Never. That's when I thought I'd see the unfolding of events as they are tumbling into chaotic existence this year. And look it's only July. And I fear much is unfolding unseen. I don’t know what to worry about anymore - there are so MANY choices!!
METAPHORatorium
The river of life flows on - Mar's notes, photos, artwork, (660+ posts)
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Selecting a worry list for the Zombie Apocalypse
Never. That's when I thought I'd see the unfolding of events as they are tumbling into chaotic existence this year. And look it's only July. And I fear much is unfolding unseen. I don’t know what to worry about anymore - there are so MANY choices!!
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Remembering our terrible human flaws
Well well. Seems everything comes back into relevance. This post from ten years ago suddenly seems relevant again.
When thinking about this day, perhaps now more than ever, we can rightly consider our peculiar human blindness that leads a people of any persuasion, ethnicity or belief, to take power and crush others that are different without mercy almost as a privilege born of their belief in or assertion of their own "special" place in history, their so called destiny - by dehumanizing and blaming the other, stripping them of their homes, goods, social rituals, food, neighbors, stealing their labor also, and finally cramming them into cattle cars, express to the "showers" a euphemism for communal gas chambers, and subsequently incinerating the evidence leaving only piles of shoes and eyeglasses - so many that the sight is heartbreaking to look at, as if the starving skeletal bodies of the few survivors were not enough..
And we say #neveragain and over and over it happens with other groups, over and over, in and out of the light, seen and unseen, large scale and small scale. Sometimes the abused and the abuser (assuming there are survivors) might switch roles over a generation, over a governmental coup.
Don't kid yourself that we as a nation are above this. Consider who this land belonged to only a few hundred years ago. Consider your favorite political or spiritual enemy who you think is ruining or threatening this country, the economy, the world. How easily each of us could be led away into the dark and disappeared by men in black masks, never to be heard from again.. How easily we could turn a blind eye while someone else is led..
And don't you dare say say oh that was a group of Nazi monsters that has nothing to do with us. According to one of the Smithsonian's web pages, the genetic difference between human beings is around %.01. That is, one hundredth of one percent. In other words, we share 99.99% of common DNA with Hitler, Goebbels, Mengele... If you are too young to know those names, try Google.
Friday, November 8, 2024
Afterlife
AFTERLIFE
I’m just a sullen moth
flinging myself at the porch light,
always speculating,
splitting hairs,
asking myself why.
Is it the light?
Or the warmth?
Or the stillness of the
dried bugs inside the fixture
with that almighty bulb….
very still, but not "one" with the light
as their papery wings become dust….
#poem #mortality #metaphor
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
The Hiding Habit
originally posted May 1, 2024. Seems worth another go....
THE HIDING HABIT
When the world shouts obscenities
and the winds of change roar in the trees,
move low to the ground to the hiding place.
When fear is strong, pay attention.
Sit in stillness, in silence and listen.
Wait. Think. You don't have to move yet.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Purr to comfort yourself.
Friday, May 3, 2024
No restaurant like home
NO RESTAURANT LIKE HOME
Whole wheat and rolled oats with flax,
golden in the hot pan
cook one side then add to the top:
Red red raspberries, crunchy chopped walnuts.
Add remaining batter on top. Wait.
Wait some more. Flip. Wait. Then Flip some more.
When you think it might finally be cooked inside
Cut it in half and look. Make sure!
Get out the maple stuff.
Pour the coffee.
Be grateful.
Know how improbably lucky it is to have a meal at all.
- Mad Mar Mistryel Walker
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
May, May, go away
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Praying Mantis in the Fleabane!
In August I planted a dwarf butterfly bush, a sterile cultivar called Pugster Blue Fragrant. While not a native plant, it cannot be invasive like its larger relatives. I got it locally at Halas Nursery and even there it was swarmed with pollinators: butterflies, moths and bees. It was pungent and had filled my car with its heavy sweetish smell on the ride home.
After all the digging and watering, I went in the house for some coffee. I looked back out the window and there was a black swallowtale on my new butterfly bush already! For the next few days, there were always one or two butterflies enjoying the flowers. But after a week I didn't see any. I figured they were enjoying a change of diet over in my neighbors cone flowers. I kept peeking about but no butterflies.
All summer I have been nurturing a few stands of wildflower weeds as a garden project. The weeds in question are four-foot tall forests of Daisy Fleabane and Queen Anne's Lace. While I was looking for the missing butterflies, I found three praying mantis
Nature is capricious and pragmatic. Next year I think I will let the Fleabane grow elsewhere in my yard - somewhere not in a direct line between the butterfly bush and the cone flowers down the road....