I decided to subscribe to the Twitter gig. At first blush, the e-mail way of communicating was way better than snail mail, but it's losing it's followers to other, more contemporary technologies. Every e-mail discussion list seems taken over by about 10-12 people who gang up on any newbies, and most of the existing conversation between those warlords is whining and puling about the madness the discussion group has resolved to, and then it usually loses it's wheels and dissipates into nothingness. I too have sinned.
I don't know anything about Twitter except that you get 140 spaces to say what you gotta say. I decided to follow David Pogue's twittering to get some idea of what people are doing. David is the tech editor of the NYT, but I have known about him for at least a decade because he used to write for the computer magazines I read. I read a really informative book he wrote on artificial intelligence.
For all intents and purposes, the kind of Twittering Pogue does seems associated with his job and his thousands of readers/followers. This ain't much use to me as an example. I don't have a job and only one follower. The one follower I have is a good one though. Twitter hooked me up to him because I happen to have his e-mail address in my Gmail Address Book, due to the fact that he's on my discussion list. Bob is a very bright person and an excellent writer.
I've decided to write rhymes in 140 spaces. It might be a swell place to create those Japanese haiku poems in such a limited space. I've never got the hang of them because they have such a specified form I can't tell if what I've written as a haiku actually is one. Maybe I'll Google up the rules again and see if I can finally understand haiku. For some reason I'm just not impressed. Sonnets either.
I apparently don't like observing rules about poetry. It probably has something to do with my youthful rebellion against authority I still follow for it's usefulness as form. My rebellious nature is not much more than the skepticism of a shamed man anymore. It's the kind of skepticism I must use to ostensibly deny the objects of the world in order to remain firmly ensconced in consciousness. Most of the poetry I write these days is disguised as prose.
I've tried writing haiku and sonnets before. Arguably, I get distracted by having to follow their forms than concerned with the content. The content is dictated for me by the form, and maybe that's the way it should be. I find that difficult because I need to write what I write to somebody, and these classical forms make me think I'm writing for somebody.
I've been repairing the shower drain. It's not rocket science. The water-proof grout I put around the shower drain got old and came loose from the bottom of the fiberglass shower floor and the drain pipe that is attached to it. It was just a matter of cleaning the old grout out and putting new grout in. The cleaning was the hardest part. I applied the new stuff that is supposedly of a superior quality and will last longer. It's probably better because it's been twenty years since I put the first stuff in place. Now, I just have to wait until the new grout sets to be able to use it.
I'm determined to began working on my house again. The most pressing job I have to do now is to get the sub-flooring in my old bedroom installed. My bed is in the new room Ben and I put in when we put a roof over what had been an open second-story balcony. I'm sleeping in there until I get this flooring in. When I do I'll move my bed back into that room, and use the new room for a study where I'll put my computer. It has lots of windows that let me look outside as I waste my life away.
Which is kind of the focus I have to move to now. I'm not getting as much outta being online as I once was, and ignoring the work I need to do on my house seems stupid because the discussions I've enjoyed in the past just ain't working for me any more. I've thought a lot about what the reason might be, but I'm not getting no satisfaction from my pondering. People do what they do for their own reasons. Thank God I'm only responsible for mine.
The leaves are already showing on my fig tree. If a late frost comes there won't be no figs this year. I might be able to cover some of them up if that happens. If it doesn't frost however, I'm expecting a bumper crop. My brother who lives a few hundred yards away came over with his pruning saw, and we pruned out from the center of the tree/bush to open it up more and keep the ripe figs close to the ground for picking.
The commercial fig cutting I planted last spring looks dead. It probably didn't help when the grass fire burnt over it. It was looking just as dead before that happened. the only hope I have for it is that the roots may have survived and will send up new shoots. It's a different variety of fig than my old tree and seems to blossom out later in the spring, but I might be fooling myself to delay the inevitable.
When we lopped off some of the older branches of my original tree to prune it back, I took what we cut off and made cuttings of them. I dipped the cut end in the rooting enzyme powder and plunged them into the ground. I put them in the same place where I put the same sort of cuttings last spring. I got one little leaf bud to come out on just one of the cuttings, but it died. The new ones already look dead.
On the face of it, I can't get another fig tree to grow on my property. I've been trying for years. I think maybe the old tree got a mojo on me, and kills all it's potential competitors before they can get a good start. The commercial cutting had a good start, but it's probably dead too. It's too woeful for words.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
