We spend a fair time waiting, waiting for this, for that, for them and those to come and go, to start and end, to rise and fall, full and eclipse. And for Spring to spring, our world coiled like hair in plastic curlers held in place with bobby pins (see F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”).
We don’t wait in Winter, when we freeze in place and live in the cold moment (waiting is Samuel Beckett’s dry theme), but as the great slow thaws finally come we start to wait for a stronger sun and almost believe again in Spring and Spring does come slowly over the horizon and up the sky climbing a ladder of weathered trellises where last year’s climbing vines still cling frozen in place.
We anticipate Spring with its cartoon-like colors unfolding:
I thought once again and again and again and still the nagging thing rang an alarm clock in an assembly line repetitive factory too much time on my hands think again our Supervisor said again
I thought twice thrice four to the bar again with my factory wife any number of numb clock ticking times X and after time was up the world no more in need of time clocks we laid off thought
thought again and again of my time on the line spent thinking not off the pieces clicking by but on some other think I can’t now seem to remember again lost as I am to thoughts again and again and again
Rumor has it the pandemic is over, and folks are getting back to the way they were. Sidewalk cafes are filling with hopeful bon vivants, wine bars are recreating the gypsy jazz trio, tea rooms have put out the herbal welcome mats, and down on the corner, a lone violinist is busking the blues away. Movies? Newspapers and magazines? Some things are likely not coming back. But we can’t blame the pandemic for all our ills and woes.
Brick sidewalk cafeBuskerUrban CafeNewspapers and MagazinesCoffee Noir
Pubs are open, and wine bars, bakeries and coffee shops. You’re lucky though if you can find a place to park in between the street seats impromptu platforms, or to find a warm tavern that serves both a hefty microbrew and a tasty pinot noir.
Wanted: A clean, well-lighted place, with polite waiters, a high ceiling and not too crowded or too noisy or too far away, with a live trio that doesn’t require ear muffs, a place that doesn’t mind singles sitting hour after hour over a book and the same cup of frequently topped off java.
Below: A friendly waiter.
And weddings are back in full motion, fashion, with updated attendance rules. Below, what to wear:
Wedding DressCocktail WearCome as you are
Soon Spring will spring, doing its thing, a spring dance fling, prom night, a concert at an old venue downtown.
Spring FlingProm NightAllegro con brio
But some folks might have the post pandemic blues, and don’t want to go out. In a way, the pandemic has set them free. No more shopping sprees. No more putting on the style. But what about a baseball game in the ballpark? There must be some way the afflicted can lose those post pandemic blues.
If we think of planets as globes of fruit, like an apple, orange, lemon, we might see them growing ripe, falling, turning bitter. If we see ourselves as fruit flies, we might caption a big lemon a planet in our sky.
The first planet outside Earth humans visit will probably be Mars. But will there be free parking?
We know there is life in the universe, because Earth is full of life, and it’s in the universe. But are there places in the universe where the sun god on a freezing cold day invites you up for a cup of hot chocolate or herbal tea?
On Earth, nature seems to overseed, replenishing by adding more and at the same time sowing excessively, creating overdensities. Think of pollens on a spring day, the fine flour that sprinkles and saturates and has everyone sneezing to beat the band. On Earth, life is abundant and various, mighty and powerful, strong.
When you look up at night, into the sky, what do you see?
When in the news new worlds are discovered and photographs published, we see tiny dots astronomers claim are actually galaxies thousands and thousands and thousands of light years wide. The point is to find (the scientist like a garden snail crossing the Sahara) another planet where life grows and people enjoy backyards during summer months.
Meantime, back on Earth, we’re still trying to find that place where the moon stands still, on Blueberry Hill. That’s life.
Everybody in a car nary a door ajar. The world is our oyster full of pearls (Shucks! A flat tire!) and perils. A penny for your thoughts - As if we had either.
Dear Ai! Quick! Quick! Quick! Lickety-split! I need about a 500-word paragraph on how I spent my last summer vacation! I totally spaced this stupid assignment! If I don’t get it in by today the teacher, Mrs. Millgillicutty, not that her name matters much, won’t accept any more late papers! Something about we’re almost to next summer vacation. Anyway, I remember when we first got this assignment, and I was like, I didn’t do anything on my last summer vacation but lay on the beach at El Porto listening to a transistor radio! What’s to write about that! And I watched the surfers come and go and the waves blow all froth like the bottoms of cutoff jeans and the jets from LAX taking off over the bay looking way too fat to fly like the Dodo and the oil freighters off El Segundo and a few sailboats in the offing a word that was on our last vocabulary quiz by the way. Anyway, one day, one of the hottest, ever, you couldn’t even walk barefoot down to the water the sand was so blistering hot and I dropped my towel and jumped on it every few steps to keep my feet from turning toast until I got to the wet sand near the water and all was cool. I don’t like to take a bunch of stuff to the beach. Just my towel and my bag. In my bag I stuff an extra suit, a pair of shorts and an extra tshirt, my transistor radio, a bottle of water, an apple or an orange, suntan lotion, a comb, a Nancy Drew book (I had a summer goal to read 12 Nacy Drew books, and I actually ended up reading 17), a pair of binoculars, a foldup sand chair, a small umbrella, a pair of flipflops, and my purse. Oh, yeah, but I was going to talk about that one day, the hottest on record. I usually get to the beach around noon, after I’ve finished my chores, make breakfast, take out the trash, straighten up, empty the ashtrays. I live up on Gull in El Porto so all I have to do is walk out of the apartment and down to the beach and usually I’m the first down but soon there are the others my friends all strangling down like they had a bad night or something but the reality is the worst they might have done is stay up late watching movies on the all night movie channel. Of course there are parents, or parent, and they can be unsettling, what with their bickering and worrying and criticizing and stopping off at bars on the way home until you have to get your own dinner but not everyone’s home is like that in fact each home is quiet different even if the parents seem the same. Anyway, back to how I spent my summer vacation and the one hottest day I remember it’s like branded on my behind. Jocko the beach’s best surfer ever stops where I’m sitting and asks can he leave his board with me while he goes in for a dip the blackball flag is up and all boards have to be out of the water. I’m stupified. He’s never even noticed me before. But I’m totally chill and like if you want whatever and that kind of stupid self conscious response and off he goes into the water where he stays like three hours! I’m like HELLO! how long am I supposed to watch your stupid surfboard and it was that day I decided how I would spend the rest of my summer vacation and it wasn’t watching some stupid minihunk’s surfboard while he dolls his afternoon away in the waves. I’m not some sort of artificial doll, you know. I’m real. With something real to talk about. About 500 words is all I need! Thanks!
Sincerely, Beach Bum Betty
Dear Betty, Here you go:
I didn’t do anything on my last summer vacation but lay on the beach at El Porto listening to a transistor radio! What’s to write about that! And I watched the surfers come and go and the waves blow all froth like the bottoms of cutoff jeans and the jets from LAX taking off over the bay looking way too fat to fly like the Dodo and the oil freighters off El Segundo and a few sailboats in the offing a word that was on our last vocabulary quiz by the way. Anyway, one day, one of the hottest, you couldn’t even walk barefoot down to the water the sand was so blistering hot and I dropped my towel and jumped on it every few steps to keep my feet from toasting until I got to the wet sand near the water and all was cool. I don’t like to take a bunch of stuff to the beach. Just my towel and my bag. In my bag I stuff an extra suit, a pair of shorts and an extra tshirt, my transistor radio, a bottle of water, an apple or an orange, suntan lotion, a comb, my cell phone, a Nancy Drew book (I had a summer goal to read 12 Nacy Drew books, and I actually ended up reading 17), a pair of binoculars, a foldup sand chair, a small umbrella, a pair of flipflops, and my purse. Oh, yeah, but I was going to talk about that one day, the hottest on record. I usually get to the beach around noon, after I’ve finished my chores. I live up on 44th in El Porto so all I have to do is walk out of the apartment and down to the beach and usually I’m the first down but soon there’s the others my friends all strangling down like they had a bad night or something but the reality is the worst they might have done is stay up late watching movies on the all night movie channel. Of course there’s parents, and they can be unsettling, what with their bickering and worrying and criticizing and stopping off at bars on the way home until you have to get your own dinner but not everyone’s home is like that in fact each home is quiet different even if the parents are the same. Anyway, back to how I spent my summer vacation and the one hottest day I remember it’s like branded on my behind. Jocko the beach’s best surfer ever stops where I’m sitting and asks can he leave his board with me while he goes in for a dip the blackball flag is up and all boards have to be out of the water. I’m stupified. He’s never even noticed me before. But I’m totally chill and like if you want whatever and that kind of stupid response and off he goes into the water where he stays like three hours! I’m like hello how long am I supposed to watch your stupid surfboard and it was that day I decided how I would spend the rest of my summer vacation and it wasn’t watching some stupid hunk’s surfboard while he dolls his afternoon away in the waves. I’m not some sort of artificial doll, you know. I’m real! With something real to talk about!
“The game is a foot, I’m certain of it,” said the poet who talked the walk datum. To bloviate down his shorts and long waits about town he strolled and spoke and sprayed the populace with one-off quips and quotes. A foot player he was who climbed high limbs lofty the poet tree of mystery. Came he then to a steep stairway and down he went a long way down a circus clown. Loose freely from his three-rings born he returned to la-la-land a surfboard under his arm covered in salt and sand. “If life be a game,” he said, “play I will in waves never still twirl the pencil’s twill.”
“We take it as a given that games are useful, productive, redeeming forms of human experience and expression.”
Lugubrious etymologically descends from the dinosaurs in “Allegro Non Troppo” (1976) when the great reptilian gargantuans gentle and armored alike move south ahead of the ice and melt into tar. In Bach fugue file they march.
I was sitting in bed four nights ago typing this, under a pile of covers, plus fully clothed, wearing two pairs of pants, three shirts, a sweater, a vest, a wool watch cap, and a pair of wool socks. It was 12 degrees Fahrenheit outside, windchill below zero. The house had lost power eight hours ago, years ago, the vicious east winds having blown down enough trees around town to put mist local folks in a freezer. But I gave up the typing in the cold. It was now 30 degrees inside the house. I pulled my hands inside the covers like a turtle for the long cold night and we decamped the wood igloo the next morning moving happily south to a warm house full of warm children.
Frost’s promises to keep keep us sustained, moving, to keep warm. Yes, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” but what melancholy invites us in? Our horse still questions why we might stop here. The museums are also lovely, though well lit, still dark and deep, security guards meandering the lost empty halls, the paintings wired, the statues as still and as cold as ice sculptures, and they don’t allow horses in. Anyway, we prefer trees wandering in the wind full of birds and squirrels and lost kites and balls and flying saucers and climbing kids.
Earlier that afternoon, I was in the backyard, preparing a place for Zoe, when I heard a rushing sound, a falling dinosaur come to roost, and heard the voice of the tall Sauroposeidon, a wind and wood splintering crash and crush, and looked north to my neighbor’s backyard to see the 100 foot 100-year-old east Pine limbs still shaking off the ice and snow where it had come to rest breaking through the ridge beam, the tree’s upper girth shattering off and coming to rest in the front yard.
The frightfully freezing cold day moves slowly lugubriously on and we learn that pine tree but one of hundreds of trees falling all about town in the east wind in soaked soils across power lines, cars, streets, houses, parks and lots.
Back home now, five days on, power restored, but morning after ice storm moving across last night, but still now, windless, half inch of ice coating tree limbs, cars, street, wires, the downed dinosaur leaning across the roof next door. Fog. The dickens of a cold fog. But should we lose power again the air is at least warmed up some, to just below freezing outside.
A lugubrious fog has settled in, sifting down through the firs, down the street, over the houses and yards dotting the rotting old volcano.
I was in the 8th grade, taking a multiple choice vocabulary test. I came to melancholy. One of the choices was happy. Another choice was sad. The word melancholy sounded happy. I blackened the circle next to happy with my number 2 black pencil on the Iowa Test page and moved on, but the word stayed with me, and I later asked Sister Mary Annette the meaning of melancholy. Her blue eyes peered out from her starched white habit hallowed in black. Sad, she said. Ah, what does Iowa know, I responded, and ran for the playground.
Cartoon: Scamble and Cramble and the Social Media Adventure
Sometimes it seems a step backward is the way to go, but I’m not sure painting over yesterday’s canvas is movement forward or reverse. But why think in these lineal terms to begin with? In spite of tidal waves of news pouring in from every mode, it seems keeping informed about what’s going on is ongoingly increasingly difficult. At the same time, as John Cage said in his essay on Jasper Johns, “Why does the information that someone has done something affect the judgment of another? Why cannot someone who is looking at something do his own work of looking?”
Today, later this evening, to be more precise, is the solstice. If all goes as planned, the days will begin to grow longer again. There’s no keeping still, even if forward and backward amount to the same thing. In fact, I read just last night, the sun has already been going down later in the day in these environs, but the sun has still been coming up a bit later each day, and will continue to do so for some time yet, despite the solstice. So the moment, the epiphanic slice, the exact time of the solstice, when you feel the bump at the top of the amusement ride just before the reverse tilt comes true, you probably won’t feel.
Nevertheless, we celebrate the solstice, for reasons old and new, and take the opportunity to consider what new lectures and writings, poems and songs, essays and cartoons we might make up between now and the coming spring equinox, which is planned for Tuesday, March 19th (Saint Joseph’s Day, if you’re keeping track of that too). New ways of measuring time are always being considered. But if you adopt a new calendar, you’ll have to then come up with a proleptic view. So we might anticipate objections before they’re even brought up. Remarks.
The proportion of ideas might be considered important. If an idea is too big, or too small. To warrant further development. I thought I might try some reconnections, might even write a few letters, though my initial attempts at this, very much no doubt excited by the solstice, have met with instant failures to communicate. The art of the steel sculpture. Then again, I’ve never been much of a letter writer, not like the folks in the old days who might spend half the day reading mail and the other half answering mail. Pastime. Mail which had taken days or even weeks to arrive during which time rendered moot much of its news, feelings, ideas.
Speaking of letter mail, the kind written on paper and requiring a postage stamp, we get very little here these days. Even junk mail seems to have diminished. We’ve received two Christmas cards, both kept on prominent display. Of course, one must send mail to receive mail; not always, but usually. As for blog exchange, comments are problematic. They aren’t really letters in reply, and often say more about the commenter than what’s being commented on. The art of the quip, the comeback, the rejoinder, retort, riposte. But that’s the cynic in me coming out. Get back! Get back! The blog, “The Coming of the Toads,” turns 16 this month. I’m not even sure what a blog is anymore.
The most effective blogs (or whatever they might be called) seem those dedicated to a single purpose: photography (and photos about something specific – e.g. birds, architecture, surfing), politics, poetry, how to, music, art, opinion, travel. But the personal essay seems the most resilient form of writing (personal essay as illustrated, for example, in Philip Lopate’s anthology “The Art of the Personal Essay.”) I’m not sure where the idea of a pic necessary to accompany every piece of blog post writing ever came from. The Header, I guess. In case you’ve not noticed, The Toads has for some time now sported a minimalist attitude illustrated by a mostly blank white page dotted with black text – might be one way to describe the setup. This allows for the least distraction for both reader and writer. Indeed, blog posts past, I spent more time coming up with an appropriate pic than I did on the writing. Back when the blog began, most readers read on a computer screen. The display of any post is now changed by format depending on what kind of device the reader’s using: phone, tablet, computer – so what you see is not always what the reader gets or what the writer might have intended (a problem which of course is not new to any kind of writing).
Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to restate a few of the underlying interests of the writing here. It’s original, without recourse, it must now apparently be officially stated, to any borrowing from an Artificial Intelligence (AI). That includes all the essays and pics, cartoons and poems, songs, unless of course specifically quoted and cited yada yada yada. That’s not to say influences won’t be discerned: John Cage, Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, the Beats, Guitar and Music in all its forms but increasingly Gypsy Jazz guitar – to name a few.
But back to the solstice! Happy Solstice to all of you writers and readers. Please feel free to leave a comment if you still have time.
The Coming of the Toads 