Year Round

   New collections appear along the trail: designs of nature and creatures of God. Spring is full of surprises!

   Evidence of tail dragging can be found. What began as one turtle crossing mark turns into a proliferation. Low amplitude sine waves connect the meadow side of the path to the bank of the creek. Dual tracks cross with a central X – major turtle activity. 

   Further up on the path a folded white paper receipt has absorbed moisture from a fine intermittent drizzle. The words YEAR ROUND can be read, and a price $2.52.

   Near picnic bend, a heron wades, then fades away in flight.

   On the way back is a circle of bark without the wood of the tree in it – like a wrist cuff without a break, a wide bangle. I take footage of this, it is unusual.

   A egg-headed heron stands on an overturned tree of great girth that goes across a tiny tributary of the creek. It stays put, assuming the Pose of  a Flamingo, although lacking its coloration.

  A dead field mouse lies on the path, poor dear, and I take its body to the edge of the woods for safe keeping.

   At the World’s Cleanest Grocery Store, I pick up some juice from the ever dwindling frozen concentrate selection – the same kind I always buy that has gone up another ten cents in price, two cans of cat food to feed the clan and a French demi-baguette that will be breakfast with the jam at home.

   Self serve terminal 3 is open but not accepting of cash. Cash is all I have.

   The clerk at number 7 rings my $4.14 sale.

   “Would you like to buy pretzel rods for a dollar a package?”

    I note several packages emblazoned with the name bran UTZ, placed in the bagging area for convenience. White speckles of the bark of the pretzel trunks are conspicuous and suspicious.

  “Sea salt or regular?”

   “I don’t know.”

   “No, thank you.”

   At home I feed the kitties, finish coffee, prepare the toast, sit with the cats and read. My concentration is broken by surface guilt; it bothers me to have said no to the cashier. This will haunt me all day, making her feel badly when she was following a company directive for increasing add-on sales.

   An unpaid gas utility bill from yesterday rests in my calendar/planning book. I head out the door to pay it at the grocery. I plan to go stop at checkout seven and purchase some pretzel rods – it’s a contest and she gets credit for the sales. My purchase can help make her day.

   A bird flies near the front door as I step out of the house. Its wings are firm and outspread. Light peeks through fanned feathers. A tattered black bird, what do you know?

Digital Red Emery

   A red emery board lies on the asphalt, parallel to the yellow line that marks one of the spaces at the post office. As I fumble with the engineering compass to obtain the heading of the man-made arrow to find out if it is pointing north, I get a reading of 330: it appears to be shy of north by 30 degrees west. How did it get here? How did I get here?

   Today I am doing bullet work. There is just one thing that must be done today and that is pay the Target bill. I have accomplished that and more. Here is my account.

   I slept from (blank) until (blank) on the couch in the living room. When I got up I played guess the time .

   “It’s between two and three,” I said, traversing the dining room to bedroom and kitchen, where the clock on the stove read 2:27 in digital red.   

   I fed the cats, changed to go out and went out. I stopped at the bank to withdraw money. I drove toward Target. The sky, which delivered light rain this morning, now was the color of a bleached heron. An unbleached heron flew, flapping eastward, in the sky over Spring Ridge at 3:11. It made me glad to see one.

   Morphine was playing on the radio when I arrived at the shopping center. At Target, I picked up a lighter someone had dropped inside the store. It was filled with lighter fluid. It was light. It was pale pinky-orange-red. It was a cheap one. It had no markings. It lay on the carpet between the food area and the dollar deals section where the indoor carts cluster. A lighter would not be the kind of thing I would want running loose in my store. I gave it to the individual who processed my payment, which was for twenty per cent of the total and six times the minimum amount due. Exited without further excitement, leaving the lost light lighter behind, and photographed a round sticker with a happy giraffe face next to the pedestrian crossing area with its multi-stripes of safety yellow-orange that run at a diagonal to the curb kerb.

   Next, visited the library jonesing for a computer and suspecting they were in possession of my library card. Yes, they were holding. Was assigned a public computer next to a man who has been searching for a job from there for weeks. The computer monitor in front of him contains his resume.

   During a check on business, I learn Target has dropped Amazon Kindle. I learn I have an order to be fulfilled. The computer next to displays a letter to Human Resources. I go home to the fulfillment center and process my order. I learn about the evils of sugar by perusing a book, like when you go on a vacation you take one last look at where you’ve been. At 5:37 the package is taped and ready to go with me to the post office. I drive like a conservative bat out of hell to get it off by 6:00 p.m.

   “Take the Skinheads Bowling” plays in the radio during the drive on the expressway in Reading PA, much to my amusement. My amusement, My amusement. The package I busted ass to send off will arrive next Thursday, Next Thursday? Next Thursday!

   Read my memory. A red emery board is in the space I pull into at the post office. This is how it got there.

BCIU student show 2012 part 1

Art appreciation comes easily at the annual display of high school student art, open at the Goggleworks Cohen Gallery through 4/25:

Three of my favorite artifact groups: The fine character of the non-loom fabric projects of Governor Mifflin – Precious! The simplexity of the cardboard charcoal drawings from Boyertown - Stunning! The sophisticated three-dimensional mosaics of Exeter  – Awesome!

Special Mention: to a pair of students from Exeter for their offering of writing and illustration called An Alphabet Book of Underappreciated Animals – dear and charming.

There were, alas, no herons in the exhibit, but I plan to go back for Part II today.

Four D’s

  Car bearing a Berks Gymnastics Academy decal with a figure silhouette and three words beginning with “D“, or so I thought. The world wide web site includes four d’s: desire, discipline, dedication and determination.

   During the afternoon acquired an exciting world wide bird reference book, bound to have a heron in it!

   At library, couple exits a pretty Mazda 3. A note is attached to the dashboard: a piece of lined notebook paper with large cursive sriting in blue ink: Do Not Speed!

Journey 2

   Aud 3. Vanity tag Maryland: SERVOUS. Three in three locations is louder. Items of stowing interest Guatemalan Worry or Trouble dolls packs of four with pouch, their faces, individually and hand sewn all distinct and different as if real people. Produced in assembly line but not mass-produced to point character is taken out. Stet. Stat. Pick of the Litter is ticket for theatre: Journey 2. Also a petite (under heading of items of stowing interest) booklet of paper: Emotional Mastery. Have today slept, showered, coffee’d, cleaned, straightened, painted, sorted, shone. On ten-dollar bill ING, on five the stamp now or MON. and on a one dollar bill the sequence of numbers: 1-13- 17-21-35-43 and on another 850. Making lot of 32 artist cards. No herons to report. Journeous. Servous with two smiles. I’m serious! Et tu?

Water Truck

  Three people or groups of interest seen on the street yesterday, in addition to a water truck:

1.  A car driven by the Travelling Piano teacher with the logo of  three frogs hop dot com.
2. A tall slim man walking the wrong way up (east as it happens) a one-way street, carrying a  large styrofoam container of food, with the lid flipped open. He forks food into his mouth while striding not on the sidewalk but in one of the traffic lanes.
3. Two young brunettes, with broad smiles and gleeful grins, dressed in tees and shorts, working in front of Hooters, twirling lime green hula hoops around their waist and hips.

  This morning became a follower of a car with a SLEEP vanity tag.

    Items of overnight stowing interest:

1. a book on vanishing New York storefronts
2. a book of poems called ADDRESS – the cover very interesting
3. Masada peppermint sea salts for soaking.

  today: Painterly clouds, nice breezes, gentle temperatures and sunny sun sun. Lying on the couch, letting thoughts drift. All that is is the cat’s hip (Simon). The smell of cherry bath soak for my aching foot surrounds coffee table. The sound of a mournful dog at the nearby veterinarian’s can be heard. The soft white pines fan open and closed in sun and air.

   A black SUV moves in reverse as the driver pulls away from a slot in the office parking lot. after a turn to the right, the vehicle goes forward.

  “It must be about five o’clock,” I think. The clock tower bells ring and the chimes add one by one to four plus one. I have spent most of the day sleeping. No herons to report.

Avocado One Eleven

 Crossing Delancey on trash day in the neighborhood, what do you get?

EMHU

   Every day is different and this one begins the same way: I go for coffee and I go for a walk. First comes trainspotting. At the train tracks the first letters I see are EMHU freight lettering, followed by the phrase top lift only and all purpose spine car.

   On the road: School bus 56.

   Today the temperature is warm and the lighting mellow under a mackerel sky.

    As for walking: There are two heron in the middle mile. The first looks into the creek with great intensity, as if it were examining a slide through a microscope, displaying the feverish focus of a scientist in a lab after a big discovery. It also looks storklike and I have to look twice to distinguish its stringy breast feathers, white in the light, from the ghostlike shreds of plastic bags that get caught in the branches along the water and sometimes hang there.

   The second heron is in full view, standing on top of a good sized rock in the middle of the creek. Sunlight exaggerates the appearance of its bill and throat so that it resembles a pelican. It too, stares fixedly at the dark brown and brackish water, finding its occupation in a search for fish flesh.

   My thoughts are occupied with What Must Be Done Today and a book called The Remembered Visit by Edward Gorey.

   The path includes broken leaves, a squirrel that hesitates and then dashes in front of a jogger and a blue jay making hawk noises.

On the radio, Colin Cowherd in reviewing questionable decision-making in one Sunday football contest, exclaims: “Why are you talking about previous games? What about this one? Every game has its own feel.”

64 Seasons

   Non-attachment and seeking no gain are under consideration a dollar bill with numeral 64 written on it a chimera no other pathlings and zero heron sightings there is a time, there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven and there are rhetorical questions and toothpastdoes not go back in the tube nor ashes back in the firewood another day’s useless energy spent plus $6 in gasoline. I saw a person make a motion to hold an umbrella stand that is shaped like an umbrella in lieu of using a real umbrella and that was the funniest thing on this day that was warm wet and now woolly bear chilly if not silly a day that goes nowhere and where will we be at the end of the day? It would be like sitting Buddha in my lap for sixteen years.

Labor Day 2011

A day not to work while contemplating work and labor and efforts that bear fruit. Clear the centers. No herons to report. What is the central nervous system?