Ageless Age with Edge

Ageless Age with Edge
welcomes you twofold

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Door Knobs, Tires and Tobacco Tea (with Herbs!)

I’ve been tampering with door knobs, especially the kind that pull off when you use them, and the kind that don't shut neighbours' rattly bang-bang doors. I've also been swapping tires off different bicycles to make one straight bike. The front is almost level with the back, almost. Sponges in door cracks are useful to hold doors still, but being sneaky with sponges makes neighbours suspicious. Frankly, I find people who try to recycle their wet shirts and half-eaten tomatoes in the recycling bin suspicious.

Otherwise I'm succumbing to a madness for dandelion & chicory root/leaf teas - 'wortbrews': They are my darlings. I got to mingling coffy & tobacco leaves with the dandy in an iron steeper today. It's pungent, heady, headswimmy & tasty (with lots (LOTS) of pure cream). For calories, am slurping in a deal of leek & tater cream-soup, biting on Italian red-wine salamis, red taters, February crabapples, honey, butter, ciabatta, high calorie ale (imperial), dandelion, broccoli, broccoli sprouts, salmon, sardines, and ingesting dark cacao cakes with runny cacao centers.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Halo Eve

Snowpaced home,
tingleblissed and snowlambsoled,
shiversouled,
after bell-rain tings,
scents and frankincense,
winegrails and waferflesh,
halos and hallows of Chrissamass mass

{25-26 December 2010}

House of Nations

Dreamt today [8 January 2011] I climbed thru hatches in a tower, multi-level, archival, housing an ongoing history of all the world’s peoples. Spent hours in the 'Jews Room' with Dad, Mom & Rachel, as Sara peeked over from Arab Corridor. A Christian Jew (folkdancer I know) spoke of Jewish history, while friend Alan-Hugo exchanged good legs with a crippled Jew, before I spiraled north up a stairway into Britain.

Feeling along the floorboards, I found a ribbon-wrapped letter, sealed with a red heart—signed from me. The lady recipient had saved it from centuries ago, came & kissed me for hours; the same thing happened in a special Scottish ‘wing’- the young girl said Robin (Burns) had died & left her along the way. Saying goodbye, my letter sealed, I walked into a land of mountains & Aryan tribes, where an Indus-Iranian woman made my wedding with invites from Carpathians to Himalayas. The entire dream played to the tune & faint whisper of Robert Burns’ song, _The Wren’s Nest_ :

The Robin to the Wren’s nest
Cam keekin’ in, cam keekin’ in;
O weel’s me on your auld pow,
Wad ye be in, wad ye be in?
Thou’s ne’er get leave to lie without,
And I within, and I within,
Sae lang’s I hae an auld clout
To rowe ye in, to rowe ye in.

{Translation}
The Robin to the Wren's nest
Came peekin in, came peekin in;
I'm blessed by your old noggin,
You want inside? You want inside?
You'll never get leave to lie outside,
While I inside, while I inside --
So long's I have an old cloth
To swaddle you in, to swaddle you in

The tail end of the dream featured Alan-Hugo, now one foot tall, hobbling on the crippled legs he'd willingly taken off the Jew, a man named Simon. Alan, barely able to walk, was his old, bold, joking self. Simon suddenly appeared, overjoyed to see him. The two reclined along a low table, laughing, telling stories, both so happy, their eyes went red with tears. I sat and watched them both, amazed, my face wet. Neither one remembered what deformity or pain meant.

People on the Bus Tell You How to Be Healthy :-/

I overheard something very similar to the following conversation while taking the 10pm 3Bus on February 7th, 2011.



Participants:

--Single mother

--Two male students



Mother: Hey. Just came from Knuckleheads. They didn't have any.

Student: Yeah you can't beat those. When I want my tobacco fix, I always go for __________.

Mother: Yeah def. They've been sayin smoking it isn't good for you, but cigs are just as bad, pot the same. It don' matter.

Student: Shhhhhh, Everything's bad for you. Taco Bell just recalled a bunch of lettuce! D'you hear that? Yeah.

Mother: Like my kid. He's been havin some kinda skin issue. I just give him ___________ , clears him right up, but it's not supposed to be good for'im.

Student: [laughing] That is some bad stuff! Intense. He's like 1? It's helpin tho, I bet, RIGHT?

Mother: Heck yeah.

Student: Man, babies are craaaazy!

Mother: Yeah, tough lid'l guy.

Student: Wshooooo. Wow, gettin hungry. Can't wait till class tomorrow, you? I love it when Mr ________ brings a sh_t-load of donuts or cupcakes. Gives me enough punch for the day.

Mother: Y'got that right. And what about cookies? Cookies will make ANYONE happy.

Student: Sh_t yeah! I skip breakfast just for his class. Ts'mazin he brings all that sh_t.

Mother: SOMEONE's gotta take care of us!

Student: People are nice !!

Water Dreams IV and V

Water Dream IV, Monona Swamp Zona

On January 29th, 2011, I dreamt I descended a steep park pathway that used to be Monona Path next to the newish Convention Center. It was wet dirt, slowly slicking with rising lakemud. The path led to a green bottom of shimmery ooze, wet grass, and sinking algae. The poorest people in Madison, many of Hispanic, African or south Asian heritage, were playing and frolicking in the mud, sometimes getting stuck or diving under, some laughing, some looking worried, and a few of them pulling themselves onto the wet grass for football kick or toss in the park. Many people were swimming, nay crawling, far out inside the lake itself, which swoll with waves of mud broken by rippling rivers of water on top of the brown. When I myself got to this lakeshore park, I suddenly sank to my hips, then swim-crawled, clambered toward higher ground to the North.

Water Dream V, The Wave-Swamped Clique-Isles of Mendota

Further North was Lake Mendota. It looked like a colossal indoor swimming pool. The embankments were made of steel, glass and cement. No trees or grass grew along the shores. It had a raw beauty, if only for its sheer expanse of water. The far north banks could vaguely be sighted, where people were sitting, dangling their feet into the lake as if it were a manmade basin. No one seemed to have any cars or boats close to the water. They were all afoot, or already out on the lake. I stood on the Union side (south), had a full view of all ends of the water. I walked along this waterfront westward, seeing islands floating like rafts, rocking on the waves. Hordes of people clustered on each island. Some isles rocked, swayed but were anchored, a little wave-washed. Others freefloated across the water, sometimes partially capsizing or flooding.

I swam out. Pulled my body up onto one island raft after another, but found each one too crowded, and the people only stared into nothingness, or looked down, or yelled into the air at no one and no thing in particular. Every time I came to a water-island, I jumped off back to sea, seeing I didn't fit on or in. On some isle-rafts stood exclusively students. Other rafts had hipsters or geeks or other (for me) cosmetic, xenophobic, ephemeral cliques which nonetheless strictly floated on one bit of rock or another and only on that one. Shorewood Village had the grandest isle, but it was ringed round with a high-voltage fence! I went to the far west shore then, saw this huge craggy thing out in the water, like a mountain rising up from the shore so steep you couldn't hope to climb it. The top looked like a glass-like obsidian top to topple off. I swam round to its lower access point, climbed on, then began slipping down toward the water no matter which end of it I walked on. I finally made a leap for shore, left Lake Anti-Social and Lake Mud, left BOTH behind.