Strong Views

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Strong Views

On the narrow road rising steeply
to Sierra City's cemetery, a wry
sign notes, "Not A Through Street."
We set the headstone of a dead aunt
next to a rock wall her brother
built. We place beneath the concrete

a full bottle of whiskey, a
horseshoe, a deer antler, and
a piece of rose quartz. Otherwise,
the aunt's not represented here
except in our memories. Her
ashes travel up by an alpine
lake somewhere. The family's
idiosyncratic, you might say,

and tardy, even haphazard, with
its burial rituals. In fact, there
are no rituals, no funerals or
formalities. People get together
eventually, share some laughs
and glum grief, eat, and drink.

A panting black dog lies
in the truck watching us lay
the headstone. Later, the aunt's
remaining brothers will visit
the stone in the shade, have
a look, say a total of, oh,
seven words, maybe. For now,

we kid around in the cemetery,
get the job done, nobody's
business but our own. Goodbye
to Aunt Nevada. The smooth blue
stone, saved from an arastra,
gives the pertinent dates, her
other last name, and a nickname--
then mentions, "Strong Views."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Audible Is Laudable

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Audible Is Laudable

A crisper whisper would have been
audible to you. You wouldn't have
said, "What?" The whisperer wouldn't
have then withdrawn, mortified. You
wouldn't have made all those bad
guesses: Did she say, "Wild swans
used to be white, of course" or
"Michael wants you to rewrite
the reports"? or something else
entirely? Why had she desired
to whisper? You can't ask her. She
has moved away from you to another
part of the room, is conversing
garrulously. Others look at you.
Again you say, "What?" but for
another purpose. You say it clearly.
They hear you. They say nothing.


Copyright 2009

Ford F-100 Coda

A correspondent from California who is familiar with the history of a particular Ford F-100 pickup (see previous post) observes the following:

"It should also be noted that for most of its life the F-100 rarely exceeded 40 mph so it's carbon production was very low when compared to the Ford Expedition behemoths that are rolling down the freeways of America every day at 75 or 80 mph."

Speed emits. I've never written that particular two-word sentence before; wow, that felt pretty good.

Cap and Trade: Bring It On!

Apparently one proposal for reducing carbon emissions is known as "cap and trade," a concept that, I gather, involves charging companies (for example) for emitting carbon but allows companies to trade "units" of carbon they have been allotted.

Another proposal, already enacted, involves giving people $4500 for so-called clunker automobiles if they spend the $4500 on a car that emits less carbon.

These policies converge directly on my 1969 Ford F-100 pickup (step-side style, short bed).

I'm ready.

My secret weapon is the odometer, which I, which no one, has turned back, in case you're wondering. The total miles on the odometer is now 52,480. Divide that number by 40 (years), and you get the resulting miles driven per year and carbon emitted per year. Not many miles, not much carbon.

My late father drove the pickup until 1997, so almost all the credit for low carbon emissions and minimalist driving must go to him. Most of the miles he put on the truck involved going to and from work as a carpenter and stone mason; going "to town" to pick up the mail and some groceries; going hunting, which essentially involved driving straight up into the mountains (much elevation, few miles); and going in search of gold.

However, at the insistence of the Ford F-100, I have maintained the minimalist philosophy. If you would emit less carbon, suggests the Ford, drive less. I know: it is a complex theory.

To echo lines from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, I don't need no stinking $4500 dollars for my "clunker" (a term the Ford and I find offensive, incidentally), and bring the cap-and-trade on, baby. I will amass units of carbon that I will sell to, well, I don't know to whom--Du Pont? California? NASCAR?

When I do occasionally drive the Ford into my favorite working-class shopping area in Tacoma, the Ford gets a lot of approving glances--from persons of all generations and from both genders, believe it or not. The truck is certifiably funky. It is an automotive poem.

Motorcycles, 2:10 a.m.

Motorcycles, 2:10 a.m.

At 2:10 a.m., it is too hot to sleep. An open
window reports the sound of motorcycles as they
rage away from saloons' parking lots at closing-
time and down a long dark hill out there. The
thought of a drunk riding an unmuffled engine

home and startling people all along the route
salts an insomniac's grim sense of humor. A
soused, solitary biker riding is a raucous
creature, a sad Nietzsche in bluejeans, the
gas-tank shaped like a stylized tear-drop,

the woozy rebel's jacket hand-sewn by a
tolerant, bemused aunt whose husband, an
insurance salesman and the step-father
of the lad, drives one of those silent
hybrid cars and must arise at 6:30 a.m.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Horse-Trail, High Sierra

Horse-Trail, High Sierra


Riding horses in the High Sierra, we take
trails threaded through hulking conifers,
bypass a Maidu/Washo ceremonial hill
covered with black gravel. Breezes off
Gold Lake wrangle scents of wildflowers,
thick aroma of skunk-cabbage, corn-lily,
and mountain misery. The horses snort
thin air. There's sign of bear.

Lightning felled a tree not long ago.
Now new thunder-clouds amass explosive,
creamy ambition over blue distant peaks,
east. Alpine meadows seem closer to
Paradise than most places, at least
in this easy summer's ride. The

sun-scalded cowgirl from Portola
leading the way shifts on the saddle
and hollers unsentimentally, "This
tree you're passing's over 300 years old."


Copyright 2009

Thoreau on August

Here's a quotation from Henry David "Hank" Thoreau (I think only a few of his Transcendentalist friends called him Hank) about the month of August:


"In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees,gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs."
- Henry David Thoreau

I found the quotation, which amounts to a nice little prose-poem, at . . .

http://www.egreenway.com/months/monaug.htm

Uncle Victor's Senility

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Uncle Victor's Senility


Uncle Victor's senility seemed comic then.
He was in fact a great-uncle, and we weren't
yet adolescents. He wore his hat when he took
a bath. He proposed marriage multiple times
to multiple nurses in the Old Folks' Home.

His skin was parchment-thin, the veins like
big blue roots. He trembled. We learned a new
word, "palsy." Now Alzheimer's and Dementia
name what we didn't know. Old Folks' Homes
are called Nursing Facilities. Victor woke

to memories scattered and broken in a meadow
of the mind. He picked one up, put it on his
head, took a bath, knew marriage was the logical
next step. To the vandals of Uncle Victor's
memory, we now say, "Shame on you."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poem By The Side of the Road

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Poem By the Side of the Road

Here is a poem that lives
by the side of a road
in the form of a shack
with a tin chimney stack
and a recluse stirring inside.

Walk on the road past
the shack if you will; see fine
dust rise from your foot-fall,
and if you're brave, shout a call
to the recluse stirring inside.

A poem is a shack, and a
shack is a poem, or
so the tautology flows. What's true
of poems and shacks? Who knows?
The recluse stirring inside.

Mowers, Toes, and Phones

Mowers, Toes, and Phones

On a July day one barefoot American
teenager shouts into his phone outside
as another barefoot American teenager
is cutting grass close by with a snarling
power-mower. One of them needs to go
inside, and the other needs to put on
shoes, but only a fool would try to
tell them, so this fool, me, strolls by
and tries to enjoy the comedy and not
wince at the thought of those toes,
or of those ears owned by whoever's on
the other side of that shout, and I wonder
what marketeers created the category
"teenager," and I know one has to
have faith that young ones will grow
up and older ones will stay that way.
Yes, belief in maturation's based more
on faith than evidence, but by now
I'm a block away, and I don't have
to look at the toes inches away from
whirling steel blades or watch the
shouter compete with the voice of a mower.
A fool, I need to believe the two lads
will turn out all right, whatever than means.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

ABC of Under-the-Influence, Part Two

A correspondent from the foothills of California, where the creeks have known to run with whiskey a time or two, has offered a supplemental ABC of inebriation (below). Also, I remembered that my parents' generation occasionally described a drunken person as being "three sheets to the wind," which (being a literalist) I used to associate with bed-sheets hanging on a clothesline but which I now assume refers to sails on a ship. I also remember the same generation speaking of someone's "going on a bender," meaning the person had gone on drinking for, let's say, a week, or for a lost weekend, like Ray Milland's character in the movie.


A: Annihilated, aced, addled, ambushed

B: Blitzed, bent, bombed, blasted, bagged [in the bag], backed up, blind {blind drunk], blotto, brain dead

C: Confused, clogged, comatose

D: Detoured, damaged, dunked, (plus all of the hundreds of “drunk as…”)

E: Electrified, eighty-sixed, embalmed,

F: Feeling no pain, faced, fried, flattened, flaked

G: Gonzo, glocked, grossed out, gassed up, gone

H: Hijacked, high as a kite, half in the bag, haywire

I: In the weeds, in deep shit, in a puddle, invisible

J: Juiced, jammed up, jolted

K: Killed, knockered, kay-oed

L: Liberated, limber, lit to the gills, listing to port, lubed

M: Misty eyed, mellowed out, moronic, marinated, mummified

N: Nasty, nuked, nailed, numb

O: Over the edge, oiled, ossified,

P: Plastered, ploughed, pixilated, paralyzed, pickled

Q: Don’t know any “Q” words for drunk,
drugged, etc.

R: Roasted, ripped, rotten, ruined, rooted

S: Silly, stupid, skunked, slobbered, stinkin’ drunk, sauced, snockered (or schnockered), schwacked, sloshed

T: Toasted, tanked, throttled, totaled, thrashed

U: Undone, used up, unbalanced

V: Violated, varnished, vegetated

W: Wasted, wobbled, weirded out, woozy

X: Don’t know any “X” words for drunk, drugged, etc.

Y: Yanked, yellowed, yippy

Z: Zagged, zapped, zonked, zeroed out

An ABC of Inebriation

One interesting characteristic of most inebriated persons (and in this case, I'm using "inebriated" to refer to an altered condition created by a variety of substances, not just alcohol) is that they behave as if they are among the first persons in history to be inebriated. This is true of many college freshmen (to select but one of many groups). My generation of college freshmen--let's see, I think we began college around 1854--believed itself to be the discoverers of getting drunk, and I'm sure many freshmen in the Fall of 2009 across the globe will see themselves as discoverers of something new when they drink, smoke, etc.

Another oddity about inebriation is that, at least in the U.S., the language used to describe it is not complimentary. For example, people speak of getting "stupid," "smashed," "hammered," "destroyed," and so on. "Hey, dude, last night we got totally destroyed." I'm so happy for you! Dude.

At any rate, while I and my ancient auto were stuck in traffic (I was not inebriated), I got to thinking about an ABC of terms for getting drunk or stoned or high or whatever: inebriation in its broadest sense. So here's a list. When I have (at least as far as I know) invented a term, I have placed an asterisk beside it.

A: altered, avalanched* ("Oh, man, we got totally avalanched last night.")
B: bombed, blasted, baked
C: clobbered, crazy
D: drunk, damaged, destroyed
E: eroded* ("Jeez, we drank tequila all night and got very eroded.") I tested this descriptor on an audience, and the audience thought it was "dumb." I think it's a droll term, but drollery often fails.
F: the obvious one is "effed up," which is pretty funny when you think about it; what are those new to English to think of this? "We drank innumerable beers last night and got effed up." Really? How exactly does that work? "Fried" is one I've heard, too. Also "footless," as in "footlessly drunk."
G: giddy--hmmm, not very good; glad? No. Obviously, I'm having trouble with G.
H: Hammered; high.
I: Well, "inebriated." Also (under the) "influence". I've always thought this term was too soft. When someone gets drunk, drives the wrong way on a highway, and kills people, "influence" doesn't quite measure up. By the way, what is the condition of "ebriation"? "Honest, officer, I'm ebriated, not inebriated."
J: jacked? jolly? jacked up? joyous* ("Dude, we smoked some weed and got joyous.")
K: Kebobbed*? Knackered?
L: loaded, loopy, looped
M: mashed?
N: neutralized*?
O: obliterated; oppressed* ("Dave and I got a bottle of rum and got extremely oppressed, man.")
P: Pissed (a Britishism, I believe).
Q: Quarked*. I rather like this one. Quenched? I like this one.
R: Roaring drunk. This was a term I heard from my parents' generation. Rummy. Ravaged.
S: Ah, so many. Stoned, stupid, smashed, soused, silly, etc.
T: Trashed.
U: Unhinged*? Unbelievably drunk? That's cheating, using an adverb.
V: This is a tough one. Verved*? Vegetative? Vectored? "Hey, man, you want to go get vectored?"
W: wrecked, wiped out, whacked, etc.
X: Oy, this is tough. Xylophoned*?
Y: Young*. You know, like when old people get high, they feel young, so the next day, they say, "Hey, we got really young last night."
Z: zapped, zonked.

Highest Form Of Art

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(Image: Mount Everest)
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Highest Form of Art

"I regard," said the famous novelist,
"tragedy to be the highest form of art."
We were meant gravely to absorb this
highest form of her opinion. One among
us, however, sneezed. Another, a
notorious literalist, believed
a makeshift sculpture on Mount Everest
to be the highest form of art. A
third believed tragedy to be the lowest
form of the raw deal offered by Life.

None of us spoke, though, until later.
We knew enough not to disagree publicly
with a famous, highly paid literary
guest, who seemed to be running a mild
royal fever; who appeared to be slightly
flushed with her current stature,
the highest form of her reputation.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom