High on the list of THINGS NOT TO DO would be anything that sounds like a good idea after having imbibed in “a whole lot” of tequila The Tao Te Ching frequently mentions “the 20,000 things.” I surmised that that … Continue reading
The horse-head profile of the Quadriped-Inuk of The Front Yard against the billowy blanket-rolls of the oncoming storm … somewhat benign (the storm, that is) at this point. Wish I had either the camera or (more probably) the patience, eye, … Continue reading
I recently got to thinking of all the live musical performances I have attended. Before I met my wife there were several. And after meeting her, many more, rarely without her. ONE musical evening we both attended stands out in … Continue reading
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Rosco and the Chronicles of Narnia
It was the spring of my 22nd year. Like most, or practically all guys that age, there were a few things which could and would inexorably attract my undivided attention. One thing in particular. Most of you know what I mean.
Now it is 40 years later and when the occasion presents itself, I (usually) get just as interested. But I am not waiting expressly for those occasions very much. I am just about as interested in beer, beer with the guys, beer alone, dressing up in hockey-goalie equipment and getting abused by whoever my companions are at the time, responding when the writing muse strikes (or, usually, merely whispers in my direction), soaking in hot water, and the juxtaposition of place and climate and time for a nap.
However. I had an on-again off-again girlfriend. She would get the mood sometimes, and if I was lucky, I was around. I was in the mood all the time. But that didn’t matter — the ring on the merry-go-round would present itself on rare occasions, so I had to be eternally vigilant.
We were talking one day. She mentioned a series of books she had read and enjoyed, and I said that I didn’t know a thing about them.
She measured me with a steady gaze. I can’t remember exactly how she said it, but she would withhold certain, shall we say, favors, until I read those books.
It may have been within minutes, at most the next day, but I rushed down to the Boulder Public Library. Reading those books became the foremost and most important objective of my life. Well, a means to an end.
I obtained a Member’s Library Card. Where the heck were those books? The Children’s Section, of course.
I was slightly embarrassed, but as I said, there was a very important result to be obtained. So, I became familiar with venturing to that section where the only other adults were there with their children.
There was a young man in charge, and he tried to diffuse my not-completely-convincing attempts to act un-embarrassed.
“This is a great series. It doesn’t matter how old you are. And,” he conspiratorially whispered, “I still read these myself.”
I checked out volume one and sauntered home quickly to read it. I had to admit, that even without the incentive, this was fun. I was immersed in the C S Lewis world and knew that I would enjoy subsequent visits.
![Narnian.world.map[1]](https://betunada.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/narnian-world-map1.jpg?w=560&h=197)
Girlfriend-at-the-time gave me the Book Quiz. I knew all the important character’s names, their relationships, how they got there, what was going on, what destiny intended to be going on, how the story ended. And I was awarded my prize.
I checked out the second book in the series. A couple days later, I’m back for book number three. She probably had an ulterior motive, perhaps several motives, but I was hooked. If the star by my name during the summer-school reading program was not to be issued, the probability that I’d still read the remainder was not miniscule. Never-the-less, to my delight, there were a half-dozen or so books remaining.
Oh, that all assignments in school, and in life itself, had incentives like this. Having said/written that, it could easily be argued that yes, all assignments do, indeed, have, if not the same exact incentive, an incentive which is identical in other unforeseen and equivalent ways.
Thirty or so years later, the Chronicles of Narnia movies started coming out. I’ve seen them all so far, and I wonder, sitting in the audience, if I’m the only one who views the screen with a curious mixture of romantic tugs from the past, the shreds of actual memory of the story line, and waiting to see what happens next.
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BEYOND PARKOUR
(My WP buddy, BlueInThisLight, posted a “parkour'” experience recently, and)
We all, all of us,
have, haven’t we? traveled REALLYfast THROUGHtime &SPACE, perhaps instantaneously, at least once.
I read “Mitch the Singing Cowboy”s remembrance of performing parkour as he was chased by a 2700-pound bull when he was 10 or so years old. A spark (or, if you don’t think my clouded mind has the necessary ingredients for combustion, perhaps something akin to even a primitive form of pre-ignition) went off in my head. There was an occurrence in my life where I, and a friend, translocated instantaneously several dozen yards when we felt our lives were in danger.
“Allow me to explain.”
I used to study paranormal and psychic phenomena, and the term “translocation” meant the ability to move one’s body instantaneously from one location to another. That sort of thing …. could have …. happened to me, and a friend, once.*
Kevin and I and the rest of the high school track (and field) team had just finished a workout and, like cows back to the barn, went to shower in the locker-room. There were more athletes than shower spigots available, and Kevin and I wandered out into the hall to go to the girl’s locker-room. Now, this was usually a ‘safe’ thing to do, as the girls did not (as far as we knew) use the locker room at this time. There would be plenty of room, hot water and soap, and we’d saunter back to our lockers, dripping clean and wet, without having to wait our turn.
If memory serves, I don’t think we brought towells, so cavalier were we in our sense of security and mastery of our corner of the universe. Showering complete, we went to open the door from this locker-room into the hallway …
We heard laughing chattering happy girl’s voices, lots of them. The locker-rooms were across the hallway from each other, down a corridor accessible either from outside or down from an interior stairway. To make matters even more scary, the boys locker-room door was ten or so yards closer to the stairs than the girls door. The chattering and laughing intensified. We saw the first pairs of feet appear at the end of the hall, coming down from where the hallway framed the descending stairs. Kevin and I froze, giving each other brief piercing stares of sheer terror as our immobile and electro-shocked brains went into hyperdrive in an attempt to assess the situation.
The next thing we knew, we had instantaneously zipped flippulated willed ourselves back to OUR locker-room, panting and out of breath. The shock of our experience must have been etched deeply in our faces. Fred “Smokey” Barnes, the team’s affable genial giant state-ranked shotputter, wrapped a towell around his bounteous middle and sauntered out into the hall.
He came back later, laughing, and said that the dozen or so girls had “seen something” out in the hall. They claimed that they heard two sets of doors slamming loudly, with a flesh-colored streak connecting the audible dots.
I don’t know about you, but if you were a geeky pale skinny guy with low self-esteem, this was as close to outright humiliation, setting the stage for many weeks of school-wide ridicule, which we had, apparently, narrowly escaped.
*I will attempt to contact the other party involved. We were bestest of friends for many years, and for reasons (or no reasons at all) unknown to me, are not, anymore. Never-the-less, “in the interest of science” I shall endeavor to send THIS STORY to him, whose name is Kevin, though we all called him the affectionate nick-name of “Slum” back in those halcyon daze — to ascertain if he remembers this, and, if so, is his memory congruent with mine.
Please log on to blueinthislight.wordpress.com and read a recent essay about bulls not liking children. Mr. Blue, IMHO, describes an experience in which he utilizes “parkour” even though he did what he did at the time without a label as to what he was doing.
PLEASE CLOSE the GATE. (Another boring high-desert ramble Wif Da Dorgz)
I don’t know what they’re keeping out, or in. Perhaps they just want to make all the motor-idiots slow down, even stop, while going from one side to the other. This gate nor fence wouldn’t deter the bighorns, below …
The Nine-Mile Hill bighorn sheep herd, part of which is pictured above, hadn’t been very visible these past few months. Today, they’re out grazing, in their full glory for all the nearby highway traffic to view.
Meanwhile, back at “the gate” Rocksea, Sleven, and Dually engage in a pre-hike sniffaroony.
We stop on a ridgetop just south of what I call East Pass to Cactus Park. View is to northwest — with snow-covered Pinyon Mesa on the horizon, and the red desert sandstone cliffs along Unaweep Canyon beyond the relatively flat Cactus Park. What would be impressively visible just a couple miles further west — unseen from this vantage point — are the massive pre-cambrian granite cliffs which displace and replace the reddish sandstone.
Turning 120-degrees to the east, we look to the shaley steep slopes of theBookcliffs. What you can’t see is that my house, along with a few thousand others, is on the valley floor before the Bookcliffs.
Gibbler Mountain, the primary west-edge landmark of Cactus Park. A pleasant breezy cloudily-scattered-cloudy day.
Dool pauses alongside an inuk-thingy in the trees.
Rocksea peers down …
The truck is just off the “road” towards the left.
We get home. The kitten is prostrate at the foot of the Lithograph of the Cat-Saint Bearing Fish.
… we’re in trouble.
The semi had hit the telephone pole exactly mid-front bumper. This was a straight stretch of highway, and so, the patrolman noted that the abrupt change of direction the tire marks made on the ice on the pavement did not “make sense.” Did the driver quickly and erratically spin the wheel due to a dropped cigarette? — or perhaps a latent heart condition kick in? The answer should come from the truck’s custodian, unconscious and en route via ambulance to the clinic at Llano Naranja.
The driver was checked-in by Marta Dominguez, working the night shift at the clinic’s emergency room. As she helped transfer the gurney into the receiving area, she had an odd sense about this patient. A look of shock and bewildered apprenension seemed etched onto his face. She had the feeling that this facial message presaged the accident.
It would be two days before the driver regained consciousness, his presence at the table of “the Here and Now” further impeded by the drugs administered to block the pain of cracked ribs and broken nose.
Marta had gone to the movies earlier that month with a male friend, and afterwards stopped at the Orange Flats Diner. She had barely settled into her seat when a hand tapped her shoulder from the adjacent booth. “May I join you?”
Marta turned to her companion, who shrugged ‘why not?’ then back to Fescue Tseyka, within whose gray and weathered countenance could be any combination of ethnicity. Turned out he was half-Tlingit Indian, far from the tribal homelands of the Northwest. A competent and efficient handyman, he had done odd jobs at both of Marta’s places of employment, and she had made his acquaintance. But something was troubling him this evening, and Marta and friend were to become the outlet for Fescue’s epistle.
“Miss Dominguez, I have watched you for some time. And your companion seems of kindred spirit. I think I can share something with you.” Marta and Beta, noticing the nearby waitress, pointed to their coffee cups and turned back to Tseyka.
“I am far from my ancestral home, but I have followed the spirits of my forefathers to this place,” continued Fescue. “Many years ago my people lived not only in harmony with the land and sea, but with the spirits of those places. The holy men would strive to become conduits for their spirit guides and allies. Messages from these spirits would be transmitted to the people through Potlatch.”
“Potlatch?” inserted Marta.
Tseyka continued. “Each passing of a chief, or a change of dynasty, moments of deep significance for my people would be marked by Potlatch. Each Potlatch would be commemorated by a totem for that occasion. Our spirit guides and allies would reveal the totem’s form through the holy men.”
Beta squirmed, though he knew, no matter what, he had to be polite on this date. “The holy men were like spirit mediums? Coffee appeared in their cups, with menus left unobtrusively at the table’s edge. “The spirits worked through the holy men?”
Tseyka looked at Beta benignly, and with a hint of a smile continued. “Not my tribe alone, but our neighbor tribes could read their ancestor’s history through the totems. The Tsimshian, the Haida, the Nootka, and others whose names are gone but their spirits continue. And,” he sighed, “cry, Kwakiutl.”
Fescue lapsed into silence, his eyes momentarily closed. Marta politely waved “we’re fine” to the puzzled waitress, who then was able to concentrate on other customers across the diner.
“When the white men began to intrude upon our lands, they tried to take everything. It was not enough to take our livelihood, our best hunting and fishing. They could not take Potlatch, so they tried to take us from our spirits.” Tseyka took a long slow sip from his cup. “The creation of totems was outlawed. None fought as hard as the Kwakiutl. The white men were especially ruthless in their squashing the Kwakiutl’s ancestral ways.” Another measured silence ensued, their coffee cups re-filled. “My uncle was part Kwakiutl,” Tseyka resumed. “He told me of his five times great-grandfather, a holy man of powerful medicine. Rather than abide by the white man’s edicts, he and a few disciples went directly to the spirit realm to continue the old ways.”
Both Marta and Beta had been patiently listening, but this last statement was in need of clarification. Fescue allowed himself a wry smile. “They left their bodies and have been in the spirit realm ever since. When my uncle told me of this, I realized that I have always been aware of my six times great-grandfather. He and his tribe are near this place.”
“They practice Potlatch, sometimes their totems briefly intrude upon our realm. When the light is just so, at twilight, or when a dark cloud hides the sun, I can see their work.” Tseyka allowed himself both another smile and long sip of coffee. “Oh! I better let you kids have your dinner. Thanks for listening.” Fescue Tseyka grasped both their hands in his, scooped up his coat, and left.
Marta was back on duty when the truck driver regained consciousness. She reflected back to when she admitted him two nights before, and the apprehension she had had. She then easily bridged another mental spark-gap, to her “dinner with Beta and Fescue.” Afterwards, Beta mentioned that during his previous truck-driving job he thought he had seen strange protuberances from trees or signposts or even telephone poles “when the conditions were right.” Marta remembered one time in particular in the forest when, for one several-second span, a tree had several faces, stacked one atop the other. She looked again, and they were gone.
The driver moaned through the bandages covering his nose. Marta took a few steps in from the door. The driver opened his eyes and looked around the room slowly. His gaze stopped at Marta. His banged-up face could not disguise an embarrassed grin. “You’ll never guess what I thought I saw.”
“Try me,” Marta grinned back.
“Our give-a-shit expired a long time ago.”
The title is from a “search” someone typed into whatever internet search engine* and was directed to my blo(r)g. So, whatever it means, it apparently is manifest, somehow, here in the blo(r)g. Perhaps through-out. The whole site, all of betunada@wordpress, might be, for all I know, positively (or negatively) dripping with it. Veritably oozing.
However, and not in my defense, I exemplify the Expiration of the Give-a-Shittyness, eh?
Betty, however, continues to have room not only in her heart but within the castle to provide a home for more foster children.
Yesterday she brought home “Waldo.” FOR FREE while the supply lasts! looking lonely in a cage in the local pet-supply store. He won’t quite replace Walter, our most-recently disappeared feline. No, nobody, cannot be exactly ‘replaced’ — but ‘remembered’ and ‘revered.’ (Provided the entity warrants those.
(Define “warrants.”
“What!? Who are you?”
“The not-so-wicked twin of yourself.”
“Are you here to throw off my dialogue?”
“Yes.”)
So I shut him off, and presume EVERYBODY warrants some Regards, Reverence, and Remembrance. But(t) heck, experiences yet to come (I just might live more than 5 or 6 years) could change that belief. Prob’ly all too easily.)
So, we can’t really not make an effort, as we should at least go through the motions of taking care of our foster family. And, to quote Paul Simon, we’ll continue to continue
to pretend
our lives
will never end
and flowers
never
bend
with the rainfall.
*And, later in this chapter, I typed in “why are internet search functions called Engines?” and will try to summarize just part of it. A quirky weird part of it.
Well, the Amerikin elexions is/are apparently, over, for now. Now, granted, I detest the million$ and bazillion$ waystid awn the so-called ads and venomous schmegg-schlingging, but … if I had a “spare” few million $$$, I would have considered putting up (as) LARGE (as i could afford) BILLBOARDS in as many major cities as i could afford. saying: YOU DON’T HAVE TO VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS: VOTE GARY JOHNSON, LIBERTARIAN — FOR PRESIDENT.
This moronic two-party doomed inert ineffectual sick inherently greedy and short-sighted and basically unresponsive system will have to end, or (as is likely, and obviously ongoing) drag us all down.
What’ll help is that here, in Colorawdough, mariuana smoking has become mandatory. Maybe make things more tolerable …
Why, just tonight, we put in the movie “Marley” (No! NOT the cute puppy-dog Marley!) and, because of the just-voted-in state law which says POT SMOKING IS REQUIRED we had to indulge. That movie is intense. There are several tenents of Rastafarianism I think I could readily embrace, but acknowledging Haile Selassie as THE DIETY — well, I need more than a little convincing, there. (But, still, I’d acknowledge the ‘validity’ (or actual/real/valid/main-line-to-gawd) of Rasta over, say, LSD (oops! LDS) or ‘take-a-hostage’ (or “convert or die”) varieties of Islam).
And (she doesn’t know it, but, heck, it’s a plan) I pictured and (as)phyxulated upon A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE. Betty and I should continue to practice being a folk-singing (or folksie-schlepping) duo. While incarcerated within a senior-citizen medium-or-countryclub-security old age hoam, we can conduct our music-playing sessions IN THE CENTRAL LOBBY of whatever facility, and especially after having indulged in the state-sanctioned mandatory mildly-psychotropic substance. Well, I think that’s better than the slow and gradual mental rot-ation which goes on anyway.
Betty continues to be what (or, more exactly, whom) I call “WulfMuthur.” The usual plethora of “wolves” clustered about.
Below, a poster child for yet another search-engine query:
“the why don’t people like me test.”
Yeah, that was another recent “search engine term” directing somebody (or if not a “some” and/or “body” — it could have been a robot!) to my site. And, seriously, folks, I wouldn’t ask that question. I don’t wanna know why people don’t like me. if i took that kind of poopy seriously, i would probably have to seek therapy, whatever that is. and i’m not too unhappy with the way i am and things are. if only i could CONVEY or convince people of that. but ’cause of the lack of concern of the, uh, test, why bother convincing anybody?
But(t) still, I thought my site was, more so than not, uplifting.
Sleven found a mostly-empty bag of nachos and went in to finish off the crumbs. He prowled around the house like the bag-head-monster that he inherently is. I considered taking the bag off, but it did have a transparent window, diminishing the banging-into-doors and walls a bit. (He eventually extricated).
And I wonder about Dopey, still lost out there, somewhere.
Wolf-Mother doing what comes naturally. Note the three dawgz under the table, and two cats atop.
Sleven stumbled about, and when all the nacho crumbs were inhaled, or completely slobberated, the bag either partly disintegrated or somehow disappeared.
And she’s out acquiring more wolves for the never-ending WulfMuthur Chronicles …
Good ol’ Wikipedia: (re: search engine):
“an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system”
oh well, “they” (hooever ‘they’ are) had to call “it” (the engine) something.
There was a lengthy detailed response to my query. Much of it was the history of how search-engines came about. I copied just a part, about some characters from an old (lame) comic strip –> Archie.[3] The name stands for “archive” without the “v”. It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, computer science students at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a searchable database of file names; however, Archie did not index the contents of these sites since the amount of data was so limited it could be readily searched manually.
The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota) led to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead. Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy’s Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers. While the name of the search engine “Archie” was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, “Veronica” and “Jughead” are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor.
yeah. i knew that. thanx, Wikipedia.
This reminds me of an philosophical and rhetorical question, stabbing at the basic essence of everything my life was when I got my present job. What is an “engineer”? The dictionary said — something basically like “someone skilled at working with machines.”
Now, THAT didn’t shed much light on anything. Over 55% of what I “do” as an “engineer” involves staring at one or more glowing rectangles, while moving cursors and clicking and typing stuff. But Archie and Jughead and Veronica, that was (and is) sorta funny …
Dogzeneye discover the Wombat Cow-Skull Shrine.
Darned E T’s. What should be a glorious sunrise is compromised, thrown into a bit of doubt, by yet another of their hovering spy-craft keeping watch on us. The thinly-veiled attempt at disguising it as a cloud didn’t fool me. I think they’re wasting their time keeping me under surveillance! So, later in the day I decide to go on a foray into the Olivivas Wilderness Area, taking the dogs along with.
The weatherman warned to “expect a bit of weather,” and bit of weather it (whatever “it” is) did, indeed. What had been a dry mostly cloudless week rapidly changed. The front rolled in …
Dually peers down into gathering fog. Soon, it began to snow. (First of “the season” for this area). The white stuff melted pretty quick after it hit the ground, but there were brief intense flurries.
The clouds thickened. The wind picked up. RockSea gives the lower elevation one last look before we turned and …
… stumbled onto the Wombat CowSkull Shrine. In a mysterious* open area where nothing grew, the word “wombat” was spelled-out with rocks. Above it was a sort of … shrine? Totem? Warning symbol?
*(“Mysterious” as during our trek we moved through as thick a forest as one would encounter in the “high desert” — which our region is categorized as. Yeah … this forest wouldn’t be “thick” in, say, the Pacific Northwest).
View of the Wombat from right-to-left, and
from left-to-right.
Rocksea and the mysterious assemblage of bones. The dogs didn’t even linger to consider hauling off a piece for gnawing. (There was a large enough collection of the rest of the skeleton nearby).
I checked the time and we would have to hurry to get back to the car before dark.
I usually have a basic idea of where I am when in the Olivivas Wilderness Area. This time I was put to the test, what with fog and diminishing light. And I had a difficult time keeping my cigar lit. We arrived back where the car was parked with less than five minutes before it would have been completely dark.
Is everything related to everything else? or are there many disparate un-connected random chaotic aspects and things and trends winding about? Somehow, it made sense when I got home and checked the stats on my blog. One search term which someone had entered, and was directed to this site was:
“Our give a shit expired long ago”
It’s like the man said, when this happens, I think you can then DO THINGS without a sense of attachment nor identification with the fruits of your actions. Hompity ho …
b e t u n a d a 