Stray thoughts

A crazy jumble of [stuff] going through my head…

I sure love homemade granola! So easy, too. Can’t figure out why I took nearly a half year to replenish our inventory of the stuff. October 2026.

Here are some quotes I’ve been saving up. Inspiring, frivolous, hopefully entertaining:

I am never more generous than when I split open an avocado, see that it’s perfect, and agree to share half with my husband.

Mia Leimkuhler in The New York Times

There’s a book called 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die by Loren Rhoads. Makes me wonder if there isn’t a cemetery tour or something after you die. If there isn’t such a thing, there should be…

Me

Music is the reward for being alive.

Jorma Kaukonen (guitarist/singer, founding member of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna)

I can’t possibly be this ancient. I haven’t had enough time to prepare myself to be this old.

The father of Martin Hesp on or near his 67th birthday. M. Hesp is a British journalist and blogger

When you come to Philly [to play baseball], you forget about nutrition. You eat the cheesesteaks in the visiting clubhouse.

Freddie Freeman (Atlanta Brave and LA Dodger)

I literally don’t have even 25% of the time I need every day to do what I want and what must be done to function in society. (If at 72 I don’t function in society, they will take me away and put me in a home.) I am not one of those persons spoken of in the semi-famous quote, “Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a Sunday afternoon.” In any one moment I can plan four days’ worth of things to do in the next four hours. This means I’m always under a bit of tension because everywhere I look I see things I “want” to do but haven’t touched (or even begun) in the four years since the idea first occurred…or six…or twelve…or longer. Life’s mundane ways are interfering with my life.

There’s supposedly a Turkish saying, “No matter how far down the path you’ve traveled, if you discover it’s the wrong one, turn back.” I read it one day in my Franklin Planner, sometime between 1997-2001. It’s resonated for the decades since, but it’s losing its impact now that I’m over 70. There are a few paths that cannot be retraced at this age. I would still be recovering that lost distance when I moved to ‘the home’ preparatory to dying. Example: I’ve purchased houses poorly throughout my life, fixating on what would make it closer to perfect but not realizing I was not capable of doing those things. The house we live in now is almost certainly the last one. We set out to get a house with the master bedroom on the main floor along with laundry facilities. The overarching premise was to avoid stairs. We achieved the stated goal: bedroom and laundry are on the main floor. But the house has a basement which now holds our freezer, the beer fridge, my office, the library/study, and a rec room. In short, I spend large chunks of every day downstairs, and I need to go up and down those stairs every time I want a beer, need to get something out of the freezer, need to do anything on my computer, or heck, empty a cat box.

Yet since I was a teenager I’ve dreamed of a one-story Spanish-style house which from above would look like a capital U. The base of the U would house the common rooms, one wing would hold the master bedroom suite and personal office/hobby space (plus laundry services), and the third wing would house spare bedrooms. I have never come close to purchasing such a home in the fifty years since I thought of it.

And that’s just one! I guess I have regrets or at least questions, all of them related to what were you thinking?

In a book I read about being a Philadelphia sports fan, there’s a quote which explains them quite well. I’ve lost the book and can’t quite remember the title, but the quote goes something like this:

In Philadelphia the glass is not only half empty, it’s got a cigarette butt in it and a lipstick stain on the rim.

Cheers, everyone!

saturday haiku

A couple of stray poetic thoughts…

[insert photo of chickadee here] Which I would do if I had tagged my photos better. Working on it. Come back next year.

There are no chickadees in this photo. Somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula, WA. April 1998.

Chickadee mind grabs 
seed, drops it: 'Get another!'
Lather, rinse, repeat.

Born as unblemished 
marble; Life's chisel reveals
us to everyone.

So you wrote a lot of poems…

Maybe it was crazy to attempt 100 daily poems.

I had thought to wait another day or two for the Poem Post-Mortem (which sounds pretty cool if you say it aloud). I had a lot of reactions in the final ten days or so, and I see no reason to wait. In no particular sequence, here are some reactions of this author…

It actually got easier in a way when I got into it. In reviewing at random over the course of the writing (July 7 to October 8), I noticed that somewhere around one-third of the way in, between poem 31 and 35, the subjects seemed to suggest themselves more easily. They acted like shy faerie folk who don’t know what to make of the giant human at first. Were there any ‘good’ poems in the first 33? I guess. I’m much more pleased with the ones over the final third.
I became more surprised at what words showed up. In particular, Daymare (Oct 1) popped in from who-knows-where. All I did was think, “I’d like to write something more ‘image-ry’ like the ones Bridgette does.” Fine, mission accomplished, but from where did the image come?
I surprised myself also by sticking with it. My general attitude toward life has been, “when the going gets tough, get going,” in the sense of go work somewhere else, go do something else. “Life’s too short to keep [insert what I don’t want to do].” Yet I cracked the ends of both radii in my arms only two weeks in and kept right on writing. I traveled for two weeks yet wrote poems #35 through #49. I contracted the flu Type A on September 24 and kept right on writing. I must credit Bridgette with that, mostly, because she kept writing through her time sucks and bodily aches.
More people are interested in reading my poems than my prose. My blog readership increased about 100%, and my followers rose about 10%-20%.
In the beginning I mined poems written long ago when I railed inside at the perceived shortcomings of the people running my places of employment. (I still think I was partially right, but over the two to three decades I accumulated those poems, I learned two things: there are more paths to the goal than you think; and oftentimes the goal you think you’re working toward is not the goal your management is working toward.) Those poems in my opinion remained stilted, as if I tried to breathe life into a corpse but only succeeded in creating a zombie.
I have a peculiar knack to take a popular tune from my younger days and spontaneously craft new words for it on the fly. I sing these to my wife who rarely is amused by it. I’m rather proud of the fact I can create rhymes and mimic the meter of the original tune, but then I’m a borderline narcissist. This talent(?) helped in writing poems, particularly when I decided to rhyme them.
When I lowered my expectations my poems rose in quality.
I have a strong urge to publish a poem today! Resisting.

I thought as I got into this a little bit that it might be fun to rework the better poems and churn out a chapbook. I still might, but I’m thinking more that I will be working some poems on the side for submission to poetry websites. There are plenty. A new blog I follow, zumpoems, has this list of more than 4000 places which will accept submissions.

About the photo: I’ve carried that book around for about 30 years (published 1996), even though by then I had given up on my dream of actually earning a living from my creative writing. I never liked it that much. Pulling it from the to-be-donated pile, I thumbed through it today and I’m much more inspired by its suggestions and insights. Like so many things in my life, poetry came to me when I quit trying to be a poet.

And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all,
they just stand back and let it all be…

—from “Jungleland” by Bruce Springsteen

Found poem #2

It’s time to find a poem again! Yay! Today’s paradigm will be…what I found over the past 50 hours.

Rest assured, poor little doggie! When she dresses you in pajamas, she prepares you for all of Life’s ludicrous realities!

pills once taken for entertainment
now do anything but, maintaining 
dubious adherence to general 
opinion. schedules provide 
meaningless information to
entice us with false surety.
familiarity with annoying
situations eases moving
through them, no one's idea
of good design. security doors 
which open for everyone.
here mister tee-ess-eh? will
you pass this through your
magic gate? how does he know
it won't explode? not planning
for Game Day in your bar
most assuredly epitomizes 
poor planning, understaffing,
my lovely barmaid. silent 
Uber drivers receiving their
instructions in Chinese,
afraid to make eye contact.
beautiful golf courses, those
green monuments to money,
grass, dominating nature.
never in one dozen years
has any hotel thermostat
delivered any temperature
near its displayed number.

until you knot your necktie
around your head like poetry's
morning Rambo to avenge this
collection of glib promises,
lame excuses, forms without
function, lies of omission.

"Reality, I'm coming...for...you!"

83/100
100 poems in 100 days

Dichotomy, meet Contrary

Would it help to know I’m a double-Gemini (both sun sign and ascendent)?

Dichotomy, 
meet Contrary. 

Loved sport—disliked
jocks, hated pep rallies.
Baptized at thirteen,
Atheist at eighteen,
Agnostic at twenty-five,
Catholic at thirty-nine.
Supported group marriage
of the "line" variety, found
monogamy difficult enough.
Voted for Carter, editorialized 
supporting Reagan.
Call Washington "home,"
Can't live there—love rainy,
warm South-East. Love
spicy food, can't eat it.
Believe sobriety equals our
natural state; drink like a fish.
Studied communications,
journalism, wound up 
playing scientific expert.
Planned working to seventy,
retired at sixty-five.
Believe in "live every day
as if it's your last," stand
fixated in space-time's
ambergris, pinned by 
my dwindling time.

Don't believe astrology
(much) though I studied
it enough to know 
ascendents from sun-signs
yet how can this Gemini 
resist, confronting 
all these two-faced
contradictions?

80/100

One day

Continuing what’s becoming a theme…

One Day

Without noticing suddenly
you cannot easily pull your
sweatshirt over your head.
Each morning you perform athletic 
routines getting into your pants.
Rising from chairs, your muscles
will cry out. Sleeping will bring
rest but also body-wide tightness 
driving you prematurely from bed.
Every step you take becomes fraught:
you'll concentrate on each one (if
you know what's good for you),
relearning how to walk. Climbing
steps will be similar as you 
wonder alternately how you
could confuse distances which
rise regularly before you, and
how you ever did it when younger.
"Lift with your legs" no longer
something preached by your
health-and-safety officer, but 
your new mantra for avoiding
three days' bedrest. Concentrating,...

...you become a true zen master,
without trying—as the sutras say.

78/100
100 poems in 100 days

Your grandpa’s so becoming

I asked AI to polish this up (“no you didn’t”), but it didn’t believe what I wrote. (“that’s completely untrue. we’ll believe anything you tell us.”) I guess we don’t have anything to fear about AI exterminating the humans. (“Uh….we’ll get back to you on that one.”)

Husky Stadium. Across the marsh toward the upper-right corner is Laurelhurst where my grandparents raised my mother. If it hadn’t been hazy, the North Cascades would be on the horizon. Fall 1955.

Old men know. It lies in their bones,
not powdering brain's surface, but
penetrating, melding with DNA, at
times holding them upright. He hoofed 
it every day from above the freeway
into his boyhood city, walking one,
two miles 'til hit by that car, already
years past eighty. One wonders if
he never accepted cars completely:
few if any dodged horses when he
would run home from tide pool 
afternoons, salmon in hand
for dinner. He teetotaled his life 
after being dragged into saloons
by his Klondike gold-panning father.
He watched with alumni pride as
his University of Washington grew
from only two buildings in his day to
small-city dimensions—or to one-third
of his boyhood home. He explained
what "the Denny Regrade" meant, 
showed you where Lake Washington 
shorelines lapped prior to when the
"Montlake Cut" joined it to Lake 
Union then to salt waters. Before
he experienced TV's dawn, he played
with that new-fangled radio thing.
How many days passed until he learned
about those Wright brothers flying in 
North Carolina? He must have seen 
biplanes training for war while he
served as a land-based radio officer.
Then passenger planes, jets, rockets, 
humans landing on Earth's moon. 
Big computers took over business
before he retired to travel through
North America, to Hawai'i.

My life stretches now like those
timelines in history museums,
marking space programs, personal
computers, vinyl records through
cassettes, CD's, to zeroes-and-ones.
We hold computers in our hands,
but call them phones. Cars run on
electricity like the trolleys of my 
youth, my grandfather's middle age.
My timeline lacks two decades, more,
compared to his. It teaches us
respect too late, but teaches
wonder more and more.

The beginning of the Montlake Cut. Looking SSE from Husky Stadium. Lake Washington’s shore was 15 feet higher before the cut. That marsh in the top photo was under water originally. Fall 1955.

76/100
100 poems in 100 days.

Rollercoaster

If life resembles a rollercoaster,
with ups, downs, head-banging turns—
entered for free, no real way off—
life bests physics in several ways:
faster, ever-faster, ka-chunk,
ka-chunk, kachunkachunka chunk,
until sound blurs, sights blur,
horizons collapse to this car,
this seat, these hands gripping 
this bar. Life masters sending
your ride both uphill, downhill,
simultaneously. Life's car
travels quicker but on ever-
shortening track seemingly; you
crest one climb just moments after
you started a downhill stretch.
You begin to realize this speed
increase means your ride's end
will occur sooner than you
thought. Your youthful panting to
"just get to eighteen," "once I've
got steady work," "can't wait to
have kids," "can't wait 'til those
kids leave," "geez, if only I were
retired," now seems incredibly
foolish. Mentally straining to
get older yielded to its reality.
Now no strain's required. I wish...
no...no more wishing...just 
stay here, be here, live here. 
Here.

74/100
100 poems in 100 days…

…and if life seems to speed up, it’s seen even here. Didn’t I just post my 60th poem? How can I be on the verge of being 75% through this challenge?

My other lives

Inspired by this poem from Bridgette Kay.

Hopped a freight, saw gang in Thompson 
Falls, flatcar next track over. They liked 
my car better, took it by force. No, wait...
Hopped freight into someone else's car,
who pushed me out again without my
knapsack, broke my leg, or...
I remember: clinging to moving car, one
hand desperately grabbing a handle,
slipped, lost my legs while those
startled drivers waited, watched,
horrified behind barricades. Or
did the speed freak sipping Mickey's
Big Mouths not drop me off, but
instead mug me miles from home?

Eloquently, asked blond Orphan Annie
out when snow bounced like Styrofoam.
Followed her eastward to Midwest. Sat
bouncing one child after another while
she conducted services at her church.
Or did we split angrily over my lack
of faith? I can never remember.

My epileptic buddy seized while training
for his bicycle road race, hit his head,
died. Knowing he didn't take his meds,
dedicated my life to medical counseling,
patient support/advocacy. Died early,
stress from lack of success, debt.

Indulged whim to own motorcycle.
Pretending to slalom along Woods Creek,
hit gravel, slid into oncoming lane,
already occupied by one-ton pickup.
Or did I just slide right over the edge,
mangling my body, my hopes for 
being energetic weekly news reporter?

Did my heart burst when I snorted
Black Beauties? Or did I die after
doing same with PCP disguised
as so-called cannabinol? How 'bout
that time "chocolate mesc" turned
out to be rat poison, not placebo?

Millions of me's live in my memories,
branched from events gone right,
events gone wrong, events gone
different. When my editor ended
my career for once again failing 
to put "ly" on adverbs. When my 
employer marketed my database, 
fame, money, a new career following.
When I got hired in Southern
California instead of upstate 
New York. When my wife died
from cancer instead of lived.

70/100
100 poems in 100 days

Every one of those branching events could have happened, the only speculative one being the one about getting fired for not using “ly” on adverbs—although an editor/publisher could have ended my teaching career before it started when upon learning I intended to teach journalism he laughed and said, “You?”

I did indeed hop a freight while in college. There was a sinister looking bunch of guys on a flatbed. There could have been a guy in my car. I did hang on gamely when I tried to mount a moving freight car now way too high due to a raised railbed. After getting off of the freight, a tweaked out guy picked me up in a Roadrunner around midnight.
I did have a crush on that young woman in college, but too insecure, I didn’t ask her out. I speculated on her future career.
My epileptic buddy fortunately had his seizure on the dormitory floor, not while he was out training for the race. He’d stopped taking his meds.
I did slide right into the oncoming lane of traffic. It was a lonely road. I righted the bike, got back into my own lane.
Uh….yeah I did do those substances as described. The capsules at the end only had chocolate in them, not mescaline.
The rest is self-explanatory.

It’s interesting to me how I think about all of the ways my life could’ve gone wrong, only rarely think how it could’ve gone differently, and not at all how something could have gone right instead of how it went down. Does that make me a glass-half-full kind of guy? Or do some of us innately focus on good things instead of bad ones?

Genius

My cat knows exactly how everyone
should behave. He fails to understand
his clear vision isn't clear to us.
Eleven years yet endlessly he
chastises us for our transgressions, 
failing to enact his instructions,
breaking his long-established norms, rules.
          *          *          *          *          *
It's ironic we watched that show on
failure of genius, then I followed
by failing to understand you. It
seems so clear to me, terms precisely
stated, precisely used. Why do I
fail constantly? Each time sound bites play
repetitiously leaving me to
analyze what went wrong, who failed whom,
oblivious to the simpler fact:
not everyone understands my rules.
Chastising them works no better for
me than it works for my cat. Now who
thinks he's a genius? My cat's quite sure.

69/100
100 poems in 100 days