S.B.T. 398

old age is pretty

tabitha showed up suddenly on the eve of a golden autumn jewel of a day.

the child of my half-sister and her first husband. whose birth i awaited and attended with precognitive excitement. so much art was generated during the months tabitha was germinating. her birth was a thrill indescribable. i bought her first pair of shoes, tiny pink strawberry sneakers.

but then sis's marriage derailed after a few years, and the little strawberry angel-child moved to cincinnati. sis's 2nd marriage brought her out to wyoming, and gave her another daughter and 2 sons. but i only knew them through pictures and stories. and tabitha all but vanished in the melee of changes during those years. now and then she'd briefly touch base, like when she'd come back to stay with her father for a short time, but that didn't happen regularly. and at a few clan get-togethers after she'd gotten a car and could get places. no matter how much time or distance between connections, she always remembered me.

so we sat in the garden-room, listening to the fountain bubbling, splayed out on the pink saucer chairs, and it seems there is always some call for pink around tabitha. and she was talking so fast, catching her words was like cllnging onto the last car of a runaway train. she's flashing pics of her wedding a year ago and her trip to spain. so fast i could barely see them and had to ask her to slow down a few times. but her slow was still my fast. finally, i said something i'd heard my mother say to me "for me, you've got to go a little slower". 

she did try, but at the speed of light everything flowed in a rushing stream punctuated by splashes, touching and lighting upon something, ever so quickly. and here she was telling me her younger sister was born well after the techno blast so she comes with devices built in more or less, which she said "makes her do everything really fast". 

in comparison my mind moves rather slowly. i like to hang onto words and images a bit before letting them go. i mull at length, and tabitha mulls for a split second before getting onto the next plane.

anyway, i'm sure you know the feeling of "smiling inside", which i remember as a yoko ono contribution from some time in the 80's.

S.B.T.397

irresistible forces 

A

time 

to gather 

winter 

stock 

has arrived unannounced, carrying a basket with bread and berries 

"none can be denied yet some demand the denial of others"

"though at least 7 are high priority and all are crucial," 

"ths friction can create a conflagration" 
that might change 
everything you 
know

but this

is no time

for heroics

get   the

h     o

S.B.T. 396

corresponding keys

avoid beginning a paragraph with a question, like the head of a snake, everything after it wriggles. in fact, never question anything. the whole issue about questioning is largely engulfed in the context of schooling, scheduling and protocols.

however you can write something like

"Where did the time go?" he wondered, blinking through the dusty window of the time machine, where he'd fallen asleep in the 14th century when men wore leather cod-pieces and must've accidentally snored or something and tripped the gauge that landed him in the present now.

i suppose i could say that you should always put quotes around a question. or give it a line of it's own. if you must. but my advice is to get rid of questions entirely.

should we leave it at that?

S.B.T. 395

Finite Element Analysis

An FEA agent, that's what i was, tho i didnt want to be that, but i realize now it wasn't who i am,  just what i did, and somewhat egolessly i might add — it never felt like anything other than service, to my higher-ups, industry, the public, god. i made it my game to make the best quality products possible, using eager talented artists and a variety of manufacturing facilities then watching the ticker-tape sales roll in.

i remember one time feeling happy about it. a bonus check,  if i remember correctly, that took my breath away, it was huge for me. but, just once, i only walked on air once, in chicago, after i was on my own, that is, after i left the company — what happened in chicago is another story, for now let's just say the angels were singing. 

scratching my head, i couldn't remember any outstanding events thrilling to my soul and spirit making me proud of myself, all such were tinged with regrets, not truly worthy. except maybe the time i enjoyed my first single malt scotch in a really posh upscale star-studded cocktail lounge in NY. i don't care much about those things now, not to mention pride itself ahem cough cough i could never find it worthwhile then to be happy about just one small thing, like getting an award, helping or saving someone's life. small things, yes. you never know what a big thing might actually be. like a really good vacuum design could be big.

Bakhita, that was her name, the saint, the woman from africa who was canonized in 2000 — that, is big.

please talk FEA and send letters with your personal advice to vacuum cleaner designers the world over, there is a crisis in utility/function/design rampant, insidious and embarrassingly pretentious which only we can rescue guerrilla-style

S.B.T. 394

she was a poet 

who knows why 

words splashed onto paper

filling pages

not pretty really, 

dark throbs

truly curly

smoke rings

eyes on fire

isolate, desolate 

world-weary wise

no one understands anyway

he was a comic

who knows why

pictures splashed on papers

alighting screens 

not pretty really

surly truly

ticklish too

eyes of blue

dark, throbbing

isolate, desolate

world-weary wise

no one understands anyway

S.B.T. 393

peter pan

if you tell me with words, 

a string of pearls 

a veil of  ether moss, 

your lips move  

but i can not see your eyes. 

so modest! 

and so devout. 

your words may be precious, 

scented, light as saffron powder 

lustrous and green like malachite 

the ease found in rhythm 

renders rock weightless 

somehow by magic

i can't see my shadow,  

a disguise that turns permanent

specially curved lenses
all matters of invention 

and creatures of adventure
seeking meeting and seeing  

who the other one is,
dear little tinkerbell

S.B.T. 392

a story and a poem

changeless

the king's only daughter's name was Shan-zhee-lis, she was (like snow white rosy cheeks, etc - about 20 pages worth which we can write right now with white light and rainbow pens) but now and then would become possessed with an entity who tried every trick to block her efforts to be perfect and good, even to hurt her, but not too much, just enough to be really annoying, like toe-stubbing, charlie horse, near misses on the roadway

and this entity would gather gobsmack gold sparkles streaming from her crown every time the noise reached such a high pitch that she would need to scream primal-therapy/karate style. 

this entity thrived on a few monthly jabs of life-force but Shan-zhee-lis was like a wellspring bubbling, an easy mark to be vaporized, but the entity allowed her to live because 1. she was self-renewing good nutrition, and 2. she was very amusing. (47 pages of incidences)

one time (last chapter) she had just been laughing and screaming into this pretty little flower-rimmed mirror-pool deep in the green valley, a ritual prescribed to deflate a purplish suckling pig-shaped balloon stuck to her neck (15 descriptions of typical situations) and it had only moments before let go, farting itself away when suddenly the entity spoke through a bobbing daisy at the edge of the pool "i am in you" and she looked at her reflection in the pool, right into her own eyes which she didn't recognize at first and screamed "get the fuck out!" which worked suddenly because the thing didn't realize she'd glimpsed the star pointer on the map showing where it was. abiding, that is. delight returns after a long journey to faraway places...an epiphany emerges

it happened that the truth for ages beyond all time, had been kept in a hut in the high himalayas, and thanks to martial art training (27 pages on dojong life) which had been achieved as a child in the Shao-lin temple, she remembered where/what it was/is. a terrible contest between good and evil had forced her to abandon that life for the modern age. the training had been put away but not forgotten.(chapter on life after extraordinary life)

her back, which had been crooked and needed chiropractic straightened by itself, it was after she'd inadvertently collected every drop of power that was stolen/squandered that the pathetic entity swallowed itself up just like a prune and turned into a powdered drink in a flexible container, sweet juice i mean sweet jesus

____________________

after midnight the cricket sings

don juan asks the guy on the corner
under the street-lamp

where's the ball game

right across the street he says

behind the walls around the stadium

that's a touch of spatial class 

he says looking around at the grey concrete

don juan, i whisper in his ear impeccably 
i forgot all about protecting 

personal power, don juan 
anywhere in the present tense can't be 

entirely personal 

it's all universal

you need to gain some x-tra

power from the moon

don juan whispered

back to me

personally

______