JUST SURFACED…

Published June 13, 2021 by Nan Mykel

While re-organizing “archives” I came across a partial letter I had written to friends and family in 1981, typed on my daughter’s manual typewriter in her dorm room at Oberlin College: “I’ve been pretending to be a student again…went to daughter’s classes all day–Poetry, Biology and Religion….You may note that I’m writing before my sense of humor returns, so bear with me. My daughter is now wearing a different earring in each ear. She trades off with Joe, a friend of hers, who wears a single earring in his single pierced ear. (Actually, he has 2 ears, just one is pierced)….I spent some time today in Mudd Learning Center, the Library. (I wondered earlier what daughter meant when she said she’d been sitting in mud).

“They have a photography exhibit (or ‘photo-documentary’) entitled Stories of the Skin, delineating tattoo parlors and the people who frequent them [well, back then, anyway]. Quote from one habituee: ‘When I got my first tattoo my grandma said to me, If you have a tattoo and you commit a felony they’ll be able to identify you. And I said to grandma, I’m not going to commit a crime, my daddy’s a policeman. And then she says, Well, what if you want to go out into high society? and I said, Grandma, I am high society.

“I’ve even been writing graffiti on the bathroom stalls here. (The college wisely provides computer print-out paper on the walls to encourage creative expression, and Oberlinites are creative all right, at least the visitors to the second from the right stall in the basement of Mudd Learning Center: ‘There’s an old saying a tattoo artist once told me. One tattoo means you’re trying to express yourself, two tattoos means you hate your parents, and 3 or more means you’re crazy.’

“Graffiti from the stall, to give you a “feel” for what the day to day matriculation at Oberlin is like, at least in 1983:

Life is like…

a bowl of cheerios
the ultimate paradox: the search for the universally infinite through the personally finite (analogy: universe vs. atoms)–neither of which is ever attainable
a magazine. How much does it cost? $2.00. I haven’t got $2.00. Well, that’s life
paradise when you’re making love, etc.
a load of cow shit on a hot humid summer day
the feeling you get after you haven’t slept in 4 days, haven’t showered in 5, and have existed on cigarettes and coffee and the whole time you haven’tt brushed your teeth because you have only $5 and you have to have cigs and coffee
a cereal. How much does it cost? $1.50. I haven’t got $1.50. Well, that’s life…q

“Julia, a co-worker of mine at Meigs, is mad at her dentist. He let her leave the office the other day with white gunk mixed with blood all over her face, and she went shopping around town for a couple of hours before spying herself in a mirror. She said she’s only non-assertive with dentists and hair dressers.

“Oh yes, I just remembered a bad thing that happened: When my mother and I went to Atlanta we accidentally locked Blackie the cat in the house. By the time Marvin, the next door neighbor, noticed him at the window and let him out, it was WHEW! (Still is, to some extent). Ralph told me about using vinegar, but I didn’t write the mixture proportions down, not knowing I would be needing them within hours…”

Thr Grandeur of Age

Published June 13, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Thanks to Dr. Horty Rex for mind-blower post which reads:

“

Which made me wonder about him, and to save you time have looked him up, but too much pro and con to cover for you at some wide-ranging Google posts. Thanks to Dr. Rex, without whom I would never have known about him…

tarongazooVerified

tarongazooVerifiedSmall, bigger, biggest! 🐢

Taronga Western Plains Zoo has continued its Galapagos Tortoise breeding success, welcoming two new hatchlings! The hatchlings will take 20-25 years to reach their full size and may live up to 150 years!

Our photo shows the tiny pair next to…..Taronga Zoo (@tarongazoo) • Instagram photos and videos
tarongazooVerifiedSmall, bigger, biggest! 🐢

Taronga Western Plains Zoo has continued its Galapagos Tortoise breeding success, welcoming two new hatchlings! The hatchlings will take 20-25 years to reach their full size and may live up to 150 years!

Our photo shows the tiny pair next to…..

I Throw Snowballs at Myself

Published June 12, 2021 by Nan Mykel

I’m not OK.

You’re not OK.

That’s not OK.

Pretending otherwise

is not OK either.

I won’t throw them

at you, however, but

hoard them For myself.

I deserve to be

pelted more than you.

So there!

(with a definitely not OK photo of me)

Topic for a Poem

Published June 10, 2021 by Nan Mykel

That’s the hardest part of it since

I insist my muse do the work,

not me. At least most of it.

So I wait and listen, feel and

free associate and recall my

dreams and surrender to the past.

We have lived it together, she

and me. Sitting on the train tracks,

waiting. The train is running late.

Ho ho, that wasn’t fun was it!

Lighten up, Mu!

(For https://dversepoet.com)

IF THOUGHTS WERE WORDS

Published June 10, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Oh no. Here she comes again. I wonder if she eats babies. I thought the holly bush would be protection enough, How awkward not to carry a weapon. Just my voice. I felt like a genius when I selected the holly bush. She ignores me. Guess that’s better than murder. I never guessed I could yell so loud! Good. She’s going inside, through with beheading petunias. Now back to my babies.

HONESTLY…

Published June 9, 2021 by Nan Mykel

KEITH ON TRUTH – Reblog

The lies are like a loose string in a woven fabric

Posted on June 9, 2021 11

“Always tell the truth as you don’t have to remember as much,” said a voicemail greeting from an old friend. His greeting spoke volumes to me when I first heard it. He would alter his greeting at work on a daily basis offering adages or life lessons and this remains my favorite lesson of his.

To me, it is an important lesson as when people do not tell the truth, not only do they have to remember more stories, the lies are like loose strings in a woven fabric. They will eventually begin to unravel. This is especially true when people in leadership positions lie. Their lies are so visible, others have to adjoin their lies with the so-called leader’s. That leaves greater exposure as there are now more strings to unravel.

It truly saddens me how the truth has become more of a commodity these days. Politicians feel they can get away with exaggerations or even bald-faced lies. The know pseudo-news outlets that support their tribe or party will cover for them. To be frank, when someone knowingly covers for a lie, that is also lying.

All politicians lie, but by far the worst of the lot is the former president. But, that is truly not news, as an attorney who worked for him for years before he was elected said the former president “lies every day, even about things of no consequence.” Similar quotes can be found by more than a few people who worked for him over the years and in the White House.

Yet, too many believe this person. He did not win the election – he lost. It was not stolen from him – he lost. He lost because he got seven million fewer votes. He has been unable to prove election fraud losing well over sixty court cases, while winning one. That is a pretty miserable investment of money to pay attorneys for so little return. Some funders actually want their money back as they felt the former president cheated them by insinuating there was fraud.

Yet, these lies led to people dying on January 6 when he invited, incited and pointed protestors at the Capitol. Lies about the seriousness of COVID-19 led to more than deaths than needed and some people still believe it was all exaggerated or a hoax because of such. And, those folks who are still covering for those lies – such as in Texas where it was recently ruled illegal to use the Vaccine passports, reveal a how screwed up this former president has made things.

The truth matters. People rely on politicians to tell them the truth. We need to believe them, but when a president, governor or senator lies, it devalues our country. Being a sycophant to an untruthful person does not bode well for one’s reputation. And, these sycophants know they are lying, which bothers me as much as the lying itself.

Runaway Thoughts

Published June 7, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Crabby (above) is lying down because I can’t figure out how to heist him (he’s currently unattached to anything but gravity). Suggestions welcome. I found him dead and de-gutted him myself in 2019…

If there should be a good God: “please protect the no fly zone in Washington, D.C. better than you did on 9/11…”

While housecleaning I had the horrible thought that I might live another 10 years and suffer from having discarded the many droppings from my past in an anti-hoarding activity. (Smile)

P.S. And by the bye, when I searched Webster’s for the spelling of horde…hoard?…, I saw that the word traces back to the word vulva…And when I first looked up horde it was across the page from the picture of horse, with 35 places on a horse numbered and named…

Things

Published June 6, 2021 by Nan Mykel

They say it isn’t nice

to love things as well as life

but hoarders know that things will stay

when others in their lives go way.

My things all around me pile,

big Mama to the little child.

Old letters calling to my mind,

tales from those who are left behind.

Wise old Yoda looks back at me

as though to say, “It’s me and thee.”

(Nan’s reblog from 2019)

It’s 2021 now and I’m still dealing with “things.” In fact, earlier this month I added a 6 ft x 4 ft painting from the Recycle store down the street, plus purchased a 4-drawer legal size filing cabinet. One of my daughters caught the –quirk…defense…habit…addiction…affliction…from me.

I suspect it relates back to a problem with transitional objects*. For much of my life my transitional objects have been books after the baby blankets disappeared. Hunger, depression, loneliness, a longing to be validated and changing schools all along before I could really practice making friends (11 schools in 12 years prior to 2 universities). The result has been too much of a me-me-me focus. I never heard of a support group for hoarders, but I suspect the world could use one. No, not the world–there are many more refugees with bare bones belongings than self-centered hoarders, or maybe it should be hungry and lonely hoarders.

I don’t think being incested as a child (grammarians would shudder at that misuse of the word) is pertinent to my hoarding. I do suspect that my feelings and thoughts being discounted by my parents is probably the primary culprit. I recall as a very young child cutting a hole in the skirt of my dress. When someone asked me why I did it I said that I didn’t have anything else to do. Then, somewhere I wrote Say It Aint So! (Maybe I blogged it here, too):

Here’s the thing:

I’ve been talking

through this

loudspeaker I

found in my crib

80 years ago and

just now notice

it’s not plugged in!

The old Christmas cards, letters and especially valued articles (on consciousness, imaging, evolution, dreaming, nature, etc.) and even more especially old photos of my immediate family and genealogy on both my parents’ sides and other genealogical records and shells and driftwood, fossils and puppets and 10 shoeboxes of big old-oversized dvds leftover from my volunteer days at Public Access television, plus journals and dreams…you get the idea…

Actually I feel kind of scared at the thought of discarding evidence from my life. I’m scared of depression and boredom, I guess…And perhaps surrounding myself with things is a form of escape from acknowledgement of the inevitable end of things and me.

We are not amused…

Published June 5, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Since I seem to recall swearing off snarking some time ago, I’m reduced to snarking via reblogging or partially snitching. Since jill dennison (Filosofa’s world) is fairly reliable for snark, I thought I’d share a bite of hers’:

She describes several irritants, closing with a favorite of mine:

“Software, websites and browsers that make sudden unwanted changes. Most of you here on WordPress can relate, for WordPress has made numerous changes over the past six months that most of us hate, but they seem not to care about the opinions of their customers. Microsoft Office continually makes small changes, or what they call ‘improvements’ that require us to do something differently, generally requiring extra time. And the two browsers I use, FireFox and Opera, have recently made changes that, at least in my view, are not welcome! It seems we just get used to something, figure out how to work with it, and then it’s changed for no apparent reason. (Italics are Nan’s)

I have more pet peeves, but these are the ones that are bugging me most at the moment. What are some of yours?”

Nan responds, “In my senior moments I suspect it’s a ploy to steer bloggers on to the more expensive .org than our .com” P.S. I love our wp.com, fellas!

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SOME PEOPLE LIKE GOSSIP…

Published June 4, 2021 by Nan Mykel

I confess I like excitement, but of the curious kind—the true kind.

I don’t make this material up…it worms its way to end in my lap. I don’t subscribe to the New Yorker–but the May 24th issue, from the sister of a friend who passed it on to me–gave me quite a bone to gnaw on, about Francis Bacon. No, not the earlier Francis; this one was an artist (1909-1992). Unbelievable, but I believe the New Yorker, so it must be true. Read the article by Joan Acocella based on the new book The Life of Francis Bacon by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan and tell me what you think.

I’ve been coming across other pieces of writing such as the above recently. This week my excitement was additionally ignited by a couple of shorter pieces in the June 4 The Week magazine. Both were on the Health & Science page, 23.

The first was headlined “Writing by Thought Alone,” and described an experimental neural interface that has “allowed a man paralyzed from the neck up to compose sentences on a computer simply by imagining himself writing on a piece of paper.”

The second article in The Week was equally startling. Since the intestines of mammals are capable of absorbing oxygen, it was found that oxygen deprived mice and pigs completely recovered after the insertion of a doctored oxygen compound via the anus. They “completely recovered from very, very severe hypoxia.” (A medical researcher from a Tokyo university plans to begin clinical trials on humans as early as next year.

Perhaps it was the mental images that formed after reading all three articles that made an impact–on me, at least.

And oh, also the statement that Ohio was once below the equator also made an impression… (GeoFacts No. 17, Ohio Department of Natural Resources-Division of Geological Survey).