"Original"

This is J.B.'s sausage wagon - sort of an Athens institution. If you're out late at a show and hungry as hell, maybe you'll find your way to J.B.'s wagon, parked out behind the 40 Watt club. He'll make you a hot dog and slather it in something called "Comeback Sauce" ('Cause it keeps you coming back for more,' he once told me).

Naturally, I rarely see J.B. anymore, due to the fact that I'm no longer 23. But today I saw him, at Wal*Mart of all places. I drove past him on my way to the dump. That's how me and my ladies spent the last day of 2007: We went to the dump and to Wal*Mart. That sounds bad. But we did follow it up with our usual hike in the woods. Saw lots of mushrooms too. And in so many ways, are not mushrooms the comeback sauce of the forest?

Anyway, what I like about this photo is how my man has the word original in quotation marks. Just what's he trying to imply anyway?

Socklets and Chocolates

It's been raining for the last five days. Our garage is flooded. The front yard is a swamp. Some things have been ruined. It's a good thing. No complaints.

I'm warm and toasty, and wearing a pair of socks I lifted from the psychiatric unit before the doors closed for good. They are grey and thin. They have no-slip treads on them. We used to hand them out to patients who had cold feet or who otherwise required sockage. The hospital probably billed insurance companies and patients $145 a pair for them. They're actually quite horrible. They're not even full length. They're ankle socks. They're booties...socklets. Horrible socklets.

Yesterday, Eleanor & I hiked in the rain. She slept, mostly, while i held the umbrella, traversed slippery slopes, and forded usually dry creekbeds now running with fast flow chocolate milk that overran my boots and flooded my feet. I saw an old cornfield. Its topsoil was washing away into the forest. Goodbye, topsoil. Goodbye, dry feet.

Cool

A Georgia Cadillac. My father's, actually. Moments ago, I popped in a mix tape and slid on down to the post office and deposited the final application materials for the first wave of writing program deadlines. (The next wave are due before the 15th of January.) I have therefore officially applied to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Montana, and the University of Notre Dame. In the next week and a half, I'll be finishing up the other applications as well. Then it's simply a waiting game.

Janelle and the baby went to the post office with me. Family adventure! They waited in the car while I plied the poor postal employer with my obsessive queries about approximate arrival times and best case scenarios. When I came back out, Janelle asked me, "How'd it go?" I told her it was cool.

Electricity

Electricity is, in fact, mysterious. I have no idea how it works, how it makes my coffee maker grumble and chug, or how it gets the old hi-fi to spin. It's part of my everyday tableau. It flows through my every activity. It's even pulsing in my brain. And yet if I stopped to think about it for very long, I'd probably have a psychotic break.

When I was a kid, I had about a half-dozen near-fatal close brushes with electricity. Like the time I tried to climb an electric fence in order to get a closer look at a bear at the zoo. Yup. That really happened. When I regained consciousness to the delicious aroma of smelling salts, there was a circle of worried tourists looking down at me. My head was elevated on somebody's bunched-up t-shirt. There were also some pretty girls in the mix. I started crying.

Nikola Tesla figured out pretty much everything we know about electricity. He even invented something called the Wireless Energy Transfer, which is a way of beaming electricity from one point to another without the use of wires. Everything was irie until Thomas "genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration" Edison actually employed Tesla to overhaul his motor and generators, which Tesla did expertly. After 2 years of 'round-the-clock, fruitful labor, Edison out & out refused to pay Tesla the money he promised and told him, basically, "Now take yo' ass home to Croatia, sucka." Tesla, the real man of the hour, ended up digging ditches.

What I think is interesting about Nikola Tesla is that he had plans to invent a pocket-sized machine that could induce miniature earthquakes. Bet'cha he would have liked to have used something like that on Tommy Edison. He also had theoretical designs for a camera that could photograph thoughts! Check it out:

"I expect to photograph thoughts... In 1893, while engaged in certain investigations, I became convinced that a definite image formed in thought, must by reflex action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might be read by a suitable apparatus. This brought me to my system of television which I announced at that time..." - Tesla, 1933

Pleopeltis polypodioides

Resurrection ferns. Nature's opportunists. When it's dry out, they go on powersave, turn brown, and shrivel up. To the untrained eye, they look totally dead. In fact, however, they're just playing possum with precipitation. Cause when it rains, the resurrection fern perks back up and turns as verdant and fluffy as Oscar the Grouch. They're a parasite, really. In fact, if granted free reign, they'll eventually kill their host, robbing it of its nutrients and weakening its metabolic functions.

Damn, what a lovely way to go, though: Death by fern. I love resurrection ferns, and I don't mind that they're as much a menace as a decoration. (Ain't we all?) These pleopeltis polypodioides have been growing on this old oak in my parents yard for years and years, giving the old patriarch the effect of wearing bushy green shirtsleeves. But only after a rain. When it's dry out, that oak is as naked as the naked eye.

The Way of the Luna Moth

Actias Luna a.k.a. the noble Luna Moth. I used to see these a lot when I was growing up. They'd plaster the vinyl siding on my parents' house on hot summer nights. Anymore, though, they're pretty rare and hard to come by. Apparently that's because most of their habitat has been claimed by Homo sapiens, Taco Bells, and track housing. It also hasn't helped that the air has become more polluted, causing the tender moths to recoil in winged horror. Making matters worse, a certain foreign pest (I forget which) was introduced a few years back to combat crop-destroying insects here in the South. Unfortunately, said pest unknowingly had a taste for Luna Moth flesh. All those factors added up to Luna Moth megadeath.

Things come and things depart. That's just the God-damned fact of the matter. This morning, hiking through the Appalachian foothills with my wife & baby daughter, it occurred to me how lucky I was to grow up here in this magical place. It's the kind of environment I'd like Eleanor to grow up in, or at least be familiar with. But places like this one are getting harder and harder to find. Where all they all going? They're going the way of Actias Luna. By the time Eleanor's my age, will wilderness even exist anymore?

Damn, this is a depressing blog entry. I must be in my right mind.

Three Kinds of Light

We're here in Manchester, Georgia for the holidays...where the moon is full, the faces are familiar, and the magic of winter is alive in the foothills...

Moonlight. I watched this moon rise in the East tonight and said to my dad, "That big fat moon's gonna shine like a spoon." And he said, "Yeah." And then we talked awhile about psychosis, Indians and a few other things. Stella attacked the moonlit darkness, and it melted into her starry fur. I'm pretty sure that's Mars off to the right.

Christmas tree lights. Incandescent. Representing the five Tantric Buddha Families. Conjuring up Tibetan magic. You can't tell, but the tree pictured here is actually a tiny ceramic tree that my grandmother made in her ceramics class at the senior center. That fact gives me hope. I'm not sure why.

Candlelight. Not really. It's actually electric candle light. These are wired so that they actually pulse and flicker weirdly. My Ma places these on her windowsill every winter. From afar, perhaps they look like real live candles. Probably not. That's okay.