Revealed to Us, Later

Twice we’ve tried a cat.  Twice I became asphyxiated.  I put a good face on it till I was forced into our local health center in Beijing demanding they give me an asthma inhaler now, even though I didn’t have a prescription.  I can’t breathe, you see.   No more cats.  I don’t think dogs will end well, either.  Yesterday we set up the terrarium.  Today we’re bringing home a lizard.

The debate now centers around whether or not he (she?  - This will be revealed to us later in life, we’ve been told,) will eat yucky but manageable mealworms or if he will insist upon, less-controllable, more agile, hence notably more yucky live crickets.  One gal at PetCo is adamant.  But my older one has done her research and there are many voices out there that swear by a diet of mealworms and nothing but mealworms.  Attempts to discuss or expose away the fear of hopping crickets is not successful and today though we were resolved to go mealworms-only to-start, we were helped by another young lady who also kept a pet Gecko.  She insisted that mealworms by themselves, were just fine.  Two-points then to the Poughkeepsie PetCo for having not one but two passionate, professional young woman who knew their lizards.   One suspects that particular skillset isn’t easy to replace. 

Herbert Aptheker was a Marxist historian from Brooklyn and his work, which I hadn’t realized was a classic, “American Negro Slave Revolts” was recommended to me among a number of tiles, by my former high school teacher whom I’d recently reconnected with.   The myth of antebellum docility is unpacked, decade by decade to show that the rebellions of Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey where simply two noteworthy examples of what was essential a constant state of rebellion and agitation.  Slaves consistently resisted slavery. 

Unanswered ponderables swirled: what would the American Revolution been like if the British had thought to offer the slaves in the Colonies their freedom during that war.? What a different “revolution” that would have been with Washington fighting a rearguard guerrilla war against slaves in armed rebellion.  Saint Domingue hadn’t yet become Haiti.  The British didn’t end the slave trade for another five decades till 1833, so they couldn’t expect to emancipate in one part of the empire and not have word reach Jamaica or Barbados.   No wonder then, this seemingly indelible martial quality to American life, the south, the hothouse where the police state was born of necessity and gestated.

Sunday, 06/14/20

Was No Doubt Wandering

I’ve written before about ‘worts.’  The word signifies a traditional medicinal purpose and is stuck with the unfortunate association of unwanted protrusions on one’s epidermis.  A wort, like a wart, has primal association with a witch, as well.  Witches with warts, like the three at the outset of Macbeth, were no doubt rather familiar with worts as well, both foul and fair.   Our yard has Virginia Spiderwort which connotes a wort that wouldn’t be for your betterment.   St. John’s Wort is also on the property.  Beatified, and also available at Walgreens, one has a slightly more positive association with SJW.  Spectrum-defying, somewhat racy new addition to the worts of my world is one I identified today and plucked a few yellow flowers of to sit on my desk.  Named by a scientist who’s mind was no doubt wandering, Nipplewort is apparently named because the flower buds resemble that part of the body, though looking at them now I’m not sure I see it. 

Lapsana Communis, a European native, is part of the Daisy family.  Apparently, the plant has a calming effect, though one suspects I’d need to consume a remarkable quantity before it had any demonstrable impact.  It was also used as an antiseptic and apparently and perhaps more appropriately given the name, it was used to stanch the flow of milk when a woman was through with breast feeding. 

I picked four stalks out of the ground on my way up the bike trail and put them in a small, clear glass of water.  Each stem is about a foot long and each one has a half a dozen yellow flowers and bulbs reaching out.  They didn’t seem happy on my desk at first but now they are beginning to stretch and open in response to the sun. 

Among the ingredients of witches toss into their brew before meeting the new "Thane of Glamis," and "Thane of Cawdor," is the eye of an unfortunate newt.  I dropped nearly two-hundred dollars today secure and equip a terrarium for a Leopard Gecko which my daughters have decided they want to secure.  The home needs to be warm and ready before we place the lizard inside, so the lizard itself will need to wait till tomorrow. On the way over it was my turn to control the music and I thought to reacquaint these ladies with “Forty Thousand Headmen” by Traffic and then “Tales of Brave Ulysses” by Cream.   

Saturday, 06/13/20

Crafty Marketeer Has Branded

There’s a detour at Bridge Creek Road.  The last time I took the route prescribed I couldn’t make it in first gear, heading up the hill to the left on Old Ford Road.  Today, I was determined to hit the approaching downhill with all I had and see if I could power up it.  Enervated, proceeding rather slowly, with a slow-moving tractor making its way up the road behind me, I mounted the hill, with an eye to the family yard on the north east corner there as they’ve yapping dogs and I wasn’t in no condition to outrun them. 

From here on it’s a gentle slope along Old Ford Road.  Many of the houses have stately old trees in front.  One home has two large Catalpa trees.  I’d like to know if they are different species, as they look different, but I’m sensitive to riding up a stranger’s property and photographing their flora.  I’d tried to identify the same wiry oak that I’ve unsuccessfully worked up on Old Huguenot Street.  Before it had leaves, I’d tried the bark.  No luck.  And even when the leaves were fully formed this Seek app could only say it was an “oak.”  Today it finally yielded that this was a Pin Oak.  (aka: Spanish Oak, aka: Swamp Oak”) Now I’m seeing Pin Oak’ everywhere.  That explains the spindly tree in our front yard and the one in the bank I’d noticed as well.

Adams Fairacre Farms up in Kingston doesn’t have any Pin Oaks but they do have a few interesting trees.  This must be past the season as there isn’t much left.  If there were a Copper Beach Tree. I’d very much like to get one, but they’ve haven’t got one, and there aren’t any honey locust either.  But they do have a Bloodgood, London Plane Tree.   It’s about ten feet tall and the leaves have that characteristic pale green on the one side and silvery moss on the other.  The bark has yet to molt that fascinating texture that the shady trees of Shanghai which the French planted always boast of.  At the top there are a few of the chestnut-like balls which the tree always drops. 

I go and find a guy named John who explains that they can deliver it to my place for fifty bucks, but that I ought to be able to get it into an SUV.  And after I check out at the cashier and with my groceries that I ostensibly came to procure she adds the not insignificant cost of my new plane tree two bags of mulch and a fertilizer bag of what a crafty marketeer has branded “Moo Doo.”  John and another fella have the tree bundled up and they wheel it over to my Toyota while I go get my sack of Moo Doo.  They have it slid up to the passenger seat without having had to bend any branches.  

Driving, I refine the narrative which will help to explain this extravagance to my wife.

Friday, 06/12/20

Acting Like an Amplifier

Paul Bowles set me out on a journey, as is appropriate.  I hadn’t realized that the author of “The Sheltering Sky” had a broad range of music he’d composed.  Diving in there was there on Spotify, an attestation to his more familiar work as an ethnomusicologist.  He’d recorded hours of Moroccan folk music which I settled on later in my morning.  The howls and ecstatic shrieking all reminded me then, of the music of Randy Weston the jazz pianist to who studied under Monk and lived among other places in north and west Africa, in Morocco for many years and, on albums like Blue Moses, afford ample evidence of Berber music.  That night, making dinner, I reached for that album and confirmed.

It was raining all morning.  I took that to mean there’d be no point in watering the sad little aspen stems I’d, seemingly unsuccessfully, transplanted.  The brittle bamboo that hasn’t decided whether or not it wants to live yet, could also get through the day without any help from my pink watering can.  Later, the hourly forecast proved accurate and the sun parted leaving some remarkable afternoon clouds and I head out, up north towards Rosendale where I stopped and spotted a Bitternut Hickory tree who was just making his way up into tree-dom.  The shortest-lived of the hickory, they “only” last to be two hundred years old. 

Tira Hunter has written a book which had been recommended to me called: “Bound in Wedlock.”  A history of marriage during slavery and while I thought I knew what this might mean before I dove it I swiftly realized marriage proved a vexing matter to settle into Christian morals and legal frameworks when, both people were property or when one was a freedman or freedwoman and the other person was not.  The many hundred’s years gestation of life as chattel where a master could break up a family on a whim or any time he or she was faced with economic hardship.  “Let no man put asunder” unless he or she was white and then, it didn’t much matter what you’d vowed. 

Now the sky has cleared and there is a phenomenal sunset.  The sun is down beyond the Shawangunks but there is a cloud that is acting like an amplifier, gathering up and radiating out a remarkable megaphone o final reds and pinks and tawny browns as the sun continues on across the Pacific to greet the dawn in Asia. 

Thursday, 06/11/20

Narrow Leaved Blue-eyed Grass

A few days back I’d decided to pick a bouquet of Dame’s Rocket.  If there’s a bouquet of flowers on the table that is pleasant.  If there isn’t any there for the next twelve months, I won’t particularly care.  My wife is nearly always appreciative and that’s reason enough to grab some flowers on my bike ride every so often.

Yesterday I identified a new flower that had popped up on the little deer trail between our house and the rail trail:  Narrow Leaved, Blue Eyed Grass is a fairly literal name, but it’s descriptive and relates back to something that conjures up what it was you saw.  Heading out today I passed th little flowers and determined to pick a few on the way back home.  And when I did, it occurred to me that these needn’t necessarily be turned over to the Mrs.  These blue eyes might look swell on my desk, so I found a brandy snifter and placed them all in it with some tap water. 

They all close right up after I plucked them, and I figured this was to have been a failed experiment. They closed up into small little opium balls, sockets of blue eyes that no longer gaze out on anything.  But lo.  Adjusting to the water, considering the afternoon sun most of the oblong balls have opened back up into the simple six petal flowers with their yellow core.  The dozen or so wispy Narrow Leaves wouldn’t make much of a bouquet for anyone else, but as an observational experiment, they are wonderful.  Let’s see how long they last.

My little one and I are enjoying “East Goes West” by Younghill Kang.  I’d caught a salutary essay on the man and this work by Ed Kang in the NYRB a few months back and bought it right away.  Writing in the 1930s when there was no “Korea” from which to hail from, I wanted my younger one to consider Korean engagement with New York from an earlier, more challenging epoch.  As the Park essay had suggested, the writing is fresh and urgent, marveling at New York and as I’d hoped, affording a different view into the city through a vehicle she is interested in. 

Wednesday, 06/10/20

Dump the Old Grounds

First call was at five.  I’ve an alarm set, just in case, but I know that I’ll be stirring around hours before that and not long after four I catch the note that the meeting has been postponed.  Next call is at seven and there’s one at eight, right after that, but now there’s time, the rarest of gifts.

When the calls are done, I go out take the end of yesterday’s coffee and pour it into a mug.  This goes up into the microwave for one minute of molecular manipulation.  Time was I though coffee tasted awful after nuking it.  Now I don’t seem to mind.  Dump the old grounds into the compost, toss the dirty paper filter and position in a new one.  Stop and Shop has Peet’s Coffee.  Major Dickason’s blend was something I first tried seven years ago in the lounge of a fast-moving tech startup, located right along 101 there in Silicon Valley, before this shop moved to Santa Clara.  Turns out Key Dickason was a customer of Peet’s who helped him design the blend.  Presumably he wasn’t one to nuke his coffee either.

Old, scalding coffee in hand, new resonant coffee at-the-brew, I head out to the porch between the kitchen and the garage and slip on my sneakers.  The automatic garage door opener breaks the morning’s silence and I consider the bird feeders at the base of the driveway.  Supply in the two feeders have dropped precipitously.   I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stock these.  I’m glad the birds enjoy them, but I don’t get to see much here.   Out in the back I put the woodpecker suet feeder back up.  I’d taken it in last night as the raccoon seems to think I’d left it there for him.  Before I head out into the yard, I take my cut-off gallon milk container and scoop up a half gallon of sunflower seeds which I’ll toss into an arc in the back. 

Tonight, the Age of Division, in our Chinese history class.  The Han dissolves into three kingdoms.  My daughters know all the main characters from the same-named drama, having watched one and then another serialized version of the story over the years.  China, before the Tang, might have fallen apart and become a southern Byzantium and a northern Catholic Christendom.  Christianity spreads across the formerly Roman world at much the same time that Buddhism spreads across the Middle Kingdom after the demise of the Han.  And where Charlemagne tried his best to fashion a united empire across Europe, he was no more successful that Napoleon or Hitler.  But that which is apart must eventually come together, as their ‘good book’ says and China is united by the Sui and held in unison by the Tang for the next three hundred years.

Tuesday, 06/09/20

Post Office has WPA

We may be heading for a New Deal.  We might have Work Project Administration initiatives in our future once again.  Let’s hope Biden is thinking big.  Let’s hope the specter of depression can be kept at bay. 

The Poughkeepsie Post Office has WPA murals.  I remember my grandmother showing them to me and explaining that they were tied to FDR.   All the artists who were out of work got paid jobs painting murals, such as these that speak to the history of the city.  I was making my way through another WPA initiative today, one of many that had put writers back to work.   “Voices from Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives,” acknowledges at the outset that it was an imperfect initiative.  Some writers were inexperienced, or robotic in their efforts, though fortunately there seems to have been a lot to cull through.  This edition is a selection of the overall body of work and each tale is roughly the same length, of two to three pages.  Many people don’t know when they were born and a notably sampling suggest they are precisely one-hundred years old.  They generally trace the living memory of slavery and end swiftly by saying they moved here or there after the war, had some children and carried on till the present.  The rapid-fire engagement though, with so many different people who were born as chattel and remember manumission creates an unnerving sense of familiarity.  Slavery as life, over and over and over again.

Most interviews suggest dreadful violence as a way of life.  More interviewees that one might suspect, suggest life wasn’t bad during slavery or that it somehow got worse thereafter, as a sharecropper.  And it is also to be remembered that the interviewees were all white people, sent by the federal government so more than a few people might have thought it was the better-part-of-valor to keep candor to a minimum or tell them what they expected these interviewers wanted to hear.  None of the stories “feel” inauthentic though.  And in each case, you have at best a few quick glimpses of what survives the strongest from childhood, nuggets, one assumes that had been shared many times before and were what was first reached for when the topic came up.  What would writers be gainfully employed to research and save from oblivion today?  The time is just about ninety-years on from this last last effort.  So, we’d be looking to speak to people who had memories of life before 1955. 

No one is interested in a formal dinner.  I made way too much food yesterday when I had my extended family over.  There is a big pile of turkey, and four or five cuts of ham.  Not sure anyone else was in love with this quinoa salad but I’m enjoying it cold. 

Monday, 06/08/20