Wednesday's Open No Mike...

… Aka Gypsy caravan /café, is stationing for the cold season at my place.
We decided, since our musicians several times observed they were getting rusty, to go back to having Open No Mike weekly, on Wednesdays as in the good old days, so as not to block people’s weekends during the holiday season. So we’re meeting every Wednesday at 7pm at my place.
Yesterday some of our regulars were missing, but we had a great time, as some other people showed up. The K Paul family came, and brought along the two English ladies of our little town, that was a nice surprise. Kevin Paul had brought his native drum, and honored us with wonderful drumming and songs. He and his nephew Jason brought the magic by singing their heart out, Bless those hearts, making my living room feel like a Pow-wow arena. Little Michael had fun with Charity and the two resident dogs of Open No Mike, Tug and Toolie. Gene had also brought her so well behaved little dog, Lilly. Patricia Paul read a poem from Robert Service, thus making me discover an author I didn’t know. I read one of my poems, and so did Roberto. Rick, aka Tug’s chauffeur, played and sang some old goodies along with Bill. I started a song for our friend Gary, who was missing. And we had crepes and Nutella and fruits with organic coffee. Smoke breaks allowed the political talk.
It was fun and wonderful sharing.
See you all next Wednesday…

Getting old (sort of)

Every now and then I stumble upon the idea that I'm slowly but surely getting old. So what? Nothing extraordinary there but the course of nature. I mean, I didn't expect to be as fit as in my twenties but, when a calorie burning person like me, every now and then, is reminded by mother nature that well, she should pace herself, slow down (what? slow down more than I've already done so, by moving from Paris to Skagit valley? that possible?) Yes, it is. It is not necessarily about the physical thing, but about accepting the idea that you can do only a certain number of things a day. That the To Do lists I make every day are way too ambitious, and that well, if some items are not completed by the end of the day, I shouldn't feel bad about it. Yeah, but that's the very paradox of getting old, time flies, no time to waste, you gotta get things done. Ok, these are the bad days. Actually I do sometimes manage to think, well, let's just BE, for God'sake. Anyway in this country exhausting yourself won't do any good or bring you any medals, since exhausting yourself at work is the norm. But I'm not really fitting in that box.
As we say in French, "cherchez l'erreur" ("Look for the error".)
The real thing I should put every single day on my list and shouldn't derive from, is "take some time for yourself, every day". I do. But not enough.

Hoover Nirvana

Hoover Nirvana
I borrowed a carpet cleaner machine from Chef Roberto. Now he didn’t know what he was exposing himself to. First my giving in the French national sport, complaining and recriminating that the damn thing was too heavy and hard to handle, then guess what, you have to empty the damn bucket every ten minutes or so, and as each time the water was black, I figured it would take me a whole day to clean my carpets and rugs. But wait. La makina infernale is a Hooooover. And Hooooover made sure you get hooked. You push the machine forward and you see the water and soap soaking in, and it makes about the same soothing sound as inside a plane. As you push your jet machine along the lines of the carpet, you almost expect to hear the suave voice of a flight attendant asking you “Coffee Madame?”. Then you start being so concentrated on following those lines, you’re in a trance like state. Nothing else counts. You don’t see time flying. And Oh! The rotating brushes , that VROUM like the propellers of the plane seen through the window. I got so hooked that I came to consider the best part the one when you empty the bucket from the blackened water. It has something nirvanesque, orgasmic in it, to see all that dirt draining down the sink, then as you come back to your rug, to see the colors revived. Immediate gratification. The Mt Olympus of household appliances, that a few decades ago, were promising women’s liberation from chores. I don’t know about that part, though, as it did take me a few hours to complete the job, which left be back broken, ready to crash into bed with a body feeling like it had run a marathon. Lying down in bed, as I was falling into my (other) night life, I surprised myself wondering if I couldn’t have that heavy machine vroom vroom its rotating brushes over my back, providing me with a well deserved shiatsu massage that would flatten me out, leaving me as flat and stretched as a jelly fish drying in the sun on low tide.

Sus-tai-na-bi-li-ty in Tooth Street

The conversation today at the Fruit&Produce market&cafe, turned around how far this economic recession is gonna go and whether the worst is not yet to come. I know, these days, nothing original with this, that's about all you hear about, a part from the color of
"Sar-appalling" 's lipstick. Seriously. So the malicious band of recalcitrants that hang out there every afternoon were today imagining the resources we'd have to dig out in the worst case scenario. It went from silly questions like "can the state go bankrupt?" (me) to different ways to survive when the dollar is worth nothing. Among the lucrative businesses to open in the now numerous empty business places in La Conner someone mentionned a tooth extraction business, I imagine with a sign that would say something like "Get your health insurance money back and retrieve your gold" , "Pull your teeth & reclaim your inner gold". We could have a "Tooth Street" in La Conner, that would be the local stock market. Then once extracted and welded, the precious metal would go to one of the pawn shops that would proliferate in town to replace the once wealthy souvenir-antiques-vintage stores for tourists. The town is currently considering putting a billboard on highway 20 to attract more tourists, well they'd better think twice on what they're gonna write on it, for by the time the billboard is on, half the businesses advertized will be closed. It would be certainly more enticing to put an ad for the tooth extracting business.
And then what would we do when the dollar is so low and gas so expensive that no one can afford it? I guess the local gas stations would start growing veggies on their parking lots, the neighboring towns would have to destroy the shopping malls, extravaganza! to put agricultural land back on there to feed hords of hungry people. People would tear down their useless garages and grow their own food, for their own subsistance as well as to survive, since most people couldn't go to work any more, because of the shortage of gas. Those living in condos would squat the deserted malls and turn them into community gardens. The sheriff would patrol the town on bike, or on foot - this is already happening to a certain extent- with torches. They would have boomerangs instead of tasers. They'd be in seventh heaven, no car chases anymore. No speeding ticket, no DIU. They might have to deal with black market practices, though.
Wait, here's the best part of it, since there would be a shortage of energy, no TV's anymore. No computers either. Ouch! We'd have to learn smoke signals. Even preachers would go bankrupt, with no TV to spread the faith. We wouldn't see the faces of our politicians anymore. They'd have to move their asses even more travelling around country to gather votes. And maybe their efforts would be vain, as some local communities would probably find out they're doing better without them, and would cecede. Isn't that what we, the "civilized world" would call CHAOS? What a short but frightening word, that lets you have a glimpse of the monster in the cupboard. I can hear them already, mouthing it with that particular distortion of the mouth, as if to say "cockroaches", they'd say, but... that would be.. "CHAOS" wouldinit?

Eclipse

There rose the generous belly of the moon,
apricot blushed, a baked soufflé,
only to hide then, shy of the gaze of humans,
later reappearing up high,
so white, luminous, cold,
in full radiance of her youth,
casting sharp, deep, clear-cut shadows,
bathing the universe in her quier luster,
thus making the street lights,
stiff on their stems,
look like faded flowers.

A Capella

One night as I stepped out to listen to the wind,
I first heard its rustle entering the dance floor and courting the trees,
then the fluttering of the leaves, responding to the soft murmur of their lover,
when Zephyr whirls here, whirls there,
and the occasional Swish! of a young tree
- you could almost hear laughing-
But the star of the show that night was the tinkling duet of my windchime on its balcony
and the neighbor's in the corner house.
Mine tinkled with a feminine voice, a delicate, soft spoken jingle,
thairs a deeper, lower, masculine tone, chiming in echo to mine,
and a whole converstation wnt back and forth,
the chime echoing the tickling of his Dulcinea,
and that was all I could hear then, this courting scene of two lovers,
living accross the street from each other.
After a while, the A cappella duet grew so loud, insistant, that it permeated evrything,
and as this canon for two voices intensified,
as the wind accelerated its dervish whirl,
so there it sounded like a thousand chimes in a Tibetan temple garden.

The Temple

In the center of the clearing in the park there is a temple,
guarded by a circle of high rise Fir pillars,
their arms dressed up with long drooping sleeves,
here and there glistening with prisms of dew drops as the sun pierces through,
and the Firs crane their long necks, all bending towards the center of the clearing
in a concave reverence to what mysterious power?
The sleeves of their long magician robes,
long strips of fabric randomly cut through by invisible scissors,
leave a narrow passage for streaks of soft opalescent sunrays
that brushes leaves with splashes of transluscent green and covers the top with silver varnish.
Right in the heart of that straight sheet of light,
a cloud of golden bugs dance, in small groups or in couples,
tirelessly drawing eights in the air.
An Arbutus tree stands in the shade,
with its cracked, peeling saffron skin lit by the sun, turning it into an incandescent tree of life.
And as I crane my neck up, I have to surrender, and lie down.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are out in my backyard. I wanted them for color, and planted many.
In a matter of a few days they grew big and multiplied.
I like their color palette and their oversized leaves that shelter blooms like Japanese umbrellas,
under which, here and there,
two or three flowers display their silky kimonos in a debauchery of warm tones.
Honey, lemony yellow butterfly wings,
the brightest orange, no doubt a few drops of the Eastern sun bleeding,
Blood orange, sprouting, no doubt from the entrails of the earth,
where the magma is simmering a glowing, sticky stew
waiting to remind us of our impermanence.
All shades of saffron, like the neat conic mounds of spices
artfully displayed in a Morrocan market stall,
glowing like mounds of powdered gems in a dark, narrow, medina cobbled street.
Like the robes of Buddhist monks in a dimly lit temple,
And rust, the peculiar texture of metal turning back into powder,
going back to the earth it was extracted from.
We'll get rusty too, and when we get tired of our futile combat against our nature,
we'll curl up and wrinkle and dry out and be reduced to a powder,
just in time to go back to our mother, beneath our feet,
who, in her unconditionnal, loving wisdom, will blend ud with a savant mixture
of earth, minerals, syrup, water, and fire,
to revive us, pushing us back up as a nastutium flower.

Mother of pearl

Somewhere in the confines of the universe,

a mysterious arm feels pity for the darkness we're immersed in,

and in a slow, graceful sweeping movement,

pushes away the shirt tail of the clouds,

so we can catch a glimpse of the shy maiden moon.

As the mysterious ballerina dances around the pearly sphere,

the veils every now and then are pulled close and cover her feminine roundness.

But the queen of the night, in her infinite generosity,

dances her adagio around the pale globe,

softly coaxing her into letting her face shine to the Earth,

and as the demoiselle is ready, the queen stretches out a swanlike finger,

and turns the light on,

and the mother of pearl, rivalling the million sparkling gems around her,

at last offers her opalescent glow, pulling us out of the darkness.

Travel in a backyard

It's here. Finally.
late for its yearly date, but it made it, once more.
Once more, the slow, longed for spring has landed on our valley.
I became aware of it in the last few days when I step over my porch overlooking the backyard.
It's not the slow blooming, nor the few patches of color, nor the birdsongs,
that confirmed the long awaited good news,
but what my nostrils perceived as I stepped out in my town garden,
that has now just enough foliage grown to encase all the fragrances into an invisible cloche.
As I step out on the sideyard along the tall bamboos, it already assaults my nostrils,
as the air is barely warm enough, with just the right amount of moisture,
to allow the delicate scents to be liberated.
There are so many it's impossible to distinguish them,
it's just a subtle, perfect combination,
that the most world renowned perfumers will never be able to duplicate.
Some I can identify, like the unmistakable, insistent fragrance of the Jasmine that instantly transports me to the shores of Hamamet, Tunisia, then to the hilltop village of Sidi Bou,
its cobbled windind streets, reflecting the whitewashed walls.
You have to slowly trod those streets, for they don't like hurried visitors,
those irregular cobbles, and the heat, force you to slow down, watch your steps,
for you have to deserve what's awaiting for you at the top of the village.
As you walk up the narrow streets, with its whitewashed walls and indigo mucharrabieh,
its heavy wooden doors bolted with ancient, rusty knockers,
you bathe in the blue light and breathe in the scent of jasmine,
worn by men in a tight bouquet behing the ear,
and by women woven in necklaces.
As you stroll along uphill you pass craftsmen working on copper and pewter, the tin-tin noise of their hammer tirelessly shaping the metal.
You pass spice stalls displaying rich powders in shades of ocre, saffron, and earthly reds,
transporting you to the era of high walled, impenetrable caravanserails.
A you stroll up the hills of Sidi-Bou, you pass bougainvilleas overflowing the round, soft edges
of glaring white walls jealously keeping secret realms,
then you reach the Sidi-Chabaane cafe overlooking the bay of Carthage and the Punic harbor,
and sitting outside there with mint tea and pinon pines,
a narguileh and Maalouf music, you know you've reached one of the tops of the world.

The coat of the night

When the night spreads her dark coat over the deserted town,
when the human creatures drape themselves in their beds
and finally fall into oblivion,
Imperceptibly, another world awakens.
The doll houses, aligned in neat rows,
abandon their competition to show the same vague color,
only remain their jagged ridges, an uninterrupted lace festoon,
The street lights watch, like sentinels, their long stems carrying a unique faded flower,
and stetch their frail neck over the streeet shining from the last rain.
Then, then the frogs awaken in the ditches saturated with water
to celebrate the fertile rain,
tirelessly,
thousands of voices sing the blessing of the essence of life.

Backyard twilight

When the cars and motorbikes start receding,
when in between I can actually hear neighbors laughing in their yard,
as I lift my eyes I notice the sun is hidden,
and a strange, greyish yellow light announcing a storm
The Calla lilies are craning their graceful necks up,
glowing sentinels, like Art Deco lamps,
The roses I put eralier on in a vase on the graden table are opening up,
finally releasing their delicate, ephemereal aroma,
The clouds above, dark teal sponges that an invisible hand is about to press,
are holding their breath,
Everything is getting still with that almost palpable expectation,
Every now and then, a very slight breeze tries to agitate a branch or two,
but Hush! says the tree, something's coming up!

Here and There

In those early hours as you emerge back to the surface of this world,
after many journeys and visits in the other one,
cleansed and light,
As you emerge, stripped of your human self-consciousness,
small and light as a feather, your eyes opening, barely,
still sealed together with the sap that, at night, closes the gate of this world,
and takes you to your other life.
In those aerly hours, as your toes start moving,
and your limbs soon stretch that primitive, feline stretch,
as you feel the softness of your comforter, barely warm,
you awaken to the pleasure of the senses, touch, feel,
In those early hours you're a wanderer,
oscillating between this world and the other,
still draped in the shreds of dreams,
floating back and forth, gently, in that cloudy space
between this world and the other.
In those early hours, you may. for a while, close your eyes again,
not to go back to sleep, but to savor a little longer the pleasure of the voyage
between this world and the other,
till the early bird song coaxes you back here and now.
In those early hours, you know you have two lives,
in this world and the other,
and you may wonder, which one is real, but maybe both are,
and mabe that's what dreams teach you, if you listen,
messages from your other life and beyond...

The hand that has lived

This hand has lived a thousand lives,
it is thick, coarse, rugged as an old country road,
with crevices and ditches and potholes,
ridges and untamed streams bedded with river rocks,
It smells of sawdust and rusty tools,
its nails forever blackened with the soil they have dug
and the plants it has tirelessly grown year after year,
It harbors untold stories of battles in remote lands of memories,
of the lovers whose curves they have stroked and whose names are long forgotten,
And now here it is, dry and silent like a desert canyon,
but so warm I wish I were small enough to lie down in it.

Summer breathe

Waking up to the promises of another summer day,
all windows open, gentle breeze circulating,
soft morning light calling you to the millions of possibilities,
like millions of question marks,
their queue pointing at the openness,
make your mind wander like a bee,
and your body buzzes of excitement at the prospect of a long, warm day,
anticipating all the little adventures of an uneventful weekend,
watching the rubies, sapphire, topazes, lapis lazuli, set in your backyard,
sprouting abundance by the minute,

Or standing in mute admiration of the myriad of mirrors
on the surface of the Channel
you’ll savor the amusement on a café deck,
of faded people, under faded pastel umbrellas,
with faded Hawaiian shirts from faded, old fashioned thrift stores,
who surrender to the gentle heat trickling into every pore,
turning them back into human beings,
stopping their busy minds, now floating in a gentle stupor,
that heat that pulls the strings of ease and laughter,
and chases the self conscious mind,
to let in the compost of nothingness,
on which sprouts the wit of slowness.

Or maybe you’ll stop at the funky fry bread stand,
to sit on the deck by the fishermen, them too immobile,
watching them sitting on the boat for hours, a can of beer in their hand, as immobile as the wooden piers,
lost in eternal contemplation.
You sit there, your mouth trickling with fry bread honey,
your hands sticky from that honey that turns you back into a child,
and you’ll lick your fingers, and won’t need to wash your hands,
because you’ll want to remain a child for the rest of the day.

Or you there, maybe you’ll be digging the dirt in your garden,
with the inexhaustible pleasure of playing with organic matter,
and you’ll pamper your salads, tirelessly tearing the weeds away,
and the salads will breathe their ease, and spread out,
stretching their polished leaves as if to thank you,
and you’ll look at your nails blackened with dirt,
and you won’t wash them either,
for you don’t wash away the dirt that feeds you

Or maybe you’ll go to the park on the hill, listen to the tall firs
telling you how strong and stubborn they are,
telling you of the power of life,
teaching you how to stand your ground,
with deep roots and enough flexibility to stand the winds.

Or, maybe, you’ll go to the beach,
and kick your shoes off,
and let the soles of your feet sink into the sand,
and you’ll allow your long imprisoned toes
to venture in the cool water and play with each other
and make you giggle like a child,
and if you giggle,
that will open the doors of the million bounties of simple pleasures,
just because,
just because, of the child within you.

Channel organic

Bent over the banister overlooking the channel at the end of the day,
watching the may happenings of the wildlife, in its last urge to accomplish its daily mission
before the monarch of the day ends its circle,
I see,
The white flakes of seagulls, fluttering above the buffet at the surface of the water,
like hungry guests at a cocktail party, elbowing their way closer to the finest appetizers,
swooping down on the regal feast.
I see,
Down below,
The emerald green waters harboring the precious bounty of smelt, crabs, and barnacles,
of algae and green, mossy substance, clung like suction pads to their heavy mineral anchors,
shadowing unfathomable realms, where all the agitation from the surface is muffled,
only disturbed by the occasional ripple of a fish.
I see,
The emerald waters turning clear, as they gently tickle the sticky, muddy shore
patterned with starshaped bird prints
Then comes the rich, organic smell of iodine, that tastes of sea urchin,
bringing about the call of the open sea, filling you in with a month vacation in an instant.

Dawn

All is silent and still, yet something has awakened you
All is dark and quiet, yet some impulse pushed you up,
to perform the morning ritual of dark, steaming coffee.
And you sip, and wait, for the slow raise of the day star
And when the dim, blue dawn, finally,
opens the curtain for the morning light,
ribbons of pink and yellow muslin adorn the pale blue robe.
Glass beads oozing on the window invite the fingertips to play
and absorb the essence of life in their million crevices.
Then you see, beyond the prism of dew drops,
the golden tips of the fir trees,
all aligned and straight up,
ready for the review of the master of the day.

Wedding party in the clouds

The bride's long trail
stretches out its thousand veils,
pushed by the purple breath of the breeze
Her bridesmaids, cotton cloudlets in apricot chemise
in the satin folds play hide and seek, and wave
Hush! Hush, maidens, behave!
Powder your cheeks with carmine,
strew our path with Jessamine,
for the poet and the painter,
for the peach astral cylinder,
that will soon cast irridescent rice grains
on the snowy service of porcelain.

December morning

Fog descended at daybreak upon the firs, draping them,
immaterial whitish veil, a mousseline scarf wraping the cone tops,
then almost instantly dissipating,
as the golden sunrays started their delicate watercolor painting,
slowly reavealing the details and contrasts of their majesties.
For a while though, the muslin scarf would come back, a vast vaporous curtain,
embracing the beloved trees, reluctant to give way,
O! Let me hold you once more!
And you could barely make out, as they melted with their morning lover,
the outlines of their majesties the firs,
like a sketch made by a hesitant hand with an unsharpened pencil,
And you could follow that hand and its movements as it went over the tree tops,
with each passage defining them a little more, by timid strokes.
Then the finger would shade off the lines again, over and over,
till it got bold enough to sharpen the edges, deepen the shadows,
so that their majesties could, at last,
make their tall presence known to their next lover, the solar disk,
A pale, powdered yellow light, yearning to stroke the fir trees
And melt the snow and dew with its warm breath.

Don't put a lid on a volcano

This is about all things that should be left to the open air, all things that should be left to breathe, all things that should be left to wander, all things that should be left to show, all things that should be left to ooze, things that should be left to grieve, things that should be left to expand and grow, all things that should be left to run around naked, all things that should be left alone, things that should be left in peace, those that should be left to swell, and pour out freely.
Don't put a lid on them. You think you gonna kill them by doing so? How naive. How selfish. How unconsiderate. How suicidal.
I recently made a trip to Mt St Helens volcano, and watching this formidable force of nature, permanently letting out that plume of smoke, I thought of how wise and powerful nature is, and this was a reminder to anyone who wants to watch, and listen, not only with their eyes and ears, but also with their hearts and souls, a reminder that we cannot - and should not- try to control everything the way we do. That we should accept - and respect- what happens. Who was it that put in humans' minds this silly idea that they could control things and people, that they could control what happened? What a presomptuous idea. We'll be on our way out of trouble, the day we admit that we cannot control everything, and that what happens was meant to happen the way it happens.
So why are we trying to put a lid on ourselves, and on others? Why are we killing ourselves by inches? Why are we putting so much effort in killing what little humanity remains in us? Why are we harming ourselves so much? What are we so afraid of? Tell me!