The Porcelain Cabbage

After reading my previous post, titled "Fly," one of my readers who goes by the initials TA, which I am guessing stands for "Totally Anonymous," suggested I should write poems. The fact is, I've written a few poems in my day. In fact, one of them that I wrote many years ago—many decades ago—is one of my favorites, and over the years a number of people have read it and asked me for a copy of the poem. Although the poem is a little bit reminiscent of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," I wrote my poem several years before I read "The Hobbit" and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and decades before the films were made.

Some background: I had nothing to do one day, so I pulled out a notepad and pen and I started writing. The poem that came out is titled "The Porcelain Cabbage." (I was in a whimsical mood.) The poem is written in iambic quadrameter, except for the first line which I never could fit into the same rhythm as the other lines. Iambic quadrameter has four beats per line, with each beat having an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. So: duh DUH  duh DUH  duh DUH  duh DUH. Like a heartbeat.

When I began writing this poem, I had no idea where it would go nor how it would end. It just flowed out of me like a feeling put into words. I've never "published" it to the world, so it feels a little bit odd putting this old poem on the Internet. Here it is, for what it's worth; I hope my readers enjoy it. And credit to TA for the nudge that prompted me to dust off this old poem and put it on my blog.

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The Porcelain Cabbage
            a poem by VirtualWayne

Long before the eyes of man
Did rest upon this weary land
There was within the forest dim
A porcelain cabbage very grim
A thing that was so terrible
Whose sight was so unbearable
That none before it dared to stand
And all who saw it turned and ran.

It was the porcelain cabbage great
That through the land did ravage late
A cabbage so carnivorous
Without the slightest fear of us
That those who lived were those who fled
And those who stayed were quickly dead
Across the land both far and near
The cabbage spread its hate and fear.

But of these matters all I knew
Was tidings from survivors few
Who had escaped the porcelain wrath
And deadly peril of its path
In tens they came, then hundreds and
Before the end the thousands ran
To Skydown where the Smorg and me
Did live and rule in harmony.

Now Skydown was a haven fair
And evil had not ventured there
Since Smorg and I had brought our rule
To this fair land, this sparkling jewel
And all these things the cabbage knew
But every day its power grew
Until one day it conquered all
But Skydown, which had yet to fall.

It dawned a dark and gloomy morn
That day the evil news was borne
To Skydown that the porcelain wrath
Had set its gaze upon our path
And even then was drawing near
To Skydown, and would soon be here
But hope did not fail Smorg and me
That our fair realm would still be free

A roof of clouds had covered all
When Smorg and I strode from our hall
The day had grown dark as the night
With eerie lightning flashing bright
And thunder shook the very ground
And acrid smoke hung all around
And then we knew that if we could
Not stop this thing, then no one would.

Out of the dark the monster loomed
And if we fell then all was doomed
We stood before the might and hate
And felt the rage that none could take
Then Smorg and I began to fight
And all that day and through the night
The battle raged on up and down
The length and breadth of fair Skydown.

On us alone its might was bent
Until on us its wrath was spent
And then on Skydown fair the sun
Dawned bright, and Smorg and I had won.
The world does not remember now
That battle or that land so fair
Nor does it know just what it cost
To save the things we almost lost.

The world was safe until some morn
Another evil shape would form
And threaten some new Skydown fair
But Smorg and I will not be there
For this will be the time of man
And he will live throughout this land
And when he meets that evil shape
I wonder what will be his fate.   

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A final note is, I think, worth mentioning. When I wrote the poem, I debated whether to reverse the meaning of the final two lines. So instead of

And when he meets that evil shape
I wonder what will be his fate.

I could have written

And when he meets that evil fate
I wonder what will be its shape.

That gives a very different meaning to those two lines. I decided to use the first option, which questions whether Man will survive that final encounter with Evil. Had I used the second option, the poem would have questioned what kind of Evil will Man encounter in those last days.

Fly

Sometimes it gets lonely around the house. I have one pet. It's a fly. I named it Fly. It was very friendly and followed me everywhere inside the house, from room to room. Sometimes Fly would go zooming around my head like an airborne puppy, except much smaller than an actual puppy dog. Sometimes it would land on my shoulder and just watch the world go by as I walked. Sometimes it would sit beside my keyboard and watch me type as I wrote my blog.

I found out Fly was female when other flies identical to Fly began appearing. I was overwhelmed and resorted to breaking out the flyswatter. I hated to kill Fly's children but I had no choice. They were swarming around me wherever I went. Sometimes it was difficult to make a meal because flies would be buzzing around my hands and trying to land themselves on the pot or bowl I was using. But I'm not very good at swatting flies so I had an idea. I put a glue board on top of the kitchen stove. 

It was an ordinary, unscented glue board. I had doubts that it would collect flies. But collect flies is what it did. At one point I snapped a photo of the glue board so that I could count the flies on it. It had collected 65 flies. So I put a second glue board at the other end of the room and it began collecting flies. I was still swatting and killing a few flies, but the glue boards did the heavy lifting. They killed dozens of the annoying critters.

Then one night, about two nights ago, I was in the kitchen making dinner and a fly landed on the countertop. Without hesitating, I picked up the flyswatter and killed the critter. Then I took a closer look and realized that it was Fly. "Was" is the operative word here, because it was Fly no more. It was dead. I looked closer and saw what looked like a tiny note in one of its tiny paws. I got out my old 30-power Radio Shack microscope, switched on the built-in lamp, and looked closely at the note in Fly's dead paw. The note read, "You're my only friend. I love you."

That was so sad, it made me cry. At least I thought it did, until I realized my face was too close to the onion I was cutting up for my salad. I stepped back and wiped away a tear. Fly and I had good times together. We watched YouTube videos together, we watched the evening news together—we did everything together. But now Fly is gone and the house seems so much more empty and lonely without her.

I picked up Fly's tiny body and held it above the kitchen garbage can. "Alas poor Fly, I knew ye well. Have a good journey into Fly Afterlife." And I let her tiny body drop into the garbage can. I don't have a picture of Fly, but I still have the photo of her children. But who wants to look at a photo of 65 flies stuck to a glue board?

Sometimes I think I spend too much time alone.

Lies and Half Truths

My opinion, from where I sit looking at the political world, is that too many national politicians have too little regard for the truth. They don't care about what is true. To them, it is more important to get votes. That means that if they have to lie to their constituents about what is really happening in the world, in the country, and in their state, then they will tell those lies without batting an eyelash. Lying is easier than telling the truth. They seem to think, "Just tell people what they want to hear, even if it reinforces their prejudices, their fallacies and fantasies, and then go about your business." The voters are happy because they hear what they want to hear; the politicians are happy because they don't have to engage in difficult debates and their constituents love them; and the country continues down the long bumpy road to perdition.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when most lawmakers seemed informed, astute, and well intentioned. There have always been exceptions, of course, but they were ... exceptions. (Southern Democrats in the era of civil rights struggles come to mind). But now it seems that the exception is the rule. "If you can't beat them, join them," is the motto of many of today's politicos.

But the fault doesn't lie entirely with the politicians. A big chunk of blame goes to those who put them in power based on their own prejudices and their own unwillingness to accept reality. It is not too late to make changes and steer the ship of state away from danger, but I doubt that today's public has the character, the inclination, or the desire to do what needs to be done. Today's voters easily swallow the lies and half-truths perpetrated on them by biased news sources and incompetent leaders because that is the easy way.  It is so much easier than the difficult job of thinking for themselves. As Abraham Lincoln said, "People will believe anything if they read it on the Internet."

Old Stuff

This is Friday. My last blog post was published Wednesday. That night, sometime during the night, I was awakened by the sound of hammering coming from upstairs. My bedroom is downstairs; no one lives upstairs. And yet...

I sat up in bed and listened. Bam! Bam! Bam! (I thought: "I know I'm not dreaming this.") Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Finally it stopped. I don't know what it was. I haven't gone upstairs and looked around, but when I do, I don't expect to see anything unusual. My house has been subject to strange, loud noises and other weird occurrences ever since I moved into it. I've blogged about these occurrences numerous times. They don't happen as often as they used to happen. But anyway, the hammering had stopped. I lay back down and went to sleep.

Today, I got up early (for me) because I wanted to buy groceries before the store got crowded. I drove to Walmart and got there at 7:30AM. I bought food items (so many choices...should I buy two family size boxes of raisin bran crunch or the mega size box?) and returned home and put them away. Since then my day has involved Skyping with Nuria, practicing Spanish, napping, eating, and soon: more eating. And washing dishes. By hand. The way I did it when I was a boy. Washing dishes was one of my daily chores in those faraway days. I hated it. Maybe it's why I put it off so much now. I wait until the dirty dishes are everywhere in the kitchen—on counter tops, on top of the stove, on top of the cutting board, and so on. Then, when not even I can stand it, I give in and wash them all and put them away. It's a small achievement but I feel good about it for a while. Until I take out that first dish and use it and leave it on the countertop or in the sink.

I am pondering publishing some of my writings that I did many years ago. I've been writing a long time—since I was a school boy. I used to sit in class, open my notebook, and begin a story. Sometimes I would write poetry. But little of it has survived the years and even less has been transferred to a PC. The writings that have survived are lost somewhere in the room that I call the Hell Room. If you could see it, you would understand the name.

I'll continue my pondering and see if I can find any slivers of writing that are worth publishing. I was really into science fiction back in those days, and so most of my writing was of that genre. No promises, but maybe I'll publish a little piece of that old stuff now and then.

Word

Today is Wednesday. Last Friday I drove Nuria to the airport and now she's back in Costa Rica. She's been a trooper with helping me learn Spanish, but I think the days of learning new things may be behind me. Or maybe I just need to do the lessons for twelve hours per day.

Yesterday I took my car to an auto shop for its annual inspection, which in theory should cost $20. But every car owner knows how that goes. The mechanic put it on the lift and the first thing he said was, "You need a new muffler." Of course. It really doesn't seem that long since I put a new muffler on it.

I looked closely at the muffler. It was a bit rusty, but I didn't see any holes. Still, it was louder than it should have been. So I nodded "Okay." 

He said, "You need an oil change." I already knew that, so I nodded again and told him to be sure to perform a lube job, too. 

He then said, "Your headlights are foggy and need buffing." I said "Okay."

"It will be three hundred ninety five dollars," he said. Thank goodness it wasn't four hundred dollars—that would have been expensive. *sarcasm*

I walked home and waited for a call telling me I could pick up the car. After two hours, I figured the job should be complete, and I called the shop. The mechanic answered. "Oh, I was about to call you," he said. "Your car is ready."

I walked back to the auto shop. The first thing I did was to walk to the front of the car to inspect my shiny new headlamps. They looked the same as before. Exactly the same.

"They look the same!" I exclaimed. The mechanic offered some mumbo-jumbo about "painting" them, which I quickly put down. "They look exactly the same as before," I insisted. "I'm not charging you for that," he said.

I knelt beside the car and looked under it. A shiny new muffler was installed. I'm sure it was the cheapest muffler they could find. As for the oil change and lube job, I have only his word. 

I paid him $395. The Jeep is good for one more year.

As I walked out of his office, he offered me one tip: "You should sell that Jeep and buy a new one." But I wondered, "Why? It looks good and it's been running great for 26 years."

Today, my house and garage were treated for termites. I found termite tunnels in the garage a few months ago. I called a termite company and a salesman/inspector came out and looked around. I told him, inasmuch as they had to treat the garage, they could treat the house, too. Of course, they don't enter buildings to treat them. They dig a shallow trench around the perimeter of the building and put down a poison.

The salesman told me that the trench would be 8 inches deep. The young man who did the actual job (I will henceforth refer to him as "the termite guy") told me it would be two inches deep. When I mentioned the salesman's eight inch trench, the termite guy said, "That's the old treatment. The new stuff we're using is much stronger and we only go two inches into the ground."

The salesman told me the job would take four hours. It actually took one hour. I told the termite guy that the salesman said four hours, and the termite guy said, "He doesn't do the work."

The termite treatment was $850.

So, yesterday and today I spent $1245 and the only thing that I'm sure of is that I got a new inspection sticker and the cheapest muffler money can buy, and a guy with a hose spent an hour walking around my house and garage. Oh, and digging a two-inch-deep trench so narrow that I can't really see it. Maybe he did a great job, the best job any termite guy has ever done. Or maybe he did a quick job and then took the afternoon off. I don't know for sure. I have only his word.

Only Time

Today is Saturday, September 11, 2021. If you're an American, you know what that date means.

Football, American style.

Oh, you thought I was referring to the 9/11 terror attacks. Yes, those happened 20 years ago to the day. But when I mentioned the date, possibly you didn't pay attention to the "day and month" portion of today's date. It's Saturday and it's September. Nothing overrules American football when the season arrives. Television broadcasters like to make money, and on a Saturday afternoon during football season, they make money by broadcasting football games.

But now that I've broached the subject of the 9/11 terror attacks, and especially after America's inevitable withdrawal from that campaign, I think it is appropriate to list some of the countries and empires that have invaded and attempted to conquer Afghanistan.

United States and NATO, 2001-2021
Soviet Union, 1929, 1930, and 1979
Great Britain, 1838–1842, 1878–1880 and 1919
The Sikh Empire, 1837–1838
Tamerlane (Timur) and Mughal Empire, 1383-1385
Mongol Empire, 1219-1221
Arab Caliphate, 7th to 9th centuries
Kushan Empire, 1st century AD
Greece, 330 BC
Median Empire, 1500 BC - 551 BC

Though countries and empires may have left their influence on Afghanistan, Afghanistan persists. Only time conquers all.

Mi Rodeo

As I have already revealed, I am studying Spanish and have been since at least November 2020. Today I finally found some use for it. I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant (code-name: Mi Rodeo) with Nuria and I was reading the menu. The waiter stopped at my table and placed appetizers on the table. I looked straight at the waiter and said, "Gracias." He replied, "De nada." First contact: successful. 

After this exchange, I was feeling smug, so when the waiter stopped again to take my meal order, I leaned back and said, "Pollo Loco." He went away and a while later he came back with a plate of food. While the food was completely unidentifiable to me, I had no doubt that, in this establishment, it was called "Pollo Loco", which is Spanish for "Crazy Chicken." Or, perhaps in these more socially correct times, this menu item is now called "Pollo Con Problemas Mentales." Whichever, it's okay with me. I just want lunch.

I came home and saw my neighbor in his yard. He is Egyptian and has been renting the house next to mine for several years. I walked over to him and chatted for a while. He has a thick accent and I can understand about one third of what he says. He told me he bought the house he has been renting. He bought it last month. He told me a lot of other things, but because of his accent, I missed most of what he said to me. Finally, he asked me if I understood him. I replied, "No." He laughed and threw up his arms, then he turned and walked away.

So I went back to what I had been doing, which was putting air in my Jeep's tires. The front tires needed no air, one rear tire needed one or two pounds, and the other rear tire needed 10 pounds. That one might have a nail in it. I'll have to keep an eye on it. Also, I'll buy a can of Fix-A-Flat, just in case. 

I try to publish blog articles more often than I succeed in doing, but the time really does fly. I spend two to four hours a day studying Spanish, and I feel I'm getting nowhere. Oh, I understood the waiter when he said "De nada," but that isn't a conversation. I'll never be fluent in Spanish, so I don't know why I'm studying it. Many years ago, a woman who was supposedly a psychic told me I had lived previously as a Spanish landowner. I shrugged. I don't know, but why not? It's as probable as living a life in America, or anywhere else. I've always felt, going back to at least age six, that I had lived somewhere before I was born. In other words, I felt that I existed long before my birth. Sometimes, I felt I could almost remember that place, but in the end I could never recall it. But I still remember vividly the feeling that I existed before my birth, before my entry into this lifetime. It wasn't something I made up, and I never discussed it with anyone. But I felt it very strongly.

It's 6PM on this Tuesday after Labor Day. On the short list of Things-To-Do, I have to add motor oil to my Jeep, check the transmission fluid and coolant level, and do a few other simple things before Friday. I will be driving Nuria to the airport on Friday morning for her return trip to Costa Rica. I'll miss her. 

[Note: Unbeknownst to me, a small part of this blog post was accidentally published on Sunday, September 5. That partial post was replaced by this post published on Sept 7.]

The Man In The Arena

Republican Congressmen and Senators are condemning Biden's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. They are especially criticizing the loss of 13 service members to a terror attack. Some are calling for Biden's impeachment. Some are calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked. Could any of them have done this withdrawal better? Or would they have our troops remain in Afghanistan forever?

The entire episode – the withdrawal and the predictable criticism – brings to my mind a quote by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1910, at the Sorbonne in Paris, Roosevelt delivered a speech called “Citizenship in a Republic,” which, eventually, would come to be known also as “The Man in the Arena.”

Roosevelt railed against cynics who looked down at men who were trying to make the world a better place. “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” he said. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities—all these are marks, not ... of superiority but of weakness.”

Then, partway through his speech, he delivered this passage: an inspirational and impassioned message that drew huge applause:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."