Moms Love Car Wash Booklets

  and other prominent sayings are on display at various venues around town: a car wash, a storage facility and other businesses that escape immediate memory and might be noted in my sketchbook which is momentarily separated from its owner.

   Did you know you can now buy stainless steel straws to help reduce the number of plastic straws in the wastestream? Do you know how many varieties of solar lighting are on the market? Do you know what fun it is to shop Oriental Trading? It’s bazaar! 

   One heron spotted this morning, in flight at 8:44. None to report from over the weekend. Hope you have a good week. I like I’ll Have Another in the Derby.

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.

Cast Rite Metal

   A Cast Rite box truck is on the road the same time as I travel by car to walk. Cast Rite Metal is located in Birdsboro, from what my reading of the lettering on the vehicle tells me.

   My arrival at the park is greeted by something the crew has deposited in front of the dumpster: a crumpled 50-gallon steel  drum. The cast away container stands upright, yet is a third of its normal circumference. No longer round, its outline is irregular.

    The color, possibly once green, is now rust. Its patina is that of having been submerged in the water for a while. It looks like some of the crew dragged it out of the creek, there is the thread of a weed across the top, stuck on a jagged edge.

   It looks like a sculpture that an artist would make of a steel drum container – one that might cost a good sum. This is the original.

   As for this morning’s walk, there are no herons along the creek that I can see under the overcast light gray sky and clouds that bring intermittent rain. Trees and shrubs are filling out, the forest is filling in with new, green foliage and wildflowers such as Philadelphia fleabane and wild geranium polka dot nature’s dress.

Copy Paper

   A cardboard box, empty of paper, has been sitting next to the railroad tracks for a couple of days. Earth Day was yesterday. Many were celebrations held over the weekend. Our schedule permitted attendance at the Reading event Saturday April 21 at Riverfront Park.  

   A band was playing as the shadows lengthened on the grass. The Main Stage lineup board indicated Umami was on. Umami has a cool sound, including an oboe and some of their songs sounded like Dr. John or else they were playing Dr. John.

   In addition to the sounds, there were sights:

Hippies with hula hoops and Long flowing skirts.

 Girls painting on each other’s skin.

A man with a well-behaved brindle Great Dane. The pair was magnetic and attracted comments like “he’s as big as a horse.” The dog wore black leather accessories with studs as if coming from a Harley Davidson fashion runway.

   Most of the vendors had cleared their tables under the information tent. A small separate canopy housed bicycles. The sandwich board listed six cycles and a trailer to the other side carried the slogan It’s a Solar Thing – You Can Understand.

  Most of the food vendors were shutting down and the choices has dwindled. Several people scooped colorful Italian ice which has almost no aroma. A  woman clad in short shorts performed with a hula hoop accented with about five flaming wicks distributed around the circle and many videographers truned their attention her way.

   A green cloth was hung on a line tied on two trees. The cloth was printed with words and a couple of globe shapes that gave the impression of batik. The words were Hope. Happiness. Save. Throw away your cash. Before and After, Eliminate Drugs, Help save our earth. Two young women were about to break camp and noticed I was writing in my notebook. One of them described the origin and the process of the fabric work – it was made by children in an outreach program and they used  glue and acrylic paints to create the piece. Ever since then it keeps occurring to me how fortunate it is the young women and the children got together. It would be nice to make something like it.

    Feeling tuned up, I returned home by way of the River Place trail along the Schuylkill river near Reading Area Community College (RACC). Piles of stone, baled with wide plastic strapping, have been placed under the Penn street bridge. The Penn street bridge, when you look up, is crumbly but maybe not as badly as the Buttonwood street bridge. Where the stone belongs is unclear.

    “This has been here for twenty years!” a man cried out as we passed the stone pallets. “ Twenty years they’ve been sitting here and the city is crying for money.”

  I copy. Do you read?

questions along the way

Two questions popped up during drive time this morning. First, the first: “Is your garden hose ready to work?”

   The second question is “ Is your vehicle ready for spring?” 

 

4 ever

  Fresh grey screenings have been placed on the path. Last evening, the edges  were a slate blue grey. The combination is similar in hue to heron plumage. 

   At the 4 marker a pair of initials may be seen, having been crudely scratched above the carved numeral 4, a number which identifies the post and an area of natural interest. Below the hefty permanent 4, rough markings formed the word: ever.  They have a thin, unsubstantial look of transience. It is possible they are still there today.

  The level of the creek, having been kept low, shows clear water flow. The bottom is visible in most spots, revealing rocks and plant life.

   One heron to report, an early bird, having flown over the house at 7:30 this morning, heading east-south-east. We do not live yet we live 4 ever.

A Heart With A + E

   Sunday: The creek is at a reduced volume and the level is lean. It is like looking at the back of a thin person, where the backbone and ribs stick out. The rocks and lines in the creek bed are visible, the meat and the muscle of the water current are miniscule. 

   Small birds dot tall trees: a rusty red-breasted robin, then a fiery red male cardinal and finally a brilliant blue jay. No heron to report, not in the stream, trees or air.

   Someone has etched a good-sized heart in the screenings: a plump round one about two feet across, enclosing the lettering A + E. Then a series of heart outlines at intervals along the path, like an ellipsis of continuing love and adoration.

o Ye of Little

   A purple or pink foam “u” has been found near the Heritage Center, if lost please don’t worry everything’s going to be all right.

   Three herons along the way today, one that flew above the Gring’s Mill bridge at 7:36 a.m. and two more that stood stock-still in the inner edge of the creek, first a pennant-pose heron near the picnic area, where the water level reached almost to its hocks at 7:55 in the morning.

    The other heron, seen fishing in front of the stone home near the 222 bypass overpass, was fringe and fine and its wings and body looked like moveable parts. The water ran about midway up its legs and the bird looked fresh and lively on the warm late November day, when the bittersweet has burst open to bare its red-orange inner fruit like a robin’s red breast and the yellow-orange outer parts have split open like wings as the fall takes off.

    Along the trail several natural objects have presented themselves: the seed part of the maple wings that remains when the thinner membrane gets abraded and eroded, forming a kind of triangular piece that resembles a flat candy kiss; a simple leaf with the tip folded back and some morsels having been eaten from it – it reminds me of an oval picture background; and a nice piece of sycamore bark that has been appropriated for today’s sudoku rebus puzzle drawing, such drawings few and far between with current work schedule. Several squirrels scurried and scrambled around in the brush and three small whitetail deer followed a dirt path to the creek and made their way along the water’s edge in the low lands that lead to the channel. One large cardinal and an attractive woodpecker alit on a fallen branch and a rotting trunk, respectively.

   In addition to the purple u, have found a blue bracelet shaped like a bat, and ran across – as if it were a finish line – a pink bracelet made with a word in raised printed form, a sight which made me feel sad for a minute, thinking someone had lost their FAITH, but to lose a bracelet and to lose one’s faith are two entirely different losses and separate pieces.

Leilani Needs Wipes

   Apple green paper square with black lettering: Leilani needs wipes. Each line is one word, three lines in all to convey the shopping list, a need and a memo. Must do this. Giant cavity pear walnut gold tinsel string with silver metallica stars and an upside down paper plate in six-sided convex cancave star pattern. 

      Have seen heron drawings on the covers of a couple of books in the past few days and that is all for the birds.

   Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Tel

  First two letters missng i.e., burnt out bulbs, leaving the tel in motel.  ESPN on QB substitution: we think you’re good enough. Just be yourself. Cambridge book on creativity. Operating from the cockpit. Muscle milk left stnding on piece of the architecture at the top of the library steps. Rain is making drops while the sun shines somewhere. Working nine days a week. Stellar. Telephone. Don;t tell on me.