FOR PEREGRINE

The best collection of hilarious comics is over at This Isnt Happiness.
I've filtered them out for you, just follow the link below, and enjoy!
http://thisisnthappiness.com/tagged/comix

YOUR OWN ADVICE IS HARDEST TO TAKE

"To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "crystallization," so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different."

Czesław Miłosz

A few years ago there was a girl, Ellie, that wanted to show me what for. She flirted, I flirted back. As girls often do, she confided in me. Said she was seeing a married man. I talked with her, without revealing to her that I was seeing a married woman. That I had been for 3 years. I listened, and let her talk.  It was easy to empathize, though her case was different from mine.
Among other things, he had told her he was moving out from his wife, getting an apartment the next day. But it didn't happen. My girl had never told me anything like that. He had strung her along with those kind of stories for quite some time. And she was distraught over it.

A week or so later, at a party at my friend Angela's on a New Years Eve, I spied a ceramic bird on a shelf. I asked Angela where she had gotten the bird.

“Oh, Ellie gave me that!”
Ellie said “Do you like it? I got it Target”.

I said yes, I liked it very much, but didn’t say that I wanted to get one for my girl (she loves ceramic birds) because, well, my girl is a well kept secret.
For almost five years, a very well kept secret.

A month went by, and one day Ellie called. She wanted to come to my apartment. She had something for me. She was pretty insistent, and I gave her directions. She came in and gave me a package with the ceramic bird in it. Then proceeded to try to seduce me.
I’m not one to turn down  pussy, at least I never had been before. But I explained to her that my heart belonged to another, and I wasn’t at liberty to say who, because my situation was so similar to hers.

She seemed to understand.

And here is the thing.

About two weeks or two days later she met someone, and they had an instant connection, and she forgot all about her married guy, forgot all about me, and within a  few months she was married to the new one, and they make the coolest couple. Just meant for each other.

Before I posted this I went through some old Facebook messages I had traded with her two years ago. I sent her this, a few hours after I had refused her advances. Man, it so relevant to what I've been doing for five years now.
But your own advice is the hardest to take. 

“There's something better for you out there, something cleaner, more crystalline, and pure. Some people like to say not to settle, but sometimes we settle. Sometimes a little love on whatever terms is what we need. But there is a time to move too. A time not to settle anymore.”

Addendum: I know why I cant take my own advice.
I still believe, baby. I'm still a believer.

Addendum #2; It took another two months from the posting, but I took my own advice.

THE TOOLS

You think your heart’s your own,
to lay down like a red chip, 
to share or not share. 
But it isn’t your own, 
it will never be your own. 
It belongs to whoever can win it, 
to whoever can keep it. 
It belongs to whoever has the tools 
to break inside your chest and 
take the red right out of you. 

Peregrine @   Your Eyes Blaze Out

THE WHO?

"But in the end you become a hostage to who you are, to what you want, what fascinates you, what breaks you down, what holds you under; the sense you feel compelled to build, the truth you try so helplessly to construct, the who you ultimately and helplessly are."
 - Brad Zellar

SMUGGLING BUBBLE GUM

I cooked some ribs on my smoker this weekend. Two women walking dogs came by. Both with big breasts, nipples poking through the terry cloth tops. Like they were smuggling bubble gum. They talked with me for a long time, and I gave them some ribs, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't stop looking at those tits.
Do you think they noticed I was gawking?
They are probably used to it.
What do you think was the cause of this effect?
Me?
Or the BBQ?
I don't know. 

I'd post this to FB but I'm afraid they might be trolling me by now.
Shoot, they're probably lesbians anyway.
So whats the difference?

BREAKFAST AT THE BUTTERMILK WITH MARK COLLINS ON THE DAY OF HIS BENEFIT

Mark asked me that morning if he had to actually, you know, GO to his Benefit. 

'I dont want all that attention" he said. "Its embarrassing" "

Well, Mark, I think people are expecting you to be there. So, yes, I think as a general rule ones attendance is required at your own Benefit, especially since there have been a few benefits lately that it was impossible for the honoree to be there, if you know what I mean". 

Mark hung his head, played with his eggs. 

"I was afraid you'd say that" he said. "I've asked about 6 people, and they all tell me the same thing". I laughed. "Is there anyone left to ask?" 

"No, I guess not." 

"Well, I'll be seeing you about 3 O'clock then" .

I started to tell all about Mark, how he had started taking pics with his phone camera a few years back, then he bought a stick to steady the camera, and started taking videos of music shows, until one day some pro photographer (they say it was Larry Dillon) said "Hey man, I got a bunch of old gear you might come dig through, and see if we cant get you set up proper", and Mark and Larry got him set up proper, and Mark would go to all the music shows he could, taking pictures of the acts, and more pictures of the folks enjoying the show, (he used to want to film me dancin', but I always told him "If you want to SEE the show, you are going to have to COME to the show"), and as I was to find out the last time I saw Mark, the photographers like to take pics of each other taking pics, like this one of his friend Robert he took at Reds just last Saturday.

Everybody knows while Mark was in the hospital  someone came and ripped off all his gear, and a benefit was held by Mark's friends. an undetermined amount of money was raised, enough to replace all his stuff, and I have to think the total was quite substantial.

But I didnt want to turn this into a long post. Mark went from being a hobbyist to a professional photographer in about two years, and along the way everybody loved him, He was as much a part of the scene as the musicians themselves.  He was famous, though he didnt want to be, and his great humility always shone through, and now that I've put it down I guess I really regret not letting Mark film me dancin', just one time.

Marks camera, taken by Robert Keith, 4/23/2016 at Reds. Mark passed 4/27/2016. 

This has got to be the loneliest camera in the world right now.

EATING PEACHES

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."
- Wendell Berry

FRIENDSHIP

"In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves. Through the eyes of a real friendship an individual is larger than their everyday actions, and through the eyes of another we receive a greater sense of a self we can aspire to, the one in whom they have most faith. Friendship is a moving frontier of understanding, not only of self and other but of a possible and as yet unlived future."

"..., the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."
David Whyte

More, click here.

LITTLE BIRD

These are not hollow words.
Just sit there, and let me land on your finger.
I’ll try to be lighter.
Just remember these are not hollow words
     when I say how much I love you.

bulletholes, 2016

THE CLOWN IN THE BELFRY

The trading of joy comes naturally because it is of the nature of joy to proclaim and share itself. Joy cannot contain itself, as we say. It overflows.

And so it should properly be with pain as well. We are never more alive to life than when it hurts—never more aware both of our own powerlessness to save ourselves and of at least the possibility of a power beyond ourselves to save us and heal us if we can only open ourselves to it. We are never more aware of our need for each other, never more in reach of each other if we can only bring ourselves to reach out and let ourselves be reached….
We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us.
Being a good steward of your pain involves all those things, I think. It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.
-The Clown in the Belfry

Frederick Buechner gatehered at Alive On All Channels

THE DOOR

So I had this dream last night. 

She had moved into the same apartments as me. 

Lived just a couple doors down. 

I went outside to smoke a cigarette, which is weird because I don't smoke. I look, and she is by her car, kissing some guy. She looked up, see's me, and I yell “NO!” and turned and started to run to my apartment. She’s running behind me, yelling “Stop!” and every time she yells "Stop!" I yell “NO!” and now my apartment is like 100 miles away, all the while she's somewhere behind me yelling "Stop!" and I'm running fast as I can yelling "NO!". 

Finally, I see my apartment. 

The door is wide open, just like I left it. 

I go running in, and stop to close the door. 

But I don’t. 

I stop, catch myself, and leave the door open.
Bittersweet. Surrender.
End of dream.

"...the heart breaks, and breaks, and lives by breaking..."
Stanley Kunitz, "The Testing Tree"

MY SISTER LISA'S FRIEND SUZI SAYS:

"I always enjoy the parts about Lisa in Junior High because that is what I remember best. But, yeah, I remember that your bedroom was dark and scary with lots of strange posters depicting music groups like Black Sabbath. Lisa & I scooted on past your door very quickly when heading to her room."

And I responded:
Suzi, you stopped by my room one day...I had The Who "Quadraphenia " going....Daltry sings...

"Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.

Love, Reign o'er me
Love, Reign o'er me, rain on me

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love Reign O'er me

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain "


Suzi, Daltry was singing his heart out, singing from his toes that day.
And the voilins wept and Moon carressed his drums and Suzi, you got this glazed look in your eyes
And Suzi, you sat down crosslegged on the floor and sagged against the wall and mouthed the words to me "That song is beautiful Steve" and it was very intense.
And Suzi I got to tell you I just nearly kissed you that day, but you were even scarier to me than my room was to you.
And you never came back again.
No, you never came back again.

THE LATEST ADDITION TO THE BULLETHOLES CULINARY REPETOIRE

I've never had a really nice grill and smoker before. Always just the little 50 dollar rigs that dad's use to cook burgers twice a year. But I went ahead and got a pro model. its bigger than it looks. When I got it to my apartment I discovered that it would not fit through the sliding glass door to go safely and secure on my back porch.
So I bought a chain, and a motion detector, and dared anyone to try to steal it from under the stairwell.
Well, as things go it didnt take long for it to attract the attention of Apartment Management. They said it broke city code by "impeding egress".
Bullshit.
The Grill Nazi's at my apartments have made me move my grill from sitting harmlessly beneath the stair to my back porch. I didn't even whimper, I just complied by pulling out the tools, removing the sliding glass door (it would not fit through otherwise) and put the grill on the back porch.
I hold no resentment towards the Grill Nazi's, and wont burn the complex down in retaliation. Not on purpose anyway.

When chicken thighs and country style pork ribs are on sale for 88 cents a pound, this is what $12 worth looks like.

LOOK IT IN THE EYE

"You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

Patton Oswalt via Alive On All Channels

SPRING IS COMING ALL BY ITSELF

Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake
in the valley of midnight or three a.m.
to the first fragrances of spring
which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.

My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.
My body says, will this pounding ever stop?

My heart says: there, there, be a good student.
My body says: let me up and out I want to fondle those soft white flowers, open in the night.

An Old Story by Mary Oliver, from "A Thousand Mornings"

THEY GOT THAT WRONG

"Women think that the men will eventually change, and men think the women never will".
A good friend of mine

WAY IT GOES

TRUE GRIT

DAVE PREPARES TO RUN A 50K THIS WEEKEND, DESPITE THE CANCER AND A LESS THAN HOPEFUL RADIOLOGY REPORT

"Dammit! I was sleeping so good. I guess I need to start driving to Kansas, though. Gonna try to walk fifty miles tomorrow if I get myself all the way there, which is a decision I'm still making. Shouldn't the adrenaline be kicking by now? Hello! Adrenaline! Oh, God. Cristina Renfro was so soft and sweet and the bed was so warm. Stop it! This is nonsense! It's not that bad a drive and you know the route be heart. Stop at Rush Running on the way there--that'll cheer you up! You said you wanted to visit the Mothership, the new store in Bentonville, so do it! Nope. As soon as the guys pressure-washing the breezeway finish, I'm hitting the road and I ain't stopping till I get to the same gravel road where I stopped to pee last time. Hey, I think my afternoon pain pill is starting to kick! Fucking oxycodone is magic! You know what? Turn your alarm off, Babes. I'll sign Donald out of school a few minutes early and get him some French fries on the way home. I want to kiss my baby. Hell, were it not for an accidental conversation with Zach Adams this morning, I wouldn't even know there was going to be a speaker at Celebration Hall tonight. I'd love to hear his presentation, but I'll meet the dude at the finish line instead. I want to pick my son up from school. That's my job. Balance, baby! Balance!

You should read my radiology report, which contains the word innumerable. I'm as proud of that word as I was of the speeding ticket I got in 1988 when I apparently passed a sheriff's deputy in my Datsun 510 autocross car at the Doty fire hall on Nemo Road and she didn't become visible in my mirror until I was already in Rapid City. She wrote "very excessive, dangerous speed in corners" on the ticket but was super cool about it. She didn't seem pissed at all; she knew she was outgunned! But that's lateral information. The point is that I'm gonna finish this fucking race regardless of what it says in my radiology report. I dropped last year because I didn't know what I was doing. Not this year. I can shit my bowels out and I will not drop. As long as my heart is delivering oxygenated blood to my brain, I'm going to keep walking, and that is a fact. Just want you all to know."

THE HOPE THAT MEMORY WILL FULFILL ITSELF

And when He did die it was sad -- such a young man, so full of promise, and His mother wept and His friends could not believe the loss, and the story spread everywhere and the mourning would not be comforted, until He was so sharply lacked and so powerfully remembered that his friends felt Him beside them as they walked along the road, and saw someone cooking fish on the shore and knew it to be Him, and sat down to supper with Him, all wounded as He was.

There is so little to remember of anyone -- an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long,"
- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping.


`gathered at Alive On All Channels

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

"I have to get up at five o'clock in the morning and SPARKLE, Neely, SPARKLE!"

RIP Patty Duke

“The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men."

Honore de Balzac

WILSON FLOATS AWAY

There are two kinds of people in this world my friend. 
Those who cried when Wilson floated away, and those who laughed.
Haha.

BROOKS ON TRUMP

“Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. … They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance... Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.”

Psalm 73

From an article by David Brooks.

In the article Brooks suggests that most of the Trump supporters are disenfranchised folks who have lost jobs and had their dreams shattered. Most of the Trump supporters I know do not fit this category. They are doing pretty fine as far as I can tell. They are certainly doing better than me, not that I have anything to complain about..

SPILLED MILK

I had an amazing dream. I was at the grocery store. They had a bargain. You could fill your cart for $ 100 with whatever you wanted.
I filled my cart, and got to the register.

They girl ringing me up slid a head of lettuce over the reader and called out “Canned Goods”.

The next items was Irish spring soap. “Baking Products” she called out.

I thought this was odd.

She grabbed a can of coffee. “Frozen Desserts” she says, and rings it up.

“Wait a minute” I said “That is not Frozen Desserts,  that is coffee.”

“Its just how we do it” she said.

“Its stupid, it makes no sense” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders, and went back to ringing stuff up. None of it made sense.

I found myself getting frustrated.  Aggravated even.
 And it was when she got to the gallon of milk, and called it “Household Goods” that I exploded.

“This is not Household Goods” I screamed, and I picked up the gallon of milk and spiked it like a football, the carton breaking and milk splashing everywhere.
“Oh no” I thought “I’ve really done it now” and I looked up to see that a manager had appeared next to the cashier. He looked at me with no real expression on his face, and said:

 “This episode belongs to you”.

I felt so ashamed.

I said “ I know. I’m so sorry. You guys can ring this stuff up however you want. Its costs me the same either way. Can you bring me a mop, please?”

Just For Today I won’t spill any milk.

AVOIDING DEATH

… when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed. They hung together for years, whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen. With your death they do not die. Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on.
David Eagleman: Sum.


I have been going to see a counselor for two sessions now. I guess she is like a Life Coach, as I understand it.
Last week she gave me a writing assignment. I turned it in. She said "Keep writing" and I'm like, "Oh I do, I write pretty much every day". So after that second session, I got home and realized she had not given me an assignment for the next week. I texted her, and asked what my assignment would be.
"Keep writing" she said.
"Do you have a topic?" I asked.
As I waited for her reply, I thought about maybe I might write about death. I've had a lot of death in my life. She probably needs to know about all that. There is more death still, and some more close than I want it to be. But death comes, and to us all. I cried to think I might write about death, but then her text came back.
"Research, and write a summary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".
I was relieved.
So here it is:

I can remember as a kid watching the movies Spartacus and  King of Kings.

It seems that there has always been two kinds of people; those with whips beating other people into some kind of submission, and those being beat into submission. Its been that way since the beginning of time, I guess. I sometimes wonder how long Man had been around before he figured out that he could dominate other folks in such a way as to take away their basic human rights.

If men have been around for 10,000 years, it sure took  a long time for them to finally come up with a document like Basic Human Rights, which was written and adopted in 1948. Due largely in response to the Holocaust, the world finally attempts to get its shit together as a whole. Two other documents that established a basis for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are The Magna Carta and the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence(just a guess).

The Preamble states its reason for existence: that most of the problems in the world start when  one group of humans seek  to control and take advantage of another, resulting in a loss of dignity, freedom and equality. The effect is always a decline in their standard of living leading to violence, suffering and great loss of life.
The preamble states its purpose; to establish a more verdant, just, and compassionate society within and between the nations, insuring peace and dignity for all the people.

The Articles establish certain principles; freedom, dignity, equality, and brotherhood. That these principles are extended to all humans regardless of religion, race, social class, personal or political opinions. It seeks to eliminate discrimination for simply being who you are.

In short, and in the words of the NA program, it seeks to establish a world of  “Principles Before Personalities”.

It abolishes anything that would interfere with the ends of these principles, such as slavery, torture, arbitrarily applied laws, denial of protection under the law, and restriction of the freedom to go anywhere of your own choosing under the law, and to have a safe place to live. It also assigns specifically certain social security’s such as the right to work with minimum standards towards hours and pay, the right to health care, the right of a free elementary education. In exchange for all this we have a responsibility to protect the rights and freedoms of other people.

When I feel myself  losing faith in the world, I turn to Spartacus, and King of Kings. I enjoy Peter Ustinov’s role as a slave buyer who eventually does the right thing, and his relationship with Charles Laughton, the kindly senator. I think I probably developed my attitude towards women from Spartacus’ pure and worshipful relationship with Virinia. Of course, everyone is moved by all of Spartacus friends when they stand up and claim to be Spartacus, even being crucified in his place, lining the Appian Way to Rome with their bodies.

In King of Kings, it is not turning water to wine, or walking on water, or even the resurrection of Christ that touches my soul. It’s when Jesus comes to John the Baptist in prison as a true friend would, and later sends a message that there has been none greater than John the Baptist, but that even the poorest is at least equal to John . Also the  part where Jesus is moving through the crowd and suddenly turns asking “Who touched my robe?” and a woman says “I did, in order that I might be healed.” And Jesus is moved by that.

It’s the Golden Rule, and the world isn’t such a bad place when you give it, and yourself, a chance.  

I CARRY YOUR HEART

"Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It's what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours."
- Robert Fulghum

"here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"
ee cummings

THE PSYCHIATRIST

I called him because I felt like I needed to talk to someone about my sister after she died.
He said “I’m not taking patients right now.”
I said “You mean new patients? I came to you two years ago. I wouldn't be a new patient”
And he said “No, I’m not taking ANY PATIENTS AT ALL”.
He didn't sound too good. I think he was having a breakdown.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

"Unfortunately, Rubio recognized reality and found his voice 254 days after Trump’s scabrous announcement of his candidacy to rescue America from Mexican rapists. And 222 days after Trump disparaged John McCain’s war service (“I like people that weren’t captured”). And 95 days after Trump said that maybe a protestor at his rally “should have been roughed up.” And 95 days after Trump re-tweeted that 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by blacks. (Eighty-two percent are killed by whites.) And 94 days after Trump said he supports torture “even if it doesn’t work.” And 79 days after Trump said he might have approved the internment of Japanese-Americans during World II. And 72 days after Trump proved that he does not know the nuclear triad from the “Nutcracker” ballet. And 70 days after Trump, having been praised by Vladimir Putin, reciprocated by praising the Russian murderer and dictator. And so on."
George Will

More here..."The Albatross"

YELLOW PAPARAZZI DREAMS

Mom was helping me run a bunch of errands. We went all over town. Then we stopped by the hospital to see dad. He had the Alzheimers, and they had him in a new room.
‘It’s the Reading and Writing room” mom told me. “They have found a way to teach the Alzheimer people how to read and write again”.

This was my first clue that I must be dreaming. Dad's been gone a long time 

Then we went shopping. I bought some shirts, and two pairs of pants. We went  to the grocery store.
We got home, and mom helped me put up groceries and  clean our apartment.
Then it was time to go to work. Mom was going to drive me so that she could use the car while I was at work. It was then I started to sense this was all just a dream. Mom has been gone a long time too. 
This is how my dreams of mom and dad often go. First I realize dad's not really there, then further in, I remember mom isn't either.

I wanted to ask her how it was she could help me so much when she wasn’t even really there. She died 30 years ago. But  you hate to ask a question like that in a dream, for  fear of scaring the dream away.  I didn't want to scare this dream away. I wanted to stretch it out as long as I could. So instead, as we stood there outside my car, I said
“Mom, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure Stevie”
She had on a  lavender top, with a white tennis skirt and these great, shiny patent leather yellow Go-Go boots.
She looked so great, so I said “Let me take your picture first” and she struck a pose next to my car.
I pulled out my phone, clicked on the camera, and raised it to my eye.
And  there she was... gone.

I have a lot of dreams of mom and dad. I've learned two things.

Don't ask any direct questions, and never, ever, try to take a picture.

A KITCHEN WITH A VIEW

I dreamed an old chef I worked with and I were going to cook at a restaurant he had built. His name is Paul, and I just found him on Facebook a few months back. We had only worked together for a few months back in 1977. He was a really cool guy, a few years older than I, and a Vietnam vet. That summer of 1977, I would go over to his place to play chess, and smoke pot. More than that, it was his ping pong table that Chavonne (my blind girlfriend) and I would go play on before she died. I always looked up to Paul, and wondered where he was all these years.

This restaurant was at the top of a mountain. Paul scrambled right up, but me, I’m scared of heights, and not in good enough shape to climb a mountain. Paul kept calling me to come on. He would stop and look back and I would look at how steep and high the mountain was. I kept telling him I couldn’t make it. Then I woke up.

I woke up, but just for a second. I closed my eyes and quickly fell back asleep. The dream restarted and found I’d made it up the mountain. We were standing in the kitchen. The kitchen was full of windows. You could see the valley's below, and a tiny city of lights, and all the other mountains all around, golden, purple and green. 

Paul said “See, you made it!” 

I said “There is only one way for me to make it up here, and that’s to dream it. I must be dreaming.” 

Then we made blackberry cobblers. 

I told Paul about this dream and he said for all that trouble we should have made more than just cobblers.

But like I told Paul, I think the dream was more about the view, and the fact that he lives up in Tahoe, and one day soon I'll be going to see him.

PATCH ADAMS

"All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be. Home. The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place."
Patch Adams

LITTLE BLACK SAMBO

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE CONCERNING BLACK HISTORY MONTH

When I was four years old this was one of my favorite books. It was a controversial book, though at the age of four I didn’t know it.
As I read it, I could look out across my backyard and across the field beyond, and see where they were building Loop 820 in 1961. Loop 820 now circles Fort Worth Texas. 

And just on the other side of Loop 820, I could see they were building a High School, Richland High School, where I would have attended had I not moved to Detroit in 1963.
Richland High School, where at the height of the Civil Rights movement, and the country still trying to understand Brown vs Board of Education, would choose a Confederate Rebel as its mascot, and the Confederate Battle Flag as its colors.
Was that a political statement, or just some coincidence, an ill-timed expression of southern heritage and pride? Or was it meant as a "STAY OUT" sign for blacks in white suburbia in 1961?

That’s the great thing about history though. It not only repeats itself, it tends to correct its wrongs as well, and in 1993 the students of Richland High School spearheaded a movement to remove the flag as an emblem of the school.
Some students said they felt uncomfortable waving the flags at football games, pep rallies and other sporting events, especially when they were the visiting team. Members of the pep squad approached the principal to make a change.
A school-wide vote was held, and the flag was removed from representing Richland High School.
Its a very interesting issue, one that continues to divide the country.

My own feeling is that I would like to give those pep squad members that went to the principal a big hug.
UPDATE 6/21/2020- Richland High today voted to eliminate the cartoonish Confederate Rebel as its mascot. the new school mascot will be voted on with the students at the start of the school year.

By the way, my copy of Little Black Samco goes for 200 bucks on Ebay.

A BELATED VALENTINE POST

I’d been divorced about a year when I ran into an old girlfriend. We went to a movie and later she asks me:

“So what’s the story with you? You’re divorced, and you spend all your money on child support, and you’ve got all this baggage, and you’ve forgotten how to be single?”

That’s a hell of a question you know?

So I said “Well, I don’t think I have any baggage”

Man, what was I talking about. Just all the dope I was doing was baggage enough. Lets say you meet a nice girl. When are you going to tell her about your little habit? That it takes a hundred bucks a week just to get you going. That she is going to be wondering where all the money is disappearing to. And all this weird unexplained insanity that is your life, where is all that coming from?

Sometimes I go to the grocery store. I see a happy couple, and they are pushing the cart together down the aisle. They are discussing whether to have the Rock Cornish Hens, or salmon for dinner. They are comparing the seven blade roast to the the pork loin, and trying to decide what is the best value. They are amazed at the price of yellow squash—“Can it really be 2.99 a pound?”—but they are laughing, smiling, happy and exchanging romantic looks as they skip on over to the family planning aisle.
It all looks so normal, so sane.

I look on, and watch them from a distance, and I’m horrified.

Could I ever get that normal? Would I want to? It’s some scary shit, man. I might could do that for a week, or a couple times a year. Could I keep that up forever?
I have my doubts.

I mean, I come home in the afternoon, I walk in the door and the first thing I do is take off my pants. I don’t plan to stop either. It’s the best part of my day, and I just don’t know if there is anyone out there that would put up with that. Even if there is, she’s probably going to want something in exchange. God only knows what. It will probably be sane, whatever it is.

And I been thinking lately about what it has looked like to be restored to sanity.

It has looked like, as the program says, not doing that first drug.

It has looked like pleasing the court seven years ago, and staying clean that first year.

It has looked like first getting my driver’s license back, and then being able to buy a truck with the money that used to go up the nose, and a REAL inspection sticker and insurance and registration.

Sanity looks like when I got my first ticket in that truck, going and paying it before it went into warrant. My whole life I’m not sure if I ever done that before.

Sanity has looked like not stealing any gas. Its looked like still being involved with NA, and becoming the treasurer for the group, and picking up a couple of sponsee’s.
Sanity looks like clean socks, empty sinks, regular meals, sleeping nights.

Sanity has looked like improved family relationships, and a couple of kids that have a dad again.

A few years back I got  upset over a girl for a while. I started going to more meetings, and that really didn’t help much , so I decided to seek professional help and went to a psychiatrist. I didn’t want to do like I did after my divorce, and spend a few years trying to figure out how to get over it.

He asked me ‘What is it you want Bulletholes?”

I said  “Doc, I just want what everyone else wants”

He said “And what is that?”

I said “You know doc, a love that lasts forever.”

I remember that one of us laughed, and one of us didn’t, and just now I cant tell you which one of us did what.

I kinda think it was him that laughed. I already told you what the odds of me keeping up a relationship forever would be.

I think back to a post I did a year after getting clean. I said all this spiritual stuff in the program was starting to scare the shit out of me. All this being restored to sanity, and coming to believe that a higher power could restore me to sanity,  and the Third Step; making decisions to include yourself and God in your own life while getting out of your own damn way. I’d have liked to disprove God, to disprove prayer when I came to the program, and the reason it was all starting to scare me was because if it was working so well in my life, practicing open mindedness, and willingness to believe in a power greater than myself, and developing a God of my own understanding, then it could only mean one thing.

That I had been wrong about everything.

That’s scary, being wrong about everything.

So, when I see these nice soft couples at the grocery store, maybe I got that all wrong too. 

The scariest part of all is that maybe someday it wont be so scary anymore.
Maybe someday I will be OK.
Maybe someday I will be OK.
Maybe someday I will be OK.

***Now that I've written this one down instead of just sharing it in an NA meeting, its not as funny as its supposed to sound. Sometimes I guess it just be's that way!

MY AWARD WINNING CHILI

AT THE BIG CHILI COOK OFF LAST WEEK

She asked me if I had put jalapeno’s in my chili.

“Is it too hot?” I asked.

“Its pretty hot” she said, and paused. “It seemed hot at first, but it’s not that hot now. Did you put jalapeno’s in it?”

“No ma’am, no jalapeno’s. But I did put white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, green chili’s, crushed red chili’s, and soaked some dried ancho chile’s in some water and made a  nice ancho paste, but no, there are no jalapeno’s.”

Pro-Cooking Tip of the Day
The more types of peppers you put in a dish, the deeper and more layered the flavors will be. Not so much of any one pepper to make it hot with that pepper. It’s the cumulative effect you want.

If you don’t have any white pepper in your cabinet, go get some. Use it and the black peper together on anyvegetable. The black pepper is dark and woody…the white pepper is bright and shiny. You’ll appreciate the flavor right away.

On her second bowl, she said “It’s not really hot at all!”

WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN

if you pass your night
and merge it with dawn
for the sake of heart,
what do you think will happen

if the entire world
is covered with the blossoms
you have labored to plant,
what do you think will happen

if the elixir of life
that has been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns,
what do you think will happen

if because of
your generosity and love
a few humans find their lives,
what do you think will happen

if you pour an entire jar
filled with joyous wine
on the head of those already drunk,
what do you think will happen

go my friend
bestow your love
even on your enemies
if you touch their hearts,
what do you think will happen

.~Rumi

CROSSING TO SAFETY

"You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine."
- Wallace Stegner
Crossing to Safety

A WORD FOR PITY

I am the man who spits wet clay back
into the face of God and yells, “I am weary!”
And I don’t yell it in Greek or Aramaic,
but in the dead language of Adam’s bones
from those days when he was alone, before
God made a word for pity and gave him Eve.
There wasn’t even any way to measure time
before her.
The moon meant nothing to him,
The sun meant nothing. All his senses knew
the missing shape of her. I know it… I know
how he named the taste of her, how he felt
the skin and lips and sway of her body. I know
how he could hear her voice in his mind, how
the missing smell of her was so powerful.
I know… I know he saw her in everything,
in everything… I know it because of you.
I know it and I am, God, the fuck weary.

Peregrine @ Your Eyes Blaze Out

HAVING EDUCATED MY IGNORANT WHITE ASS

 ON SOME BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Two years before the Kent State shootings was the Orangeburg Massacre, February 8, 1968.
28 were injured and 3 killed when state police on the South Carolina State University campus fired into a crowd of protesters.
For three days the protests had escalated over a segregated bowling alley, the All Star Triangle Bowl. Anyone tries to keep me out of a bowling alley is in for a fight.
Nine troopers were acquitted and Cleveland Sellers, a black activist with the SNCC, was convicted for inciting a riot. He served 7 months before being released on good behavior, and was pardoned 25 years later.
South Carolina State University's gymnasium is named in memory of the three men who were killed. A monument was erected on campus in their honor and the site has been marked. All-Star Triangle Bowl became integrated. Cleveland Sellers wrote a book.

The Nivens Laws might never have been abstracted were it not for Kent State, the first of which is:
1) Never throw shit at an armed man.
1a) Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

My insurance changed again this year. My premium went down, but my out of pocket went up. I expected it to go up a little, and all things being equal, if I stayed out of a hospital setting my overall savings from the reduced premium would come to about 750 bucks for the year.
So I determined this would be the year I get a hearing aid. Because I cant hear shit.
But I ran in to a snag. One of my diabetes medications, the one that cost 30 dollars a month the last 6 years, ended up on a different tier with the new insurance.
And the price on this new tier?
Three Hundred bucks a month! The lady at the mail order pharmacy, she tried to console me.
“After you reach your Out of Pocket Max, that medication is covered 100%!”
But I didn’t plan on even hitting HALF my out of pocket for the entire year. Now it looks like I might hit in 8 months.
There went my 700 savings. There went my hearing aid. My medical expenses just doubled.
So I called personnel to confirm all this and see if there was a way out.
It was all true.
But when I told the personnel lady that my hearing aid I planned to get was off the table now, you know what she said?
“Mr. Bulletholes, Hearing Aids are covered this year. It pays up to the first two thousand dollars”
They havent been covered in the past.
So by financing 2000 dollars on a hearing aid, I met my Out of Pocket max, and basically financed the deductible. Hitting my Out of Pocket max means that the medicine that went up so much is now paid for 100% by insurance.
The bottom line seems to be that because the Hearing Aid was covered, my savings for the year increased to $2000 from 700 over the previous year, had I purchased the hearing aid without insurance.
My net gain was 1300.
I’m trying to figure out what procedure to get next year.
A hysterectomy perhaps?

EDUCATE YOUR IGNORANT ASS ON SOME BLACK HISTORY MONTH

On this day in 1794, France abolished slavery, only to have Napoleon re-institute it four years later.
In March that year, the United States would pass the Slave Trade Act, limiting transport of slaves to American ports. This set the stage for further restrictions which eventually outlawed the importation of slaves to the United States until finally the Thirteenth Amendment  made owning slaves in the United States illegal.

One of my favorite movies is Amistad, about a slave ship revolt in 1839. While owning slaves in the United States was legal in 1839, the transport of slaves was not.  John Quincy Adams, played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, tries the case to the Supreme Court against the ship owners and has some of the best lines of the movie.

"Well, when I was an attorney, a long time ago, young man, I err... I realized, after much trial and error, that in the courtroom, whoever tells the best story wins. In un-lawyerlike fashion, I give you that scrap of wisdom free of charge."

[to the Court, with a copy of the Declaration of Independence in hand]
This man is black. We can all see that. But can we also see as easily that which is equally true: that he is the only true hero in this room? Now, if he were white, he wouldn't be standing before this court fighting for his life. If he were white and his enslavers were British, he wouldn't be standing, so heavy the weight of the medals and honors we would bestow upon him. Songs would be written about him. The great authors of our times would fill books about him. His story would be told and retold, in our classrooms. Our children, because we would make sure of it, would know his name as well as they know Patrick Henry's. Yet, if the South is right, what are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document, The Declaration of Independence? What of its conceits? "All men created equal," "inalienable rights," "life, liberty," and so on and so forth? What on Earth are we to do with this? I have a modest suggestion."
[tears papers in half]

Great cast, great script and direction, I give it 6 stars out of 5, and find it so enjoyable I watch it on a regular basis.

THE POTTERS WHEEL

Last summer I got to go visit my good longtime  blog friends Souby and Red Dirt Girl down in Houston. Its rare to meet in person your blog friends.
Souby is a Master Potter. He gave myself and my sister-n-law Becky a pottery lesson.
He explained to us the particular properties of clay. He showed us the machine for mixing the clay. There is a worm gear inside a steel chamber that mixes and then pushes the clay out as a 3” diameter plug. From this plug you cut a piece, and work it in your hands which delights the clay and aligns the molecules in a certain way as to be in harmony with the Universe.

Then, you slap it onto the wheel. You slap it onto the wheel, and follow your dream. Its not that easy slapping in onto the wheel, because it has to be CENTERED on the wheel. Otherwise it gets the wobblies. And if it gets the wobblies, your little pot is going nowhere. It doesn’t matter how well you’ve aligned your clay with the Universe, if its not entered on the wheel, you are buggered.

I really sucked at getting mine centered on the wheel. I think I would have done better if I had paid more attention and followed instructions.
Lets just say it’s a lot trickier than it looks.
After that you get to form the clay up and down, and back up again, as it spins on the wheel. There are certain places to put you thumbs and fingers, and certain ways to palm the clay as it spins to raise it up, hollow it out, and keep it smooth.
I sure did have fun doing it, and learned a lot.Someone took a picture of me, my hands cupping the clay. I was hunkered over the wheel in total concentration, my face inches from the pot I was forming. All you could see was my purple shirt, hands, clay, and the top of my head.
The top of my head?
If it hadnt been for the purple shirt I would have wondered who the bald guy was.

Thanks to David @ Live and Learn for helping me find the comment on his site for the closing lines of this post.