life
Camera timer
Police car
Mother
Smile
St. Patty’s day
And not a Guinness or corned ham with cabbage within hundreds of miles. And than it comes to mind is that there’s not a bunch of friends here to sit with around the table, drinking Guinness and eating corned ham and cabbage and laughing about protestants and catholics and the Irish and beer.
Same old same old, nothing like want to teach you what little things aren’t really all that little.
That all off my chest, I’m going to go home and change into my green boxers.
Juggling
Note that the burners are going under all three pots. The fourth burner is going too, making hot cocoa.
Nikon D200 + old school Nikon 28/2.8 e series lens + carbon legged tripod + bounce flash
Mangoes
One-fifty said the woman. Not cool–last time they were one quetzal even, so I got on her case a bit. Are you sure? They must have gone up, last time they were a quetzal. Are they harder to find now?
I had gone to the market for fruit in the morning, searched for mangoes that looked good, and asked for the price.
She explained the price of the carton and how many, but I really didn’t want to do any mental math at all, so I just nodded and said Ok, I’ll take three.
Four for six quetzals, said the woman quicky. I thought–well, I guess if she’s gonna offer me a deal I oughta take it, so I said Sure, sounds good.
This afternoon as I pulled out the bag of four mangoes and thought about the price, I did a calculation. Six divided by four.
I was about to be frustrated, until I thought about having four mangoes instead of three.
The good and the bad
The good: yesterday a little girl, who practically never smiles and has been deaf for four years, lit up the whole exam room with a big ear to ear smile when she heard her own name in her own voice, and I was there to see it.
The bad: after 5 good months, the intestinal parasites (I’m hoping it’s them, otherwise I blew $5 on meds for nothing) finally got me, and they got me good.
The ugly: last night a bunch of people were in my house and made a huge mess of the kitchen, ate half of my bread, drank my tea, used my mug and didn’t wash it and used up my margarine. And they left the bread bag open. Not cool.
Baser place
I’m convinced. Nothing convinces me like puking convinces me. Puking convinces me with absolute pure and immutable resolution bigger and more solid than a huge windowless brick building that life always has a base or even baser place waiting just one bad dinner away.
So here I am on my hands and knees on the floor over a half full pan, in that baser place. I think about how some boxers puke before weigh-ins, then next thing I know I’m remembering the club and how everybody talked about the legendary fast food runs that coach treats his fighters too after the weigh in, and this one time when someone’s like “ah man, I’d load up on double macs” and one of the assistant coaches is like “awwwwWWw MAN that stuff’s nasty, you gotta go B-K or the Bell,” which by the way is totally the truth. But that’s mostly aside of the point, except that this thought triggered another one, and in a moment, me on my knees over a pan, pathetically wheezing little breaths because for a reason I don’t understand puking jacks up the respiratory system, every single strategically placed subliminal message of McDonalds’ big and disgusting food came rushing into my nauseous head at once.
I puked again.
Words
Running down a mountain after the last gray light has begun to fade away, I see a firefly for the first time in my life and stop running, hold out my hand and it lands on my hand like it knows me, this little insect, absolutely nothing at all and at the same time the neatest little beautiful thing, walks on my finger then lifts up again lighting its own way off into the last bit of dimming light. Then they all came out and lit my way as I ran down the mountain.
Exquisite grammar is so far out of the field of question, even words just seem wrong.
Grammar
After running halfway up and then back down a mountain’s foothill in hot sun, showering and then eating beef stew exquisite grammar just feels wrong.
Know
There’s anothern.
He ran his arm down the hole and lay on the ground feeling about in the dark beneath them. He closed his eyes. I got him, he said.
The dog he brought up was dead.
Yonder’s your runt, Billy said.
The little dog was curled and stiff, its paws before its face.
He put it down and pushed his shoulder deeper into the hole.
Can you find him?
No.
Billy stood. Let me try, he said. My arm’s longern yours.
All right.
Billy lay in the dirt and ran his arm down into the hole.
Come here you little turd, he said.
Have you got him?
Yeah. Damn if I don’t think he’s offerin’ to bite me.
The dog came up mewling and twisting in his hand.
This aint no runt, he said.
Let me see him.
He’s fat as a butterball.
John Grady took the little dog and held it in his cupped hand.
Wonder what he was doin off back there by himself?
Maybe he was with the one that died.
John Grady held the dog up and looked into its small wrinkled face. I think I got me a dog, he said.
——-
You sure you don’t want a glass of water?
No mam. I’m alright.
Betty, he said.
Yes.
I’m not what you think I am. I aint nothin. I don’t know why you put up with me.
Well, Mr Parham, I know who you are. And I do know why. You go to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.
Yes mam.
From Cities of the Plain, by Cormac McCarthy
I’m gonna make a big stretch…McCarthy is like Messi. Yup. Messi doesn’t use tricks or gimmicks or anything that he doesn’t need, just perfect timing and sense of the game. He’s so good he doesn’t need that silly stuff. Reading these books, it’s like that–there aren’t tricks or gimmicks in the plot, and it’s all so much more story for it.
Down drift the leaves of change, I think the long time standing winner in my book of series of books, the Hitchhikers Guide, has come to the end of it’s season there.
Sunrise
