note to self: buy candy before dark

this night dreams and fears
spill into the dark ~ take form
and beg for candy

                 ~mudpie

click picture to enlarge and see the wonderful poster Osprey made for today's shows. Taken at Barney's train station, and there is Lucy in one of the costumes.

signs that might be knowin'

late yesterday a flock of geese was in the field. they looked so tired, they were quiet and hunkered down. must have come a long way to arrive so late. not much corn left on the ground. this morning they look better, most are standing and many are honking impatiently. time to go! snow coming from the midwest!
i have seen a little fox in that field, peeking out from the corn in the summer as i walked the tractor road. hard to imagine his scrawny self could be any danger to those big geese!

hallowe'en in the boo! nies

vampires and tinkerbells
stood at the door!
we live in the village
more came, and then more!
we gave them the apples
and chocolate and gum;
quick ransack the house before more of them come
our nickles and pennies we were in a fix
what's left but the case of guacamole mix!
we gave them that too, got some puzzled expressions
we turned off the lights, we had learned a new lesson
don't put out a pumpkin, don't dress as a clown
if you live in the village this night, just leave town!

The Four Reminders drive to work #3

#3
Unalterable
Are the laws of karma;
Cause and effect
Cannot be escaped.

every object along the drive, even my thoughts and actions,
is the effect of all that has been before
nothing comes about of its own
house, road, car, stone fence, beaver pond,
asphalt, job, tree, hill, song, memory, anger, love
-- and all are cause!
all part of the causes and conditions
to coalesce into future joys, deaths,
landscapes, friendships, environment, suffering, love
pay attention

virtual treats, but none for real kiddies!

sent out this invitation to all my Second Life friends to come trick or treating at my place, even if i am not there (which is most of the time). the funny part is that at my real house, i have to leave home to escape the trick-or-treaters! so many children come, and it will be at the same time as the Second Life hallowe'en show i am in, so i'll be off to hide out at with friends out in the boondocks.

the mystery on page 81

a big mystery! i got to page 81 in the Agatha Christie and noticed a neat pencil mark underlining the page number.
i was reading all the A.C.'s at the local library.
one by one, i read them and, always, a neat pencil mark underline on page 81. same with the Nero Wolfes! and, in fact, all the mysteries. i started seeing it in the other books!
someone has been here before me.
by observation, deduction, and clever questioning, i solved it.
Mr. Whittaker! he'd been doing this since he was 81. you can bet that HE never got half way through a mystery only to realize he'd already read it. this happens to me ALL the time, but fortunately, i don't usually remember how it turns out, and i just read it again. the funny part is that when the library replaced a book with a new copy, he'd happily and innocently READ IT AGAIN and underline page 81.
i want to do this with youtube!! people send me links and i watch them and think "this is great!" and send them to people who email me back..."you sent me this last year!"
not everyone is as lucky, or unlucky, as i am -- to have a magic slate for a brain that wipes itself clean. just me and Mr.Whittaker!

to err is human and so is blowing things up

this morning i found a great animation for blowing myself up,
with a horrifying noise, spewing blood and guts so far
that neighboring properties send notices that i am not allowed to set anything on their property
...all this in Second Life of course!
this will be perfect for the hallowe'en show zombie act.
today is a rainy nasty cold day the leaves all falling
and i am in the virtual world happily blowing myself to smithereens
and then smilingly reassembling.

the four reminders drive to work #2

#2
but death is real,
comes without warning.
this bodywill be a corpse.

my commute can be a charnal ground.
frog, skunk, deer, racoon, bird,
tree across the lane,
and once, a man lying ,
steam rising in the cold
from his hot blood spreading over the asphalt,
once a dog standing confused beside
another dog lying quite still.

The Four Reminders Drive to Work

#1
Joyful to have
Such a human birth,
Difficult to find,
Free and well-favored.

i have driven the same road each day for over 15 years
i am so lucky
beauty revealed season upon season
i drive into a calendar picture
there is time to sing and feel and be present
my little subaru takes me through dangerous conditions
glad not to be the fly that shares my ride or the thin fox racing across the road,
or the toad that -- ooops! -- sorry!

what's the latin for 'fear of entropy loss'

3 things that happened yesterday:

1. in the morning i started to read a book karuna sent me, which began with the quote "Mid-way in life's journey I found myself in a dark wood, having lost the way." (Dante, The Inferno).

2. when i got to work i opened my email and read in The Writer's Almanac "It's the birthday of poet and essayist Robert Pinsky ... in 1995 he published a new translation of Dante's Inferno ... Robert Pinsky's The Inferno of Dante begins: 'Midway on our life's journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost.'"

3. later that night a complete stranger added this comment to my blog post about the entropy detector:
"Just shot and posted a "how to" video for this device on youtube (search for "stephenleadersf")Thank you and Mr. fforde ."

I'd better build myself one quick! Entropy is dropping fast.

but soft!

"... in 1995 Pinsky published a new translation of Dante's Inferno."
so many beautiful works are translated again and again into user-friendly english.
but we be english speakers, thus we must study and take classes to understand the parlance, so old it no longer makes sense to us...for us, Hamlet in English must be performed using the original words!
do other countries re-translate it year after year, excitement and outrage at each new translation, some better some worse?
listening untutored to the archaic speeches in Hamlet would be like listening to a strange opera in an unfamiliar language. quite beautiful, the meaning inferred from the performers' expressions and actions.
oh but we don't think of it as music, as sound, as accoustical performance art.
and does anyone say for example, "but soft!"? How terrible would it be if instead they said "Quiet!" or even "Hush!" or even a whispered "stfu horatio."

sorrow to my heart

pick up the water bowls
put away the toys
throw the litter down the bank
wash the old blankets
cry and leave doors open
my long married life
this is the first time
living in apartments
or a volkswagon camper
or with my parents
or in my own home
no warrior joker intense friend
guards us from hard-heartedness
there is no cat in the house
goodbye dear Mouse

* *,

more zombiefication

a follow up to my previous post -
in my guise as a headless zombie, i went to a sim last night to look at some skins; i can't remember the name, it had god in the name somehow. there, a stalwart sort of fellow who seemed to be quite taken with my appearance followed me around saying mostly "Wow." it turned out he spoke only italian, except for wow - not even 'woot'! and i know nothing but ciao in italian. mother always warned me about guys who dig headless zombie chicks and speak only italian, so i said 'ciao' and went home...oh, but not before winning a lovely bed by having the letter L come up on a lucky-chair in a gated crypt reached by going down some stairs into what appeared to be a pond and through a maze of creepy rooms.before the lucky-chair gave me my prize, the chair electrocuted me quite spectacularly. definitely a place to avoid, tho i must say the bed is pretty.

note to self - avoid Osprey, she has armed herself with zomb-off

Hallowe'en

last night i worked on my zombification for the hallowe'en show.

not a good thing before going to bed, i thought i'd have nightmares! but it was so exhausting, i slept soundly. zombies are scary enough without also worrying about losing your head.

wtf were you thinking

small squashed mosquito
you wanted so little
now both our blood's spilled

~mudpie

West coast bookstores

on my vacation i took 2 books and came back with 5.
took The Time Travelers Wife and finished it, and Marilyn Robinson's Home, didn't read yet!
bookstores i visited along the way (not counting in the airports!) City Lights in San Francisco :-D, Bookshop in Santa Cruz, Open Secret in San Rafael, and the Henry Miller museum which is also a bookstore, in Big Sur . They were great! I could have spent way more time browsing, something i don't have much patience for at home.
maybe west coast bookstores have it all over the ones around here, even tho there are TWO independent bookstores in the tiny town where i work!
i didn't buy any books...too many to choose...the 3 new ones i brought home were gifts.
between that and the tea i got in San Francisco, it'll be a good winter.
I did just finish Tea Time for the Conventionally Built, and Smith is back in stride. i'd given up on the series, but this one is another winner.

secrets of the night

in the night came the snow
washed away by morning rain
late sleepers don't know!

~mudpie

not david either

hard frost everywhere last night
car-scraping frost
killing frost
"an end to gardening for everyone" weatherman said
it's official! no more feeling bad about the garden this year!

got up in the night to find wool socks
slept curled in a ball and dreamt of Los Angeles
sleeping floating sprawled in warm air

the hard-working boy who mowed our *cough* grass all summer
has stacked the wood in the garage.
what is he saving for i wonder, that makes him work so hard?
i do love stacking wood, but could not find time this year.

when i stack it myself, i leave room for the car.
now john is rearranging it, not knowing how to tell the boy to.
he'd better hurry. this morning something whispered 'snow.'
i wonder if that boy shovels walks?

i mostly wonder if this boy is from another planet, shot into space by his loving parents
as his planet fell into its sun.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Imagine Peace

i didn't get to meet or dance with Yoko Ono on Friday night :-(
the imagine peace project activities continued through the weekend.
all i managed to attend was the saturday morning discussion, which i expected to spend 10 minutes at but stayed an hour.
it was far better than any discussion i have been to in second life, for many reasons.
i don't feel i contributed much except to stir the pot and keep throwing out thoughts.
here is a report from any1, and many thanks to her!
i hope there will be follow up to it. as for her posting some of our remarks here, i'm not sure it is in the spirit of uninhibited discussion, but whatever works.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-340694

loneliness

All day
my toes
missed your toes.

~mudpie

(mudpie is an alt of lucy. i'd put a picture but mudpie is sometimes male and sometimes female)

Fussbudgets i have known

lucy as a tiger has conference with fussby

in second life i have a cat fussbudget, named for a real cat now gone to be with elvis; fussby is the being i envision sometimes to raise maitri, 'unconditional friendliness.'
to get in touch with this loving feeling within yourself, you think of someone, person or pet, that you love without complication or reservation.
both cats are orange tabbies, very vocal, very consistently companionable and amiable.
real life (rl) fussbudget, unlike many rl cats, was even delighted to get his ration of cat food each day. yeahhhh! it's CAT FOOD AGAIN!!!! unlike sl fussby, rl fussby was a major barfer -- i always wanted to get him a little tee shirt that said on the front something like 'barf your guts out' and on the back 'then eat the barf' -- he was very tidy and easy going.
enough about that. here's my problem -- every now and then sl fussby's programming gets out of whack. like a rl cat he is programmed to ignore all commands and settings from time to time and wander out of his preset range to get hung up in some neighboring sim border or object protection. dragging him back doesn't always put him right and then i have to delete him and rez another copy.
this is where i get a little freaked out. is it the same cat i am so fond of? this sounds like the buddhist exercise "if you lose a leg are you still your 'self', if you lose all limbs are you? if you lose internal organs are you? if you lose your brain are you still you? etc..." (for the answer, meditate for several lifetimes).
are these sl fussbudgets just blossoms on the virtual cat bush? to me it seems the exact same cat but i still hate to delete him. and for some reason i don't consider him a sentient being like the roomba, any more than i consider my avatar to be a sentient being. maybe because neither one of them seems to learn much along the way.

not Robert

frost -- warned in August

September -- frost predicted

now just assumed -- frost

.

~mudpie

.

praise be to fill-in-the-blank

vermont in october (not my photo)

there are just a few times i ever wish to believe in a god.
when my child was out late in bad weather, lost, in trouble or sick, i wanted some super power who could help where i was helpless.
more often it happens on days like today when the beauty of the world is almost unbearable and i am bursting with praise and gratitude to be offered up.
yesterday the hills were a vast choir of voices of color singing their hearts out, and then at 5 pm a rainbow appeared above it all!
this morning was grey and rainy which only made the red maples among the yellow and purple trees blaze like neon.
and don't get me started on snow, the most wonderful amazing undeserved gift of joy and beauty, always different, always glorious.
ok i admit it, i sometimes pray and praise a god i don't believe in and have no ability even to conceptualize.
one of my secret vices...singing hymns and gospel music...i love it!
praise be for hymns and gospel music by people with a totally different explanation of it all but the same wish to express their heartfelt experience of joy and beauty.

my trip and a business opportunity

10 days 5 cities 6 airports and many friends later: new hampshire to boston to seattle to san francisco and drive down the coastal road to los angeles then back to burlington vt via pittsburgh! what fun! i loved it all!

idea someone can use -- i will never act on it, but someone should! usually when i come up with a great idea someone's beat me to it anyway...like 'baseball' style cards with serial killers, or even a starter kit and handbook for s.k.

new idea:
peel and stick lettering for anonymous blackmail letters.
do you think this exists?
don't you hate it when you have to cut out all those letters, and the black stuff from the magazine gets on your hands plus what kind of glue is best, anyway?
maybe a starter kit and then sell refills and new sheets of most-used letters.