my grandfather was resurrected today,
in all manner of momentarily, a whole string of instants
he stood behind me as i stared at the tangible remnant
of my firmest memory of that old man

the night before i had been out late, making an ass out of myself in a circle of people composed primarily of those whom i know in too many ways to quickly explain, there was a bottle of mescal making slow rotations and i had a drum in my lap; i’m certain that i sang, perhaps even well enough to frighten away the less foolish people whom i did not know

As I read The Brief History of the Dead I found myself consistently twisting between the position of loving and disliking this book. Now that I’ve finished it, I’m perhaps more confused than I was while I was reading it, but I can’t seem to get my mind off some of these ideas, which can only mean that Kevin Brockmeier was doing something right.

walking across a slight patch of earth
that interrupted all this concrete,

watching a robin’s sudden
spread-winged swoop
into the heart of a nearby tree,

his boot heel freed a sliver of mirror
from the clutches of grass blades
and sent it skittering out onto sidewalk
where it rested against a stone

the angle caught the contents
of his left hand,
fingers loosely grasping
the brown paper sack

You run around for a few years, determined to find the odor of the gears and mechanical wheels that are to be found in clocks and other machines. Your nose is streaked with oil, your fingers are positively coated in the same stuff; and then finally, you are forced to admit . . .

Ok, to be totally truthful, it is seldom that a product will get a five star rating from me. I have very high standards that I set for most objects and in this day and age the engineering is often overlooked in order to have more money for marketing.

A few months ago I lost my camera. It has and will continue to be much debated issue as to how this camera was lost (I blame my son, my wife blames me) but regardless, it was found last night.

There is a part of you that feels terrible when you look at your blog and realize how many days it has been since anything new appeared on it. Strange twinges of egotistical thought (egotistical simply because we want to fool ourselves into thinking that there is a faithful readership out there, [and if there is such a faithful readership {oh please let there be a faithful readership} hopefully they will forgive these bouts of silliness] but otherwise why do we bother to write, let alone care?) that one will try to justify anyway. This paragraph I’ll blame on - global warming.

i must believe in something.

and in truth i do, but it’s little more than a fragmentary collage of impressions and ideals that has proven inherently fragile in the face of reality.

it seems that i have no faith in reality, or rather that my beliefs are continuously trying to overcome reality.

sadly, such is the nature of belief.

I have a large messianic ego
it took me quite some time to come to grips with
after many years of being beaten down by public education
and self doubt
i was finaly able to confine it

i keep my godlike ego in a box
and since i am not a cruel keeper
it is a plexiglas box

there are air holes
and a small slot in the door to
pass its sustinance

As grand as it is to be a member of the cognoscenti, and to revel in the fact that I can get kicks out of all manner of esoteric referents; nothing compares with the simple pleasures. I just got to spend the better part of an hour playing in the dirt of a construction site, and I’ve got the mud stains on my pants to prove it. After all, what good is a jester if he doesn’t engage in the occasional, perhaps unintentional, pratfall?

I have to say I got a great chuckle out of this one. And if you are using Internet Explorer right now, you should really download Firefox.

Walking downtown the other day, I turned a corner and saw a woman facing into a window. I disliked her in an instant; allow me to explain.

There is a small, knee-high, brick ledge running the length of a set of windows. The woman was older, the kind of woman who carries a purse of such size that you wonder what all can possibly be stored in there. Her dog would fit into her purse, had she been so inclined; a little yorkshire terrier, a perfect fit for the woman herself.

Viewing pleasure

Originally uploaded by talkingplant.

This was a rather serendipitous moment. The Jester and I have been talking about needing some new photos for the site. We came up with this great idea to get some old furniture and a broken down TV and take them into the woods for a photo shoot.

Imagine our surprise when we were off wandering around near the disc golf course the other day and happened upon an old beat up and rusty TV in the middle of the woods.

When the site suffered its cataclysmic disappearance, I went into a period of mourning, and the only thoughts being given to new posts was the concept of a eulogy for all those things that I had written of which I was terribly fond and attempting to come to terms with the fact that they were gone. My initial notion was that I’d wax poetic about the half-remembered ideas that were gone forever.

guess this book

Originally uploaded by talkingplant.

If you have read it then you will probably figure it out. Course you could always cheat, but what fun is that?

So you think you know what the book is? Leave a comment and the winner will get a prize.

Talkingplant can be an idiot (for those of you that don’t know him that well or haven’t read much of his stuff yet). Over the weekend he managed to delete the site almost entirely. I hated him after that.

But I must apologize, for he has just redeemed himself. It is back. I take back all those horrible horrible things that I said and thought. Especially the broom handle bit.