Taking what life throws at me one pitch at a time
I was less of a boat anchor today than I was yesterday.
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So I anchored myself with a check in to Obscured House
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After a brief visit
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To the big lake on my doorstep
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On my way to the Jewels;
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Where once upon a time I used to cash checks.
An absence can be
Painful Scarring Horrendous
Or very welcomed
I sometimes plug my haikus into this graphic engine to see just what it makes of my words and to give me insight into the world we are making aided by A. I. output. The results can go from sublime to horrifying. When I plugged this haiku into the engine it produced such disturbing results I chose not to subject the world to this A. I.’s algorithmic nightmares. After four batches of nine results it finally gave me this one, in my opinion, usable option. The first set was produced by entering a more user friendly woo woo trope, but even that put some A. I. darkness on display.
me
I also sometimes wonder how my words are skewing the data set.
In the mid 1960’s my Aunt and Uncle bought a house near where we lived. Maybe one or two social classes up from my neighborhood. Quite literally the other side of the tracks. I would have been nine or ten at the time. So of course they invited their poor relatives over to tour their new home. Actually, they had always been in the rotation of family holiday get together locations so much time would be spent visiting for the five or six years they lived there. That is until they took another step up to the burbs leaving us real Chicagoans behind. It was a nice two story home with the best bonus in the world for a boy my age. The second story bathroom top row of tiles had delightful naked blonde cartoon women, ala Marilyn Monroe, discreetly hugging bubbles in various provocative but still tasteful poses on alternating rectangles around the whole bathroom. Just a little above my pre-puberty eye level. But what an eyeful for me in those clueless days of the mid 60’s. I didn’t know why I liked ’em. But boy did I. Even to this day the memory makes me smile. Best of all nobody else seemed to pay them any mind and I knew better than to remark upon them. So that particular decor choice by the previous owners stayed and I had many inspired visits to that lavatory as the revelations of puberty over took me. I think I hold those tiles responsible for my life long penchant for blonds.
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I still wonder what the people who bought the house from my aunt and uncle thought of their choices?
When I sit to meditate
I carefully try to radiate
Without words to intimidate
In spite of where I situate
Careful not to over inflate
Verbiage merely to saturate
Animal magnetism will infatuate
And unintentionally infuriate
Making it necessary to mitigate
Without appearing to subjugate
Intentions merely to intimate
That I'm just trying to relate
To precursors of my current fate
I finally
scraped the last
bit of gumption
off the soles of my
inflatable shoes
to follow the
moving yellow
line to board the
Dutch Elm Street
bus but I’ve
fallen into my
shadow and
I can’t
get
up.
‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿
This Valentine’s Day was a bittersweet one. Many of them throughout my days have been indifferent. Many of them have been sweet. Some very sweet. Some even tepid at best. The past ten years have been bumpy. So my pilgrimage on Valentine’s Day 2024 only got me lost. No amount of GPS, Google Maps, or my own dead reckoning was able to deliver me to my desired target. Alas, I went in the entirely wrong direction. Being a seasoned veteran of zigging when I should have been zagging I moved on. But the next morning I found my destination. My first approach was like this.
♥╣[-_-]╠♥
Being a double G (Geezer and Gimp) clearly another route was in order. I zeroed in and made my approach.
♥╣[-_-]╠♥
My destination was in sight. On a newly renovated reseeded urban public golf course in February. A warm February. But February in the Great Lakes region of North America nonetheless. Encouraged that my goal was closer I made my approach.
Addressed my object.
“Hello object.”
Winding up I took my stroke.
♥╣[-_-]╠♥
My purpose was to grieve for my most recent Valentine. It had been a tough ten years for both of us. My Valentine and I had been tentative, joyous, passionate, tempestuous, tenuous, hurtful, healing, woundful, painful, playful, humourous, forgetful, vacant, freeing, absent. Now left with only unresolved lingering regrets. Only mine. I found a place to share them with the wind.
A place where people leave painted memorials to people they cared for. Spend a few quiet moments to recall what made them special. To remember. Reflect. Enjoy what went before. What matters.
So I sat and spoke to my beloved in the wind.
♥╣[-_-]╠♥
She has taken her light into the night that has no dawn. I shall continue to try to find my way to wherever my days will lead me. Guided by GPS, Google Maps, or my own dead reckoning I shall persist asking questions. Such as ,”Does this count as a Finial?
♥╣[-_-]╠♥
Sometimes you have to
get out of the fantasy
bath and dry off with
the towel of reality.
No matter what. Don't Panic.
(✯ᴗ✯)
The Guide says a towel “is the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have … you can wrap it around you for warmth … lie on it … use it as a sail on a mini-raft … wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat … wave it as a distress signal in emergencies … and of course use it to dry yourself off, if it still seems to be clean enough.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
(✯ᴗ✯)
P.S. I write a tanka for a word prompt on Mastodon. Lo and behold, the RDP of the day is “galaxy”. Ain’t life grand 😁
Maleva:
The way you walk was thorny through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over, Bela my son
What was once an almost imperceptible rumble may or may not have been there all along. To those paying attention to rumbles, those scratchings were already on the wall. It’s just a matter what attention is given. Many things are a concern. All the usual accoutrements of the American Scheme. Both purveyors and consumers. Some more than. Some less than. The claw of complicity claws rampant o’er the land. Once noticed, the volume of rumblings continues to climb. It fills every silence with it’s sticky content. That content grew bigger teeth. Fiercer talons. Now content is clawing at the door. At the window. Leaving marks on once impervious sensibilities. Ramparts of rationality. The claw of opinions. Things influencing both happy and sad events. Highly unlikely conspiracies. Rabbit holes that have no more bunnies to give and yet do. Claw back attention to things that influence circle encompasses. Ignore the outrage industrial complex. Try to do good where it can be done. Be kind or just be.
“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
🦀🦀🦀🦀
History is filled with examples of one Alien Nation accumulating and acquiring the stuff of another Alien Nation by any means necessary. (i.e. by hook or by crook) When everybody is an Alien, nobody is. The coagulation of Aliens into Nations is where the real mischief commenced. One bunch of Aliens would begin to alienate another bunch of Aliens. So instead of unum ad unum alienation, it became a “We’re not the aliens, you are.” assignation alienation. So it has been and will continue to be until the Space Invaders arrive, or when us Aliens become the Space Invaders elsewhere. That’s when the real results on this alienation algorithm will reveal itself to all who can or care to see. In the meantime….
A Scroll Threw Life 