"future shock "

Granted, I write a blog on a social network, but the intellectual property problem of social networking is that social networking has turned emotions/likes/life stories/personal narrative into the ultimate fetish commodity. Soon, with the help of bit coins, silk roads, onion-ed security footprints and fingerprint i.d. shopping, we will be able to attach a value-based number to this isolated emotional currency; there will be links to bank accounts with incremental percentage points of monetary value paid out for every like/feeling/narrative/personal story/photo/and inadvertent advertisement via trends on social networks.

the rain

People accuse me of being contrary when I say I love this weather, but I don't mind. It's not overcast, it's tropical balmy. It's soft, bunched-up, pearl grey, Maui overcast. It's not grey, it's Paris grey. It won't rain, but if it does rain it will be something soft and transparent. I've worked 12 hours in the rain, I've slept in the rain and today I don't mind the rain, because I know I can go home and put on clean, dry clothes and open the window and listen to the rain; if I choose. I may choose to go for a walk in the rain. I might enjoy getting soaking wet just because I can get dry again and it will be easy; as easy as going home to where I live, where I can afford to live, where I rent a clean, dry space all my own where I am free to be. Where I have stocked with food and blankets and bed, where I have built in space and time and my own. I don't mind the rain, because I can do all these things, and still get soaking wet and still be okay. It is just the rain. I have loved the rain since the summer we cut the hay and it was lying flat in the field to cure when it started to rain. And it rained. I remember my father coming into the kitchen and starting a fit something awful because it was raining on the hay and it was the end of the world (and it might have been for us at the time. To lose the hay crop meant we would have to buy hay and hay was expensive for all the animals and beds to feed; even I understood this as a small child and understood this import and that that was why my dad was so upset.) Still, I remember standing in the kitchen window, listening to the storm above me, staring out at the rain, and thinking, "but Daddy it's only raining." And I felt bad for the rainy day because it was so beautiful. We lived in Washington state and when it rained it rained. I remember looking out into the yard and it was so green it hurt. The apple trees, the pear tree, even the old scrappy little prune tree that was always trying to die, were green and bright and budded and bending over in the rain to accept the rain. The grass was too long and looked like a horses main, standing up in thick green tufts. The sky was heavy and leaden and dark, and in the window I could see reflected the bright, clear primary red of my favorite sweatshirt. It was like the earth was seething and breathing thick blood-dyed color. I have been in love with super saturated color ever since. And with the rain. So no. I'm not being contrary when I say I love the rain. I want to lie down in it and let it soak me to the bone until my blood threads with the trees and my skin dissolves into the dirt and I wash away from it all. I want to be like a ribbon of water threading through a river, made of rain, made of me.

the sounds in my neighborhood

Sometimes I sit down right where I am standing and listen to the sounds in my neighborhood.

A car drives by playing loud music. It’s so loud the windows on the car rattle and it sounds like the car said boom.

My mother says the music is a little too loud, but my brother says it’s just loud enough.

An airplane flies overhead and sounds like a giant bumblebee making lazy circles in the sky.

Several people are mowing their lawns. It sounds like the Christmas concert we went to in the city. My mother called that a symphony, so maybe this is a symphony of lawn mowers.

Our neighbor is running a table saw in his garage and it sounds like a lion’s roar and I imagine being a famous explorer in a far off country.

My sister says I have never heard a lion roar so how do I know if that is true, but my mother says maybe I hear what I hear and my sister hears what she hears and that is okay.

A truck drives by after making deliveries to the market on the corner and it sounds like its climbing stairs as it drives passed our house.

My father says the driver is “shifting gears” when the engine makes that sound.

One of my favorite sounds is the sound of wind rustling through the trees. It is a quiet sound and easy to miss. My grandmother says it is a lullaby the trees sing to the birds. She puts her arm around me and kisses my forehead when she says this.

The sun is hot on top of my head and even the heat seems to have a shimmering kind of sound. I can’t explain this sound, you will have to listen for it yourself.

It’s easy. You just sit down right where you are standing and listen to the sounds in your neighborhood.

What are the sounds you hear?

letter from my father

excerpt from a letter from my father Herb Cargill, one of the best story teller's I have ever known, save my brother Matthew.

Richard Blake, 1982 Big Sky Magic Enterprises

"I will try to put yesterdays thoughts into words for today.    In one of the pictures with Kent's car, I referred to doing the Coho repair with the chain and the tractor.     To explain the Coho fix I will tell another story.     Jim O. lived at Madrona Beach on Camano for many years.     There was a fellow, Rick F. that lived a few house's from Jim and Kathleen.      When his girl friend, Marla, had enough of his drinking she would kick him out of their house.    Rick would move to living under an overturned boat near what was once the yacht club building on the beach.  

Jim called him the resident troll of Camano Island.    Rick was brought to the Stanwood AA meeting one night by his friend Larry H.    Jim and I decided Rick would be a good project for us.    So we started a 30 day meeting run.    Either Jim or I and sometimes both of us would take Rick to a meeting each day.    Something happened around 30 days and neither Jim or I could take him to a meeting and Rick got drunk.     He then told Jim he was not going to meetings any more but would stay sober fishing in Puget Sound.    That is when Jim nicknamed him Coho.    He can stay sober fishing for Silver Salmon.  

Well his act had cleared up a little so Marla let him  back in the house.    About this time is when Rhoda and I moved to Darrington so I was not very close to take him to meetings everyday.     One day Coho showed up at our house in Darrington.    Rhoda was home from work that day and told me when I got home    She said that Coho asked her to keep his money so he wouldn't loose it and borrowed some toilet paper and coffee..   He was going to camp out near the road somewhere up the mountain above our place.   I got angry and told her if he was drinking, which he was, to shoot him if he shows up again.    He is responsible for his money and we are not his banker.    

The next day  I was home and not a work day.    Coho shows up in the afternoon in his pickup with the bumper and fender mashed against the front wheel.    He can't steer it very well after driving into a tree somewhere.     I have no idea how he got down the road back to our place.   But here he was sitting in our driveway telling us he was not able to drive it and was going to camp at our house.    I told him he was not welcome if he was drinking.   If he was sober I would walk with him but not drunk.   

So Mark and I got the tractor and hooked the same chain to the bumper.   I was not too gentle and rather yanked the bumper away from the wheel.    We gave him his money and I I told him to get going.     We were  watching him back out of the driveway and a radiator hose burst.    Coho was all smiles as he was sure he was now able to stay at our place.     I told him it did not require a new hose and I could fix this one.      I found a plastic water pipe connector in my gravity water system parts supply bag.    I cut the radiator hose cleanly at the break and put the connector into the hose and clamped it in place with two hose clamps.    We all waved goodby again and he left.   

As a foot note, Coho was found dead in his pickup a few months later on the other side of the valley on Squire Creek.   The lone survivor was Whiskey, his three-legged dog.   Coho had shot him many years before in a blackout and the leg had not been able to be saved.    Coho was 42 years old and beat a doctor's admonishment that if he did not stop drinking he would die before he was 40.    He beat it by 2 years.    My hope is someday when I walk on I will find Coho and give him that big hug he deserved that I never gave him.

So Coho is firmly embedded in our lives and the Coho fix is used in respect for him.   He brings smiles to my face.   Jim and I have some stories to tell and Jim in particular as he was just a few houses away.    Coho is one of those people who didn't die sober but maybe left me more memories than some  that did die sober.   When I try to figure it all out it just gets more confusing.    So I thank God for all the people who have walked on the trail with me..."

the coho repair

water/books

“In the toils of orgasm—she said, she said—she’d be whelmed in a warm green sea though which, dulled by the murk of it, pass a series of small suns like the footlights of a revolving stage, an electric carousel wheeling in a green ether. Envy’s color is the color of her pleasuring, and what is the color of grief? Is it black as they say? And anger always red? The color of that sad share of ennui called blue is blue but blue unlike the sky or sea, a bitter blue, rue-tinged, discolored at the edges. The color of a blind man’s noon is white, and is his nighttime too? And does he feel it with his skin like a fish? Does he have blues, are they bridal and serene, or yellows, sunlike or ruinous, does he remember? Neural colors like the fleeting tones of dreams. The color of life is water.”

Suttree, Cormac McCarthy

new art/old soul/wild at heart

new work available by the artist:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Terroirista?ref=hdr_shop_menu

walking and talking/cities at night

I was doing the laundry last night on a busy little-restaurants, side street close to home, walking the block back from my car and looking in on nail salons and quick and spicy Chinese, long and slow Italian cafes, the cigar shop, the antique store (bright by day and dark by night), frozen yogurt, the barber shop and the liquor store who lost its license, with my shoulder leaning against the wall and headphones on. I don't usually listen to music at night when I'm doing the laundry, but it was a gentle night and it was nice to have a sound track and the street reminded me of favorite cities.

There is no greater tourist attraction (if you ask me) than a long walk with a good friend through a night-time city. Even if the city is not much more than a long block, on a short night, at the end of a busy week, there is just enough neon to spark the open doorways in my mind and remind me how much I love the city and maybe it's time to go home. Not that I'm from the city, but I'm no longer from the country.

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