Stardate 7643. (You aren't reading this, right? Oh, you are. I so knew it. [clapclapclap])
We planted a skinny 'Charlie Brown' maple tree a few years back. Maybe 7-8 seasons ago. It took awhile, but it's now a 25-foot-plus monster. 4-5 foot uprights means it's goin' for it next spring. On this fall day, powdery leaf mildew gathers spackly white on its lower leaves, a pox that'll work it's way up before the first frost. The squirrels have used it as cover from my hound dogs, but those days and leaves are numbered as the nights get cooler and nippy. Downdraft winds spew cedar seeds from next door. A killdeer 'cheers' about 1/2 way up, above the crow perches. My crows finish off the brown rice leftovers atop the garden shed. Golden light filters through the neighborhood trees, kissing the plants it can. Layers of color grace the land, and we all sense the coming of late harvests.
"I was born a believer,
Played the fool.
Lonely dreamer,
Left to choose.
I don't know where the love is
There's a promise undone.
Someone's cryin'
In a room all alone."
Journey's 'Happy To Give.' It's worth listening to the whole song. Seriously.
I'm sure you've been paying attention to everything political. I know I have. It's almost exhausting.
The repulsive GOP is at their dirty tricks again, election season and all. They're so busy rigging Diebold's voting machines and denying Dems the right to vote that they're 'occupado' right now. They won't even mention their own foul scandal. So we can talk about them openly. Fuckin' fucks. "Money is Free Speech" is not a factual statement. Let's pause and give deliciously sarcastic thanks to Justice A. Scalia, for profoundly fucking over this republic twice now. (Bush v Gore, 2000 and the Citizens United case.) I can't imagine the lack of thought that goes on in that man's big mookish head. He can't even keep his conflicts of interest at bay. SCOTUS is now a puppet organization for the ultra-rich, minus a few reality-based thinkers, in the minority.
"NAV, come about to 168 degrees and take us to Norcal at 2g."
"Blinx, Klargen. Issa blurn pen'cho brap?"
"Bolinas, 3/4 mile west of the store, at the treeline on the hill. Red gabled house. That's close enough."
"Blinx, Klargen. N'Sol speruts." (Sun is setting.)
"Noted. Safe air, then."
"Blinx, Klargen."
The XO moved purposefully to oversee the NAV instructions. He knew where we were going. (I'd done a full memory share with him soon after the abduction. I've never shared that here. And I'm not now, right?)
The Rotatey Chair sucked me in good for the 2g run. Inertial dampening was still a bit questionable, it's still not permanently repaired. I'm just not in the mood for Archuleta Mesa Heavy Repair and all its BS and reptilian trickery. It'll have to wait. MAIN switched from search to front visual, and I could see Rainier go by off to the east.
"WEPS, configure for full stealth. Let's not run into the triangles. They do the S-4 to Santa Rosa run at times." They're hard to avoid in visual mode, and they have stealth beyond this ship's sensor capability. It's a good thing they don't run with that 'on' all the time. They like to be seen. Freaks people out.
"Blinx, Klargen. Prap glurb s'll nee lop glant, spin 'to nix glurg."
"Understood, WEPS." I knew that. He thinks I don't know that? "SCIENCE, let's get 4 co-ord osmics on the way, as much as is possible.
"Blinx, Klargen. "
"NAV, adjust for run past McMinnville, recompute if necessary."
"Klargen, lerp spat bing nop."
"We've already passed it? Understood." I often underestimate the speed this craft has, even in this configuration.
"SCIENCE, anything?" Shasta passed by. Crickets from the crew, they were very busy.
"COMMS, anything?"
"Klargen, social media has an update. Authored."
"Fuck that, I'm done for now."
The XO turned and eyed back at me from NAV, because he knew better. The Rotatey Chair eased up as we came in low, through a bit of fog over Point Reyes. The deceleration at 2g isn't much. Like hitting the brakes in a sports car. The XO was bracing himself against the NAV panel/screen.
He pushed at me, in our freq, that he had no idea what was going through my mind.
Speaking of scouring, let's give thanks to the last of the cyclical Ice Ages! Huzzah! No more snowing and scraping and advancing every X-thousand years or whatever, trees and rocks and villages crunching asunder before the onslaughts of ice. We whupped that one forever, probably. That was a bitch. I don't look good in animal pelts, I'm pretty sure. No, I probably do.
Oh shit, WAIT! All those regular-ish ice ages occurred on a planet with 290 parts per million of our toxic fair-weather friend, carbon dioxide. (And woolly mammoths didn't use aerosol deodorant, but, by God, they needed it.) We're so far above that CO2 level it REALLY ISN'T FUNNY. Ok, you CAN make it funny.
Guy walks into a bar, says to a gal at the bar, "My penile tumescence is directly related to the CO2 level in the atmosphere. Nuthin' but way up!"
"Oh yeah? I got mace, asshole." (Proceeds to shoot said jokester with chemical irritant.)
So we won't be trying that again.
I see future sunsets tinged with oily reds and purples, deep smooth yellows, a whirl of toxic additives, and a heat that keeps the cities insulated, trapped in their own car exhaust, sewer gases, and myriad manufacturing wastes. (We all know places like this, if you've been to LA in the summertime.)
I have been in traffic jams in the LA area, and the last one involved George Clooney on the I-10 westbound in Riverside, May 2009. I'll just let your imagination run wild right there. Sea of cars. He was in a new black Porsche. Classy one. (Not even dealer's plates - they just let him take it to Palm Springs for a test run, I bet.) I was in a silver Dodge truck, loaded for the trip back to Washington with my Father. You can see where I'm going here, right? I was 'This' close to Ocean's Batman. One lane away, for 15 minutes or so. He was impatient, but I let him be, braking and accelerating as he was. I just kept moving, and looking. And then, not. Then it was just us, stopped together. I can't remember if we had a 'moment' or not. (Maybe he remembers.) He never calls.
The fat are getting so much fatter, the rich are getting so much richer, what's the deal? Can we not literally 'contain ourselves?' So many of our fellow Americans just spend their hard-earned bucks on the cheapest, the worst, Chinese manufactured crap products. ($1.19 flip-flops at Walmart come to mind.) We've become a nation that seeks 'low cost' and not ' good value.' What happened? Where did we go so wrong?
You already know I know that answer. Don't be silly.
We became a nation of 'smalls.' This goes back to Vietnam, friends.
First, take out the hope - they shot JFK, MLK and RFK. (Maybe some other acronyms, we don't know how far this shit went.) B) The military/industrial complex and corporate media basically demonized war protesters as hippie, pot-smoker, group-sexing . Maybe they know something, those patchoulied bastards. Warmongers love to have their wars, it's good business if you have no morality. The media marginalized those dissenting voices, just as they're squashing voices today. We didn't think our voice mattered then, so are we going to think our voice matters now?
Intelligentsia has been defeated. No more 'Earl Grey, hot.' We're back to Kirk. Polish those codpieces. Kiss the green women. Wrestle the Tribbles. Fight the rocks.
Hand-sanitizer. Need I say more? We're so fucking disconnected from nature. Not me. I live in it.
"Sheets of empty canvas,
Untouched sheets of clay.
Her legs spread out before me,
As her body lay still.
Oh, all five horizons
Revolved around the sun
As the earth to the sun
(But) Now the air I tasted and breathed
Has taken a turn..."
Pearl Jam's badass "Black" 1991 (which slayed me when it came out, in light of her and our epic erotic massage sessions)
I ran into Eddie Vedder once, at the Off-Ramp. Mid-late 90's.
No one else saw him come through he door in the plywood wall, because bassist Jeff Ament came through the front door at about the same time. Everyone was paying attention to something else. He was wearing a grey nondescript hoodie and noticed me recognize him and motioned to me to 'shush' about it with that familiar gesture. SO I did, and we watched a show two feet from each other. Never said a word between us, but we clapped and smiled and cheered the Park Boys together. I'm sure some of my awesomeness rubbed off on him.
My trees have outgrown my expectations of them. Smiles abound.
Beatrix, I'm done even being angry with you. It just isn't worth my energy anymore. You won't answer my questions, that was to be expected. I learned my lesson about BPD (or whatever it was that made you act that way.) Splitting WAS involved.
And I survived it.
Nothing but love left, then. And a bit of sorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment