Restless

You’re reading along, not a deep thought in your entire head, and then you have a moment. That poem there in front of you climbs off the page and Crisprs itself right into your DNA. It’s a flashlight illuminating some truth that you might have dimly sensed but couldn’t put it into words and here is a guy who can and does.

That was my reaction to this moving short poem by Mick Canning, from his book “The Night Bus.” Rather than feel like just one of the characters in the poem, I identify with all of them. There have been times when I was definitely a door closer, and others where I flung it so far open that bats flew in.

The Restless Wind

By Mick Canning

Some people need the familiar,
Finding within it, safety and comfort.
But some see it as a constraint,
Suffocating them like the walls of a prison.

And the same wind that blows
Through both their houses
Causes one man to close his door,
While the other throws his wide open.

A long time ago, I had a colleague who was quite fond of listening to the sound of his own voice, and daily used it to express what he regarded as deep thoughts, but were mostly platitudes. However, the principle of even a stopped clock being right twice a day was certainly true of this man. Thus when one day he said “Poets are the last truth tellers,” it rang so clearly that I have not forgotten it.

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This past week I ran across a recipe that piqued my curiosity. It was for sardine paté. One took a can of sardines, a few other ingredients, tossed them into a blender and blended the very bejabbers out of the contents. What other ingredients, you ask, almost fearing what I will say, since the thought of sardines in a blender has already proved unsettling?

Well, some butter, a hard-boiled egg, lemon juice, capers, mustard, shallots, and parsley, that’s what. The sardines were of the sort that is packed in oil. During the process Robin wandered into the kitchen and idly enquired what I was making. When I told her, her color paled and she quickly found other places in the house to be.

This is not the first time in my life that I created food that no one else would eat. When my children were young I found a recipe for liver casserole. There was a bold aroma in the kitchen as it baked, and a finished appearance that most resembled something that the dog had eaten and then later yarked up. Not only would my entire family rise up with one voice and refuse to eat it, but I was not allowed to keep it indoors.

At the time I was puzzled at first. During my own early childhood, liver was a big part of our diet, since organ meats were not subject to rationing during WW II.

I liked it. My family of origin all liked it. My mother had become an expert in its preparation. So for me I was revisiting of one of the pleasant parts of being a kid in the early 1940s.

However, for my kids, the best spin that I can put on the whole casserole episode is that it was as if an alien had brought out something scooped off a greasy floor in the corner of a malodorous room in their UFO. Something whose expiration date was clearly months in the past, and now here it was in the middle of their dinner table and they were being asked to eat it.

‘Twas not exactly the same, but Robin’s facial expression when I spoke the words “sardine paté” did look familiar.

(BTW: the paté is delicious.)

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On one of those late summer nights long long ago when too many gin and tonics had definitely clouded my judgment, I had left the front door of my home wide open. At some point I looked up from my chair and saw a bat fluttering about the living room. Interesting, said I to myself, so I stood up and as it flew past me I reached out and caught it in my hand.

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A gigantic heat dome is setting up over most of the western US this weekend. What’s a heat dome, you ask? It’s like a monster hair dryer from a beauty salon that has dropped down and lost its mind while being set to parboil. Here’s a graphic to guide you:

It’s the sort of picture that doesn’t need explanation or a legend to tell its story. Records are being broken everywhere you see red. Paradise is right in the middle. I doubt even events like this summer are changing many of the minds over in the conservative bin, many of whom are still describing climate change as a hoax.

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

John Stuart Mill

Listening to these clodpolls, including some at the highest levels (is there such a thing) of our government is enough to make one ready for a quiet place where you cut out paper dolls and make leather belts.

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