one dollar per hour as a most-possible wage. So, when our six cucumber plants produce a full bushel more than we can eat or offer to neighbors, it is right for me to give them to the YF (ah, thought I had given up on the practice, eh?) to sell at the market, especially when they have suffered crop failure and bug bites the city folks cannot ignore. (Another parenthetical: If I had not stepped away to tweet a caustic remark or two, I would not have noticed that this paragraph began and ended with "ignore." Feel free.)

As I was saying... Besides the cucs, there was a bit less than a bushel of summer squash (twelve plants, mind you, faster growing fruit given to waste when unharvested for a few days), for which they appeared grateful in the form of a good number of biscotti on our doorstep today. But we are still on yesterday, when thanks came in the form of words about the soaker hoses that made management so much easier, the extreme noticeable via the plants that did not get watered by another means and died. No time. Not that we didn't provide them with enough hose.

We did it so much better and it did not matter. There isn't much more one needs to know in that regard. There is, however, a story that will not leave my mind, almost a persistent fever, the impression so, cells lost until all we have left is impropriety. Cells? It may not be a matter of pathways and such at all. The garden invariably has weeds lest one disregard most else that should matter, and it will come in good time.

And so, I must keep my promise, the oath of humility, or contrivance, I cannot be certain of motivation but I shall strive to keep it current:

The Rule of Three-Fifths