3 am I wake
Find you atop me
Kneading
I savor
The soft purr
Of you
The gentle scratch
Of nail on flesh
Tiny pleasure pain
I hold
I hold
I hold
Until I can wait
No more
Lift you
Lovingly aside
And rise
You follow watching
My grimaced
Downward
Push
Muscle pressure
Pain
Release
Your tail
Lashes S and Z
In empty air
Green eyes fixed
I search absently
For a synonym
For piss hard
And ponder how
Like the useless
Appendix
This serves no function.
No. No.
It reminds
Remembers
Other uses
Other times.
There’s something mildly annoying and intrusive about having ourselves tagged and numbered by some damned academian somewhere as a particular personality type. But when my good friend, Rich, sent me this link along with the question, “Does this remind you of anyone you know?” I clicked it.
“INTJs are strong individualists who seek new angles or novel ways of looking at things. They enjoy coming to new understandings. They tend to be insightful and mentally quick; however, this mental quickness may not always be outwardly apparent to others since they keep a great deal to themselves. They are very determined people who trust their vision of the possibilities, regardless of what others think. They may even be considered the most independent of all of the sixteen personality types. INTJs are at their best in quietly and firmly developing their ideas, theories, and principles.” —Sandra Krebs Hirsch[15]
If I were the kind of person who allowed himself to get pissed off about things other people do and say this would really piss me off. In the first place, I don’t even believe in psychologists and psychology. What the hell do they know about anything?
Secondly, wrapping people up into a nice little package and putting a colorful bow on it, sending it out as though it were a gift for anyone who wants to claim he knows something about people and the way they think is an invitation for more of that sort of insufferable thinking-behavior disguised as learning.
Thirdly, the way institutional science is forever confusing itself with engineering without ever pondering the consequences, next thing you know there’ll be all manner of psychologists getting themselves government grants to devise ways to profile their homespun stereotypes so’s some branch of government with an opinion about a particular type can identify them for their own purposes.
For instance, every day you can read about physicists at CERN and other labs patting themselves on the back and saying, “Oh yeah, we’re creating baby black holes. They just vanish. No danger of one of them getting away and gulping up the planet earth.” As though they know what the hell a microscopic black hole is doing, or likely to do in orbit. Heck, maybe it was just in a slower orbit and got left behind until the next time earth comes around Old Sol to pass through and grow a little every pass.
Think about it. Those Manhattan Project guys developing the atomic bomb consisted of a significant portion of whom thought testing that device might set fire to the atmosphere. They got out-voted, not because anyone knew it wouldn’t, but because most believed it was a low probability.
How’s that for some exercise in risk-taking judgement? “Hey, let’s put it to a vote. How many think there’s a big chance if we detonate this thing it will destroy all life on the planet by setting fire to the atmosphere?”
40 PhD physicists raise their hands.
“Okay, how many don’t think there’s a very big chance it will?
60 PhD physicists raise their hands.
“Cool! Let’s run with it!”
And the majority turned out to be right. Whoopee! Now, generations of scientists later all over the world consortium of pointee-heads in laboratories and behind desks at universities can hold that up as an example of how to measure risks they’re taking without ever getting outside their closed circles of wisdom and knowledge.
But I’ve digressed. Back to these grant-prostitutes calling themselves psychologists.
You and everyone else can be assured there are graduate students somewhere creating a box to hold all your personality traits, figuring out the buttons to push to produce a particular behavior from you. What words, images, sounds will inspire you to buy a particular type of product, vote a particular way, choose a direction for your life. The grad students just do the work, but some hotshot pointee-headed prof will give a paper about it when the National Association of Prostitute Psychologists meets next spring and position himself for more grant money.
But you can be equally assured that cop shops and the ilk have hired them out to help them see what else is in the box they have you in. Yeah, you’re all these things, so you’re also probably a serial killer, terrorist, baby-raper, or someone who just doesn’t have any damned use for authority figures.
You’ll be damned lucky if they don’t outlaw you sometime because some hired-hand grad student working for a grant-hack prof put the wrong thing in your box.
Here’s an example. A gentle, harmless personality box. But just listen to what else is in there to light up the eyes of the cop shops. But I suppose old John Denver’s probably not concerned about it.
Old Jules
The John Denver Show (BBC), 1973 – Poems, Prayers and Promises
A person used to hear young men say, “I’d give my left nut for [fill in the blank]” and everyone knew precisely what he was saying.
Sometime over the past few decades I filtered out allowing myself to precisely ‘want’ anything without consciously intending to do it. When I get the silly-assed notion I ‘need’ or ‘want’ something I just stuff it into a file folder in my mind marked, ‘tentative’, and go into a patience mode. That just involves waiting for the Universe to drop whatever it was, or the components to fabricate it into my life. Which the Universe consistently indulges eventually.
But yesterday in town I saw this and it stopped me in my tracks. “Wow!” thinks I. “That thing could wash a lot of clothes at once, and it has a wringer.”
I’ve been using the Thrift Store busted near-freebee 1947 Kenmore for some time and I’m generally tickled pea-green with it: Clean Underwear and Hard Times. But it has the decided disadvantage of not having a wringer. This results in not getting so much water out of the clothes, so they take a lot longer to dry on the line.
I tagged and numbered the concept of the washer above and sent an order for something along those lines out to the Universe. But as I thought about it driving away it dawned on me what I actually ‘need’ if I were going to do some needing is a carwash chamois wringer.
But the cheapest of those new runs almost $100, which doesn’t fit into any strong likelihoods of me ever forking out. Even on EBay they run that price and upward.
But those things appear to be built to last. I’m betting when car washes go out of business they end up in places nobody expected, taking up space and not getting much use. I’m going to watch for them at flea-markets, auctions and garage sales. And maybe I’ll post something on the Yahoo FreeCycle groups for Kerrville and Fredericksburg.
I wouldn’t give my left nut for one of those wringers, but if I wanted one I might.
Steve Goodman knew all about the trap of wanting dream things, though. In this song he just about says it all:
After the literary Mehitabel, the first namesake to enter my life was in 1967. She was a stray, moved in ahead of a hurricane reputed to be headed for Houston. My new wife and I took her in because she was hungry, pregnant, and a violent storm might be coming.
She was near to giving birth and decided my sock drawer was the best option, refused to be dissuaded. So I built her a cat house behind the apartment. She didn’t stay around long after the kittens died, evidently because of drinking her milk.
Mehitabel #2 was a bob-tailed calico. Amazing cat, a loyal companion for 17 years. I once watched her in horror and awe as she mauled a full grown German Shepherd and similarly sized mutt, though they intended it to be the other way around, then found themselves surrounded, blocked repeatedly in their attempts to escape by a feline seemed to prefer two at a time.
I could spend pages telling Mehitabel #2 stories, but I won’t, except to say she was the mother of Hydrox #1, Hydrox #2, Xerox #s 1 and 2, and The Great Rumpus Cat #1. I always figured she was reincarnated from Mehitabel #1.
Over the years I always kept the cat population contained in a set of names lying in wait for a cat to fit in them, Mehitabel, Hydrox, Xerox and The Great Rumpus Cat being the primary ones. The method always worked well for me, but cats needed to fit particular qualifications to seize a particular name. Hydrox and Xerox were always jellicle cats. Mehitabel had to qualify by meeting other standards, generally following the Don Marquis model.
Mehitabel #3 came in around 1996, me fresh out of cats, her being a pregnant bookstore cat in Socorro, New Mexico. When Mehitabel #3 emerged from sleep and demanded I pick her up I asked the lady-owner, “She’s close. When these kittens are weaned could I have one?”
“You can have HER.”
“I don’t want half-a-dozen cats.”
“I know. As soon as the kittens are weaned you can have her.”
The enthusiasm and insistence of the lady told me I had the right cat. Mehitabel and I hit it off beautifully. But I was on the road a lot, and despite the cat door she was able to use to go in and out, I sensed Mehitabel was lonely.
Mel, a good friend, had a pregnant jellical female, Electra, living in his garage, and when the kittens were born I picked out Hydrox #4, or maybe 5. Freshly weaned, I carried him home to introduce him to Mehitabel #3. She hated him.
Mehitabel showed no signs of accepting him, so I went back to Mel and borrowed the second-best of the litter, Niaid, on an indefinite loan to keep him company. I didn’t try to fit her into the name thing because she was just a loaner.
As the pair matured I’d frequently ask Mel, “You needing this cat back?”
“No,” he’d assure me, “I’m fine.” Then Mel partnered with me on the Y2K land, though he stayed in town except for a week leading up to January 1, 2000, so the Niaid issue wasn’t a concern.
But in the background, throughout her life, Mehitabel bullied both of them unmercifully. When we went to live in a single-room apartment in Grants, New Mexico, toward the end of 2000, she could lay down the law and they couldn’t get away from her. But eventually Mehitabel #3 went on permanent mouse patrol, relieving the household of a lot of tension.
That’s where the screw-up happened in the life-long cat naming procedures. A stray pregnant cat emerged from catdom at a motel Jeanne was staying in while visiting me in Grants, which she took back to Kansas with her. Named her Shiva, largely because of my lousy abilities at prognostication.
I had no idea the was going to eventually fill the Mehitabel #4 slot.
But she did and it’s screwed everything up from a cat naming perspective. I doubt I’ll live long enough to get it back on track. One of Shiva’s litter’s living with me, as well. Sheeze! Her name????
Salvaged wheelbarrow, salvaged nightstand and salvaged material stapled over door opening
Salvaged microwave stripped of components with the back cut off makes a great means of keeping the cat food dry
Heavy rain and the cool snap last got me scrambling to give the cats a way to get out of the weather and keep the food dry. Looks as though it will serve, but I’ve got to work on several more shelters. They’re there, but need upgrading a bit.
I’ll confess I’m behind the curve on a lot of things. I should have re-wrapped that electrical tape around the busted phone line before the rain hit. Internet’s back in tin-can telephone speeds this morning.
Gale and Kay were working the Mesquite Show in Fredericksburg this weekend, so I borrowed Little Red today and went into town for necessaries. But when I’m on the road I always shop the grader ditches and investigate any potentially useful items thrown or blown out of vehicles. Today was great insofar as upgrading cathouses:
The top was missing on this, but otherwise it's in good shape
The cats will be fighting over which gets to sleep inside this
I find a lot of these lids in the ditches and this one almost fits.
Also found these rubber bungie cords near another bunch of trash in the ditch
How fortunate we are to live in a time when all this can be pulled together into a single post. You didn’t put a lot of miles on the dance floor with these songs. You stood still.
To me all these are #1 when I’m listening to them.
This is a confusing situation. First I consulted my feline advisers about it, which didn’t help much.
Mr. Hydrox did, however, point out that the chickens, coons, possums and deer want to be like cats, coming onto the porch eating cat food, which gave me pause. But then I discussed it with the Great Speckled Bird, who pointed his spurs of blame in the direction of the deer and the coons, mainly.
“You’re constantly having to run them out of the chicken feed you put out for us. Those deer aren’t even scared of you, but it’s fun watching you trying to chase them off throwing rocks, cussing and waving your arms around. Damned deer want to be like us chickens.”
The deer were next in line for consultation. That’s more difficult because they don’t speak proper English. But a young buck assured me it was the feral swine causing the problem. “Squeeee deer are just hungry. Squeee don’t meannnnn no harm ner try busting things up. Most of ussss. It’s them damned wild hawggggs doing that. They want to beeeeee like us deer. Copycat bastards.”
What I was trying to figure out was why ‘we’ US citizens want the rest of the world to be like us.
At least, we want them to want to be like us
Time was not so long ago when the US cared so little about whether the rest of the world wanted to be like us, or not, the thought would have never entered their heads yea or nay. Prior to WWII most US citizens wanted nothing more than to go about their own affairs and be left strictly out of the troubles spilling blood all over the planet. What the rest of the world did was the business of the rest of the world.
Earlier, during the Civil War, when the UK was trying to decide whether to join the French in the invasion of Mexico, the Prime Minister was saying a lot of things to Queen Victoria about the leadership of the country (Abraham Lincoln), the reasons for the war, the conduct of the war, that Americans would have found painful to hear if they hadn’t been too busy killing one another to pay attention.
But they’d have found those remarks between the PM and the Queen painful because they contained so much truth. Not because they cared a damn what the leaders of the UK thought about the US.
We’ve spent the last half-century trying to make the rest of the world want to emulate us, politically. Most of the world wasn’t interested. But we did succeed in a lot of ways nobody anticipated. We shipped all our industry off to the countries we’d spent a lot of lives and treasure whupping the socks off of, trying to help them be like us just a few years earlier.
By ‘we’, I’m not talking about ‘me’, nor am I talking about ‘you’ if you happen to just be a regular person who wasn’t involved in making decisions to ship all our production, manufacturing and skilled labor jobs off to third world countries because of the cheap labor and ostensibly trying to help them to be like us.
The ‘we’ I’m talking about is some nebulous consortium of folks who had enough money to own companies, factories, mines, lumber mills, steel mills and all the other components involved in a healthy economy with a population of employed citizens.
And by ‘we’ I’m also talking about several generations of bought and paid for politicians of both parties who found themselves more attracted to serving the interests of those described immediately above than protecting the interests of the citizens who elected them to public office.
When the parts of ‘we’ described above were minding ‘our’ own business the part of ‘we’ not included had thriving industry, plenty of jobs, affluence. Anyone who wanted a job could find one.
But gradually, as ‘we #1’ and ‘we #2’ succeeded in making the rest of the world in our own image in some unanticipated ways, all three of ‘our’ industry and production infrastructures became a dead shell. All ‘our #3’ jobs became government related, or pure government, or ‘service’, such as selling insurance, flipping hamburgers, running the sewer plant, advertising, cashiers, sales, lawyering, medical, and cops. The kinds of jobs producing nothing of lasting value, nothing for export.
And in the process, the world we made in our own image wanted to be like us. They wanted cars, television sets, air conditioners, microwave ovens. They became super-consumers. They began needing petroleum products for energy, for plastic rubber monster toys for the kids. Petroleum to run their power plants to refrigerate. Petroleum to run their hair dryers. Petroleum to run their industries.
They became like us.
Meanwhile, the dead hull of US industry didn’t demand so much energy, but our automobiles, air conditioners and plastics requirements continued to do so.
But the rest of the world wanted it, too. They became like us. Prices skyrocketed.
So, now we don’t have any industry, don’t produce anything, but still need the energy to run. And so, also, does the rest of the world because they’ve done as we hoped. They became like us. Now maybe we need to find some other ways to make them want to be like us, before they decide to be like us in some other unanticipated ways we’ll like a lot less.
But a couple of decades ago the entire Eastern Block of Nations, along with Iran, did something we might be well served to emulate. They kicked out all the politico factions who’d been selling out the interests of the citizenries, tried a lot of them for treason and other serious crimes, and tried to start anew.
Now that they’ve managed to become like us it’s time we tried to be like them.
Finally, Tabby pointed out what’s probably both true and obvious.
“You run those chickens off the porch when they try to steal our food. You do whatever you have to do to keep the coons and possums from killing the chickens. You drive the deer away from the chicken feed. And you kill the swine because they’re dangerous to all of us and destroy everything that stands in their way of taking everything from all of us.
I should have known this was coming yesterday when I took a nap and kept noticing a few things crawling on me occasionally. But I was preoccupied with musing about other goings on.
Then last night I went in there to rest a few minutes and conked out, only to be awakened around midnight-thirty with a lot of things crawling on me. Pretty much all at once, doing a little stinging here and there.
That half of the bed is taken up by upwards of a hundred books, some read already, some partway through the experience of being read, some waiting to be read, some held for re-reading. They’re usually not enough of a problem to outweigh the advantage of having a book near at hand when I need something to read. But when I turned the light on, here’s what I saw last night:
It’s not the first time that’s happened and I could have prevented further invasion if I’d been paying closer attention. I keep a container of boric acid powder nearby and usually try to do a pre-emptive strike on them on a fairly regular basis. But it requires taking the layers upon layers of books off and squirting the boric acid powder all over the underlying bed surface.
This, I’m reluctant to do, because everything gets disorganized and I lose track of which things have already been read, which are waiting to be read, which are occupied holding something else up, and generally where things are.
So they sneaked up on me. I had to do it in the middle of the night with no pre-planning, no organization at all.
Sheeze. Now it’s chaos in there.
————————————–
9:30 AM edit:
Heck, I might as well add this since I’ve got them there together now. Here are a couple of authors I’ve come across lately I’ve enjoyed a lot.
They’re thrift store books, so I’m not certain you could find them easily, but both authors have an interesting approach, plotting is tight, characterization’s good, and they hold the attention well.
Upfield writes about an aboriginal who’s an Australian police homicide detective and his mystery solvings, along with his ethnic difficulties trying to do his job in that setting, along with his internal struggles demanding he go back to being a bushman. Good reads.
Alexander’s a completely different bag of tricks. He’s created a blind brother to Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones, who’s a magistrate-cum-detective in London. His characters include Dr. Johnson, whores, a pirate, poets, actors, and all manner of peasantry. The narrator is actually a ‘Boswell’ sort relating the activities and events, a young teenager taken off the streets.
I don’t have enough distance from the Alexander books yet to decide whether it’s his unique and innovative setting, plotting and characterization intrigues me so much about him, or whether he’s also a damned good author.
Old Jules
11:20 AM edit:
Heck, I might as well add these since everything’s screwed up in there anyway:
Mari Sandoz – Crazy Horse, and Old Jules. Mari’s my daughter in a previous lifetime. Her biography of Crazy Horse is better than a lot of others about him. Her biography of me during that lifetime is as good as you’d expect from a daughter.
Doug Stanton, In Harm’s Way is the hair-raising account of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during the last days of WWII, and the ordeals of the survivors in shark infested waters off the coast of Japan.
Dan van der Vat, The Pacific Campaign is nothing to write home about. Of the thousand-or-so books following the steps, events, tactics and strategies of the Pacific War this one ranks in the bottom third,in my estimation.
Lauro Martines, Fire in the City, is a narrative of the strange and
surprising emergence of Friar Girolamo Savonarola in Rennaisance Florence. So little attention has been paid this fascinating man and time it’s worth the read even if you aren’t crazy about Martines’s particular style of writing and his method of organizing his material.
So, call me a hypocrite. These are made in China. The top flashlight and radio were purchased in 2006 and the light’s been used frequently since then, including last night.
The crank side
Radio
Here’s how those came into my life:
Friday, September 22, 2006 Placitas, New Mexico
Winterizing
Today I was finishing up battening down the hatches on the old adobe for winter. The last week or so it’s been into the low 40s a couple of times, nights, so I’ve been pecking away at putting up plastic over the insides of most of the windows to cut down on the amount of wind blowing through the house. I came across some car-covers free a while back when the lady was wrapping up at the flea market and was going to haul them to the dump because they didn’t sell.
I’m cutting up those to staple over the plastic in hopes it will provide insulation. Last year it got cold enough in here to impress me with my pansyish non-pioneer spirit, even with Mexican blankets hung over all the windows and the front door on the inside.
Anyway, I ran spang out of staples and plastic, mid-job, so I toodled down to Rio Rancho Home Depot to buy more. The clerk asked me in passing, “Does it look like snow out there to you?”
I’d been asking myself the same question almost from daybreak onward. “Pretty early for it. Almost never get snow before the first of October. But it’s happened.”
Clerk laughed, handed me my bag, and I headed back through Bernalillo toward the mountains.
As I passed the Dollar General I was reminded I was running short of tortillas and a couple of other incidentals, so I swung in. I always take a look at their half-price clearance items, which are dirt-cheap and sometimes something a man could use.
There on the half-price clearance table was a plastic package with a hand-crank flashlight and a handcrank AM/FM Weather radio. $12 regular price. Hmmm.
Some little voice in my mind says, “Jules, old man, batteries are dead on your flashlight, and likely are dead on your radio. You need to buy that $6 package of flashlight and battery just in case the power goes out for a few days.”
So I put it in the plastic box hanging off my arm, picked up a few extra cans of canned fruit and fruit c*cktail, and headed for the checkout. Clerk knows me by sight and we’re amiable.
“You think it looks like snow out there?”
“You been talking to the guy down at Home Depot?”
Blank look.
“Guy down there just said the same thing. I think you might be right. That’s the reason I’ve picked that half-price radio and flashlight off your clearance table.”
Another blank look, then he squints at the plastic thingie with all that in it. “Was this on the clearance table?”
“Yup.”
He calls the manager over. “Is this half price?”
“No. The half-price stuff was all the summer stock… barbeque things and that.”
I scowl. “Okay. I’m not paying $12 for it. Don’t ring it up.”
“You’ll buy it for $6?” She grins at me. We clown around some when I’m in there.
“Five and a half.”
“Six.”
“Sold. Ring it up.”
Sooooo. I ended up with a hand-crank charging flashlight and radio.
The hosses are getting thick coats of hair. I’m thinking it’s going to be an early, bull-goose of a winter.
Mainly the radio and flashlight thing. I confess I haven’t gotten a good look at what the hosses are doing, hair-wise.
Jules
Edited in:
As I re-read this entry I noticed the censor had edited out the nasty part of the word c*cktail. So here I was claiming I’d bought some fruit tail, which I might if I ever come across any, but this wasn’t the day for it. That old censor’s always catching me out when I try to use that nasty word, full-c*cked pistol, c*ck fights, and now fruit c*cktail. Lucky thing for me that old censor’s on the job. Otherwise I’d be saying just awful stuff.
2011 observation regarding automatic censoring out of nasty language: Me, I’m sorry that’s gone away. Having a computer perform the job of straight-man instead of having to wait for some commenting reader to do the job’s a lot more 21st Centuryish. I’m old fashioned that way.
Turned out I was so impressed with that flashlight I included it here: SECTION 10: SURVIVAL AND EMERGENCY SUPPLIES and if I were writing the book again I’d say a lot more about it, including what’s in this post. I have a lot more experience with these now than I did when I wrote the book.
2011, I still use the flashlight frequently and it still does a good job at what it’s supposed to do. The radio was up on a shelf until I began writing this, hadn’t been turned on in a couple of years, dust covering it. I cleaned it up, cranked it for a minute, turned it on and picked up several stations immediately. These things are ‘way too good to be made in China.
—————————————-
Here are some others I’ve picked up over the years. They’re good too.
A number of you readers are experimenting with alternative energy sources. I don’t have one of these assembled yet, though I’m gradually accumulating the pieces.
The group is composed of a lot of back-yard experimenters who are putting them together and testing, altering, testing, etc. The group site has hundreds of helpful pictures of the work members are doing and how they’re doing it, what results they’re getting.
I’m not saying it will work, but the people working on them are continuing with it and expending a lot of energy communicating what they’re doing. Evidently they’re devoted because what they’re seeing is sufficient to convince them it’s worth the effort.
I’m thinking a couple of you I’m aware of who read here might be interested in going over there for a looksee.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
