Pulling up stakes (sort of)

I’m sending this blog into semi-retirement (except for the occasional self-indulgent entry). It was started with a respectful tip of the hat to my imaginative grandfather. Now it’s time for a different approach, a reboot of sorts.

New location: kurtkremer.wordpress.com

 

Otter

Displaced by condo construction and with no where else to go, your otter has joined the growing community of displaced life who wander our countrysides and streets. Keep watch–it might show up late in the afternoon as a busker going by Otr who plays jigs on a penny whistle, his sign reading How I Play for My Food, If It Pleases (with the word Fish scratched out next to Food.) Or a sleek-haired homeless maiden slipping through crowds and asking for change, but never slowing for an answer. Or a grizzled old being slumped against a stoop, signs of life the cherry ash on his cigarette and one eye barely open. Or it’ll be the oddly familiar lithe businessman in the silk suit who insists that you step ahead of him in line at the tea shop. Otters are masters of industry and have succeeded brilliantly in the human world where they can adjust to a diurnal day and resist grooming themselves in public. (If you’ve ever visited a zoo with otters happily lazing in a pond and grooming their genitals to the titters of children and the sudden fleeing of adult spectators, you’ll know what I mean.) More than one have been President.

 

Garden for Yard

Last weekend I dug up our small surburban front yard in favor of a garden. I laid the old sod alongside the creek that borders our lot, covering up the unholy f-ing morning glory with thick turf woven with forget-me-nots–the latter a beautiful infestation that I hope will resist and repress the almost unkillable morning glory that creeps up the bank and into my yard every summer, and chokes the native plants (which I did not cover) along the creek .

(On a positive note, the morning glory makes a nice green canopy for the creek frogs, but then they keep us awake in the summers with their all night clubbing, so I’ll also be happy if they relocate downstream into the culvert).  

It’s a south facing yard/garden that we expect to be pretty productive in a couple of months. As long as we can keep the cats and squirrels out till the plants take over. Then it’ll be time for winter planting–something we never had to consider when it was just grass. Still, worth the initial and ongoing effort. With careful use of mulch (organic and artificial) we can keep the water usage down, and make sure the fresh vegetables and herbs cost far less that what we’d pay at the farmer’s market (as much as we love to go there) and grocers.

 

Revenge of the Old School Publishers

In a revenge fantasy of publishers, a hurricane force wind tears through the Internet community, while the community documents its own demise with videocasts and images–and posts of 140 words or less–of users hanging on desperately by their earbuds and mice (those few left with corded mice) as their playground is shredded and blown away like cheap paper, until the landscape is pristine again, and then–and then millions of books begin to drift from the sky like snow or skittles–really really heavy snow or skittles. And children laugh and the old folks weep and moms and dads rediscover love. And there are picnics and ball games for fun in the park, and people smile and shake hands in the street, and no one goes hungry again. And Garrison Keillor becomes President, even though he doesn’t want the job. But someone will have to deal with the few Morlocks who survived the storm in their caves deep deep underground.

 

Earth Hour, Lights Out

Earth Hour Website

People, turn your lights off for an hour on March 28, 8:30 PM, local time. Light a candle or two. Get to know your neighbors. Have a party (I know at least one person doing this.) Make carbon reduction a celebration, make it a holiday. Get your congresspeople in the game. Better yet, write to your greeting card publishers and retailers. Don’t make it a back patting session or a lesson in political correctness. Make it about survival, and community, and have a little fun.

Learn what other people are doing and see the nifty video

Yeah, it’s a tiny thing. No, the act won’t save us. We can’t even say it’ll give us another hour. But then we’ll do it again.

 

Strings do battle

Downtown, vines of white light are creeping cheerfully up our trees, chasing off the rust and golden leaves in stop action animation: one day they’re six feet up the trunk and twisting into the lower branches, the next, as you’re waiting for the commuter train, you notice they’ve crept up another foot, atropical artificial vines cheerfully thriving in crispening weather. You whistle goodbye willingly to the leaves, who had their time. You’re ready for twinkling trees and hot cocoa. You, and the homeless guy asking for change.

A tangle of lights (or luminous eyes) blink ferociously in an eloquently coded rail against illiteracy. You blink back. Ferociously. The lights snarl. You snarl. You know they’re wrong, or not right, you know this in your gut. You try to make your case to friends, not for the defense, but for clarity. Your small, limited supply of words fall golden on the ground and, in the rain, turn to cornflakes. Your tree stripped to a bare trunk and twigs, you thrash about trying to expose the major flaws, the short circuits, the damage done. Your lack of literacy confounds your purpose. You and the other writer, two howler monkeys chasing each other around a denuded festival tree, each with beautiful fur, tangled in the lights. The homeless guy finds leftover kettlecorn in a bin and settles down to watch.

 

Back of the bus

How many of you wear earbuds when you commute, please raise your hand?

Ma’am, there in the back–would you like an earbud? You must feel very lonely.

 

Your love is better than ice cream

It may sound foolish, but, depending on one’s income, what can be more shocking than an increase in the price of a staple like milk is an increase in the cost of luxury items based on a staple (or a hidden staple like corn by-products)–ice cream, for example (only recently a luxury item in our home). Last night I paid $7 for 1.75 quarts, and realized that it was a tipping point. On the plus side, rising costs for transportation, fertilizer, and manufacturing are increasing the cost of prepared/junk foods faster than fresh foods, organic or not–a good thing for poor people who too often buy cheap filler foods because they (think they) can’t (or don’t know they can) afford anything healthier. 

Makes me wish we had local Asian open-air market along with our very nice but expensive farmer’s market. In many of the Asian markets, sellers buy ripe foods with reduced shelf life and sell then for far less–which means you go to the market more often but spend less (for vegetables and fruit, there’s little cost savings in bulk). 

HFCS rant: there’s a new commercial by the corn-processors guild showing a sensitive looking young man shying from a popsicle waved in his face by a woman we think is his girlfriend (or a demon in lovely human form sent to tempt him). But the bar contains high-fructose corn syrup, and he’s having none of it (although this could be masking a homophobic fear of having a phallic object publicly thrust at his face, but we’ll leave the subtext out for now). She looks at him with sardonic tenderness and assures him that HFCS is perfectly natural and poses no problems when taken in moderation–and how much could there be in an ickle popsicle? We assume in the next scene that he’s convinced and is happily slurping away while she privately plays a m4m fantasy and collects her check from the People of the Corn. Where are the fundamentalists when you need them! 

(Let’s also note that it’s impossible to ingest anything in moderation that is an ingredient–often a primary ingredient–in most products containing sweeteners–which is damn near everything–even those with sweetness too low-down for your tongue to detect but not your biochem. Let’s hope the cost of corn-based additives balloons as the economy wheezes.)

 

Corteo

I hate the circus. There’s no magic, no wonder, no inner music. Clowns are idiots, not funny, not charming. Circus daredevils and dancing girls keep me at arm’s length. (Okay, I use the words “hate” and “idiots” carelessly.) I’m disinterested, bored, not charmed or mystified. My kids are more accomplished clowns and daredevils (because they’re natural) and when they consciously perform, you sense that they do it in pursuit of (or immersed in) their sense of wonder. At least, if you’re mom and dad, you do.

Then Cirque du Soleil comes to town in their giant rubbery bigtop on the waterfront. And my employer offers discount tickets. And the company CEO gets a little giddy describing his impressions from his first row seats. So, against my better judgment, I sold two of the family pets (pure-bred Martian Dustcats), took out a fourth mortgage, and bought tickets for the family. Fifth row tickets (I’m not a CEO).

We sat, we watched, we didn’t get up to pee. Then the cast took their calls, the curtain dropped, and we still didn’t want leave. My 17 year old (who is, by nature, unimpressed) and I both exclaimed, let’s run away and join the circus! His mother, who saw sense through her own starry eyes, pinched our ears and pulled us back to the van. By the time we cleared the parking lot, we’d left the waking dreams behind, replaced with “we had a nice time, didn’t we?”

REM world has no patience with practicality. You want to join the circus, you got it.  That night, dressed shoeless in the rumpled suit of the off duty clown, I bicycled after molting angels between chromatic clouds. I crawled on fingertips and knees through glittering underground tunnels, swung apelike through a forest of dandelion seed, spurred a clown horse over tundra in search of a feather’s owner. I stood on a street corner with my typewrite case open, selling trinket impressions: mystical, wonderful, superb! Angelic. Feathers! Erotic. Mystical. Transient. Oceanic. Truffle! Warm bath. Humbling.

Until an acrobatic cortege of hooligans in feathered caps stampeded my feet, stole my words, and raced into the footlights. And then, I woke up, dizzy and then days later, grasping at the rags of the dream here.

(Cast extras: I wanted to use “Fellini-esque” and “subconcious slurry” in my description, but couldn’t find a place, so here they are.)

 

First impressions

What was that noise?

First impression: I’m alone in the … and trying to get to sleep and…

First impression: Something woke me and I’m just trying to focus…

First impression: I’m burglaring and…

First impression: The wife and I are alone at last…

First impression: It’s inside of me.

First impression: <explosive cartoon balloon, no time or day or other visual, may go better with “What the hell was that!”>

What’s that light?

I thought we taped all the blanket seams?

It looks like a campfire…

See <explosive cartoon balloon>

What’s that smell?

See all of the above.

I asked myself and two other people these questions without providing a setting or any other cues–the lines above are our immediate reactions. In writing, what are the minimal cues needed to set the scene around a character’s reaction? Our flash response is partially framed by common experience, partially by, well, who we are. My son gave the cartoon balloon response–not once did I consider anything so abstract. When is it important to leave it in the mind of the reader? Possibly too open of a question without more to go on.

Late night ponderings before tomorrow’s visit to my (well heeled) gasteroenterologist, who’ll stick a tube down my throat to determine what’s bugging my esophagus, besides the tube, while I’m loopy on some nifty narcotic (and liable to giggle if I re-ponder any of these during that 5 minute procedure or soon afterward). What is that noise? Well, isn’t that different! And look, colors!