S.B.T. 441

The Dangers of Wen

there she was in the hot seat, the camera closing in, she's trying to explain her story to veteran reporter on human interests, Cody Cowlick: 

 "i didn't know what to think," she shrugged, her hands in front like she was holding a potted plant, "i received a promotional notice in my email for WEN hair care, it was convenient and easy," she pleaded, "i always saw the WEN tv ads too late at night to phone in an order and never remembered to look up the website, so this "promotion" made it easy, because i was interested in the product, it just fell into my lap after a long while of considering the purchase" 

 "and so we heard about what happened. would you please tell us how it was that they used your name and finances to traffic in slavery?" 

 "the WEN site that was linked to the email was a false front. my personal/credit and computer address info was placed in compromise and then used to fund some kind of transfers" 

 "oh my goodness! then what happened?" 

 "i was taken away by FBI agents and locked in a psychiatric cell for 37 days" 

"why a psychiatric cell?" 

"because i told them they were crazy to think i'd be involved in anything like that." 

"what do you mean?" 

"in that situation, they took what i said to be offensive or dangerous to them or something, and i was simply expressing myself in the same way i usually would do, nothing loud or abrasive, just incisive. i think i accidentally hypnotized them with the word "crazy" (it rang a bell somewhere in each of them i mean hello) and they turned it back on me, it's what they are trained to do like a knee-jerk reaction, it was easy to lock me up if i was "crazy". and it was nothing more than a kind of cruel discrimination, especially if they thought i really WAS crazy, which they didn't, not really.  imagine how people with real mental disorders can be treated like slaves, that's the whole thing about it." 

"you use the word "slaves", what do you mean by that?" 

 "they are segregated and kept down, medicated and tossed around." 

 "and so what happened finally?" 

"i was finally let go with no charges but i am now having the battle of my life trying to get my children out of the foster system" 

 "well we're holding your children backstage, and here they are! c'mon out kids!" 

 "Mama! mama! MaMa!" the camera pans the children rushing onstage and closes in on the group hug, Cody is grinning, swinging her arms aw shucks. 

 "now we understand, dear, that the courts wont allow you to take the children home, but i have received permission to bring the children to my house where my nanny will see to their needs, and you can come and visit, until the whole deal is done." 

 "oh my god, my kids are gonna live with Cody Cowlick! that's gotta be the best thing in the world! thank you! thank you!" 

 "oh it's no trouble, and you're welcome any time i'll get your paw-print for the door-scanner, and you can come in." 

 "kids, what do you think?" 

 "she has six video game stations" 

"a swimming pool and garden on top of a building" 

"an aviary and a complete tech studio with kid-friendly computers" 

"she even has a sauna and steam bath big enough for fifteen people" 

 "wow that sounds great. ok, let's do this!" (((((((((((((group)))))))))))))))) 

 "then, i hope you'll come over for dinner tomorrow, don't leave before i can scan your paws......thanks everyone, this is Cody Cowlick for the network. good night.

S.B.T. 440

 Inside the head uv a fish writer

She delivers packages, letters, messages, taking the short-cut route through the fields. The sun and wind are freeing, invigorating. She could close her eyes and walk briskly, arms out, reliving a once-upon-a-tme when she was a hefty-winged raven, finding each breath and matching step elevating and exhilarating. Her 2nd stop is always Pola’s farm and zoo, where she bathes and feeds the baby elephant, filling and leaving a basket of fruit for the chattering monkey twins, and lastly, sits to the side of the elderly gentleman panther singing the lullaby her mama sang, while he sips from a bowl of cream.

The earnings are enough to keep the garden seeded and not only feed the gypsy miners, but herself, aunt Reubie in the old stone cottage, and the children Norin and Wita. With barter for nails from the garden vegetables, the gypsy wood-carver made a temple of candles out of broken barnboards, kindling and wood-chop, and she could greet travelers and passersby who stopped to see. The candles when lit together, made a star that could be seen from as far away as can be imagined.

By the way, what was her name?

She was a robust woman of 42 in the days when knights, blinkingly armored, trotted up on horses so strident they were drawn to the likeness of willow and birch in snow. Days of reverence, pride, fear, and pony uprisings.

The simple folk longed to live peacefully in their patched cabins, gentle farmer homes, climbing ivy rancheros, grassland huts, coconut houseboats playing at the river edge. 

She does her best every day to fulfill appointed duties. 13 dusty blue miners last counted eat suppers in decency, she sees to it, an humble feast is ready when they come around 7 pm to gather at the kitchen window, waiting as complete with roasted chicken and fried potato, bread and cream and brandied apples, the "Table Ready!" call would ring out - and they’d dance gaily clamoring for chairs, laughing and singing “La,lalalala Lee…Veritas Veritas…La lalala Lay…..”

S.B.T. 439

before i knew it, i found out that according to the trees, the ones i know personally, there are no spaces between them. their root legs feather out like veins underground, a stretched mirror of their top limb'ical syst'm. and of course they signal-speak more or less to each other, cues in the wind, they wave, touch leaves on a breeze, they often bend over each other in storms, while under the topsoil their shanks intertwine, sap running through arteries, on high vibe nature alert, tall, quietly majestic, welcoming to birds and little beasts - there are no spaces between them.

but, "empty space, in a complexity of connectivity, with multi loose ends, is a need," i tell you, "for a creative type of person."

so i consider that spaces between things are a disconnection.  a chance to vacate from thought-like inclinations, from repetitive evocative scents, sense and senses, from any kind of crushing intimacy, from some overwhelming daily drudgery-doo.
but it widens the gap between the tiny nerves under my skin and the molecules of air that swirl all around from tree to tree to me.

S.B.T. 438

disappearance

thought dust swept away

from the shelf

brushed off,

the surface polished

my brother and me, almost 3 and almost 5

S.B.T 437

i always left the most... 

i always felt that there is something bigger and more genuine than i could fathum. but i also always felt that whatever the something is, it’s none of my business what it’s doing. and though it had an effect on the overall lineup, as contender for the position of originating force, i never thought of prizing alignment with it, because obviously, we’re related.

i keep remembering/discovering ways that ledd to the currrrent errer, and have found many instances of facts pseudo-scientifically swep=t under the rug, which someone owes apologies for. what i would not have stopped long enough to appreciate is the hallmark of a flaw in the pattern sensibility. what through erroneous judgment anyone felt entitled to do without consideration very much of dispersed effects: tamarrow we can cab calculate calloway the dreaded ‘how someone feels’ equation and get desired result short-term. “forget the possibility of disaster FOR A FEW SECONDS” and THEN “think of every catastrophe along the way.” 

cant think of every catastrophe i might meet along the way, w/out risk of damaging the OS, but it looks like a f-good bizway map.

Ping Pong Mandala — July 9 2019 pic.twitter.com/nSfmEMM4vA

— tipota (@tipotato) July 9, 2019

S.B.T. 436

firing people

“Missy has not changed in all these years, Rocky” i said, (“she’s like the picture of doria grey”)

“my wife is so full of….god” he smiled, almost apologetically, tilting his gaze toward the que-ball. I swiftly understood the angle, he uses his heart to love, he loves, he really loves. He probably knows people wonder how he got a beautiful girl like that to marry him. People look at them and think something like Liv Tyler married Michael Jeter. but it’s the complex surface reflective with added texture they’re responding to. And it’s stone simple: he loves truly, and she was either wise enough to know or just plain lucky.

Remembering struck me silent for a while, thinking of that last good-bye, and how dignified he was when I fired him.

Unlike when I fired Brystal, who started yelling and crying and screaming "how am i gonna pay the bills?" (i looked at her blue streaked hair and thought, “well you can skip the beauty shop expense”.) (it might have been that i had just begun using a “rinse-out-the-grey” bottle of color once a week in the shower, i’d just turned 40. and so i knew you could do it at home for cheap.) and then she stormed out running to the President’s office but failed to successfully go over my head and get her job back because of course he knew exactly what was going down. 

Also unlike Charlotte, who threatened a lawsuit and then did sue, and then did settle. All that day in court with the pages of documented reports in my briefcase that I’d had to prepare and pre-date. A skin-tingling creepy scalp feeling ripping to resolve down. I never did want to fire her but had an ultimatum from a frustrated overlord after delaying for three months so she could collect. 

Even tho it was years ago the firing of Rockwell Savarino still plays in my mind like a newly released reel. The thing is, he has said it was a fantastic thing, losing that job. it changed his life, he said, grinning. and maybe that was the truth sparkling out from the merriness dancing in his eyes. He handed me a bowl of pasta when my mouth dropped open, then he suavely grated cheese over the top of it.                                                                                                                                                   

“how did i not see the greatness of these people before?” i wondered silently, wide-eyed, looking at Rocky, white streaks in his beard now. wasn’t i standing right in it? i couldn’t see myself. it is much easier to fire someone you can’t relate to. so i assessed performance, that was all, and thought of them as robotically useful. but if they didn’t do enough or they didn’t do it right or they annoyed me continually. send that one back to the shop….NEXT>.

_________

“…….and adda yadda yadda i’m so sorry i have to let you go,” I said wrapping it up.

Pause. 

Gayle looks me in the eye empathically and says  “Are you sure?” - that was the best instant response ever.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

S.B.T 435

refuge for wonderers

things changed this morning. or was it two minutes ago? or was it 2 days ago? maybe it was never, maybe it has always been this way. the way of the wonderer keeps a path that can move in any direction and in any dimension, but this morning sensibilities are definitively different. i think it's because of a dream i had.

unaware, as wonderers most often are, she’d been looking for someone, a friend perhaps, or someone new. a tarot layout suggested someone was coming, someone from the past it suggested. she rolled names and faces over through her head. were there any among them i’d love to see again? she asked herself, she told me later. and oddly, there were, even though she’d spent the last decade or so ignoring the memories of the past. 

you know how sometimes it might happen that “signs” come to you in a snapshot flash, or in a moment of reverie, or just before sleep, etc.? “if i could learn to stop worrying,” she said,
”i would see more of them.” 

A burly yellow tomcat Djedefre lives under the crumbling vacant cottage at the back of the yard. I put food out every day for him and his tribe.  During winter I use a heated bowl strung through a slit in the kitchen window next to the deck, set up under a lean-to book-ended wth a ramshackle shelter carved out of a plastic storage tub. Inside the insulated tub, another giant warm dog bowl, for a St. Bernard or two maybe, for keeping outdoor water unfrozen. It’s big enough to accommodate a queen and her kittens, twice the size of the one with the food in it. But Djedefre (Joo-DEFF-ree) is hefty - broad, muscular, puffed out - it’s a cramped studio apartment. Nonetheless, in January he squeezed in there and filled the dog bowl brimming over in his search for warmth, fortunate to find a cozy spot away from cold, snow, wind, and with food nearby. 
      Three summers ago Djedefre defeated Vortegen, the aged and tired despot, who'd been colony king for several years. It's what they do. Since it is obviously unwise to interfere with natural predilection, even though people are gifted at doing it, it must be wiser to support survival.
      Anyway, I was carrying a basket of food out to the back deck of the old cottage yesterday, humming along.  As I reached the steps and looked up - there he was, right there, curled up in the morning sun. He raised his big golden head and called out something to me, it was whole tone and jazzy. That moment I realized life is truly magical, pretty much every minute. He didn’t run away when I approached to lay down the goodies. He kept talking, and before I'd turned to leave, he was already nose-down. So what? a cynic might say. But cynics rarely realize who they are, they assume the right to question equals or implies the right to be judgmental and waste a lot of time. In reality it was Godlike, blessed, a magical vision. Watch the evening news and you'll understand how that works, brainwashing contrasted with nature and now. It just was what it was. a wild cat accepting and communicating with me, showing trust. It is nothing less than a prayer answered/dream becoming real. I think I know what to do next. See the new comedy. And edit the dream to bring forth enhancements.