About me? What about Us? I think it’s more about us.
Me, I’m only a very temporary Earthling.
A poem about a tree is about me whether I want it to be or not, especially if I happened to write it.
But the sound the poem makes when said tree falls in the forest, well, that’s about us if you were within earshot.
About me, that’s just one of the things I’m hoping to discover here. About me is the toughest part to write.
And It doesn’t stay written for very long.
If it were all about me then me wouldn’t be that important and it wouldn’t really matter what’s written here.
Not too long ago one of my friends wrote a book. I asked him what he was going to put in that big empty “About The Author” field. He said, “What else can I provide but my name & my place of origin? I just wrote you a whole damn book!”
I agree. On a page I’m only the words. What else could I be?
What if I’m only the words?
What if the words are all I ever wanted to be?
Seriously, I love words. So maybe I can love me.
Which would make Us all the better.
What is a picture to a shapeshifter?
It’s always a bygone version of yesterme.
These words won’t even look the same tomorrow.
I could draw you a picture from a reference in the mirror.
I could draw you the same picture tomorrow and it will look completely different.
So maybe I will use this otherwise empty page to give us some different looks.
Pickle-Banana Chaos Salad
Earlier today I stood awestruck (bewildered, transfixed, maybe even drooling on the linoleum floor a little bit) while staring through the rows and rows of glass jars in the dill section of the pickle aisle of a busy three-acre grocery store trying my best to see the pickles for the brine when suddenly some other guy in an alpaca poncho and Chucks walked up, stood right beside me and asked me what I was thinking. Now I may be paraphrasing of course because I couldn’t quite hear myself think; it was noisy and I wasn’t sure if he meant to comment on my attire or if he really wanted to know about my pickle-shopping process when in that moment I was actually still questioning my choice of sriracha. But I also happened to be thinking this:
If the weird turn pro when the going gets weird, then what do the weird do when the going already done went ass-over-tea-kettle-sideways & backwards-chaos-bananas crazy? And how weird is weird enough to fit in whilst not looking like you’re trying too hard to strike just that right-in-the-Goldilocks-zone of weird? And what, exactly, are the pro doing now anyhow?
That’s what I was thinking. That, and whole dills this time instead of spears.
I love peanut butter. Peanut butter toast and coffee is probably my all-time favorite breakfast. The blended smell of coffee, peanut butter, and a well-oiled Selectric II coming up to nominal operating temperature is what gets me up in the mornings if there’s nothing else. I think we should try to capture that warm, spinning Selectric smell in a bottle and market a cologne and air fresheners. There’s probably even a market for a Selectric-flavored Ramen if R&D can condense its essence into a salty powder. My guess is that’s what heaven smells like in the mornings. Now I’m hungry. I’ll finish this later.
I’m a semi-retired writer/corporate-state-sanctioned-graffiti-artist/marketeur* but I’d like to be a little less retired soon. Retirement’s overrated but I always knew it would be. I’ve never been bored that I can recall, but it feels like it could happen some day so I’d like to go back to work in some capacity. I got pulled off course there for a while by some strange gravity–must’ve fallen asleep or took a wrong turn somewhere a ways back–so I’m currently in the process of starting a new business, if for no other reason than to re-center and concentrate my focus on one endeavor instead of 27, regardless of whatever else is swirling around in the storm. My co-pilot keeps good notes when he’s not sleeping so I can already see where we left the road in a blinding white-out. Remember your Why & adjust course(s). There’s no use whining about the ineffective, squeaky windshield wipers now, it’s been snowing too hard. Huge flakes. I’m Thankful that you can see the lines on the road once in a while. I’ll slow down again and try my best to stay on it. I’ll see if I can add those typewriter-shaped air fresheners to my product line and I’ll keep you posted. They should look good with fuzzy dice on a mirror and smell approximately like 1937, give or take.
There may be a scratch-N-sniff poetry book in the works as well. I don’t know about making books because historically that’s been Musie’s department (as is musing & editing & now teaching–multitasking–I know, it’s complicated) but I’m learning, researching. Maybe I’ll start with a poetry coloring book that smells like crayons. Research has already changed the scope of my project. I shouldn’t have looked. Are there any good scratch-N-sniff printers/distributors out there any more? I’d imagine scratch-N-sniff technology has come a long way since the 70’s so the possibilities must be endless.
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*but only because I had to in order to survive “adulthood” and to see how the game was played. Research is one of my outer adult’s side-hustles.