Farmers' Market

I've given up on thinking too hard about blog punctuation. "Farmer's or Farmers'?" You bright people know the answer. I would too if I weren't so wiped out.

I spent part of this overcast day in the gym moving plates of weight up and down and side to side. By God I think that this is one of the silliest things I do given that there's always real work to be done.

After, I wobbled toward home and cut through the farmers' market. A skyline of scrubbed beets, carrots and tomatoes competed for altitude and I thought of my Grandma Fieata. Her life was a continual farmers' market of few boundaries. Whether it was dandelions in the spring, berries in the summer, a local produce stand or her own overstuffed garden, she was always on the look out for the holy grail: fresh healthy looking produce cheap.


She would have loved the eye-popping selection at the Capital Hill market. I can't imagine how she would have reacted to the prices but let's just let that go. She might have been bewildered by the Lemon Cucumber. The name's about the shape and exterior, not the taste, if you were wondering.


Me, I thought of how lovely it would be to pick all the cucumbers out of her tomato salad again while she looked on in dismay. Then employ some good Italian bread for the juice. So that's what I'm doing in just a minute. (Please note, none of the pictures of the salad were crisp. I think I was ready to eat.)

Inspiration

Many of you probably don't know that one of my life goals has been to be awarded an honorary doctorate degree from THE Ohio State University. Frankly, I've not made much progress on that front. Now, after reading about Brian May in today's news, I might strike the honorary degree from my list.

Unless you're a big-time guitar fan, you probably don't know who Brian May is. But you have heard him play, he was the screaming guitarist for Queen. Almost impossible to not to have heard their jolly noise! May became a headline because of his brain and what he made it do. Below is the note from today's New York Times.

Brian May, 60, who abandoned his studies more than 30 years ago to found the rock group Queen, has returned to his first love: astrophysics. Mr. May, best known as a guitarist and songwriter, said that within the next two weeks he plans to submit his doctoral thesis, “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” to supervisors at Imperial College London, The Associated Press reported. He was an astrophysics student there when the glam rock band Queen, including Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. As a result of the band’s success, Mr. May put aside his doctoral studies. He told the BBC he had always wanted to complete his degree. “It was unfinished business,” he said. “I didn’t want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for.”

Well, crap- in a good way, I guess. Now I have little reason to whine about the difficulty of going back to school or to angle for an honorary degree from O.S.U. Just time to get to it and enjoy the work.

Ellipses

No, this isn't another exhausting metaphor. It's really about ellipses. Really.

On Wednesday evenings, I've been taking an intro to drawing class. After dabbling around with paint for the past hunk of time, I felt like I hit the wall because I could no longer do what I wanted to. No enough skill, couldn't see how to get from point f to point m. More learning required.

Very basic stuff is what I'm learning- measuring, making lines, learning materials. Our class has been locked in a two week battle against the cube, cylinder, sphere. They're surprisingly resilient foes. We make one adjustment after another but we have yet to draw these shapes well, except for this bored teenage kid.

One of the many tricks necessary to learn is how to draw the ellipsis (the round ends of the cylinder). The key to making circles in various squished states is that they are always round. So you make a drawing like a tornado and you'll be making the correct shape. For some of us, this is an activity worth pursuing. For most, it's yet more evidence of something vaguely weird.

Today, I drew an embarrassing number of ellipses at differing widths. This practice happened after I'd been doing over an hour of drawing exercises already. The miracle is that after my first few dozens, I made a number of ellipses that were proportionate, delicate and pure. It was like making a snowflake out of dishwater. Delightful.

Cats

My main concern has been coming home after one of these 100 degree days and finding that Emmitt has been turned into furry jerky. Didn't happen. You can employ the phrase "Hot enough for ya?" without any irony with him. A few times, he rested in the sink, but I think mainly for variety.


When the mercury dipped under 90, time to huddle up, conserve warmth. The kitty is a generous soul. Not only was he willing to share precious body heat, he would douse me daily with a ration of fur. Nothing but pity for the hairless among us. I typically looked like a wig factory exploded on me.

One of the breakout toys of his visit: the broken popsickle stick. That seemed to fire his imagination, although not as potently as the shoestring that I took from my old sneakers. He did like that and I'd burn about 20 minutes per day flopping that thing around. Exhausting. The picture below is a simulation of what it is like when E is hunting for prey. He's still, then Wham! - as quick as you can say George Michael, he's on it.

I think I'm turning Chinese

Not really. Plus I'd have to learn Chinese and I still have problems with the English.

But I just heard NPR's twist on Harry Potter reporting which concerned the difficulties of bringing this final tome out in the Chinese language. The upshot is that it takes at least three months to translate the real thing. Pirates can create something in five days. This leads to a strange and delightful fact in Chinese publishing: the totally made up translation.

Bill Clinton's memoir was cited as an example. Below is an excerpt from Kitabkhana, a literary blog:

Clinton's memoirs have been sanitised by China's translators and book pirates.
The counterfeit edition of Clinton's book, My Life, starts with a memorable line: "The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui."
Another story reports:
Out went: "I was concerned about China's continued suppression of basic freedoms" and "I went to bed thinking that China would be forced by the imperatives of modern society to become more open."
In came: "She (Hillary) was as beautiful as a princess. I told her my name is Big Watermelon" and "China is a mysterious and unique place."

How can you beat that! Suddenly, I'm interested in biography again.

Humans 2

i confess that i never tire of a rousing game of kill the snake. the human did well today and i learned something about their charming ways.

first the real news is that boxes must have some life giving importance to humans. and that the snake must be their animal familiar not cats. heres why i think this. today the human went into a large box and grabbed one of the boxes that cover his feet. i dont remember seeing it before but the foot boxes are held on his feet by snakes. so he has snakes that go into his mouth each night snakes that hold boxes onto his feet and i swear to tiger that he ate a plate of snakes the other day. funny how all eating is round for them.

the box must be sacred. today i watched him take a flat box, shake a wand onto it and some pattern emerged. he called it homework for a drawing class. i dont understand any of that. you know that they collect my droppings in a box. by st. francis there arent enough claws in christendom to count all the boxes this human has.

but im a bit off the subject.

the human takes the snake from his shoe and it is one of the biggest snakes ive encountered. it smelled like the snakes from the time before we lived inside. he watched protectively as i kept trying to kill the snake but he kept saving its life. he tries to kill me by making me eat the detritus from the nuggets but wont let me hurt his precious snake. get this he must have gotten scared for it. he did what. he put it into a box away from my teeth. jesus its just a snake. theyre made for killing.

at least he lets me hunt and thats good. he probably thinks that i wouldnt hurt his precious snake. he doesnt understand how it works. maybe he will keep bringing out bigger snakes. does he think we making friends. one of these times ill kill one of those thin bastards to make a point. hed probably not let me eat it and put it in a box somewhere.

Humans

one of my humans is probably one of the stupidest humans on record. i am stuck at his den, betrayed by my other human. why this happens i cant say. the humans have physical abilities that they seem to use just because they can. would you put someone into a little box that goes into a rolling box to move him to another box. i didnt think so. it makes no sense. not even to birds i bet.

this human to tell you what he is about is not the brightest. it took him weeks of vacant stares until he understood that i want water from the water fountain. id tell him explicitly and he would just stare. sometimes he would notice that things went better once he turned on the fountain. the human has such a precarious grasp of cause and effect. cant they see how their lives bloom when cats are around.

hes iffy this one. most times hes good about the water. not consistent yet. it is baffling and amusing that he immerses himself under the giant fountain occasionally. he must be crippled in some fundamental way to let that happen. he must be very very thirsty. or sick perhaps. he puts lion awful medicines onto his body and in his mouth every day. its sad.

he does have one routine that i honestly cant conceive. he puts a snake into his mouth almost every day. his mouth somehow kills it judging by the snakes smell when its dead. he will then dangle it and i kill it proper. the human has a box of snakes he keeps in a box near the fountain. how do they do these things. it must be an instinct evolution must have taught them this. a miracle.

its not all bad. this one is very warm and that is good. my paws are like snow most of the time. this human has richer smells than the other and has not lost the ability to hunt which seems to plague the other one. still he insists on feeding me these stale little meat bones when he often has the real thing in front of him. again i think he might be weak because he never eats kill. he changes it by drying it with heat and putting more medicine on it. there are a lot of boxes involved one very hot one very cold another full of medicines in small glass bottles. most times some mixture of these boxes go into one of the boxes and its very confusing. i dont know how he can go on like that.

another good thing. the humans understand that being together in a pile is how it works. that is the most reassuring thing. it gives me hope that they might understand some day.

i think that they must be a bit crazy because they often use their bulk to move me from their gaze. it makes me a bit queasy to watch their stunted little legs do this. maybe thats why they put snakes and medicines in their mouths. tell me how any of this makes any sense. but as our people say what are you going to do.

Turning

I've been saying it for a bit now: I've turned the battleship around. You know the battleship. It's the heavy, irresistible thing that was pointed in a direction long ago. Easier to stay the course, if I may sound like Bush Sr. for a moment. Why I didn't realize I was off course, well....

Say that's true- the ship's momentum is stopped now -how do I proceed? Can't just fire up the engines again and point myself somewhere. I know that I can't yet chart a true course. Hell, I'm not sure if I'm in the ocean, a pond or a wading pool. Whatever body of water I'm in, I decided to be patient, to sit and pay attention. Willing to turn off the autopilot and tease out the details around me. I'll judge which direction I should head in, correct course as needed, wanted.

This is all about something simple. I might choose well and I might make mistakes but I am going to decide. Teenagers, adults, mid-life crisists, and elders make this kind of life-stage declaration, this strategic rebellion. Maybe it's not even as grand as turning a battleship, more like a cruise ship. You can layer rust into the comparison as well. So much to maintain and shine.

God knows that I no longer need a ship of that size, insulation and protection, guns or no. I want to offload what I need and want onto a more personal, nimble craft. I want to feel the bump of consequence and know that it happened because I pointed myself there.

Have I described this change accurately? Whether this has been a hopeful whisper to myself, the real deal or just a wet finger in the air, I can't say with any confidence. But I am the guy who's sitting here floating, looking: waiting to turn.