The HOWLING

Half of me HOWLS for what I have Lost. Half of me WEEPS for what I have Gained.

Put away your Trinkets and BELIEFS. They won’t Save me.

I have seen Beyond the “TRUTH” you seek. It is the Dream that fills me Tonight.

Put away your Weapons and REVULSION. They cannot touch me NOW!

Your sense and logic hold no sway over me TONIGHT!

Wrestle the Stars, Follow the Moon, till Daylight drives me back.

Till then, cower in your safety. WEEP for what I have Lost.

My BLOOD is as good as yours. The taste of it in my mouth gives me STRENGTH!

HOWL in terror to know MY pain. BAY at the MOON to know my Power.

Who among you can follow me? EH?! Who among you could stand to have your entire being DISSOLVED into a new form!

The pain of it would make you WEEP! But I Run with the Stars. I was ready when it came for ME. Now, it gives me STRENGTH!

Hide from the NIGHT, if it gives you Courage. Daylight is no respite from Fear.

Your “LIGHT” has no POWER over me ANYMORE!

I will dwell in the DREAM, and Cherish the Night.

 

It’s the only metaphor that even comes close….

 

The WEEPING

Purple Thistles

I’ve been watching this thistle for the last couple weeks. After I’m done taking pictures for the shelter, I take my dog, Amber, on the farm walk. This bush is in the pen that holds the Pot Bellied Pigs. If I had a choice between a thistle and pig chow… if I were a pig, that is, I’d go for the pig chow any day. Last week, the blooms were just opening. Today, it’s all Prickly Purple

Rubbing Shoulders with the Stars

http://people.uleth.ca/~little/PE2110/funcanatomy/2back%20muscle.jpg

 

I like giving backrubs. It’s an essential part of a relationship for me. It’s a way of showing affection that appeals to me. It implies trust, it explicifies trust (not a real word). Trust is what I like about relationships.

So, I’ve had a lot of time to think and read these past few years. Let me share some backrub theory with you. First, massage is about finding muscles. You don’t have to memorize muscle groups or acupuncture points. Massage is something you can literally feel your way through. The goal is to relax. While massaging, seek out tense muscles. Keep moving your area of focus. Be aware of the response you’re getting from your subject. Look for signs that you’ve found a rewarding spot. Maybe a shoulder blade or a hard rub in the small of the back. This becomes your home base. Radiate kneading patterns out from that spot. The spot will move as your subject relaxes, so don’t spend more than a little time in one area.

Shoulders are a good place to start because several muscle groups cross there. Don’t impose your massage on the recipient, though. Your goal is to find the tense muscles in their back. Massaging one area relaxes the local muscles. Another area will tense up. You’re searching for those tense areas. As you search, there are some areas that deserve repeated attention.

Neck: The back of the neck is an area of concentrated nerves and muscles. Let your shoulder massage drift up to the base of the skull and back down again. The muscles in the back of the neck work all day holding our heads up. We’re used to them being tense. The relief of loosening those muscles makes the scalp rub a tingling crescendo. There are a lot of nerves in the scalp. A few brisk fingertip scratches can light up a scalp tingle. Besides, you get to run your fingers through her hair, too

Lower Back: The small of the back holds a large cluster of nerves. These are the nerves that do the heavy lifting of moving your legs. It is also the area where the pelvis meets the spine. Any signal going up or down has to pass through an area accessible to prodding fingers. Follow the connections outwards from that central point. Don’t overdue the spine tingle (running your finger up the back). Instead, try a kneading pattern up the spine. Use the palm of your hand, or a knuckle. The higher up the back you go, the more ticklish the sides are, so narrow your kneading as you go up. Tickling is for later.

Arms: The elbow and wrist are intersections of muscles and nerves. Don’t move to the arms until the back is well relaxed. You want to radiate your massage outwards from the person’s centerline. Allow your shoulder kneading to work outwards, pausing at the shoulder joint. I like to concentrate on one side at a time. As you move down to the Biceps/Triceps area, hold each muscle in a hand. Don’t stick your thumb in her armpit. Massage rhythmically, then opposite. Keep alternating. For limbs, range of motion becomes part of the massage. Massage from different angles. As her arm goes through it’s range, different muscles will tense and relax. Keep coming back to the same places at different positions. For example: the Bicep is most relaxed with the elbow at 90 degrees. Keep massaging as you extend the arm and bring it back up towards the shoulder.

When you come to the wrist, you’ve reached the frets of the arm guitar. Take the wrist between your thumb and forefinger and rock her hand back and forth and around and round. Now put your thumb in her palm and rub. Don’t rub the back of the hand. It’s better to use a finger tapping there. Go right out each little piggy until you get to market.

Legs: Legs and arms follow a lot of the same rules. Don’t rub the top of the foot, tap. Use more pressure on the sole of the foot, like you would on the palm. The back of the knee, the inside of the elbow, these are good places to massage as you lightly push and pull. Most people are more comfortable if you approach the buttocks from above rather than from the legs. Draw an imaginary miniskirt line on the thighs, and stay south of there. When you’re done, just jump back to one of the good spots on her back that you found earlier. Otherwise, you’re wandering into erotic massage, which a subject for another day.

I suppose I should put a disclaimer here. I’m not a licensed masseur, nor have I studied massage in any formal way. I’ve never hurt anyone, because I don’t forget that massage is intended to relax both participants.

Wasp’s Nest

Well, look who’s making a new home in my garage. I think it may be my fault. I’m not what you would call a diligent grounds keeper. About half of my back yard is made up of clovers. Less mowing means more flowering clovers, which could mean a wasp’s nest in my garage. However they got there, they’re not very welcome. Right now, I’m planning on waiting until winter to take them out. that way, the wasps will be dormant, and I may just get a whole wasp’s nest out of this.

Of course, if they decide to start hassling me, I’ll have to use my stockpile of wmds on them.

Climate Change

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

I’m not writing this because of the many red and white places on the weather map.

Climate Change seems to have an inherent controversy to it. The premise is that we’re doing something wrong. That’s a hard pill for anyone to swallow, let alone a planet full of greedy humans. It’s the panic and denial of an auto accident spread out over three generations.

There is more CO2 in our atmosphere now than at any other point in known Earth history.  (all right, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea) We know this by studying ice samples from glaciers. Glaciers form through years of snowfall compacting into a permanent sheet. Drilling an ice core exposes the previous years’ snowfall like tree rings. Measuring the CO2 in each ring gives us an idea of how much CO2 was in the atmosphere when that snow fell. The closer you get to the surface… the more recent the snowfall… the more CO2 there is in the samples.

From our study of Venus, we know what unrestrained CO2 levels are capable of doing to a planet. We are many, many years away from Venus’ fate. Unfortunately, humans can’t tolerate environmental conditions outside a relatively narrow band. We rely on our planet to maintain a rather precise balance of temperature and weather for our survival. A climate change that the planet might not even “notice” could change our habitat profoundly. The planet doesn’t care if the water is frozen on the poles or liquid in the oceans. We do.

Say for a moment… assume the deniers are correct. Humans are not responsible for global Climate Change. We know that CO2 is rising. We know that our activities produce a lot of CO2. We know that CO2 in a planet’s atmosphere heats up the surface of that planet. We know that humans can’t tolerate large changes in the planet’s surface temperature. We can’t even tolerate large storms produced by that atmosphere. (a cooler atmosphere means a cooler ocean, which means less severe storms)

It seems obvious to me that humans should be concerned about climate issues to the point of action. Reducing our emissions of greenhouse gasses is prudent, even if you have to tell yourself that we’re just offsetting a natural rise in CO2 levels.

There are things that we can do to make our planet more habitable. Maybe, we could even make it more comfortable. Climate Change doesn’t have to be all about avoiding disaster. The lessons we learn in the next couple generations will most likely teach us how to control our planet’s weather to our benefit and pleasure. It’s just my bad luck that I was born now. Yours too. What should we do about it?

Holding Pattern

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=200543183&size=l

I’m waiting right now. Waiting to get my marbles back. I’ve been waiting for almost a week now. There are stories and ideas running through my mind, but none of them have really solidified yet. Did you know that sometimes they make marbles by growing them? Kind of like a candle or a crystal.

How I met my High School girlfriend…

A scene in the middle of my short story…

Cleaning up an historical research project on hemlock Lake, NY. …

A rant about Citibank selling their upstate NY branches to M&T…

The Snipe hunt i went on when I was 12, and the lasting repercussions of learning there’s no bird in the pillowcase.

Researching the “tangent” hits that blogs get. My blog is very popular with people trying to find out how to tie a Monkey’s Fist. go figure.

There are a few others that haven’t floated high enough to get regular attention, so I’m waiting for the waiting to start on those. Something about quantum mechanics is out there, but everyone’s eyes glaze over when I bring it up. Glaze over like marbles when they’re being made.

Turning to Twitch

Original

Twitch’s Fortress of Solitude

I got Twitch one week after my apartment complex started allowing us to keep cats. It took me about 2 months to name her. After trying out a dozen names, I settled on Esmeralda, Mel. One of the people I can’t say no to suggested it, and I went along. It didn’t seem to fit her personality, though.
The one thing that dominated the first two months of Twitch’s stay with me was absence. When I opened the pet carrier, she shot out of the room and hid. For 2 weeks I didn’t see that cat. The food kept disappearing, so i figured she was still in the apartment. Her hiding spot was buried under some boxes in my closet. Whenever I had to go into the closet, I’d get that angry cat sound.

Slowly, her view of me mellowed from Kraken to Godzilla to Cujo. I started to see quick glimpses of her. At the 1 month point, I had it where I could pet her if I didn’t move too fast or look right at her. bent over at an uncomfortable angle, I could only scratch her ears for a minute or two before some part of me would start protesting. One twitch in my leg, and the cat would fly off into the bedroom.

That’s what I muttered to myself while rubbing the twitch out of my leg. Twitchtwitchstupidcattwitch. And what do you know? One time, she came back for another scratch behind the ears.

Over the years, She’s mellowed out considerably. she’ll jump in my lap now. She will even stand up, nose to nose, with the dog. Things have changed quite a bit for Twitch over the last 10 years.

Eye on Amber

Original
This is my dog, Amber. She’s German Shepard, Black Lab, and Pointer. She has Pannus, a genetic disease that she probably got through her German Shepard part. It causes lessions to appear on her eyes. She’s lost about 50% of her sight. She bumps into things and people whenever I take her to a new place. When she gets excited, she Spins. She jumps and does a 360 (slowly becoming a 280) She can still jump high enough that her head is higher than mine.

Original
This is Amber pretending to look sorry for the stain on my new carpet.

Here is some more about Amber

Necessary Secrets

Do you have something that has never passed your lips?  Of course you do.  So do I.  It’s the unwritten, unspoken definition of “Personal”.  Somewhere in the labyrinth of our experiences, there are things that we’ll never talk about with anyone.

That’s not to say that necessary secrets stay secret forever.  I’ve shared one or two with people over the years.  Sometimes, revealing a layer of my self opens a gate somewhere, and that topic slowly loses its taboo.  Other times, that vital admission drives the pain deep.

Just now, I’ve thought of one.  It shames me even to think of it.

It’s not just bad things, though.  Ah, I’ve thought of another one.  HeHe, no way I’m writing that one down

When I began, I thought that there were perhaps one or two things that I needed to keep in my own space.  Now, it seems that there may be more than I thought… or would like to admit.  I’m an open person, so I have to assume that I have fewer necessary secrets than most people.  Still seems like I have too many.

Rochester Redwings

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jheaney1/sets/72157594212181597/

AAA baseball. with the majors in a permanent rutt, you can’t beat the good times at a small market game. Especially when Microtech picks up the tab for the skybox, dinner, drinks, et al.