gus was calmer tonight, i let the leash go lightly and he went in small circles, quiet, and we felt more easy together. i didn't try to restrain him and he didn't try to pull me. what i thought was him was also me, my frustration, wanting accord, not knowing how.

it's a pretty good day. after a bad beginning, getting caught in a rainstorm with no rainpants and worrying about gus, i made a short walk with mister and he was disappointed, he wanted to go with me when i left, he was all set to go to the island and see the birders, but i promised him a good walk in the afternoon, and it was. pebble beach was all pebbled again. it amazes me how the storms will bring or take away all the pebbles, as well as move about big slabs of concrete and chunks of limestone. it was a good day but a long week and fatigue and stress accumulated till up to the time we should rest like god did but have to do the feaster family thing which is good but, well, you know.

crawdaddy.

gus afternoon was much better weather than gus morning. gus was waiting in the dining room, his eyes sweeping to and fro. we went to the midway again. he did circles and looked away. i don't know what he sees but i stop and hug him and try to reassure him by seeing me. the doctor gave him a checkup before and said the stuff that alarmed me this morning was just the vicissitudes of age, and his mom wasn't worried like me, so i got unworried like her. now i'm calmer, and i can deal with his distress and let him circle more calmly while i wait.

i introduce mister to crawdad.

 mister gives crawdad a lick.

 mister gives crawdad a ride.

 crawdad falls.

 crawdad pinches mister's nose.

 mister eats crawdad.

it was a dramatic morning this saturday. i thought gus was going to collapse. the wind blew me sideways on my bike and i caught my fall. i said to r. it's a bad day, i had a bad feeling. i always do that, when i was a kid i felt like the sky was gonna fall eyes scanning and i stepped on glass in a subdivision refuse swamp looking for frog life. i climbed trees to feel safe, watching the sky waving watching the ground rise up to meet me. well the rain stopped and gus is back on his couch in his nest with his fan and his bear and i'm watching the talking heads with penny so relieved nothing bad came, the sky just hangs there, the wind winds and snakes and tunnels, we fall and get back up again and lay back down between yesterday and tomorrow.

Signs, signs are lost
Signs disappeared
Turn invisible
Got no sign
Somebody got busted
Got a face of stone and a
Ghostwritten biography

Dogs started rushin' in
Hungry for some food
Dogs started twitching and they're looking at you

It was light by five
Torn all apart
All in the name of democracy
He's hurt, he's dying
Claimed he was a terrorist
Claimed to avert a catastrophe

Someone should've told him
That the buck stops here
No one ever said
He was involved with thieves

They're blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind
Blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind

No sense of harmony, no sense of time
Don't mention harmony
Say "what is it? What is it? What is it?"
Give a little shock, and he raises his hand
Somebody shouts out, says
"What is it? What is it? What is it?"

He was shot down in the night!
People ride by but his body's still alive
The girl in the window, what has she done?
She looks down at me and says "I don't wanna die!"

 

And I'm blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind
Blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind

 

Somebody could have told us where they go
Crawling all around looking for foot, foot, footprints
Now tell me what the hell have we become?
Some dirty little bastards, what the hell is going on?

 

No sense of harmony, no sense of time
Don't mention harmony
Say "What is it? What is it? What is it?"
Give a little shock, and he raises his hand
Somebody shouts out
Says "What is it? What is it? What is it?"

 

He was shot down in the night
People ride by but his body's still alive
Girl in the window what has she done?
She looks down at me and says "I don't want to die!"

 

An' it's blind and they're blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind
Blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind

 

Blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind
And I'm blind, blind
Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind

Lost my shape
Trying to act casual!
Can't stop
I might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape
I feel like an accident
They're back!
To explain their experience
Isn't it weir
Looks too obscure to me
Wasting away
And that was their policy
I'm ready to leave
I push the fact in front of me
Facts lost
Facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there!
No information left of any kind
Lifting my head
Looking for danger signs
There was a line
There was a formula
Sharp as a knife
Facts cut a hole in us
There was a line
There was a formula
Sharp as a knife
Facts cut a hole in us
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
The feeling returns
Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head
looking around inside
The island of doubt
It's like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight
Got the message from the oxygen
Making a list
Find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right
Facts are useless in emergencies
The feeling returns
Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head
Looking around inside.
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...

 

 

talking heads

the first day gus was in the left end of the couch. in the right end his polar bear was laying in a nest of sheets and pillows. gus looked up wondering who i was or why. the next day gus was in the nest in the right end of the couch with his face in the fan now turned on. his bear was in the left end. today he slid off the couch and flopped on his side. he peed. ok ok gus let's try this. he turned circles. he sniffed mary louise's choice parts. now he's re-oriented. he watches her go. he turns circles. 
i call his mom. that's just gus she says. 

gust of night. soon as we get into the night gus looks at me with his eyes big with fear that say we gotta get out of here! he seems to feel it's a dangerous world outside, and how can i convince him otherwise? it is.

In his farewell address, Obama paid tribute to the hardscrabble neighborhoods where, as he said, he “learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved, get engaged, and come together to demand it.” That’s the credo of the CBA coalition—of the South Side’s ordinary denizens who say of his center, “Push back on being pushed out.”

Obama vs. the community organizers: On Chicago’s gentrifying South Side, neighbors are asking who will benefit from the Obama Center—and who will be pushed out?


the smug bureaucrats of the obama empire are entrenched in their done deals, smugly meeting the community with blank stares, arrogantly furthering their corporate investors goals, but this won't go down according to their deceptive narrative. they will honor no community benefits agreement because they mean to completely overtake the community for the speculators and the elite who will be able to stay. the people fighting against obama are the ones he left behind and now will push from the neighborhoods he pretends to care for. he cares for his constituents. he cares for the golfers and the bankers, the industrial barons, the super-predators, his constituents are the powerful and the entitled.

  blue moon fire escape.

the beast in me

the beast in me
is caged by frail and fragile bars
restless by day
and by night rants and rages at the stars
god help the beast in me

the beast in me
has had to learn to live with pain
and how to shelter from the rain
and in the twinkling of an eye
might have to be restrained
god help the beast in me

sometimes it tries to kid me
that it's just a teddy bear
and even somehow manage to vanish in the air
and that is when I must beware
of the beast in me
that everybody knows
they've seen him out dressed in my clothes
patently unclear
if it's new york or new year
god help the beast in me

the beast in me

nick lowe

stop for murphy.

murphy.

by and by i think mister and murphy will be buddies.  
mister starts out kind of aloof, especially with puppies, which he regards as sort of alien species of cuteness. 
and he's used to being the one fawned over. but murphy is a subtle pup, and i know mister was impressed, and once the jealousy subsides, and everyone fawns over everyone equally, these two distant relations will be bosom buddies.

murphy is a miniature golden doodle and something else i think i forgot. mister i say, you are related. he's like, you're kidding me right? you're pulling my leg.  
go 'head, pull the other ones.

mister is polite but wary. in the beginning, while he greets savannah, murphy walks right under his belly. while i focus on murphy he walks a few steps away and lays down and waits.

he looks apprehensive as murphy scoots closer.

mister tries on a lavender wrap for after swimming.

we were at the edge of the park when i see murphy and savannah coming to see us. savannah asks if mister likes puppies, and i say er, well, i do.

i find our troll face down in the swamp, like that painting by millais, ophelia, blue hair billowing out in the clear spring water. i rescue her, (for now she's a her, a pre-raphaelite troll. being free of genitalia, her sex is fluid), and place her on a raft in the center of the swamp. before leaving i ask the swamp air around her, are you o.k. here?

the endearingly permanent smile is vital to the swamp troll's well-being. if you cant' see that smile, the troll appears somewhat anxious.

who has no genitals, lives in the swamp, has crazy blue hair, and is always happy?

 um, let's see...who else! it's me!

mister blesses r.'s ostara egg.

 mmm, bunny eggs.

the rabbit was a symbol associated with eostre, representing the beginning of springtime. likewise, the egg has come to represent spring, fertility and renewal.  in germanic mythology, it is said that ostara healed a wounded bird she found in the woods by changing it into a hare. still partially a bird, the hare showed its gratitude to the goddess by laying eggs as gifts.
the encyclopedia britannica clearly explains the pagan traditions associated with the egg: "the egg as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life goes back to the ancient egyptians and persians, who had also the custom of colouring and eating eggs during their spring festival.” in ancient egypt, an egg symbolised the sun, while for the babylonians, the egg represents the hatching of the venus ishtar, who fell from heaven to the euphrates. 

i have this affliction
it's a turrible itch
people have worse afflictions i knows
i guess i can live with it

dr. patel is having an easter egg hunt at pearl vision and invited the good neighbors. 
she said,
we hope to see lots of kids as we have lots of eggs.

a good neighbor replied:

Dear Dr Patel

Christians celebrate Easter on Easter Sunday, not on Good Friday. Having an Easter Egg Hunt on Good Friday, one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, is insensitive, to put it mildly. 

(note: the White House Easter Egg Roll is NEVER on Friday or Saturday of Holy Week - it is always on the Monday following Easter - with good reason)

Dhilanthi Fernando

sarah sent this which made her really angry, i thought it was hilarious and read it to r. in a rather stilted manner and she cracked up like humpty. 

Easter as a celebration of the Goddess of Spring
A related perspective is that, rather than being a representation of the story of Ishtar, Easter was originally a celebration of Eostre, goddess of Spring, otherwise known as Ostara, Austra, and Eastre. One of the most revered aspects of Ostara for both ancient and modern observers is a spirit of renewal. 
Celebrated at Spring Equinox on March 21, Ostara marks the day when light is equal to darkness, and will continue to grow. As the bringer of light after a long dark winter, the goddess was often depicted with the hare, an animal that represents the arrival of spring as well as the fertility of the season.
According to Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, the idea of resurrection was ingrained within the celebration of Ostara: “Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted by the resurrection-day of the christian’s God.”
Most analyses of the origin of the word ‘Easter’ maintain that it was named after a goddess mentioned by the 7th to 8th-century English monk Bede, who wrote that Ēosturmōnaþ (Old English 'Month of Ēostre', translated in Bede's time as "Paschal month") was an English month, corresponding to April, which he says "was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month".
The origins of Easter customs
The most widely-practiced customs on Easter Sunday relate to the symbol of the rabbit (‘Easter bunny’) and the egg.  As outlined previously, the rabbit was a symbol associated with Eostre, representing the beginning of Springtime. Likewise, the egg has come to represent Spring, fertility and renewal.  In Germanic mythology, it is said that Ostara healed a wounded bird she found in the woods by changing it into a hare. Still partially a bird, the hare showed its gratitude to the goddess by laying eggs as gifts.
The Encyclopedia Britannica clearly explains the pagan traditions associated with the egg: “The egg as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who had also the custom of colouring and eating eggs during their spring festival.” In ancient Egypt, an egg symbolised the sun, while for the Babylonians, the egg represents the hatching of the Venus Ishtar, who fell from heaven to the Euphrates.

toy mouse strategy. 
i noted yesterday penny's toy mouse by jasper's dish, and jasper not eating. i thought it was a coincidence. the mouse moved around through the day. this morning it was by jasper's dish again, placed just so. jasper came close, looked at the mouse and left. i put the mouse elsewhere and bonito flakes to call him back. he ate contentedly. penny was non-plussed and left part of her food for jasper while she hunted something in the living room behind the round river stone.

maybe it's the polka dots and the giant eye. maybe the underpass is where gus gets goofy. polka dots are fun and make you giddy, unless you have cloudy vision at night and you go bonkers with all the black eyes looming at you. i decide to avoid the claustrophobic zones and head for green space, which we have near, since we supposedly saved the midway.

we started out calmly. i talked and whistled. i soothed and petted. on the avenue by the tracks he got spooky again like he was in the bush of ghosts, zigzagging here and there. i tried to calm him but immediately he started his frantic dance again. tomorrow i'll take him to the midway where there are more bushes and not as many houses and ghosts.

this is my friend jana. i don't know her too well yet, but you don't have to know dogs long 
to recognize them. me and jana recognized each other directly.