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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
 Posted - 06/20/2009 : 16:31:52
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~from Brock Miller at Sunrise Retirement. Spoken, not written.
"I was watching Anthony Bourdain's Bombay Beach episode when I was hit with deja-vu's hammer. Early '80's. She used to work for the studios. Had that little place out in Borrego Springs. Paid for. Her last deal with Warner's. Turned it into a gold mine. Blushing Stars shipped all over the world. Grapefruit sweeter than Ruby Reds. The "human interest" story was gaining favor with the Dailies, so I thought I'd try my hand. Cruise out and poke around, ya know. Ask a few questions. I stopped at Ski Inn at Salton Sea to try to get a line on the locals. No smiles and no dice. I tell ya, man, it was eerie even back then. Water to walk on. Dead fish. Palm trees with no tops. The nearest super market 40 miles away. "UFO's? Yep, we got 'em." the sign in the convenience store said. Convenience store/gas station/post office. Hahaha. I think I'm tellin' two stories. Anyway, at sunset I'm headin' through the Badlands. Checked into La Casa Del Zorro. Let the paper pick up the tab. (LA Times.) The word was she was runnin' crews from Mexico and the place was heavily armed. I followed the dirt road through a maze of citrus groves. No Trespassing signs. No street signs either. Only arrows back to S22. It was Spring and the scent in the air was a drug. A narcotic. Everything tasted like those flowers. I got to the end of the road. Five or six miles, maybe. Shooting I hear. Lots of shooting. All I could think of was the two P's. Pulitzer and posthumously. There's a big clearing and a house with a wrap-around porch. Knee braces and corbels. Lace at the windows. The woman approaching me is holding a pistol. I identify myself. I show my credentials. She didn't ask. I show her anyway. We spend the rest of the day shooting cans off stumps. Target practice, she says. She's beautiful. She makes chili. I don't want to leave. Ever. It's the fragrance, she says. Spooky, my son says. He won't travel the 86."
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 06/24/2009 : 22:19:57
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Sunrise Stories~
I love what they tell me. From Claire D on the occasion of her 81st birthday, June 24th, 2009.
"When I was a child toast tasted toastier. And my breakfast was always the same. Except Sundays. A BB size ball of cod liver oil. 'Sunshine,' mother called it. And a glass of Mother Gray's Sweet Worm Powder mix with a chaser of orange juice on the side. Prune juice for Grand Dad who brought his teeth to the table in a freshly ironed handkerchief.
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Edited by - Ailinn on 12/16/2020 18:14:34 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2009 : 17:59:14
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Sunrise Stories~
Wedding Day ~ 1949. Jie and Zhin Chung. Zhin says, "I took my pumelo bath and sat between the candles when Lim put up my hair. My good luck woman. The Santa Ana winds were blowing guests against the doors. My dress, a snowy prison, a barricade of veils. I found his eager face almost too annoying!" Her eyes sparkle when she pinches the back of Jie's hand. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2825 Posts |
Posted - 07/02/2009 : 19:58:19
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We miss the bars.
We miss the crowds and the passion
and the romance of the drinking life.
We don't get laid as much.
We're afraid of everything.
[Still]
We do everything better.
We're going slower and using less gas.
There are more better days than worse ones.
The tide's come in,
Boats have risen.
It's still dark,
but there's enough light
to dance to.
Rev B |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 07/03/2009 : 13:42:59
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Rev. B
Do not be gone so long again. You hear me?
Mean it !!! Okay? Okay, then. Whew!!
Glad that's settled !!!
Love,
BarbraG |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2009 : 18:02:21
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"America's Native Sons"
They stood on "Freedom's Shore", watching the ships
come in.
The Santa Maria, the Pinta, the Nina -- brought
in by a fickle wind.
For freedom, we left our homes..
..on a far and distant shore ..
The new land wasn't empty but..
we wanted it all... and more ..
So, we took it to the Gulf of Mexico --
..to Canada and .. the Pacific, too ..
But, for all the souls we laid in waste..
..to our own selves, we were true ..
We thought we had come to India ..
..we were so far off base ..
Yet, we gave them the name "Indians". .
..and set out to destroy their race ..
We have a lot to answer for --
.. somewhere on down the line ..
We took away their beloved land --
and someone made it mine ..
Well, tonight, as I salute the Flag..
I'll remember them -- one by one ..
They're out there somewhere in the night ..
...America's ... Native Sons ..
Barbra Griffin
July 4, 2009
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2009 : 19:29:54
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One young blond kid at the Nighthawk border crossing,
not concerned with our cargo or reason for travel,
just happy to see living human beings.
Where you going?, he asked, after five minutes of chitchat.
Billy told him we're going to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan,
but decided to take the scenic route.
In Darby, Montana, old Jerry with the broken-back gait
told us stories of his childhood in Texas, whipping out
his single-shot derringer from his trouser pocket.
His wife Adele was childless until she met him at age 39,
now has two rascal boys to care for and love.
In Wisdom, the moment we got out of the car we were swarmed
by mosquitos. They flood the fields below town and skeeters
benefit. Two old boys outside the pint-sized post office
are discussing aches and pains. Inside the gas station office
a woman in a house dress answers, when I ask about Wisdom's
population, "We got 102 people and 9,000,000 mosquitos."
Bunch of mountain goats start across the highway two miles
shy of Painted Rocks, Montana, then decide to stand there.
Twenty-five cars wait for them to budge, the midday heat
changing the color of the car's paint. Fishing the Madison
River in hip-waders with a fly rod trout are jumping everywhere,
but I can't get one to take my fly. "Billy," I yell to my
pal downstream, "they're swimming between my legs!"
DL |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2009 : 21:26:44
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Good thing Patton wasn't on that road in
Montana where the goats were holding up
traffic.
BG |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2009 : 19:11:23
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Sunrise Stories~
"I want a cigarette," he says. "Oh, shush! Behave yourself!" Alma Cottswold says, tsk-tsking and wagging her finger. I want a goddamn cigarette, NOW!" He gives Alma a menacing look as she backs up shaking her head. He takes a step toward her. I reach out to touch his arm but he yanks it away sending the refreshment tray flying. Dixie cups floating in an orange and cranberry juice puddle where the maintenance crew just finished polishing the Day Room floor. "Please, Major, let's take a walk," I say. I almost whisper, not ready for war. The Major takes the wide Trex stairs two at a time. More agile than I imagine. Then he bolts up the short fire escape and I follow. A beautiful night. Balmy. The traffic on El Camino thinning out. The sun on its way to Hawaii. The corner flower vendors with their striped umbrellas waiting for their rides home. He sits down on the still-warm tile roof. I sit down beside him. He doesn't say a word for ten minutes, then finally, "I'm transferring to Hemet." "You'll like it," I say, "Cahuilla country." "Yeah," he says. "My daughter and son-in-law live in Sage. I'll be staying with them weekends. He's a die- hard Marlboro man." We sat up there til some fog rolled in, then he helped me down the fire escape. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2009 : 19:16:16
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| "Hop in," he says. His elbow out the window. His fast foot tapping the floor. Sunset slides across the windshield when he follows the red X's off the map. His fool-proof plan of escape. Later, when he falls asleep at the wheel she nudges him awake. He opens his eyes. He smiles, he nods. "For my next trick..." he says, and winks. |
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San Diego
Swinger
509 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2009 : 20:17:56
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| Crowded campers in a shopping mall lot. Bright Christmas tree quilt draped over one door. Pacific Ocean across the street. Plane taking off on the water. Water everywhere close to the road. Crossing the PCH at San Elijo where the line winds around Cove Donuts at 6am. Vans from UCSD and Scripps Oceanography double-parked waiting on their orders. Bumper stickers ~I got glazed at Cove Donuts~. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/18/2009 : 17:02:53
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Sunrise Stories ~ True Fiction
Three for Clotilde
1. I went looking for him that hot desert night, the American. I found him in the cameo-lit tamarisk grove under the pale Anza moon. He warned me about the jumping cholla. A cactus with its own luring aura. A bright bite so bold it demands blood and surrender. He shook my canteen with a rueful frown. He made a speech about shade and water. Made me squat down beside him when he scratched a crude map to the Ranger Station in the dust. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/18/2009 : 17:05:09
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| 2. The trail curves along toward Trestles and San Mateo Creek. He shows me where the boat is hidden. Our shoulders touching in the starry dark where beneath the surface of the water the serpent stirs. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/18/2009 : 17:07:22
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| 3. A tray of glass beads that match his eyes cooling on the kitchen counter. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2009 : 21:57:09
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These towns and cities, their roadside-joint signs
offering loans, steak-dinner specials, cheap beer
and happy endings. Tawdry saloons where the husband
sleeps off last night's booze 'til late afternoon
while his wife cracks whip on the lunchtime waitresses.
The 25 mph speed limits that power-mad locals cops
love to nail you for breaking by two miles per hour.
A library with a single public internet computer,
closed on Wednesday, the librarian tinkling her bell
when your half hour is up. The tow truck driver's
stories about ancestors who prospected and hunted
in the nearby mountains before the town existed,
his truck lurching until your guts are in your throat.
Churches everywhere, all shapes, sizes and denominations,
their spires rising above the low-slung houses.
An elderly woman dragging a barely-working sprinkler
over burnt-dust ground toward her failing roses.
The JFK Bar in Anaconda, the Club Moderne, most of
the houses dark by ten at night. The lonely Chinese
restaurant, grease on the windows, the scotch-taped
menu with prices crossed out and revised. There's
a hot tub at the Trade Wind, water pistols to squirt
cold water at each other when the steam and the beer
lull you to sleep. All the hidden guns that you feel
and never see, if you're lucky. And every woman you
meet and feel something for is either married or has
a boyfriend who is due out of prison any day now.
Like those storefront signs that promise so much
and deliver so little, people, too, may present a facade
which invites and lures and, ultimately, proves to be
bright neon next to the dark blood of the truth.
It's a story, then, they're telling, and you listen
knowing it's so, that it's a way to shine up time.
Five miles outside most of these towns there are
wolves, bears and mountain lions, stalking old paths
among trees that remember a time before the river.
There are rocks with fossil traces of snakes and snails,
stairs that lead you down to miraculous limestone caves.
A smelter's smokestack survives the smelter as the town
survives its departed and dead, the sun sprinkling its
broken promises upon the sunken public graves.
DL |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/22/2009 : 21:14:24
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| Eve's a superstitious chronicler of his days. Won't change the things he's named. She has fire in her eyes and a rolling pin in her hand. A temper like loose mercury. She reaches for the coffee beans in their twist of brown paper, the grinder with its tiny aromatic drawer. He tips back in his gravity-defying chair. Folds his knuckles up under his prolific chin. Of course nothing is what it seems and...all is as it should be. His peppery grin, his profile split by divination. His legendary shenanigans. His cracked-in-half laughter and well-worn wings. "Save everything! he says. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 22:37:30
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Reading Rilke on the strand at MacDonald Beach,
a Vietnamese man fishing on the old wooden pier
asleep beneath a parasol. I'm too alone in the world,
he wrote, yet not alone enough to make each hour holy.
A fish taking the hook would ruin the poetry of this day.
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2009 : 21:07:41
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| Cormac's Wake. A dangerous man crosses the border. His life was a fiction. Colossal with grief. A quilt of chilled lillies. Memorial wreaths. Folded roses and icy carnations. His Faith on gilt easels displayed for the crowd. A rosary with tears and candles. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2009 : 21:09:46
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The soul is a bird on a string straining for Heaven.
Saint John of the Cross |
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San Diego
Swinger
509 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2009 : 17:43:52
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For Gloria.
The rabbits are back en masse. They eat purple cabbage and garlic bread. They don't run when we come into the yard. Much less timid than before.
PS Thank you for posting the Gathering photos.
Ro
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The Nightly Vigil