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

back to back imps

This is a drawing with pencil, charcol, conte crayon and gesso. I had an actual person in mind, but I was drawing the inner attitude rather than the outer detail. Oddly the person who's back is towards us is also someone who knew the imp in the front. The profile is telling. You know who you are...