michaelboy

In the fold of your hands, I grew
dad doesn't wipe my headlights clean
mom doesn't say "I hate to see you go"
- as once both were true
but I'm terribly lucky and wouldn't trade
days that pass differently now, simply because they do
and for all this in the fold of your hands, I knew

At the end of those weekends when I'd come home from college, I'd pack my truck with clean laundry, extra food and a fresh $20 bill from my dad (well sometimes it was two bills). I hadn't really studied - like I had planned to do. (Forget it Maslow, my self-actualisation levels weren't quite high enough) I would say 'bye' to mom in the living room and dad would come down to the garage. In an small way, I didn't want to go and I think in the same odd way, he didn't want me to go. Anxiously, he'd ask me if I had changed my oil or if I needed anything. And as we headed out into the driveway, dad would bring his homemade windshield washer stuff in the Windex bottle and would tell me how it was "good stuff" and that newspaper was always better than using paper towels. This was a scene repeated many times - it was a way of staying physically connected until the last minute. I think, more importantly it was also his precious way of protecting me.

Postulate: Clean Windows = Safer Trip

He would always be sure to wipe my headlights as my truck rumbled to life - just to be sure I was extra safe.

I used to sit under the Forsythia bush -- the one by the back basement door of my parent's house. I imagined that some day we would timidly trade the yellow flowers and then wander down by the burning barrel where we would count each ant crawling on my mom's peonies and so then we could reckon it was our entire world. Overwhelmed with desire or perhaps need, I would have loved you so completely.

What sometimes seems irrational, often isn't at all and recognizing weakness can also be one of our greatest strengths.

When I ran along the creek, I remember the round rocks that bruised the bottom of my feet but still I loved it. It was more a lesson of feeling than of knowing and I would grow around the life that water brings as it would be part of me

Against the Sahara sand
and to its soft conform
the nape, curve and languish
of your smooth skin rests

I held you here - fast
in my heart and in my fancy
and hoped for desert stars
to be whispered as your eyes

Here rests a quiet desire
where beauty is not
by pencil or of powder
but is tendered in morning

This unending moment
more than all ever beauty
is when I helplessly dream
of touching your hair

* * *

Once, in this same mineral Sahara, I was taught that a dream might partake of the miraculous. Again I had been forced down, and until day dawned I was helpless. Hillocks of sand offered up their luminous slopes to the moon, and blocks of shadow rose to share the sands with the light. Over the deserted work-yard of darkness and moonray there reigned a peace as of work suspended and a silence like a trap, in which I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with outstretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.

But I did not fall. From nape to heel I discovered myself bound to earth. I felt a sort of appeasement in surrendering to it my weight. Gravitation had become as sovereign as love. The earth, I felt, was supporting my back, sustaining me, lifting me up, transporting me through the immense void of night. I was glued to our planet by a pressure like that with which one is glued to the side of a car on a curve. I leaned with joy against this admirable breast-work, this solidity, this security, feeling against my body this curving bridge of my ship.

~ From: Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I may never revisit those who were an essential part of my young me, but I will never forget and value the reverie of when:

you asked me to kiss you, braces and all - at the park because you knew I was too shy to ask,

or the place behind the school under the Ginko tree where we entangled ourselves - teenagers rolling around on the ground,

or that shared kiss on the cheek - behind the coat rack at the roller skating rink,

or when we drove out on the gravel back roads under the powerlines and made out in your parent's green Dodge,

or that night during the swim dance at the community pool where you held me up in the water as we kissed and spun around to the music,

or how I drove us around on the back roads in my dad's car for 127 miles but never stopping even though I wanted to, but didn't have the courage to do so,

or seeing you by chance on the next street over from my parent's house - kissing but never mentioning or talking about it ever again,

or when you sat next to me because you were worried for me at that party - stroking my hair because I was mostly passed-out from taking too many recreational drugs,

or when our friend drove us around while we made out in the back of her mom's old blue station wagon,

or when we laid on the thick red shag carpet of your 3rd floor apartment - together all night long and simply fell asleep looking at each other.

* * *

Sia, before most of you knew her:

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There are those that may have had a brief presence in our lives but stick in memory more than expected. I worked at North American Coal Company's Powhatan No. 6 mine many years ago, and there were several very memorable characters on my shift.

One fellow, forever staged workplace injuries to get out of work. I once watched him purposely and carefully back up with a wheelbarrow into a diagonal I-beam at the preparation plant and then fall carefully to the ground.

Two rockdusters I knew (Bud and Mike), made a regular practice of sleeping on the job. They used an old 5-ton rail-mounted GE trackmotor to pull the pod dusters around the mine. But rather than doing much dusting, they'd usually pull up into a set of entries, apply the brake and then set the drive control on first point (which is kind of like putting an idling car in drive with the brake applied). This would cause the motor to heat. They would then sleep a few hours of each shift on the top of the warm motor.

Charles Pelkey was a farmer that once drove a taxi and a raw milk truck but turned to coal mining as many farmers in the area at the time did. Everyone simply called him "Pelkey". He was a hard-working pleasant guy who had a great smile and an endearing sense of humor. I believe many of his co-workers admired his life attitude but as many coal miners might, they'd never dare to admit it. I remember that he always chewed Happy Jim chewing tobacco because "it wasn't as sweet as Mail Pouch, Red Man, or Levi Garrett".

Out of many, he was one of a few successful coworkers that I'll always remember from No. 6.

Rapid-fire social media, unlike a slower-paced journalling style, seems often now to consist more of shared/reposted/regurgitated memes than very much in the way of substantial and thoughtful writing. Even whether or not I agree with a point being proffered, it is almost always less impactful and believable to me when an idea isn’t carefully considered, sorted and then written in the poster's own words. Moreover, and beyond even advertising space, we are presented way too many unsolicited feeds of unwanted or irrelevant information with an equal measure of blatant misinformation. It's all beginning to feel very dirty. I get that ads are what gives a "free" service it's wings, but what happened to the days, when you would predominantly see what your friends might have actually posted? This evolution makes it way too easy for cherry-picked or inaccurate information to slip onto user's feeds which can be both anger-inducing and frustrating. While I'll still keep at least one of those forms of social media, I resolve to participate much less and only minimally observe, while companies like Meta create even newer ways of sowing the seeds of unwarranted discord. It just is starting to feel unproductive, ugly and like an enslavement to a social cesspool. Why do I feel this way? I am not really certain but there you have it.

One day I will know more on what it means to be kind. There are times when it seems that all of the weaker parts of me and that all of my selfishness will bleed instantaneously -- wholly and carelessly from the cradle of my jaw. The amazing thing is, that even beyond action, my feelings alone have often accomplished something as this.

We used to go to this community store with my parents on odd Saturdays. The thing that is the most substantial in my mind about the place was that they had a wooden floor. It was the sort of wood that was unvarnished in the kind of selling space that was always kept neatly broomed but never washed -- kind of smooth-oily-grimy. It gave a very different feeling than linoleum, vinyl or tile does.

There are probably about ten other places I can remember like that. So I guess it speaks a little to my age and a little more to a twisted mind. It makes me glad my feet were there.

I'm sure most people will find something similar -- it'll just be different.

We attended a presentation yesterday at the Underground Railroad Museum in nearby Flushing, OH.

Part of this involved an experiment with the audience attempting to fill-out a reproduction of a literacy test given in 1964 to potential Louisiana voters who could not prove at least a fifth grade education. If one question was missed, it was deemed a failure and consequently you were not permitted to vote.

Not one person in our entire group was able to pass within the allotted 10 minutes.

Obviously, the intent of this test wasn't to insure voter integrity and fairness but was really designed to be something much more treacherous.

I carved your name on a desk in a grade school classroom once with hopes that you would see it and under countless streetlights I scratched your initials on the curb with a yellow sandstone rock.

And you would write the same thing upside down but it still all meant the same because it was the shape of the letters that mattered more than the distance of miles on roads

George Herriman had a comic strip in the early 1900's called Krazy Kat

Krazy Kat (the heroine) was madly in love with Ignatz Mouse(the villian). Ignatz Mouse would simply throw bricks at Krazy Kat. In spite of that, Krazy Kat still loved Ignatz deeply. Offissa Pupp (the hero) would put Ignatz Mouse in jail for being so cruel - Offissa Pupp loved and wanted to protect Krazy Kat.

e.e. cummings wrote:

The sensical law of this world is might makes right; the nonsensical law of our heroine is love
conquers all. To put the oak in the acorn: Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp (each completely convinced that his own particular brand of might makes right) are simple-minded--Krazy isn't--therefore, to Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse, Krazy is. But if both our hero and our villain don't and can't understand our heroine, each of them can and each of them does misunderstand her differently. To our softhearted altruist, she is the adorably helpless incarnation of saintliness. To our hardhearted egoist, she is the puzzlingly indestructible embodiment of idiocy. The benevolent overdog sees her as an inspired weakling. The malevolent undermouse views her as a born target. Meanwhile Krazy Kat, through this double misunderstanding, fulfills her joyous destiny.

I've done at least a 30 minute yoga practice everyday (online with Yogatoday) since January 26. I'm determined to get back to where I was before retirement. Somehow I lost my way.

Of course it is in the basement, in front of my workbench, so it is rather basic and certainly not a very elegant view in savasana, but there you have it, floor joists and all....

While I do love living out here and certainly prefer this to be the "street" in front of our house,

it's sometimes good to get back to Pittsburgh. As far as cities go, I love the diversity in the people, places and neighborhoods.

This past weekend we spent the night with family in Greentree, watched a good movie on Saturday (The Curse of the Werewolf, 1961) and then on Sunday ate at the Zenith Restaurant in the Southside. I haven't been there in nearly 20 years -- Still dusty and kind of cluttered with a mess of old and curious artifacts inside, but the food was good and very vegetarian friendly (something hard to find in eastern Ohio).

Last week I attended a volunteer orientation at Trinty Hospital for an upcoming position in the ER of a soon-to-be-completed neighborhood hospital. This facility, to be completed in July, will have ten ER beds, two OR's and I believe 6 ICU treatment rooms. When I lived in Pittsburgh, I volunteered for ten years in a twenty-five bed ER and absolutely loved it. I miss it immensely.

My regular career was first as an underground coal miner, then mining engineer turned IT manager at a consulting firm. I liked my job well enough and it certainly helped me enough to comfortablly leave it when I did, but I never loved it. It just never seemed to sufficiently define me. I need more and hope to make at least a small difference.

One of my all-time favorite humans was Walt Whitman. He willingly spent much of his time tending to the sick and dying during the Civil War. He understood that what he selfishly gained was way more than he gave and wrote these substantial words about it:

"I find deep things, unreckoned by current print or speech—
It is perhaps the greatest interchange of magnetism human relations are capable of."

I would not approach you, unless you wished for me to approach. It would break my heart (and yours), if I did so without warrant. The days and hours pass in mixed colors of reverie - without stipulation as they may, tendered within my drum.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep at night, I'll stretch my fingers out widely and press firmly on my chest and ribs, just so I may better feel it.

*

Watch on YouTube

It's easy for many of us to feel we've had a rough life and many times, it is a fully justified sentiment.

So today, we met a new hospice patient - the sweetest and most gracious gal you'd ever want to meet. We began to delve into her history and it turns out she and her siblings were simply abandoned by the parents. She was five, had two 14 month old twin sisters, a seven year old brother and a fourteen year old sister still at home. Her father left first after divorce and moved to northern Ohio to work in a manufacturing plant. Her mother then hooked up with another guy, got pregnant and simply left the children on the farm to fend for themselves. She told us about finding garden remnants such as old potatoes to eat as well as a "wonderful" peach tree. They lived on the farm for five months until the state discovered them living alone. Subsequently, they were spilt up. She and her brother lived with their grandmother. The young twins were ultimately adopted by a much older sibling that had previously left home.

Now, she is faced with an end-of-life situation and still is kind, animated and appreciative. It is so amazing, even at my age, how much there is to learn about life.

when I recall the most
of you: tangled arms and
the texture of your skin
This pattern, of which
the warp and weave
has left a forever print
and scent of its fabric
deeply in my hand

Days rattle by like an old wind-up Big Ben
but when every alarm clock rang with a bell
we felt an immense sense of immortality
8 turned to 9 every year without sensing
as kids do, all great losses we might face
This gentle door closed softly now, quietly
with no complaint as love turns us around
and everything that silently takes us apart,
may also put us back together.

* With apologies to Jimi Hendrix

The local refuse service is unable to drive their trucks down to our location. I guess years ago they tried and tipped over their garbage truck. Consequently every week, I attach the garbage can to a specialty hitch on my Kubota RTV and haul it to the top of the hill. I actually enjoy this routine as our dog Buuff always likes to go with me.

Last night, we got to the top, turned off the lights and enjoyed the moonless starry sky. There is very little light pollution here so the view is incredible and often humbling.

I thought for a minute that there are many things that a whole host of world leaders, politicians, and demagogues try and do change throughout time, but not a single one of them has or will ever have the power to change this unique pattern since long before anyone.

So, take that, you bitches! :)

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michaelboy

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The Good Stuff

The Burning Barrel

Round Rocks

More than All Ever Beauty

Those particular you's - my under 21 life

I'm so old that I recognize the Jack-in-the-Box song played backwards

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My Crooked Jaw

Same Different

Would you pass?

That Mattered More

Love Sense

On the Basement Floor

Here and There

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If 8 was 9*

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