Ride a Wild Wind

We had borscht for dinner last night. Ms Wonder said it was beet and sweet potato soup but I've lived in the vicinity of this old Russian soul long enough to recognize her MO. It may have had lentils and chickpeas mixed in with the cabbage and other members of the veggie kingdom but that was all subterfuge and misdirection. It was borscht alright. 

I don't blame the borscht for my sleepless night. I was already feeling the familiar sense of impending doom way before dinner. It was a feeling much like that felt by victims of lightning strikes just before the psychedelic brain waves. I haven't made a study of lightning strick victims but I've heard that such a feeling is common and I have no doubt that it's true.

"Something wrong?" asked the Wonder when I entered the boudoir amidst a tidal wave of cats.

"You need to ask, do you?"

"Qigong exam?" she said.

"No, not that," I said, "it's something that Amy Normal was talking about yesterday in Native Grounds. Vampire cats."

"Is that the band that covered that old Bob Dylan song? What is it, rainy day something?"

"No, not a musical group; actual furry cats but living an alternative lifestyle of vampires. Vampire cats! And what she said about them gave me quite a start."

"I wouldn't worry about it," she said. "Amy has a rich, varied, and vivid imagination."

"When you say Amy, are referring to Amy Normal, Native Grounds barista and backup mistress of the greater Durham night, or do you mean the little princess that lives in my head?"

"I'm certain of it," she said, leaving me to guess the answer to my question. "Still, even though we know it's only an Amy thing, it couldn't have been pleasant for you to hear it. Poor baby."

I didn't like that last part--the bit about the baby but I let it go because this Wonder is a master of diversion and subterfuge.

"Oh, I took it in stride," I said, which wasn't exactly the case but one doesn't like to look weak when discussing life's slings and arrows with these Helen of Troy types.

"Wore the coat loosely?" she said.

"Like Peter Rabbit," I said.

"You made your escape?"

"A strategic retreat," I said, "following the example set by Napoleon."

"Ah," she said, "perfect analogy. You refer to Napoleon leaving Moscow."

"How do you mean?" I said, not getting the drift.

"Well," she said. "he had to steal a sleigh, commandeer a team of horses, and then hightail it through the snow-covered countryside in the dark of night with the Russian cavalry on his trail. He couldn't have enjoyed that either, now could he?"

"No, I suppose not," I said wondering where she was going with the Russian motif.

Ms Wonder often speaks the soothing word in season and by the time she finished the history lesson, I was feeling much better.  

Leaving the stable in the company of Wynd Spirt and Quinn, I was singing along with the Andrews Sisters to their signature song, 'Hold Tight.' Princess Amy doesn't have a chance of keeping the mood in the lower registers when singing a song, which is amazingly subtitled, 'Want Some Seafood, Momma?' 

Little wonder that all things seemed to be coming up roses.

As I listened to the tunes, I felt an intense pang of joy but, with a little investigation, determined that it was only hypomania and no need to redecorate the house or change the wardrobe. 

By the time I entered Native Grounds, the blue bird was perched on my shoulder singing, if I remember correctly, an old Italian folk song.

 It's at times like these that I pity the people who don't want to ride a wild wind or to dance with the devil on a Saturday night. All they want is a careful garden that blossoms and withers according to season. But I'm not included in their number. 

No, the Genome is bent in a different direction. I like the storms that sweep away the everyday and get something new started. Makes me feel in touch with something greater than myself. Sooner or later, no matter how chaotic the present moment, Reason will return to her throne and all will be right with the world again.

Sometimes the best thing one can do is hold tight and wait for the gale to peter out. 

Now I know what you're thinking. What's all this got to do with vampire cats? Nothing. But what's it matter? The point is that we can never know where life is headed and we aren't in control of outcomes. Instead of fretting about; better to let be what will be. Que sera sera and all that.

No Place Like Home

I woke this morning to that old familiar feeling of fingers walking up the thigh. You probably know the feeling I mean. My first thought, as I lay there underneath the blanket, was that if fingers are ankling up the leg, then the hand doing the walking belongs to the ghost that resides on the third floor of the Inn of the Three Sisters in the Genome ancestral home in Pittsboro. 

If you're not familiar with Pittsboro, it's the village that lies beside the Haw River south of Chapel Hill and is not to be confused with Saxapahaw, which also lies beside the Haw River. Easy to tell them apart; they're spelled differently.

Gene Jirlds Copyright 2000 - 2024

But I've jumped the rails again. The topic is the ghost that's tickling my thigh. To face this ghost, as you may recall from an earlier post, requires a steel resolve if that's the term. But resolve isn't always abundant and it's been in short supply in recent days. I took a moment to breathe deeply and to muster the will. 

Be still, I said to Princess Amy, who you probably know as that almond-shaped cluster of gray cells sitting on her throne in the middle of my brain. She's fond of stamping her foot and yelling, Off with their heads! or alternatively, Run for your life! I believe Napoleon had the same temperament.

As I lay in bed, taking my moment, I happened to remember an old saw I heard somewhere--it may belong to Ms. Wonder. The gag I mention goes something like this (I paraphrase, of course): There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Well, you know how we Genomes are; men of action! I took that tide at the flood and threw back the duvet ready to claim the pot of gold or whatever it was the man had in mind.

Well, imagine my surprise, to discover not a pot of gold and not a ghost. It was Abbie Hoffman, the white-gloved assassin, walking up my leg and I was not in Pittsboro but back home in Durham! And Durham is a good place to be. All's well that ends well and all that.

Now, I would be misleading my public if I said that the prospects of late have been more than bleak. The birds have been singing out of tune and I'm pretty sure I overheard the bluebird talking about cashing in her chips and retiring to Miami. 

But today is different, which isn't surprising because nothing is permanent, as the man said.  Was it the Buddha or Shakespeare? I get them confused. But surely it was one of the other. They seem to be responsible for everything that's worth repeating. Have you noticed?

Wen, the Eternally Surprised, my once and future martial arts master, taught me that life comes hard and fast and that the prudent person is ready for anything. How to be ready he never said exactly but I gathered that it required acceptance rather than resistance.

Though things came that close to falling apart over the last few days, the flame of fierce qigong never died and I was able to extricate myself from the looney bin that is my limbic system without a stain on my character. Almost no stain. Very little stain. No stains that won't come out in the wash.

Where once the birds seemed to be in an unending argument, today they sing as though spring were just around the corner. It's a positive frame of mind and it's contagious. I share that positive outlook today and it's due in no small part to paying attention to those birds. Master Wen might say it's due to simply paying attention--period.

Whatever the cause of my new attitude. I'm not questioning it. I'm just happy that knotted sheets didn't enter into it. I must give Ms Wonder credit for helping to clean my mental windows so that I could see more clearly. That's all I'm going to say about it for now.

I will say that it's good to be home again. There's no place like it.

Princess Amy Again

Princess Amy is the personification of a little group of gray cells in brain, called the limbic system. Sometimes it's called that. At other times, it's called the lizard brain. It's made up of the hippocampus, the amygdala, and a few other odds and ends, but we won't let that stop us.

This limbic system is responsible for extreme emotions. The amygdala in the Genome's brain--my brain--is a species of drama queen. She has a mercurial temperament. Ekaterina, who knows the Genome best, describes metaphorically, but she it's a derogatory reference to the mental ability of bats, which I consider to be pejorative and will give a miss.

This Princess Amy gets steamed up anytime things don't go her way and she can escalate from tepid to incandescent in an instant. Since she is my amygdala, it follows that when she goes ballistic then I'm not far behind. If I pay close attention, I can interrupt her tantrums before they reach the tipping point. When left unchecked, she makes me feel a toy rat in the jaws of a her labrador puppy.

Yesterday Ekaterina, that daughter of the Winter Palace, suggested that I confront Princess Amy about her latest vexation. You will recall, the princess was showcasing an old movie-in-the-mind staring that damned sweater I received at the corporate Christmas party in 2008 when I was expecting--no, when I deserved--a big bonus check.

"Tax her heavily," were her words.

"Tax her?" I said, and I thought it weak of the Wonder to use the common speech just because April 15 is coming soon.

"Yes," she said, "look her squarely in the eye and tax her with her crime."

"Ah," I said, suddenly getting the gist of her words, "I'll do it right now."

"I'll come with you," she said.

"Where's my hat?" I said.

"You don't need a hat to tax a fiend about cashmere sweaters," she said. This Ekaterina is well versed in the manners and rules of good society. I was surprised, though, to hear the cashmere motif in her comments and I remember wondering where she could have learned about it. I usually leave that unnecessary detail out of the story for I feel that it unreasonably weakens the justification for my resentment.

I felt that resentment rising now. as I drew myself up and stared haughtily into a passing mirror, which proved to be the very place to direct the gaze when addressing a little group of brain cells in the middle of my head.

"Amy," I said, "your sins have found you out and don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You have guilt written all over your face."

"If it is a face," said Ekaterina.

"Think before you speak, Amy," I said, "choose your words very, very carefully."

"Why think? Why careful?" asked Ekaterina.

"You have me there," I admitted, "it's something that a policeman once said to me and it affected me deeply. I thought it might have that same effect on Amy."

"Tax her about that sweater," Ekaterina said.

"Amy!" I said, "you almond headed, gargoyle from hell, what about that sweater?"

"Don't overdo it," advised Ekaterina.

"I've always known you were mad as a coot," I said getting into the rhythm of the thing and feeling that it was going very well.

"Coot?" said Ekaterina.

"Sort of duck," I said not wanting to take the time to fully explain for fear of losing momentum.

"Up until now I've tried to be respectful of your feelings," I said taking the high moral ground, which I strongly recommend as it makes all the difference in these confrontations.

"I have, up till now, skipped over the more embarrassing stories of our shared past. But if you insist on bringing up uncomfortable memories for the purpose of driving me manic when I'm trying to finish my book, then I will divulge all the sordid details to the world."

This seemed to be a good place to illustrate the text with a visual and so I added, "You will remember getting thrown out of Cafe' Dulce for trying to raise the price of a gelato by auctioning your boots? That and more will be exposed for the readers of my book, Out of the Blue. "

A sharp cry erupted from somewhere nearby and for a moment I thought it was Amy but quickly realized the sound escaped from Ekaterina's lips. She seemed on the verge of apoplexy as though she'd been stung on the leg by a hornet. I stared fixedly at her waiting to see if she had something to say. She did.

"Come on, let's get out of this bathroom before it's struck by lightning."

She was right, of course. She often is. Not that thunderbolts suddenly appeared but Amy had collapsed in a heap and it was clear to me that my work was done. I followed Ekaterina down to breakfast on the screened porch, as far away from that mirror as it's possible to be in Chatsford Hall.

Life comes hard and fast but not today, Amy! No not today!

Qigong Ukelele

This morning even before the sun got up (that slacker) I was qigong-ing like the dickens, doing the crane and I don't mean to boast, playing the ukulele. I know!

You are, of course, aware of what the Zen Buddhists say about chopping wood--that you should just whack the stuff and don't make a Broadway production of it. Just pay attention to the chopping.

According to these Zen practitioners, we should never under any circumstances play the ukulele while performing qigong. And yet, there I was underneath a spreading magnolia, bending and swaying and strumming. You're anxious to hear all about it, I'm sure, but like so many of my stories, it's a long one and for God's sake I don't intend to go into it all now. Just the gist, if that's the word.

Arriving at Native Grounds in the bright and fair of yester-morn, I found the room full of the usual corpses staring into space and presumably waiting for something to stir them to life. Little hope, of course, because nothing ever happens in the morning. Every Durhamite knows that if you want something diverting and invigorating, you've got to have the magic hour that follows the purples and amethysts and golds of the evening sky. 

I eyed this rabble with disapproval, resenting the universal calm that enveloped the horde at a time when, thanks to that little almond-eyed Princess Amy, I felt like one of those heroes in a Greek tragedy pursued by the Furies.

Ankling toward the bar, I noticed the headlines on the Observer lamenting the latest abomination of the North Carolina legislature and I felt Princess Amy hotting up in the darkest recesses of my mind. She was getting rowdy. I hurried toward the bar hoping that a steaming cup of Jah's Mercy would restore my sangfroid. It was not to be.

"Where have you been?" said Amy Normal, part-time barista and Backup Mistress of the Greater South Durham Night, for it was she filling the space behind the Order Here sign. "I haven't seen you in days."

"Oh?" I said. The comeback, I am fully aware, was lacking the usual Genome flair but don't forget those Furies who, even now, were creeping ever closer like a gang of Aunts.

"It's no good saying, 'Oh' with that tone of voice as though you don't give a damn," she said. "Consider the stars." She embellished the last remark by lifting a hand upward, as though we could see stars from inside the coffee shop.

"The stars?" I said, ratcheting up the Genome spirit in an attempt to get the emotional feet back on solid ground. "Is that a reference to, Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold? Because if it is, I want no part of it."

"I do not mean whatever it was you said, and what the hell are patens anyway? Shakespeare?"

"You have me in deep waters there," I admitted, "I'll ask Ms. Wonder when I see her this evening and report back tomorrow morning." I hoped this diversionary tactic would steer us safely away from Shakespeare. This A. Normal is a quirky bird and loves to get knee-deep into the Bard.

"Oh no," she said, "you don't get out of it that easy. I know where you've been."

"Oh?" I said.

"Stop saying Oh! What's happened to you anyway? You had so much promise in your youth and I wanted nothing more than your happiness. But what a waste you've turned out to be. You come in here giving me orders and expecting me to do just as you ask and then when the slightest temptation comes along, you cheat on our relationship and have coffee at some cheap, tawdry hole in the wall."

"Do we have a relationship?" I said.

"That's the question I ask myself," she said. "Looking up at the stars, I know quite well that, for all they care, I can go to hell, but on earth, indifference is the least we have to fear from man or beast. Auden."

Once more with the star motif and, to be honest, I had no clue as to why she called me Auden. Someone you may know, possibly, but I've never had the pleasure, I'm afraid. I began to worry for her sanity if any.

Fortunately for you and probably just as well for me, the rest of our conversation is a blur but when I regained consciousness, I was sitting at a table with the remnants of the Secret Nine. 

Sister Mary was saying something about a ukulele. When she placed the period at the end of the sentence, she gazed slowly around the table and each person, in turn, made some sort of reply to her statement. I searched the database for something meaningful but when her eyes came to rest on mine, I had only one thought.

"You don't mean a ukulele," I said hoping against hope because deep in my heart I knew I'd heard correctly. Still, it doesn't hurt to try.

"I do too," she said. "I loved that ukulele. Took it with me when I ran away from home at the age of five."

"Might it have been a cocker spaniel?" I said. "I loved a cocker spaniel when I was a kid and once took him with me when I ran away from home."

"No, I do not mean a cocker spaniel," she said. "Were you successful in running away? My parents found me on the neighbor's stoop by following the sound of my strumming."

"As I recall," I said, "my mother intervened when she found me packing a honey-cured ham for the trip."

"Too bad," she said. "Well, better luck next time. Anyway, Island Irv was just telling us about a ukulele video he saw on Youtube and his story reminded me of the Hawaiian music I heard in a hotel in St. Petersburg."

"IZ?" I said.

"Is what?" said Mary.

"No, I mean Israel," I said. I was about to add, 'Israel Kamakawiwo'ole,' but Mary interrupted again.

"Not Israel," said Mary, "Russia--we were in St. Petersburg."

"But why Hawaiian music in Russia?" I said.

"Why not?" said Mary, who is one of the more accepting and tolerant members of the Nine. If Russian hotels play Hawaiian music, let them do it until their eyes bubble, is her attitude.

And there, if your mind hasn't wandered, you have the story. It's the bare bones but I think it's enough to be getting on with and now you will understand why I thought of ukuleles while practicing the Five Animal Frolics in the dark this morning. 

I suppose one must give Amy her due because when it comes to selecting distracting thoughts, no one else comes close. I refer, of course, to Princess Amy, the Queen of the Limbic System, and not Amy Normal, Backup Mistress of the Greater SoDu.

Strange Case of the Cat in the Night

On a long winter's night, with rain falling softly and a wispy breeze lightly rattling the window panes, there are few things more enjoyable than, as Shakespeare said, "tired nature's sweet restorer--balmy sleep." 

It helps to have a bed liberally sprinkled with serene kitties, provided that is, that you have not got one like Abbie Hoffman aboard.

We can never really know why a cat does anything. Not really. We can only imagine and, more often than not, our imaginings interpret cat behavior in human terms, which I'm sure makes us look like priceless asses to the cats. 

Come to think of it, Sagi M'tesi, the caramel-colored target tabby, has only two expressions--one of them says, 'Please feed me,' and the other says, 'What a priceless ass you are.'

Now if Abbie Hoffman has ever resembled a specter, shimmering in and out of awareness, he achieved this resemblance in the wee hours this very morning. I could go so far as to say that he shimmered unceasingly and to the annoyance of all. 

Not only did he shimmer, but adding insult to injury, if that's the term I want, he yowled. He yowled in the Chang Mai room. He yowled in the hallway. He even yowled from atop the kitchen cabinets. Only during the few minutes that he lay motionless, cuddled in my arms, did he stop the nuisance.

I rose this morning much earlier than I would have chosen but you know how it is when you realize that you are wide awake with little chance of revisiting the sweet restorer. 

When I entered the dressing room, I discovered a clue to the cause of the incessant yowling. Abbie Hoffman had spent the wee hours of the morning in the closet trying on Ms. Wonder's scarves. 

This explains why, despite my earnest searching, I'd failed to locate him during the yowling episodes. He'd been in the closet trying to find the perfect scarf to accessorize his custom tuxedo.

Now Ms Wonder has done herself well in the matter of neck joy. Each time one of her colleagues travels to a foreign country, and they do travel often, each country being more foreign than the next, she puts in an order for a scarf of native handicraft. 

She has scarves from China and India, from Zimbabwe and South Africa, from Guatemala and Colombia. The actual number of countries represented in her closet by those colorful scarves is reminiscent of the parade of nations in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

The subject cat, A. Hoffman, tried on every one of the scarves, judging from the fact that all of them were lying on the floor. I deduced that he wore none of them to bed, that not a single scarf satisfied his longing.

No doubt this process was intended to be a palliative to dull a pain that gnawed at his heart, for little as anyone might suspect, he has a gnawing pain. I know this because I too have a gnawing pain of the heart and I am well acquainted with futile attempts to find something--anything--to medicate that pain. 

It's a common malady. I believe that Cleopatra, Catherine of Russia, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and perhaps even Napoleon, suffered in much the same way.

Strange how we never cease to look for something in the external world to restore calm to the manic mind. Abbie tries on scarves. I write these missives in Circular Journey. Whatever works about sums it up for both of us. 

When the limbic system drifts off station, the resulting altered state of mind will have you behaving in all sorts of absurd ways, like searching for a non-existent mouse or perhaps writing for a non-existent audience.

Yes, despite the evidence to the contrary, I'm certain that Abbie H. was searching for a mouse. That's the only possible explanation for his behavior in that closet. 

You may wonder how I came to this conclusion. Well, as Shakespeare or someone once said, 'Elementary.' It may not have been Shakespeare but he's credited with almost everything else quotable, and I like to go with the odds. 

Cats are well known to be acutely interested in qigong, performing slow ritualized movements, interspersed with bursts of rapid activity, followed by formal meditation. I did mention that earlier, didn't I? Should have. Sorry if I didn't. 

Cats are also known to shun the accumulation of material possessions, such as scarves; however, and I have this on the finest authority, cats do search for mice.

I'm fairly certain that I once watched my Aunt Maggie's barn cat stalking a mouse for half a day. And on more than one occasion, a devoted cat has presented me with a gift of a mouse, even though I had expressed no interest in having one. 

So I ask you, put yourself in Abbie Hoffman's boots. Your hippocampus is lying down on the job, and the happy hormones are on the decline. You feel that you could face the coming day if only you could teach a mouse a lesson or two. 

You search the premises, upstairs and down, looking for the hiding place that you know must be there. Your frustration builds until you begin yowling. Yes, you do yowl and you yowl without restraint. 

Then you enter a closet and discover a rainbow of scarves, each one looking for all the world like curtains behind which little furry invaders may hide. You see where this leads?

As I said earlier, on a long winter's night, with rain falling softly and a wispy breeze lightly rattling the window panes, there are few things more enjoyable than balmy sleep in a bed liberally sprinkled with serene kitties. Always provided that is, that you have not got one like Abbie Hoffman aboard.

Find Bill

While I could not go so far as to describe the heart as leaden, it was definitely short of chirpiness. This can be expected when friends gather at a favorite oasis to browse and sluice, enjoying rain on the roof and warmth in the hearts, and then the time comes to say a biento. You just don't want the good times to end.

                                        Copyright Bill Rasor 2012

This describes perfectly the morning when Ms Wonder and I met Jenny at William's Gourmet Kitchen in the South End. We came together to exchange notes on the status of the upcoming wedding that will irrevocably link Jenny with the affianced Bill. 

You will understand the importance placed on these wedding plans when I tell you that this is not one of those light-weight, flit and sip, summer flirtations but the real forever-after thing. They love!

You may be saying to yourself if you are one of the more observant readers, that I am overlooking the elephant in the kitchen--the absence of any Bill in the proceedings. Where is Wild Bill Hillsborough you might be asking yourself but, if you are one of the Inner Circle, you know that the missing person is spending the weekend in Emerald Isle on the Crystal Coast, just down the Atlantic Ocean a bit from Beaufort, where Ms Wonder and I dealt with the aunts last weekend.

The aunts will not figure largely in Bill's stay because it's not aunts themselves that matter so much as the courage one brings to them and this Wild B.H. takes a line through Napoleon.

It turns out that my lack of chirpiness was not due to the habit Bill has of materializing everywhere in the state of North Carolina where I am not. No, the disturbance that led to the v-shaped depressions, if disturbances do lead anywhere, was the appearance in the footlights of Princess Amy, that holdover from the Paleolithic who has the habit of making an ass of herself when she stops going to meetings and gets off her meds.

Not to worry, however, this Amy is not the menace she once was. Fierce QiGong has given me the necessary cosh for whacking her like a game of whack-a-mole every time she pops up for another go. And so I say, "Not today, Amy." Today I will be free from the limitations of yesterday.

That brunch was a good example of the principle that there is more good than bad in each moment. There was, in fact, more Wonder and Jenny present than there was absence of Bills. But he was still missed sorely! Hurry home, Bill.