Boogies

I got them boogies in my nose.
They grows and grows and never goes.
I'd wash them boogies with a hose,
But that don't work it only slows
The growth of boogies in my nose.

Heaven knows I never chose
To have them boogies in my nose.
They there so long it seems they froze,
Way up there where the wind don't blows.
Them boogies nestled in my nose.

I blows and blows and blows and blows,
Then hold the rose under my nose...
But still them boogies never goes.
The snot it never flows no moes
I guess it only goes to shows
That I have boogies in my nose.

The cut of my jib

Somebody came in the store today and said to me, "I like the cut of your jib." What the heck does that mean? thought I. I posted the question on facebook and Fr. Justin replied thusly:

"Cut of your jib: One's general appearance and demeanour.

The jib of a sailing ship is a triangular sail set between the foretopmast head and the jib boom. Some ships had more than one jib sail. Each country had its own style of sail and so the nationality of a sailing ship, and a sailor's consequent opinion of it, could be determined from the jib.

The phrase became used in an idiomatic way during the 19th century."

Well, if that didn't make my pride swell. Somebody likes the cut of my jib. :) But then I imagined myself strung up between the foretopmast head and the jib boom. :p

A dream - injury and justice

I dreamed last night that a woman was lied to and made to give up her ovaries to a scientific experiment. It was displayed on a computer screen... all the parts of a woman's ovaries, but it was all mechanical, with gears and conveyor belts and sliding hydraulic pumps, moving eggs along mechanically constructed fallopian tubes... but there was a point were the eggs were diverted. They fell onto another conveyor belt. Each egg glowed bright blue, and some had partially formed arms and legs. I saw each of these eggs as a potential human as I watched, as a distant observer. They were being deposited into a tank where experiments would be performed, without the knowledge of the woman.

She was drugged, and put into an ambulance, thinking that she had been injured. She kept calling for the one she loved, the one who had talked her into this and lied to her, but he never appeared. She was taken away, and needles were put into her. I cringed when I watched this and had to turn away, as I have a great aversion to needles. Nevermind the horror of what was going on.

Some weeks later, when she was back to her life, she still had no knowledge of what had happened to her. Then the guy she was in love with sent her an e-mail, detailing everything they had done, trying to convince her of the 'good' of it. He was actually trying to justify it. At this point, I was active in the dream. I warned her that this man didn't love her, that he had further designs for her in his experiment.

Later we are all together in her apartment, and the man is there in person, pleading his case. I attacked him with a rod, trying to beat him, but I was subdued. Then we were all underwater, and the man had a knife to my throat. There were several voracious looking fish circling us; they looked like giant piranah, but we couldn't see their teeth. The man drew the knife across my throat, but it was a dull serrated edge, and only drew a little blood. He examined the blade and seemed astonished that I wasn't dead. Then he had the idea to snare one of the fish to finish me off. He caught one, reeled it in, but instead of going for me, it opened its gaping maw, filled with rows of razor sharp teeth, and latched onto the mans face. He screamed in agony, but it was muffled because his screams were going down the throat of the fish. Finally the fish let go, and I saw the mans face, gouged deep with teeth marks. His head was now one mass of yellowish green decay. But the fish hadn't had enough yet... the mans screams were muffled again as the fish once again latched on.

Green Vs. Green

As I stare out the window, I see trees on the mountainside, blowing in the windy rain. The closer trees are a dull bright green (a contradiction in terms, but with no sunlight, there is no other way to describe them). The ones further away are a darker, kind of pine green, behind the closer ones. And even further than that, there is a dark green patch which blends into the black of the farthest point of vision on this mountainside, completely ensconced in shadow. Imagine these layers of green, with the brightest and closest moving the most rapidly... then through layers, with less motion and less green, until you finally reach the black motionless part.

I watch this black part and am annoyed at the interruption of the bright greens and lesser greens as they obstruct my vision of it because of the wind. It is very windy here. Nevertheless, I stare for a long time, losing track of time even, at the blackest part of the green, where it becomes completely black... towards the farthest point away from where I am, over there on the mountain. But still, the closer portions move the most relative to my position and keep obscuring my vision to the point that I start noticing the brighter parts.

The brighter part, superimposed upon the darker, blacker part that I was concentrating on, what with it's movement and all, begins to look like the slavering jaws of a monster which is trying to consume me as I gaze into that black part. I don't know what this means, if it means anything. Probably nothing. Everything doesn't have to be symbolic in my life. But I could have sworn that the rapidly moving bright dull green movement was trying to consume me as I lost myself in the black.

Sitting

Today I came home early. It was my turn. I was just sitting on the couch, watching 'The Last Samurai'. It's a pretty good movie. I was just going over in my head... is it a good movie, or a great movie? I'd say, just in between good and great.

I was sitting there on the couch, just a few minutes ago. On the left side, against the arm. I looked to my right... what if someone was sitting there? Next to me? Where would that person be? Close, or far away, on the other side?

I imagined that someone sitting close to me. I put my arm along the back of the couch. Where would that person's shoulder be? Right about there. I looked at my hand, imagining it cupping a shoulder. I adjusted it up and down, an inch here, a little bit forward... right about there seemed right.

Their head? Upright, or leaning against my chest? I imagined against my chest. I put my hand where that person's head would be and imagined stroking hair, against my palm, through my fingers. It took a minute or two to get it right, but then I had it. A good vision of what it would be like. Almost a memory.

Only

Last Thursday I began to feel sick about halfway through the day. A pounding headache, chills, and a stomach ache. I've had stabbing stomach pains before, but these weren't like that... more like aching anxiety in my stomach. I walked home and just felt steadily worse and worse as the day progressed. I went to bed early and didn't go in the next day. I looked up the symptoms online, and with no fever to accompany all of that, the most likely cause was stress. Kind of a mild nervous breakdown is what I chalked it up to.

Last night I didn't get drunk, per se, but I was definitely buzzed. I went to bed early again, at about 5:30 (I think I'm still on Texas time). I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible stomach cramps. Again, not like the 'stabbing pains'; lower down in my gut as opposed to my stomach. I lay there for about an hour enduring it, then got up and went to the bathroom. Chaos ensued.

I won't go into the gory details, except that both ends were very active. Horrible. For an hour I was in there, constantly flushing the commode and either sitting and cramping, or curled on the floor with horrible nausea. I finally prayed to God to please, take the pain away, and I promise I'll do better.

The pain immediately began to fade. It was almost like that a time at vigil one night when my stomach started to cramp, and I prayed to God to take away the pain, and He did. This time I made a promise though... that I would do better.

These last few weeks have been the most stress I've ever felt in my life, I think. Even worse than when I was on drugs. I've never really experienced stress to the point where it just wreaks havoc on me physically. I've been away from church, I miss my friends and family, I'm trying to deal with a broken heart, I'm drinking constantly, and I'm depressed and just not happy being here. The novelty has definitely worn off. I don't like this nervous breakdown crap.

Only three more weeks.

Little guy

A guy was perusing the gloves right outside the door about 30 minutes ago. Strapped to his back was a wide-eyed toddler, probably just under a year old. A real cutie. He gazed at me with those wide, brown eyes, not a hint of self consciousness at all. What an age... I lose the staring contest every time when I'm confronted with that wondrous gaze of the innocent.

I played peek-a-boo with him like I used to with Marcos. That brought a smile to his little face, and he reached out his arm toward me as the guy he was strapped to started to walk away. I reached back, and was just able to brush his tiny little hand with my fingers.

Stuff

I came home today with another stomach ache. I hate it when this happens. Luckily we had some great business right before it kicked in. We had a crap day yesterday... and I had just put Pinback into Ed's mp3 player, so I played Pinback all day yesterday.

This morning Ed said, "So, we know better than to play Pinback again." He's superstitious... all kinds of things influence sales to him. Where the racks are positioned, how many games of chess or solitaire he's won on the computer, and what music is playing.

So, when he dissed Pinback... well, I just seen red. So, the day started out really slow and it sucked for about three hours, and I thought to myself.... self, if the day is going to suck, I'm going to at least hear some Pinback. So, I started it up and five minutes later, BAM we got hammered and sold two coats and 4 scarves and a hat. About $3500. Of course, it was the Pinback we were playing. The cruise ship passengers today just happened to have really good taste. How can you not spend a few grand when Pinback is playing, getting your endorphins pumping?

Unfortunately, right after that the stomach cramps started, so I walked home.

Alive

The movie about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1974. This movie plays on HBO a lot here.

I started out watching Futurama and drinking beer, having a dandy time on my day off. And after the third beer I remembered my prayers, that I didn't say them. And there I was, half drunk on an empty stomach, and I suddenly felt awful. Such guilt. The enemy... but it's my own damn fault.

I switched on the TV and Alive is on. I can't help but watch this movie every time it comes on. It never fails to make me cry. The prayers they say, in the midst of such despair and dashed hopes, along with such courage it took to survive for more than a year in the freezing mountains.

God was with them.

::::::::

There is a scene where one of the survivors, just after an avalanche that killed many of them, is sitting on top of the packed snow above the buried wreckage and smiling. Others climb out and the one sitting says, "Do you feel it? God is everywhere today."

I looked at the mountains on the TV screen. They were beautiful... I turned my glance to the window. I saw the mountains outside. They were beautiful too... but obscured somehow. Glass. The window was shut. I shut the window...

Night Time

I sleep on the couch regularly because Ed snores. The couch is lined up along the wall, with a big window, about 3'X4' positioned right there at the end. I usually sleep with the blinds closed, because there are houses on the hill with lights that are kind of bright. However, last night I just plopped down and snoozed with the window wide open.

I woke up during the small hours, lying on my back. When I opened my eyes, I was looking directly out the window. I caught my breath... four stars, remarkably bright, were positioned in an M shape, with the two bottom points of the M spread out to the left and right. It was an almost perfect formation, and being only half awake, at first I thought it was a formation UFO's. I'm always scanning the skies for those things, since I've seen a couple of unexplainable things in the sky on a few occasions. My eyes were already dark adapted from being asleep, and there were just hundreds of stars all around these ones... for they were stars, I realized after about 15 seconds. I was seeing the handle of the big dipper. Brighter than I'd ever seen it. I lay there and stared at the dazzling sky for about 15 minutes before falling asleep again.

WTF?!

So here I am, at home, drinking a beer and watching this movie, something funny on TV starring whats his face and that other whats his face. I'm surfing the net at the same time, reading about lost technologies and... well anyway, so Scott and I are sitting here and suddenly the door opens and this occurs:

Ed: Hey HEY hey, loooook what I GOT!

(Scott and Elias turn around and are presented with a shopping cart, full of groceries, right there in the apartment. Nine floors up, that is.)

Elias: Jesus H - (Elias shuts up, chagrined at this unfortunate yet habitual outburst, and then busts out laughing)

Scott: What, what? (Scott can't see from his chair)

Elias: Ed, what the fuck? There's a shopping cart in the apartment!

Ed: Hey, what was I supposed to do? I couldn't carry 'em all!

(All balls out laughter ensues)

Elias: Ok folks, I'm gonna go for smokes. Anybody need anything?

Ed: Yeah, could you return the shopping cart?

(All out laughter ceases abruptly. Elias reluctantly pushes the cart into the hall, amidst his own muttered protests, into the elevator, down the basement hall, all the while the subject of many curious stares, out into the parking lot, amongst many more curious stares, and across the street back to Safeway. A cop observes this unorthodox crossing of the street with a curious stare. Elias is not happy. The cop turns the other way. Elias is returns home, relieved and exhausted.)

Ed: Look at the size of this fish!

An interrupted blog

It's such a beautiful day here in Alaska. The forecast is for about three more beautiful days. Hang on...

"Hi folks. Welcome to Ketchikan. What can I help you find?"
"No thanks, we're just looking... Thanks."
"Thanks."

Ok back to my blog. Hang on...
"Hi folks..."

Ok, this requires a different format, if people are going to keep walking in the door:


Elias: (He spies two people walking into the door, interrupting his blog writing. It is a very VERY old man with a huge smile and gleaming white dentures, with his wife, very similar in age, but minus the smile) Hi folks. Welcome to Alaska!

Old man: Answer me a question here, son. You're a furrier, right? Well answer me this. I've got a question for ya. (The old man with the gleaming white smile approaches the $25,000 chinchilla coat) How much is this coat right here? Right here, son?

Elias: (This is an easy question, and Elias is ready.) That coat, sir, retails for $25,000 dollars. (He says this proudly and with the confidence of knowing that this is, in fact, the correct answer.)

Old man: Hey HEY now, but look at these pelts. These are glued together, right?

Elias: (He thinks for a second... are they glued? No, they're sewn. He's seen a hundred mink coats, the pelts let out and sewn. But chinchilla? Are they glued or sewn? Sewn of course, who would glue furs together? That's absurd!) These pelts are sewn together sir, by professional furriers in Chatsworth, California.

Old man: No, hear me now, these are glued. Glued and sewn! (He says this with the brightest smile, a smile that would blind a bat.)

Elias: Well sir... (glued and sewn? Surely not. I'm the furrier, who is this guy? But then again, he is very old and most likely wise... maybe he knows something I don't? No, stick to your guns! They're SEWN!) Sir, I assure you that we use no glue in our manufacturing process. Yes, we are manufacturers. We make these goods! These are chinchilla pelts sir, the finest pelts when it comes to fur, and the most expensive. I assure you we would not subject such goods to glue. We sew these. And by the way, this $25,000 dollar coat is on sale for only $12,500. And that's before the 10% discount! Why, you could walk out the door with this coat for a mere $10,000!

Old man: (The old man has moved on to the rex rabbit coat, apparently oblivious to all of the previous expounding by Elias) This is the finest fox I've ever felt!

Elias: Sir, that is rex rabbit.

Old man: What's that?

Elias: Rex rabbit sir. It's in the same family as the chinchilla. Not like your domestic rabbit, the kind you probably saw 40 years ago. Those shed. These don't shed... it's a much more dense, durable fur. Almost like chinchilla.

Old man: So Rex is still alive, is he? Well I'll be damned!

Elias: (Rex? Ok, either this old man is senile or he's messing with me.) Yes sir, Rex is alive and well. He supplies us with these rex rabbit coats! Alive and kicking, sir.

Old man: Well, that's about what I figured! (He and his silent wife head towards the door) Still alive, eh? Well don't that beat all!

Elias: Yes sir, it'll take more than a couple of world wars to do in Rex!

Old man: (laughs) Well, I thought so! Have a good day there, ok?

Elias: And you enjoy the rest of your cruise sir!

Old man: Now hang on there, son. Do you have any... starts with a B...

Elias: Beaver?

Old man: Nah, not beaver...

Elias: Broadtail?

Old man: Nah, not that either... lets see, starts with a B...

Elias: (what else starts with a B?) Uh... fitch?

Old man: EXXXX-Actly! Fitch! So, do you have any of that?

Elias: Actually, right there at the door, sir, that coat is mink with fitch inserts.

Old man: (examines the coat intently for a few seconds) So it is! Fitch, right there! See, honey? (he motions towards his wife, indicating the coat. She remains silent) Fitch! Well I'll be.

Elias: Yes sir, fitch. Mink with fitch inserts.

Old man: (walking out the door) Well, I thought so! Ok, we're off! Come on honey.

Elias: Enjoy the rest of your cruise!


Ok, back to the blog. By the way, what did you folks (assuming anyone is reading this) think of that? Quite an encounter, huh? Kind of fun, yeah? Alright, now I've forgotten what I was originally going to blog about. But that's enough, I think.

A realization

Why do I worry? Why am I depressed? Why do I despair? These are useless feelings. I just realized that in the midst of worry, sadness and despair, I can be happy because God is with me. This feeling will probably fade, but it's at moments like this when God talks to me that strengthen my faith, and gives me hope that eventually everything really will be ok, just as God promised me.

Power - by Daniil Kharms

Faol said: "We sin and do good blindly. A bailiff was riding his bicycle. Suddenly, when he reached the Kazan Cathedral, he disappeared. Does he know what he was meant to accomplish, good or evil? Or take this case: an actor bought a fur coat. It could be supposed that he did a good deed to the old woman who, needing money, sold him that fur coat. Yet he also most likely did harm to another old woman, his mother, who lived with him and usually slept in the entry hall where the actor used to hang his coat, because the new fur coat smelled so unbearably of mothballs that one day the old woman, the actor's mother, was not capable of waking up, and she died. Or again - a graphologist somehow so soaked himself up with vodka and did such things that Colonel Dibich himself would not have been able to make head or tails of it, what was good and what was bad. To distinguish sin from good is very difficult."

Myshin, poring over Faol's words, fell off his chair. "Hoho," he said, lying on the floor, "hi hi."

Faol went on: "Let's take love. It can appear good and it can appear bad. On one hand, we are told, 'You should love,' and on the other hand, we are told, 'You should not coddle.' Perhaps it is better not to love at all to begin with? But we are told, 'You should love.' But if you love - you will coddle. What are we to do? Perhaps we should love, but not in that way? Then why do all nations use one and the same word to represent love like that and also love that is not like that? Another young actor loved his mother and also a very young, plumpish girl. And he loved them in different fashions. He would give the girl most of his pay. his mother was hungry quite often, but the girl drank and ate enough for three. The actor's mother lived in the entryway on the floor, but the girl had two nice rooms at her disposal. The girl had four coats, the mother one. And lo and behold, the actor took this one coat from his mother and spoiled the girl, but he did not coddle his mother. He loved her with a pure love. However, the actor feared his mother's death, though he did not fear the death of the girl. And when his mother died, the actor cried, and when the girl fell out the window and also died, the actor did not cry, but found himself another girl. It follows that one values a mother as unique, like a rare postage stamp, which one cannot replace with another one."

"Ho ho," said Myshin, lying on the floor, "Khokho."

Faol continued: "And this is called pure love! Is such a love good? If it is not, how is one to love? One mother loved her child. This child was two and a half years old. The mother would carry him into a park and set him down in the sand. Other mothers also brought their children to the same place. Sometimes as many as forty little children were bunched together in the sandbox. And one day a mad dog rushed into this park, ran right up to the children and started to bite them. Mothers, including our mother, rushed to their children, screaming. Sacrificing herself, she leaped at the dog and grabbed her child, as it seemed to her, out of the dog's mouth. But when she had snatched the little boy away, she saw that it was not her child, and she threw him back to the dog in order to seize her own little boy, who was lying right next to her, and save him from death. Who will answer my question: did she commit a sin or did she do a good deed?"

"Hyu hyu," said Myshin, rolling on the floor.

Faol went on: "Does a stone sin? Does a tree sin? Does an animal sin? Or does only a human being sin?"

"Hm hm," said Myshin listening to Faol's words, "shup shup."

Faol went on: "If only human beings sin, this means that the sins of the world are to be found in the human being himself. Sin does not enter into human beings, it only comes out of of them. That is similar to food: human beings eat good things and evacuate bad things out of themselves. There are no bad things in the world, only that which has passed through human beings can become bad."

"Mnph," said Myshin, trying to lift himself up from the floor.

Faol continued: "I have been speaking about love. I have been speaking about those states of ours to which we apply the single word 'love'. Is that a mistake in the language, or are all those states one and the same? The love of a mother for her boy, the love of a son for his mother, the love of a man and a woman - can it be that all those are one and the same love?"

"Definitely," said Myshin, nodding his head.

Faol said, "Yes, I think the essence of love remains the same regardless of who loves whom. Every human being is given a certain quantity of love. And every human being seeks to apply this love somewhere without taking off his little fuselages. The revelation of the mysteries of the transformations of the petty qualities of our heart, similar to a heap of sawdust -"

"Get!" Myshin shouted, jumping up off the floor. "Out of my sight!"

And Faol crumbled like a pile of bad sugar.

Belief

An excerpt from 'The Old Woman' by Daniil Kharms - translated by George Gibian

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

"I want to ask you something," I said finally. "Do you believe in God?"

A horizontal wrinkle appeared across Sakerdon Mikhailovich's forehead, and he spoke: "Some actions are impolite. It is impolite to ask a man to lend us fifty rubles after we have just watched him put two hundred into his pocket. He either has to lend us the money or refuse, and the most convenient and pleasant manner of refusing is to lie and say that one doesn't have the money. You saw the man had the money and hence you deprived him of the possibility of refusing you simply and pleasantly. You deprived him of the right of choice, and that is a dirty trick. That is an impolite and tactless action. And to ask a man, 'Do you believe in God?' - that too is a tactless and impolite action."

"Why," I said, "that's quite different."

"I'm not comparing it," Sakerdon Mikhailovich said.

"All right," I said, "never mind. Just excuse me for asking you such an impolite and tactless question."

"All right," Sakerdon Mikhailovich said. "I simply refused to answer you."

"I wouldn't answer either," I said, "but for a different reason."

"What reason?" Sakerdon Mikhailovich asked weakly.

"You see," I said, "I don't think there are people who believe or who don't believe. There are only people who want to believe and people who want not to believe."

"That means that the ones who want not to believe already believes in something," Sakerdon Mikhailovich said, "and those who want to believe already, beforehand, don't believe in something?"

"Perhaps, even in mortality," I said.

"So why did you ask me if I believe in God?"

"Simply in order to ask you, 'Do you believe in mortality?' It sounds sort of stupid," I said to Sakerdon Mikhailovich, and I got up.

"What are you doing, going away?"

"Yes," I said, "it's time for me to go."


Here is the entire story, albeit a slightly different translation.
http://absurdist.obook.org/kharms/display.php?p=30