Jimperialism Race me, joyless Check

A Subjective Report On The Trials And Tribulations Of A Winter Bicycle Commute in These Twin Cities Of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Note A: Nokian A10s perform admirably on anything which is reasonably plane-like and also not slush.

Note B: Tiny historical glasses become choked with snow almost improbably quickly.

Note C: Strange that, of all the places I've been lost in at night on a bicycle, Victoria north of University is the only place I've been called a "Cracker" in earnest. It was a few kids hanging out in the park at night, playing at boundaries and self-assertion, picking a target who's obviously on his way somewhere and wouldn't care to stop and confront it, but it's remarkable that a word coming from someone half my age who doesn't know anything about me but the way I look can still hurt a little. Also remarkable is the fact that I was born into a situation where a slur directed at myself is trivially rare, rather than a part of daily life and routine. Where it's something I puzzle over for a few miles instead of, say, grappling face-to-face with it in a rough neighborhood bar or in an alley after a show or at any type of establishment trying to barter for goods or services. It is disgusting that a huge portion of the people of this nation have to grow up in a world where superficial derision is commonplace, rather than extraordinary and baffling. Now seems like a good time for myself to give a little thanks to the world for my comfortable place in it, and I might suggest other readers so blessed choose to do the same.

Note D: there were also probably some other things I was gonna write about but fuck 'em

for Ginsberg

time it is for truth and time it is for the flipping open of the manhole covers
and the counting of the rats
who course blindly through the sewers at night to feed on refuse
and who build nests of mcdonalds wrappers
and who shiver at the precipitous drop in the temperatures at night
as men of means and wills suck energy from the very air within our lungs
while the cruel cruel cruel relentless march of endless fashion and mendless passion
coil and twist about the skies above in fervent displays of anemic glory
and tight-skinned drums beat a nervous war march which resonates hot like lover's breath
in the steel cavities of our empty chests
and which pulls with gravitational persuasion the bread
and butter
and electronic guns of home
to cross oceans and to storm deserts and to blow plaster holes in the white walls of mosques

while other men strove and struggled up hills and through thistle
you whistled an honest tune
found strength and peace and some measure of self-awareness
in-between the lonely notes of the clear sine wave's vibrato quivering in the night air
lovely threads twisting from the mouth
wrapping themselves around the hearts of the world
which beat in fettered silence

when torrents of rain turned our world to mud you bravely donned a rubber hat
and tore the handle from a trashcan lid
to sit, cross-legged as the buddha
and you propelled yourself down the slick hill, arms pinwheeling
howling towards some imitation of the velocity of finches
and of diving hawks intent on the red feast of nature

when the earth opened up and swallowed you
there was a violent drop in pressure
as though the wind were kicked from the heaving lungs of the earth
by the steel-toed boot-black toes of censors
shining blinding lights in the eyes, demanding access to the retinas
to follow signals through nerves to brain
but gray matter resists, opaque, bending light only by choice to shine from golden mouth
into fine-lashed lenses at dawn's cold break

show and tell

it's a dog eat dog world
a man eat smog world
a writhing, twisting, long forgotten world

it's a glass landscape refractory
and an artless heartbreak factory
a torn and wind-beaten, laugh to keep from crying, wind up and set it flying environment
a placid lake tinged at the edges with reeds and with partridges
while at the tangential horizon young men fire cartridges
set fire to magazines
enlist in the marines
sail the seven seas
and come back again with souvenirs of frantic unease
with no name for the disease left gnawing at the peripheries of unbidden memories

and let me tell you,
you would not believe what I paid
for this fucking condo

Bones #1

There's a skeleton in Horace's bed. It's very hard to convince anyone else of the fact, but he knows it to be true. He's taken to spending his nights camped out in the living room, on the oak slat floor, to avoid having to commune with the thing. He hasn't been sleeping well. It's the rattling that keeps him up, really, and not the lack of bedroll or mattress.

It's been so long that he can't remember when the bony bastard first came around. The old fellow used to click clack on into the place once in a while before departing to wherever it is a thing like that might go, but his stays have grown longer of late. One year it was just a couple nights around Christmastime. Maybe the skeleton was in town on other business and happened to find Horace's home to be the most vacant. Maybe he just liked the look of the eaves, or the way the siding is gapped just enough to let the spirits through. Maybe the skeleton was too tired to keep moving on to the old motel down the street. Horace lives in ignorance of the thing's motives, ultimately, since he hasn't been able to get the thing to talk. Oh, he's tried. Ask about the weather, local politics, the meaning of life, whatever -- not a peep out of it. Every once in a while the skeleton'd muster up a sort of noncommittal clattering, from lord knows which joints. Horace is frankly uneasy at the mere sight of the thing, and tends when speaking to look not directly at the skeleton but rather just off to the side, or down at his own feet, or out the window on the other wall. There's not much to see inside the room or out, but Horace has a hard time focusing on the gaunt countenance of his visitor. At first it wasn't so bad, but every year now Horace's face and the skeleton's look a little bit more alike, and frankly even a little bit of resemblance is still far too much.

It's most odd how the skeleton only takes the bed. He's never seen in the sparsely equipped kitchen, rustling through the silverware drawer or cleaning the wood stove's ash dump or admiring pots and pans. He never gets up to use the bathroom, though it's hard to see why he'd need to. He's never even walked around the bedroom to more closely admire the old photos framed on the walls, or to wipe the spiderwebs from the neglected corners of the room. Aside from the occasional snake-rattle of dry vertebrae he's never attempted communication with his gracious host. It is that fact which most upsets old Horace, who wracks his mind during every skeleton tenure for something approximating a cause or explanation.

Horace has even gone so far as to sit down at the desk in his office with a sheet of parchment and a full inkwell and make an honest and complete account of his sins; perhaps the guest is some sort of sign, some impetus to atone for wrongdoing. The skeleton does bear some significant resemblance to Scrooge's third ghost, but what good is a spirit who lounges about in bed all day? The thing's never offered to take Horace for a walk around the block, let alone into the future to see his pristine grave, presumably immaculate due to a conspicuous lack of heavy-kneed mourners.

The list that Horace comes up with is not a long one, but size isn't everything. The Civil War accounts for about half of his offenses, for which he hopes God will grant some leniency due to special circumstances. Perhaps the leniency comes in the form of a slothful skeleton, rather than a murderous or otherwise bothersome one. It's no walk in the park getting booted from one's own room into the drafty parlor, but Horace supposes it could be much worse.

The first and most obvious charge against his soul, murder, is written lightly, and the strokes of his pen lack confidence. In fact, it's not completely clear to him whether he committed any acts of bloodshed in the war. Sure, they gave him a rifle, sure, he loaded and fired it many times, but he can't recall ever drawing a true bead on any of the men in gray. He made a good show of it, for the officers, but he was never a crack shot, and even in the midst of battle he'd never managed to get right into the fray. From a couple hundred yards away it was easy to miss. Hell, he didn't even have to try to miss. It just sort of happened. It's certainly possible that one or two of those bullets, though lobbed carelessly, might have bounced off a rock or taken an unpredicted turn in the air to strike the enemy. Crazier things have happened. Just the same, Horace has spent plenty of time flipping through the smudged sketchbook of his own mind, trying and failing to recall an image of a man on the other end of his rifle collapsing to the ground or merely clutching at the gut or arm in response to his musket's report, but his search is fruitless. The first item, "murder", is adorned then with a question mark, and it seems very unlikely to Horace that such an indeterminate guilt could conjure a spectre like his calcified companion.

The second, adultery, is quite a bit more definite. Does a touch of infidelity really merit a ghoul, though? Back when his friends were still alive, Horace had known more than one of them to have dallied in their own life, and to his knowledge he's the first and only to have had a skeleton visited upon his bedsheets. However, if ever some poetic justice were to be served to an adulterer, it seems a dry old sack of bones under the covers would be a fitting punishment for the accused's lustful wanderings. Horace's thoughts drift back to the summer of 1863 and the whirlwind of petticoats, and not even the deathly racket of that damned skeleton twisting and turning in Horace's own warm bed can keep him from drifting off to slumber, his scraggly gray hair dipping into the ink bottle as his head sinks to his chest.

It’s there

Johnny whose fear seeps on up through the floorboards
Erin whose fear keeps the gate
Joseph whose fear won't be silenced by mortals
Carl whose fear kept the date
Martha whose fear creeps through shadows and darkness
Annie whose fear shakes the branches and shingles
Jürgen whose fear sleeps in ponds of his dreaming
Herbert whose fear bent the bars and escaped
Billy whose fear won't take no for an answer
Jenny whose fear 'round the corner lies waiting
Amanda whose fear takes the form of a dancer,
crossing the stage in a nauseous display
Pablo whose fear howls from deep in the ocean
Fernando whose fear takes the form of a bull,
raging and bucking and out for his blood
Emmy whose fear she will clutch like a blanket
Bobby whose fear chokes his airways with mud
Sarah the penitent
Donald the son
it dictated their actions and blotted the Sun

Snow

The weather is getting colder now and the wool I bought at Factory Surplus has found justification. The plants recoil from the frost until they lose the ability to do so. Water's predictable expansion wreaks havoc on water fittings. The sky, bathed in cloud, cast over, splashes diffuse light across the Western Slope while the nights draw in on themselves like an old woman white-knuckling a knitted blanket before a small fire.

The deer have started coming down from the highlands, and soon after coyote and elk will follow, chasing the verdant desert grasses who retreat from the powder that is now quickly overtaking the hills at altitude.

It takes some creativity to stay busy on a soon-to-be-frozen farm, but it's not like we have a shortage of messes to organize or Critter Problems to tackle. The pigs awaiting slaughter have begun to live up to their namesake with gusto, digging expensive feed from the hopper and tossing it on the ground with their snouts. Slaughter awaits, backlogged, and in the meantime the swine will do a number on our food cost. Such is life.

Omens and tidings

A couple of friends came over last night to partake in some rituals. We carved pumpkins, and one friend brought all the materials for witches' brooms. The idea is to create the broom out of the seasonal dried grasses and fallen staves of the outside world and bind them together in the form of a sweeping device, with the intent of then using it to sweep away the negativity. I must not have swept hard enough.

Today I drove to the Vitamin Cottage health food store to kill some time before going to see a new film, Secretariat, which was given two thumbs up by web darling Roger Ebert. I was reading my book and did not realize the headlights were on, and consequently my long-suffering battery did not have the juice to turn the engine over. I wound up getting a jump from a VC employee and just barely got the truck started, so I drove into town, anticipating the film. On finding a parking spot, I did get to contemplating, and weighing the risk/rewards of going to see the movie after all. Well, the truck is running right now, and it is awful cold out, and the truck sure doesn't like the cold. How long must the truck idle before I can trust the battery to cold-crank my ass out of Glenwood Springs after the movie? I settled on 35 minutes, wrestled with the movie issue while letting the battery charge, and penultimately decided to take the risk. I would get out of the car, lock up, and go watch the film with peace of mind. If the truck refused to wake after the movie, there was always AAA.

So, at any rate, I got out of the truck. I went to lock the truck. The key wouldn't go in.

Your humble narrator took one look at the situation, and determined that someone or something was again trying like mad to give him a hint, to bop him on the head with a clue.

This time, I actually got the hint. I got back in the truck, assembled a mental to-fix list, and drove the old girl home with a heavy heart. There is much joy and heartbreak to be found in an American vehicle of past vintage, and I have no choice but to dive in, up to the elbows in grease, and figure out just what her guts are really made of.