blazing saddles

oh my god it's so hot here. whew!
i forgot what 100 degrees in memphis feels like, but i am sufficiently in awe of the heat.

we met cristin and jano at the airport this morning and made the trek to pho hoa bin. they're gonna hit graceland, and i'm gonna hit last minute preparations.
it's pretty intense out there. hope nobody melts, fries, or evaporates.

went by declerye. a lot of stuff looks the same, but some things have changed, as i suppose is inevitable after a year. a couple new faces there. the garden looks better than i thought it would, but it obviously hasn't rained much because the salvia apiana has never looked happier. i was amazed by how much the lavender has grown, but the rosemary still seems to be put out about being in the wrong climate. the sunflowers look very cheerful indeed.

jb was in the backyard when i arrived. derek was in the kitchen frying okra. andy and tim must be out on the road because they're gone. amanda was in and out and i saw robin for a sec. swung in my old hammock, juiced lemons with casey and jb, and walked over to the medmart, where i saw some more familiar faces, and fell madly in love with patty pan squash pickles from bulgaria. didn't see tj but i guess there's still later, but we heisted the jars and i wore the driving hat.

i had the worst luck trying to go swimming though. the pool at millington closed, then eva got to town and they got a hotel with a pool but it closed 5 minutes before we got there. i guess my pisces self and water aren't happening today.

it's so nice to see cristin and jano again. it's been a long time.

tomorrow the family descends. it oughta be interesting.

back in mtown

made it to memphis safe and sound after 3 flights! whew! sure am tired of planes after all THAT.
everything looks the same as when we left, but i'm sure there's been changes in my absence, the kind that lurk under the surface of crumbling inevitability...there's some sightseeing i need to do, if i can find the time in the middle of wedding madness...
i can see the humidity in the air, and smell the palpable mixture of fried chicken and diesel exhaust. yep, i'm back, and can say "y'all" and "fixin' to" to my heart's content without getting funny looks from anybody.

good bye ol' lonely mountains

Memphis bound

bye bye orygun! tomorrow morning i'm making tracks to memphis...leaving the beautiful land of mountains and trees behind, and trading them for the hot mysterious delta.

it's a whole different world where I'm going. I'll have to confront the rigors of the climate (it's not humid at all here, even if it can get hot and as tough as i used to be...i'll admit i've turned into a sissy out here), and well, forgetting about the weather, it's just a whole different world...like night and day.

in a way i'm looking forward to it, though...i miss a lot of funny little things that are unique to memphis and for a week at least i can get my fill of them...along with ravenous mosquitoes and blazing hot days. A quick check of the weather reveals that the temps are in the Mid 90's, there's an ozone alert for the whole week (happy happy lungs), and due to the heat, there could be thunderstorms popping up just about any ol' time. (hopefully not on saturday morning when I'm trying to get married).

somehow i need to fit all this crap into just a couple of bags. (such as the stuff I've been saving up for liz, my wedding dress, flowers (both fake and real), and a bunch of flower seed packs, to name a few things) and somehow i have to remember EVERYTHING and get it all done today. and keep my sanity to boot. it's a tall order.

wish i was rollin' in on a train, but it's a bit far for that. i've got air travel time to look forward to. joy. but this song has been on my mind a lot lately. "the rock island line it's a mighty good road, and the rock island line, it's the road to ride...if you want to ride, you gotta ride it like ya find it, buy your ticket at the station on the rock island line." One thing about the delta is that life really is really about the same in some ways as it was in the days of alan lomax's field recordings...for better or worse. So I'll be back haunting my old haunts very soon. Kind of a funny feeling. can't wait to see everybody though...and see what kind of trouble i can get into over the next week.

1 week and counting

woah guys. i'm getting married in a week. pretty crazy heh?

marriage is a funny thing for me. getting married is not something i really ever planned on doing in my life ever. i always admired my parents and their relationship with each other. but everyone i knew had been through a divorce. and my policy on this whole topic is, if i'm doing it at all, that's it. ain't gonna be doing it six times. i'm old fashioned.

didn't think it was very likely that anyone would want to marry anyone as crazy as me, anyhow. i'm just not like other people...

so here i am waking up every morning with someone who actually understands me and i feel pretty good about doing it for a long time to come. so i got roped in, caught, so to speak. and i'm pretty alright with that.
so in a week, i'll be joining the legions of married folk. but you know that a scruffy freebox hustlas probably got a few tricks up ma sleeves, y'all.

bro's in the hospital. it's pretty serious bidness.
those poor kids have enough troubles as it is, too.

i'm pretty disappointed that he won't be coming to my wedding, i'll admit it. but even more so, i worry about his wife and baby (which is a whole tragic tale unto itself). those guys have been through a lot.

i'm pretty freaked out by the whole episode, and can only hope that he'll be okay, and that things won't get any worse than they already are.

life's a funny thing. one minute things are just fine. the next they turn into a big pile of shit.

so yeah, no baby brother at my wedding. i'm pretty depressed, but as long as he's okay, i'll have to live with it.
seems like most people don't get along with their sibs but i'm an exception. always got along decently with my brother, and have really missed hanging out with him. but for a long time he was overseas, and then i moved to the opposite side of the country. i was really hoping that at least i could see him once this year.

someone i work with said they'd pray for him at church. i thought that was amazingly sweet. that's all you can really do at times like these, anyhow.

intro

well here goes. had to start over because the site i'd been using for years and years ( way before the whole "blog" thing even really got going) has been a bit unreliable as of late.

"Remember that where there's a little PRC, there's a whole lot of Shade".

What you are about to read is a miscellany stew of my daily experiences, frustrations, ponderings, travels and whatever music's stuck in my head at the moment. Not necessarily the most profound stuff in the world...just a reflection of my reality.

i won't waste much time introducing myself because all that need be known will become apparent, unfolding slowly over time.

as the saying goes "believe little of what you hear". the details are unimportant and will become less important as time goes on.

chances are nobody knows i'm here yet, that's a nice feeling.

shhhh. ;)

June-a recap

goonies never say die

2005 Jun 08

sweetpeas, cornflowers, california poppies, ragwort, yarrow, wild ceanothus, vetch, and the very beginnings of hypericum...these are all blooming now and they're beautiful. they keep blooming time after time, reminding me that life goes on.

things are as strange as ever, and my name is not what it was, and i don't know where i'm going, and i don't know who you are.

if i followed these railroad tracks, i'm sure they'd take me home, and i'm sure they'd take me somewhere that i would like to go, and i'm sure i'd be the last one on this earth who knows.

i'm not good at saying goodbye, i'm not good at saying anything, i know that nothing is forever, and us goonies never say die.

life is not so linear, you always come back around, at the end of the road, you find that you've already been down.

never regret anything. it will be okay. it always is in the end. you take a breath, get up and keep moving. tomorrow's another day. don't look back.

nothing is forever.

a symmetry

2005 Jun 07

THAT sort of monday my wallet fell out of my pocket on the bus. about 5 minutes after getting off i realized it and had a nervous breakdown. luckily i had the presence of mind to call right away and managed to catch it just after it arrived at the terminal and was able to get the wallet back...with the $150 intact. that's a sweet little miracle. and as everyone says, I guess there's some good people left in the world after all..."there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."

the rest of the afternoon was trauma free. it just rained and rained and rained and rained. well at least i don't have to water anything. spent the whole quiet day pruning the overgrown bonsai and the unruly saplings out back. takes a bit of work to keep them from going with their natural tendency to become large leaf covered sticks. plums are especially bad about looking crazy and putting out way too many branches. grafted maples always have wild looking shoots coming out of the graft stock that need cleaning up.

i had a small moment of clarity and realized that acers (maples) really crave perfect balance and have an innate need to live symmetrical lives.

"The world is changed.

I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.

Much that once was, is lost,

for none now live who remember it."

i don't think there are many of us left. people who can see the everyday magic of the world, the hidden mysteries, the small miracles, the stuff that gets lost in our frantic noisy modern lives. it often seems like nobody takes the time to be quiet and listen to anything or slow down enough to watch anything. just think how much more beautiful and simple things would be if everyone were to pay attention to things, and observe the way things work in the natural world, instead of rushing uselessly around and struggling about.

"All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by frost." -Tolkien

Today's list of random facts

Current Location: 97520

The Shoes You Wore Today: the clogs that I always used to wear when washing dishes for njeri.

Do you get Motion Sickness: sometimes on the bus.

What do you want to be when you Grow Up: a pirate.

Number of things in my Past I Regret: None. Even things that sucked were good lessons to have learned even if it was the hard way. i may not always be proud of the things i've seen and done, but i don't regret the lessons i've learned.

scared straight

2005 Jun 06

had a pretty quiet day of pruning trees and pulling weeds. had to give the ol' annual vs perennial grass lecture again. all said, it was a pretty quiet routine sunday afternoon for me.

meanwhile back in memphis, TN this poor kid www.myspace.com/specialkid

comes out of the closet, and gets tossed into the murky netherworld of "homosexual recovery". having known several victims of the infamous "second chance", this sounds remarkably similar to me....a big lucrative mindfuck run by freaks who make a fortune off desperate parents of "troubled teens". i don't think it's a coincidence either. sigh...i just hate stuff like this. the worst thing in life is not being able to love and accept people for WHO THEY ARE. just think of all the trauma and pain that could be avoided if we just learned to accept ourselves and each other? so your kid's gay? trying to "fix" them will only cause years of intense psychological damage. this seems to be a problem that so-called "christians" have so guys, what would jesus do? i'm guessing this ain't it.

alrightee then. i don't even know this guy but i'm feeling pretty sad for him. i've seen other people whose lives have been deeply scarred by these places, and it's one of those times in life when the "cure" is definitely worse than the "disease".

wow.

who let the dogs out???

2005 Jun 04

thought of the day: we a long way from memphis, y'all. heard the familiar refrain of " Put yo hood up

Put yo click up" then a little while later, "fuck this shit...we in da hood..." overheard at a party of teenage white boys (the nearest "hood" being 300 miles away). ahh we a long way from " Gettin' money in the Bluff or on MLK, Since they brought gold back, I bought me a gold mack, To explode I leave ya back on Old National, I'm in a gentlemen's club with gentlemen thugs" yep, long long gone. y'all just don't KNOW.

Today was nice--supah nahsss! Going to work early is where it's at...nobody but the birds around. Just imagine what all a person can get done without being interrupted by questions like "where's the lavender" and "how much is a flat of....". me an' math are like oil and water anyhow. but i found a new plant rescuer so now i don't feel as obligated to rescue all the scruffy dumpster bound plants. my conscience rests a bit better these days.

is there anything more utterly satisfying than going outside and picking peas right out the front door? although peas are good in certain dishes: mattar paneer, split pea soup, etc, i really like just eating a handful at a time everyday just for a nice snack.

i wonder if anyone at declerye is taking advantage of the raspberries now? did my strawberry patch yield a bumper crop this year? does anyone remember that there's blueberries out there? all these burning questions that have no answers...

here i have a pretty impressive array of things-offhand i'd say i have a similar diversity of things growing in 1/5th the space.

i'm currently harvesting peas and a few strawberries (along with herbs)...word on the street is strawberries will really get going in a couple of weeks. i have potatoes that are almost as tall as me. the garlic is almost ready to harvest. the carrots are forming nice umbells (i'm growing second year's carrots for their power of attracting beneficials. the first year carrots are almost ready to harvest too, come to think of it.) the tomatoes are getting to that gangly stage where they need to be staked. the tomato shoot i stuck in the pot with the quince is growing just as fine as can be. the pineapple sage could be mistaken for a shrub and both it and the tangerine sage are covered with red tubular flowers that are allegedly attractive to hummingbirds. the ground cherry is forming husks and the pepino dulce is forming fruits. the culinary sage finished blooming. the nasturtium is just finally starting to bloom. everything looks pretty darn happy out there.

today was nice and since hardly anyone came in, i got to go home early. woo hoo! that's a rare and unheard of treat on a saturday. a saturday where i do something other than work all day. what a concept.

h to the y to the p to the e...whew, who let the dogs out??? boy it's hype deluxe around town...like someone done gone an' opened the gate and let everybody an' everythang right on in. riding down the street, i had a memphis flashback, a pimped out caprice and a truck with a barking german shepherd about scared me right off my bike...don't know how many times i'd ride past someone's house and hear some killa dawg...whew, down in the plaza there's a really cool looking bus parked right by lithia. like everyone else on earth, these folks have a website 12 tribes. anyhow, it was really cool inside...all kinds of custom woodwork and solar roof and well i could gush all day about what neat things were going on inside the converted bus...the only way it could be any cooler is if they had a 3 mast sailboat on top. makes me want to run away and join the circus...but don't worry y'all i think my running away and joining the circus days are probably over. moving right along...and keeping that dawg theme, we went down there in the first place to go see dogtown http://www.sonyclassics.com/dogtown

ah that brings back some memories of my skate rat days. what a fun movie. those guys were a little before my time (we were hooked on bones brigade videos and half pipes) but it's all good. now i got that damn clash song stuck in my head...aww it's fine i was already going there...i found a tape from highschool that has a good bit of the clash on side a.

death or glory,
becomes just another story...
death or glory becomes just another story

who could forget the intro to thrashin' where he drops in off the roof of the house? dawg!

looks like the rain and clouds are coming back. and my ornery ass is just fine and dandy with that. it it wants to be cloudy and wet, i'm all for it. who wants all this lousy sunshine anyhow?

blow wind blow

2005 Jun 04

blehhh glysophate, blehh. love THAT smell. love it.

spent the morning pruning the prunus lineup. boy did they need it. love that blister i've got going now.

today was a windy day. and just like the wind, i just let things blow on by. nothing was holding me to the ground...blow winds blow. felt more like buzzards looping around the landfill than like a girl on the ground. circle circle circle. let everything drift on by.

don juan roses smell surprisingly good. hummingbirds really dig upright lobelia. the baby finches in the santavilla are very cute with their fuzzy bodies and yellow beaks, tiny tiny finches. i love it when it's slow and i can watch the clouds go by and think tree thoughts. hope i can get to the blueberries before the birds do. mt ashland still has snow on it but before long it should be gone. spring is fading fast.

That's all for June...