Lamentations

   Where are clouds with silver linings? All I can find are entire leaves with silver edges: rimmed in frost crystals. Pictures of squirrels, water patterns and miscellany. An absence of herons.

Water under the Bridge

    Highly recommending: Chalk Shadows.

Warm and Fuzzy

   There is nothing I like better than wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving, courtesy of Carlton Cards and Target.

Warm and Fuzzy

Exercise video facility

 

sudoku re:bus

 

  There is nothing I enjoy more than stretching my legs first thing in the morning and then creating work that pleases. Incorporating the herons, the heron report, improvising a found object, and including a passing theme, such as the Wyeth on the red cap of a jogger, comments from ESPN.

   Today will be different. Or as the David Byrne & Brian Eno song goes: Everything that happens will happen today.

Street cred

Make that $1.97

   Thank you Lords of Oil, gods of the gushers!

The High Price of Gasoline

$2.07

$2.03

Shimmer and shake

   Nine carz at *Bux drive-thru when I go past at 7:45 a.m. after making a right→ turn on red that was like a flying lead change. What a gold mine!

   Bus 0544 turns corner→ right: catchy banner:”More than a ride.” 

   Walk time: Eight post: hear the heron first, the sound seems displaced from its body: like when you hear a jet and then search the sky for it. The heron is actually close by, shaking itself out near the near bank. Getting its stripes right.

   Quiet. Few souls. At outset, Candelario was resting on the railroad ties at the bridge. (He took some miracle pills this summer, took a few too many and had been feeling unwell since.)

   The sun’s reflection on the creek shimmers up onto the trunk of a tree, making a section of it look like a mirror. Unusual, that.

   Return trip, Candelario has walked almost two miles, sitting on a bench.

   “I’m peeling an orange,” he says.  

placemat with candles

   “Healthy!” I say.

   Near a bench on Tully turn, I am trying to decrypt scrawled letters in the path: a backwards S and c and h and a but it looks like: ζςμaΠπΝ and a runner says “Can I help you look for something?” ( Just the translation of this, the meaning of this.) and it’s kind of like GLWT, good luck with that. It could be school, Shannon or shame, to me.

   On the radio, driving home, Mike and Mike talk about the 6 word poem submissions.

Fandom

 

 

Far and Away

 

  Rear of the fan: “Farrand Organs are the best. because – they have the sweetest tone –  they pump the easiest -  they are built with the famous “Separable Features” (found in no other make) they are built in an honest careful manner and give satisfaction for a lifetime.”

Web Presence: the Barack of an Envelope

  

Barack of an Envelope: Web Presence

   Heavy rain before daybreak. Walking for the Heron Report: first one sits hunched on a branch, facing the bank of the creek, opposite. From this position, its head looks like a hard-boiled egg on grey feathers.

   The day is quiet, the sky grey. Mostly runners on the path, single or in pairs.

   Another heron flies above the creek, squawking and heading downstream until it lands in the high notch of a tree. 

   One man jogging: a once-regular whose schedule is shaken up by golf and bicycling. He asks if I am happy about the new man in office and, when I say “Yes,” he relates this:

  “People tell me I’m crazy. I wanted Obama to win but I voted for McCain because I didn’t want Obama to win by a landslide.”

   Hmmm.

   One more heron on the way back, in the water. Just another day.

  

   Related stories:

   * The New York Times

   * Yahoo! News
barack obama

Strike up the Rock Band

     Sisyphus rolls a rock; I just talk the walk.  My path? Part of a ribbon on the earth. I go up, I come back. Rock, Paper, Scissors.

    This morning, we receive rain. At a place I call half-mile rapids, a heron stands erect on the band of small rocks across the creek. It is rare to see one there. His head is a regimental stripe, the dark spot on his shoulder, an epaulet.

    A little further on, the creek has a darkened band across it where the red covered bridge prevents the stippling of the water from the rain. 

    A few paces ahead on the Macadam, rests a small red maple leaf with a small track across it- a darkened band – from a tire tread.

   What is the band width of a person’s life? We vibrate at different frequencies, yet we meet up with each others vibes and lives. Its a veritable miracle, this spectrum!

   The bands on the creek and the leaf interrupted a pattern. Bands as applied to people and beings are ties that bind, things that bring us together.

  The take-away from this morning’s walk is: it is a trap to think of ourselves as being hurt: “I am among the walking wounded. “

     It is more effortless to consider ourselves in a holistic way: “I am among the walking whole.”

Duck Red Tape: Sudoku Rebus

Capitol, Washington D.C.

   Prior to the elections, a friend described the WOW! factor that governmental edifices in Washington D.C. have. Their clean, classical lines and rigor, the precision and immensity that awe and overwhelm us. Their marble and granite mystery. What goes on inside them?

    “People lose sight of what the government’s purpose is, ” he said. “You can’t have government without people; you can have people without government.”

   ”The government organizes things to make it easier for people,” he added. “The government is composed of ordinary people and people should not fear the government, the government should fear the people.”

   The government organizes things for and provides money and opportunities to people. It also structures flights of successive steps – presents hoops to jump through. Requirements get tightened up, making it harder to reach the inner sanctum, or just to obtain or earn some type of benefits. 

Red Tape, sudoku rebus

               Imitation of a predacessor who has overcome barriers, negotiated the course,  or successfully traversed the red tape process, may be the sincerest form of operational flattery – of getting the same task done: “If you/they can do it, I/we can do it.” Yes, we can.