The backhanded non-apology....

 Got creeped out recently on the phone when a computer voice interrupted  - - "This call is being recorded!"  I said what the heck is that? And it suddenly said it again. I insisted the caller turn it off and said little after that. As always when I don't know how to react -- I don't. 

The next morning I woke up already a bit freaked out thinking about it. This person I was talking with posts nearly everything she does on Facebook - lots of selfies with groups of people she knows and places she's gone. Has to always have a social plan to go somewhere or be with someone. Hates to be alone. Also talks endlessly about what this or that person said to her - no matter if the conversation was yesterday or 60 years ago.... 

When I texted her saying to record someone secretly is really a betrayal of trust (also illegal which is why the app alerts people!)  Rather than apologize, she turned it right back on me - saying the presumption and assumption of malice in my reply was shocking and calling her mean was hurtful. 

But I never called her mean. I had asked what she planned to do with the recordings -post them to Facebook? She's pushy rather than mean, kind of bullying the reluctant into doing what she wants, or repeatedly asking very pointed questions for personal info which I had always found troubling.  Being more or less easy going I'd  awkwardly blurt out the answer and be filled with regret afterward. 

But recording me was a bridge too far. Way too far. And apparently there were two recordings - which she stated and claimed to have deleted, saying they were "gibberish" anyway. So she reviewed them before deleting. To see if they were useful? To see how the app did at recording? 

No regret was expressed. "I'm sorry you feel betrayed," she said. Not sorry about what she did, just sorry I found out and felt betrayed....

OMG I've moved.... I'll never find anything again

 Oh yes, I have pulled up stakes and moved, boxes and boxes I thought I'd never be done but finally after endless trips, I moved the last box. I'm still exhausted. No words of wisdom here. Just plunge in and do it!

That said - I'll still be unboxing sorting and tossing in September. 

Give Your Life Another Chance Before it’s Gone - Mad Mar Walker

This rendition of Time Rolls On (Give your life another chance before it's gone) was recorded at the Putnam House Restaurant and Bar on 8/31/25, with my phone - by propping the phone against a coffee cup!!! The Putnam House has great food, nice people too - the open mic is hosted by The Incredible Kelly who has a fabulous voice and plays a mean guitar both acoustic and electric.  She has rotating colored stage lights, which on my low res phone video made me purple and green. It  looked weird to me so I thought I make it even stranger by added a retro effect in Google photos. ( I'm doing what I can!)

The Terrible Mistake

The Terrible Mistake

On the Seventh Day, 

when the Almighty should have been napping,

He paced the glassy surface of new poured sea 

wringing his sculptor's hands in celestial anxiety.
A nagging tug, a vexing doubt about creation, 

something about creation -something obvious 

and overlooked. a single lively thread, woven
in his own image in a split second of pride. 

One thread, twisting in the solar winds
unraveling slowly down the eons....

             -- Mad Mar Walker, (Mistryel)  

Four acre lots of the mind,

are circumspect and clean, so clean

God forbid the ideas should touch one another

Or leak onto the plot next door

Which might accidentally create some 

new upstart idea, something

Unclassifiable and awkward

Requiring a hazmat team to extract....

For fertility of ideas

multifamily structure is best

 

Stack em up

like floors in a highrise

Skyscrapers of boxes on a dock

rickety, shabbily

 

Zagging every which way

expanding in various directions 

In danger of falling over

Askew. Like community garden patches,

Overgrown, seeding their neighbors

plots with something untoward and interesting.... 

                        -- Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel)

The Essential Trick

If you have perennials, biennials, 

things that seed themselves 

and return to you in odd moments,

sprout anew after a while of dying back

-- then you can't indiscriminately

pull up unknown sprouts in the name of neatness.

Be patient.

Study the situation.

Is it a weed or a daisy in waiting?

or Queen Anne's Lace 

or the wee tip of fern

about to uncurl?

The essential trick?

Never uproot a thing

that will, sometime later,

fill you with the earnest, wild

energy of delight

& make you glad you are alive...

                            --- Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel)

Selecting a worry list for the Zombie Apocalypse

Interstitial Connections, oil on canvas board

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!! 

All the countries that used to be our friends and allies, but have stopped calling. 

And all the people who’ve died because certain international agencies that dispensed food and medical aid have suddenly turned on a dime and disappeared - absorbed by the so-called state department.

Will we ever have vaccine recommendations we can trust again? (Hmmm try the AMA  - they still believe in science.) What happens during the next pandemic when research funding has been axed?

Will NOAA be trustable after all the climate experts have been banished? What will happen to the coast as things melt on - will AMOC stop?  Will we bake in the oven of our folly?  Or will a new ice age suddenly arise and make Popsicles of us all?

So many floods,  epic rain and wind events in recent years! And Think of all those campers and RV-ers  swept away in the night as they slept - heartbreaking. They are still searching, many finding the sudden darkness of grief....

 

What about all the forest fires creating swaths of charcoal out of  the animate and inanimate alike?  Will 47 have everyone sweeping the forest floor, and pull all the national guard fire details to help ICE?  Speaking of ICE what happens to all those folks snatched and deported leaving families and jobs dumped in countries they’ve never been to  or incarcerated incognito?  What of Due Process? Rule of Law?  Will Miller reduce the US population by jailing half of us in various Alligator Alcatraz iterations? 

And if there is a "Big One" along the Cascadia Subduction Zone - how will we recover?  I don't think we will really. California is the engine for a large chunk of our national economy. By then, FEMA may be a memory, missed more and more as the months pass. As stodgy and rule bound as they were - they helped many.

And what of democracy? Of Technocrats, cryptologists and accelerationists trying to  burn down the world.....

Speaking of technocrats - think of  all the various AI iterations preparing to take our jobs, hallucinate new law cases and other nonfacts, run and analyze all those surveillance cams and drone-swarms, acquire human targets for.... ummm, never mind. 

The only thing I can think to do is turn off Siri and never ask ChatGPT. MetaAI, Claude or Gemini etc any questions. Those other iterations, many with industrial or military purpose or having secret code names --- are too frightening to contemplate.  And Grok - why don’t people realize Grok is named for a sci-fi verb “to grok” which means 'communing with your dead friends by eating them'?

             Zombie apocalypse indeed.

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….

            --- Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel)

#poem #mortality #metaphor

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.

If you must move, be stealthy,

silent in the shadows, then return to safety.

When quiet evening finally comes - emerge. 

Look around. Sniff the air. Stretch. 

Give a wide yawn. Blink. You are still here! 

Pay attention!

                    --- Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel)

--------------------------------

This was an older post I thought needed another go. There is a story to the photo. The windows were wide open at home and there was a crew of roofers working nearby and they made a lot of noise. After a while I noticed my three cats were missing. I hunted under and behind everything until I found them. They were  lined up in a straight row in the narrows behind a dresser, hiding from all the noise. If I had tried to line them up like that,  well, herding cats right? 

PoemADay? hahaha NOT!

No poem for days. May be I have lost my zing! Like this polymer clay guy who seems sort of indefinite. Maybe tomorrow. (I shrug. :) This guy is made from Sculpy polymer clay - the over bake stuff.