Duh

I know I’ve been busy. I know I haven’t been posting regularly. I know I haven’t been visiting other people’s blogs.

Still, even when I do post regularly, visit other people’s blogs, and generally be a good social member of the blogosphere, it is only old friends, and a few newer ones, who drop by and visit.

I was thinking about that as I was falling asleep last night when I had an “Ahah” moment. I had a vague memory of something I had done when I set up this blog. Fortunately, I stayed in bed and got a good night’s sleep, but after running around and doing the days deeds, I checked my blog settings and there it was.

I had made my blog invisible to search engines and the internet in general. It was only available to people through WordPress.

Duh.

While I have found most of the people I visit through WordPress’ various tools, particularly the Tag Surfer, I have also made a lot of contacts who came in through search engines. When I actually used to pay attention to the number of hits I was getting, and would see where they were coming from, more than half were from search engine queries.

I had made myself invisible to search engines and wondered why people weren’t just dropping by. I think the count of new strangers on this blog is 1. That’s not an el, or an ai. That’s a one.

So I just changed my privacy settings.

Now I have to start writing again.

Just as soon as I finish unpacking the two boxes that belong in the bathrooms, and glue 15′ of synthetic lawn to the concrete pad that passes for a back yard at my new house. I’ve been living here with my poor dog for one month and two days, and she has a total of about 10 unpaved sq.ft. out back on which to do her business. She’s pretty disgusted with me, and takes every opportunity to go out front with me.

So I bought a strip of synthetic lawn, like most football fields are made of these days, and I’m finally going to glue it to the pavement tomorrow. I hope it looks enough like lawn that her years of potty training and revulsion at the thought of using a carpet or rug do not cause some sort of mental misfire. In her, not in me. I have plenty of my own, thank you.

Let’s see. Books are unpacked, computer is set up, TV and stereo are hooked up (and even interconnected). All but two boxes are unpacked except those that remain in the garage and those containing things that need to be hung on the walls or otherwise artfully displayed by my wife.

Both toilets now work, as do the shower heads. The hot water heater has been replaced, as has the heating and air-conditioning thermostat.

I even, finally, threw out my old 17″ CRT monitor. My gawd that thing was heavy! i could barely wheel the dumpster to the curb once it was in it.

Yep. Once the dog’s potty is laid and she’s convinced that it really is where she is supposed to go, we will be officially moved in to our new little tiny house in our little tiny condo community, where everyone is either old or disabled and retired, or young and living in their starter home with one or two little kids.

I hope my dog likes her new potty as much as I like mine.

The Hidden

I wonder why you never cried,
The day you learned that I had died.
The secrets we together kept,
Demanded that you should have wept.

I hung around to spy, you see,
And some there were with hidden glee,
But though I watched you quite awhile,
I saw no tears, no frown, no smile.

Anthem

We do not yield because we are weak,
but because we are kind.

We drive our lives because of our hearts,
our weapon is our Mind.

If we are used it’s by our own choice,
not by another’s will.

It’s through our love that others are taught,
many ways not to kill.

Humility, kindness and love,
may not carry the day,

But if paradise is to come,
we must live the meek way.

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I had a wonderful poem come into my head today. The words hung there, begging to be written. They were so strong, so true, so right, that I knew I could put off writing them down. Besides, I was starving, and I had just sat down in front of a plate with three slices of pizza.

I wonder what that poem was.

That’s why I write poetry in a composition book, instead of at the computer. I type it in after the fact, and clean it up a little.

After I ate, I was disheartened that I had lost this wonderful poem. While I was staring sadly at myself in the mirror, my toothbrush gradually lost power and gave out. I had unplugged it earlier in the day and forgot to plug it back in. I think that’s the first time that has happened in the eight years or so I’ve owned this electric toothbrush.

As I rinsed and spat, I was feeling really quite all right with the world. I was well fed. The pizza was excellent. I’m getting settled into my new home. I bought a new coffee pot today because my old one sprang a leak out the bottom this morning. Every little negative seems to have a counterbalancing success these days.

As if to compensate me for the loss of my wonderful poem, my muse gave me this one as a consolation prize.

A Moving Experience

It’s 5  minutes until my dog will start to get snippy about me breaking my promise (again) about being in bed by 11:00. So I’ll keep this short.

I’ve sold my house and moved to one half as big. It’s in a cute little neighborhood of tiny houses that is surrounded by first, apartment buildings, and then commercial zones. I’m less than a half mile from a 45 mph boulevard on which everyone drives 55 (at least), yet it is quiet as the country.

They are small, inexpensive houses, so what I have seen of the neighborhood indicates that it’s a mixture of retirees, like me, and young families, in their starter home. There are lots of children, and no sidewalks, so I have to remember to drive at 15 mph once I’m in here. It’s a condominium community, so the lot sizes can be small. My lot is 0.04 acres, but my house is on its own lot. I don’t share any walls with anyone else.

My previous house had 0.25 acres, and I thought that was too little.

There are a lot of dogs, probably more dogs that I’ve ever seen in a neighborhood before. Despite the city leash laws people let them wander around unleashed, but they stay with them.

The amazing thing is that the dogs are so quiet. I rarely hear one bark. When they do, it’s because somebody is running a lawn mower or a leaf blower or something that I would like to bark at.

My water heater was broken, so I took a few cold showers. The thermostat for the heat pump heating and air-conditioning system was broken. Both of those were fixed today.

There are boxes everywhere. I sprayed pledge and dusted the bookcases today, so I can start unpacking my books. Once that is done, I will feel at home.

I got my DSL hooked up today, too. I’ve been limping along on free NetZero for a week and a half. Ugh! Ran out of my ten free minutes this morning. DSL came on at 4:00 this evening.

Also at 5:00 I saw my doctor and got some steroid injections in my spine’s L4 facets. I didn’t expect quick relief, but it’s already helped a lot.

I’m done in. It’s time to ask for help. A friend of my wife’s has volunteered to come over and do whatever is necessary to get me moved in. If I could get the kitchen cabinets cleaned and the shelfs lined so I can unpack the kitchen my life will be complete.

Well, that and getting the leaky toilet re-sealed.

Life goes on, and so do I. Just before I started the move, my muse began to speak to me again. I had no idea how badly I had missed that until it came back. It’s like I had lost a sense but couldn’t remember what it was.

I’m looking forward to letting her speak through me to you.

Soul Mates

If Suicide would be my bride,
Would you join us at the wedding?
We’ll look so sweet in linen sheets,
Decked out in our marraige bedding.

There’ll be no glare from frozen stares,
I can finally stop forgetting.
No more cries under sunny skies,
When we share that last bloodletting.

What sweet relief from lives of grief,
That have made none of us merry.
The wild dogs bark within the dark,
As we ride the final ferry.

God’s Breath

God’s breath surrounds us day and night,
But buffered by his angel’s wings,
Else we could not withstand the might,
Of which the gentle angel sings.

If simple breath can rock my life,
Without the aid of divine beings,
Would there be terror, fear and strife,
Were God to hum, disturbing things?

Perhaps we should ourselves reflect,
And listen for His quiet voice.
Were God to speak we might reject,
Through quiet listening we rejoice.
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Here I go again. Whee does this shit come from?

I don’t believe in God. I like to think that I live in a world of small gods, who guard the hearth and help the traffic lights stay green. I feel surrounded by the touch of these small gods, who caress my life and soothe my dreams. They ease me gently through the day, and  make sense of senseless complexity.

Yet, I sit down to write and out pops this Judeo-Christian symbolism.

Is it just easier to do than to try to write the way I see the world?

Adios A La Casa

I always have been homeless,
But always had a house.
One time I was deluded,
Confused “home” with my spouse.

The house that I have dwelt in,
For this past half-decade,
Surely is the nicest place,
In which my bed has laid.

These same five years of sorrow,
Rank worst of all my life.
I’m leaving it all by myself,
I moved here with my wife.

My goals in life were simple -
To own our house outright.
So we could age together,
In dusk’s declining light.

Our household now is broken.
My life is lived in pain.
The things in life I lived for,
Are gone - no hope, no gain.
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I took my dog over to see the new place yesterday. It’s about half as big as the current one. It has two bedrooms.  I’m going to make the bigger of the two into my office. The bedroom is going to look awfully squeezed.

There is a fenced in back yard, but for some reason the previous owners paved the entire area in concrete. The lot is a whole 0.04 acres.

My dog was really excited. She ran all around the house, through every room, several times. Then we went outside. I showed her the four patches of ground that have bushes growing out of them and asked her if she could pee anywhere back there. So she ran inside and peed in the bedroom.

Dogs are not subtle.

Rather than hiring somebody to jackhammer our enough concrete to put in a lawn, I’m planning on buying synthetic grass (the original version of which was called AstroTurf). The stuff they make now is pretty realistic, although green lawn in January doesn’t pass the realism test very well.

The problem is that these are designed to replace grass and are supposed to have a couple of inches of gravel with a couple of inches of sand or rubber rip-rap on top of that, so you have drainage and a ground-like surface.

I’ve read on-line that people use this for dogs in places like dog day-care centers, but I haven’t found out how you attach it. I assume you seal the concrete. You don’t need drainage and you don’t want the dog’s urine soaking into the concrete.

Maybe outdoor carpet glue will do the job. I just googled it and it probably won’t. It’s designed for outdoor carpet, which is suitable for something that looks kind of like putting-green grass, but doesn’t look like real grass.

Synthetic grass looks about as much like grass as a really high-quality artificial Christmas tree looks like a real tree. If you are more than five feet away, only the lack of tree odor gives it away.

I can’t believe how much effort I put into making my dog happy. Truthfully, this whole synthetic grass thing is really for me. My dog was potty trained very well, but she’s had a dog door to come and go as she pleases for five years now. She’s forgotten how to signal me that she needs to go outside, and I’ve forgotten what the signal looks like when she tries to make it.

We’ll muddle through. We always do. With a big-screen TV and high-speed Internet, who cares if the house smells like dog piss?

Not My Words

The words I write want to be said.
I don’t seek them; they just are there.
My work is but to quickly build,
A scaffold framework for them where,
They can safely be supported.
Then I can rest, lean back and stare,
Amazed that they do not collapse,
As I do, in my solid chair,
And wait for the next stack of verse,
To organize and place with care.

October 14, 2006

Wake Up!

There was a man, a quiet man,
a man of peace, I’m told.
He held that all life’s riches,
had naught to do with gold.
He wandered ’round the streets of town,
and spoke to everyone.
“Wake up!” is what he said to them.
They laughed with him in fun.

He didn’t stop; he had a goal.
He kept it on a list.
He thought the world could be changed,
if he did but persist.
Clipboard in hand he’d find a man,
And check a little mark.
“Wake up!” is what he always said,
then leave them in the dark.

This man went on for many years,
he was our small town’s clown.
My daughter asked about him once,
I said he’d been around.
She watched while everyone ignored,
the things this strange man did.
“Wake up!” she’d tell me as a joke,
when I ignored my kid.

The quiet man has long passed on,
I wonder how he fared.
Some thought that he had failed in life,
but I was glad he dared.
My daughter’s grown and now she too,
has kids to call her own.
“Wake up!” she always says to them,
“Before you’ve gone and grown.”

November 3, 2006

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This is an “old” poem of mine, written a whole year and five months ago. That was also two blogs ago. Since I’m otherwise occupied lately, I thought I’d post some of my favorites. They are not necessarily my best, but they are my favorites. The distinction, of course, is in the mind of the beholder, and it’s my mind I’m beholding.

Shorebound

I hit a rock,
I’ve run aground,
I lost my way,
Forgot to sound.

The strangest thing,
about it all,
Is that I stand,
I did not fall.

In fact I kind,
Of like this pace,
I could just stare,
Off into space.

Sometimes it takes,
A little wreck,
To let us know,
Just why we trek.