Stoop-id

So let's get started. Here is my stoop.

The chair is only there when I'm having a smoke or contemplating...just contemplating, nothing specific. The screwdriver is with the chair when I have vodka and orange juice. Sometimes it's a beer. Eventually it will be a white russian. A real one. I tried to get a white russian in the town of tonawanda on Friday, and I got a black russian with whipped cream. It was good and I did not complain, but it was not correct. You should understand that there is the tot, the cot and the not. Town of/City of/North-- Tonawanda. No one here calls them the tot, the cot and the not, but I do. No one says "stoop" up here. They keep calling soda "pop". This should confuse and anger me, but I'm not an unfrozen cave man. I'm a super intelligent chimp. I will study their ways and find out how to fit in. On that note, this is not a "victory garden" I am growing. My closest friend called it that. But that is wrong. Granted, he knows more about plants and such like than I do. His father is the gardener that I aspire to. Yeah, in the end, if I want to know any damn thing about growing crops, I do know the Man. He's got a doctorate in math and doesn't even grow for food. He grows for sport. I'm not gonna ask him questions yet.

Stoops and Stickball are not even parts of our youth. My youth. They are a thing that was before me and then we had porches and baseball and some part of the back yard you could grow tomatoes in. I got a stoop, though. so I'm going with it. Got a tomato plant.

I call him Yuri. There are some Communists I can admire. Yuri is some sort of Siberian Tomato that produces blackish fruit. I assume he's a tomacco plant. It got a little cold the other day and I said the hell with it. He's a Siberian tomato plant. "is not cold, is like what people in amerika think is cold" I'm pretty sure it gets colder in the CoT than in Siberia. But I might be wrong. Coldest place on earth is outside of Utica. Tonight I'll post a picture of the pimping of the stoop. There are lights, but it's too early. And a proper stoop would be much steeper, without the ramp. Americans with disabilities act. I'm all for it. More grow space. Easier on people who can't climb stairs. I'm all about evolving.

Raise Our Food, Like the Man.

Since I'm bringing this blog out of the cold, I should point out that I'm going to curse a lot. Well, maybe not a lot, but effortlessly. I will brook no lip re: my cursing. I've always wanted to say that. I know fuck all about growing shit. I could keep fish alive, sometimes. My cat was a bit of an asshole, but I liked him. Never had plants. My sister, I think mostly, and maybe some brothers had a garden out back the parent's place. I had little to do with it. Might have eaten some cucumber. Michelle's brother flat out said to me that the family saying was, "Give it to Michelle and it will die." At some point, somehow, this changed when Jen and Chuck gave her Police Constable Danny Butterman.

Who is a peace lily. He did very well and so did the rest of her plants. I bought her Police Constable Doris Thatcher, our only policewomanofficer shortly thereafter. She's an Anthurium, which looks like a peace lily with pink flowers.

Also. I tend to give things names. Like some people name cars or boats. I once named a bass "spike" because it followed me along the shore like a dog would follow a person. This is important because all of my garden plants will have names, and I don't want you to be alarmed. But the point is, I stayed hands off with the indoor plants. I gave them names and sometimes spoke to them sternly. But Michelle watered them, took care of them. It was a very 50's style of parenting. The garden is a different thing. I've decided to step up and be hands on. Only the Germans could have a word for "Finally I have decided to be a strong black male father figure, just like Bill Cosby said, just as Bill Cosby is totally discredited and I am neither black nor a father, and they're plants--fercrissake" I don't actually know the word. I learned some German 20 years ago and that was it. (das ist alles). Yup.

You will find me in the garden if you want to, unless it's pouring down with rain.

Also then, I'm going to talk here about tomato plants and how quickly broccoli can grow, when grown right. Also graveyards and Niagara Falls and glowing lights arranged on your stoop. Maybe not everything has to be said, but I'd like to say some of it. I'd like to say a few things.

Etoile

It hung there. I swear to God I could not watch the road for it dragging my eyes away. So I pulled to the side of the road. And when I got out, a Jack Rabbit jumped. And the sand went on forever. And I was sure a rattlesnake would get me just above the boot.

But instead the big stupid star just sat there. Probably a planet, mind you. Probably just stupid Jupiter.

All this damn time Jupiter pounding in my head and I had to stop and acknowledge it. The only dumbass on I10 stopped and looking at the sky.

I still remember the jack rabbit run and the bright star all these years later. I still remember being more alone than anything and still having to just stop for a minute. I still remember that I took a left turn at Jacksonville, because, why not?

Did I do everything right or wrong? Too late now.

To Forgive

Apparently only God can forgive. And you have to jump through some hoops first. You have to talk to some old wank.

I mean I guess I can see really wanting to be forgiven for murder or some such.

But do you have to only confess to a designated representative under specific circumstances?

Baptism seems pretty fluid, at times, pun intended.

Maybe confession is too, is more, is the most.

Maybe you just need to get it off your chest.

To take on any responsibility for divine forgiveness seems like hubris and possible madness.


Maybe forgiveness is not divine at all.

Nor revenge, mind you. Some have to be put down like dogs. Maybe some people should never be forgiven.

But the silly shit. Shit where no one died or was crippled.

Don't do it again. Don't establish a pattern. Right?

Anyway, I want to be able to tell people they're cool in the hope that one of them will tell me the same.

Hrmm

One blog to comment on the other, and also provide cooking advice. Just so crazy it might work.

My writey write blog is all over the park. I feel as if I must straighten it out.

But that's not how blogs work. If you read them in order chapter 5 comes first. Should I write backwards? Only if I can do it before people read.

I'm not happy with the blog. That will be the next revolution.To post the beginning/middle/end as such, so they appear as such.

I understand the value of the non linear story. I can write the non linear story, but I don't want to be limited by non linear.

y'dig?

Firing on All Cylinders.

I had a job once, temp job, not pleasant but not particularly hard. Just boring. Eventually you get into a rut of when you eat lunch and what you have for lunch and how many cigarettes you can smoke on a break. The idea was to make money and....? Go, I guess. Cos that's all I wanted back then, to get in the car and go.

I sat outside, one summer day, eating my sandwich, drinking my can of coke. Staring across the grass patch and the grill of my car. "We gotta get out of here," I thought.

I always felt like I was born maybe 10-20 years too late. Like I had missed out on the ground floor, which was then covered in sand, buried in gravel, and replaced with the next floor. I think I would have fit in on that old ground floor.

When I was Going places it was a romantic notion of a bygone era already. All those road monkeys of old never described the crippling loneliness well enough to dissuade me. Or the hours sitting in a hot car, wondering where the hell you fit in with the world.

Ah, it's a rich man's game now, the cross country road trip. Gas is expensive. Time is expensive. Should you really be doing THAT to the environment?

One day you realize that there is no loneliest place on earth. One day you realize it's good to just be alive. That's a hard mindset to get rid of, try as you might.