Do the Next Right Thing

Did I ever tell you this story?

I’m supposed to be to work at 8:00 am. It’s Monday. It’s February. It’s snowing like crazy and it’s freezing cold, cold like a blizzard. Crazy cold. Your boogers freeze when you breathe through your nose kind of cold. I’m in bed, I have pajamas on, but no socks and my feet are cold. I’m too tall for my short bed. I was so cold I couldn’t sleep all night and I’m still tired. I’m lying there in bed thinking about how broke I am. Washing dishes at the Chancery doesn’t pay much. All I have for cash is bus fare to get to work and pay day is on Friday. And I think to myself, this sucks. I look at my alarm clock and I have two hours to get to work, which is more than enough time. So what do I do?

I get out of bed, grab my bus fare and run for the bus. In my pajamas and barefoot, no jacket, gloves, hat, or keys to the house. I don’t even take time to lock myself out. I just leave the door wide open with the heat on. I get to the bus and I ride the bus as far as it will go. I’m like ten miles from home. I get off the bus without getting a transfer and I run farther than the bus until I see a car in a driveway of a nice big house and people inside. I run up to the front door and I bang on the door and ring the doorbell like crazy. I run out to the car in the driveway and I crawl underneath it. I stick my tongue to the muffler. It is instantly stuck. So where does that put me?

I’m under the car of some strange guy who is mad at me and yelling. I’m frost bitten on all of my appendages (including the peeper). I’m hungry because I didn’t eat breakfast. I’m breathing hard from all that running and my lungs hurt. I have no way to get back home. Even if I did, I don’t know why I’d go. I’m late for work. In fact, I’m fired because I’m late again. I’m sure the hoodlums have walked off with all of my Belinda Carlisle and Teena Marie CD’s. I have to pee. My tongue is stuck to this guy’s muffler and the only way to get it off is for him to start his car and burn my tongue. While he’s revving up his car, I breathe in the exhaust and pass out.

I wake up in the hospital. I hear David Bowie: “Ashes to Ashes”.

I make up this story all the time. It’s got the same scenario, but the events change. It’s my worst case scenario vignette. It’s funny, but laughter is not the only best medicine, there is crying as well. I think of Peter Gabriel and his CD So. A line from Washing of the Water “and if I follow through, I face what I deny”. I can make myself cry to that song all the time. I think about doing the right thing. If I always do the right thing, I’ll never have my tongue stuck to a car in a blizzard wearing pajamas away from home and late for work. …Yeah. I don’t know why it works, but when I’m out of my head, Ashes to Ashes does the trick. I lay there and listen for answers. I once listened to it for over two days straight, over and over. Nothing else but that. Everything seems to work out fine with some time to think and a little faith. It’s like my nerve salve. (Salve My Jagged Nerves)

I’m not going to go back and read/edit this message. I just babbled, like I was talking. And if I was really talking, I can’t take back what you just heard. So, I just talked to you for a while. Such a while that I’m sufficiently late for bed.

Keep warm,
Rebel with a Frog.

crispy… calmness in a strange twilight

So I find myself sitting around at night purging something creative from the marrow of my thoughts, the blurbs fledging for a glimpse of common sense or clarity so that I may document the moment. Maybe at some point I will revisit. Maybe I struggle with putting thought to paper. That locks it in, in black and white. Sure I can rewrite it or redo it. But Sometimes I don’t want to. Why is it hard for me to accept the passing moment as a moment and let it pass? Is it the great memories I have of favorite ideas that I never wrote down and simply can’t remember exactly what they were. Is it the great memories I have of favorite ideas that I wrote down and can simply remember exactly what it was. Yes, I contradict myself often. That is the beauty of being mortal.

Someday the wrinkled sleep that overcomes my complexion and sits in the corner of my eyes will smile as if it were actually my eye. There is something subtle and intent about blue, something that doesn’t matter to anyone except to anyone that matters, something that will wake up. Really, what color is blue? Is it eyes or sky? Is it CAT5 cable or cute cars? Is it planned or spur of the moment. Is it the darkness blindsided or the coffee forsaken? I will wake up to a new day smiling and never move my mouth except to yawn and sip my tea.

The comfort in complexity is simple for me. I am a creature of habit and patterns. My favorite is breathing in and out without thinking about it and is shortly followed only by eating. Yes, the love of family is all over the place. That is a given. It is a given that acknowledgement of love must be repeated repeatedly. True, there is complexity in comfort and it is not that simple. Somewhere I’m out there. Somewhere there are stacks of thoughts waiting for the gate to drop and spurt out. Sometime I may have an idea about this glimpse of myself I recall, about the struggle for the situation to harmony. How I arrived at this subtle blue hour moment of crispy… calmness in a strange twilight.

Writing Haiku

A Haiku is a keenly observed moment pertaining to nature or human nature described in a short poem.

When writing Haiku I prefer the use of a 17-syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. The inclusion of a season and a cut are also preferred. What do you mean a cut? A cut is the unconditional contrast and comparison of two instances, events, images, or situations.

Keep in mind that it is impossible to single out a style or format or subject matter as definitive for Haiku. I prefer the structure and inclusions to define and form the Haiku.

An example of Haiku as I understand it:

waves lap, icicles
lake snow melts, freezes, melts, drips
wet skin becomes cold


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bqJS5fqmmE

A closer look:
1. waves lap, icicles
Five syllables.

2. lake snow melts, freezes, melts, drips
Seven syllables.
Icicles and snow imply winter, the season.

3. wet skin becomes cold
Five syllables.
My skin in this instance is cold from standing in the waves and getting splashed. I never mention that as it is implied. I mention the lake, the snow, the ice, and the freezing/ thawing of water. Then, I mention my skin being cold. The contrast and comparison between the state of the lake and my skin. That is the cut.

But, this is my opinion and preferances for haiku and not a definition. I think Robert John Mestre; the Editor of the online newsletter Simply Haiku did a good job at describing haiku. He published his take on haiku in Volume 1, Number 1 July, 2003.
http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv1n1/pages/mytake.html

Not Cookies, Bakies!

So I spent the afternoon with kids making cookies.

No I didn’t. I spent the afternoon making bakies. They’re bakies I tell you. Not cookies. If someone told you they were cookies, they lied to you. If you thought you made cookies, well you didn’t. If you bought some cookies, you got ripped off and you should ask for your money back. You should be mad as all crumb at the world for spoofing you into participating in this foolish prank. Cookies? You still want to call them cookies? Unfortunately, you are a victim of incorrect thinking. Let me set you proper.

Cooking happens on the top of your oven, on the top of your range. Imagine cooking chicken soup, macaroni noodles, a bok choi stir-fry, grilled cheese sandwiches, mushroom and Swiss cheese burgers, or even Reuben sandwiches to name a few. These foods are cooked in pots, pans or skillets on TOP of the stove, they are COOKED.

Baking happens inside of the oven, inside behind the door with the window. Imagine baking meatball lasagna, chili con carne corn bread muffins, angel food cake, double chocolate brownies, or an Idaho baked potato for cheese’s sake. These foods are baked in pans, tins, and cups INSIDE of the oven, they are BAKED.

Proceed to your local grocery mall and pick up some of that already made dough that comes in a roll so you can slice it up and apply a dry heat to it in your oven for a dessert type snack. What would you put it on? You’d put it on one of those flat things that go in the oven with food on them, some kind of a sheet thing it’s named. Hold that roll of dough in one hand and go to your favorite house wares retailer. Look for the aisle where you can purchase one of those fangled sheets. Now, with your free hand pick up one of the aluminum sheets, the no stick sheets or the silicone sheets, whichever floats your boat. With that sheet in your hand ask yourself “What section of the store am I in?” You are in the “bake ware” section. You should be standing proudly in house wares in front of things you use to BAKE. Outside of the very center of your gaze you may see Belgian waffle irons, automatic drip coffee brewers, two temperature removable-crock slow cookers, multi function multi speed food processors, toasters for bagels and sliced bread all in the same appliance, blocks of bone breaking cutlery and if you’re lucky the cast iron skillets. Ignore all of those things in your peripheral. Concentrate on the baking sheet and the dough, the matter at hand.

What do you do with that dough? You bake it in the oven on a baking sheet. For all that is right in the world you bake it in the oven on a baking sheet. They are not cookies. They are bakies!

They are bakies and that’s the way your reality crumbles.

I Wish I Was a Piece of Nature

How absurdly grandiose for me to wish this temporal conscious existence of a soul into a free flowing randomly automatic event. If I close my eyes my optimism doesn't give a damn.

Grasshopper Cupcake

I like cake. In case you didn't know, I like cake. I don't have a beer belly. I have a cake belly. I LIKE CAKE. I'm always looking for new ways to eat cake. Not that cake gets boring; I just like to be creative. So I have a few leftover chocolate cake cupcakes. They're not frosted yet. My 7 minute frosting got a bit dry in the refrigerator and needs a bit of water to bring it back up to spreadability. I could always microwave it, but who likes hot frosting. A hot cake fresh out of the oven should warm frosting, not a microwave.

I have a cold. I want to take some green minty cold medicine before I go to bed so I can sleep medicine. You know, the one with Acetaminophen, Dextromethorphan, and Doxylamine Succinate in it. It's supposed to be a good pain reliever, cough suppressant and antihistimine.

Do you see where this is going? Can you imagine a grasshopper cupcake?

Yes, I did. I put a dose of the cold medicine in the frosting and drowned the cupcake with my new grasshopper minty green frosting and I ate it like a mule eating an apple. Yes, I did.

If the obvious timeframe wasn't apparent to me I would think that I thought of that AFTER taking the cold medicine, not before.

This reminds me of the time I was eating some mint chocolate chip cookies and my friend said "Dude, what'r ya doin'?" I told him eating mint chocolate chip cookies. He said "Really? Mind if I try one?" I said help yourself. He ate one and said "Dude, that tasted like a regular chocolate chip cookie." I said I know, you gotta brush your teeth first.

Well, I'm going to brush my teeth and go to bed so I can sleep. I already took my medicine.

Make Me One with Everything

Did you hear the one about the Zen Monk in Kinhin at a hot dog stand who said "Make me one with everything."?

Think of soil. Think of the soil in a river, the soil around the root of a tree. Think of the soil as boiling water or a load of laundry, it's always moving. Potato bugs make holes in it. Rocks make their way to the surface in a farmer’s field. Even under your house the soil moves. Have you ever seen a raised sidewalk? OK. Soil never sits still, it’s always moving around.

Think of water. Rain falls out of the sky, onto the ground. It seeps into the ground. A tree root soaks up the water, it moves up the trunk, out a branch and then into a leaf. Autumn arrives; the leaf falls to the ground and dries up. The water returns to the sky. Water never leaves, it just always moves around.

Think of air. Air just is, trust me. It's not just air with nothing there, it’s real and it's real. Air is so thin you can see through it. Air is so big the weather lives there. Air motivates my senses. Air is even in my blood. Air keeps me alive so I try not to play with it.

Consider this: Soil is not all soil, air is not all air and that water is not all water. There is air in the soil, there is water in the soil, there is water in the air, there is soil in the air, there is air in the water and there is soil in the water. Everything is everywhere. It's just that there are places where more of it is apparent.

Matter just doesn't appear and disappear, it moves around. Like the raindrop that never left and just moved around, people never leave, we just move around. We eat stuff, collect up the good stuff, add it on to us and get rid of the leftovers. The banana I just ate was on a tree in perhaps Jamaica, gathering minerals and water from the soil. Some time ago the banana was physically part of the tropics, now it is physically part of me. So, in a way, part of the tropics is me, I am part tropics. I come from everywhere. I am made up of all, air, soil and water. I am no different than a raindrop, a potato bug, a rock or a banana tree. I am composed of the very same. I move around collecting stuff, composing myself. Eventually, I will return to everything. (Lay on the beach long enough and you will die. Even if someone brings you food for the rest of your life, you will die. Just because you are getting food does not mean you will not die, it just means you will not die as soon. So, OK, you die, you dry up, you decompose. Decompose is the key word. ) Parts of me will move around regardless how the rest of me moves. I will decompose becoming less apparent in one spot. Liquid and ash separate, they return to the soil and sky. It's just that now I have a life form, a shell, a place where I am more apparent.

I never appeared out of nowhere and I will never disappear. All of me, all that ever was and will be was always here and always will be, so even now, I am one with everything.