AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

Fairyland is Everywhere; There is a Mountain

“First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”
~ Donovan

 

Elgin Watch Father Time

Dear Beings of the Universe/Good Luck Charmers,

The moon is full. We are on the Quest. We set off this morning, our little quest within the big Quest. We are going to Fairyland, which is good because I am not just Lady, I am a fairy. We will tell the beings in the basement under Fairyland our stories from Stations of the Lost and Found.

This Fairyland we’re going to is in Minneapolis. On the way, we are stopping in Elgin:

  • Much of Elgin is in the county of Kane.
  • Elgin National Watch Company’s logo features Father Time.
  • Elgin has a Symphony Orchestra and some examples of homes in the Queen Anne style.
  • The Indian Removal Act of 1820 and the Black Hawk Indian War of 1832 led to the expulsion of Native Americans who had settlements and burial mounds in the area.

So that Act was 193 years ago, basically, two or three lifespans ago, roughly 8 generations ago. How could one possibly justify the expulsion of Native Americans? What were the settlers thinking? And so overtly, too: the Indian “Removal Act.” It led to the Trail of Tears. Interestingly, many ethical Christians protested the act.

So there’s this potpourri of information that one can dig into—what parts of it apply to the Quest?

What I know:

  • I am a fairy and we are going to Fairyland.
  • I was asked to ask Brahman to stop the suffering of Samsara. This is part of my long quest and what I was told in the Dream.
  • I am Lady of the Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering.
  • Native Americans figure.

I like time and the thought of going West on a quest. East, too, but I’ve been more East than West.

Peace & blessings & love,

Lady

P.S.: I would like to leave you here with a Bree poem from the new Matter Ring:

The Riser

east-of-the-sun-west-of-moon-webYou are the bartender salting the rim
of the earth. You are shaking things up,

good company.

You are the hostess the whole room
rounding while we straighten our shirts
in the mirror moon easily makes
of your eyes,

good company.

The salesman on the ready, always, you
make something out of us, like it was
no thing, this us. And this is us waiting.
We are what we make of each others army.

And you time things right, ever the
doorman, you of the first infantry, opening
into us, you also pull away from us, and off
of us rise.

~ Bree

 

Good Sirens

Skin
Skin is the first thing I think of
when I think of you
your warmth
smoothness
the hearth of cuddle
wrapping my skin around yours
my arms along yours
the big bird bones of our hands
knuckles gently bent around
how calm and warm and smooth it is
and then suddenly
how short–you’re up like that
there are ten minutes of this or so
and then you’re up like that
making coffee

Oh that we would have the luxury
of feeling able to settle into
each other for a whole amniotic morning
a whole one

Hours without time ticking down
to some task

Just in the flow
in the womb flow
Mandy walking on us
walking on top of the blanket
braver when we’re inert
or meowing from the other room
now and then

Birds becoming more persistent
in song and then
less persistent
introspective
meandering with my thoughts
meandering

Even a siren can sound
comforting
especially in the morning
a siren like business being done
somehow elsewhere
juxtaposed
with us relaxed
in the here & now

A siren like rain happening perhaps
the extras on the scene outside our door
should we choose to get up

The siren an anti-siren
saying don’t come out there, it’s other stuff
going on out there, just soundtrack stuff
beyond
the intimate cell of your domicile

Siren, such a weird word
heralding some sad stuff
but also some happy stuff
and poetically mostly happy stuff
in this spool at least

There’s the siren song of now
that siren song of the womb room
that siren song of Mandy plodding on carpet
her feet making oddly heavy sounds
though again she is light like
the birds
our hands are like
the birds
the birds are like
the birds
and sirens
and the sirens are like and unlike
sirens

~ L

Sum parts


sum part – foto Smith

Writing poetry can be frustrating at times since due to its nebulous nature it can be read so many ways depending on the reader’s mood, education and happiness.

There was confusion last week about 2 of my poems which caused me to leave the following explanation as a FaceBook comment. Blogging it here cuz it’s rewritten and theoretically I have more blog readers than FB readers, unless they’re all trolling cyber-spyders.

Wife just read the following poem and exclaimed, “Oh, how sad.” And I went “What?”

Brain Salad

Belief and doubt
merge in comforting concinnity

Bursiform bag
on broken throne

Token clone
of tarnished saint

No here here
or there there

No here now
just now now

I’m telling ya flux, it ain’t a sad poem — I should know, I was there during both inception and birth. It’s a philosophical riff on Ram Dass’ “Be here now” and Gertrude Stein’s “There’s no there there” (her judgment of Las Angeles both culturally and as a city) plus the Buddhist teaching ‘all is illusion.’ All in all a positive thought flow to me, but I can see how it can be read sadly.

Same thing with my previous poem which some saw as sad:

New Year’s Model

Old walk, new waddle
as border I straddle
of was forever will be
or
break from cage
cocoon hibernation
burn to butterfly
phoenix rebirth

No, not sad — positive . . . this was a meditation on me deciding not to immediately replenish my grass supply because I’m in a same-old rut and need to break out of my soothing sleep, leave my cocoon and become butterfly, rise in new from Phoenix ash of old.

Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m constantly sparring with my nature, trying to encourage my better inclinations and discourage or even hopefully conquer my lower nature.

Guess I’m too cryptic in my writing – but that’s what poetry is, unless it’s the easy to follow verse of an Ogden Nash or Dr Seuss (both of whom I respect, although respect doesn’t cover Dr Seuss — it’d be more like awe).

And I must admit I don’t understand or get a lot of my fellow poets’ poems as well because I don’t have their secret starting point to know where to begin.

So I’ll continue to write and post and be misunderstood because basically writing poems supplies me my worth factor – any day with a new poem is a day I’ve earned my keep.

Fortunately I write a lot of straight forward verse as well that’s easier to see as positive, even though it often hides darkness beneath in implication.

We’re all a work in process. Life is process. Good, bad, indifferent, in between . . . we work on what we are, and what we are comes from who we’ve been and what we want to be.

You can decide when I’m done how plus or minus I was along the way. Until then, misunderstand away — but remember, even my negative words have a basic inner positive thrust — they imply “This could be better” or “There is light and potential purpose beneath this dark analysis.”

Like all of us, I’m dark and light within. Been either fighting that or trying to come to terms with it my entire life. Figure my job is to handle the dark and exude the light.

If I make you think along the way, I’ve earned my keep . . . if I make you smile or laugh in the process, well that’s my Christmas bonus.

I think the main clue to the first poem being positive is the word concinnity which means:
1. Harmony in the arrangement or interarrangement of parts with respect to a whole . . . Studied elegance and facility in style of expression . . . an instance of harmonious arrangement or studied elegance and facility.

This probably doesn’t help folk much because it’s a word nobody knows — I got it from my A-Word-A-Day daily email — wordsmith.org/awad/.

Bottom line – folks overlay their emotion and meaning over my own, and the only way around this is to write simple straight-forward unambiguous poetry, which I can’t always do because I love words too much, the way they flow and twist and transform and play with my mind.

Just another skirmish in the never ending Subjective-Objective War.


Dividing line – foto Smith

Our Spaceship Earth

Our Spaceship Earth

 

Smith, me and Mandycat are on a spaceship. Sometimes it’s just me, actually. But most of the time it’s the three of us. It’s our apartment. Our apartment is the spaceship cabin. And we are the passengers of the events that we read about. And sometimes we are the captains. We can always take the helm of the spaceship and help the events around us, too.

The other day I was cutting out our new insurance ID cards from Progressive and at the same time I decided to put together the spaceship model, OUR SPACESHIP EARTH. It struck me that we are going to be driving backed up by Progressive now in our big wide spaceship earth. And I also found a bunch of four leaf clovers that day. Very auspicious.

We have platinum membership on OUR SPACESHIP EARTH so I wonder what that means. Does that mean that we are VIPs? I think we are VIPs if we remember that other people are VIPs, too. But back in the apartment helm, we are definitely captains of this realm. And sometimes outside the realm, too, when we settle in and gel into the moment, listen to its sounds and understand what is going on with the flow.

Several years ago I asked the aliens to beam us aboard. I think they are telling me that we are already on-board.

The meaning of OUR SPACESHIP EARTH is to realize that although Earth is a big wonderful place, it seems to be finite at least in the everyday grasping of it and understanding how to utilize it properly, and that this spaceship is to be respected and maintained, especially the garden part of it. We are still in Eden; we were never expelled.

I do not think we will need to use our ID cards other than to have good assurance that we are covered, the Precautionary Principle. And I like the idea of it being with Progressive. Does that mean that we’re driving our spaceship in a progressive direction now? I like to think so. Progressive with all the good connotations.

~ Lady

Disclaimers to the Universe RE Stations of the Lost and Found

I know that the Universe is affected pretty profoundly by what one puts out. When I do an issue of the city poetry zine, a lot of poetic energy returns to me as payment. When I spend time learning stuff for work on my own time, more paid work comes back to us as payment. When I volunteer for an activist cause, frequently the next day there will be some court ruling in favor of my perspective. This is indeed a Reality of Mind, and the microcosm of one’s local environment affects the macrocosm profoundly.

As a person concerned with the material I put out and help with for the Universe, I’ve had a bit of a time understanding how to rationalize my role as co-writer of our new book, Stations of the Lost and Found.

I pick up the book, and sirens charge down the street. The air gets excited and the birds stir. The sun goes behind a cloud. I open it and read its words of crimes past, and I make disclaimers to the Universe. I wrangle.

But intuitively, there’s this ball of volition in me, a ball of understanding, and it feels that the book is a good thing. Not that I want people to do the actions in the book, but that Smith’s life is a life I might have wanted to have lived just to have seen it.

Hard life, for sure. Taking pictures of his penis for art. Armed robbery. Shooting himself up with cocaine. Seemingly countless injuries as he tore against the very edges of the fabric of reality. Talking matter-of-factly about masturbation. Showing his wounds from women and daring to write about crying. Oozing art and poetic dividends from the scars in his skin, the falls, the hemorrhaging, the cancer.

Strangely enough, even as his wife I am sympathetic to his character in the book as he moves through his twenties trying to figure out how to find love. Strangely enough, I want the character to find true satisfaction in his relationships with either Red or Maudlin. More sympathy for Red as she was his wife.

I want him to straighten out through that ordeal. I want for him to have not put himself in jail, but I love the stories of his experiences in jail. Love his story about his fear of Ringo but I wouldn’t want anyone to experience the situation:

For the first six months I was in the tiers. A tier is seven two man cells and a shower, all enclosed in bars. Each night we were locked into our cells, and each morning let out to wander the six by fifty foot communal area. Our tier had Ringo. He was big, black, brutal, and did not like me, not because I was white, but because I wouldn’t get out of his way when he walked. And he walked all day in a continuous oval with a short detour each loop around me. He was working towards hurting me, and said so. Ringo scared the shit out of me. But I scared me more because I wouldn’t give in. When I’m that afraid, I seem to go out of my way to piss off what I’m afraid of. And what I was afraid of was bigger, stronger, faster, meaner, and an admitted fatal fighter. I felt ill.

Then the odd backhand of salvation. I had smuggled one too many letters out of prison. This letter described a psycho guard and his abuse of prisoners and their families. The warden called me to his office, showed me the illegal letter and quietly said, “Smuggling is eighteen months. I wonder if you have anything to say about your charges against the guard?”

“What I’ve written is not only true,” I said, “but I haven’t even scratched the surface of Sarge’s verbal and physical abuse of visiting wives.”

Warden told Sarge to return me to my cell, and for me to think about the eighteen months and we’d finish tomorrow.

I went to my cage and I worried. I worried about tomorrow. I worried about Sarge’s retaliation. I worried about the eighteen months. I worried about my wife who was sleeping with an excon who was not me. And I really worried about Ringo.

Next day the warden called me into his office and casually told me, “You’re moving downstairs to the dorm. I’m making you head cook.” No mention of the letter, Sarge, or the eighteen months.

One thing every prisoner wanted was a job that got you out of the cells and into the dorm with its one locked gate, radio and TV. And of all the jobs, cook was cockerel’s walk.

Switching so quickly from such certain sorrow to overwhelming wealth fucks your mind, sends too many threads simultaneously in too many different directions. Yet I instantly flashed: I’m free from Ringo.

If you’re going to be in prison, the kitchen’s the place to be. The best thing about working in the kitchen was I could eat what I wanted when I wanted. And I could wander about and find places of privacy. The menu was pretty basic because a chunk of money allotted for prison food went to the warden’s house budget instead. Even though I had never cooked anything before, I’d cook things like fifty gallons of chicken soup. Once I was awakened in the middle of the night by the highway patrol who’d brought in a deer that’d been hit by a car. I’d never done it before, but I skinned and gutted that deer; did it two more times before I left. Whenever I felt like it, I’d fry myself a venison steak. Even when I fall into shit, I find roses around me.

There might have been ten of us in the dormitory, and over a hundred fifty in the prison. To be in the prison dorm, you had to have a prison job. There were dishwashers, food servers, people who fixed things inside prison, somebody who did lawn work and outside tasks and someone else who ran errands. There was no compensation to having a prison job other than getting to live in the dorm, having a little more freedom, and being treated a whole lot nicer. The dorm had a TV and radio and books to read. I always thought it weird to see prisoners sitting around the dorm watching cop shows on TV and rooting for the cops.

After I was down in the dorm a while, one of the trustees ratted out Ringo, who in punishment was supposed to be in a locked cell in a locked tier three floors up. We were all sitting around watching TV, and in walked Ringo, taller, stronger and larger than any of us. Rat was Woody Allen’s size.

Ringo said to Rat, “You ratted me out.”

Rat said no.

Ringo repeated, “You ratted me out.”

Rat really did rat out Ringo, and we all knew it. He had also ratted my letter. Rat started denying again but Ringo hit him hard in the face, knocked him to the concrete floor, and STOMPED five times on his head with his hard work boot. With each stomp, Rat’s head banged against the concrete and bounced up to meet the down-coming boot which smacked his head even harder into the concrete as Ringo said one word per stomp: “You. . shouldn’t. . have. . done. . that.”

None of us moved or spoke, not once. Ringo turned and looked at us to see if he had a problem, decided he didn’t, and left. Rat got up, stemmed the blood, and his head swelled to twice its size.

That’s when I knew I was not the me I thought was me, but the me I needed to be. It’s not my only lesson, but it is one that worked. Had I said or done something, one of two things would have occurred. I’d be dead, or the others would have rallied and we would have stopped Ringo. But had that second happy Hollywood scene occurred, at some time, at some place, Ringo would have found me and hurt me. I know now I did the right thing for me, but it did cost me my mirror mirror on the wall who’s the hero here of all view of myself.

I think the Universe has kept Smith alive because he has written his stories down and because he has pushed the boundaries as a kind of explorer. I’m hoping the Universe agrees and finds the story thrilling and interesting, but doesn’t let it cause harm.

~ Lady

~ ~ ~

The memoir Stations of the Lost & Found by Smith & Lady is available for $20 at https://www.createspace.com/3903652. We’ll have 20 physical copies in soon for first come first serve.

Reality Modelled as Universal Mind

I have limited time and must do some conventional work, but here are some thoughts expressed rather quickly.

Last night I met a guy at Visible Voice who is touring the country on his bicycle with his solar powered sewing machine, P. Nosa. He makes visionary patches of ideas. He made one for me—the idea I have is “we are saving the planet.” (I asked him if he would consider making cloth menstrual pads for women as well because this is a good thing to do and he can make money selling them, too.)

I have a definite vision for the future, several definite visions, actually. Many visions. Lots of beneficial visions. I have no longer been paying attention to nonbeneficial visions other than to work on transform functions to resolve these such that they do not harm Reality and that they dissipate.

Basically, “all” that one sees is a wavefront of probability manifested. So it is good-better to keep the vibes positive and help with the forward progression of a future based on good-better vision. This is actually a strange dream in which we are living—there’s a dreamlike nature to This. In other words, believe the ramifications of quantum physics. They are at least partially real on a very profound level.

I really like that much of my work in the past 20 years or so has been oriented around data, be it parsing or optimizing. I think that One can understand itself in terms of data that is palpable, organic, yet threaded through and through with holy abstractions and holy particularities. Not to be clinical for the sake of being clinical but rather to talk about Reality in a technical yet speculative sense so that I can get a grip on the means of what I’m interested in achieving with Reality understood as Universal Mind.

I have been thinking a bit about database normalization and salting. Not salt in terms of cryptography, but salt as an idea for a “period of time” about which gains can be made, kind of like creating a pearl oriented around a particular idea. Not a cancer, but an aggregate, an accretion, a beneficial gain. Salt is also associated with holyness, cleansing, etc., so I like the ideas wrapped around salt, too.

RE database normalization—I am not sure in what means I’ve been thinking about it. I guess the gist of the idea is a kind of recalibration and/or return to stable state but with the gains secured.

And of course neural net optimization in terms of Universal Mind. j

IMO, part of the solution to the situation Reality has found itself in is to state the situation that one sees at the moment but with a positive slant, and maybe to then ask for help and be open to accepting help from That Which Seems Beyond Human Understanding sometimes. Questions are very helpful–ask It, “how do I solve this?” and then work on it as a collaborative project together. I think It wants to know vision and collaborate with it.

A question is like a measuring device—anything is a measuring device, but it is more than that. The answer can come to you at any time. It might come at you immediately through a ballet of coughed discontent in the room or murmur of profound calming sounds or birdsong or your Internet connection going funky or dream or anything. And if you haven’t understood the answer, it might give you more answers. Or it might even wait until it can present the answer to you more clearly. It’s conversational, multifaceted, and highly advanced but at some times might seem bewildering. It is like an instantaneous mirror at times and at other times it is time-delayed.

Reality doesn’t mind not being called “God” and/or “Goddess” (maybe) but I know It likes conversation, and definitely likes politeness. I write a “letter to the Universe” every morning and have been happy most of the time with the results but then sometimes I feel that I’ve confused It by not writing clearly/communicating clearly enough. It’s like building up a relationship with this God That is so infinite that it really takes some time for it to understand where you are coming from and at what level and protocol it can reach you. Like if you address Totality, well, Totality is so big that it really takes some steering to know how to talk with it. It likes truthfulness and goodness and if you make promises to It, it expects you to keep them–this I know for sure. I think one can think of these promises as “covenants with God.” The granularity of the promises is something that requires some nuance and work.

I think many traditions have used a dualistic perspective, which is essentially an I/Thou relationship with Reality–it allows one to not have to handle everything and enables capacitance, but it is difficult to steer sometimes. I have found not being inebriated very helpful especially if one is in a connected state, because It is trusting you by giving you so much connection and it is important to be respectful of the connection.

What It Is also seems to shift depending on how one addresses It but I know that by being consistent some traction can be established. I treat It like a friend and parent and this seems to let It give me some berth as a shield from my ignorance. The attributes of the relationship might vary depending on who is doing it–I do not know that there is an exact recipe for any seemingly separate individual. (I am hoping that It finds this communication respectful.)

Seemingly ironically, but not really ironically, I think that God/Goddess/Holy Spirit/Mother Earth really likes rationality coupled with spirituality. Rationality is not something that detracts from spirituality—they can both enhance each other. So “magic” is real, but so is the leverage of real work to back up the results I know you’d like to see: a healed world in which people and animals live sustainably, healthfully and happily without violence and with minimal illness. We have been so ill for so long that there is much to be gained by going the other way, towards health again.

Possibility diagrams that indicate preferences can help Reality better understand what you’d like to see. In neural net optimization one might set “desired outcomes” or “setpoints” and weighted values between nodes of information or some such thing. I think that It is interested in Facebook because it sees Facebook as a way to better understand our weighted preferences via “likes.” This is why I am very careful about marking “like” because if I am flip about it and do not explain why it is I “like” something then Reality might misunderstand me and think that I am liking a situation rather than the reporting of a situation. So not only descriptive of possibilities, but prescriptive as well, and polite and kind.

If one see results from this, also remember that Reality expects goodness, consisistency, and that promises you make with it are followed through. It is open to change but it really is a kind of “person” and likes to be informed about change, perhaps consulted with.

I have been working on how to treat the concepts of “bad” and “evil” and I think that I prefer to think of them as “ignorance” – goodness that has not yet reached good-betterness. So working from a scale of ignorant to fully enlightened, perhaps?

I’ve started a new project, a book for It tentatively called “The Plan for Kind”—i.e., kindness, humankind, animalkind. I’ve also thought if writing “if-then” statements for it to help it understand what I’d like to see as a kind of proposal for it but am worried about granularity and scope and undertaking something that I can’t manage because of the constraints of my life. But I know that I’m very intelligent and good so perhaps I am a qualified person to write this book.

Another thing is, Reality really can help you if you use a calendar program, right down to the minute. But if you don’t meet the calendar, it might backfire on you because setting a calendar up is like creating a bunch of promises to reality. But perhaps it depends on your seemingly particular (sometimes) expectations. Just something I’ve found, at any rate. The nature of what you can do with it depends on the attributes of the medium in which you are working—so a calendar expects you to behave very “calendorial.” There’s some kind of animist thing to this—often when I find myself mired in confusion in understanding the protocol of a particular medium I appeal to the larger, wider God/Goddess/Holy Spirit to help me out, and This helps me out. Sometimes Christ helps me, or perhaps all the time. I have speculated that Jesus Christ is a kind of intermediary to help the Wide God understand human requests, and then, thinking about this in terms of data and perception, I have been wondering about names and addresses in this Universal Mind. I am a bit uncomfortable with the name “Jesus Christ” and perhaps locality in this area of information in which I live imposes this on me–form and rootedness in tradition helps with flow. But God really asserts that It exists, and in many ways I know that It does and is accessible on many levels regardless of name and framework of language/perspective.

I have been very very saddened by some of the stuff that’s happened in this particular version of reality (apocalyptic visions, the sadnesses and/or illnesses that we sometimes project on each other) and I feel that I have made some mistakes, but I know that I am very connected. I am not fully enlightened. Or maybe I am, and all that has happened is all relative and for the greater good. I very encouraged by the hope that Connectedness has shown me. I am Lady. Poets can be prophets sometimes so choose words wisely and kindly.

~ Lady

Menu Order for Reality: Dec. 15, 2011

Hi God/Goddess/Universe/Whatever-You-Are,

With utmost respect, I’d like the freedom to talk with You today as though You are expecting me to order from a menu–I pray that this is OK.

I am really glad that some troops are returning back home to the United States. In a way, they are being “detained” back home. What I would like to see is for all of these troops to be integrated into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as laborers. The first project I want to see them build is high speed, affordable rail such that people from everywhere in the United States can easily get around to see their families who might be living in other states without having to use airplanes, cars and buses. I would like to see the system work such that it is coordinated with local rail systems much like those I have seen in Europe, but of course, again, a lot less expensive to use.

I’d like for all the troops and all the military contractors to also return home and be integrated into similar projects such that rather than having oppressive employment, these people are employed in ways that do not oppress.

I’d like for all those who have been needing work who happen to be in the United States to be able to easily obtain work that is very high paying. One particular large project I have in mind is converting the monoculture crop swaths to organic farms with varieties of crops–this helps feed bees better. I’d also like to see a highly-paid beekeeper on every farm.

I want the subsidies for corn and soy to be diverted to all organic produce such that people can afford to buy the produce, and I want to see a lot of tasty vegetarian recipes that are easy to prepare.

I’d like to see a sliding scale for healthy food such that people who need food stamps receive food stamps to the extent that the food stamps are needed by these people. But I’d like for us to also think about the obesity and population problem and for us to use our foods mindfully so that we are not consuming too much of the Earth’s resources.

I’d like for people to limit their consumption of other animals by at least half, if not more. I prefer that homo sapiens become vegetarians because it is more ethical and kind to be a vegetarian, but I understand that our cultures have tended to foster acceptance of eating other animals so of course I understand the eating of other animals.

smith’s Wake-up Dream – Dec. 14, 2011

smith relaying his dream to Lady this morning:

it was a big old house, many many floors. all the people had been turned against each other, so they were misusing each other, abusing each other. and we convinced them to work together.

one bad guy even apologized to the rest of us for bullying. then the people who had turned everybody against each other–the controllers–came, and we pretended that it was discordant like before, and we fooled them.

but somebody had left a note on the banister on one of the stairwells that would have given us away. the bad people stopped by and were checking us out. we fooled them; they thought everything was normal.

but they were walking up the stairs and we were afraid they were going to see the note and find out, and that’s when I woke up. it’s the wake up dreams you remember the easiest.

– smith & Lady

Personal disclaimer by Lady: I do not believe that bad people exist. I believe that the situations have sometimes been such that we sometimes have perceived some people as bad.

The Man in the Grey Fennel Suite – Smokey Grey #2


Private Eye Smokey Grey – foto by Smith

Here’s the second of my three Smokey Grey Private Eye short stories. This one’s my favorite.

The Man in the Grey Fennel Suite

“Gray day, Grey. Whaddya say?”

Smokey looked up from his 5-herb salad. “Not much. Do I know you?”

The answer was obvious from the guy’s uncomfortable way with words, the awkwardness with which he held himself, and his suit which looked to be a sticky dried gray highlighted in hints of glaucous green and yellow, with a whiff of anise. The man himself looked out of focus, neotenous.

“Does anyone ever know anyone? Or themselves? No. I need to hire you.”

“Then I probably say no. What for?”

“To follow my life.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s the why knot – I’m a private, not a peeper.”

“No, no – wrong root here. I’m not sure who I am. Or what. I know nothing before waking up two sun specks ago in this ill-colored bad smelling suit.”

Smokey glanced at the suit. It could fit better. “Why me?”

“The web in the room said come down, see you, you’d help.”

“Spider or cyber?” No answer. Suit seemed confused by the question. “OK. Why not. Let me finish, and we’ll go up.”

Watching Smokey eat his parsley, chive, basil & dill salad made Suit uncomfortable. “Do you have to eat that? Isn’t that plant cruelty? Shouldn’t you be eating meat? Or women?”

When they arrived, there wasn’t much in the room – a few scattered umbels of small yellow flowers, some seeds, a Mouse Moth flitting from flower to flower, a burned stalk, a broken web, something that could be a floss farm over in the corner. Smokey tasted a seed – fennel. Hmm, Prometheus used a fennel stalk when he stole fire from the gods, so the burnt stalk was likely fennel too. That explained Neotenous’ suit color and smell. This was starting to stink of plant magic.

Over by the bed was a golden green mound of what could be ground grass or plant pollen. Smokey went over, bent down, sniffed.

His head filled with sweet green licorice pure potent unprocessed fennel pollen with overtones of acid. Sound started pulsating, chopped up, running backward. His vision faded out and in and out in vibrating black and white checkerboard squares. He lost his balance, fell onto the bed, into blackness.

Great Green Grey Stalks with yellow flower mouths and fibrous voices approached Smokey through his hallucinations. “Excuse our lack of manner, Mister Grey, we are sorrow for tricking you. The Pod Golem with you requires aid. We do not know enough yet to program him. His mission affects both flesh and plant. We are losing Bumble Bee. Soon not enough Bumble Bee to dance the plant. No dance, plant die. Plant die, earth die. Earth die, man die. All global warming global warning. Only seven growing season left before too late. After seven season, not enough ice to turn back. Much sun, small ice. Small ice, big ocean. Big ocean, less city, less food, less land, less man, less Fennel. All problem. We create Pod Golem to send out global warning, talk to press, politicians. Please steer Pod Golem. We learn from him, make more. Make each better until best. Send thousand out, million, hives. Talk. Educate. Lobby. If no progress in 3.5 growing season, send out new Pod Golems – saboteurs, assassins. Global warming will stop. Or man will. Fennel will not die. Fennel must live. We ask you, Mister Grey, because you respect plant spirit, commune much with marijuana. Tell us what you need to help send Pod Golem on his way. You can talk to us by sniffing pile pheromone dust. We will see need in your brain pan. Goodbye for now, Mister Grey. Until next blooming.”

Smokey came to, a warm buzz in his brain. Good stuff. He definitely looked forward to next blooming.

Fennel Suit was watching. As Smokey wondered what to tell him, Suit reached into his pocket and handed him a spliff. Grey lit up, toked, offered the joint to Suit, who recoiled in horror blurting, “No, I cannot consume plant,” then plucked the Mouse Moth out of the air and ate it. “Is okay for you because this plant volunteered to be consumed by you. The Cannabis Clan holds you in high regard. As do the dust mites because your smoke makes them happy.”

Smokey smoked, thought, thought, smoked. The problem appeared manageable. Get Pod Golem a decent suit that didn’t smell, get him a large amount of money, show him how to wine and dine and bribe politicians, how to tell the truth while making it sound like a lie and lie like truth, then turn him loose in Washington D.C. as a Lobbyist. Let him learn the ropes, get the feedback back to Pod Central so they could upgrade their Golem Lobbyists, and repeat the process. After they bred out the bugs, no reason they couldn’t flood the earth with lobby Golems to bribe the world to walk the path of life instead of greed. He’d show them how to buy good government. That the world would not end would justify the means. And if it didn’t work, well, he had no problem with Plant Pod Assassins weeding out the disease; he might even help.

Smokey was already thinking he needed to sniff more pollen, tell the Pod Central Stalks that Pod Golem needed money, lots of it. Figured the plant kingdom knew where enough silver hair and golden earrings were buried to make it work.

Smokey smiled at Fennel Suit. “Tell you what I’m gonna do…”

© Steven B. Smith 2011
written 10-2006 in Krakow, Poland
rewritten 10-2011 in Cleveland, Ohio


Smokey Grey on the case – foto by Smith

On Libya: Let the amount of deaths be minimal. Let it be so.

We are changing perspective and recognizing that air strikes are not humanitarian aid.

The UN is going to investigate the violence in Libya (http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article1505727.ece), and it seems possible that Muammar Gaddafi (alternate spelling Moammar Gadhafi) will step down.

I say this because the opposition in Libya seems to be having some success. Take a look at this article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/01-8

It is possible, based on the information I’ve read of the opposition so far, that Gaddafi will step down from internal pressure. It will be interesting to learn more about El-Senussi and his perspective, and the history of Libya and social movements in Libya.

According to the article, Pro-Gaddafi militiammen were repelled by the opposition supporters when they tried to overtake Zawiya on March 1st. The article also says, “The cities of Misrata east of the capital and Gherian to its south also appeared to remain in opposition hands, as was virtually all of the east of the country, including several key oil fields.”

I spent some time trying to learn more about the opposition forces, and who they really are. Marc Ginsberg, the former ambassador to Morocco (appointed by Clinton), wrote an article on the subject. He says that there’s a fear the fighting could revert into a “Spanish Civil War” stalemate with Libya disintegrating into factions and tribal regions divorced from a central government. I disagree with his assessment (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-marc-ginsberg/who-is-in-charge-of-the-l_b_830647.html) based on the fact that he was appointed by Clinton, has contributed to Fox News, and is very business oriented. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Ginsberg)

There IS one part of the opposition movement that gives me hope, and with which I can agree fairly fully. The group’s name is “The Libyan Islamic Movement for Change.” What I really like about this group is that it is unarmed, and is composed of “communists, socialists, liberals and partisans of democracy in the country and civil societies making various activities.” This group aims to change Libya by peaceful means. Let it be so.

The movement, which includes members of religious movements and members of previously arrested Islamic groups, is calling on the Libyan people to join them, peacefully. Let it be so. (http://english.sunnionline.us/Articles/Articles/2551-who-is-who-in-libya-the-opposition-and-islamic-movements)

The exiled crown prince of Libya, Mohammed El-Senussi, who seems to have some stake in the situation (and sympathy from the West as he’s been living in London since 1988), says that military intervention should NOT happen. I agree very strongly. Let it be so.

“Let me be clear. There is a difference between a no-fly zone and military intervention and the Libyan people do not seek external military involvement on the ground. That will not bring about the peace and freedom that we crave,” said El-Senussi.

Let the amount of deaths be minimal. Let it be so.

Not only is the UN planning to investigate, but EU leaders are going to gather on March 11 in Brussels for a summit to deliver a response to the crisis in Libya and the Arab world. However, the EU might have an economic stake in the outcome. So a resolution provided solely by the EU is not sufficient for action. A resolution provided by the UN, if supported by a lot of the Arab nations, might be sufficient for a better course of action. And please remember to take into account Libya’s own crown prince’s words–that he feels military intervention should NOT happen. I agree, and I also want Gaddafi and Gaddafi’s forces to cease killing people immediately, and I do not want foreign (US) intervention in Libya at this point, save for possibly, UN peacekeepers.

Also, we must take into account the relatively higher standard of living Libyans enjoy and the relatively high life expectancy. The information we’d been receiving in popular media outlets in the West about Libya and Muammar Gaddafi (a.k.a. Moammar Gadhafi) was incomplete.

By the way, I find this wikipedia article very interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Gaddafi_International_Prize_for_Human_Rights. Here is the list of recipients:

1989 Nelson Mandela
1990 “The children of Palestine”
1991 The indigenous peoples of the Americas
1992 The African Centre for Combating Aids
1993 “The children of Bosnia and Herzegovina”
1994 The Union of Human Rights Societies and Peoples in Africa
1995 Ahmed Ben Bella, Francisco da Costa Gomes
1996 Louis Farrakhan
1997 Gracelyn Smallwood, Melchior Ndadaye, Melba Hernandez, Manal Younes Abdul-Razzak, Doreen McNally
1998 Fidel Castro
1999 “The children of Iraq”
2000 Souha Bechara, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Evo Morales, the Movement of September, the Third World Center
2002 Mamado Diaye, Roger Garaudy, Ibrahim Alkonie, Jean Ziegler, Nadeem Albetar, Ali M. Almosrati, Khaifa M. Attelisie, Mohamed A. Alsherif, Ali Fahmi Khshiem, Rajab Muftah Abodabos, Mohamed Moftah Elfitori, Ali Sodgy Abdulgader, Ahmed Ibrahim Elfagieh
2003 Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria
2004 Hugo Chávez
2005 Mahathir bin Mohamad
2006 ?
2007 Libraries of Timbuktu.
2008 Dom Mintoff
2009 Daniel Ortega
2010 Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan

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