take and bake terrors, tall trees, and tally craven
i dreamt that i was a scout for an unseen gang of chaotically violent road warriors but mostly i was just alone, wandering down roads overtaken by nature and looking for clearings still large enough to set up camp
fallie rescued the cutest pair of skimmer baby pals this week but the salamander kept trying to get back in the pool
on friday night, i went to a show that i've been looking forward to for a long time. i had a funny interaction with the singer after the show, mj lenderman was in the soundbooth, and finnie grabbed a sign from the greenroom door reminding all of the performers that the noise ordinances kick in at eleven
a cop pulled us over on our way home with the lamest excuse for cause, immediately told us he wasn't going to cite us for his invented infraction, ran all of our ids, flirted with my son in a super creepy way, and then let us go. i understand that law enforcement plays an important role in a functioning society, but i have still never personally had an experience where they made things better, and i have had many experiences where they made things much much worse
yesterday, i decided against going to the site installation at goatfarm then i ate two fried chicken thighs and it was good
i read that farscape is a very popular show in some american prisons and i don't want to know if it's not true
i'm about to go for a ramble at my favorite spot and later i'll having hot dogs and oven fries for lunch and watch the last baseball game of the season
and tomorrow will always have to take care of itself
I was telling my belovèd how much I love that English has the word "whirlwind" like people looked at dust devils and tornados and said "yep that wind sure is whirling" and then I added how much I also love the word maelstrom and turns out that literally translates as "whirlpool" and my morning is made complete - we love the whirls (actually I've spent a lifetime learning to overcome what I call turbophobia - a visceral fear of tornados and whirlpools - I'd always found even water spinning down a plughole scary, and until recently would flee the room if a tornado appeared on the telly, but I'm able to enjoy them now - and incidentally I blame Disney, it was a Minnie Mouse cartoon where she chases off a cheeky lil tornado when she's trying to hang out washing, and then its mum shows up and it's fucking scary when you're 7)
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'We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life. In flowing forward, a river or stream may hit rocks, branches, or irregularities in the ground, causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there. Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on. Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpools is just the river itself. The stability of a whirlpool is only temporary. The energy of the river of life forms living things - a human being, a cat or dog, trees and plants - then what held the whirlpool in place is itself altered, and the whirlpool is swept away, reentering the larger flow. The energy that was a particular whirlpool fades out and water passes on, perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool.
We’d rather not think of our lives in this way, however. We don’t want to see ourselves as simply a temporary formation, a whirlpool in the river of life. The fact is, we take form for a while, then when conditions are appropriate, we fade out. There’s nothing wrong with fading out; it’s a natural part of the process. However, we want to think that this little whirlpool that we are isn’t part of the stream. We want to see ourselves as permanent and stable. Our whole energy goes into trying to protect our supposed separateness. To protect the separateness, we set up artificial, fixed boundaries; as a consequence, we accumulate excess baggage, stuff that slips into our whirlpool and can’t flow out again. So this clogs up our whirlpool and the process gets messy. The stream needs to flow naturally and freely… We serve other whirlpools best if the water that enters ours is free to rush through and move on easily and quickly to whatever else needs to be stirred. The energy of life seeks rapid transformation. If we can see life this way and not cling to anything, life simply comes and goes.’
- Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: Living Zen.
