SONG OF THE DAY: Sound System (kudzu'd)

Today, I was eating chick peas straight out the fuckin’ can, and all the cats were nervously circulating around where I was sitting because the can opening sounds made them think it was wet food time. The whole scene was kinda pitiful, them and me, and I don’t know, I’m just sharing it here so that is there is a heaven with a giant book of all our deeds to answer for in life, but they’ve made some sort of artificial intelligence integration into the book by now, I wanna make sure my data shows I readily admit my flaws. I know I ain’t perfect lol.

SONG OF THE DAY: Rush

Heard a squeal on the back porch today, and I figured one of the cats had caught a field mouse, but when I went back there, the big cat had a pileated woodpecker in her mouth. I shoo'd the cats away and ushered the bird out the back door, where it just chilled on the steps. I didn't wanna leave it for the cats to get again so I scooped it up. No notable wounds anywhere, but I'm guessing maybe its wing was hurt. I took it back into the woods where there's a birch tree I kinda of look up to as the elder, and put the woodpecker there in its roots. It immediately scampered off, not flying, but it worked its way up a nearby tree and was gone from my reach completely. Just felt like the best place to take it.
I guess there's wildlife centers you can take hurt wild animals, and I also I guess some folks are like, "Don't let your cats roam outdoors" because of this exact thing. But maybe it was a mistake domesticating cats, and just having these wild beasts trapped in the house doesn't seem like a good cure. Also, I honestly didn't have the time to find out where these wildlife places are, and whether they took pileated woodpeckers, and whether I could even get the bird there or not. Sometimes in our quest for utopian reactions, we assume too much infrastructure of privilege and entitlement for it to be an actual reaction for most folks.
But going back to the birch tree back there, that felt like the right thing to do, and the woodpecker definitely pepped up when I put her down there. We, as humans, have obviously over-complicated life on Earth. But unfortunately, a lot of times, the solutions to fix these inherent issues with the existence we've created are also overly-complicated, which just compounds the problems. I'm too fuckin' simple half the time for all that.

SONG OF THE DAY: Electric Boogie/Break Dance

I can't breakdance worth a shit. Is it too late to learn? Perhaps not but it feels like it. Instead I shall rock electro rap jams at the wrong speed and shuffle around in my old slides while the cats look at me inquisitively. "Play the hand your dealt," like my pop taught me. But also cheat if you get to deal.

N4TVR4L S3L3CT10N TRVMP3D...

natural selection trumped 
by the comfort of empire 
(even as it’s declining) 

SONG OF THE DAY: Little Green Monster

It’s pretty easy to hate, getting mad at folks for not being the way you think they ought to be in this world. Been working on my own judgments lately, trying not to hate on folks, even if they’re not my type of people or somebody I’d trust. Folks can exist separate from you living full lives without you having to be all caught up in their shit. It tarnishes the enjoyment of your own life to be worried about that shit. Fake don’t realize it’s fake anyways – it feels real to them. And my real might be fake to somebody else. You get too caught up in all that shit, you’re consumed by self-doubt and external hating and resentment about things too far beyond your own control to be worrying about.
Side note: ain’t been writing much on here because I was down with covid for the past few weeks. My voice is still all sorts of fucked up, but when this song kicks off right after he says like his grandma used to tell him, and hits that “sha la la la la la lalala” – when my voice is right, I sing that shit to the cats smooth as fuck.

S1MPL1C1TY 1S TRVMP C4RD...

simplicity is trump card 
in the natural world - just 
figure out how to survive 

SONG OF THE DAY: Spanish Hustle

I refuse to hustle. It does no good. Look at Pete Rose.
Some people will say disco, and synths, and color coordinating all your clothes even though it's raining and you're home alone (except the cats), are weird behaviors. Luckily I don't know them people.

SONG OF THE DAY: Lunca

It’s a storm brewing outside so the cats are dashing around crazily, wanting to go outside, but I live in front of an old quarry and I’m no fool – you let a black cat out right before a giant storm next to an abandoned quarry with old buildings, that how magical realms get unlocked that live in the thin veil between visible and metaphysical. And to be honest, it’s too early in the week for all that. I can’t be wandering off dealing with magical realms on a fuckin’ Monday.

SONG OF THE DAY: Dance Till We Die

A few years back, at first, my center kid was bummed I actually listened to Lana Del Ray, because dads aren’t supposed to listen to shit their kids are listening to. Takes the edge out of it. But then they got mad at me because Lana Del Ray was a fascist, or some shit. I don’t know. It’s all too much to keep up with; I just play music and sometimes I like it but mostly I hate it, which is why I like to point out what I like on here. I don’t ever dance really, not in front of other people, because I always felt I had bad rhythm. Family members used to make fun of how I walked, because it wasn’t white enough, and then when I danced, I realized it was just flopping my body around so I got self-conscious about how my arms flopped, because that seemed to be the part of my gait that wasn’t white enough. Who the fuck knows? Now, I shuck a little dance from time to time around my kids or girlfriend, and I do elaborate spinning mambas holding the cats if a good cumbia song comes on in the middle of the day. But I ain’t dancing in front of nobody I don’t know too fucking well.

SONG OF THE DAY: Twenty Skinny

Working from home, I let the cats spend most of the day outside, but always try to get them in before we leave, or do anything down in the front of the yard, trying to train them to treat the back and woods behind the place as well as the sides and just out front as their full domain (which is a really FULL domain for two cats), and to stay the fuck away from the road. But if we’re going to go somewhere or be gone, I’ll call them in, and generally they’re out there long enough they come running if I call, occasionally even happily leaping into the house as I hold the screen door open.

I should mention how our two cats are. We have a grey tabby named Stella who is like a baby leopard in stomach markings and spirit. She is goofy as fuck, and would stalk bugs and butterflies for seven centuries if I let her. She’s also the one that comes in the last, barely needing inside time, and in fact I often let her sleep on the back porch because she likes it better than all the way inside. Ponyo is a black cat, and has one of the strangest auras of any cat I’ve ever been around. She skip flies onto an 8-foot bookcase in the living room to sleep on top of it, and will strangely show up meowing at me when I’m thinking sad thoughts. I really don’t know how to explain her other than she is something else entirely, like even in the realm of cats being strange, she is STRANGE, but not bad strange, just special strange.

The other day, me and the kids were gonna head out on some errands and goofing off, and I went to call the cats in. It had been hot and they’d been out there for a long ass time, so I knew they’d come running. I opened the screen and did my goofy cadence “KITTY KITTY KITTY” that I learned by osmosis from my younger sister growing up, a weird mountain yodel call to the cats that sounds ridiculous I’m sure if you look over and see this bearded dude jabbering it out the screen door at the world at large. But it works.

The other day, I do this, and immediately here comes Stella bounding from behind the graffiti shed, full baby leopard leaping mode the whole way across 50 feet of yard, through the screen door and porch, into the house. While Stella is coming, about halfway, I see Ponyo peripherally coming from the left, around the house, also leaping in full run. She is about two seconds behind Stella’s pace, and as she rounds the flower garden on that side of the porch, with an old metal goat sculpture, no shit, a spider leaps behind her from the garden. Stella jumps over the steps from the left side and goes through the screen door into the house, AND THE SPIDER LEAPS ONTO THE STEPS THEN SLIDES INTO THE PORCH AS WELL, right past the screen door, behind a recycling bin. It was the weirdest thing – the spider seriously leapt just like the cats, and followed them in the house.

In West African Ashanti culture, Anansi was a spider-trickster that had all the knowledge of the world. Similarly, in Lakota mythology, there was Iktomi, a spider-trickster spirit as well. There are tricksters of various forms in all indigenous cultures not yet bleached by economic colonialism, regardless of continent. There is no way that spider is not some sort of trickster spirit flying up into our house, and yet also this does not scare me, because the way it bounced, there was nothing but joy in its movement. It’s been two days, and I keep waiting for that spider to make itself known again, in some way, but so far as I can tell thus far, nothing beyond the regular extraordinary has happened. It does feel good to know we’ve already cultivated a home environment where silly spider spirits feel excited about coming in and joining us.

D0M3ST1C4T3D B3Y0ND...

domesticated beyond 
our desires, which remain wild; 
hearts and brains think different 

SONG OF THE DAY: Down In Mississippi

Honestly, sometimes I just blast blues music with all the windows open and the back door propped so that the cats can come and go without worrying me. Sometimes cats that ain't even mine come and go. Fuck it. I can understand their plight. It's some good shit in here.

3V3N1NGS W4ST3D G4Z1NG 4T...

evenings wasted gazing at 
events beyond my control, 
as the atrophy creeps in 

D0M3ST1C4T3D SP1R1TS...

domesticated spirits 
gazing longingly at the 
wilderness just out of reach