The Invisible Underpinnings
Over at laughingsky, this tale about a story involving premonition and perceptions outside of our everyday ken, caused me to recall:
I rolled over as quietly as a Brunswick pin machine. There had to be an--as yet unfound--perfect position where my body would fit between the metal bar severing the nerves at the base of my spine and the one causing my scapula to chafe. Then I might feel like I was undergoing ordinary knife-torture-bliss and not at all like being impaled on a pike. This was our, well my, third night on the torture-rack that was my grandmother's foldout couch.
My wife didn't find sleeping here any problem, but Koreans sleep their whole lives on floors with pillows made from wood-shavings. This must be better. Maybe I should get down on the living room floor. My mind began to wander toward sleep.
Catching-up with relatives can be a whole different type of torture. And last night's dinner at Great-Aunt Myra and Great-Uncle Gerry's was proof that I can bite my own tongue for over four hours.
From the opening salvo:
"You sure gotcha one cute little china doll, there Veach. Only Korean. A Korean china Doll. Hah, that's a good one. Here, want a beer?"
"Hush up, you! And don't mind Gerry, honey. I'd say drinking brings out the asshole in him, but he acts the same way sober."
To the closing bell:
"I didn't make any rice. Is that OK?"
"Sure, I don't eat rice with every meal."
"Oh reeeaaly?" Aunt Myra's eybrows rose with her inflection in a that's-a-fucking-lie tone.
My back was no longer complaining when my wife shot up off the fold-a-bed with a gasp and flail. The sun was up. I must have slept. "What? What's wrong?" I said.
She relaxed and lay facing me. "I just had a terrible dream. We were in one of those large skyscraper buildings like we saw? But we were sitting in the center area where there was a kind of atrium with trees and plants and flowers and a large pond with a waterfall. We were kissing. Your sister, Nancy, came up to us and you turned towards her and she stuck a spear into your chest. There was so much blood and you died." Tears were in her eyes and her breathing was becoming shorter.
"It was a nightmare. I'm fine." I smiled. But I needed to get her mind off the memory, so I asked, "You've never met Nancy. Why do you think it was her?"
"Nana showed me pictures of her a couple nights ago. It was her." So we talked for a while longer about my sister and the dream and after a long few minutes we both went back to sleep.
The phone woke us. It was now mid-morning. Nana answered and after a hurried exchange came into the living room where I was returning the bed to it's less-painful form. Nana said, "Gerry's dead. It must have been a heart attack in his sleep. That was Myra, she found him on the floor about seven this morning after she heard a falling noise from his bedroom."
I recalled the dream. The spear through my chest. I commented on the coincidence that Uncle Gerry would have a massive coronary and my wife--who only met him for a few hours the night before--would have a nightmare involving a spear through my chest at about the same moment. We discussed it with Nana and then decided to notify relatives of the pending funeral.
"Hey, Nance. Haven't talked to you in a while."
"What's up bro? Are you visiting Nana still?"
"Yea. Hey, I can't talk too long, it's her bill and all, you know. But I was just..."
"It's weird that you would call today. I just had a dream about you this morning that woke me up. It was fucking strange."
"What?" I looked over at my wife sitting in the dining room talking with Nana.
"It was soo real. You know how those are? You and I were sitting on the grass in the park next to the duck pond. And--this is the strange shit--we were, like, kissing. I mean we were really going at it. Then your wife came up to us and you and her got in an argument about us makin out and she stuck a knife in your chest. It was fuckin waaay freaky. And I woke up all jumping out of my skin and shit."
"Nancy. You are...I need to tell you..." Again, I looked over at my wife. I was certain if this was a 'game on Veach' she would give it away with a look or a smile. No look. No smirk. "Nance. First off, the reason I called is Uncle Gerry died this morning. Of a heart attack."
"No fuckin way. Wow. Now you're gonna tell me it was around 5 a.m. and that my dream was connected to his death, right?"
"Why...was that when you had the dream?"
"Round then. This is a joke right?"
"You don't know the half of it yet."
Nancy lives two time zones West of Nana. You do the math. It gives me brain-hair-chills just to recount it. I certainly don't understand the invisible underpinnings. I do know they're there and that some people see a shadow of the edge in their dreams.
Anger, Angst and a Jalopy
digital rendering by veach st. glines, creative commons license 2005
self portrait, ears intact, no tongue
Text size(s)
When viewing my site on my normal browser: Mozilla Firefox, there is no problem with any of my text size--in both the side bar and the body.
I certainly don't want to post a notice at the top that sends all other browser users away ("Hey all you people still using a non-user-friendly browser designed to permit pop-ups and pop-unders and now about a decade behind the times: get with the new century.") Because that was me not so very long ago and I know what it is to be too lazy to download Firefox, even when I heard it was free and easy and simple and...no matter, I was familiar with the old way and 'sorry, there has to be a catch' right? Just like you are thinking now.
So. I changed the font in my template and it makes it huge in Firefox (I mean GIGANIMOUS, Great-Grandma without her tri-focals would stammer 'it's too large,' The above title was so large the e(s) wrapped onto another line...yep...While making it still all barely readable in shitty IE.
Until I can fix my template to allow me to see it on my good browser with all the fonts and texts and spacings I like--because this is 98% for me and the remaining 2% is a bonus (constructive critisism, which I like and utilize). Although I gave it a quick swipe and it didn't work, I'll get into it more and I'll fix it so it is readable for all. Soon. Really. Give me a couple days.
Until then, IE browser users can still enjoy my digital renderings (or need to click on the ittybitty words to bring up a prior post, THEN the sidebar and posts are perfect size) or DOWNLOAD Mozilla Firefox now and embrace 2000 only half a decade late.
Any suggestions, from anyone, as to what I need to alter in my style sheet to make words readable in both shittIE and Mozilla are more than welcome.
--Veach
Applaudable and Standing Ovationable
In an attempt to dimly provide illumination on a chunky topic where fluffernutters are about all there are to dine on, I have set myself a ponderous task: explain how a web log floating in the hypertext-effluvium becomes ‘applaudable’ and (a bit further from the stain) how one may come to deserve ‘standing ovationable’ status. Furthermore, my glazeyed fucknucklers, I'll attempt to enunciate why those who I applaud in both the sitting and standing position have attained their dubious status. Of many factors taken into consideration instinct-taneously: clean, concise, and engaging writing is of the utmost importance. Microseconds after a new blog strikes my rods and cones I begin making judgments. The topic rarely matters. Who the author is (or pretends to be) is never important. What matters is how unfettered-interesting I find the writing. How engaging are her or his words? As a writer, I'm looking for good reading; it's as simple as that. I find sites at random (next-blog clicking), by trolling hubs and communities--usually focusing on art and writing subtopics, and I also utilize search engines. Leapblogging sites I've already identified as worthy doesn't work so much; I rarely favor my favorites-favorites. I don't blogroll and rarely peruse automatic-entry blogrolls. If a pre-surfer doesn't have time to manually add worthy sites to their template, then none are worthy of reading. Applaudable becomes standing ovationable after several return visits cause me to laugh or cry--no matter, as long as I want to read more--and, then (obviously), I involuntarily stand up and bang my palms together. I either steal or create a button for those I consider standing ovationable because I expect they'll be around awhile, I'll be reading them often, and I want them to visually stand out on my site. Disqualifiers abound. Some of the most egregious reasons for never getting a read let alone a golf-clap: - Publicity slag-braggers who desire being awarded something unimportant by some other oddblog. - Unobjective, unresearched, conspiracy-theoralism. Do propagandizers and proselytizers breathe a different mix of oxygen and nitrogen? Maybe an inordinate amount of humidity and swamp-gas erases all self-analytical ability, resulting in pages of irrational, unreasonable, unentertaining dreck. - Of all of these reasons, succinctly encapsulated by Davecat, I especially despise trapper-keeper blogs which won't let me get away the instant I want to flee (which I usually recognize before their blog even loads because I've been greeted by a Java button: I'b BeEn MizEn U!!, and I fuckin have to click 'OK'.) As of today, I hold these artists and writers in high regard (listed randomly with mine first as example):
I apologize if my subjective descriptions aren't the "public face" expected. Gender, sexual preference, and geographic location--gleaned from reading the sites--was provided to reflect the range of surperb artists I've "discovered" out of the vast stain of mediocrity. That was my intent. However, at least one person feels my 'compartmentalization' was rude and unnecessary and commented that I'm worse than a mass-murderer. Just yesterday I was berating myself, "Self, even Hitler was published...when are you going to at least become as good as him?" And now I learn that even his blog is preferable to mine. Scheiße...Dieses kurze dumme Haupthitler empfängt eine große Menge Gottfluchglück. |
Percentage Aries / Pisces
You are 40% Aries |
You are 60% Pisces |
fraktura terrenus
digital rendering by veach glines, creative commons license 2005
more layered composite art:
finate
Breakfast
greypopcorn