Today, and today, and today – never today will it be tomorrow, the cat creeping about like yesterday, filling her box like there’s no futurity. Yet tomorrow times our day without delay, though it remains as dark as ones past. Today’s light will soon turn cold, burnt to nub where the candle once stood so tall and proud, center stage, lighting all around and into all corners and crevices, minutes and seconds. Poor today whose hour is usurped by what’s yet to play and whose voice can’t be heard over yesterday’s, and what happens off stage makes more noise than this display.
I could have been applesauce. Or a French apple tart. Or a Viennese strudel, dessert following an outdoor Oktoberfest Mozart concert. Something fit for a queen. Instead, some two-bit squirrel is eyeing me for a quick bite of fodder. I could have been a hard cider. I suppose I still might be.
They say we don’t fall far from our tree, but if your tree is on a steep hill and you get squeezed out early by self-thinning siblings and you hit the ground bouncing and spinning, you might end up, as I did, in a patch of dry grass on the edge of a grade school playground.
We live to be eaten. And it’s what we want. It’s complicated, and I don’t pretend to understand it all, but ever since I was awoken by the bees, those giant furry honey bees, and the little masons, the breeze also stirring my imagination – anything seemed possible on that early Spring morning when we got our first taste of sunshine and our petals felt like wings and we thought we might fly with the bees through the trees.
My tree was planted as part of an orchard up on the hillside sometime in the late 1800’s. There are not too many of those early trees still around. They watched the city grow slowly from across the river and up the Eastside slope – growth that took out a lot of trees.
Funny how things grow and move around and live off one another. It takes cooperation for life to thrive.
I was hoping to be part of a bushel full of my siblings that might make its way to some outdoor market. That was fantasy. My old tree is lucky to produce a single peck these days. And it’s been a hard go since that day awhile back the temperature reached 117 degrees. We prefer the chill side, but still, we’re not all that picky. We start off cold, slumber in the warm shade of summer, and finish cool. Life is not bad being an apple. And there are, contrary to idiom, no bad apples, just poor storage.
But a crop of boys one decade used the apples for their backyard baseball games. Wooden hardball bats. Talk about applesauce. The old tree was happy to see the boys grow up and move on. Another family took exceptional care of the tree. Every year careful pruning, watering, thinning, picking – and storage in their cool, dry basement. They made applesauces, cobblers and crisps, and prize ribbon-winning pies. But that family also moved on. An older couple that spent most of their time travelling abroad moved in and let my tree grow wild, apples falling and rotting, fermenting, covered with wasps in the fall. Those years the yard was full of birds. One year there were skunks. Raccoons were common. And a family of possums took up residence under the back porch, though they mainly fed off the slugs and bugs and tiny rodents attracted by the fallen apples.
All this and more my tree passes on to its apples, how to open to the coming of the bees, the loss of petals, the June drops, our capricious caretakers – the humans who covet us. We know our past, and fancy we know something of the present, but guessing our future is tricky.
One day, hidden in the schoolyard grass, I was found by a dog chasing a ball, and I was picked up by a boy and put in his jacket pocket, and I went for a walk with the boy and his dog around the playground. Over a fence I was tossed, into the back of a nursery, in among the rose bushes potted for sale.
I got picked up again, looked at closely and felt all over, and put in a paper sack with an assortment of other apples. We were weighed and paid for and carried out of the nursery and walked off, winding our way up the side streets of the hillside.
An old woman received us at the door and carried us through the house, out a kitchen door, and onto a back porch where she took us out of the bag and placed us one by one upon a table. A murmur of softening filled the air.
And there I saw my tree, out in the yard, looking as old, no – much older – than the old woman standing on the porch next to us, picking us up one by one, smelling, feeling, softly rubbing, looking closely. I don’t know what she’s going to do with us. She looks like she could be a fritter type. I’m hoping for a good old-fashioned apple pie. A la mode.
You can subscribe to “Laconic Cartoons,” which promises to be fun, free, with no ads, and no AI! If you do subscribe, you’ll get an email with each new cartoon I post. So a subscription keeps up-to-date. The cartoons will go directly to your inbox, where you can view them, delete them, or print one and tape it to your icebox! Or you can visit Laconic Cartoons at the Substack website anytime you’re looking for a smile.
There won’t be much to read – explains the “Laconic” in the title. Of course, cartoons are noted, even with captions, for using few words – short, economical, crisp. So maybe the title, “Laconic Cartoons” with subtitle “simple doodles with few words,” is superfluous, but that’s what doodles are, and gratuitous. And doodles are spontaneous, improvisational, which is something you can’t quite aim for. A good cartoon is thrifty. Like this one:
Substacking: Messing around with Substack again. Tried out songs with video (which I ended up using here in post previous to this one), deleted the songs (“More Modern Songs”) substack, started a poetry substack, deleted that one too, settled on cartoons. “Laconic Cartoons: simple doodles with few words.”
Substack format seems busier than when I previously gave it a trial go. More social media characteristics. “Notes” page, for example, that seems to work like the old bluebird site (see cartoon, “This Bird has flown”).
Listened to a short podcast this morning on a cartoonist’s substack I’m following. Two and a half minutes in which she reads all the captions from the cartoons in this week’s New Yorker. It’s Liza Donnelly, who is herself a New Yorker cartoonist. Clever idea, captions without the drawings. Sounded like a John Ashbery poem as the captions ran together randomly as if they were connected by some logical narrative thread. Flight of the bumblebee. I was going to leave Liza a comment, only to find I couldn’t – only paying subscribers can comment on Liza’s substack. Clever idea that, too. And there were two captionless cartoons in the issue, which of course she could not read, but I was reminded of John Cage’s 4’33.
“Laconic Cartoons” has no paying option, and no plans of such. All free, and feel free to comment, such as, “Dude, seriously? You can’t give these away!” Something like that.
Decluttering: Have now filled a dozen grocery bags with books, eliminating the need for several bookcases. Vietnam Veterans will pick them up, along with some cool items recently discovered in the basement. What books did I keep? Might want to save that for a future post.
Guitar: Working on more original songs. “More Modern Songs”: that title, btw, suggested from Dylan’s latest book. Planning more videos. Had not tried to post a video on WordPress before. Easy. Songs are different from poems. Though you can usually read a song a lot quicker than you can listen to it, but you can listen to music while doing other things, though vacuuming the living room presents challenges, while poems should be read aloud to achieve their full flavor.
Cartooning: Here’s a cartoon (captionless) for readers unwanting or unable to visit the Laconic Cartoons substack:
(G)1 Here’s an emotion (B7) let’s jump in an ocean (E7) of lotion (A7) of coconut oil (D7) coconut oil (G) coconut oil (D7)
I got a gal heart full of mushrooms she drinks oceans of coconut oil coconut oil coconut oil
She tells me Joe don’t be so dry she likes me all wet night and day drenched in coconut oil coconut oil coconut oil
A somewhat different version of the song “Coconut Oil” appears at the end of the novel “Coconut Oil.” In the book, the song is sung by Penina, who gets everyone in the pub singing the refrain line “coconut oil.”
The video below, which was copied and cut to show just the song “Coconut Oil,” is from the Instagram “Live at 5” show we made for the 2023 International Music on the Porch Day. It was too hot and smoky outside to play on the porch, so we’re inside.
Coconut Oil
I hope you like the song “Coconut Oil,” and play your own cover version! Let me know how it goes.
Pages 188-190 from the novel where Penina sings “Coconut Oil”:
Below, front and back covers of “Coconut Oil”:
The front cover photo (below) used on the book “Coconut Oil” I took up in Mount Tabor Park around 2007.
Below, the back cover photo is the cove at Refugio Beach California, which I took from the Coast Starlight Train around 1978.
Trees and vines tired yield fatty fruit apples grapes figs pears and plums tried of a risible sun they surmised (if plants could) they’d never leave home tied to secret crawling roots.
Birds bees and woe wacky wasps buff yellowjackets give peppery ear to where teeny seeds well watered sprout and flume into chalice gold tomatoes peppers gourds hot yams.
Sockets and bracelets ankled deep and wristed waisted random gloved catch the yawning blue moon lured by lovers deep smell a wet garbage vinegar a hand harvest work party.
Purple night suckered us here dilly dally by the sap empty sugar shack waiting by the swelled bushels sour jobs lasting summer into sweet fall and to think we happily volunteered.
The Coming of the Toads 