Jupe

Usually it was easier just to throw on the guise of an insect for a reconnaissance, but that made seeing more difficult. With so much of such a small brain devoted to collecting and sorting through visual stimuli, she would have a difficult time making sense of anything else while dressed in June bug drag. She needed to be more than mere paparazza on this outing. Besides, it was mid-winter where she was going, and inconspicuousness was always required wherever the vagabonds were concerned.

for Mike

"So long as I don't have to shovel it..." the old Caper used to say, since he favoured rain over snow any day. There are few who had a sweeter disposition than he. He also had a toe where his thumb used to be. One of his hands one day at the mill got trapped underneath a large pile of hot steel. The pain that he must have endured! His left hand was crushed, mangled and melted; tangled and tattered. By a terrible chance, he'd gotten it smelted. In time, and to some degree, it was cured by a specialist physician for a nominal fee. The procedures were new and untested as yet, but the toe-graft was the one good chance that he'd get to have use of the arm in some capacity. All this he later related to me.

"Age before beauty" I'd sometimes joke as I let him enter a doorway before me at work. "Shit before the shovel" was his stock reply. He'd say it without ever missing a beat. He'd not bat an eyelid. That's how we'd kid. But now he's long gone and dead, six feet below any snow he won't shovel. He's fled, but I doubt if he's burning, the devil. No, he's high up and far off and quite out of sight. His body was broken but now he's made of light.

the N.A.S.A. scrap-book, part one

Here is a picture of another world, a different sphere entirely, that exists independent of the human race. So far, human hands have not been able to touch her virgin soil. 

P.S. click the image to make it enormous!

wanderings

As it turns out, my wife never did write about our family's walk in the Assiniboine forest, so it is left to me. We all went: mother, father, baby, even canine. We drove to the head of a trail in the little blue car, then set out on foot. The weather was agreeable for an afternoon in March, but the light was diffuse. The sky was not overcast, it was featureless white cloud, and the pale evidence of a sun somewhere above met our eyes only after infinite reflections between white snow below and white cloud above. We were in-between, squinting into a void broken only by ourselves and the countless thin, black lines of birch on either side of our blank path.


There is very little to observe in the Assiniboine forest in March. During a momentary rest that also served as a chance to put the mittens back onto a child who continually managed to get them off, our faithful hound relieved her bowels of their burden. Only then did I realize how wonderful the wood, the day, the whiteness had smelled. We held our breath, then our noses. I had a camera with me, so I captured a few images of us on the trail. I took a picture of the dog's business in the snow; a more vibrant brown I doubt I have ever seen.


Some short time later, as we were passing some cattails, I think made our first remark about the monster who inhabits that forest. "Very elusive" he or she is. Then I believe we headed back toward the blue automobile awaiting us in the parking lot. The path on the journey back twisted and turned. We had not  turned around and gone back the way we had come. We took the first intersecting path in the general direction we needed to go. Intersecting paths then somehow seemed to abound. We zigged, we zagged. We were lost.


Eventually, we saw some signs of movement through the trees.... We headed toward the moving things, and found that we were very close to the road we had traveled to get to the forest. The car-park must be near! But the path looked nothing like the return-path we had seen when we had first set out. On the sidewalk we realized that, though it felt as if we walked more than the return distance, we were actually a kilometer short of our destination. Had we fallen prey to a monstrous spell?

moonspeak

A co-worker of mine, who shall remain nameless; no, perhaps we'll call her "Shane" to ensure her anonymity, though calling her "Anonymous" would be more apt. Anyhow, Shane is an expert at Moon-speak. Have you not heard of this dialect? It smacks ever so slightly of racism (against the human race, what other?). Moon-speak is the term used to refer to the very broken English sometimes spoken by people from the Earth continent of Asia. People from the countries Japan and Korea are noted for their Moon-speak.

English is a much younger language than most on Asia, and it sounds and functions much differently, having been at such a remove in time and space for much of its existence. So, when someone  from an Asian country is learning English, the sound and meaning of what they are saying often remains foreign to an English speaker, and gets labeled as Moon-speak. I mention all of this by means of introduction. Shane and I refer to my wife as "mai waifu". 

Today, mai waifu, and mai famara-ee went for a walk in the very spooky Assiniboine forest. I cannot tell much more about this though, because mai waifu now has her own web-log, and she wants to write about the adventure. You can find it here:

http://thelittlereadengine.blogspot.com

NO!

The Mars Volta are a terrible, terrible band, and I don't like them. It is necessary to leave some evidence of this here because a friend of mine, let's call him "Shane" to protect his identity, introduced me to the band and decided they were my favourite because I have a Martian-themed webbed log. They are well and truly cringe worthy. I will leave it up to your selves to search out video footage of the Mars Volta "performing" on David Letterman's late night television program.

sheesh

...and then there's these guys:

don't sweat it

All this talk of space and other planets has really helped to bring me back down to Earth. We already have an atmosphere here: how great is that? If you want to see other life-forms, all you have to do is walk out your door and scatter a few crumbs. Until humans figure out how to build a proper flying saucer, the cost of getting off this teeming planet is, well, astronomical. But we don't have to leave. We can continue sending messages out there and wait for a reply. In the meantime we can put a little more effort into keeping what we have in better condition, right? I'm going to let outer space be more about inspiration, not perspiration.

tick tock on the clock

The Martians of the past could have been so war-like that they wiped themselves off the face of the Red Planet. No reports have yet been revealed on Earth concerning microbial or bacterial life on the planet, but we like to believe that there could be. After a million years have passed, noticeable changes will have occurred everywhere. Humanity may have become Martian, who's to say? We may need to find a way to combat the pugilistic tendencies of our species in order to find out.

Is there no utopia, no 'not place'? Time is 'not place', though it makes for the possibility of places. The electronic network humanity now uses to communicate is 'not place' and far from anything near human societal perfection. That there is no perfect place is the didactic thrust of the concept of utopia. Yet even with shattered ideals, there is still a means to go on. Time. The sun. Life. This might be all there is. People can help sustain their little part in it. Desire still spurs us on, and hope.

no time for idle chit-chat

Oh, hi!
Sorry, I have to go!
Here, enjoy this little ditty: