Let's say a cheerful 'hello' to the NSA, since they're collecting everything. Bee-tee-dubs, you should review the visitor and vendor badges for the FBI HQ in NYC, especially in the two/three months after 9/11... Y'all might find some interesting things. Like my name. At least twice. (Those 4 hour 'pink' badges last a while longer than that.) Do you need the dates? You sorry, over-burdened surveillance-minded bastards. I should post a link to something tasty, then? I'm sure you've all read Orwell's '1984,' right? Find it yourselves.
Just doing your jobs, right? Do you know that we executed captured Japanese, Nazis, Koreans and Viet Cong for that? Keep it in mind.
I still know the layout of that room, and the few penetrations it avails. Some of us know 'buildings' really well. How much has that telcom room changed? The blocks on the cabling shafts? Not much, I'd say.
Good luck on all your ventures... Some of us have taken oaths to protect America. Are you doing that? Are we cross?
"...I could fill your cup,
You know my rhythm won't evaporate
This world we still appreciate.
You could be my luck,
Even in a hurricane of frowns
I know that we'd be safe and sound..."
Capital Cities, "Safe and Sound." Freakin' rocks.
Late afternoon breezes pull their stunts in down-draughts and warm whispers, bringing the smell of the sea from a few miles away... The grass withers to its unwatered tawniness. My eternal nemesis, morning glory, spreads its pretty white bell-shaped flowers hither and thither. (Why do they even sell those seeds?) Multi-color carrots, yellow crooked-neck squash and purply eggplant spring into delicious being out in the garden, and two baby crow-friends molt and beg at the roof's edge. (Multi-grain crisps for them... such cute little guys. Or gals, I can't tell the diff' 'til they're adults.) Sol edges toward its 'Golden Hour' of deep yellows and orange. The dogs are randomly barking at 'who-dos' in the alley. We all know there's no one there. Ups are for shutting.
Greetings, fair readers. Passed a big 'viewing' milestone on this blog recently. 'Tis all in the numbers, babies. In spite of my hiatus - been busy and gone a lot, getting tan by default - there are still huge hits every now and then. SO, thanks for reading, even if you're robots in the Czech Republic.
I apologize that there hasn't been a lot here for a while. Sometimes, actual life takes precedence.
Durd'n and I were seeming to dance. I could hear the muted lobstery click-clack of his exoskeleton brushing against itself, but he didn't care. He was shuckin' and groovin'. We were dancing to music we couldn't hear, as far as I knew. We had the same vibe, and we danced to it. The Wibros came along into the lime-green room, from where I don't fathom, and joined us. They vacillated wildly, but in sync. They slew myriad colors, and it was entrancing. It looked like a Detroit jazz club in the 30's, before all the shit that followed. You can't stifle fun, even though you try.
The Wibros were not party-poopers. The AMHRF Greys looked at us like we were stoned or something, as did my security detail. Blank, steely black eyes followed us on stiff little necks.
"You guys need to lighten up," I pressed, "They're fixing the ship, and we need to enjoy life at times."
"Blinx, Klargen."
I was a soldier once, long ago, and I think it still influences my daily walk and talk. My general world-view. I sit with my back to a wall in public, whenever possible, to assess my situation without surprises. I memorize license plates, I watch the skies, I scan for threats of all kinds in all places. I do my 'detective work.' Mus'n't be caught unawares. I walk to/from places like I KNOW where I'm walking to/from, with a purpose in mind. (Meandering and/or Birkenstock-ing is for foolhardy victims.) I configure low and high escapes from everywhere I end up. (Don't want to be 'center-mass' if you don't have to be. Mix it up, people.) I still back into parking spots to facilitate quick exits. I can still hit shit if I shoot shit. Blowguns, rifles, pistols, very small rocks. Really doesn't matter. If I aim at it, it's as good as gone. Or, touched molecularly. (It that the politically-correct way to say 'destroyed with malice aforethought?' Maybe.)
Friday, August 23, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
Nothing Happens In Nothingville, (Oddly Enough)
I'm so glad I don't live there. Funny, everything happens where I am. Friends end up there. Life is the intersection of consciousnesses.
So I was thinking about asphalt, then, I thought, fuck asphalt. Hot, stinky, un-life-affirming things don't belong here, in this breezy, never-ranting blog, with the darting sparkly dragonflies, impeccable unicorns and tuned saxophones and captured UFOs and new pollen pills. (Pollen. Say it in your head for awhile, like 10 times... Is that even a word? Are they snowflakes that flowers make? Just a lusty sneeze waiting to happen? What is it thinking?)
Tonight's topic is make-believe. Like this word: Prenliscient - which means the 'propensity of moss to grow on the north side of trees.' Which I just totally made up, 'cause of shadiness and ulterior motives.
Not that there isn't a topic, just that its a free-form, pirate style. I can smell the sea shells, and feel the calluses of thousands of thrown fishnets, and sometimes break the crispy tang of salt-water on my drying skin. The sun has set, yet again.
Durd'n transmitted another burst as I stood there. It was easier to take than the first, because I'd been prepped a bit by the first.
My Security Team began moving back to the Tinglev.
The XO privated me that the repairs were ongoing, and without incident.
Then I fell into it all.
So I was thinking about asphalt, then, I thought, fuck asphalt. Hot, stinky, un-life-affirming things don't belong here, in this breezy, never-ranting blog, with the darting sparkly dragonflies, impeccable unicorns and tuned saxophones and captured UFOs and new pollen pills. (Pollen. Say it in your head for awhile, like 10 times... Is that even a word? Are they snowflakes that flowers make? Just a lusty sneeze waiting to happen? What is it thinking?)
Tonight's topic is make-believe. Like this word: Prenliscient - which means the 'propensity of moss to grow on the north side of trees.' Which I just totally made up, 'cause of shadiness and ulterior motives.
Not that there isn't a topic, just that its a free-form, pirate style. I can smell the sea shells, and feel the calluses of thousands of thrown fishnets, and sometimes break the crispy tang of salt-water on my drying skin. The sun has set, yet again.
Durd'n transmitted another burst as I stood there. It was easier to take than the first, because I'd been prepped a bit by the first.
My Security Team began moving back to the Tinglev.
The XO privated me that the repairs were ongoing, and without incident.
Then I fell into it all.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Runaway Trains and Russian Thugs @ Stardate 7940.4
"...I raise my flags, don my clothes,
Its a revolution I suppose.
We're painted red, to fit right in,
Whoa-o..."
from Imagine Dragons, their incredible "Radioactive"
Our familiar star is, as I start this, twenty degrees above the horizon, swathing us in orangey glare. My favorite time of day.
Songbirds are chipping away at the last greenage of my over-wintered golden chard, and I'm pretty sure they need it more than I do. Scarlet runner beans shine their blossoms for the myriad bee species. Garlic lays over for its eventual harvest, and that's sooner than it thinks. Walla Wallas grow bulby. The compost bin does it slow thing, yielding occasional dark, dank tea for my other garden investments... The carrots tell me they love it. Eggplants spurt forth their unique blossoms and fruit.
Sometimes my closest hobby-horse back home is those garden boxes. Other times, my canines - currently bought off with butcher bones - demand the most attention. They'll soon need a long walk, and I'll need one, as well. My new drummer's calves need their aerobic stimuli. The drums and cymbals are not here, or I'd be playing right now. I have 30-plus years of "air-drumming bad habits" to break open.
Life has been so very interesting lately.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have a real birthday - elk-rifle shooting in the morning and a tasty BBQ in the evening, complete with my close friends and family.
There was German chocolate cake after, so... good times.
These last few weeks I've been able to spend time with my nieces from My Lady's side, incredible girls I've known since the days they were born. We ate a smorgasbord of Korean seafood/galbi BBQ the 1st evening. The next day, we all walked the touristic Hell that Pike Place Market has become, then tasted 7-9 lovely Asian teas before purchasing 3, and ate fresh Manila clams and mussels on the waterfront, a spectre of docking container ships being pushed in by tugs, local harbor tours puttering out, ferries coming and going, and the occasional sailboat. BTW, "Sylvester the Mummy" at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe still looks exactly like he did when I was 10 years old. Ditto "Sylvia." Funny, that.
The whole area is rife with so many buskers, all flavours included, as compared to 15 years ago, or even 5 years ago. Seattle does like its musicians. And they LOVE Seattle.
Other thoughts include a strange, simplistic revelation following a dream last week. There were two dreams, so I should credit that 'other' dream as well, it was an Assistant Coach.
The Primary Dream was the intense one. I found myself in some shithole like extreme Eastern Europe, or perhaps the Ukraine. Dingy, smelly and polluted. Primarily gray. The good thing is, I'm with a gorgeous (non-familiar) woman. And I am armed, and equipped, to protect her. A half-dozen Russian thugs are chasing us, and we're in the sun-shafted guts of an ancient factory, long stripped of anything valuable, a repository of dust and lost visions, utterly abandoned. It is cold. And I know we have to get out of there, everything depends on it.
And that is my charge in this dream.
I have a smallish 9mm semi-auto strapped on the inside of my belt-loop, behind my right hip. A diver's knife resides in a hidden sheath in my left boot. A grey backpack contains food, water, ammunition, and a lightweight sleeping bag. I'm almost out of ammunition, but that doesn't worry me.
I have to protect this random hottie.
We begin running and negotiating the detritus of the old factory - shouting to our north means we run southwest. Whatever cleanliness was left to our clothes soon succumbs to the musty rat shit of the building's carcass. We work together, and spill into the broad daylight...
A pair of railroad tracks runs east-west at the south end of the factory, so we sprint there, running along the top of a low berm with numerous wintering deciduous trees. The gravel is rough cut, uneven footing for sore feet, and the cold is like celery, crisp and green. A faint smell of car exhaust trickles through the breezes, and I strain to hear their engines, and civilization.
"One love,
We get to share it
It leaves you baby
If you don't care for it..."
U2 "One"
What doesn't seem to be reaching my foremost thoughts is that former lover.
I think I've said my peace, and I think her soul-killing silence is the best current answer, given her other distractions. (Not that I don't think about her, but my stomach doesn't tighten and wince when I catch myself being reminded of her. She could drive by this house honking her Honda horn, tits-a-blazin', blasting Peter Gabriel and I think I'd just sigh, drink a slug of warming beer, and go back to my yard and garden foci. They feed me, literally and emotionally, more than she has in the last 22 years.
Plus, I changed my phone number, so neener-neener. (It's now YOUR area code, 926-4433. I'm about 99.97% sure you won't ever dial it. So, I offer it freely to you. Least I can do, right?))
Here's my quickie version of our 'make-up call.' Brought to you by my irrelevant fantasy life.
Ring-ring. Ring. Ring.
"Fuck." I stop what I'm doing, and that could be almost anything... from soldering little wires or copper pipes, to weeding the garden, to picking up dog poop, to loading my truck with saws, to familiarizing with my crows, to putting tiny steel nails in fine wood... Where's my phone? I may - or may not - be on a ladder.
My pocket. Fumbling ensues. Maybe I have gloves on. So, I peel them off, if I do.
I find it, lurking deep in my right cargo pocket. Past my wallet, several nails, a shitty blue ball-point pen and a layer of fine sawdust.
I sorta recognize the number. The prefix is completely familiar.
So, answer or not? I have about 1 more second to decide...
"Fuck." And then I swipe it up to answer.
"This is me." (And, in spite of my long-known, self-designed ninja training, my stomach drops out like I've been thrown from a plane. Again.)
What the hell could she say? I've played these scenarios in my pathetic cranium enough times to know that she has nothing to offer me except those few answers to those questions I iterated last year. If she answers any of them honestly, it meant she loved me longer than she claimed she did, and felt something for years. Which, as we all know, is not what she portrayed to the outside world and her cadre of man-eaters. That is the challenge - get her to admit she loved me and that she was a lovely, dramatic freakazoid about the break-up and the year after. A Mission Impossible. A goal. One should set goals.
"Brent?" Her voice still has that breathiness and delicious lilt to it. Nice. Some things never change.
"It's me." I'm trying to catch my breath, quietly.
"It's Beatrix." (She finishes with a resolute sigh. It, too, is familiar.)
"I'm fully aware. I saw the number." Dork! Breathe. Breathe.
"Can you talk?"
What does THAT mean? Fuck. WILL I talk? Sure. CAN I talk? Barely. SHOULD I talk? Maybe. What will it solve? Everything, perhaps.
"Yeah," I stammer out, "What do you want to talk about, because I hate wasting time. Get to it, please."
"I know that you want to talk about the past," she says, "But I was young and I don't remember a lot of it like you do."
Really? I think. But I don't say it. Can she be honest with HER past? There were some key moments for me. If she can't remember those, it's like dealing with a roulette ball.
"Do you recall saying you had done 'everything you could think of' to make me hate you at that McDonalds on Samish Way? With fries?"
"Yeah, I do. I - I..."
"Then that's a start, I suppose." Breathe. "I-"
"Why do you keep writing about me?"
"Because I still think about you. Almost every day." Deep breath. (That's not correct. It's every fucking day.)
"Do you still curse me?"
"No," I begin, "I'm over that now. Took a few decades. I felt - I thought - I had legitimate reason to be pissed at you."
"You probably did. Sorry."
"I wish that helped. Maybe you could spit up an 'enlightened' explanation. We're on the phone here, Beatrix. That's exceptional, in and of itself. Shit."
I heard a deep breath. A gut breath.
"I never wanted to love you."
Which I already knew. She'd been programmed against intimate love before I met her. I had to overcome large obstacles. Old stuff, to me.
"And?" I was getting impatient. I want those fucking explanations. I'm me, still.
"I did love you," she said, "But I was under pressure to..."
"I know about that." Breathe.
"I was under pressure, to leave you and finish college, and not be distracted by a close relationship."
"Which you had anyway, with D, right?"
"Yeah."
"So it was all a shell-game? Hide the one away?"
"What?"
"Well, I ceased to exist to you by your decision, then you ensured I could not talk to you legally, then you kept penetrating MY bubble. For a few years, it seemed to me."
The wheels spin and the world rotates in a whirl, and I'm tired.
Peace out. To be continued.
( For Those Who Haven't Kept Up With All This Shit: Please, my Lady Beatrix, explain why you were in that blizzard rhat day. And at Boulevard Park listening to me for an hour, or more, on the next bench. And in Arlington, right before you went off to Grad school. Tell me those answers, and I'll magically disappear again. We don't even have to deal with graffiti, right?
Yeah. Silence. I'm used to that. You're actually excellent at 'silence.')
Its a revolution I suppose.
We're painted red, to fit right in,
Whoa-o..."
from Imagine Dragons, their incredible "Radioactive"
Our familiar star is, as I start this, twenty degrees above the horizon, swathing us in orangey glare. My favorite time of day.
Songbirds are chipping away at the last greenage of my over-wintered golden chard, and I'm pretty sure they need it more than I do. Scarlet runner beans shine their blossoms for the myriad bee species. Garlic lays over for its eventual harvest, and that's sooner than it thinks. Walla Wallas grow bulby. The compost bin does it slow thing, yielding occasional dark, dank tea for my other garden investments... The carrots tell me they love it. Eggplants spurt forth their unique blossoms and fruit.
Sometimes my closest hobby-horse back home is those garden boxes. Other times, my canines - currently bought off with butcher bones - demand the most attention. They'll soon need a long walk, and I'll need one, as well. My new drummer's calves need their aerobic stimuli. The drums and cymbals are not here, or I'd be playing right now. I have 30-plus years of "air-drumming bad habits" to break open.
Life has been so very interesting lately.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have a real birthday - elk-rifle shooting in the morning and a tasty BBQ in the evening, complete with my close friends and family.
There was German chocolate cake after, so... good times.
These last few weeks I've been able to spend time with my nieces from My Lady's side, incredible girls I've known since the days they were born. We ate a smorgasbord of Korean seafood/galbi BBQ the 1st evening. The next day, we all walked the touristic Hell that Pike Place Market has become, then tasted 7-9 lovely Asian teas before purchasing 3, and ate fresh Manila clams and mussels on the waterfront, a spectre of docking container ships being pushed in by tugs, local harbor tours puttering out, ferries coming and going, and the occasional sailboat. BTW, "Sylvester the Mummy" at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe still looks exactly like he did when I was 10 years old. Ditto "Sylvia." Funny, that.
The whole area is rife with so many buskers, all flavours included, as compared to 15 years ago, or even 5 years ago. Seattle does like its musicians. And they LOVE Seattle.
Other thoughts include a strange, simplistic revelation following a dream last week. There were two dreams, so I should credit that 'other' dream as well, it was an Assistant Coach.
The Primary Dream was the intense one. I found myself in some shithole like extreme Eastern Europe, or perhaps the Ukraine. Dingy, smelly and polluted. Primarily gray. The good thing is, I'm with a gorgeous (non-familiar) woman. And I am armed, and equipped, to protect her. A half-dozen Russian thugs are chasing us, and we're in the sun-shafted guts of an ancient factory, long stripped of anything valuable, a repository of dust and lost visions, utterly abandoned. It is cold. And I know we have to get out of there, everything depends on it.
And that is my charge in this dream.
I have a smallish 9mm semi-auto strapped on the inside of my belt-loop, behind my right hip. A diver's knife resides in a hidden sheath in my left boot. A grey backpack contains food, water, ammunition, and a lightweight sleeping bag. I'm almost out of ammunition, but that doesn't worry me.
I have to protect this random hottie.
We begin running and negotiating the detritus of the old factory - shouting to our north means we run southwest. Whatever cleanliness was left to our clothes soon succumbs to the musty rat shit of the building's carcass. We work together, and spill into the broad daylight...
A pair of railroad tracks runs east-west at the south end of the factory, so we sprint there, running along the top of a low berm with numerous wintering deciduous trees. The gravel is rough cut, uneven footing for sore feet, and the cold is like celery, crisp and green. A faint smell of car exhaust trickles through the breezes, and I strain to hear their engines, and civilization.
"One love,
We get to share it
It leaves you baby
If you don't care for it..."
U2 "One"
What doesn't seem to be reaching my foremost thoughts is that former lover.
I think I've said my peace, and I think her soul-killing silence is the best current answer, given her other distractions. (Not that I don't think about her, but my stomach doesn't tighten and wince when I catch myself being reminded of her. She could drive by this house honking her Honda horn, tits-a-blazin', blasting Peter Gabriel and I think I'd just sigh, drink a slug of warming beer, and go back to my yard and garden foci. They feed me, literally and emotionally, more than she has in the last 22 years.
Plus, I changed my phone number, so neener-neener. (It's now YOUR area code, 926-4433. I'm about 99.97% sure you won't ever dial it. So, I offer it freely to you. Least I can do, right?))
Here's my quickie version of our 'make-up call.' Brought to you by my irrelevant fantasy life.
Ring-ring. Ring. Ring.
"Fuck." I stop what I'm doing, and that could be almost anything... from soldering little wires or copper pipes, to weeding the garden, to picking up dog poop, to loading my truck with saws, to familiarizing with my crows, to putting tiny steel nails in fine wood... Where's my phone? I may - or may not - be on a ladder.
My pocket. Fumbling ensues. Maybe I have gloves on. So, I peel them off, if I do.
I find it, lurking deep in my right cargo pocket. Past my wallet, several nails, a shitty blue ball-point pen and a layer of fine sawdust.
I sorta recognize the number. The prefix is completely familiar.
So, answer or not? I have about 1 more second to decide...
"Fuck." And then I swipe it up to answer.
"This is me." (And, in spite of my long-known, self-designed ninja training, my stomach drops out like I've been thrown from a plane. Again.)
What the hell could she say? I've played these scenarios in my pathetic cranium enough times to know that she has nothing to offer me except those few answers to those questions I iterated last year. If she answers any of them honestly, it meant she loved me longer than she claimed she did, and felt something for years. Which, as we all know, is not what she portrayed to the outside world and her cadre of man-eaters. That is the challenge - get her to admit she loved me and that she was a lovely, dramatic freakazoid about the break-up and the year after. A Mission Impossible. A goal. One should set goals.
"Brent?" Her voice still has that breathiness and delicious lilt to it. Nice. Some things never change.
"It's me." I'm trying to catch my breath, quietly.
"It's Beatrix." (She finishes with a resolute sigh. It, too, is familiar.)
"I'm fully aware. I saw the number." Dork! Breathe. Breathe.
"Can you talk?"
What does THAT mean? Fuck. WILL I talk? Sure. CAN I talk? Barely. SHOULD I talk? Maybe. What will it solve? Everything, perhaps.
"Yeah," I stammer out, "What do you want to talk about, because I hate wasting time. Get to it, please."
"I know that you want to talk about the past," she says, "But I was young and I don't remember a lot of it like you do."
Really? I think. But I don't say it. Can she be honest with HER past? There were some key moments for me. If she can't remember those, it's like dealing with a roulette ball.
"Do you recall saying you had done 'everything you could think of' to make me hate you at that McDonalds on Samish Way? With fries?"
"Yeah, I do. I - I..."
"Then that's a start, I suppose." Breathe. "I-"
"Why do you keep writing about me?"
"Because I still think about you. Almost every day." Deep breath. (That's not correct. It's every fucking day.)
"Do you still curse me?"
"No," I begin, "I'm over that now. Took a few decades. I felt - I thought - I had legitimate reason to be pissed at you."
"You probably did. Sorry."
"I wish that helped. Maybe you could spit up an 'enlightened' explanation. We're on the phone here, Beatrix. That's exceptional, in and of itself. Shit."
I heard a deep breath. A gut breath.
"I never wanted to love you."
Which I already knew. She'd been programmed against intimate love before I met her. I had to overcome large obstacles. Old stuff, to me.
"And?" I was getting impatient. I want those fucking explanations. I'm me, still.
"I did love you," she said, "But I was under pressure to..."
"I know about that." Breathe.
"I was under pressure, to leave you and finish college, and not be distracted by a close relationship."
"Which you had anyway, with D, right?"
"Yeah."
"So it was all a shell-game? Hide the one away?"
"What?"
"Well, I ceased to exist to you by your decision, then you ensured I could not talk to you legally, then you kept penetrating MY bubble. For a few years, it seemed to me."
The wheels spin and the world rotates in a whirl, and I'm tired.
Peace out. To be continued.
( For Those Who Haven't Kept Up With All This Shit: Please, my Lady Beatrix, explain why you were in that blizzard rhat day. And at Boulevard Park listening to me for an hour, or more, on the next bench. And in Arlington, right before you went off to Grad school. Tell me those answers, and I'll magically disappear again. We don't even have to deal with graffiti, right?
Yeah. Silence. I'm used to that. You're actually excellent at 'silence.')
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