Who knew a typhoon could be so instructional and so mysterious at the same time. Yesterday late afternoon, early evening my friend the mystic artist posted a meme about “gentle raindrops falling” with a time stamp of 6:58 pm, earlier another artist sage had included photographic instructions for lashing two doorknobs together for reinforcement. I have since learned you can sleep through a typhoon if you are willing to sleep with one eye open; that if “she who would be queen” is being testy - let her; my farmer friends are kind to the bone, braving the 100km per hour winds to render their duck friends, albeit future dinners · comfort in the intervening time; and some how leaves blew through the secured back door to land over the drain on the plastic stool and create a lake puddle from droplets unwilling to stay outside - my friend the rat who i’m sure is related to the movie star rat from “Ben”, boosted two of my three candles in the dead of night - leaving her teethmarks on the 3rd · and somehow an offering in folded yellow waxy paper with pictograph writing was left at my doorstep containing a very plausible copy of a $100 C note - as they say in East L.A. “s’plain me.”
The meme with the kindly time stamp, now provides realtime information for predicting the duration of the blackout - cam on Anh Ay Duc Bet · the missing candles, simply fortify my anthropomorphic theory about my house guest Madame Rat, and sure enough moments later i found her teeth marks on the cap of the bootleg plastic bottle of rice wine - the night before i had interrupted her slurping of my pot-au-feu a-la-poulet that i left on the stove; as she lept off the counter after i disturbed her meal, i can swear like the current ‘merican president that she gave me the “Bronx Cheer” - ‘thrbbppp’, were my vision sharper i’d likely seen the 3rd digit of her paw in salut, but will not chance her next visit by leaving the container exposed for her to topple and slurp all that distinguishes me from sleepless despair, and sleepless hungry despair; kidding, sort of.
These two paragraphs have cost me 5% of the 89% left i left myself after arrogantly not recharging during this morning's fb activism just prior to being cutoff from the electrical trough for thoroughly rational and commendable civic precautions at a time when leaves can be blown through closed door and puddles made on random stools. My prayers are that the sticks of incense i reflexively burn, while wondering whether they are simply of no help, or that without them the massive natural calamity befalling friends of mine and enemies alike would just be that much greater - i d f k · I do know i’m glad i got to the rice wine before my wannabe rodent house guest figured out how to topple the bottle and consume my precarious store of liquid courage.
And in the midst of all this solipsistic bullshit i feel for “she who would be queen”, so accustomed to stopping men in their tracks with a glance to find my frozen heart not responding to a fury that serves neither her nor her ambitions, much less something i fear. I fear; i do not understand why when i toss cabbage, oatmeal and nut crumbs to the duck cluster outside my window, they seem more afraid of me than the storm. Days earlier, i’d crushed mollusks with Anh Ay Tran that is apparently the ducks staple, but their foraging appetite seemed stifled with the ravaging 100 km per hour winds; what i don’t know about mother Gaia and her kin will fill the unfilled volumes of my thinking when i pass - how sad, and not. There will be others wanting to learn from farmer Tran and his family about how to nurture food and livestock while weathering fierce and more fierce storms from a paradigm based on greed no one questioned them about nor obviously learned much from observing them. Hopefully the chemical traces left in my synapses at my moment of death will constitute some information somehow for those facing an extinction not at all of their making.
My friends the ducks have returned to their semi-protected aisle between our two buildings - whether my nutritional offering in the midst of this typhoon was useful or useless, i may never know - but i tried · what is left to decide for that interminable silence between reconnection to the “information super-highway” when electricity is restored and my flickering house lights can once again pose a danger to me from electrocution is anybody’s guess, like not knowing the mind of a woman or learning how to fathom one’s own heart after a lifetime of indoctrination · I accept fully that compared to the force of nature, mine own ambition and life is vastly insignificant; i am struggling to understand how much that will affect my end days. Right now i am trying to track the effects of mold on my ear canal from an ancient wound, and the toxic repercussions of a dissipated youth squandered too far into my dissipated dotage @ 77% battery charge, hoping for electricity at 3:07 pm is little different than hoping the mold growing on my walls will not influence the disease of rot from my early on broken eardrum, so i will now go and fashion some gruel of oatmeal and pot-au-feu that will retain enough coldness in my electric-less “icebox” and provide nutrition to combat the emotional stress i feel while wishing you all a wholesome future full with courage and wisdom to prevail over a handful of capitalist weasels who care not a whit about you, but what you can pay them.
Good luck to us all.
jts 28/10/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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