Bizzare food

Crawfish are pretty bizarre as far as food goes.  There are worse things than crawfish however.  Like dumpster diving.  I am not an enormous fan of crawfish, but contrary to popular opinion, I think they go better with a red wine than a beer.  The need for alcohol while eating crawfish is clear.  Or maybe iced tea, but generally speaking I avoid alcohol and crawfish and dr pepper just dont go.

"in the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty..."
~Bob Marley

Watched the Andrew Zimmern Bizarre Foods episode about prepared food from dumpsters after the food had been discarded by the restaurants for no other reason than it had gotten expired shelf life.  Thats illegal but in San Fransisco they are getting away with it in one downtown district.  Crawfish are not so bad as that.  But the consumption of alcohol while eating them goes a long way to the contributing to how long you or I can sit around and consume the small crustaceans.  They can be large or small but after a few dozen I get tired of fooling around with them.

Apparently Bob Marley in the above quotation was not talking about hunger in the abundance of foods.  There are some foods like 1000 year old eggs and molded tofu that I will never eat no matter how hungry.  Now pho or menudo, I'm there.  Luckily these are items available locally.  I am even sneaking up on purchasing a Dorian fruit from a local Vietnamese grocer.

Daffy stuff

After I applied the jackhammer calm
to the back of my neck
I worked at getting back into my small foreign car

Then remembering the time I had to navigate
An Italian restaurant in a wheelchair
And all I broke at the last possible second
Was a coffee cup.

I've been watching the skies at night
I saw lightening and towering clouds
Cosmology in miniature for Earthlings like we are.

Nebulae clouds and horizontal lightning
Flashes of insight fire synaptic thunder of chemicals across the synapse of water vapor in the clouds as they make their fluid calculations at motion.

The darkness of the night was just beginning to set in,
But it did not rain here.
The rain passed south and west to east of me.
So this season I have been lucky like that.

Later that night I walked around the bayous
Under the sodium arc lamps orange glow
Then home where I fell asleep right away
After stretching my back for a minute on the floor or a firm mattress.

The bed of my friend was infested with roaches last week
His girlfriend got arrested for shoplifting roach spray
Her bail was $100 plus restitution  and a fine
I bought him 2 types of roach killer for under $7
How the roaches ended up in my friend's bed I did not ask.
He confided in me that she and he eat cookies in the bed.

You know what a bell pepper is don't you?  I asked the friar
Over lunch.  Oh yes he responded quite proudly
He loves to overstate the obvious.

He seemed a little sick today however and I think
He is working way  too hard at keeping all the adults
He is in charge of in some way in keeping with his personal values
He must try to see things from the eyes of the clients more.

I tell him this in the morning before lunch
And he agrees with me
He tells me he feels a little better than yesterday
We observe this may be the last cool morning for a while
As summer purrs along with snakes and mosquitoes
I look forward to fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Sometimes I practice just sitting quietly at the desk.  I have gotten pretty good at it.  The phone inevitably rings at the wrong time, wrong person, wrong problem....  I go back to just sitting.  I have gotten pretty good at it.

The other morning was cool outside.  I got off the bus about a mile from work and walked through the historically impoverished neighborhood in Shreveport.  I enjoyed the quiet of the morning and the golden sunlight mixed with the green vines and flowers along the sidewalks and cobblestone streets which have been paved over but still show brick colored stones like heavy chocolate colored breasts beneath my slow and determined footfalls.  The sycamore trees have been dropping pollen like wild fire.  Feral cats hunt between the dandelions.

Now I am sitting, remembering all the things from the morning and not being able to recall the multitude of separate story lines that ran through my head while driving the old van with James. Just dance.  Just clean your bowl.  Just "git er done."  For Thursday maybe this is enough.  Maybe I don't have to save the entire city today, maybe just sitting here quietly is enough to get me through just one more day.  And then there will be tomorrow.

Glad it's Friday.  The weather is warm and threatening rain.  Im getting rady to walk in the windy overcast late afternoon.  Listening to Michael Hedges play Bensusan on the guitar.  Wishing I was in a tent on the Ouchita National Forest now.  Swimming in the last cool days of springtime.  Thats about a 4 hours drive north of here though.  I doubt I will be going there this year.  The memories of such outings are as often as not more pleasant than the actual experience -- like so many things.  Sometimes I live for the memory of things as much as for the things itself.

kind of getting over a little stage fright now.  Writer's block, who knows...  Reflecting on the art of my blog while doing my walk this evening.  I just type this once.  Spellcheck.  Maybe re read it once if it is good.  I back up my blog occasionally so I can see the HTML codes as well as have a record of what I am writing.  I push the envelope of grammar and spelling.  I try to just let the words fly to my finger tips without so much editing.  The more I do this is so the sound of my words can be emphasized at times, other times it is just a typo.

I will write more soon.  I need to get back into the habit of trying to blog every day.  Just for fun and the ocassional guest comment. 

Rasputin: Gregori v Vladmir

http://www.moviegoods.com/Assets/product_images/1020/206708.1020.A.jpg

Not being Russian I find it dfifficult to understand their psychology.  But being American and such long time adversaries of the Soviet Union, I must give it a try.  Be warn, I took Soviet history twice and failed to complete the course both time.  I remember how terrible that looked on my transcript when I was 20.  Now I am 40 and I still have trouble understanding what goes on in Russia.

Rasputin v Vladamir Putin is what I am getting at in the title above.  The names are similiar as you can see.  Here in Shreveport what I hear about Mr Putin these days has been his prowess with a rifle and his love for Siberian tigers.

Rasputin on the other hand was more of a charlatan that the former statesman for Russian Mr Putin.  But Rasputin deserves some respect for his role in the life of Russian nobility in his day.  There must be types like Rasputin running around in the hills somewhere even today.  I am trying to feel what it must have been like to be a fraud like character in a drama so big and folklorish that even Rasputin himself may have bought into the idea that he had supernatural powers.

For now, check out the link to the movie poster of the name Rasputin and I will dig into the wikipedia article and see if I can come up with any similarities between the two Russians.  Maybe I can even find some similiarities between myself and Rasputin, or V Putin.  Your comments are welcome about this, especially if you are an armchair philosopher like me.

Post # 40

Patrick O'Hearn "87 Dreams of a Lifetime". Nice song. I first encountered it on a Yoga Zone compilation CD and liked it very much. Often considered music for women doing yoga or something, I being a man, find it relaxing to listen to also. It's a little like saying "grown men don't listen to New Age music" whatever that is. I listen to new age music a lot and often. Not that I am a paradigm of healthiness or anything like masculinity, but hey I like women, if you know what I mean. And then there is this nice music. Too bad they have taken my favorite video of it off YouTube. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway here is an index of other Patrick O'Hearn songs which appear on YouTube.com YouTube Patrick O'Hearn

Sleep versus the supernatural idea

verdant hills of green sound deep and slowly swaying in the wind.

the cloudy sky is turbulent and menacing

The chlorophyl must shine through

Swaying plant creatures waiting for it to rain.

Waiting and swaying and abuzz

with producing the energy from the stars

Who's heat drives lightning and tosses the supercell clouds.

Dazzled by the self extraction of life

organizing itself out of the chaos,

Every night renews its contract with the beckoning of time

Time the thief

The master of illusion

The reaper is also, in time, the healer of wounds.

I barter my way though time 

Chasing the circle on a reflexive

Power grab that never ends

Except when time comes for me too.

When I am brave through my pen

I see death as a doorway into back Nature.

Time brings life to us and takes life away.  When time offers the door we almost always stand up and take it.  When the time is right we return all our part to the planet and we are free of the confines of the flesh.  Where might that lifeforce go and how quickly might we travel there then. 


The idea of the lifeforce or soul is held by so many on such a diverse scale we are all about the same,  Until modern culture takes over.  We think we are our selves supernatural sometimes -- literally speaking we fall victim to the ideas that man is above nature or over nature and that kind of worried me about all the great  religions.  I don't think our desire to be thought of as above Nature is as ubiquitous an idea as a westerner might think.  Just my feeling that God is Nature plus supernatural stuff too.  Why I worry about supernatural ideas when I am trying to sleep I cannot say.  Thinking I know what happens to the soul after death brings me great comfort.  I can make it though an otherwise crappy day based solely on the feeling that I am special self aware and independent of the whimsical spirit of Nature and Death, the fact that this may not be true doesn't bother me. 

I believe that life abounds in the universe but is not just everywhere.  I don't think we have much chance of roaming the galaxy like capt Kirk, but then  again if we try let us not try to reach the stars with half measure or give up the quest for a light speed drive unless we just don't have the resources to continue.  There is enough room for everyone on this planet if it was indeed meant to be this way.  Otherwise life is a statistical menace like a weed growing in a perfectly manicured lawn.  Can we adjust adapt and transform ourselves from savages in order to learn the physical mysterious universe.  Just because we don't like the idea that we are to learn to live here in peace and never encounter the deity again until the end of time does not mean by some leap of faith it might not be true.

yes i can

I am still trying to get the hang of blogging.  trying to get in the habit of writing.  trying to push the envelope of the style in some ways.  When the spirit moves me I can be pedantic, passive, and everything but passionate.  Other times I can feel the conviction with which I try to excavate truth from the liberal education.  Alot of times I rely on psycholgy to give my first impressions then I retract back into a quiet shell.  Overstating the obvious emphasizing the most plain logic.  But I think in the simple equilibrium on finds not only Occam's razor, but lair of Nature herself.  Strong as the Mississippi River relentlessly marching onward.

Mother was happy but I did nothing special.  Spent time around the house and provided lunch and listened to church music all morning.  Both of us are feeling comfortable and rested.  I have to admit that I am attributing some of this to current news features.  My feeling of Yes I can is there again.  I am a long way off from the next time I will vacation outside the NWLA area.  But I once again feel like I can make it.  So thats what I am focusing on this meditation: the feeling of yes i can.

My work in a run on sentence

shortly after 8 am and walked the six or seven blocks to work.  The first half of that morning walk is through the edge of downtown Shreveport past city hall and a YMCA then past a large church and a few more smaller homes and the new movie studio, and some abandoned lots then the cottage house left standing from around 1890 ( no typo ) which is directly across from the cemetery where the city buried a number of people who died from yellow fever around that same time in Shreveport. 

Its a small but old cemetery.  During the treasure hunt last fall they chose a spot in there as a treasure hunt location and the one who forst found the hidden treasure won about 1500 dollars.  The founder of the program is buried there too now.  A fitting place for her since the organization she founded to serve the poor in that historical area is so near the spot of her internment.  It is not far from where Elvis Presley played at the Louisiana Hayride along time ago too.

So I work each day in an old part of town with lots of wooden buildings usually owned by someone renting out the semi delapidated dwellings to the low class men and women who depend on all kinds of public existence just to make it physically from one day to the next.  SOmetimes you see a person living in neighborhood like this one in the South actually make ends meet and they rise out of the stark poverty into an overworked and anonymous middle class, other times that man or woman becomes a fmiliar face in the social services offices that dot city, especially the downtown area.

I started to become familiar with these faces and poverty stricken places almost three years ago now.  I have to report that I have gotten to know many of the folks that will be there until they die.  I myself may be one of them but I hope not at this point. It is not an easy life to endure such a fate into one's later years.

Once to my employers office, the director gives me the keys to the van and some outgoing mail and daily instructions and Mary who arrives just before me gives me more details.  Then 65 year old James arrives.  He is a black man, retired boxer who escourts me through these once rough areas to deliver donated food and clothes to and from the free soup kitchen and countless charities and charitable private homes and businesses around Shreveport and Bossier city.  This takes all of about 3 hours each morning and each week like clockwork we pour 75 dollars worth of gas into the 1999 red van we use to haul food and clothes to upwards of 300 people.  It is difficult to realize that many people's meals each day are comprised of such meager rations.

The second half of my day I answer the phones and take philanthropic applications of and from a variety of sources.  I try to match peoples needs with one of several assistance programs that might benefit them.  The requirements for these programs are simple and strict.  I end up telling far more people no than yes when they inquire about such things but through it all I am able to help about 3 maybe sometimes 4 people each day toward problems they have paying rent or utilities.  That can be gratifying.  But the real reason I am there is just like anyone who works for a living.  I am there simply to put food on my own table and keep a roof over my own head.  If in the process of doing so I also can help keep a few others feed clothed and sheltered all the better.  After all I am a socialist at heart.  I am not so much a follower of Ayn Rand anymore as I could never figure out what her philosophy proposed to do with the poor and the criminals of society.

So that's it.  I call myself a coordinator.  And after that I walk back through the fields where the red light district thrived for a century and now has been slain by bulldozers police and the light of day.  I walk back into downtown, past the big church and past some old multi-level buildings and old movie theaters past the court house and boarded up department stores and past the buildings where they house the ubiquitous energy company to the city bus station -- a big tent held down by steel cables ad concrete pillars that looks like a giant cream colored sail against the blue sky.  I wonder that it might fly off in the wind every time it rains.

Today Henry picked me up from there.  We ate Mexican food for cinco de mayo.  I had chicken wrapped in corn tortillas and a beer. That shot my budget for days, meaning more bus rides and more walks through the quiet mornings.  Tomorrow is Friday.  The list of things to shuffle around is long on Fridays.  The weather is supposed to be nice though.  And there will be phone calls and people to assist as best I can.  Sometimes this psychology degree is as much for my own peace of mind as it is to help others in need of counseling.  I am my own best patient most of the time.  Lately things have been going so smoothly. 

Yet I must hold myself to the same set of standards that I require of my clients.  Sometimes I let my personal habits slip a little especially around the edges of my budget. If I can't fix my budget problems soon I will be there in the poorest part of town forever paying back big loans I took to help just those populations I face joining now in the bread lines and at the free clothing stores.  Scary to see this preview of the way things might be for me if I dont watch it.  Really motivating too.  You should try it.