The stuff we can never find

Keys? What keys?

Can't keep hold of keys. it seems I really don't want to open or close much at all. But keys are not the only objects that plague me. Grocery lists, cough drops, bills, pencils, poems I have scrawled on envelopes, the cup of coffee I am drinking... Whatever it is, I can pick it up, hold it my hands contemplate its uses and destination, but only half a minute later - it's no longer there and I have no idea what I did with it

I am not the only one with this problem - though for a while I wasn't sure.... A few years back I witnessed a scene that was a revelation. I was visiting a couple I know – the husband is a pianist who was getting ready to rush off to accompany a choral group's concert. He was standing in the kitchen clutching the directions to his concert location, when he and his wife realized he didnt have his dress jacket. They began to frantically search for it and finally found the jacket, smoothed it, covered the hanger with plastic. But now he discovers that although he has the jacket in hand, he no longer has the directions to the hall where he is going to play. A new search is mounted for the directions which cannot be found anywhere. A call is made to get new directions. After he leaves, I noticed the original set of directions on the floor right where he was standing when the search for the jacket began. yikes!

This sort of drama has happened to me repeatedly, except that I curse and slam as i am searching which does not really help.

It was so clear to me that my friend was thinking about where his jacket was and was not paying the slightest attention to his hands or what was in them... As he walked away his hand opened without his realizing it and the list skittered to the floor like a lost leaf. It's the thinking about something else and not paying attention that seems to be the cause...

Maisy goes for a walk early in the morning, a short one, but the terrain is not smooth. Couldn't find her cane today. We looked in every room, behind all the doors, in the car, beside all the chairs. No cane.

She went to the grocery store yesterday though where the same not-paying-attention phenom came into play. People with canes tend to put them in the grocery cart when they are pushing it around the store. That works great until they get to the car and happily stow their food, while contemplating future meals, the drive home, the next stop on their errand route. (Cane? What cane?) The last time Maisy inquired if they had found any canes, they offered a choice of a dozen that had been left behind in shopping carts. That's where we went and sure enough they had her cane which has her name and address right on it.

Go figure.

Medical bruohaha needs context

A letter I am sending today to the local paper

To the editor:

The News Times and Connecticut's various versions of television news have repeatedly run stories that illegal immigrants are costing Danbury Hospital $4 million in unpaid bills. The figure has been cited over and over again. Any reporter and any thinker worth his salt knows a figure without context can be a little like holding a dime up next to the moon on a dark night or looking at one line from a drawing. Could be the side of a skyscraper. Then again it could be the side of a jelly jar.

There are two numbers without which the $4 million dollar figure is completely meaningless. It is necessary to know the total amount billed out for medical care (both paid and unpaid) by the same hospital during the same time period - and also how much was spent by that hospital covering for medical care for uninsured and UNDERINSURED American Citizens.

Then there must be a comparison - what percentage of the total billed out for medical care does that $4 million represent? And what is the percentage of the total for the unpaid bills of citizens? Give us context and then we'll know how to consider that $4 million. I suspect we are whining about the jelly jar when we should be furious about the skyscraper...

ADENDUM - As of Dec, The Danbury News Times never chose to print this. They never even called to confirm the letter sender as is usual at most newspapers.

the wild roar of this day

        The trees are tossing in a fit of false-March on this wild morning. Though it was quite cold earlier now it is a balmy 50 degrees.  Some November.    Around here, at least the oak trees sport  a lovely copper cast, while  many leaves are merely brown.
        I live on the upper-lip of I-84 and I still can't get over the continual wind. Walk straight across our small backyard, scale the fence, and keep going for 20 feet and there is a sudden drop-off where the highway cuts through. You can't see it from here, but there's  an ever present background hum. When the air temp is changing, the wind tends to push through the i-84 canyon rattling all the trees on both embankments.

I see on the Nature Geezer blog there is a page about the winds of autumn.

Cat woman lives!

Truthism - crazier than other isms?

It's tragic how people's ideas can clash.

On Youtube on my SingingMist channel, (Now thePuzzledDragon channel) I have a "Got Christmas Dread " video. Someone left a comment on it, that Religion and Science were bullshit and should be junked infavor of Truthism.

When I visited the website indicated on Truthism, I found about six pagse of of circular bushwhacking before it finally got around to the crux of it - an emphatic belief that the planet is controlled by "Reptilian Overseers." And of course you can see these reptiles only under the influence of meditation or hallucinogenic drugs. Imagine that.

I thought that was crazy enough, but then an equally strange thing happened. One of my regular viewers told the "truthist" person to get outta dodge with his "filth" I replied with some notes about free speech - but shortly after the fellow's account was suspended. I guess that was considered spam? His comments had vanished. I thought well, I will just start over again. And I deleted all the comments on that video.....

Funny how one man's truth is another's ridiculous fantasy - how one man's free discourse is another's filth. When talking about the religion, the storyline always gets crazy no matter what faith is under discussion. How outlandish is a virgin birth or people rising from death or the whole world being carried on a giant turtles back? It seems like no one is able to think of these crazy notions as psychological metaphor. No wonder we are bumping each other off at a frantic pace over religion. Maybe that's man's tragic flaw - his penchant for us-and-them self-delusion.

-- Mar Walker

The pre-christmas bleak

The holidays are sure a time of greatly varying mental states. Some of it is very sweet, On the other had there are the choking bitters. Thanksgiving starts the Christmas season. Mostly I could live without a lot of the Christmas doings. I like the music and the pretty lights. Gifting is for the birds though.

My friend Rich just left. He is usually a veritable Christmas elf. But he has recently lost his job, his car, his apartment and his dog in the span of three or four months. Yet somehow he borrowed a car from his sister-in-law to drive down from Brattleboro on the spur of the moment to visit a few folks he knows down here. He was subdued today. Probably needing to be near people, and remembering better times.

He is lucky that he has a brother with a cabin and so he has a roof over his head for a while. I am another nar do well that is lucky to have a roof.

This past weekend I have been watching Christmas specials which I cannot believe are already on the air. I get more melancholy with each one. A couple of weeks after Christmas all this heart-warming stuff evaporates leaving a crop of crime shows in its stead.

For now though, It seems though, that when you feel sad, it's best just to feel it. Never run from it or try to drown it. If it's not clinical Just suffer through. If you feel each thing as it comes, it doesn't come back to haunt you later.

merry.

Where falling off a chair can lead....

My uncle, my father's younger brother, fell of a chair while he was setting the clock back a few weeks ago. (This not one of my fictional "uncle" stories which are based on other uncles. This is more of a journal entry.) This uncle broke a knee cap and shattered the top of the leg bone. He is an internet Junkie, and had to spend eight days without his computer in a rehab facility. OMG!!!!

In any event he's home now, but cannot climb the stairs to the upstairs room where his computer was located. So, this morning, his son David and I came over and dragged the whole setup downstairs where he is living in the firstfloor den. Dave strung the 50 feet of phone wire and carried the heavy components down the stairs, while I hooked it all back together again.

When we left he had 19 email messages to investigate and the whole word of forums and message boards on a DSL thread. I have never seen a happier man, not even one who had recently won the lottery.

Thankful? Yup! Thankful the diner was open!!!

For the very first time this year, my mother and I celebrated our Thanksgiving in a diner. Not a fancy restaurant but a simple humble diner.

She is almost 80 now and has never once eaten out on Thanksgiving - until this year. In the old days sometimes there were 30 people from Mom's side of the family who arrived for this holiday meal at her sister Pearl's house. Later it was  her daughter, my cousin Linda who made the meal.

Things change though. Some relatives moved, died, grew up, became estranged. My father died in 1984. In the last few years, Thanksgiving has been smaller. With a cousin or two and their children, either been at mom's, or at my cousin Denise's house near Hartford.

This year, Denise went to see her grand-babies in PA, with whom she is utterly obsessed. Their mom is prego again and sickish, not fit to travel. Dense and her husband passed through yesterday on their way to the grandbaby palace. They stopped here for lunch. we had ham and cheese and bagels. But that left Mom and I all on our own for THE meal on Thursday.

Somethings never change - nobody ever suggests that I cook anything. (Prudent choice...) So, today we went to Elmer's Dinner. She had the turkey special with cream of Turkey soup, I had the turkey special with a salad. It came with mashed potatoes, apple stuffing, candied yams, greenbeans and carrots, coffee, and pudding. They cooked it and took away the dirty dishes.

When we eat with the family there are six or seven deserts, and left-overs for weeks - months if you count the freezer! Thanksgiving is normally a caloric high-fat disaster. NOT THIS YEAR. We had a successfully moderate day foodwise. We didn't eat the potatoes, scrapped off the gravy. I did enjoy the apple stuffing and the pudding. The salad was great too. The Turkey was tender and hot and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In the parking lot on our way out, we passed a family arriving for their meal - a middle-aged husband and wife, a wild ten-year old child, and an elderly couple. The older gent was a bit wobbly, grey-headed and all dapper in a black and white modern art sweater and sun glasses, but his wife looked out of it, and was maneuvered deftly into a wheel chair. Life does have its necessities. So today, I am thankful for diners.

Poet Bob Taylor: One man's upload... the non-techie view

Though many folks can hardly believe it, not everyone is really into technology. The holdouts span generations. Their reasons are legion, A poet friend, Bob, has his own theory of uploading and downloading which he discussed at a recent poetry society meeting. He was not the least bit shy about talking for the camera, and was not concerned about appearing on a medium he doubted he would even look at - even if the people halfway across the world were to view it. So here's to poets, and Bob. A toast! -- mad mar

What is so problematic about keys? And where the heck are they?

WHAT IS IT ABOUT KEYS? DO some people including me have a need not to go anywhere? Not to unlock anything? this is the second time I have had a Key blip on my way to a poetry event. I completely missed a reading early in Nov. because I locked my keys in the car and had to wait for the local fuzz to come and break into it. I wasn't thinking when I got out of the car. I had just seen a small child walk behind a car with backup lights on.... Thank the fates the polixe do that sort of thing in small towns.

But Last night in city of White Plains i apparently dropped them. This time, I guess I managed to lock the car, and walk away with the keys inhand but forgot to put the long string around my neck . I added the neck band because I have so much trouble locating my keys almost anywhere I go, even at home. I get to the meter in the parking garage and find I only have a twenty, and no change. Of course the meter won't take a 20. Apparently as I rummaged around in my purse, I let go of my keys. And as I was cursing to myself, didn't hear them land on the cement floor. Fool.

By the time I came back with change and now realizing my keys were gone, no keys were in evidence either in the car or on the floor by the meter.

I thought the hell with it and went in to hear the poetry. Naturally I had already missed the feature. But I got to hear and participate in the open mic anyway. What a great open mic! After I asked at the bookstore's customer service. No Keys. I went back into the garage and noticed an arrow pointing towards the office. You can imagine my relief that someone had turned them in, and I didn't have to beg for a ride or call locksmith or pay for overnight parking.

So there is my tale of Key mentallics. arrgh. All's well that ends well. I guess. i think a spare key in my shoe might be a good idea.

Lack of Synergies

Today I made a decision to put google ads on as many of my webpages  as I can. I have an amazing amount of content on my various sites - i have quite a few domains or more residing on .mac, (mistryel.com, shijinlive.com, bentpinquarterly.net, wedpoetry.net quickmist.com, etc etc ) I have two blogs on blogger, a youtube channel. my content includes prose, poetry, videos, artwork, photos and mp3s. I just keep making more and more of this stuff because I am a compulsive maniac. None of this activity generates income and actually costs money to maintain (DOT MAC is not free....)  My life is seriously in need of income, not that this act will generate anything anytime soon.  In the year 2010 I suppose I will get a check. If I am lucky. The youtube channel though is promising....

Ha - after a year google owes me $22.  Before I'm dead I might get a check, maybe....  UPDATE: Still nowhere near getting a check. Now I can't even figure it out - I think the 22 bucks disapeared somehow or I accidently started a different account. But now I have moved my main blog to word press and not so many hits on blogger.. oh well