Riders on the storm in Normal entries

My little sister is driving in today from Nashville. The Doppler makes the Midwest look like someone dotted his eye and broke his nose; green, yellow, purple — I’m guessing it’s a rough drive. Tomorrow is my mom’s birthday, she’s driving up for that, taking mom out for mani/pedi and then we are going to what used to be the faculty club. The faculty club was an exclusive club for MSU faculty. As kids we’d go there to swim or play tennis and you never had to pay for anything, just sign your number. Heh. Now it’s called the University club and anyone can pay for day use.

Huh. I didn’t mean to make that sound like they let in the riff raff now. People in suits will go there for business lunches, makes the professors look like riff raff.

Then my little sister is driving back on Saturday. Ministers have to work on Easter Sunday. I don’t think anybody reads these pages who didn’t used to read them at OD, Christ knows I’m a hermit here, I don’t go out looking for Prosebox friends. But, yes, my little sister is clergy. Mostly she works at the VA and for a hospice outfit, but she’s also the hospital Chaplin. I know it sounds like three jobs, but it’s mostly just one. Why drive for a round trip of 24 hours to spend 16 waking hours? Yeah, I don’t know. She’s had my mom dying for ten years now. Hazard of the trade I guess. My mom is the healthiest day shy of 88 I’ve ever seen.

I was watching some B-movie the other day, a convolution of mythologies and shit. All things considered it wasn’t a horrible script, the actors weren’t too shabby and the director seemed as though he’d been in an editing room or too. My favorite line was an anti-line, I mean what I liked about it was that it didn’t have anything to do with anything and not what you’d expect, but if you could suspend your disbelief it’s exactly how things would probably go.

Part of the deal is dude is immortal, and after some horrible event he’s getting this ride from a waitress who he had just told his story too. She tries changing the subject by referring to his immortality and says “So, the civil war, what was that like?” and he says “I don’t know, I was in china at the time.” See I love that. That’s how I’d write the scene if I had painted myself into that corner. The actors were just subtle enough to pull it off too.

If I ever had a scene where a mystic was telling someone about a past life they’d say “You were married to some overage overweight guy, had a few dirty kids, some milk cows, a few goats and tended a garden with staples in it. One year was just like the other. When you died the congregation from the local church said some things and they put you in the ground.” Or “yes, I see Cleopatra. She was on the throne while you had a stall at the marketplace selling clay pots. You almost saw her once but a guy with a big hat stood in the way.”

It’s bad enough that next to whoring the oldest gig is praying on superstitions, but Christ, how many people could really have been Cleopatra? Why on earth does some guy in a cheap suit on Vacation in Atlantic City paying ten bucks to a psychic think that he was ever someone important? Or am I missing something, is the reward for being famous in a previous life that you get to sell fuller brushs in this one? It isn’t even really part of Christian mythology, which makes it a bit hypocritical and it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief. The small handful of eastern religions who have reincarnation integrated into the belief system never talk in terms of having once been a big wig, it’s usually a cricket or something.

Wow, if I were on a track I just seriously derailed. Glad I’m permanently off-trail. Which, just for the hell of it, would be my answer to fucking frost “Two trails diverged in the wood …” Yeah, bobby, I’m going off trail, I won’t know if it makes all the difference until I get to the end. It’s just how I roll.

A wood. The woods were a magical playground around here when I was a kid. Most of them are gone. In the outlying areas it’s a bit like the everglades; the woods are marshy. Here’s an odd confession, one I’ve never made before; one of the things I loved about Portland was the woods, besides just the novelty of actual forest in an actual metropolitan area. I loved the woods because in a small part they reminded me of here, home as I thought of it for the first few years. The rain forest is quite a bit different than the woods here were. Subjectively, perhaps better, definitely grander, but my woods were very Hansel and gretal-y. Old, deciduous, gnarled.

I really miss the mountains and the ocean, but woods have an ancient draw for me. Hmmmm, I don’t mean that in a mystical sense, I mean that in the course of my life, a forest is my oldest connection to the real world. A forest is enough, but, also, forests have birds. The birds here are really cool. Bright red cardinals, sky blue jays, purple martins, a variety of hawks, and crows large enough to carry off a calf. Ok, that’s hyperbole, but there are some pretty fucking big crows here. Woodpeckers (those things are like ventriloquists, you have to know the woods and the birds well to figure out where that sound is coming from).

If I were to only consider forest when thinking on Michigan and Oregon, the difference, in an emotional and poetical sense, is the woods here are domesticated, old, shaggy, and in Oregon they are wild and carnivorous. See? Not a very good practical description, but if you’ve been if both long enough to get a feel, it’s not a bad description. The timber industry here was mostly done before the industrial age. A lot of it before this territory was even a colony of England. In Oregon within the last thirty years protestors were driving spikes into old growth to save a local owl and the trees. I know, wtf? The idea is when a chainsaw hit the spike and the logger lost a limb or a life, work would halt for the day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the side of trees and birds, but it seems like driving a spike in a tree isn’t good for the tree and killing someone sort of uses up all the moral high ground and then some. I’m just saying timber is still an industry in Oregon, it’s choking out its death rattle, but it’s still there.

Yeah, shit, I don’t know. That should probably do it.