But certainly feel free to look around. Just click one of the 'Tag' links over there on the right just under the profile info. I'll be adding more pieces of writing and more tags in the days and weeks to come. If you're wondering how I might tackle a type of writing you don't see here, by all means shoot me an email! I'd be happy to oblige.

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[115 word poem]

Anthropology

Pattern seekers

With hands upon our foreheads

Calculating measures of

Consistency and Chaos

Looking at the miracles of

Parchment, paint and textile

Finding all the medicine and

Magic in our language.

Each private, lone beginning

Encapsulates our

Longest gone first days

Eons ago

And taking this reminder

Like a letter in our hands

And focusing our vision

To ancestral breath and mind,

We students, priests and healers

See ourselves through our own time

Building telescopes

Into our spirit

With them, along with those

Who would aspire to

Count the novae,

Know their mysteries,

We take our vision

Just up high enough to see

That we’re the pictures,

Color, music of the stars.

C.T.Thatch

Copyright 2011

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[290 word poem]

Archaeology

Two sides of of sacred, fleeting Earth

One end of time, the other

So many thousand years ago,

A peaceful, pleased and aged man

Peers deep in to the ancient night,

And prays…

The inky sky will echo back, with

Laughing, shining jewels and say:

I’ll fill the little Vessel in your hands now,

Human Man

For you’re to come forever after Home.

I’ll place the rhythms of your time

And all the music in your mind

The magic of your stories and your wisdom,

in your Cup;

The colors of your family, and

Richness of your seasons, the

Passion of your heady dreams, and

Wishes lost, inside;

The musings of your closest friends,

Your banter by the evening fire, the

Pieces of your lives and

Love you keep, I’ll place inside;

All your riches settle

In the Cup of blackened stone

The essence of your Soul

Will keep, inside.

II

So many thousand years go since, and

I, I’m walking westward there,

Surprised to find I stumble in the road.

Underneath my hands,

What do I see as I get up,

But the glinting of the sun

Upon a little blackened Cup.

I feel compelled to sit beside the

Road and hold it still, and as I do

the rhythms of his lifeinside me spill;

The magic of his stories and

The wisdom of his years…

I sense the ancient seasons

And my eyes sting now with tears

I look into a sunlit sky and

Hear a whisper soft;

An echo of a message to a

Soul long since aloft.

I hold the Vessel high above

My head, eons gone by, and

Wonder who I am to have this

Present from the sky.

C.T.Thatch

Copyright 2011

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[5,125 word short fiction]

~1975~

“Listen, you two, careful on your way. Which way do you kids take to school, you still use the big trail along the lake?  I want you to use the sidewalk. I know it’s longer, but just by a few minutes, and I really don’t know some of the neighbors along there, okay? It’s just safer along the streets and sidewalks.'

Papa's edict was met with silence and raised brows.

“Look, I mean, I just don’t like that fella. I hear he’s a crazy old man, maybe he’s got an arsenal up in that house, okay? Guns. We don’t want you two around that typa stuff, you hear me? Your Grandpa was killed in action in WWII.  I have a knot under my ribs just thinking of it. Thank God your Grandma was a strong lady. But a lotta your guys do make it home from war, and often times they’re pretty upset. Upset in here, you see, on the inside. They cram their hard war-time problems and whatever they remember up here in their attics, where it can fester and leak out! Now, that’s too bad and all, but we can’t have small young men such as yourselves subject to that leakage. Certainly when the man’s got God knows what kinda stuff all up in his house, on his back porch. We tend to like you kids, ok? Intact.”

“K, Pop,” said Michael, bucking up.

“K, Papa,” said Jeff, whining a little.

“Now there’re some good boys.”

~ 2005 ~

Patch Singer was 83 years old, and though he’d lost a fair chunk of his hearing, was a sharp young man if he did say so himself. He used to be a bit more of a goof because he loved to be funny and entertaining, but he noticed people attributing that streak in him to his age, lately. He began wondering if his schtick actually was a little lame these days, and settled for being more or less a friendly old man. His house was dusty and cluttered and none too lovely on the outside, but essentially clean. He woke up mornings with the crossword and a small breakfast, coffee of course; afternoons were for knockin’ around the shop or running errands in his ’94 Tercel. He took good walks in the evenings to keep everything well oiled. And though he didn’t watch a lot of TV, what with some of the garbage you found on there lately, he did have a bit of the news and the late night comedy before heading off to bed. There were plusses to a life on one’s own, and when lonesomeness got under his skin he just prayed some and got over it. It passed, like everything else. He did go to church on Sundays and had pals in the parish, and he did make a generous handful of terrific toys for the Christmas Drive every year. His mechanized pets, clocks and banks were coveted as the handiwork of a treasured local artisan. Every week, Father Tomas or one of the more involved parishioners would stop by the old house for a visit. Well, today was Tuesday so he wasn’t expecting anyone. Lunch was just for him: some Campbell’s chicken noodle getting warmed on the stove, tuna all decked out with relish and mayo, bread in the toaster. Lotsa coffee, always the good stuff, since way before having the good stuff was hip. He learned about truly excellent coffee in San Francisco some 40 years back. He thought he heard someone coming up the steps. Hey, maybe it isn’t Tuesday? No, he was sure it was, just got done with the newspaper not too long ago. Maybe a meter guy or some such, or maybe Father Tomas or somebody just got bored. If these were pity visits, as Patch gamely suspected they were, you could never tell for the grace of these very nice people. Maybe they really did take some pleasure in coming to visit some old geezer, he laughed. Indulgences for them, anyhow! So he thought he could probably stretch his lunch stuff and show off his fine cuisine; he hoped Father Tomas liked his dolphin-safe without too much mayo.

Michael Waters parked his Civic at the end of the cul-de-sac he grew up on and checked out the old house. He walked past the pavement of the ‘sac’ and up a slight grassy incline, crested it and stepped carefully down the slope to the trail. If he’d wanted, he could cross the trail and walk up the other side, go through somebody’s property and down to the lake. Michael decided just to walk north on the trail, his old route to school. It wasn’t terribly well kept but it was walkable, all the way to Kennedy it looked like. So he meandered along, checked out the school and walked back. It was on the way back that he noticed – and he couldn’t believe this – the barbeque! It was so rusted now it had literally fallen apart at the seams, but for God’s sake there it was. Looks like the War Guy was still kickin’. He loped up the hill toward the house and went around to the proper front steps, on the lake side. He collected his thoughts for a moment, stepped up and knocked on the door.

“Hello, there, young fella, haven’t seen you before, you must be a new guy! Let’s get you all set up with a nice cuppa joe, you want lunch!”

“No, sir, you know what, I just had lunch like a half an hour ago, but thanks, though,” Michael smiled.

“CreamSugar!”

“Oh, no, it’s perfect just the way it is, thanks.”

“Good boy, straight up. So you’ll sit down, then!”

“Sure, what do you mean, the new guy?”

“Aren’t you here from St. Alphonsus?”

“No, sir, just an old neighbor kid. An errand took me so close by the old stomping grounds, I thought I’d come take a look around. Yours is an old familiar house, looked like it was still you, so,” Mike got an awkward half-second, “So, hi!”

“Fine!” Patch grinned delightedly. “Now what was your family name?”

“Waters.”

“Ah, ok, believe your dad’s name was Dave?”

“Sure, you remember us!”

“Well, I’d see your parents, Dave usually, at the auto supply store, the drugstore, what have you. Nice fella, little reserved.” Patch looked at Michael warmly.

Michael caught himself before saying that ‘reserved’ not exactly how he’d describe his dad, but then considers that some of Dave’s preconceptions might have made his demeanor different around this man. “Sir, what is your name? What should I call you?”

“Patch!”

“Patch?”

“Patch.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Patch. My name’s Michael.”

“Pleasure to have you ‘round, I’m sure,” Patch enthused, “Wouldn’t be at all upset if you were to make a bit of a habit of it, no, sir. Nice you came ‘round, now how’s that joe?”

“Great, actually.” Mike was surprised and impressed. This was not little old dude coffee.

“Well, there you are.”

“How’d you get ‘Patch’? Is that a nickname?”

“’T is, yeah, a moniker that stuck on me for good in ‘38-’39 when we joined the service. I fought for our country in the Second World War, and me and my school friend Bike joined the army together just after graduating. We just barely didn’t have to lie about our ages. We had birthdays in the summer.”

“Bike?”

“Bike. David Lawrence Nixon, and a fine man, too. He got just fanatical over motorcycles when we were just small boys. He wanted to talk about them all the time. He thought there would be nothin’ better in all of this life than riding one down a stretch of road, middle of nowhere. He wanted them to look just so, to ride just so, feel just so, sing to him. He had pictures, he drew pictures, and he had such clever ideas he figured he’d like to go to work designing bikes for Harley-Davidson! That was his big pie in the sky.

“See, he and I really got on in the mechanical stuff department, as I like any type of machine. Not that we ever didn’t get along. We knew each other like books, watched the other guy’s back and were friends, such a nice fella. And he was tall and affable, so the girls always found a thing or two to say to him.” Patch surprised himself feeling a little choked up telling about Bike, missing him. Because it was falling on a fresh pair of ears, he supposed. The thought gratified him; Michael seemed so engaged and like he cared about this, it felt a little like Bike had a new brain to knock around in. Father Tomas and his other war-story victims listened to him, he knew, because he was an old man who wanted company, not because they truly cared about what he said. It’s funny how you can tell these things about a stranger, Patch mused.

“Is Bike no longer with us, then?”

“No, son, he died in that war, it murdered him in North Africa, during Operation Torch. His mother, though nearly 100 years old bless her heart, is still around, living out in one of the older houses in Kirkland. But Bike seemed so damn wise and easy-going about everything, he paid attention, he learned, he got things in his head just right. I say that because I think of all people he’d have been the first to make sense of it all, make peace with it all.”

“How bout you, Patch?”

“Well, son, it took me a very long time. Very long time. But you know, I took some pages from my friend’s playbook, and you what? I’m all right. Don’t think about it quite as much as I used to. And when I do, it’s all right. Seems a messy war’s part of every lifetime.”

~1942~

“’Operation Torch’, I like how that sounds, man, we’ll fuckin’ torch us some Krauts!” Said James, “But on the other hand it’s kind of a hot-sounding name for a place like Tunisia. I’ll see you your two and raise you two, so how do you like them apples.”

“I say I’d like it a hell of a lot better if only these here Good & Plentys were indeed apples, y’askin’ me”, opined Matt. “Can’t stand me no lickrish. I’d ‘torch’ me an apple, have me some pie’s what I’m talkin’ about. The candy’d do better as poker chips.”

“Pie…” Bike rolled his eyes back in pleasure at the thought.

“It’s not exactly hot here, right now, you may have noticed? Merry Christmas?” Murphy pointed out.

James usually enjoyed smart-assing Murphy down to his right and proper place among ‘us dogs, you know, the proletariat’, but he really wasn’t quite up to it. “I wish I could say I hadn’t noticed this rain. Feels freezing after no time, once you’re soaked. Hey,” he said, noting the time, “it is officially Christmas, just barely. God rest ye merry, gentle-dogs!”

“I’d settle for any real rest whatsoever, the best present I could get,” Bike laughed. “Getting soaked takes no time at all, but it takes all the way until the next squall comes along to dry out again, if ever. Check.”

“Ooo, say that agin, just so,” said Matt, chuckling.

“I don’t know how you boys can take it all so easily,” said Murphy, who nearly always managed to make criticism of others out of his own whining. But any way, even that sort of way, of coping with one’s fear was tolerated to some extent. “We sleep wet and filthy, we watch people get shot, gutted, blasted all to hell every day and somehow you sit there and chuckle. See you, raise you one, Matthew.”

“Well, yer highness talk like I ain’t payin’ no mind. Truth is, what else can you do? Maybe’s the last chuckle the Good Lord gonna see fit to give me,” Matt countered.

“I think I try to fight the gravity of all this during the moments I possibly can, because gravity tends to win a lot of the time. It’ll always be happy to, if you let it, so I let it sometimes and I don’t let it sometimes,” Bike said diplomatically.

Matt’s ears perked up, alarmed. All eyes on Bike, a Corporal. James mouthed, “Oh, hear that!” Everyone looked eastward and lowered their bodies instinctively hearing two long, low whistles, arcing lower. “Nasty whistle – oh, there it goes!” – A menacing, low double-blast, one shell right on top of another. Four pairs of dog tags clinked and threw faint flashes as the boys’ bodies rocked and flinched with the thunderous fire. After a moment: “Lord, who are the Krauts seeing? Couldn’t be us. Or maybe that was just a general ‘Season’s Greetings’ to whomever may be listening,” whispered Murphy.

Then… nothing. A particularly ominous silence. Eyeballs glanced around at each other and big paws full of playing cards lowered a bit. Of higher rank, Bike and James rose quietly and turned to walk in the direction of their sergeant, Terry Allen. Just to check in. “You want to go, or you want me to go with you?” James offered, deferring.

“No, you baby-sit these varmints,” grinned Bike. “I’ll be right back.”

So far, it really did seem to be nothing; regular fire had just died out suddenly with that extra-big fire at the end, like a double exclamation point. “Maybe the Germans had to go to the bathroom,” Said Murphy, further trying his hand at levity. Everyone gave him a grin. A minute and a half later, eyes began hunting around for Bike. James got up and walked a few steps toward Sgt. Allen’s location due south of here. Then James saw a flash of light right on the ground, 150 yards ahead of him to the ESE. Shit, was Bike off course? Before its sharp, uneven crack-crack even finished sounding, he knew, he just knew. He saw the silhouette bound upward and spill down to the ground unheard, like a rag doll. James sank and bowed over, cursing God that he’d have now to go over there, begging the same God that Bike was dead right now, already, please God, the moment he stepped on it. If we don’t get to have him and you do, you have some of your mercy on him, if you truly have any, if you’re truly there! Fuck you, anyhow. Just fuck you. His mind shifted gears half a dozen times in the next 150 yards; halfway there, he couldn’t help but think, the Krauts stole our fucking Bike, now how’re we supposed to get around? He wanted to be shocked and angry at himself for thinking of a joke at this moment, except he knew Bike himself would’ve laughed.

When he completed his mission, he went toward Terry’s location, but they stumbled across each other before he got there. So James and his Sgt Allen returned to the little camp together to tell these boys, a regiment parceled out from the mighty First Division to help out the Brits, that they’d lost Corporal David Lawrence Nixon. One of their best, and one of their own. They boys all folded down their own cards.  Matt picked up Bike’s five cards and just closed his eyes and held the hand in his hands for a moment. He passed it to Murphy and the other boys and Terry, who did the same. And thus began Christmas day 1942 here at Longstop Hill.

~~~

Bike Nixon thought he felt his left foot come loose; it got turned up and in so the arch touched the inside of his left leg. He noticed it pop like a chicken bone when you break the drumstick off the thigh. It was ok, but his body had just come to feel like hot, dry spray, and now that part was wet-hot spray instead. The skin broke apart funny, he was ripping and aloft, like two circus-hands had taken his feet and shoved him hard upward so he could reach the trapeze or something. He thought about cold mud being slathered onto the ripping part to make it feel better. Rain started coming down on his forehead and that was a sweet splattery wash. His arms wheeled back much too far to grab hold of anything, but that was ok, and he lost track of where the hands were aiming, anyway. The knees were coming up and he got some more skin coming open between his hipbones. Some sharp shards of stuff came up just under his ribs, he was sure, and then he couldn’t be quite sure. He felt searing right there and he wanted to tuck his body in, but his chin went backward, eyes up, and he couldn’t do it. But then it was ok and he didn’t have to. His eyes got very thickly wet. He wanted some of that rain on the too-hot ripping open skin or some mud, like icy mud, how it would be slushy. Oh, that sounded beautiful. He felt some tall, shadowy presences giving him the icy mud, slathering it on thickly with long hands like healers, quiet, helping, and he felt deeply moved. Gravity claimed his weight, the ground taking his left hip, left side.  It felt cool and he thought more of his skin wanted more of the earth, more cool. He wanted a muddy autumn park. The corner of the fence by where all the kids played stickball, that always filled up and made a soppy grass-laden schlop of dark soil when it rained. They’d stomp around in it, relishing a bit in the rolled eyes of their mothers, who were ready with a warm lunch and stuff to clean the floor. He wanted to let his back roll all the way onto the earth, but he couldn’t seem to make his body do the work. The long hands brought some cool icy mud up to all that hot skin on his back.  He felt rain skating down the side of his face. Now the healers took care of the ribs and lower lungs with those long arms, and he wasn’t afraid of their touch; he knew they’d have this cool medicine. It seemed to bubble away at first, so seared was that skin, but then it was just rills of slushy, icy thick relief. His eyes filled till they brimmed over like cups and got heavy with sleepiness. He could make out these long, tall healers better. He knew they knew him, and here of course they were, floating like blue giants. He could sense them love him with their medicine, in calm and warmth. It came from a well in his being, a sense of gratitude and connection, so profound and essential as to be luminous.  Whatever grace he had was all for them, theirs, his dignity full like a proud heart, for them; he felt urgently to give them everything, offer them himself, get folded inside their deep-water blue shadows. They gave him sweet stuff in his mouth and took him in, where he now felt some… something… suddenly grief. He was about to understand something, but he couldn’t quite yet…  after a moment, it came in lucid pictures: My sweet Beth, oh, no, Patch, Mama … Matt, James and Terry … Beth has a little one on the way, doesn’t she? Oh…no… Look, you, whatever or whoever you are, I can live with pain, I can handle being blind! I don’t need my legs, my ribs, I need my – my mom…! I need Beth! He felt horrified and outraged with a sense the shadowy blue healers had betrayed him: No, give me back! Give me back! He was never so powerless.  They listened carefully to him and let there be sorrow. When it was over, David heard an old familiar voice.  It was here, right here… He didn’t get really words from it; it just echoed toward him and he could just see this most familiar smile… the green sweater.  He smelled cigarettes, cedar shavings from making mom a box to store clothes, the friendly eyes and great big arms for hauling small people around… I could sit up on the workbench and watch if I wanted to…?  Sure you could, kiddo, come on there, time to come home.

~ Present Day ~

“Oh, hi Michael, to what do we owe the pleasure. Hi there, son,” Said Dave Waters.

“Hi, Pop, remember the big trail that went more or less along the lake?”

“Sure, sure, how bout that? Now, we’ve finished up, here, but you’re more than welcome to some leftovers or dessert if you like. I’m afraid you’ve missed your mom; she’s off to have a drink with Sophie.

“You know, I used to fish along there just off that trail. Yeah, just a quarter mile south of the house or so, you’d find some launches and a good spit at low tide, though rocky. No matter, caught some flounder there more than once, caught an errant trout once, had to toss ‘er.”

“S’ok, I’m eating later,” said Michael, “but can I have a cup of that coffee?” Pop nodded. “When we were in like second or third grade or so, that age, we used to take that trail to get to Kennedy.”

“Now wait a minute, I thought I told you kids to stop that, ok? No, now, I wanted you to take the – ”

Michael held up his hand and smiled, having steered Pop’s brain where he had meant to, “Before you told us that, Papa.”

“Ah, well, sure then, ok, sure.”

“So you remember why you wanted us to stop that and start taking the long way, the War Guy. We had this image of him as a scary old man.”

“He was a scary old man, why, who knows what kinda stuff he had up in there.”

“Jeff and I used to see his old barbeque that had tumbled halfway down from his house to the trail, and rusted there with all the overgrown weeds and stuff. We used to say, ‘Now how’ll he cook children!’ and laugh, and we used to tell Brian at school who picked on smaller kids and even girls, ‘We’re gonna feed you to the War Guy!’ We told him, ‘He has a barbeque.’ Brian was fat and stupid, so he was worried, and a few times a year we had a small crowd of eternally grateful six-year-olds. One kinda spindly kid in Jeff’s class said to me, ‘We love the War Guy!’”

Pop looked stunned, but he chuckled, “You’re joking, there, wow, how bout that. That’s, uh, well I guess that’s funny, I suppose.”

“We pictured him as a huge, vicious man all hunched over with a big, nasty grin.” Pop’s brow furrowed a bit. “We said he was like a massive old lobster: a big semi-automatic cannon in one hand, a little accurate stinger of a pistol in the other, waving ‘em around looking for fat kids.”

Pop opened his mouth. Michael waited with a contented half-smile, finally raising his brow, “Pop?”

Pop brought his jaw back up. “Son, well, son, it wasn’t quite that way…” He glanced around. “Son, we didn’t really know that man, okay? But you must know now that your imaginings as children were possibly slightly exaggerated? Here, let me top off your mug, there, Michael. Listen, have you ever heard of shell-shock?”

“Sure, Pop, they now call that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“Okay! Well, all it was is that this guy had some of that. And from what we understood, see, he liked and collected guns. We didn’t think he had a wife or anything, so. We just didn’t want to risk him one day thinking you two were The Enemy there traipsing your way to Kennedy. We tend to like you kids, you hear?”

“Did you meet him, ever?”

“Briefly, oh, we’d run into him here and there. Just cordial, how you doin’, that sorta thing. At the grocery store, the Burgermaster, what have you.”

Michael was bemused but slightly irked. He kept his half-smile and watched his dad. “You know what I did today, Pop? I walked along that old trail. I was down at Katterman’s pharmacy and it just hit me, since I was so close by, to go see the old house. I parked and went back toward the water and found the trail. It’s semi-overgrown, but I followed our usual stretch. Guess what? The barbeque was still there! I couldn’t believe it,” Michael laughed. “I poked around the school for a few – it has shrunk considerably since I was less than four feet tall – then walked back to the trail and found his front yard.”

Pop looked expectant.

Michael smiled.

Pop smiled.

“He’s a nice little old man, Papa.”

Pop lowered his head, stifling a chuckle. Michael recounted his visit with Patch to his father. “You know, son, it hurts my heart for that man that he lost his friend and went through all that. Was Patch in Africa, too? ‘Bike’? That’s terrific. What’s his name-name?”

“No, Patch was in France. I don’t recall Bike’s name, nor Patch’s for that matter, but I’m gonna go back and visit him again soon. Write some stuff down. Patch clearly misses Bike, and I think it’d be invaluable for him to have some sort of a book of stuff: I’d take down whatever stories he wants to tell, see if I can track down the mom.  Who knows what could come of that! And whatever else, maybe copies of documents, photos, etc.

“But see, now I want to write your stuff down, too, and Grandpa Larry’s stuff. Do you have that stuff on Grandpa?”

Pop was quiet for a minute, then said, “Gosh if kids don’t surprise you sometimes, boy, growing up you think they’re not hearing a thing you say. My own experience in the service bothered me enough I didn’t even try to catch your ears with it, except to try and instill gratitude and respect toward the service in general, so. I never knew if it worked, and I counted it less important than your being excited about life, and safe and well, you know, son.”

“I know, Pop,” Michael smiled.

“Yes, well,” Dave lowered his head and smiled. “Well, here’s the deal on your grandparents, and you know your Grandma told me this story when I think I was nineteen or so. She was heartbroken.” Pop paused. “We don’t have any documents or medals or anything for your Grandpa Larry. Mom said to me that the ring on her left hand was a promise ring, a promise from him to marry her the very split second he came back home. They’d have taken care of it right then, but his current leave was too short, wasn’t enough time. So it was probably the next morning, May 1st, as he was shipping out and she was waving at him, or at least that’s what she’d like to think, that your old Pop was officially conceived.” Pop got a bittersweet smile, “Eight months later, he was killed. Mom’s family was none too happy, as you can imagine in those days. But your grandma’s one strong lady, and she made the best of being painfully excluded at a most vulnerable moment. She got a friend to help her manage, she got work as a secretary not too long after I was born, and she raised me herself on that. That old friend of hers would sit with me ‘til I was old enough to head off to school, and I’ll be damned if I remember her very well, such a shame. But I think she moved away, and I think I was one of your original ‘latchkey’ kids. I pioneered that movement!” Pop chuckled. “Well, you know some of that already, won’t bore you, point is, Grandma use to tell about my dad some, loving things and that he died for our country and stuff like that, but I wasn’t aware ‘til age 19 that they hadn’t been married. That used to be a bigger deal than it is these days, and your poor grandma was afraid I might think he was somehow less my father, maybe think less of her,” Pop looked sorrowfully frustrated at the thought. “I did my best to convince her she couldn’t be more wrong-headed, and didn’t she think I was just grateful to be here! That was a conversation. Anyway, unfortunately, although we have the one old personal photo and the one wallet size army portrait he gave her before he left, I don’t think we’re entitled to any of that documentation or other official stuff. I look just like him, nonetheless there’d be no way to prove anything.”

Michael chewed this over and looked at his father. He waited respectfully for a moment. “Pop, maybe we could look into it anyway, just to see…? See if we could come up with something?”

“I’ve thought about it, son, but I’d kinda let it go. But you seem so interested…well, I don’t know, maybe so…”

“And we could make a book kinda like the one I’d thought of for Patch. Just think, having something official saying ‘whatever-his-rank-was Larry Waters’ or at least let’s get that photo. I know it’s small but we could get a great frame for it…” Mike’s mind was racing, “Caption it with ‘(rank) Larry Waters’… Lets see what we can do, Pop!”

“Sure son, sure! Okay, but one thing I can set official for you right now: Waters is Grandma’s name, see. We have your Grandma’s name. But I did get something of his,” Papa smiled a private smile, now. “My father was US Army Corporal David Lawrence Nixon.”

C.T.Thatch

Copyright 2011

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[700 word essay]

I have felt and thought since I was a little kid that The Olympic Games is the best thing we do. We, meaning the human race, as a species, as a people. That has only been affirmed and reaffirmed as the Olympiads have breezed by, but never so intensely as this time around. I was a person with reservations and concerns about these Olympics being held in Beijing because of China’s deplorable record of human rights abuses. Before I say anything else, I will say that nothing mitigates my feelings or thoughts on that matter, nothing, regardless of where these transgressions occur, or when, or ‘why’ (as if damaging a life were excusable), or any other particular. But I am now glad the Olympics were held there. I want to think that this outstanding effort to be a gracious host was earnest and honest in its greater meanings. The messages in Opening Ceremonies were an amazing surprise to me, and I’m happy to place faith in them and look with hope toward the future of China. My arms are folded; there is a streak of wariness, but it’s been well tempered in the last 17 days.

I haven’t watched a Closing Ceremonies for a long time. The last time, sometime as a kid, I was so grieved the games were ending that I cried. I ached for the next ones like I’d gotten my heart broken. I figured in the future, it'd be best to just let the whole thing fizzle off toward the end there. Well, I’ve changed that policy. I watched them tonight and I’m so glad I did. For one thing, as a person who doesn’t want or need to stand much on ceremony myself, I am a huge sucker for it. In the right contexts, I love glitzy pomp and circumstance and traditions being passed on in practice, I love being moved by all that stuff. Second of all, I discovered I like the bookend, the closure. I don’t mind being sad in this way so much anymore (especially now that the Winter Games are split out and I only have to wait two years for my fix now). And I’m glad I got a good bye from Beijing. People parting need a chance to say and hear good bye to and from each other. It’s bittersweet, but you know, I’m a sucker for bittersweet as well.

I first came to feel and understand love for my country via the Olympic Games, and I still feel it in the purest way in that context, hearing my National Anthem played for an American on the world stage. As soon as I understood that, I understood it for the whole world, for each nation and each person in that nation. I love our sporting triumph first and best, my heart is always with the United States of America, but I love your sporting triumph too, Brazil, Russia, Kenya, Turkey, The Netherlands, Iran, wherever on Earth you are. I love celebrating with the world, I love celebrating my country, I love the Olympics and the incredible power it has to bring us together and remind us of what is truly important, writ large enough for the whole planet to see and feel at once. It is light years of magnitude greater than the sum of its parts. It’s our World Spirit.

I fantasized when I was a kid, that amongst planets, the flag raised for Earth and whose image would mean “Earth” to the rest of the Universe, would be the Olympic Flag, because it is us at our pinnacle, our absolute best, it stands for something we all really love and can all truly believe in, as a planet. I’m finding I still indulge that thought once in a while.

Earth, as seen by Voyager 1 at a distance of 4 billion miles (Image from JPL/NASA).

I love this little planet and all the people on it, and I want the very best for every one of us.  I'm looking forward to London and the 30th Olympiad!

C.T.Thatch

copyright 2011

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[700 word essay]

I grew up in a big American city. I recently lived in one of the Ten Point Alpha World Cities, and I'm moving to one of the Twelve Point ones in the near future. Ever in an urban environment, I've routinely seen of every conceivable type of behavior, all my life, from heroic to abysmal. People will make your heart sing with their unbounded kindness one moment, and they will break it with tragic indifference or mean-spiritedness the next.

Just prior to the demise of  The Naked Truth, Agatha Award winning author Jacqueline Winspear had lamented discourteous behavior there (amen, and it was cathartic to read). But she cited the transgressions as “[giving her] pause to consider – again – what sort of people we’re all becoming.”

Good grief, what is the world coming to?

I understand this thought, I really do. But it chaps my hide, and I think it's flawed; it fails to take the long view that humanity deserves. Humans have been both beautiful and awful (sometimes within the span of a single moment) for the full length of our history, and we are hardly the only animals so capable. Elder generations have been critical of and distraught over the wretched behavior of upcoming generations since the dawn of mankind. People of all kinds, everywhere and always, have experienced that jolt of dismay over a disrespectful act, been shocked at the depths of another’s cynicism and how that worldview causes him or her to behave, and seen heartbreaking apathy or cruelty.

The basic nature of our race is not changing. Not even a little bit. Yes, there have been enormous, drastic changes to our world since the Industrial Revolution that have rocketed civilization forward - novel types of changes, and at a shocking pace, I realize. We have experienced mindblowing cutting edge scientific advances. We have amazing new tools for looking at ourselves and measuring who we are and how our world is coming along. We have new technology so astounding that it looks even to most of us (contemporaries!) like mystifying magic. Texting, tweeting & playing with one's iPod are brand new ways to fail to hear & listen (and get creamed in a busy intersection). I know, things are very different. And yet? We are in our deepest nature simply the current issue of who we have always and forever been.

I am definitely not saying that there are no disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (school shootings, Jeffrey Dahmer). I am saying that there have always been disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (The Crusades, Caligula). There will be disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people until the Sun gets too hot for Earth to host human life.

We are not becoming an impolite race from having been a polite race. As long as humans exist, we will have rules governing our behavior, and there will be times when we will break them. There will be people who have a chronic habit of breaking them, sometimes in a most colorful manner. As always, most of us will put some kind of a premium on good behavior and develop a set of measures for assessing it. We will hang our heads in despair when our intentions or actions fall outside of them. We will celebrate with happy hearts and renewed faith when the usual expectations are exceeded.

It's the same as it ever was. There will always be good guys, good chances, good days, redemption, sweetness, the capacity to move others beyond words and be so moved. There will always be the humdrum, the remarkable, the specular. There will always be grief, disappointment, loss. The vast majority of us love somehow, or understand some kind of love, and at some point grasp how short our time is here and begin making choices which reflect that.

We are animals; magic touchscreens & transcontinental travel changes how we do things and how fast, not who we are. What is the world coming to? Well eventually, indeed, an end. I can't know how long humanity will remain on this planet, but I'd put my money on at least 3 billion of the whole 3.2 billion years Earth has left to host us.

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[1,995 word short fiction]

It’s not that Michael Waters really dug summer camp, but it was an escape from home-life and school life, and at this camp he got to sail. He’d taken to sailing like breathing last year and picked it right back up in the past few days. He felt the mastery of repeated good practice. He felt urgent about going out to read the wind and water. He belonged out there. In such command of his skill, he resented the thought of some 19-year-old ‘counselor’ directing his work, yet rule #1 was you don’t even go swimming without adults present, never mind boating. The Sunfishes were moored off shore at anchored platforms anyway; hard just get to them without being noticed.

Michael wanted to call himself a captain. That would mean successfully taking a boat out and bringing it back, with himself and the boat intact, on his own. Well, sometimes you arrived at your mission only by way of other missions: for captain status, he now had to steal a boat.  Was it worth the consequences if he got caught? Well you know what, he thought, that’s just not an option. He would check to see if this was a night they’d let the sails remain unfurled. It did seem fairly calm out, today, but you never knew. He’d have to leave things exactly as he found them once he was done, and he was not about to take extra minutes and make noise out in the open getting a sail re-wrapped and sheathed. Those snaps were difficult even if you got the canvas nice and tight, anyway. He looked forward to the dead hours after midnight, seemingly 100 years away.

So, stealthily now, he padded out from the cabin and down the wide dirt path toward the shore.  Everyone had long since hit the sack. He went over things in his head.  So far, if he ran in to someone he’d say something like, just on my way to the showers, counselor.  He imagined gettting challenged:
  

"What are you doing in your trunks."

“What are you doing down here?”  

Just seeing if Cook’s up, see if he’s got any coffeecake.

“You’re not supposed to be in this area!”

Okay man. And abort mission.

God I think I lost my shades/tags/something down here...

“Get back to your cabin!”

Okay man, on my way. And abort mission. Okay.

He got all the way past the mess tent and just to the picnic tables - eight or ten paces and he’d be on the beach - when Rob the Cook happened. Rob. He hated Michael not especially but on general principle; he dutifully despised all children under the age of 27.  Rob was a wiry, sneering ex-con, with old corpse-blue tattoos fading into each other like a hairy traffic problem. His brows scrunched down to his nose even when wildly happy. He had more hair on one arm than he did on his whole big head. But he smelled like the kitchen and walked somehow like a bad-ass movie star, and he made one hell of a cream cheese coffeecake. And that’s what really counted. All the boys were in a sort of wary awe of this unlikely source of food.  You liked him or you didn’t, but you probably didn’t want to cross him.  

He slipped his little vessel away from the dock easily and quietly, nothing to it. He had long since set his short, simple course, just slingshot around Heron Island and right back to the dock.   

What would the boat be doing without you in it? This? I have a gust blowing south, yet the boat’s not crunched - in fact I’m clear of the bank at this point, which is...for God’s sake I’m nearly a third of the way to the south end. What have I done? Have I really done something right? Maybe one smart move, but I’m not even...I’m just barely on the tiller right now.  It’s like the weather is playing with me...

The wind did not let off much more, but Michael got a sensation that it had. He watched the water, and looked at the black sky, which he could now see. The tall, thick black lushness of trees and other growth on the island appeared to glide by, heading north on his left. The words drained out of his head. The wind really did begin to ease. The boat slowed, and slowed some more. His hand instinctively kept pace, reining in on his sail, and his eyes zoned out along the shoreline. He took in the landscape, memorizing it like words. Just as his eyes met the south tip of the island, the moonlit charcoal silhouette of a giant Great Blue Heron came into view. It faced up to the stars like an avian astronomer.

He’s made his peace with this weather, thought Michael. He understands it or not, he lets it be. He wouldn’t fight or question this moody sea or weird wind any sooner than he’d hop in an airplane. He knows the best way to know the currents and elements: watching in the present moment. He knows they have the upper hand all the time and he knows to take their mercy without question if it’s given.

Words seeping into his quiet head about how the bird sees and lives had him sensing and believing that the elements were him and that he was them; the water, the earth, the Madronas, the rain, the heron. He felt the wind at his back and imagined Rob, the camp, his friends, his brother and parents. He saw his parents’ lives as that of regular people, as if just now he understood that they too were someone’s kid, sibling, friend. He felt connected with all of them in new understanding, a deeper knowledge of time and history. He glided past his jet black majestic shorebird and around the south end and they watched each other, wondering, taking in. Michael finally coaxed his mind back to the alert present and he skated the Sunfish effortlessly to the dock. He moored it well and quickly, orienting just the way he had found it.  

C.T.Thatch

Copyright 2011

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On September 30th at about 11:00pm, I got off my bus from work one stop early. No real thought to that, just did it. I nearly bumped into a girl as I stepped down, so I gamely said 'oops' to her and her doggie, a small Shepherd. I looked at the girl with warmth while saying hi to her dog, extending my hand under its nose.

I thought this girl was special. Just a feeling. Strong on the inside, delightful and gracious and sweet through and through. She had geek glasses and curly curls, her youthful manner seasoned with having been through some serious shit. I would learn her difficult story and witness her unsinkable spirit on our way to my apartment building's entrance. But back to the bus stop, where we're still chatting about the nice autumn temperature, her dog, my job, the price of coffee.

She: "Um, would you like a free cat?"

Me: ... ?

She reaches into a satchel I hadn't even really seen in the dark night, and draws out a little animal. It is so jet black and so small I have to focus to make it out. But there were the big golden eyes, clearly a bit nervous, but not spooked. The girl handed the kitten to me. I took a look at those eyes, the sprightly little ears, her sleek fur. I stroked the little neck. The kitten nuzzled her face into the crook of the sleeve of my black work jacket, and all four of us started our walk to 9th and Madison.

I'll continue soon.

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This is Tony Baloney Balloon, Rock Star:

Has been known to:

Teach English
Bartend
Take care of his Abuelita, affectionately known to all as Chelito
Take care of his beloved kitty cats
Play guitar
Play bass
Be an excellent kid, friend, cousin, boyfriend, son, grandson, etc.
Be awesome with kids
Be a total metal head \m/

You rule, Tony. Your Auntie Trinity and I are looking forward to visting you in Mexico next year, and hauling you back up here to Seattle for a while afterward! We can't wait to visit & celebrate Fiesta with you & Mimi & our whole family!

Love,

Mommy, Mum, Mama, Mom, Your lovely Mother, Me, Catherine Taylor Thatch :D

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Ta da! I made a comic at Rage Builder.

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Note: I like to be positive, so I contemplated scrapping this list and writing an earnest “How To Be a Stellar Interviewer”. I may go on to write that, but I’m still pretty irritated right now, so this stands.  Please indulge me; this morning I was pissed off listening to some idiot mangle an interview with one of my heroes. This list is not comprehensive and is leveled at that villain’s style in particular. When I write the positive version, I will be more thorough.

Nine steps to a wretched interview:

5) Be vague. Be inarticulate. Ask “What’s [that] like?” (Fuck you. If you’re lost for a specific, well-put, thoughtful, intelligent question, please say, “Please talk about [that]”, or something comparable.)

Image credit: http://paulvargaradio.com

6) Don’t be well-prepared. Rather than bringing some excellent ideas to the table, bank on something in your subject’s current sentence prompting your next question. Meander in a loose, ill-directed & sloppy conversation rather than constructing a strong stage upon which your subject can shine.

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You know how you fall in love with an image online, so you save it somehow? Maybe you email it to yourself & stick it in a pics folder. Or you keep it on your computer, or a photo-sharing site (or you Tumblr/Tweet it), etc., where it then gets mixed up with pictures you snapped yourself and other unrelated shit? And now your faves are scattered throughout cyberspace.

Enter my new crack cocaine: We Heart It.

It is only for images you come across while hanging out online; no ‘browse’ button for loading your own pictures (except your profile pic. Read ‘Dos & Don’ts’ - check out the first ‘Don’t’).

It’s social media in that you may find & follow others, but it’s gloriously silent: no text, no chat, no articles, no news, no noise, just images special enough to have been culled from the vast eleventillions of internets.

Using it is ridiculously easy: drop the bookmarklet onto your toolbar. When you come across a keeper, click ‘Heart this’ and you’ll be prompted to choose the image, tag it if you like, and cull it to your stash.

If you start using this, please tell me or follow me: ccnomad.

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I love pictures like this:

Credit: Jason Ross of Seattle Theater Group

STG's Concerts Marketing Manager Jason Ross offers a great report on his trip to the Sasquatch Music Festival <-here. The above pic is of the audience cheering on The Flaming Lips - always fun & unique in concert. Jason snapped (among other things/people) a great action shot of true rock star Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (about halfway down after you click Sasquatch link). Great shots, Jason!

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Goals by February 29, 2012:

$15,000 (or better) saved

Slimmed down, fit & flexible (numbers & other reductions in vagueness to come as I math things out)

First draft of novel (finally) complete

Brain/mind sharpened back to optimum levels - no more cloudiness, sludginess. Math may not be available for this one, but I'll recognize the progress when I see it

Develop and/or commit to more specific goals as the days tick down & the shape of things emerges (I have some things in mind, but I need to see what the pace of progress of the more general goals is first)

No, this isn't turning into a diary of my 'leap' to the East Coast, but every so often I may pop in with a progress report.

Thanks for indulging me :-)

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You know when a cell phone call sounds like it's 'underwater' That's how my life has felt for the last year-ish. Garbled, obscured. I''ve been ignoring a lot, my energy level has been far too low & I've been using books, the internet & epic napping as drugs and alcohol.

You'd either laugh or cry watching me try to contstruct a program or plan to stick with, of any kind, by myself. This thing that seems like it should be natural and easy for any human with two intact frontal lobes is wildly difficult for me. This flaw has been well-examined, & some time if you guys are super bored & I'm feeling incredibly self-absorbed, I'll go into that (or not probably). Discouragement & the blues compound this problem, & I usually do my best to shake these things off. Like a boss. *Rolls eyes* Anyway.

I need to move on, I need to emerge from 'underwater'. I shelved my eons-long dream of heading to New York when the economy tanked and I came home to Seattle (from Los Angeles, where I'd been working as a tour guide) to regroup. Regrouping has been excruciatingly slow going. I mean...wow, glacial. This is not necessarily all bad in all ways, but my patience in leaving NY on that shelf has run the fuck out. Enough with the fantasizing. It's back in my hands, front and center. I need it there to get me going. I need the hope.

The date: February 29, 2012.

I don't know exactly how I'm gonna do this. It's not like I'm making enough money, and I owe my kid a visit first (he lives in Mexico City). But I have seen plenty of Disney movies, damnit, and I am going to do it. I've seen apparently hopeless situations do a 180. I've watched people triumph over their tangled psychology and two-bit odds. Yeah, I'm kind of a hard case, but I've still got some good old fashioned American determination in my veins. I will make this long-standing dream come true.

Yeah, I don't quite believe what I just said there yet. I'll get there. 

NEW YORK OR BUST <-enough with the bust 2/29/2012

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I came to, confused & sight-fractured, on my bathroom floor very early this morning. I got up immediately, using a two-year-old's wobbly, unpracticed actions. My jammie pants were askew to the point of Failblog-worthiness, reminding me, as my vision resolved back to normal, what the hell I was doing there. Unfortunately, Margaritas had nothing to do with it.

See, my GI tract must have been alerted to #RoastFriday and/or April Fool's Day. At some time after going to sleep, I had one of those awful cramps we've all had. It was low down but not, I didn't sense, imminent (if you catch my drift - jeez, how to word these TMI things). I had been deeply asleep, so I tried simply flipping over onto my left side. The cramp disappeared, all better.

But just after I drifted back off, it reappeared. With a vengeance. Still didn't feel imminent. Got up and headed to the bathroom anyway.

There, I marveled at the pain level of this cramp. Astonishing. Gravity had begun doing its thing - just begun, no relief yet - and ... motherfucker, this pain. I popped a sweat all over. Pain worsened. Sat there, sat back, the popped sweat turning into rivulets that started needing a hand towel to manage. The backs of my arms and my forehead got clammy and cold.

At one point, many minutes into this extraordinarily unlovely experience, the cramp seized up as though it had been just kidding around so far. It seized up as if the ghost of a slavering wolf was reaching in there to twist off my lower intestine for use as a jump rope.

Image Credit: Disney

At least that's the imagery that presented itself to me in the wee hours of the morning.

In ridiculous, insane pain, my skin now drenched & numbing, and the moment becoming surreal in every way, I said (whether aloud or in my head I'll never know):

"Nooooo -"

...then, nothing. Blackness. I did not fade out in a faint, I did not become gradually less aware; I have no memory or 'experience' of anything after the fifth 'o' of that 'No'. I just plain crumpled. In fact I can only tell you that much with any certainty due to the evidence that is my coming-to.

I am not usually one to recount tales from the restroom, but I had a strange urge to tell about this; it's unusual, for one thing, kinda scary, maybe interesting. And, thanks especially to my state upon coming-to, potentially rather comical. My first thoughts were, there are certain YouTube/FailBlog peeps who'd be ALL over this, heh. But my next thoughts were: Heck, dangerous. Super chancy. My head had been so close to the radiator when I came-to that I wondered whether my vision was so fucked up because I'd hit my head on it. (Probably not; no head bump or pain has presented itself). But I think I just also don't want to be alone with this blackout anymore.

The care I received was that of my own body doing what it could to right itself. The knowledge of what had just happened belonged to me only. I live alone, and I treasure my privacy, my autonomy, but if this episode had resulted in need for life-saving medical attention, such as if my head really had conked that radiator, a vertebra had fractured, or an artery had ruptured, I'd have been fucked three entirely different ways from Sunday.

"Life's better with company. Everybody needs a co-pilot." - from the movie Up In The Air

For all that awful, literally gut-wrenching pain, I am one very, very lucky person. But I'll feel a lot luckier if I find a co-pilot.

Image credit: Lucasfilm

Thank you many times over for reading this. I'm grateful not to be alone with the knowledge of it, anymore.

P.S. You may or may not be wanting it confirmed: I am indeed all better now. 

P.P.S. When searching for the above photo, I stumbled across this one:

Image credit: Lucasfilm

Love that. :-D

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Five Haiku, for your dining & dancing pleasure:

Origin

[A nod to the origin of the art of Haiku:]

Solitary bloom
culled from fragrant abundance
striking lotus breathes

Water:

Creek meanders then
tackles ever larger stones
cold river rises

Sun:

Vaulting into light
each new time zone a ruckus
from a sleeping silence

Music Box:

Rigid plastic doll
popped out of her pirouette
into velvet abyss

Imperative:

Splash into the glass
drip drip i can hardly wait
coffee saves my life

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Light a soccer match

In a secret pocket of

Barcelona, Spain

Photo Credit: Oriol Tarridas

Haiku by C.T.Thatch

(though it can be argued that it pretty much wrote itself)

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The Oatmeal seal birdie of approval:

Created by Oatmeal

I'm glad. This made me nervous; I am an excellent speller, but have, every once in a great while, been known to get something wrong. And it's often something obvious and simple and stupid and common. So hooray :)   

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Totally random post. I'm just bored and too brain fried to do any more work on my portfolio atm.

So this one time? at band summer camp? there were half a dozen of us: Katherine, Katie, Kathy, Kat, Kathleen, and me, Catherine. The Katherine went by Katherine and I went by Catherine. The tribe of us were already so prone to mix-ups that they tried to get one of us to go by something else. They asked her, how 'bout 'Kay'? Vast swivels of dramatic head-shaking ensued. They asked us, how 'bout your last names? I roared 'Never. Ever. Ever.' I had the name of the adoptive couple I stayed with, and hated it. It began with C and I pointed this out. One of the kids said: "C.C.!" My eyes went wide - I loved that! I was so surprised, really, and felt that weird sense of honor to be nicknamed. But it didn't stick very well, because I then sang, "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me. Hey!", and:

Everyone started calling me Cookie.

I just loved it. I was tickled anytime anyone used it, especially if I was introduced that way. 'C.C.' held here and there, but 'Cookie' won the big prize. In typical 10 year-old style, I started writing it on everything.

Alas, my beloved CYO camp (Don Bosco that year) session came to an end, and I was Cookie no more. Ever since, I've referred to myself that way in my head, maybe not as often as 'Cath' or 'Hey' or 'Dumbass', but it's never really left. I think I've held this secret hope that somebody else would (cosmically?) think it up for me again. Well, no such luck yet, so you know what? I'm resurrecting it myself, damnit. It ain't the same exactly, but whatever. It's cute & I love it and it's mine.

COOOOKIIIEE!

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The Rules In Los Angeles

Their soul is a riveted metal placard

Hung with duct tape or tacks

Emotional ink on a broken cardboard box,

Or the back of a lobby card.

Lime green highlighter, red Sharpie

 Spray paint over posted bills

Statements, commands

Misspellings, poor grammar.

and share the message

With passersby and newcomers.

Faced with these crooked haphazard signs

We thoughtful rebels are filled with respect

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I grew up in a big American city. I recently lived in one of the Ten Point Alpha World Cities, and I'm moving to one of the four Twelve Point ones in the near future. Ever in an urban environment, I've routinely seen of every conceivable type of behavior, all my life, from heroic to abysmal. People will make your heart sing with their unbounded kindness one moment, and they will break it with tragic indifference or mean-spiritedness the next.

Just prior to the demise of  The Naked Truth, Agatha Award winning author Jacqueline Winspear had lamented discourteous behavior there (amen, and it was cathartic to read). But she cited the transgressions as “[giving her] pause to consider – again – what sort of people we’re all becoming.”

Heavens, what is the world coming to?

I understand this thought, I really do. But it chaps my hide, and I think it's flawed; it fails to take the long view that humanity deserves. Humans have been both beautiful and awful (sometimes within the span of a single moment) for the full length of our history, and we are hardly the only animals so capable. Elder generations have been critical of and distraught over the wretched behavior of upcoming generations since the dawn of mankind. People of all kinds, everywhere and always, have experienced that jolt of dismay over a disrespectful act, been shocked at the depths of another’s cynicism and how that worldview causes him or her to behave, and seen heartbreaking apathy or cruelty.

The basic nature of our race is not changing. Not even a little bit. Yes, there have been enormous, drastic changes to our world since the Industrial Revolution that have rocketed civilization forward - novel types of changes, and at a shocking pace, I realize. We have experienced mindblowing cutting edge scientific advances. We have amazing new tools for looking at ourselves and measuring who we are and how our world is coming along. We have new technology so astounding that it looks even to most of us (contemporaries!) like mystifying magic. Texting, tweeting & playing with one's iPod are brand new ways to fail to hear & listen (and get creamed in a busy intersection). I know, things are very different. And yet? We are in our deepest nature simply the current issue of who we have always and forever been.

I am definitely not saying that there are no disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (school shootings, Jeffrey Dahmer). I am saying that there have always been disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (The Crusades, Caligula). There will be disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people until the Sun gets too hot for Earth to host human life.

We are not becoming an impolite race from having been a polite race.

From Harvard Thinks Big 2010 - Steven Pinker - 'Some Questions About Violence" from James Smith at Vimeo

As long as humans exist, we will have rules governing our behavior, and there will be times when we will break them. There will be people who have a chronic habit of breaking them, sometimes in a most colorful manner. As always, most of us will put some kind of a premium on good behavior and develop a set of measures for assessing it. We will hang our heads in despair when our intentions or actions fall outside of them. We will celebrate with happy hearts and renewed faith when the usual expectations are exceeded.

It's the same as it ever was. There will always be good guys, good chances, good days, redemption, sweetness, the capacity to move others beyond words and be so moved. There will always be the humdrum, the remarkable, the specular. There will always be grief, disappointment, loss. The vast majority of us love somehow, or understand some kind of love, and at some point grasp how short our time is here and begin making choices which reflect that.

We are animals; magic touchscreens & transcontinental travel changes how we do things and how fast, not who we are. What is the world coming to? Well eventually, indeed, an end. I can't know how long humanity will remain on this planet, but I'd put my money on at least 3 billion of the whole 3.2 billion years Earth has left to host us.

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As yet without a lusted-for camera, I am baking. No, I don't  think of baking and photography as directly interchangeble activities, but creative energy's gotta go somewhere, so there it is. I love cooking too, but the funnest activity for me lately is under the stovetop. I like the process of preparing stuff to bake, and it's a pretty cheap and easy hobby. And baked goodies always go over well; Cookies, pastry, etc., are easier to present to neighbors you don't really know all that well than a thing full of leftover stir fry, say. You never know what people like or what's gonna get wilty too quickly, etc.

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I'm not using Quora much yet, just watching (like most people do with @twitter).

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My mother, Mimi, just sent me the most roflmao blonde joke I've ever heard:

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Bored, looking at iPod skins. I just fell in love with the work of Joe Ledbetter:

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The Employment Verification thingy mentioned in the last post WAS RESCUED!!!! It is, as we speak, waiting for me up at the drugstore.  I am even more blissfully relieved as I was mad with frustration last night.

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