#Spouter's Corner

[persistentrain]

View from inside Spouter's Corner (Wetherspoon's) in Wood Green on 28 October 2017. Music from years and years ago.

[simiansmoke]

@kingdomsandkoopas cont.

"Eh?" Junior asked with surprise as the other grabbed him. "Uh..." he gulped and finally decided to throw some fire ahead, burning a good amount of bushes.

It wasn't as impressive as Bowser's power yet, but it was powerful. Junior was strong on his own, at least, he was practicing to be as strong as his own father. "Would that be alright?" he asked.

A low chuckle escapes him as he lifts the fire spouter under the arms and aims him towards the dense thicket of dried brambles. Goombas probably made nests in there...how tragic for them. Once the flames at the child's maw dwindle down and rise again as trails of smoke, Dread meets the inquiry with a smile that had wormed its way into the corner of his mouth like a coiled snake yet disturbed. "Most impressive ~ " He tuts, gesturing towards the small area of impact as it burned to others rapidly and grew in both size and speed. "A little goes a long way, it would seem."

Prepared to tuck the Koopaling back under his arm and be on his way, Dread pauses when a scent unlike the burning brambles drifts along a slow and sour night breeze at their backs. A scent like sweat and fur he'd tasted before...seasoned with alarm and the faintest hint of coconut oil. He has to part his maw to let his tongue rest partially between his jaw's fangs so that he could fully waft in the old familiar smell. Seemed he might not need the croc after all...if he got what he wanted without even involving the child's father, then there would be no need to give that sack of Kremling shit ANYTHING.

Having lifted up off the ground for a moment or two while pin-pointing the direction they would be able to expect their guest from, Dread finally falls forward and sets the prince down on his feet. "...it would seem we're being followed. But with that power of yours, I'm not concerned ~" He adds, giving the Koopa's shell a friendly little swat to urge him forward a step or two. "Go ahead and warm the coals up, I've got your back ~" And with that, Dread pads past the Koopaling to submerge in a section of yet-burned brambles, his fur blending in to the darkness and smoke. He fully disappears once he closes the deep red glow of his eyes.

----------------

Not a moment later does DK arrive over a hump in the path, galloping alongside the stretch of burning thicket as if he were searching for the source. When he finds JR standing there, he seems less confused about where the fire came from and more so why Bowser's kid is out in the middle of the Darklands so late. "Kid-? That you?"

As he draws closer, the more blurry things get, but it's not hard for him to judge a koopa based on color schemes. "You finally get loose too? Hey, stretchin' your legs is fine and all, but maybe you shouldn't do it this far from your Dad's place?" Not that he could talk considering he was supposed to be a cell right now. But he had ways of getting out of cages before; why stop now? Granted he probably should have stopped now as of at least for the night seeing how drained he was still feeling from the earlier over-wishing stunt Bowser had pulled, leaving him sluggish.

[dr-simple]

Moby Dick

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump.

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft’s cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.

[travellingcrane]

[taiblogcomics]

The Final Mission of the Suicide Squad

Hey there, excused princesses. Well... This is it. The culmination of eight years of reviewing. It's a new year, and it is also the very last issue of Suicide Squad.

From the resiliance of Yo-yo surviving inside King Shark, to the quotableness of the shark-man himself, to the terrible designs of Harley Quinn's outfits, to the road trip with Batman and Deadshot, to the oddly heroic spirituality of El Diablo, to the touchingly sweet relationship of Killer Croc and Enchantress, to Captain Boomerang who was also there... Boy, has it been a long and usually dumb ride. Not the road trip, though. The part where it was actually a ride was honestly pretty sweet. But yeah! This is our last issue. Will it go out with a bang, or more of a wet fart? Let's look and find out~

Here's the very last cover we'll ever see with these jerks on it:

The gang's all here! Honestly, a cool group shot is a great way to go out. I have no complaints, it's a cool cover. I just think there's a fun irony in "extra special anniversary issue" and it also being the last issue. Happy anniversary! For a gift, we got you cancellation!

So we open in the past with the Ghost Recon Squad, before they became zombie ghosts. Just in case you thought this was going to be a backstory to make them sympathetic, the whole thing is bathed in red lighting, and they're torturing Gulag of the Annihilation Brigade for information. Gulag spills the beans on the underwater base where the last issue took place. The Recon Boys head there to set up a trap of recording the Suicide Squad on camera and prove to the world they exist. Oh trust me, this is more of a trap for the viewers of said footage than the Squad itself, particularly Jared Leto's performance. Anyways, they open a secret vault and are transformed into the zombie ghosts.

Back in the present, the same power has infected Amanda Waller as well. She's less of a zombie ghost, though, and more of a Grey Hulk. And then her stomach opens up in a fiery maw, which is somehow both terrifying and ridiculous. She leans in and attempts to shove Rick Flag in her belly-mouth, which should give you some idea of how gigantic she is now. Fortunately for Rick, Harley suddenly appears and beats Waller in the face with her hammer, causing her to drop Rick. The pair regroup and swap an exposition dump about the Tunguska virus that's possessed Waller, then get the hell out of the room, just as Waller starts breathing fire.

The exposition doesn't stay confined to the one room, though. On the other hand, Cosmonut shows up to tank Waller's flame breath and make sure that stays confined. Seriously, it's a full page of plot details of more or less what we already know. At best, it at least gives me a specific issue number I can link to, which is at least nice for archive purposes. Otherwise, all this accomplishes is that Cosmonut gets killed while Harley yaks away. Alas, dear Cosmonut. He was exceedingly bizarre and out of place, and therefore was a fan favourite for me. Let us all raise a jar of Skippy in his honour~

Meanwhile, the Ghost Squad corners Captain Boomerang, who begs them to let him go and even offers to join them. Katana shows up and chops off the ghost's arms so Boomerang can get away. He's a ghost, though, so he just makes new arms out of fiery ectoplasm, and blasts Katana. Given that it's a magic cursed virus, this even hurts the souls in her magic sword. Ah, I love the sentences that comic books cause me to write sometimes. Deadshot also shows up and lays down some suppression fire so they can get away. The Ghost Squad opts not to give chase, figuring Waller will get them sooner or later. Finally, a lazy villain. That much I can relate to~

After a brief Stargate reference for no reason, they find a submarine. This also leads to a "Yellow Submarine" reference for no reason. I guess that's Boomerang's role now: Australian, coward, soiler of pants, thrower of boomerangs, spouter of pop culture references. Deadshot and Boomerang are all prepared to leave, but Katana insists that they have to stay to defeat the Tunguska virus-curse. Rick Flag and Harley join them, agreeing with Katana. This makes the vote 3-2, and they convince the others with simple logic: if Tunguska gets out, then everyone is doomed, including Deadshot's daughter. As for Boomerang, helping them is penance for killing Hack, and he sadly agrees to that. Deadshot also agrees, on the basis that his favourite film is The Wild Bunch. Well, whatever motivates you, I guess~

The underwater base breaks the surface, and the Ghost Squad prepares to go out and spread their virus among humanity. Whatever men they were are gone, though the one called Jones is still reluctant. Grier, however, is all gung-ho to be the apocalypse that dooms mankind. Once you're a zombie, might as well go all-in, I guess. It's at this point that Rick Flag finally actually learns that the zomblers here are made of his old squad, and he's horrified long enough to freeze and have them infect his arm. Deadshot pulls him back into cover, and tells him to snap out of it.

While those two are holding off the Ghost Patrol, the rest of the Squad is in the vault taking care of Tunguska's corpse. Katana's magic sword can parry the infection long enough for them to grab the body. And what is the purpose of the corpse? Well, remember the out-of-hand Stargate reference earlier? It's legitimately a Stargate, and they figure if they can get it open and chuck Tunguska inside, it'll cut the possession virus off at the source. Unfortunately, Monster Waller catches up with them and infects Harley with her flame breath, leaving the other two to drag the corpse.

Running out of both options and ammo, Rick Flag tries a new tactic. He gives up. He surrenders himself to the Ghost Squad and approaches them, where they gladly welcome him as a new infectee. After all, the Suicide Squad's supposed to be expendable, right? However, this turns out to be a ruse so he can get close enough to just deck them instead. And while that's going on, Katana and Boomerang manage to drag Tunguska's cadaver (the Tunguskadaver, if you will) to the dimensional door and force it open. Channeling her grief into her sword, Katana uses it as a beacon to lure the infection energy right to her.

Deadshot shows up, having abandoned Flag when Flag seemed like he was giving up. He helps Boomerang heft Tunguska into the Stargate. Of course, the powerful interdimensional vortex also catches Boomerang in its wake, and he's very nearly sucked into it himself. Deadshot, though, uses his particular talents of marksmanship to shoot the control console while still holding onto Boomerang, closing the gate and saving him. It's admittedly a cool, heroic moment, and it's nice that Deadshot gets one.

With Tunguska beyond the boundaries of this dimension, the infection dissipates. Waller and Harley return to normal, and even Killer Croc lumbers up, having avoided death in the previous issue. Harley gives a big thumbs up, since they've finally saved the world like Waller wanted. Waller, ever the grouch, chastises her, saying that being heroes once doesn't erase their past misdeeds. In fact, nothing will, and she tells them that no matter what they do, they're Suicide Squad for life--or death. No one leaves the Suicide Squad.

Except us! We, the readers, are leaving the Suicide Squad and moving on to better comics. And while a new Suicide Squad title is due to start up again next month, keep in mind how long this was on the back-burner for me. It’s actually been, like, a year since this issue originally came out. We’re only reviewing it now, but as an actual published work, Suicide Squad‘s been dead for a year or so. This very much is the final issue, as far as I’m concerned. Like, when the title briefly became New Suicide Squad, we knew that was happening, and it took over immediately enough to count as a continuous story. But for all intents and purposes, the Suicide Squad that I’ve been reviewing since 2011 is done, and I will not be checking out the new series. No thank you sir~

But as a final issue to all we’ve read before? This is honestly not that bad.It wraps up a story arc with a genuine world-saving hero moment, and dovetails a bunch of past arcs together. Surprisingly, for a book called Suicide Squad, they sure go out of the way to not have any of its members die in the last issue. Like, I’m very glad they didn’t kill off Killer Croc, I would have hated that. But it’s still very bizarre to have him suddenly turn up like “hey guys, I’m alive” when he hadn’t even been seen or mentioned in the preceding rest of the comic. It just seemed a little too “Saturday Morning” to me, if you know what I mean~

Don’t worry, though! This isn’t the end of Taiblog! I still have a good stack of ten or so Red Hood issues to get through before my backlog dries up completely. Even then, there’s still so much else I could do. I have other terrible New 52 comics we could review. Trust me, we’re not at a loss for terrible comics any time soon~

I’m just glad to have a finale that didn’t make me cry for once~

[kwekukweku00]

50% of food and eat out to help out £10 per adult up to 4 adults ... Mon to wed ... dont miss out #eatouttohelpout #wetherspoons (at Spouter's Corner) https://www.instagram.com/p/CERoxzXJm3e/?igshid=18umhoz11cdmu

[nextdestinationunknown]

Day 65 (8/4/14): Missoula, MT | Dubois, WY

We left Montana this morning and started driving to Wyoming, passing the Madison River on the way. Our route took us through Yellowstone National Park, which begins right on the border of Wyoming. To my dismay, there was no “Welcome to Wyoming” sign to welcome us as we crossed the state line shortly after entering the park.

The entrance fee for Yellowstone was $25, which was good for one week and also included Grand Teton National Park. The park pass worked out well because we also had to drive through Grand Teton and planned on returning later to enjoy the parks more. They were both easy to drive through with a truck towing a trailer, and Yellowstone had many large turn-outs.

However, we had a long drive from Montana to our campground in Dubois, WY. We wanted to go back to Yellowstone on another day without the trailer to spend more time there and truly be able to appreciate the park. After driving through Yellowstone and exiting Grand Teton National Park (the two parks are connected), the scenic landscape we passed was comparable to the parks without the entrance fee.

Wind River

As we continued driving, we discovered that Wyoming has a diverse landscape. It seems like one minute, it’s green and densely forested, and the next, it’s desert with red and white striped hills. We settled down in a little RV campground right on the Wind River. Lucky for us, one of our neighbors requested to switch sites with us due to us having a massive site and them having an enormous Class A Motorhome and trailer. We gladly obliged since their site was directly across from the river, giving us a lovely view from our trailer.

  Day 66 (8/5/14): Dubois, WY

We took a step back to the dark ages at this campground as far as technology goes. We had planned on using this day to book several of our next campgrounds in advance. However, when we went to call them to make reservations, we discovered that we had zero cell phone reception. Go figure. We try to actually plan ahead for once but can’t. We made the most of the situation though with me working on the blog and Justin cleaning the truck and trailer.

Later in the day, we drove into nearby Dubois, a quirky little Western town with antler sculptures and animal statues. Justin particularly liked the giant jackalope at the gas station and the over-sized skull (complete with horns) at the local laundromat. We grabbed a late lunch at the Cowboy Cafe. Justin LOVED their Swiss-Mushroom Chicken Fried Steak and hasn’t stopped talking about it since. Sauteed mushrooms, white country gravy, and an inch-thick steak fried to perfection – Justin was one happy camper. 🙂

Dubois, WY

  Day 67 (8/6/14): Yellowstone National Park

Lewis Falls

We were on the road by 7:00am and reached Yellowstone National Park by 8:30am. We had strategically planned our visit to Yellowstone the night before to make sure we saw every point of interest we wanted to see. We entered the park through the south entrance, and our first stop was Lewis Falls. The decent size waterfall increased our excitement for the Upper and Lower Falls of the upcoming Grand Canyon.  As we continued driving, we came across some wild elk!

Next we visited Mud Volcano and Dragon’s Mouth where we saw a wild bison! As we were walking up to the hydrothermal features, we spotted the bison coming down a hill. Before we knew it, the bison had made his way down and started walking through the parking lot below. It was a crazy sight to see a wild animal (and a large one at that) strolling through the vehicles.

He continued through the parking lot back into the land surrounding the points of interest.   Ironically, rather than walking on the grass surrounding both sides of the asphalt path leading from the parking lot, the bison took the paved path instead. We thought he was long gone. However, as we walked along the boardwalk, the bison made another appearance and actually crossed over the boardwalk directly in front of us!

Elk!

Look…! A bison!

Coming down the hill!

Heading for the asphalt

Moseying through the parking lot

RIght in front of our truck!

Mud Volcano

After the surreal distraction of being so close to the bison, we finally saw what we had stopped to see in the first place. Mud Volcano was a gurgling pool of mud with ribbons of silver swirling around the bubbles. It reminded Justin of a soupy, chocolate milkshake. However, if you see it in the winter, it’s thicker and would probably more closely resemble an actual milkshake.

Dragon’s Mouth

Next we viewed Dragon’s Mouth with steam spewing from it’s opening. It literally sounded like a dragon burping from acid reflux and smelled like it as well due to the sulfur.

From Dragon’s Mouth, we made our way over to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone National Park where we viewed the Upper and Lower Falls. The further up you go, the better the view gets at Artist Point. We also went to the Brink of the Upper Falls. From the top, you look down at the 109-feet tall waterfall. Being that close to the falls, the roaring sound of the water is almost deafening as it crashes below.

Upper Falls

Lower Falls

Brink of the Upper Falls

After gazing at the waterfall cutting through the canyon, we kept driving through Yellowstone and saw countless pillars of steam rising from the earth’s surface along the way.

Stopping at the Lower Geyser Basin, we took the Fountain Paint Pot Trail where we enjoyed seeing the aqua blue Silex Spring, the muddy Paint Pots, Red Spouter, the bubbling fumarole and the active Spasm Geyser.

Silex Spring

Fountain Paint Pot

Red Spouter

Spasm Geyser

Next at the Midway Geyser Basin, we loved the hot springs running into a stream below the boardwalk trail.  We also saw the thermal spring of Excelsior Geyser with it’s churning water as well as the Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone.

Excelsior Geyser

Grand Prismatic Spring

We continued on to the colorful Biscuit Basin, our favorite of the geyser basins.  The crystal-clear, intensely blue water of the Sapphire Pool was out-of-this-world! Jewel Geyser was also fun to see as it erupted when we walked by.

Jewel Geyser

Sapphire Pool

Old Faithful!

No trip to Yellowstone would be complete though without seeing Old Faithful, so that’s where we decided to finish up our tour of the national park. We hunkered down on a bench with the rest of the people encircling the geyser waiting for it to erupt. After gazing at Old Faithful for about half an hour, we finally saw it blow!

We had originally thought we could see Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, WY in one day, but that didn’t work out. We ended up spending the entire rainy day in Yellowstone as there was so much to stop to see. There are fascinating geothermal features everywhere! Even with a whole day in the park, we didn’t get to see everything. I can definitely understand why people camp there for multiple days.

  Day 68 (8/7/14): Grand Teton National Park | Jackson Hole, WY

Since we didn’t get to visit Jackson Hole, WY yesterday as we had originally planned, we used today to see it. On the way there, we drove through Grand Teton National Park again and were treated to an amazing view of the impressive mountain range.

Once we reached Jackson, we walked around the Town Square. Each corner of the square has an arch made entirely of antlers adding to the charm of the town. I would describe Jackson as an upscale Western town complete with horse-drawn stagecoach rides.

After strolling past the shops and grabbing lunch, we headed about 32 miles southeast of Jackson to Granite Hot Springs in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Justin used to camp with his family near the hot springs when he was a boy and had been wanting to take me to the nostalgic spot.

We took route 191 south for 12 miles to the Hoback Junction where we turned left. We then drove another 10 miles or so before we made another left at Granite Hot Springs Road. It was a dirt road that lasted about 10 miles before we finally reached the hot springs.

Granite Hot Springs

It’s actually a large man-made pool fed by a hot spring. The pool gets to be 8 feet deep and has a small seating area where the water comes in from the mountain. The water is quite warm, making you feel like you’re swimming in a massive bathtub.  As we were soaking in the hot springs, it started raining.

It’s rained pretty much every day we’ve been in Wyoming, but we didn’t mind. We like the rain and enjoyed it’s refreshing droplets, especially while we were in the warm water. As we were driving back to our campground in Dubois, it continued raining. At one point though, the temperature dropped to 42 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was snow on the ground! In August! As pretty as northwest Wyoming was, I wouldn’t be able to handle it’s winters, especially if it snows in the summer!

New Blog! Days 65-68: Montana & Wyoming http://wp.me/p4tmBz-uc Day 65 (8/4/14): Missoula, MT | Dubois, WY We left Montana this morning and started driving to Wyoming, passing the Madison River on the way.

[nya109]

Sojourner Truth was a prominent abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Born a slave in New York State, she had at least three of her children sold away from her. After escaping slavery, Truth embraced evangelical religion and became involved in moral reform and abolitionist work. She collected supplies for black regiments during the Civil War and immersed herself in advocating for freedpeople during the Reconstruction period. Truth was a powerful and impassioned speaker whose legacy of feminism and racial equality still resonates today. She is perhaps best known for her stirring “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, delivered at a women’s convention in Ohio in 1851. An evangelist, abolitionist, and feminist, Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883) is remembered for her unschooled but remarkable voice raised in support of abolitionism, the freedmen, and women’s rights. Tales of her aggressive platform style, of her challenge to Frederick Douglass on the issue of violence against slavery (“Frederick! Is God dead?”), and of her baring her breasts before a crude audience who had challenged her womanhood grace the pages of abolitionist lore. Truth was six feet tall, blessed with a powerful voice (she spoke English with a Dutch accent), and driven by deep religious conviction. Harriet Beecher Stowe attested to Truth’s personal magnetism, saying that she had never “been conversant with anyone who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence than this woman.” Truth was born of slave parents owned by a wealthy Dutch patroon in Ulster County, New York. Details of her early life remain cloudy. What is clear is that her name was Isabella and she served a household in New Paltz, New York, from 1810 to 1827, where she bore some five children by a fellow slave. At least two of her daughters and one son were sold away from her during these years. Isabella escaped slavery in 1827, one year before mandatory emancipation in New York State, by fleeing to a Quaker family, the Van Wageners, whose name she took. She moved to New York City, worked as a domestic, became involved in moral reform, embraced evangelical religion, started her street-corner preaching career, and eventually joined a utopian community in Sing Sing, New York. Illiterate and a mystic, Isabella nevertheless acquired a wide knowledge of the Bible and emerged in the 1840s in Massachusetts, working among the Garrisonian abolitionists. A popular platform figure, she told stories and sang gospel songs that instructed and entertained. Adopting the name “Sojourner Truth” in 1843, she became a wandering orator. In the mid-1850s she settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, her base of operations for the rest of her life. During the Civil War, Truth tramped the roads of Michigan collecting food and clothing for black regiments. She traveled to Washington, D.C., where she met with Abraham Lincoln at the White House, and immersed herself in relief work for the freedpeople. During Reconstruction, Truth barely supported herself by selling a narrative of her life as well as her “shadows,” photographs of herself. She lent her unique skills to the women’s suffrage movement and initiated a petition drive to obtain land for the freedpeople, even suggesting the idea of a “Negro state” in the West. She preached cleanliness and godliness among the freedpeople and dictated many letters about the land question, which provide rich details about that aspect of Reconstruction. Truth’s most important legacy is the tone and substance of her language. As an old woman she stumped the country providing emancipation with an eloquent epigraph: “Give ’em land and an outset, and hab teachers learn ’em to read. Den they can be somebody.” Few modern activists have better described politicians or the purpose of a petition drive than Truth did: “Send tons of paper down to Washington for them spouters to chaw on.” And when she was brutally knocked off of Washington’s segregated streetcars, she denounced racism: “It is hard for the old slaveholding spirit to die, but die it must.” She herself died of old age and ulcerated legs in 1883; her funeral and burial in Battle Creek was the largest that town had ever seen, testimony to her hold on America’s historical imagination. #BlackHistoryMonth #SojournerTruth #day17

[networkingdefinition]

Peacock Quotes

Official Website: Peacock Quotes

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• A few months ago, I had the pleasure of actually visiting the Playboy Mansion. I saw the peacocks, fed grapes to the monkeys, and even braved the fabled Grotto. After seeing the estate, I understood why anyone would be reluctant to leave. – Diablo Cody • A peacock escaped from the Central Park Zoo and wandered around the city. Either that or I just saw a pigeon on his way to a gay pride parade. – Jimmy Fallon • A peacock that rests on his feathers is just another turkey. – Dolly Parton • An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them. – Pope Francis • And that’s how the Peacock saved the Chameleon – Ally Carter • As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered. – Leonardo da Vinci • At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all. – Baltasar Gracian

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• Be motivated like the falcon, hunt gloriously. Be magnificent as the leopard, fight to win. Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks. One is all talk, the other only color. – Rumi • British men are peacocks. You see a lot more style on the streets here than you see anywhere else, on every level. – Tom Ford • But why wasn’t I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night? – Logan Pearsall Smith • Dear Alec and Magnus, This is the first postcard of five. Don’t freak out or anything, but I need you to send me $150,000 to cover the cost of: 1) Two diamanté crowns 2) 20 peacocks 3) 300 chocolate lollipops in the shape of your heads 4) My dress 5) 500 lbs of glitter 6) One white horse (More to come in other cards) -Isabelle – Cassandra Clare Death, Stars, Writing • Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you. – Herman Melville • For all the feminist jabber about women being victimized by fashion, it is men who most suffer from conventions of dress. Every day, a woman can choose from an army of personae, femme to butch, and can cut or curl her hair or adorn herself with a staggering variety of artistic aids. But despite the Sixties experiments in peacock dress, no man can rise in the corporate world today, outside the entertainment industry, with long hair or makeup or purple velvet suits. – Camille Paglia • Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright. – Van Wyck Brooks • Hansel is certainly about comfort, while still sort of having a peacock principle of wanting to attract attention. – Owen Wilson • He said that people who loved [animals] to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez • Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken. – Sylvia Townsend Warner • How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion. – Toni Morrison • I am Plato’s Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver’s Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. – Ray Bradbury • I can live without it all – love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear. – Erica Jong • I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy … fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks! – Lilly Pulitzer • I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds. – John Ruskin • I don’t know if it’s animalistic or what, but men become like peacocks with their feathers up when women are around. – Bradley Cooper • I fear I must agree,” Magnus murmured. He pressed a hand over his heart and his new peacock-blue waistcoast. “I strive to find some respect in my heart for you, but alas! It seems an impossible quest. – Cassandra Clare • I just love the way the ’60s rock stars put themselves together, because they were like dandies and peacocks. They really lived out their fantasies – and dressed their fantasies. – Anna Sui • I know exactly how strong he is… He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly to distract you from the back that his body is but weak.” -Jason to Mahiya – Nalini Singh • If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • If thou seest anything in thyself which may make thee proud, look a little further and thou shalt find enough to humble thee; if thou be wise, view the peacock’s feathers with his feet, and weigh thy best parts with thy imperfections. – Francis Quarles • If you get bored of doing it (Peacock Pose) with two hands, try it with one. – Dharma Mittra • It dances today, my heart, like a peacock it dances, it dances. It sports a mosaic of passions like a peacock’s tail, It soars to the sky with delight, it quests, Oh wildly, it dances today, my heart, like a peacock it dances. – Rabindranath Tagore • It is reported of the peacock that priding himself in his gay feathers he ruffles them up; but spying his black feet he soon lets fall his plumes. So he that glories in his gifts and adornings should look upon his corruptions, and that will damp his high thoughts. – Anne Bradstreet • It’s an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock’s tail was thus formed but … most people just don’t get it – I must be a very bad explainer – Charles Darwin • Le geai pare des plumes du paon. A bluejay in peacock feathers. – Jean de La Fontaine • Let me drive,” she said, reaching for the reins. He turned to her in disbelief. “This is a phaeton, not a single-horse wagon.” Sophie fought the urge to throttle him. His nose was running, his eyes were red, he couldn’t stop coughing, and still he found the energy to act like an arrogant peacock. “I assure you,” she said slowly, “that I know how to drive a team of horses. – Julia Quinn • Maggie threw her head back and laughed. ‘So you’re going to try…what? Birds of a Feather?’ she quested. ‘Of course not,’ Kat said. ‘Everyone knows the French government banned the importation of peacocks in 1987. – Ally Carter • Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes–and calls it his pride. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Men’s clothes are becoming kind of mod. They’re becoming more colorful and more flamboyant, and the male peacock is beginning to show his true plumage. – Liberace • Music really influenced me when I was growing up. I did go through a Jimi Hendrix phase. My hair was naturally quite afro, and I wore low-slung jeans with very high heels. Siouxsie and the Banshees had a lot to answer for. I was in a top hat with peacock feathers and thigh-high black boots. I was 17 — old enough to know better. – Helen McCrory • My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me. Raise me a daïs of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me. – Christina Rossetti • My philosophy on what makeup is…it’s very different from what a woman’s is. Makeup came from a very psychological place – of the peacock. – Jeremy Renner • News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day. – Gene Fowler • Only you could love such a vile, selfish peacock, Evie. – Lisa Kleypas Paradise, Way, Satan • Patterns drawn in ultraviolet might make those ordinary little petals into the exotic peacocks of the botanical world, and yet we cannot appreciate them. – Victoria Finlay • Peacock bass like to hide at ambush points, away from the strong canal currents. If you fish early and know those peacock hangouts, you will have little or no trouble catching peacocks on lures and live bait. – Mark Hall • Peacocks have the bright feathers. Fish have the long tails. Women have the mall. – Janette Rallison • People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet. – Saadi • Play not the Peacock, looking everywhere about you, to see if you be well deck’t. – George Washington • Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. – John Masefield • Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the border closes each evening around six o’ clock, the soldiers on each side do these amazing high-stepping peacock march-offs (like a dance-off). The displays are almost identical on each side and thousands gather to watch them. Though they’re patrolling along their separate borders, what comes across is how similar they are. – Matthea Harvey • Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. – Virginia Woolf • She is a peacock in everything but beauty! – Oscar Wilde • Simple DNA gradually morphed and evolved, so that you had the coming into being of ever more complex and diverse creatures, until one day you wake up and find there are peacocks and giraffes. Nature is an open-ended experiment based on morphing a DNA code, and ours is an open-ended experiment based on morphing a crochet code. – Margaret Wertheim • Skaters are very much like peacocks. – Jon Heder • Tell me about this Wizard Howl of yours.” “He’s the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he’d only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he’s sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can’t pin him down to anything.” “Indeed? Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies.” “What do you mean, vices? I was just describing Howl. He comes from another world entirely, you know, called Wales, and I refuse to believe he’s dead! – Diana Wynne Jones • The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • The Italians have voices like peacocks – German gives me a cold in the head – and Russian is nothing but sneezing – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton • The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories. – W. H. Auden • The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed. – Joseph Addison • The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. – William Blake • The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. – William Blake • The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail. – Rabindranath Tagore • The sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock’s tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate For easy solutions.- John – Ashbery • The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you. – Christopher Nolan • There are eight different breeds of peacock. I have them all. – Bidzina Ivanishvili • There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don’t have to be right, you don’t have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn’t mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn’t mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl. – Franny Billingsley • To frame the little animal, provide All the gay hues that wait on female pride: Let Nature guide thee; sometimes golden wire The shining bellies of the fly require; The peacock’s plumes thy tackle must not fail, Nor the dear purchase of the sable’s tail. – John Gay • To Paradise, the Arabs say, Satan could never find the way Until the peacock led him in. – Charles Godfrey Leland • Turkeys are peacocks that have really let themselves go. – Kristen Schaal • We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith. – Vaclav Havel • We may put too high a premium on speech from platform and pulpit, at the bar and in the legislative hall, and pay dear for the whistle of our endless harangues. England and especially Germany, are less loquacious, and attend more to business. We let the eagle, and perhaps too often the peacock, scream. – Bill Vaughan • When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns. – Flannery O’Connor • Who cares what a man’s style is, so it is intelligible,–as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the stylus, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for it. It is something for use, and not to look at. The question for us is, not whether Pope had a fine style, wrote with a peacock’s feather, but whether he uttered useful thoughts. – Henry David Thoreau • Women are a source of energy in life. I’ve always wanted to be in a war or baseball movie, but the thought of having no women on set for six months – that’s hell. I don’t know if it’s animalistic or what, but men become like peacocks with their feathers up when women are around. – Bradley Cooper

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[equitiesstocks]

Peacock Quotes

Official Website: Peacock Quotes

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• A few months ago, I had the pleasure of actually visiting the Playboy Mansion. I saw the peacocks, fed grapes to the monkeys, and even braved the fabled Grotto. After seeing the estate, I understood why anyone would be reluctant to leave. – Diablo Cody • A peacock escaped from the Central Park Zoo and wandered around the city. Either that or I just saw a pigeon on his way to a gay pride parade. – Jimmy Fallon • A peacock that rests on his feathers is just another turkey. – Dolly Parton • An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them. – Pope Francis • And that’s how the Peacock saved the Chameleon – Ally Carter • As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered. – Leonardo da Vinci • At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all. – Baltasar Gracian

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• Be motivated like the falcon, hunt gloriously. Be magnificent as the leopard, fight to win. Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks. One is all talk, the other only color. – Rumi • British men are peacocks. You see a lot more style on the streets here than you see anywhere else, on every level. – Tom Ford • But why wasn’t I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night? – Logan Pearsall Smith • Dear Alec and Magnus, This is the first postcard of five. Don’t freak out or anything, but I need you to send me $150,000 to cover the cost of: 1) Two diamanté crowns 2) 20 peacocks 3) 300 chocolate lollipops in the shape of your heads 4) My dress 5) 500 lbs of glitter 6) One white horse (More to come in other cards) -Isabelle – Cassandra Clare Death, Stars, Writing • Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you. – Herman Melville • For all the feminist jabber about women being victimized by fashion, it is men who most suffer from conventions of dress. Every day, a woman can choose from an army of personae, femme to butch, and can cut or curl her hair or adorn herself with a staggering variety of artistic aids. But despite the Sixties experiments in peacock dress, no man can rise in the corporate world today, outside the entertainment industry, with long hair or makeup or purple velvet suits. – Camille Paglia • Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright. – Van Wyck Brooks • Hansel is certainly about comfort, while still sort of having a peacock principle of wanting to attract attention. – Owen Wilson • He said that people who loved [animals] to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez • Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken. – Sylvia Townsend Warner • How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion. – Toni Morrison • I am Plato’s Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver’s Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. – Ray Bradbury • I can live without it all – love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear. – Erica Jong • I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy … fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks! – Lilly Pulitzer • I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds. – John Ruskin • I don’t know if it’s animalistic or what, but men become like peacocks with their feathers up when women are around. – Bradley Cooper • I fear I must agree,” Magnus murmured. He pressed a hand over his heart and his new peacock-blue waistcoast. “I strive to find some respect in my heart for you, but alas! It seems an impossible quest. – Cassandra Clare • I just love the way the ’60s rock stars put themselves together, because they were like dandies and peacocks. They really lived out their fantasies – and dressed their fantasies. – Anna Sui • I know exactly how strong he is… He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly to distract you from the back that his body is but weak.” -Jason to Mahiya – Nalini Singh • If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • If thou seest anything in thyself which may make thee proud, look a little further and thou shalt find enough to humble thee; if thou be wise, view the peacock’s feathers with his feet, and weigh thy best parts with thy imperfections. – Francis Quarles • If you get bored of doing it (Peacock Pose) with two hands, try it with one. – Dharma Mittra • It dances today, my heart, like a peacock it dances, it dances. It sports a mosaic of passions like a peacock’s tail, It soars to the sky with delight, it quests, Oh wildly, it dances today, my heart, like a peacock it dances. – Rabindranath Tagore • It is reported of the peacock that priding himself in his gay feathers he ruffles them up; but spying his black feet he soon lets fall his plumes. So he that glories in his gifts and adornings should look upon his corruptions, and that will damp his high thoughts. – Anne Bradstreet • It’s an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock’s tail was thus formed but … most people just don’t get it – I must be a very bad explainer – Charles Darwin • Le geai pare des plumes du paon. A bluejay in peacock feathers. – Jean de La Fontaine • Let me drive,” she said, reaching for the reins. He turned to her in disbelief. “This is a phaeton, not a single-horse wagon.” Sophie fought the urge to throttle him. His nose was running, his eyes were red, he couldn’t stop coughing, and still he found the energy to act like an arrogant peacock. “I assure you,” she said slowly, “that I know how to drive a team of horses. – Julia Quinn • Maggie threw her head back and laughed. ‘So you’re going to try…what? Birds of a Feather?’ she quested. ‘Of course not,’ Kat said. ‘Everyone knows the French government banned the importation of peacocks in 1987. – Ally Carter • Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes–and calls it his pride. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Men’s clothes are becoming kind of mod. They’re becoming more colorful and more flamboyant, and the male peacock is beginning to show his true plumage. – Liberace • Music really influenced me when I was growing up. I did go through a Jimi Hendrix phase. My hair was naturally quite afro, and I wore low-slung jeans with very high heels. Siouxsie and the Banshees had a lot to answer for. I was in a top hat with peacock feathers and thigh-high black boots. I was 17 — old enough to know better. – Helen McCrory • My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me. Raise me a daïs of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me. – Christina Rossetti • My philosophy on what makeup is…it’s very different from what a woman’s is. Makeup came from a very psychological place – of the peacock. – Jeremy Renner • News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day. – Gene Fowler • Only you could love such a vile, selfish peacock, Evie. – Lisa Kleypas Paradise, Way, Satan • Patterns drawn in ultraviolet might make those ordinary little petals into the exotic peacocks of the botanical world, and yet we cannot appreciate them. – Victoria Finlay • Peacock bass like to hide at ambush points, away from the strong canal currents. If you fish early and know those peacock hangouts, you will have little or no trouble catching peacocks on lures and live bait. – Mark Hall • Peacocks have the bright feathers. Fish have the long tails. Women have the mall. – Janette Rallison • People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet. – Saadi • Play not the Peacock, looking everywhere about you, to see if you be well deck’t. – George Washington • Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. – John Masefield • Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the border closes each evening around six o’ clock, the soldiers on each side do these amazing high-stepping peacock march-offs (like a dance-off). The displays are almost identical on each side and thousands gather to watch them. Though they’re patrolling along their separate borders, what comes across is how similar they are. – Matthea Harvey • Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. – Virginia Woolf • She is a peacock in everything but beauty! – Oscar Wilde • Simple DNA gradually morphed and evolved, so that you had the coming into being of ever more complex and diverse creatures, until one day you wake up and find there are peacocks and giraffes. Nature is an open-ended experiment based on morphing a DNA code, and ours is an open-ended experiment based on morphing a crochet code. – Margaret Wertheim • Skaters are very much like peacocks. – Jon Heder • Tell me about this Wizard Howl of yours.” “He’s the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he’d only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he’s sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can’t pin him down to anything.” “Indeed? Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies.” “What do you mean, vices? I was just describing Howl. He comes from another world entirely, you know, called Wales, and I refuse to believe he’s dead! – Diana Wynne Jones • The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • The Italians have voices like peacocks – German gives me a cold in the head – and Russian is nothing but sneezing – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton • The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories. – W. H. Auden • The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed. – Joseph Addison • The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. – William Blake • The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. – William Blake • The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail. – Rabindranath Tagore • The sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock’s tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate For easy solutions.- John – Ashbery • The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you. – Christopher Nolan • There are eight different breeds of peacock. I have them all. – Bidzina Ivanishvili • There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don’t have to be right, you don’t have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn’t mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn’t mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl. – Franny Billingsley • To frame the little animal, provide All the gay hues that wait on female pride: Let Nature guide thee; sometimes golden wire The shining bellies of the fly require; The peacock’s plumes thy tackle must not fail, Nor the dear purchase of the sable’s tail. – John Gay • To Paradise, the Arabs say, Satan could never find the way Until the peacock led him in. – Charles Godfrey Leland • Turkeys are peacocks that have really let themselves go. – Kristen Schaal • We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith. – Vaclav Havel • We may put too high a premium on speech from platform and pulpit, at the bar and in the legislative hall, and pay dear for the whistle of our endless harangues. England and especially Germany, are less loquacious, and attend more to business. We let the eagle, and perhaps too often the peacock, scream. – Bill Vaughan • When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns. – Flannery O’Connor • Who cares what a man’s style is, so it is intelligible,–as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the stylus, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for it. It is something for use, and not to look at. The question for us is, not whether Pope had a fine style, wrote with a peacock’s feather, but whether he uttered useful thoughts. – Henry David Thoreau • Women are a source of energy in life. I’ve always wanted to be in a war or baseball movie, but the thought of having no women on set for six months – that’s hell. I don’t know if it’s animalistic or what, but men become like peacocks with their feathers up when women are around. – Bradley Cooper

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[tamsclapper-blog]

Sweet Bouillon

I was walking down the boulevard wearing a brown skirt and this green vest that had rectangles of velcro and came with different things you could put onto it, like birds, steamers, various violins, and just food groups and stuff. You could velcro on whatever you felt like for the day and keep the rest at home on an old diving board or w/e. I was walking down the boulevard and noticed it was really clean for a boulevard and that there were only children around though some had grown old. I was in the mood for spaghetti and meatballs but thanky thanky I resisted the urge because meatballs have this way of rolling off the table and out of your life and reminding you of a song they made you sing as a kid that you only remember in spirit but not in words or sound. I ended up eating finger foods. Then I called my identical twin and it turned out she had eaten spaghetti that day which heaved and peeved me.

            The next day was really notable when I try and think about which days are or aren’t notable because that was the day I carried a sack of potatoes to my sisters house and almost left them on the door step without saying hello, but then turned back around and knocked on the door. The man who answered the door was a cosmonaut but I didn’t know yet that he was a cosmonaut because it was only 1985 and I didn’t even learn what a cosmonaut was until 1986, when this man admitted he was a cosmonaut and told me what that was.

            I stared at the man a bit but only for half a second before saying, “The fuck’s my sister and who are you?”

            He said he didn’t know and tried to close the door but I was wearing boots that curl at the toe and I caught the door with my curl tip. He sighed like a panty horse and opened the door, “She’s in the basement making wooden plates and cups.”

            “That’s fine. That’s just fine,” I said sternly.

            I went in and turned three corners and went down some steps and there was a corner in the steps too, then I was in my sisters woodworking shop. She turned to me, all cute in her goggles, and wiped her hands on her apron. We had the same face but she wore her hair long while I kept mine bowl cutted with a tam smacked on top, and she was mysteriously frail even though she ate spaghetti all the time and I only ate spaghetti once a month and she almost always had it with meatballs.

            I asked her who the guy was and she donned a goofy smile when she told me it was the buttermilk man. I pressed further and she said it was a friend of our cousin Rifkey’s and that she was fucking him, and she begged me not to be mean or scare him away.

            I helped her finish sandpapering, then she handed me three plates and cups and asked me to go up and set the table. As I sprinted up the steps she chased behind, playfully spanking my grateful booty.

             The cosmonaut’s name was Anton Pavel and he was dreadful. He said he only drank hot chocolate, and made her get up to rewarm it while we ate. People didn’t even drink hot chocolate in 1985, but this guy did. My sister did too that night which was absurd and probably not good for the wooden cups. She wrapped her fingers through the cup’s handle and held it to her mouth covering giggles while Anton Pavel said a bunch of dumb stuff. It got to the point where enough was enough and I took my tam off my head and slammed it on the table.

            “What’s that matter,” Anton asked, “Don’t like pork chops?”

            “Of course I like pork chops, you just sat here and watched me eat two, why would I eat two pork chops if I didn’t like em.”

            “Okay,” my sister said standing up, “It’s fine. It’s okay.”

            “No, I want her to get that puddle of wool off the table. I don’t like the looks of wool on wood.”

            “Wouldn’t expect you to and not surprised at all,” I remarked without rehearsing.

            He reached out to grab the tam but froze, and a dreamy look came over him like he was remembering a far off land of unverified pleasures. Then I went home and went to bed.

 My dreams back then were the same as ever; robust, vascular, with a halo sometimes, I could go on. What has changed, though, is I used to have orange plates and it has been oozy ruzons since I’ve heard from my old roommate, Cap’in Jean Bobby. 

            Cap’in Jean Bobby was three parts landlord, two parts roommate, and a chicken farmer from North Dakota and I loved her deeply in the mornings when she stockpiled those orange plates with thick eggs like they were brackets. Unfortunately, my affections vastly dwindled by late afternoon/early evening, after the eggs digested. She had these metal buttons on her overalls that creaked and would not replace them with less creaky buttons no matter how sincerely I screamed and begged. Furthermore, if you must know, the chickens she cared for, Beats and Tommy, were like first class citizens in our New Yorksville highlife apartment and I had to sit on the floor. You could really count on life not being fair when Jean Bobby made the rules. Sometimes she would push the envelope and by that I mean she would seal the deal on the kiss of death by asking me our zip code, like I was some sort of number spouter. Other times it was more subtle things like, oh, I don’t know, WHEELING IN CHICKEN FEED AND PARKING THE BARREL BY MY LIMBS. But w/e. I would just lick my finger and slick back my mane.

            At 5:30 she would do roll call, where she called everyone she knew to ‘check in’ and ‘chat’. This would tie up our phone line till 7:45, but Jean Bobby didn’t care. She would just sit there in her gross ass recliner with a chicken on each knee, moving her mouth and tongue strategically and I would have to limbo or high leg it over the cord that stretched from the kitchen blocking our walk through.

            There was this one time, hands over honor, I had a real medical emergency with the back of my knee and had to call my dentist to warn him I’d be limping when I came in for my cleaning. I wrote in jumbo letters on a sheet of paper, ‘Knee wont bend much,’ and held it in front of her but she went on chatting. So I went and got four sheets of paper, stapled them together, and wrote in bubble letters, ‘Maybe I should spread the news.’ This time she glanced and squishyed her face like a lemon licker but continued on with her roll call. By the time she was finished my dentist’s office was closed and I was plastered pink with indignants. I followed her into the kitchen as she went to hang up the phone and right as she craddeled it into the wall receiver I put my hand over hers and smashed it down firmly into the phone.

            “This smarts a little, I mean jeeze,” she squirmed, trying to get away.

This went on for a few minuets and then the phone rang. She looked at me with distress and I tried to keep my cool.

            “Lift the phone slowly,” I ordered, releasing the tightness of my grip but still holding my hand over hers. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she lifted the phone in slow motion. It was half way to her lobe when the doorbell rang.

            “It’s a double whammy,” she sniffled.

            “Yea and double the time and patience. Maybe we should call a truce. I’m going to want eggs in the morning.”

            “Truce? Your always just saying a bunch of words. You forget I’m from North Dakota and two years younger than you.”

            “It’s a verbal agreement to put down the phone and go to bed early and you have to spoon me and get up to get me water in the night even if I don’t want any, and for gods sakes take off those creaky overalls and put on something bottonless, if you even have anything like that.”

            “Truce. TRUCE!” she shouted.

*

In 1984, a year before that damned cosmonaut ransacked his way into my sister’s silky wormhole and heart when we made a special trip to the Green Grasshoppers Industry, an industry that inspired our town to put up flashing lights and where we pretended our mother’s ashes were. It had always been a special place to me since I was a little girl because there were no bean bag chairs there and I was dead to center allergic to beans of any kind even if they were bagged or being sat on. Another thing about this Grasshoppers place I think you should know right now is how easy it is to get inside. You’d think there’d be more to it then just the push of a glass door. A lot of places were like this in our town.

            “Either my eyes are slathered in hot burning peppers or it’s the Bouillon sisters,” the receptionist said dryly.

            “Yes, it’s us, her and I, here we are.”

            “We’re here for a little something something,” my sister added.

            She sighed and threw down her pen, “Look, we really don’t have your mother’s ashes.”

            “No, you misunderstand,” my sister said politely, “Were here for a bit of some-TING.”

            “Well, I’ve got brass knuckles in my drawer here. You want me to take those out?”

            “Ah, hm, sorry, is there anyone here we could talk to who mixes well with others?”

            “Someone’s dad was out in the hall earlier. Maybe you could still catch him.”

            We found a bearded fellow standing with his legs straight and his spine and head straight too. We ran up and pulled at his coat tails.

            “Are you someone’s dad?”

            “Yes, Sharon’s.”

            Excited, we couldn’t stop from both speaking at once.

            “So we had this thing-“

            “It was ooey gooey!”

            “We were on the night bus and just so exhausted-“

            “Our hands couldn’t grip firmly!”

            “It was just so late!”

            “Please! There must be something you can do!”

            He laughed heartily, “Say no more, girls! I think I can help you with this object of your desires. Wait here.”

            “K!” I rubbed my hands together furiously until he returned, and when that return he made, he indeed had the very object my sister and I dropped on the bus that brisk and weary nightshed. We curtsied and he bowed.

            “You girls look like a pair that likes ice cream?”

            “I guess so,” we shrugged.

            “Well I have two extra tickets to a town’s meeting later this afternoon. It will be long and arduous but they will serve vanilla-chocolate swirl, after, to anyone who’s willing.”

            “That’s not really how we jive,” I pointed out.

            “Alright then, why don’t I take you for ice cream now?”

            “A man like you who’s a father and all should be headed to the Daddy and Me Ice Cream Parlor with Sharon if you’re going to eat ice cream at all.”

            “You sure are a couple of tricky bitches. Forget ice cream. What do you like, soup?”

            “What we really have a taste for is justice,” my sister spouted.

            “I’m listening,” he was in it for the long haul.

            But before she could lay it on thick in a pop it to him sort of way his coat tails were tugged upon once again, this time by a Miss around 15 who may have had talent for the arts or crossbow or, if not, would surely someday find her niche.

            “Dad? Dad! Is it really you?”

            “I - uh,” he patted around at his torso in a confused manner, “I think so. Where am I?”

            “We’ve been searching for years!” She hugged the bewildered man and several doors opened at once. Team members in green windbreakers with loose sketchings of grasshoppers on the back flooded the hall and wrapped him tightly in white cloths. It turned out we had been talking to a real relic in time and a county lost man.

            They carried him out on a stretcher, daughter at side holding his hand. The sun shown so brightly as they walked through the glass doors that it looked like they were heavens glass doors, but when I turned to face my sister it was clear she didn’t see the beauty.

 She fell ill after that and would lie in bed whispering, “I can’t believe I didn’t see the signs. We would have just left him there. Me. I would have left him.” She couldn’t forgive herself for not recognizing the man had been lost. At times like these it would seem my sister and I were snipped from a different cloth even though our umbilical cords were snip snapped from the same nauseating placenta a certain amount of time ago, while over the loud speaker Neil Diamond chortled and hummed about a mystic sort of love on the only peninsula we were delivered on and to. But maybe I’m just being idealistic.

            I agreed it had been obvious with the heehawing and pants shuffling and the whole ice cream or die bit, but told her, ‘a diamond in front of the eye can look like an old seaweed rock sometimes.’ My math tutor would have called that a ‘ little white lie’ if he were still with us.

            I elevated her feet with conch shells and surrounded her bed with several dozen trays of rice.  She loved how the thin metal legs of the tv trays contrasted with the flat tops that she thought of as the flat lands of America, and the single bowl that sat center on each tray was a cascading mountain. When she leaned forward she glimpsed the white rice, the snow cap of the mountain, and to her it felt like all of time was passing when she teetered forward and back, seasons changing rapidly.  Her sounds of agony bounced off the bowls and echoed terribly through this ceramic wilderness; and if you listened closely then maybe, just maybe, you could hear the shrill voice of Lady Liberty crying back.

             At 2 pm eastern time I would army crawl into her bedroom and plop myself down by the left mid-bottom side of the bed; her blind spot. I would wait till she rang her bell, then I’d army crawl back out and walk in on my feet like the homosapien I was raised to be. One day, though, she never rang. I must have been laying there for 12 hours at least before I got the courage to shimmy upwards and steal a peak at wtf was going on. The sheets were pulled back and the bed was empty. Making a dash for the lights, I searched every inch of that room for her and then got on top the bed and did a fast shuffling with my feet, like a football shuffle. I was just too mad to do anything else. Eventually I sprained my ankle and now I really had to army crawl through the entire house swiping a Q-tip in every cranny. Then I sat cross-legged on a skateboard and pushed across town looking left to right with night binoculars.

            By morning I came to my dull senses and went down to the Green Grasshoppers Industry and sure enough, there she was in the hall trying to pressure some poor elderly couple into going with her to get a cone. Not wanting the Green Team involved, I took her home and bound her in white cloth myself.

            For dinner we had spaghetti and meatballs and lit a candle in each ball; the pink ones represented earth and gratitude and yellow stood for erased fears and droppings.  Now this is where the story gets weird. Just as we had our lips puffed to oblivion and ready to blow, the sound of carolers filled our airspace. Okay, it’s fine, we thought. Its Christmas Eve, so whatever.

            Wrong. The caroling got louder until it sounded like they were standing just outside the kitchen window. I drew back the shutters and there on god’s grass stood the Green Grasshoppers. It was odd to see this gentle rendition of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ come from their mouths cause they looked pissed. Their eyes were gleaming red and a few of them had sharpened their teeth. Clutched in their mitts was a huge cake frosted with the image of a stretcher.  When they got to the line, “Comfort and Joy” their voices boomed and snarled. Clearly they were insinuating the comfort and joy of being carried out of their industry on a stretcher, now how deceptive is that? We folded our hands in our laps and watched a few more songs before I snapped the shutters shut. We tried to persist on with dinner but the meatballs were sauced in wax drippings and a resemblance of twelve flies floated helter skelter in my grapefruit juice. It was probably one of the worst Christmas Eves ever, thanks Grasshoppers, that’s the last time I even show you my sister.

*

“Life is short and so are our children.” This is what my mother said to my turn of the keeps father every morning upon their lawful wedded waking procedure. He replied with a chin tilt I am guessing cause I wouldn’t hear another peep until after they donned themselves in silk robes and floated into the sitting room with gallons of strawberry lemonade, setting them gingerly by their feet. They called this Liquid Quench Hour. My sister and I, being ahead of the times in fashion, called it Silk’s Last Minuets in hushed tones. It really was a key stoned way to spend a morning for a dentist’s tool inventor and a dentist’s tool inventor’s wife, if you think about it. So I don’t. But sometimes when trying to preform my own morning proceedings of eating dot by dot, as it appeared from satellite, every speck of egg from those orange plates till they looked like clear bright suns, my sister called to and ask if I remembered Liquid Quench Hour. I’d sigh and say no, and she’d go over each step with this sing songy tone, “And as they would sat, their elbows straightened until the gallons grazed the floorboards. Mother’s ankles were like a sweet birds and reflected off the plastic lemonade jugs, making her look quadruple ankled, do you remember?”

            “No,” I replied, sinking my head on the table.

            “And after tax season,” she went on excitedly, “they drew open the windows and let the light heat their brass jewelry until it was luke warm to the graze of a greedy finger.”

            “Okay. Well I’m eating breakfast now, so…”

            “Yes, and on Sundays, no let me think, yes on Sundays, this would be the morning after chicken finger night –“ around here I softly hung up and continued as best I could chewing chunks, but honestly at that point the morning was a wash. I’d ask Jean Bobby to stop petting her chickens for just one round and pet my head and she’d say no and I’d crawl back into bed while crimson tears stretched from my eye socket to three forth’s of the way down my pillow case like the Nile River, but a stain. If there were any human like gods or semi god-humans bopping around in space, this would be when I’d beg them for mercy. Really, all I wanted was to be draped in silks drinking strawberry lemonade with my father but I could never admit that, even to a half god-human half anchovy.

            My neighbor had a bumper sticker that said, “TRUTH, NOT TOLERANCE” but obviously his parents didn’t have a morning ritual he was disincluded from or lofty feeling about it, hey-oh.

            I scrapped myself off the bed sheets, pulled it together, and set out find someone to disincline or pick on; maybe go down to the fire person’s station and trip em up with their own hose or something. Beats and Tommy were out of the question as I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a circle’s ooze exaltation from the Cap’in’s ready as rules iron fist. I’m saying I don’t know what she’d do if I touched those chickens but probably fist me.

            But on May 24th, 1982 as I long horned it out my door looking for a sucker, what I found instead was a new neighbor who made me feel, at the instant we locked eyes, like the velveteen rabbit resurrected. He was short and had this flat top head you could probably set a Frisbee on and top with a handful of coffee beans, and his tennis shoes were spray painted gold. I almost had to rub my eyes to make sure there wasn’t any dust on the lids.

            He said his name was Bailey and he had a fresh litter of puppies.

            “I want you to meet all twelve of my puppies before I die,” he said.

            “Are you sick?”

            “No.”

            “Can I meet them all at once?”

            “No.”

            “When should we get started?”

            “We could get started right now if right now is when you’d like to get started,” he said without the slightest hint of malice, “Or you could come by tomorrow after I go to the YMCA to tell them their pool is an Olympic meter off. I like to do that sort of thing in person.”

            “So do I. You never know who you’re talking to on the phone. They say a name but its all just vowels and sharps to me.”

            I followed him to his backyard and sat my puffed ass in an easy does it fold out chair. He shuffled inside and came out with a baby Doberman and placed it on my lap. It’s name was Credshaw. All the puppies were named Credshaw.

            I learned a lot sitting in that chair. He told me everything I ever needed to know about cleaning out an iguana tank, plus some, but it was in what he didn’t say that intrigued me most. I came back every Sunday to see what he wouldn’t say next. It was on my third visit that I asked to use the loo and was baffled to the core that his bathroom was bare besides a few handtowles, liquid soap, inspirational dental tools likely sanctioned by my father, a copy of MAD mag, stacks of loose change, joint medication, toilet paper and stuff, and just a few other odds and ends. On the floor was just a trash can, a plunger, and a pair of putrid slippers next to an old chewed up red hell of a dog toy. I really didn’t get this guy, Bailey.

            It wasn’t until my ninth visit that I realized he only really had one puppy. He had been dumping the same tired Doberman in my lap week after week. I felt a little sick when the realization hit but I didn’t have the throw away know how or the heartbeat to ring the bullshit bell that hung over our heads like back of the drawer tweezers, ready to pluck. I just kept on smiling and looking him straight in the gold shoes. He worked for the Overton’s Factory where they made a special spray to clean spider and bird droppings, and was giving a demonstration when the rudest and crudest thing happened inside my brain and projected out onto Bailey’s face. It was his hands holding the spray and scrubber, his voice hinting at a soon to be spotless remote control car, but popping out of his neck collar was a true to life Doberman head. I gripped the sides of my chair.

            He finished wiping off the little car and drove it round my feet.

            “Look at that puppy go! Drives much faster without all the spider and bird droppings!” he said with his snout mouth. “Join the spray of the month club and this will be the first they send. Just a down payment of forty dollars if you order through me. I can get you the employee discount, what do you say?”

            “Naw. I’m good, Cha-chi,” I lifted Credshaw off my lap and onto the ground as I stood up. I was feeling dizzy. “I gotta go home. Listen, I don’t think I can come by anymore.”

            “WHA?! But you haven’t even met Credshaw or Credshaw yet! You’re really going to love Credshaw, I’ve saved the best Credshaw for last!” Each time he said ‘Credshaw’ it was like a gong had been smacked in my skull, and on his final Cred I fell to my knees.

            “Mayday!” he bellowed, and I could feel his prickly fingers all over me as he lifted and flipped upside down. The back window to my apartment was open so I screamed, “Cap’in! Cap’in! Haaalp, Cap’in Jean!” but everything went white and I lost consciousness.

            I awoke in a mostly kosher hospital and a nurse with the most perpendicular shoulders sat bedside with her legs crossed as if one knee had conquered the other. She told me I was allergic to dogs and that Bailey was a hero.

            Just so we’re clear, this was no Halloween costume nurse. This was the kind of nurse you could bring home to your children if you happened to have any at the time you met her if you did. But all I had was a North Dakotan roommate and two chickens, so I left the nurse there in that rectangular hospital that practically looked like it had been stapled to sedimentary rock. 

            Before I went, she ripped the sheet off me and it made this exhilarating parachute noise. I wished we were in a cave so the noise would echo and I could lie there on my back listening for all eternity. She placed a box of prizes on my outstretched legs and told me to pick out one that made me feel alive, so I chose a silver whistle that’s packaging said it would disappear if dropped into murky waters, which turned out to be pretty fucking true.

            When I got home I noticed the back window had been cemented shut. I guess the Cap’in heard my cries after all.

*

In 1986 the word ‘cosmonaut’ was uttered 34,962 times in the states alone, often without citation, but I didn’t utter it once. Not once. I guess I didn’t see the point. My sister must have been in the top 10 utterers. I would have pasted a blue ribbon to her fleece if I wasn’t so disgusted. By 1989, however, the word was obsolete and so our very own, Anton Pavel, became a couch potato. He would hunch to the max on my sister’s sofa in grey sweat pants with one knee facing southeast and the other northwest. It was unbecoming to say the least. His friendship with our cousin Rifkey grossly solidified when it was discovered they were the only two in town that liked to watch Spin City. Other people watched it too but only these two liked it.

            I would trot over to my sisters a couple times a week when I needed a breather. This was over a decade before my unfortunate bare-legs-smashed incident and I was quite the trotter. Her house was decorated from head to toe in linoleum, yellow brick, and this cute as the eye can take it caulk she had peppered between wall tiles in her kitchen and bathrooms. It was a pleasant change from the loose feathers that rose and settled with each breath I took in my neck of the stank woods, or should I say ‘havre puant’, as it would be if we if we spoke French for any reason or w/e.           

            Wearing a pair of cutoffs with a turquoise tunic, matching blazer, and a tam one luke warm spring afternoon, I put forth a nimble limb and rang the bell with the outer most tip of my finger pad. Rifkey must have shot off the saddle cause the door swung open faster than a French to German translator can order an elephant ear. He handed out, with his face, this grin that should be reserved only for banquet settings, if my opinion matters at all. He was dressed like a b-ball / all-star component, and challenged me to find a snag in his jersey. I told him I was in far too prudent a mood to shove my irises up near his nipples, where a snag was most likely to be. He told me to survey the back and then he’d flip it around. Still, I refused. Clicking his tongue in annoyance, he stepped back to let me pass. Truth is I don’t have the sort of a mind that can consider much about snags.

            Anton sat in front of the telly and my sister on the couch facing the wall, with her booted feet up on the coffee table. I took a seat by my sheer hearted twin and America’s Most Wanted squirted into my ears making me wonder what I ever did to deserve such a TV-loving ass-hat of a sister’s boyfriend that Anton Pavel couldn’t help but be. Rifkey bounded over the back of the couch and landed by Anton. It was like my sister and I were two eggs side by side in a carton, and the boys were two other eggs in a different carton facing another direction and so on.  That’s probably what we were if you peel back the dimensions, organized eggs. It’s probably the best we could hope for.

            “I’d like to make a toast,” Rifkey mentioned, so sister went to the kitchen and came out with three cups of white wine mixed with grapefruit juice, and one hot chocolate.

            “How are you guys doing out there tonight? I wish I had prepared something. What is there to say really about the four of us and this eye opening spring day and America’s Most Wanted and wine coolers and grapefruit juice?  Shout out to all the beautiful ladies out there who couldn’t make it today, I’m thinking of you all and only pretending to watch TV.”

            He tapped at his wooden cup with a spoon making several dull thuds.

            “Alright, alright let’s get this toast started. I sing to the remembered whispers of several shoes that walked these lands without pivot during peripheral water sheddings with the wind to their backs.”

            “With the wind to their backs.” We echoed.

            “And to the underestimated grief that can be held in a winter coat-slathered pair of arms and then thrown to the ether with one pledge or grunt from a southern beast with brows of fury that reach across an entire face, the remorseless face dash of a brutish bore that receives no mercy.”

            “No mercy received.”

            “And to these things of the earth that may bounce back each season like a whistled upon foul ball. I’m going to play some basketball later. You wanna come, Anton?”

            “With the wind to our backs,” he replied.

            “I toast to the downfall we each gather in hearts as morning dew pounces on a slick blade and of which we shoot out of our chests when we rise from bed for now and forever more. Goodbye.”

             “Goodbye.”

            “Goodbye.”

            “Goodbye.”

            We choked down our drinks, slamming our cups to the coffee table. Another episode was on the rise so I motioned my sister to join me in the porcelain sitting room, where one often sits alone, but where us ladies sometimes gather to smear blush on our cheeks or compare tampons. She side eyed my trucker arm pumps, the universal sign for “I want to talk shit about your boyfriend in the bathroom” but wouldn’t budge from the couch. So I said, “I sure am getting sleepy. Maybe someone could help me make a pillow. Maybe from extra soft touch toilet paper. From the bathroom or something.”

            Anton said, “Why don’t you put your tam to work. If there ever was a hat burley enough rock your thick skull into slumber it would be that damned tam you always got sitten around the top of your head.”

            “HAAAAA,” Rifkey blurted, not diverting his eyes from the screen.

            “Is that the most clever thing you could think to say about my tammed head? Tam rhymes with like 40 things yet you’ve never so much as made a limerick. You’re always just like, “Oh, there’s a hat on your head, it’s a tam”.

            “I’m so bored with this, you guys,” my sister mouth blinked.

            “What I’m bored of is brown tams, red tams, turquoise tams, tams always knitted, never any variety. I bet you play with that one in the bathtub, it looks so tattered. How can her cuticles breath under there?” Anton pondered out loud for all the living to hear.

            “My cuticles are barely a whisper in the dark compared to what probably goes on near and around your head,” I shot back.

            “Awe! Naw, Anton’s got a great head,” Rifkey pulled Anton’s bald ass head towards him and gave it a kiss, “Dirty but sturdy.”

            “Let’s get Taco Tundras for dinner,” my sister threw out.

            “Babe. Let’s. Just me and you.”

            “WTF I thought you were going to play basketball,” Rifkey whined.

            “Sorry, man, the only balls I’m going to play with tonight are going to be the little ball chunks of ground beef circling around with cheese and lettuce in a tight fitted shell.”

            “Daaaamn,” my cousin pouted.

            What am I supposed to eat, I wondered. But before I could even realize what it was I was wondering, the girl and the guy known as my sister and Anton had long left us bottom feeders to fend for our own lives as far as meals go, and entertainment. Je n’aime pas ca!

*

Seventy-two days later, my sister was patiently explaining the benefits of macrocarpa wood to a boy who was soon to become a man, judging by the length of his legs. We we’re sitting in a delicatessen called Wrong Way Home, and I was hard munching on a glob of paper thin shredded beef that some pair of hands smacked onto a kaiser, possibly with all their strength and stamina.

            The thing I liked about my sister’s ability to finagle wood into cabinets and signs with western sayings, was how it pulled people to us like flies to a wood expert, literally, but this boy was no fly. In fact, he was completely wingless. I guess that’s why his legs were still growing after all these years. He really needed them.

            The boy was eating beef too and when he finished his last bite he put out a finger to warn us that a wave of speech was crawling, from within him, out into the open air.

            “Wood has one enemy and one enemy only, termites.”

            My sister protested but he stuck his hand in her face, a rudeness I will never forget because I have it written in a diary I still have.

            “Say what you will about the growing strength of the sun, I cannot deny that it multiplies everyday, but I’m yet to see one scrap of wood set ablaze by our daily, glowing, fire-ball-god that whitens everything, if you’re one of those people that call nighttime ‘black’.  Now, termites, if you’ll flip to the other hand –“

            “I’m going to stop you right there, son,” a man in a blood covered apron came out from the back and firmly gripped the boy’s shoulder, “The only thing that’s growing every day here is you. The sun ain’t doing nothing it’s not done for billions of years. Ain’t that right, gentleman?” We looked around for the gentleman he spoke of but nobody was paying us any part of any day. 

            I couldn’t understand why no one would let this boy talk about termites. All I know is, since then, beef has always reminded me of the sun and visa versa. Even cold beef.

*

A few years later something happened that was mostly life shattering, I’m going to tell it quickly cause I’m in the middle of making worlds soup.  It is a story of pomp and circumstance.

            Knowing damn well what time my sister goes out to the mailbox each morning to check that numbers were still sticking on, has been cosmonaut Anton Pavel arranged a plane with a banner to fly overhead, warning of a very sharp knife in their sink water. On draining the sink, she found, lurking at the bottom, an engagement ring, sitting next to the sharpest knife known to mankind, the Alloy Titanium. Shoving the ring on her finger, she crept down the hall towards their bedroom, clutching the knife. Hot Chocolate Breath was still in bed and she wanted to surprise him as well as answer his popped question by reflecting the ring off the knife to make beautiful prisms on the walls. As she approached the door he wheeled around the corner, air plopping his thick and thieves abs into the blade.

            So my sister’s almost replied to dreams of a ceremonial binding between American land dweller and Russian moon walker, that was the pomp. And Anton, who fell forward further pushing the knife into his gut, and who lay at my sisters feet with the silver tip of the blade sticking out through his back, well, that was the circumstance.

            My sister was so upset, she was plagued by three months of goiters. She then had herself committed to a faculty of marital misfits, where women slathered in black robes gave their bodies and souls to the lord, our savior. I tried to visit often, in those early years, but all she ever wanted to do anymore was walk up and down the corridors in a single file line.

            Being that my sis up to that point paid my rent, I was forced to take a job at the candy cane factory on the outskirts of town, a factory well known for being easy to love and easy to hate. I won’t get into why, but think carbon footprint and sweet tooth.

            They started me out in the mint room and told me I had to prove myself before I could think or even dream about a cane. They said I didn’t look trustworthy.

As it turned out, I had no clue how to swirl red confections sugar with white to make a smooth patty now matter how many times I was meticulously shown each step. In retrospective, I think this was probably why they threw a sack over my head and spun me in circles. The workers took turns loading me into the back of a truck. It must have been their lunch break. Then I was driven to the other outskirts of town, to the Overton Factory. My candy cane bosses marched me up to the door, pushed me inside, and I never saw their crude baby faces again. What I did see a whole lot of after that was my neighbor Bailey, as I landed right in his good grace-anatomy arms. By that time he had become the factories head honcho. He gripped my chin and lifted it so my eyes met with his.

            “Do you remember the knowledge I bestowed upon you about cleaning out an iguana tank?” he asked.

            I did not.

            “No matter,” he said, “We have machines that do that now. What I need is someone who can clean fly and bee and ant droppings off of the machines, someone who won’t get land sick.”

            “I almost never get sick on land, “ I lied.

            And so began my 52 year employment at the Overton Insect and Reptile Droppings Cleaning Spray Factory, and counting. I would be lying if I said it hasn’t been difficult working all these years for a man that would lie about how many puppies he’s got. But us Bouillon sisters, we may have been deprived the strawberry lemonade of our forefathers, but in the end that’s what made us tough. And thirsty. And hungry. Everybody gets hungry though, so idk.

[richiedukes]

#MyLifeInTheSunshine (at Spouter's Corner, Wood Green)

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Real shame ... another black boy dies unnecessarily... smh #woodgreen #odeon (at Spouter's Corner, Wood Green)