Troubles here and there

 The past week has been...interesting.

In the "big news" is obviously the conviction in criminal court of a former U.S. president.

Why this is "news" is kind of peculiar, because this particular jamoke has always been and is the most obviously incompetent, corrupt, and criminal individual to ever disgrace American presidential politics, and when you consider that includes people like Warren Harding, James Buchanan, and Franklin Pierce that's a pretty high fucking bar.

Convicting this scumbag of several of his many visible crimes was, as it should have been, as hard as hitting water when falling out of a boat.

No, what's "news" - in the sense of "revealing" - has been the reactions of the Republican Party.

In a sane world this would give the Party of (Cash, Guns, Jesus, and Whiteness) Personal Responsibility the perfect option; dump the dick.

You want a loudmouthed nitwit for President?

Margie Greene is right there!

The GQP could use this as a lockdown "It's not you, it's me!" moment and pivot towards some other loudmouthed but less facially corrupt nitwit. Gaetz, Lee, Tuberville, Boebert...I mean, goddamn, the party's chock full of 'em.

They didn't. They won't, because it's obvious that they can't.

Because, apparently, Trump scratches some sort of weird precognitive itch in Republicans. It always seems to me to be a sort of reflex rather than a thought-out decision. Tubby is the Perfect Own-The-Libs Storm, and that seems to be what gets the bulk of these people going.

Mind you, the overall GOP pyramid hasn't changed.

As they did in the pre-Q Era of the Eighties through the early Teens, the plutocrats at the top are using all this wingnut id to get the New Gilded Age they crave. They give a shit about trans women and abortion; (or, if they do, not enough to interfere with their pursuit of) low taxes and deregulation are their goals.

They're using these shiny objects to harvest the morons' votes.

And right now all the morons want is Moar Trump. So they'll get it.

And if they can turn that into Electoral votes in November so will we.

Good and hard.

So there's that.

While at home...

The divorce machinery grinds forward.

We've engaged a mediator, and part of that process means collecting every scrap of information on our financial lives. Mojo is doing the heavy lifting there as she has throughout our marriage.

And what's increasingly apparent is that we're...not rich.

Right now we're getting by.

But I'm pulling in retirement - Army retirement and Social Security - and contract work here and there. She's got her paycheck which is less than that...

Given how hard she works, and all she does for little Astor Elementary?

That's a shame and a hissing to you, Portland Public Schools.

As a unit we're doing okay.

As individuals?

Things get kinda scary.

So scary that the other night Mojo was up until midnight, sitting alone on the darkened deck, her mind so filled with fear and worry that she couldn't sleep.

It tore me. I'm not where she is; she's still my dear, still my best friend. It's murder seeing her like that.

So I made an offer. A very odd one by modern marriage standards.

Let's put a pin in divorce, I said.

Not call it off. I get it, you're done with me. But...let's give it time. Let's live together, friends, "roommates", business partners, for four years. Until the kids are through college and our expenses drop to the baseline.

Then? We go our ways.

The thing that had occurred to me as I watched her agony was that this was what millions of people did for thousands of years. They needed to stay solvent. They were rich and wanted to be richer, or poor and didn't want to be poorer. Or merchants and wanted business, or nobles and wanted land.

So they made a deal to work and live together.

This was the deal on offer. A deal that would give us breathing space and time. Time for her to find a better-paying job. Time to grow our investment wealth, time and space to better figure out how to find our ways as single people, instead of the current rush to be separate.

Unlike a lot of those people, we aren't strangers.

We were friends, and so far still are.

I think we could make that work.

I also don't think she'll take it.

But I had to make the offer. She IS my friend, my dearest friend, and regardless of everything else, I owe her every effort to help her to the best life she can.

I already miss her.

And, sadly, I'm afraid both that that will not change, and that, soon, it irrevocably will.

About the Troubles...

Got back late yesterday from a week of drilling outside Skagway, Alaska. 

 

VERY weird place; it's like a Gold Rush theme park complete with boatloads of tourists. 

 

I couldn't help thinking how the "gold rush" was awful - guys desperate because the economy sucked, being cheated and fleeced by an army of grifters, and most of them going home broke after a miserable time. 

 

It's like a Disneyland "Great Depression" ride. Who wants that? 

 

Apparently lots of people!

 

Anyway, regarding the troubles.

 

In the 22-plus years we've been married there are times when my Bride sort of...goes away.

 

She retreats within herself, barricades herself behind her tablet reading, doesn't engage. She's not nasty or rude about it, but she withdraws from our marriage more than a bit.

 

The result is that eventually I come to her. Ask her how she's doing. Remind her that it's hard to do things together if we're not, y'know, together. 

 

She always acknowledges what is happening, and slowly re-emerges and we're back together.

 

About a month ago I noticed that she was doing this again. This time the problem was exacerbated by chores from the big remodel that needed "couple" sorts of inputs; paint colors, decor, that sort of thing. So, again, I sat down on a Friday evening, got her attention, reminded her of what she was doing, and asked for her to re-engage with me. She said she needed to think and she'd reply the next day.

 

Saturday morning she and I went down to the Willamette, where she told me that she had looked into herself and could find no more love. No dearness. No "us" there.

 

I asked her if she was sure.

 

She said she was.

 

I was stunned.

 

Before I left I asked Mojo to take the week to consider whether we had a chance at finding a way back together, either rekindling what we had, or finding something new.

 

Last Saturday I couldn't wait; I called and asked for her decision.

 

It was "no". 

 

So we're done.

 

Tomorrow we go see our financial planner to get the bad news. The best I can hope for, frankly, is be able to find a way to not die homeless. We're looking at having to practically double our expenses without increasing our income unless I can find someone who will hire me full- or at least part-time and right now that's not looking promising.

 

I'd like to rage and scream. I'd like to be mad at how unfair this all seems...but the only thing I can really be frustrated with is that Mojo, like my first wife before her, said nothing to let me know that her love for me was dying (or I was helping to kill it and how).

 

With my...well, soon-to-be-FIRST-ex...at least there were priors to explain why; we had very mismatched responses to stress; I got angry, she'd withdraw, and so she kept everything inside until she was just done and past done.

 

But my Bride KNEW that! 

 

And she knew that - had I known what was happening with The First Mrs. Lawes, had I known with Mojo now - I'd have done whatever I could; pretty much made myself over, made our marriage over, done whatever I could to prevent that death of love.

 

Well...it's  too late. It's done now, and all I'm left with is grief. And the hope that I can, at least, endure that grief under a roof somewhere and not under a bridge.

 

Sorry, I know that's bleak. But right now things look pretty bleak.

Knee Replacement - The Adventure Continues

This coming Friday will be both six weeks post-op left knee and surgery date for the right.

I won't kid you; I'm not looking forward to the NEXT three or four weeks. It's going to be a pain-suck mess just like the first three or four weeks post-op was, and that's assuming that everything goes as well as the first replacement.

But the alternative - living with knees that are effectively destroyed and continue to deteriorate - is worse.

The really sucky part, though, is for my Bride, who this week finally got some relief from driving me everywhere, and now is thrown back into the tied-to-the-immobile-mass-of-living-tissue that will be me for a month and a half assuming everything goes well.

We've been taking turns sleeping on the couch, since I still haven't licked the insomnia problems, though after this coming weekend she's back out there for a solid three weeks or so until the post-op pain management becomes manageable. Which means this:

Little Cat luuuurves a nice warm person to sleep on. And the couch is perfect for that. So this was 3am this morning, when - after finally dozing off - I woke to a heavy, hot, furry little body lying on my sternum.

She really is a very sweet cat. But...damn, catto, I made you a special soft fluffy cat nest so you wouldn't do this, fer crying out loud.

Well. At least it keeps my mind off this coming Friday.

Darth Maul returns

Sorry about the hiatus. Got some bad medical news. No, no, not The Plague...but, still, it's taking some time to process. I'll be here this weekend with an update.

Meanwhile, here's another cat picture (with The Bride, who was taking power-nap lessons from the moggies...:

The Queen of the Little Sea...

 ...is another year older.

How she manages to be so terrific while juggling me and two teenage kids and being Miss Debbie the School Secretary I have no idea. But she does, and does it well.

I loved you then and I love you still.

navigare necesse est; amare est necesse, etiam

Jakin' it.

Well, shit.

I promised content, didn't I. And here it is nearly the end of February and nothing since the beginning of the second week.

Sorry.

I have been thinking...ummm...thoughts. About the coronavirus and the beyond-typically-idiotic Fraudulency Administration "response" (yeah, let's put the guy who doesn't believe in actual 21st Century science and was widely loathed as the governor of his state for his incompetence, and let's do exactly what the government of the PRC did - that is, ensure that ignorant, ass-covering officials are in charge of suppressing or lying about the diesease - that enabled the Covid-19 to escape the infectious disease reporting-and-response protocols enacted after the SARS outbreak of 2003...).

And about the latest Oregon Yik-a-hoo Adventure; the ridiculous "Greater Idaho" redneck rebellion.

And about cops. Portland cops in particular, but cops in general.

And, for the first time since December, 2018, I have a "battle long ago" for March - the Battle of Crossbarry, 1921, part of the chaotic war for independence that turned into a civil war that still has portents for the Ireland and Great Britain of today.

So...more soon, promise!

Meanwhile, here's a picture of a cat:

(This is called "cat therapy", by the way; Mojo or Missy picks up Drachma the Merkitty and cradles him. A sane cat would go utterly insane to be held this way, but the goof just lies there, and the girls cuddle him, for long moments until he finally gets bored and wriggles his way out. You're weird, cat...)

Let me introduce myself...

...I'm a man of little enough wealth and taste, well...that's open to interpretation.

Visiting my friend Maia's blog (which is sadly, quieter even than my own, but worth the while to visit for her gorgeous photographs...) I realized that one thing I haven't done is take the time to update my c.v. So if I'm going to start writing here again, I should begin with who and where I am at this time, the People's Republic of Portland in the province of Cascadia, near the end of the year 2019.

I turned 62 this past October, so I've officially entered the "terminal phase" or "descending branch" of the ballistic arc my parents fired me onto back in the autumn of 1957. That's...suboptimal, but at least I lasted longer than my birth-brother Sputnik I, who lived fast and died young.

I'm still who I tell you I am on the cover page here: inquisitive, judgmental, analytical, hard-working. And still husband and father, scientist, retired Army sergeant, and social and political liberal.

I'm no longer a teacher, though. That's unfortunate, because I enjoyed it to some extent. But the time-suck was too huge and the pay too grim. "Adjunct" is community-college-speak for "wage-slave", and I no longer have the patience to do the work it requires for the paycheck it returns.

Physically? I continue to get older and slower. I finally had my left hip replaced this past winter, so that helps, but my "...back's bad and my legs are queer". I'm eaten up with osteoarthritis, and everything, especially on cold mornings, creaks and groans (and makes unpleasant grinding or cracking noises, which is worse). I've got a couple of knee replacements in my future given I live that long.

I'm still a toiler in the vineyard of soils engineering and geology, still where I have been for the past couple of years. It's fine. It's a job, no better than many I've had, but better than some. I work with some good people, some slackers, some yobs. Sometimes my work is fascinating, sometimes drab, sometimes difficult. For every fun landslide there's a day spent with my heels up watching a bunch of chucklefucks pave a parking lot. It's a glamor profession.

Outside of work, I still follow soccer in Portland, both the Timbers on the men's side and the Thorns on the women's. I lost my gig writing for Stumptown Footy, though - and there's a special sort of humiliation getting canned from your non-paying side gig! - and moved over the another blog (called Riveting!, in case you enjoy being bored out of your skull about soccer...) where I do the same thing for the same pay.

What can I say? I like soccer, I like to write about it, I'm often mistaken but never wrong...that's kind of the point of blogging, right?

Outside of that, it's reading; history, science fiction and other fun junk-novels. I get enough heartache from the news, so my taste in literary entertainment is pretty light. I should really put up a post about several authors I've run across lately that are a lot of fun. So between that and beginning to work out again - the hips made that kind of chancy - my idle hours are taken up pretty well.

Family? Well...

Mojo is now in her second year as School Secretary of our kiddos' elementary school. She's the beloved "Miss Mojo" of a wild rumpus of kiddies. This Halloween it was pretty adorable to open the door on a bunch of fun-sized elves and superheroes and Pokemon who immediately started screaming "MISS (Mojo's name)! MISS MOJO!" until she came over and greeted them and gave them their treats. She's still smart and sarcastic and still uninterested in politics and soccer. How we find anything to talk about I have no idea, but I love her like fresh meat loves salt.

The Boy is in his third year of high school, and has entered the Monosyllabic Phase. He's still struggling with his tendency to slack off; he really doesn't like to work - something I recall from my immediately-post-pubescent-period - and until now has done as well as he's done by pure mental throw-weight. He's taking a bunch of AP classes this year, though, and has found that he can't slide on through on pure headspace alone. His response has been somewhat gratifyingly diligent, though, so we'll see. There's a lot of promise there. But at 16? It's still mostly promise.

The Girl...well, I should start by saying that one of her funny things is that she absolutely hates it that I talk about her here. She's got a fanatic obsession that some sort of creepy stalker is going to chase her down through this blog, as if I try and boost my clicks by chasing down creepy stalkers. So I won't say much other than that she's a middle school kid with all that entails. She's gone from sweet little miss to salty little devil over the past year or so. My favorite story from that evolution came the other day, when I was digging through the spice drawer and came across this:

Daughter: "Seriously?"
Father: "What the..? I didn't think we still even had this."
Daughter: "So what is "authentic Asian taste", anyway?"
Father: "Hell if I know. Have you tasted yourself lately?"
Daughter:
Daughter: (licks back of hand) "Salty. With a hint of bitterness."
Father:
Daughter"
Father:
Daughter: "What? You asked!"

She's a gifted artist and something of a dramat - though she's all about the tech side and has no ambition to shine on the stage rather than behind it. Weirdly, her love for musical theater has revived my old affection for the genre, and we've enjoyed several shows including Wicked (which I enjoyed far more than I thought I would given my indifference to the source) and In The Heights.

The Damn Cat is being a damn cat. I don't want to pen him up indoors, but I wish to hell he'd stop killing little birds. Knock it off, you furry bastard.

Oh...and, oddly, the other thing I've taken up lately is...archery.

We have a very odd little, very Portland, sort of place here called "Trackers", and one of the things they do is run bow-making and archery classes for kids. And they also run an indoor range, and a friend and I have taken to turning up there every week and killing targets. It's a hell of a lot of fun for five bucks.

Being me, of course, I can't settle for just plunking away at a paper printed with concentric circles. The fun part is the challenge of hitting some small noisy thing, like a plastic bottle or a cardboard cup. The other day all I could find was a plastic seltzer bottle, so I shoved that in the hay bales and proceeded to twang away at it. Thing is, I didn't want to try and hit it standing up, like you'd shoot can's with a rifle. I wanted to hit it end-on and, more particularly, opening-end on, so I'd have to put an arrow through the 1-inch wide pour hole.

Took me probably a dozen flights to finally hit it.

But when I did?

GodDAMN that was satisfying.

So that's me writ small; I still can't do things the simple, easy, or sensible way.

But I'll keep firing away until I hit the fucking thing.

And there I am.

See you again in a bit.

Life is life (da da da da da dum...)

(Soundtrack for this post, from Laibach, my second-favorite group of Slovenians...)

I wanted to post this quickly after my sad little rant from yesterday, because it sort of typifies my position as an "optipess". That is, I am very unhopeful about the overall trajectory of our industrial civilization. I really don't think that anyone will solve the two huge problems that are going to bitchslap us:

1) Industrial civilization is learning how to make things without people, especially things that don't require a special sort of creative process. So the people who used to live by "making stuff" are going to find that they don't have jobs. Or that the jobs they will have are either a) horrible, like hospice and elder care work, b) low-paying, or both. Basically I think that a hell of a lot of what used to be the "working" and "lower middle class" (and even a fair bit of the "upper middle class") won't have a way to make a living. And

2) Anthropogenic global warming.

I think the resulting social chaos - people fighting over water and cropland or trying to escape rising seas while scads of people will be living aimlessly, without work or hope and on the edge of appalling poverty - will make the great migrations of Europe and Asia look like a child's birthday party.

But...at the same time, my own life is fairly sunny. My hip is working much better. The Boy seems to be happier now that he's taking his Brain Medicine. The Girl is her usual sweetie self. And my Bride is, as always, a Garden of Delight, Dispenser of Pleasures and Domestic Goddess.

This, for example, is from the past Saturday. Mojo and I took the Girl to what we call "Sushi Train". It's one of several little kaiten-zushi joints in Portland, and the Girl loves her some sushi. About two-thirds of this stack is hers. That's a LOT of sushi..!

There's always something fun going on at home; yesterday I got back late from a soccer game to hear all about the little fledgling crow that the kiddos had found. They tried to shoo it back towards its' nest-tree (amid great caw-ing from all the neighborhood crows) when some sort of raptor arrived.

From the kids' description you'd think this sucker was the size of one of Tolkien's eagles! But I think it was either a red-tailed hawk or a big accipiter like a Cooper's hawk. Anyway, it took the fledgling for its' own hatchlings to the great excitement (and sadness) of the young people. "It's the Circle of Life..." sighed Little Miss, who then giggled when I reminded her that she says the same thing when she farts.

I'm doing good work and getting paid for doing something I love.

I live in a beautiful part of the world, and I have my books, and my sport, and my hobbies to distract and entertain me. I get to write to you here and get the opinion-kinks out of my head. I have people I love and who love me close to hand.

I have it pretty goddamn good, at least here, and for the moment.

And that's pretty much all any of us can ask from life, isn't it?

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsered, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Abiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

~ Wallace Stevens

Boredom is a force that gives us meaning

It's easy to underestimate.

Rain shut down the job I'm covering, so I had a whole afternoon to myself in Medford. In the rain. And cold.

Rainy, cold Medford is pretty damn...well, it's Medford in the cold rain. Figure it out.

So I took a shower and caught up on some paperwork. Read a book - Cold Iron by Stina Leicht; "blackpowder-and-socery", elves with magic and flintlocks fighting humans with ring-bayonets and 12-pound Napoleons and a fun read - and did some bloggage. Chatted with some friends via e-mail and FB.

Finally I ran out of entertainment so I sat down and did these;

This is "Kittehs o' War" for the Boy, and this

...is "Drachma the Cat God" for the Girl. HAD to be their beloved kittehs, of course. I had a buttload of these postcards and realized that the kiddos have NO interest in reading some sort of boring letter from me. My Bride I can write to...but the urchins? They love the cartoons.

So I taped the postcards together to draw the images and then took the tape off. I'll mail them tonight so next week the littles can put them together as jigsaw puzzles. A quick and fun little project and, hopefully, entertaining for them.

But now I'm done and bored again. I wonder if there's a bad movie on?

3am

Awake, empty-handed, in the darkness with the sound of rain
rattling inside the cheap metal gutters like muffled drum-fire.

The warm, soft smell of your hair pressed close still rich
in the sharp empty chill of the rented room.

The sough of the distant highway your night-breathing
rising and falling, deep and slow and far away.

Love and other drugs

Dunno why - perhaps being brushed by the leafy wing of the Angel of a Very Sore Pate - but this has been on my mind this morning:

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

~ Andrew Marvell

My sun on this sunless day.

À une Mendiante rousse

I probably pay no more attention to the whole "Miss America" business - pageant, contestants, winner, public appearances, scholarship, the associated hoopla - as the average American male of my age and history. That being, unless said Miss is involved in some sort of scandal involving nude pictures of her ownself...

...absolutely none.

I have utterly no idea who this year's "Miss Oregon" is (Allison Elizabeth Cook of Klamath Falls, for those of you interested, who is all of nineteen and either attends or attended Oregon Institute of Technology and who ran on the "platform issue" of Brain Injury Awareness - isn't the Internet amazing..?) or who last year's Miss America was (Mallory Hagen, Miss New York, whose winning performance included performing a tap dance routine to James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing" while wearing a latex rodeo outfit. She's twenty-five) or, well, pretty much anything about Miss America.

So you can trust me when I say that when I channel-surfed onto the 2014 Miss America show Sunday night it was purely by accident.

I'd had a busy day and was ready for sleep, anyway. My bride, however, likes to have a television oblongata as she fiddles with her tablet. I asked her which she preferred, the old movie on TCM or the Misses Americas and she chose the latter.

I watched a little of the opening of the show, which seemed to consist of groups of the young ladies doing a sort of one-too-many-mojitos-at-the-bachelorette-party dance

(you know the sort of thing, a lot of arm-waving and hip-circling along with tottery aimless little steps? Yeah, that.)

at various locales and stepping forward to introduce themselves. This consisted of a two- or three-sentence snippet that started with some sort of topical reference to the contestant's home state and then her connection to it; "Listening to your phone calls from the nation's capital. Just kidding! I'm Miss District of Columbia, Bindhu Pamarthi." or "Our Utah Jazz sure aren't bringing home the championship. Guess It's up to me! Ciera Pekarcik, Miss Utah."

The actual contest venue was in some sort of anonymous auditorium - presumably in Atlantic City, since isn't the whole idea to bring the tourists to the boardwalk and crimp their money? - buried beneath a ziggurat of glitter and lights with some sort of generic male-and-female hosting-type creatures and Miss 2013 Mallory Hagen in a crown and a white dress looking rather queen-like though not in a drag-queeny sort of way.

And, of course, all the contestant Misses Whereevers doing their bachelorette-party dance again, only this time in identical short dark dresses.

I watched all this in a fairly stupefied fashion. It just seemed excessive and I was reminded rather forcefully of that awful Sandra Bullock film Miss Congeniality and got a chuckle out of that.

The massed gyrating ranks of Miss American womanhood, however, seemed faintly intimidating. I assume there were only 53 of them - all the states plus DC, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands - but they seemed like a Multitude.

Perhaps because for all that they were as different from each other as Americans are different from each other (at least you could see in hair and skin color every place of origin from Europe to Africa to Asia and every admixture in-between...) they all seemed frighteningly alike.

Tall, or at least so slender as to seem tall, slim with endless slender arms and long legs. Perfect, glossy hair and lots of it. Gleaming teeth, shining eyes, flawless skin. Perfectly fitted into their perfectly tailored outfits, perfect feet shod in perfect shoes.

Perfection, and lots of it.

I went to read in bed.

A while later Mojo came in and pottered about making her nightly pre-sleep preparations. Finally she plumped down on the bed with a happy sigh.

"What did you think?" she asked.

"About what?" I said, putting Atkinson and my reading glasses on the nightstand.

"Of the swimsuits?" she said. "You're kidding. Didn't you see any of the swimsuit part?"

"No, I left before the thing really got started. How did the fembots look in their swimmies?"

"Very sleek." Mojo tipped her head and looked at me slantendicular. "You didn't even sneak a look at the swimsuit competition?"

"Nah. I know what fembots look like in their swimsuits, and I wanted to finish this chapter."

Mojo snorted. "Sure. You tell me you don't find watching them at all sexy?"

And that stopped me. I actually had to think about that for a moment.

Because when you get right down to it, that's really what all the beauty pageant business is about, isn't it? Sure, there's a lot of guff in the prospectus about talent and poise and style, sure, there are points for interviews and "platforms" and there's a scholarship...but the bottom line is that these women are there because they are beautiful, because they are endmembers of a certain human ideal of appearance, attitude, and aptitude, and the whole point is that they are "Miss America"; the sort of young, single woman that is supposed to be an American ideal.

So as a "Mister America" it seemed logical that these young women were supposed to appeal to me intellectually, emotionally, and - if not most importantly at least importantly - physically.

I should find them desirable. Sexually desirable.

And the more I thought about it the less true that seems, and it made me wonder why.

Pretty? Sure. Well-groomed? Yep.

Sexy?

Not really.

What the hell was wrong with me, then? These were by all appearances healthy, vigorous young women with bodies that appeared (from Mojo's viewing of them in their swimsuits, anyway) perfectly fit and feminine. Knowing how us guys like to look at you girls, well, there should have been an element of sexual attraction there. I should have looked at the Misses America and wanted to roll about naked with at least one of them, right?

I just didn't feel it and it took me a while to pinpoint why not.

It was, for me, anyway, the sheer perfection of those bodies and the women within them.

In those sleek contestants there seemed to be not a hint of human oddity, not a whisper of offhand intimacy, not a scrap of careless desire. All was taut expectation; poised, controlled, and precise. The contestants, the contest, and the broadcasters had done a perfect job of eliminating any shred of human weakness or imperfection.

And the more I thought about it the more accurate, and the less arousing, that perfection seemed. Although for all I know any number of these women might well be bright, funny, warm, desirable people you couldn't tell that from what you saw on television. All you saw was perfection.

And it is imperfection - for me, anyway - that fuels desire.

It's not a perfect ass or perfect breasts or perfect legs or a perfect face; its the ass that belongs to the woman curled up beside me companionably doing a sudoku, or leaning frowsy and warm against a morning countertop, scratching that bottom while she waits for the coffee to brew.

Its the way the parabola of those imperfect breasts shake as she straddles my hips and tells bad jokes and laughs at her own hilarity. Its the feel of those legs twined around my own, or the look on that face as it is drawn in concentration, or lightens in pleasant relaxation, or lours at me with incipient lust.

It is the sudden intimacy of a glimpse inside her half-opened bathrobe, or of the unperfect arc of her calf diving into her furry socks that keep her feet warm on a chilly evening.

Don't get me wrong. I "get it", the human ability to desire an anonymous ideal body, a perfect "zipless fuck". I'm not a marble saint; I've looked at women and thought carnal thoughts.

But...those women tend to be everyday, ordinary women whose everyday bodies, as imperfect and ordinary as my own, seem infinitely more desirable than the most perfect Miss Somewhere whose gelid smile and serene glance seems to free them from the earthy everydayness I share with their imperfect sisters.

I won't pretend I had figured all this out last night as a settled beside the warmth of my sleeping bride. But I think perhaps I had the main of it, in the lazy flush of warm, undemanding passion I felt for her.

No one will ever gaze in awe at her perfect skin, or marvel at the tautness of her perfect breasts. She will never again have the sleek vigor of youth. She will never wear America's crown of womanly perfection.

But to me she is infinitely, imperfectly desirable, far beyond the rank upon rank of perfect Misses.

To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl

Little white girl with red hair,
The holes in your frock
Show poverty
And beauty,

For me, a poor poet,
Your young and ailing body,
Spotted with, freckles,
Has its sweetness.

You carry more gallantly,
Than can a queen of fiction
Her high-boots of velvet,
Your heavy clogs.

In place of rags too short for you,
May a fine court costume
Be drawn in blustering, long folds
At your heels;

In place of stockings in holes,
May a dagger of gold
Glitter for the eyes of rakes
On your leg;

May barely fastened knots
Reveal for our sinning
Your lovely breasts, radiant
As two eyes;

May, to undress yourself,
Your arms require coaxing
And may they archly repel
Mischievous fingers,

May pearls of finest water,
Sonnets by Belleau,
Be ceaselessly proffered
By your enslaved lovers,

Trains of servant rhymers,
Dedicating first lines to you
And watching your slipper
Under the staircase,

Many a flunkey struck at random,
Many a lord and many a Ronsard
Would spy to seduce it,
Your tender retreat!

You would count more kisses
Than lilies in your beds
And you would hold in sway
More than one Valois!

— Meanwhile you go begging
Some old rubbish lying
On the threshold of some
Vulgar Véfour;

You go gaping past your shoulder
At twenty-nine sou jewels
Of which, I cannot, I am sorry,
Make a gift to you.

Go then, without other ornament,
Perfume, pearls or diamonds,
Than your emaciated nudity,
O my beauty!

~ Charles Baudelaire

Li Rwè, li Lwè et l’ Liberté !

I found this a curious and interesting combination of news and history; apparently the Belgians are getting a new King.

"Filip/Philippe will be King of a country that is divided between a part of the population that is deeply attached to the Belgian unity, and part of the population (mainly Flemish nationalists) who prefer regional independence. The Belgian king has always played a crucial role in keeping the different parts of the country together, and the question is whether King Filip/Philippe, who is said to have less emotional and social intelligence as his father, will be able to fulfill this role in the same way as his father did. Journalists keep asking, up until today: “Is he ready for this role?”

The connection here is that Mojo and I dropped in on the Bazi Bierbrasserie on Hawthorne last weekend to enjoy a lovely evening out and celebrate Belgian independence day;

The Belgian brews were appropriately robust and floral, and the stoemp was damn fine; I've got to try making that around here, tho finding the mergeuez sausage here in Portland might be a bit tricky. We enjoyed a truly peaceful and intimate evening ending up at the Heron Haus B&B where we spent our honeymoon night eleven years ago this October.

One of the subjects of conversation that evening was "what is a Belgian", and the whole business of Flemings vs. Walloons came up. Several of the patrons and staff at Bazi had their own opinions, but the general consensus seemed to be that there would always be a Belgium.

But it got me thinking about what makes a "nation", how its citizens (or in Belgium's case, "subjects", although the idea of a tyrannical House of Brabant oppressing its subjects in 2013 seems rather ridiculous no matter how loathsome the colonial record of the second Leopold might have been.) And what a curious beast an "American" is, being defined (at least in theory) not by language, or race, or heritage, or "culture", or really even geographical location but intellectual and emotional attachment to a slew of political ideals about self-government and the relationship between government, its citizens, and society.

And I'm not quite sure what I think about that, especially given the great changes in the U.S. between the society I grew up in - which was founded largely on a social compact defined by the New Deal - and the U.S. of today (and in case you think I'm romanticizing the New Deal a large part of that compact specified excluding the darker-colored citizens of the U.S. and the changes wrought by the Civil Rights Era had a hell of a lot to do with the subsequent changes and the breakdown of that social compact...).

I can't honestly say that I see Belgium's political and civil issues as vastly greater than those I see around me right here. But I do know that I might be a teensy bit concerned if my country depended on the political and social skills of one guy said (in the comments section of the article I found) to possess "the intellectual and political skills...of a cabbage".

The stoemp was damn fine, though.

MILF Gone Wi...on vacation

Sorry the posting has been so light; the thing is, I'm single parenting for the long weekend and the preceding week was taken up with getting ready for that. Mojolicious is off to St. Augustine with three of her old college chums (now there's a thought...does anyone this side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge call their friends "chums" anymore? They did at one time, anyway, if the pop novels of the Thirties and Forties are any indication. Hmmm.) for a long weekend of fun and sun.

The funny thing is that three of the four are now nice conventional mommies who leave a total of three husbands and six kiddos between them back home. The comic viewpoint nearly images itself:

Which reminds me of a story.

When The Boy was small - about three years old or so - Mojo enjoyed a similar weekend with one of the friends she's vacationing with this time (let's call her GeoChick, since she, too, is in the earth sciences). Now I like GeoChick; she's a rambunctious, earthy gal and visually is most delightfully curvaceous. Since at that time Mojo was also quite buxom it was hard to...ummm...let's say not "talk to their racks" as us doggish guys tend to if not careful with our gazes.



Anyway, little Peep missed his mommy then as he does now, and about 0.4 nanoseconds after the door closed behind her he asked me "Where's Mommy?"

"Mommy is in Seattle with Auntie GeoChick." I replied. "She'll be home in three days." There was about half a second of silence as he digested this. Then:

"Where's Mommy?"

This went on about for about ten minutes on the hour, every hour, for the next two days. Every time I gave him the same answers; Mommy's in Seattle with Auntie GeoChick. She'll be home in three (two, one and one half...) days.

On Saturday we'd gone to the animal prison zoo and had a relatively-where's-mommy-free afternoon. But on the ride home with nothing else to distract him (and wretched traffic, so lots to distract me...) Peep pipes up noisily from his carseat "Where's Mommy?!?" and I snapped.

"Mommy's with Auntie Chris jumping up and down on a hotel bed naked rubbing their boobies together like in one of those Girls Gone Wild videos! Okay? Stop asking where the hell Mommy is! She'll be home tomorrow!"



Peep cries, I growl, by the time we get home he's asleep (the Carseat Magic, yes!) and we go back to "Where's Mommy/In Seattle with Auntie Chris" for the remaining weekend. Mommy walks through the door Sunday evening and thrills the Peep, who fawns and drools all over her in approved toddler fashion, climbs into her lap, snuggles down, sighs, looks up and asks;

"Why did you an' Auntie Chris jump an' rub your boobies together?"

I won't describe the look I got other than if it were knives I'd have looked like the house special at Yoshi's Sashimi Palace in a heartbeat.

"What?! He asked me a zillion times and every OTHER time I just told him you two were in Seattle and you'd be home tonight! How the hell could I know that he would remember the one time I snapped?"



The funny thing is that I think my wife understands guys and our Girls Gone Wild issues. She was madder than hell, though, that I taught him the word "boobies".

Now the kids are older we've actually joked with Mojo about Mommies Gone Wild and she joked back, but with a glance at me that said plainer than words "Yeah, you horndog, you WOULD like me to make one of those videos with my friends, wouldn't you..?"

Sigh.

Busted.

So to speak.

But, as my wise bride also says, the thing about marital desire is that you can work up an appetite anywhere so long as you come home to eat; die Gedanken sind frei - you can think what you want about who you want in the privacy of your own head, provided you both understand that those are just sparks, and the fire you're tending is in the two of you's eyes and hearts. I'm married, not blind; I still appreciate the beauty of a beautiful woman. But the woman I desire is...right now, she's somewhere south of the Georgia state line.

Dammit.



Now I'm missing the hell out of my bride and she's only been gone for a day.

Gotta run. It's Treat Day and my daughter is responsible for her class Oreos.

I Knew A Woman

(By Theodore Roethke)

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

Forty-six years ago you parted company with your mother for the first time; today you are with her and parted from me, yet you will not be parted from me. You are my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.

I know our love will not last forever.

But I can hope that it will last as long as we live.

Happy Birthday, love.

Tillers of the soil (with cat)

After all that ranting (see below..) I wanted to post a nice little domestic scene, so here it is; our new raised raspberry beds.

You'll note that the vegetation down on the end is different; Mojo planted a couple of heirloom tomato plants down there...

...and her beloved basil, as well.

All together, it really was a lovely summery day today.

The Boy and I played LEGOs and drove around the town (I asked him if he wanted to see the Navy and the other diversions of the Rose Festival and he shrugged. Good lad! He's a chip off the old Portland bloc!) and the Girl and her two next-door friends played outside and exchanged coos over "Precious", the little black-and-white tabby from down the street they have adopted as their communal pet.

So the raspberries are finally in, the lawn is mowed, the borders weeded...ahhh...I feel a heady rush of sweetly urban domestic bliss.

Katter bort!

Went to the Timbers match Sunday, and took my bride.That in itself is something of an oddity. The Loved One enjoys a good soccer match as much as the next woman, but she also loves her peace and is a woman of calm good sense, none of which is there to be had in the North End at a Timbers contest.But she knows I love both the game and the surroundings, so when our friends Brent and Julie offered us their tickets she gamely stood by her man for ninety minutes to watch the final preseason friendly against the Swedish club AIK.

It was a fairly decent match, as footy goes; one-nil to the home side, which is always polite - a guest is never pushy - although these guests played a pretty rugged game of calcio. Our new Scots striker headed one in almost before the singing started (and was desperately unlucky not to get a second before the half) and the Boys in Red held on to the one-goal lead despite some shifty work at the back.But for my inamorata the real fun was all around her.

Our capo - the leader of the singing and chanting in the Timbers Army was this wonderful gal we called "Rosie" (because she looked sturdy and energetic enough to pull a double shift at Kaiser riveting together Liberty Ships) - is a long-term fixture in Section 108 and did her usual terrific job of conducting the singing; Mojo found her quite delightful.I liked this gal, who, in the excitement of the moment, actually slipped her feet out of her shoes and stood on them. Probably easier on the soles than the nubbly terrace pavement, but whatever the reason she made for a rather cute picture.As always, the Army poured out their hearts and their songs for the team; that's the Great Tradition of the game, and in case you enjoy a good singalong, here's a terrific place on the Web to learn a new song or two: "FanChants". They even have my favorite Newcastle song to the tune of Yellow Submarine, with the chorus that goes "Peter Reid had a fookin' monkey's head, a fookin' monkey's head, a fookin' monkey's head..."One thing you can always count on in Portland is creativity, and here's my vote for the so-far tifo of the year.I have no idea if AIK has a mouse mascot or not, but Jeld-Wen Field - from the days when it was plain old Civic Stadium - really DOES have a colony of feral cats, so, there. Great signage, whatever the real Swedish mouse situation.

The real thing starts next Monday, and should be a hellacious battle; our old enemies the Flounders of Seattle are looking scary good, and we'll have to be strong and fierce to bring the Cascadia Cup home to Stumptown this season.Cats away!