By the time I get home I don't want to write. Well, what was I thinking as I was driving home through the mystic hills? I was thinking about bunny nature. That is, I was thinking about what is in the nature of bunnies. I know that bunnies like to eat, and I know that bunnies like to poop. Bunnies can be litter box trained. I'll bet you didn't know that. Stick with me, kids. I'll teach you many useless things. So, it must be in a bunny's nature to be content with the relative security of a particular area. Bunnies poop in one area adjacent to but separate from the area where they eat. That's why they can be litter box trained.

Now - is that worth writing about? No, not really. But those were my thoughts.

Such beauty tonight. I saw a photograph through my car window. The sun had set behind the gothic silhouette of a barn on the hill top. A tree, a few trees - each leaf backlit into detail against the deep red light. So fleeting, never to be repeated in just precisely the same way. So much mist dappling the pastures too, in the dusk. It was then that I saw the bunnies.

Cops had to place a bear under arrest at my sons' school this week. A frightened staff herded students into the cafeteria and had them assume the exact same positions they would if under enemy attack. Don't wonder why we are raising wienies. Send a perfectly ordinary boy to school and they will do everything they can to ensure all the man is removed from his burger.

Well, what is in a bear's nature? They also like to eat and poop, but they cannot be litter box trained. Wee-wee pads - that's the way to go with bears.

I like them. I'm willing to drive a few miles to see them. I am less enthusiastic about them knocking over the garbage in my kitchen door yard.

A few years ago we had a big wind storm. It blew the scoreboard down onto the High School football field. The staff at the school were terrified. If any of you are teachers or school administrators listen to me: Don't show that you are afraid in front of the Grammar School children. That is like a flight attendant having an anxiety attack in turbulence.

When I flew - back in the day when I traveled by air fairly frequently - and we would hit turbulence, sometimes that little tin can 20,000 feet above a fiery death did some major rocking and rolling. I mean, it felt like we were being hit by big rocks or ground-to-air missiles, or something. It was enough to make a person look up from whatever he was reading. On such occasions I would glance at the flight attendants. The captain would have announced something about turbulence, if it was likely to be really bad, and the seat belt lights would come on. The flight attendants would strap themselves into their own seats - facing ours. I would examine the expressions they wore, watch the movements of their eyes. No fear from them and I knew I could return to my book or go back to sleep.

Well, the school kept those poor kids an hour after the storm had passed, and as it happens, an hour after school was due to be dismissed for the day. The buses were called off. Parents were not notified. Apparently, they were following new Homeland Security guidelines. My younger guy has been afraid of wind and storms ever since. Wow - that's a coincidence. He's getting better now.

Parentis in loco. It's enough to make you want to throw up. 

So, bears are moving into the area. It's not much of a trip for them. The question is why are they moving to the area? Do we have better pick-a-nick baskets, and are they smarter than the average bear? I shall have to give it some thought, maybe ask the next one I see.

Oh yes! - That's right; I hear the bear eluded arrest and disappeared into the river valley behind the White Lodge. And that gives me hope. The Squirrel Away product, which was really nothing more than red pepper, did nothing but attract more squirrels to my bird feeder. Perhaps a bear in the vicinity of the feeder would discourage the little buggers. Perhaps not. I suppose that will all depend on squirrel nature and bear nature. Bunny nature is not likely to be a factor, however, in this case.

 

I prefer the live version on "One Nation Under a Groove," but this'll do. It doesn't matter. I'm trying to listen to Santana on the big stereo anyway at the same time. I'll be seeing the lady who loaned me this book I haven't finished reading tomorrow. Should I try to finish it tonight?

The flip side to the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville" was "I'm Going to Buy Me a Dog." Did you know that? "Last Train..." was a Boyce and Hart song, of course. I was listening to Diana Krall this morning while I was working. It was unfortunate - she was styling her way through a kinda complicated arrangement of "Insensatez." One thing you should never do is complicate Jobim. That's why Astrud Gilberto sang him so well. Not even a trace of vibrato - just pure song. Krall did better with "Little Boy Blue," though Nina Simone owns that song. Did well with the Irving Berlin number too. "Isn't It A Lovely Day." Astaire had several good records with that one.

I have an old friend who's crazy about her. You gotta watch out for them smooth FM guys. They play "Sketches of Spain" endlessly. Well, I remember sitting in my room listening to some college station from Danbury, across the water. I had a huge set of Koss headphones with little volume knobs on either ear that crackled a little when you turned them. Mark Almond - oh Lord! I remember getting Pink Floyd "Ummagumma" and the first time I listened to the live version of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." I remember it like yesterday.

My father reminded me I used to wind the sheets 'round my head in a peculiar fashion. Only my mouth was exposed. The sheet would help me keep my eyes shut because often I sleep with eyes open. I think I was afraid of seeing waking life and dreaming life in the same gaze; they might have mingled. That would have driven my Mom crazy in the morning. She would be making breakfast and one of my dreams would show up hungry.

He wrote a poem about her - that is, my Dad about my Mom. Yesterday was his birthday. Instead of writing on this silly thing I gave him a call. I'll post it just as soon as he figures out how to use attachments down there. So - some time next year, I gather. It was very good. You'll like it.

Oil paint today, very smelly. Fellow stacked his wood against the porch wall. Well, that's gonna be a breakfast room for the guests. Can't have them eating next to that scuffed-up wall. They are my dreams. They deserve respect.

Paying customers.

At a garage sale on Saturday I saw an old telephone. I remarked about how it used to be that such things were in the hallway, next to an uncomfortable chair. The woman selling it mentioned that I had written about that in my blog. Full disclosure: I know her, and I had told her I was writing one.

Now. Tomorrow. Where the hell is TR? I miss him.

Anyhooo, I'm taking care of a friend's dog. So - I don't have to buy one. I just borrow it.

Today I have some Pantera for you. Why? Do I no longer love you? No, I still love you. This is what I was listening to in my car today, on my way down to my new favorite record store. I found "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" and "200 Motels," the latter mint, and also Miles Davis "Sketches of Spain," unbloody opened, and the Getz/Gilberto album first release with the opening sleeve. In other words, a good day for matters musical, unfortunate though it was that the Pink Floyd "Meddle" was a scratched-up mess. I also hit quite a few sales - did some scavenging. A nice lamp, a set of DVD's unopened which includes "Bad Day at Black Rock" and "I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, a Graham Greene I haven't read yet, and a lovely coffee table book on Neo-Classicism in Art and Architecture. I am down to about $20 now, and still in a buying mood.

What am I saying? Well, it's early, but I shall be painting walls and ceilings later. So - here you are: a little heart pounding fun. These guys always looked like they were having a great time in concert. You've never see so much sweat, except from athletes. Tight as can be - I understand depending on the night you caught 'em.

Well, I stopped by a friend's store on my travels. It's a husband-wife enterprise. He sells guns and she sells antiques n' stuff. Also incense. You know I like my incense. I was thinking of how many enterprising people there are. Need money? Sell something people want, a product, a service. It's preposterously simple. But anyhoooo, many are the husband-wife roadside enterprises 'round here. Some of them are unusual combinations. A few weeks ago I drove by a roadside shop someone had established in a barn, the signage indicating what one may expect to find withing: "Mulch, Tractor Parts, Pedicures."

Ooh, I like that!

Calling to mind my misspent youth. At the record store a copy of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" was sought for, not found. I remarked to the proprietor that if I found the actual album just as it was in 1975 I would become instantly stoned. This led to, "I suppose we all have to grow up some time, though I don't know why." The proprietor shouted, "It's a lie!"

The music keeps us young, though. That's my piece for today. The music keeps us young.

"It is curious, but it seems to me that some people are quite deficient in the religious sense. I don't understand it at all. They are like people who are without the musical sense. God must allow it, it is somehow his will. Religion to them is a purely this-world affair. God is a kind of chalk pit. Religion is not of this world, it is supernatural, it leavens the world. They can never understand this, and the need for this leaven. The Church works in two levels. She is never the State. She is not the police, nor a sanitary engineer, nor a bricklayer, nor a builder, nor a plumber. Marriage, having children, education, proper clothes, decent behavior, the plumber - all these are good things, but they are not religion. The essence of religion is the supernatural life; the other world, the otherness of God, different from, but penetrating this our life. That is God's level. The natural level is the State, etc. The Church must never be the State. People put God so far away, in a sort of mist somewhere. I pull their coat tails. God is near. He is no use unless he is near. God's otherness and difference, and his nearness. You must get that. God's nearness is straight out of the heart of Jesus. Religion is like a cuckoo in some people's nest. They do not understand man's needs. No man is satisfied in a swimming bath; he knocks his knees and elbows against its sides; he wants the sea. So with man's soul, he hungers and thirsts for the ocean, for God; God infinite and other, different to man, yet working in man. God's givenness. Love, suffering, renunciation, they are God's level; the passion and hunger for God comes from God, and God answers it with Christ. We are creatures and we must be creaturely. If you go out and look at the stars, can you be so puffed out, so like a balloon as to think this earth is the only inhabited world of all of those millions of stars? Do you think man the only conscious being God has made? Are you so like a balloon? I always tried to teach my children humility. I do not believe we shall ever have the Kingdom of God here, not in this world. The Sermon on the Mount cannot be here. George cannot give the Kaiser his cheek to strike. You cannot give all that you have to the poor. The Kingdom cannot be here. That is God's level. Utopias are no use. How boring are Utopias! The hunger and thirst for God in man's soul can never be answered here; nothing but God himself is the answer, is any use.

"The central fact of religion is not survival, but God. I am almost not interested in survival, unless it means God. Survival must mean God, or it means nothing at all. There are people who try to prove God only as a means to immortality; they have got it all upside-down. How secondary is immortality to God! I always think St. Paul was excessive with his 'Let us eat, drink, and be merry,' for look at the Psalmists! They hardly believed in immortality. They did not think about it. Yet theirs is the deepest expression we know of God, of sanctity and holiness, and joy. What joy they contain! They express the joy of the saints. I do not believe we should all be sinners without this hope. I do not believe it."

-Baron Friedrich von Hugel to Gwendolen Greene 

It's feeding time here at the zoo. I got this stuff called Squirrel Away to do what its name suggests it might. Made with the hottest red peppers, so says the package. Nyjer seed - (which corrects my previous spelling) - as it turns out, is a seed so tiny it requires a separate feeder. I have learned that my squirrels are Cajun squirrels who love chili. The Squirrel Away product might better be called Squirrel Attract. At the moment there are about twelve of the little blighters out there. My thought is now that they will become so engorged on the bird food that they will be unable to climb the post. They will become morbidly obese squirrels who will no longer be able to clip their own toenails, just like the typical Baseball fan.

Early this morning a very large bat was darting about in the proximity of one of my gables. I wonder if they are in residence there? It brought to mind one summer a few years ago when bats seemed to be coming indoors wherever I went. On three occasions that year I was pressed-upon as a guest by alarmed host/hostess(es) to capture the little darlings, accidentally killing one of them, (the bat, I mean - not the hostess), which made me feel boo-hoo bad.

Now I am thinking of how I used to collect model trains and design track layouts for them, but without the available space in my ancestral Long Island home could do little more that set up switching yards and scenes in boxes - what are they called? - die-ah-rah-mahs is the sound, not the spelling. Why am I thinking of that? I do not know. The Squabbler has access to all my memories. He writes whatever pleases him - the arrogant old thing.

I grew up in a tiny house on top of a hill overlooking the water, and from there you could look down upon the neighbors' rooftops - all those other houses built since in a stepped terrace formation like the hanging gardens of Babylon. Our house was built as a summer camp originally, in '25. There was one big room within dominated by a stone fireplace. Two little rooms off the back served as kitchen and (private) bedroom - I assume, for the grown-ups - respectively. The whole was surrounded by screened-in porches, the rear portion on stilts over the slope. There were many changes made to the camp over the years. My grandfather added the dormers in order to create a second floor. Indoor plumbing was installed at some early point, with a bathroom with flush toilet, a bath. Tiny. To this day that bathroom is unchanged from the date of its original installation.

Television was available at the house next door. It had been built by Mr. K., and there had been a little controversy over it. When Grandpa returned one summer to find the new house stood with only about twelve feet of clearance from his (ours) he was less than entirely happy. But my first-ever babysitter, Mrs. P., would come to inhabit that house. She was from South Africa. Her husband, beyond the veil by the time of my conscious memory, had been an editor for Britannica. She would come over to make us High Tea. She smelled a certain very good way. It was the smell of her house as well. Within it were many African artifacts and trophies, very spooky. And a clock over the mantel let out a St. Stephen's chime. Animal hide rugs, shrunken heads, hand-carved mahogany chairs, ivory tusks - you know the sort of thing.

I would go there after school to watch The Addams Family. I loved that show. The clock would tick-tock, and chime like Big Ben. Sunlight coming in through the windows, charged with a million paratroopers of dust, would shine through the crystal making rainbows on the tiger skin rug with its ferocious tiger head. I think Mr. P. was largely responsible for endangering many species who are now endangered. I think that if he ever wanted squirrel trophies the ideal location for his next safari would be right outside my library window. He could make squirrel skin rugs out of them - that would be good. That would be swell. That would be elegant.