月を睨む猫-
牡丹の茂みがガタガタ鳴る。
寒い落ち着きのない夜。
mice shoot down the road --the wind stands up a brown leaf;the cold restless night.マウスが道を撃ちます-
風が茶色の葉を立てます。
寒い落ち着きのない夜。
the blurry moon winks --a hubcap rolls off a car;the cold restless night.ぼやけた月のウィンク-
ホイールキャップが車から転がり落ちる。
寒い落ち着きのない夜。
slow tread of a snail --
カタツムリの遅いトレッド-
次の葉への直線。
茶色、しおれ、そして硬い
slow tread of a snail --glistening beneath itself;no butterfly, he!カタツムリの遅いトレッド-
それ自体の下で輝く;
蝶はいない、彼！
slow tread of a snail --seeking dampness and darkness;
stymied by a twig.
カタツムリの遅いトレッド-
湿気と闇を求めて;
小枝に悩まされた。
Dear Sprouts;
Well, we made quite an exotic lunch today. Soba noodles with quail eggs, and Japanese potato salad with seaweed and pickled ginger. The soba noodles turned out great; I will be adding them to my repertoire of standard Torkildson fare.
We went shopping this afternoon. The Great American Pastime. Garments for me, and something called a Ninja Magic for your mother. It makes smoothies.
It has otherwise been a lazy day. We slept in until 7:30 a.m. The urologist I saw 2 weeks ago gave me some medicine called Nocdurna, which suppresses the urge to urinate at night. So I’m sleeping a bit better and longer lately.
I’ve been thinking about the happiness that comes from silence. At least it comes to me when I stay silent and surround myself with silence. So here’s a poem about the subject:
Silence is gilded for bozos like me;
A muted existence can make a man free.
Whenever I shoot off my mouth it doth seem
It makes others burn up from some laser beam.
I may have opinions and feelings real strong;
But it would be smart if I just sang a song.
Or better yet just remain silent and smug;
Smile with a head shake and maybe a shrug.
In my brown recliner I love to lay back
And relish the noise and the racket I lack.
Tumult is not a state I would endorse;
I’d rather just mime it, not yell myself hoarse.
So let others posit as much as they please;
Give their advice and opinions with ease.
Me for the quiet life – no scuttlebutt!
At long last I’m learning just how to shut up!
I guess that’s all for today, mine heirs. As soon as your mother finishes watching “Dial M for Murder,” we’re off to the Rec Center for 20 minutes of stationary cycling. After that, who knows? Maybe go bowling . . .
Love,
Heinie Manush.
Dear Offspring;
A challenging day. We got stuck with doing 8 extra rewrites because the internet is down in Idaho due to snowstorms. So we had to turn down a steak dinner with the Varkavissers – a couple from Rhodesia who wanted to take us out because of the many meals we’ve shared with them. (2:57 p.m. ~ This just in: the internet is up and running again in Idaho, thank goodness!)
Your mother continues to create more wonderful cookies. Today she glued together raisin/oatmeal cookies with a sweet cream cheese fluff – and they are to die for. When people come to our door now, it’s not for the food but for Amy’s cookies. I’m thinking we can dispense with the meals entirely and just do cookies and sweets.
We stopped at the Post Office after swimming this morning so I could pick up some postcards. I stopped mailing them pretty much back in October after marrying your mother again. There just didn’t seem to be the time or the money for it. But now I’m ready to print out my obscure thoughts on cheap cardstock again. So moi bought all the postcards they had and got a sheet of 20 postcard stamps as well. I’ve put haiku on four of them today so far and mailed them to Pres. Biden, and several journalist friends – whose home address I have. It does no good to mail anything to a reporter at their newspaper, since they are never going back into their offices again. Apparently.
Maybe I’ll get good at haiku if I live another 20 years and keep writing it.
In the meantime I have nothing more on my mind today than sharing my haiku with you offshoots, with whatever commentary/explanation comes to my feeble mind. Here goes:
most things don't happen --
if they do happen, they're wind --
moving clouds away.
Your mother has the marvelous ability of not worrying about the future, because of her absolute faith in Heavenly Father. I, on the other hand, worry about everything and project future catastrophes by the dozen each day. I am trying to learn to turn off the siren that is constantly blaring in my head, warning of danger ahead, and just live quietly and accept what comes next. Which is a pretty Zen concept. So I’d like to believe that . . . most things don’t happen.
************************************
sunlight on the wall --
it's trying to be yellow;
but not all that hard
Sunlight in winter is like cold white cream. In summer it’s molten silver. Our apartment walls are yellow – the sunlight doesn’t do anything to it that I can tell. It’s just a poetic conceit. Nothing more. Although I admit that early morning sunlight and then twilight can affect me deeply. In the morning I am always created anew, and as the night approaches I have to fight to keep from despairing over the dead weeds in the patio. Us artists are too flibberty-gibbet to stand!
******************************************
Crows on a streetlight --
Lords of all bloodied roadkill;
offer them french fries.
Those long dusty rutted country roads in North Dakota . . .
Lined with wheat and sunflowers.
I remember those roads like my own children. They spoke to me. Though I never really understood what they said. But there were always crows on the telephone wires and on streetlights, or stooping over something flat and grisly in the road. And I’m going to try to convince your mother this evening when we go back to the Rec Center to stop at McDonalds so I can get a big order of french fries. I lust for them right now. Have been lusting for them for weeks.
Okay. Amy has started to do up the dishes so I must join her with the drying.
Roses are red/violets repine/I always get stuck/for a last line.
Love,
Heinie Manush.
Dear Tykes;
I start out with a thought I had this morning –
I’d like to sneak up to as many hand sanitizer dispensers as possible and replace the goo inside with Super Glue. Then see what happens.
Next, I have an idea for a new placard to take to the streets when the weather warms up –
Optimist For Hire.
($1000.00 per hour.)
All I need is one taker . . .
Now I better write a haiku for your mother:
Blending blueberries –
Her hair in a ponytail;
I will sip her lips.
Now I’m going to go collect on that haiku . . .
(Your mom says she won’t post it on her Facebook page, because “it’s too sexy!”)
*************************************************
And now for the clown news. I assume you all know who David Arquette is. I don’t, but then I’m not in touch with reality for long portions of each day. Anywho – he wants to become a clown. And I quote:
David Arquette is not clowning around when it comes to becoming a professional clown.
In an appearance on the Live with Kelly and Ryan show Wednesday, the 50-year-old actor talked about his love for clowns and his long journey to becoming one.
"I love clowns. I've been in sort of a clown period of my life. I'm studying to be a clown and I'm working with an amazing organization called Healthy Humor. They go into hospitals and entertain people who are going through a tough time and make them smile and bring some joy and love and laughter into their lives," Arquette told host Kelly Ripa.
"I'm a huge fan of Bozo the clown. I personally am studying to be a clown myself. I have been taking lessons. It takes a lot of training. You know I've never been able to juggle, but my father taught me a nose flute, and this is what I can do as my clown thing," said Arquette while demonstrating how to use the nose flute.
Do you guys remember I used to play the nose flute? I even bought them for some of you. I may have to get some for the grandkids; I can buy a set of twelve plastic nose flutes on Amazon for ten bucks. Of course, if you parents give me TWENTY bucks NOT to buy them for your darling children . . .
And in just plain circus news, I felt very excited to read this in the newspaper the other day:
SARASOTA, Fla. – The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which shut down in 2017 after a storied 146-year run of three-ring entertainment around the world, could be making a comeback. Officials from Florida-based Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus operation, said during a recent panel discussion that a new version of the circus without animals is expected to make its debut in 2023. Many observers believe that animal rights protests targeting Ringling Bros. contributed to a decline in ticket sales that led the company to cease operations. It grew famous on the strength of animal trainers like Gunther Gebel-Williams, among others, working with lions and tigers. The company dropped elephants from its shows in 2016 and said at the time that ticket sales declined more than expected. In 2023 we will be relaunching Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus,” Feld’s chief operating officer Juliette Feld Grossman told the VenuesNow Conference in Seattle last week, according to a report published by venuesnow.com.
According to the report, Grossman got choked up as she spoke. “You can see it’s emotional and exciting for us as a family. We really feel that Ringling Bros. has incredible relevance to today’s audience.”
Nicole Zimmerman, a Feld spokeswoman, said the company is “still in the planning phase for the relaunch of the Greatest Show on Earth” and an official announcement about the return of the circus is expected sometime in 2022.
Ah, the old tanbark trail! Naturally, I now daydream about hobbling back into center ring with my musical saw and my can pyramid. I know it’s probably a pipe dream, but, hey – so was marrying your mother again! If that can happen, anything can happen. If Ringling does come back, I guess I could do what’s called ‘carpet clowning’ or ‘meet and greet.’ That’s where the clown just stands still to shake hands, signs autographs, and have his picture taken. Or makes animal balloons, etc. I could still manage to do that, because it’s not too physically taxing. How do you think your mother would react to life on the road 9 months of the year? I just asked her and she said “Where my husband goes, I go.” She was remembering our time in Bottineau, North Dakota, back in 1981, when the local newspaper asked her about our plans to leave the place to move to Circus World in Haines City Florida.
What a disaster THAT turned out to be! I’m sure I’ve told you about it before; your mother had a miscarriage, I got fired, and we moved back to North Dakota to live in the Little House in back of your mother’s parents’ house. A definite low point in the Torkildson family chronicles.
But why dwell on the past? Today is beautiful. We went swimming this morning. I baked Irish soda bread. We made a chicken/rice casserole that is to die for. The sun is out, for once. And both your mother and I are in fairly good health. God is good to us. I hope he is as good to you little moppets.
Roses are red/violets reek/may your sorrows flee/to far Mozambique!
Love,
Heinie Manush.
Dear Kidlets;
I reached a watershed of sorts this morning; I weighed in at 289.4 lbs at the Rec Center. Your mother offered to feed me a pecan log to celebrate, but I settled for some Gatorade instead. I attribute this weight loss solely to your mother – she is my coach and my inspiration. My feet are now back to normal, human, size, as well. (I wish I could describe her many virtues without gushing too much . . . )
Your mother works as a tax preparer during the week from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. nowadays, as I think I’ve told you. Those hours she’s gone hang heavy on my hands. To liven things up we make dinner ahead of time to serve to people in the building at 6 p.m. Before that I usually read. Or try to read. I’ve reached that stage in life where the minute I sit down to read I begin to nod off. I no longer fight it. Perhaps just holding the book while napping will provide me with some information through osmosis. After dinner is served out I lie down to take a good rest, since as soon as your mother gets home she wants to ride hell-for-leather to the Rec Center for a workout before the place closes at 10.
Here’s the haiku I wrote for her early this morning:
buried in the dark --
her hair awash on pillow;
gold for the kissing.
I’m sure something more will occur to me to write about today. (It’s only ten in the morning and we just got back from swimming at the Rec Center, and stopping at the store for a head of lettuce and organic celery hearts.) Right now I feel the need to pick up a book so I can take a brief nap.
***************************************************************************
Oh, and here’s another haiku I just wrote – at 11:15 a.m. (MST)
most things don't happen --
if they do happen, they're wind --
moving clouds away.
I sent this one to Andy Newman, a reporter at the NYT. He likes my stuff. He took the trouble to email me back about one of my haiku a week ago:
“Thank you for that ray of beauty and strangeness Tim.”
***********************************************
I asked your mother to make me some scrambled eggs this morning. They were real good, but I forgot to thank her for them at the time. So at noon, as we were taking some chicken salad to the Hispanic Office in our building, I told her “Those were great eggs this morning. Thanks.”
To which your mother replied “I laid ‘em myself.” Then she went off into gales of laughter at her own joke. A true Norwegian. She’s still laughing and snorting over it right now. I’m worried she’ll reopen her hernia stitches!
*********************************************
Well, we are still waiting to find out what needs to be done (if anything more) in order to regain our temple marriage sealing. We’ve talked to our bishop several times, and he did more head scratching than anything else. Even our stake president doesn’t quite seem to know how to handle our unique situation. So the bishop finally just said “Call the Temple to schedule a sealing and see what they have to say about it.”
What they said was that we have to wait to hear back from the President of the Church. Your mother already wrote him, explaining why she divorced me, married Rick in the temple, and then divorced him, and then married me civilly again. Who knows how long it will take President Nelson to get to our plight? We pray that he will make a determination soon, because life is uncertain and either your mother or I may shuffle off this mortal coil before any decision is made. So please remember us in your prayers in this matter.
Despite our best efforts, the apartment is getting cluttered up – to the point where it now looks like a permanently installed indoor yard sale. Your mother has made a valiant effort to keep everything organized and put away, but there’s just too much bric-a-brac to deal with. We have 2 wheat grinders. Two vacuums. Steve has left a bunch of his stuff with us. We have six computers. The linen closet is bursting at the seams with towels and gauze bandages and essential oils and ointments. The laundry in the baskets multiplies daily like rabbits until it flows onto the floor. I can’t open a kitchen cabinet without being inundated with plastic containers. As soon as my ship comes in I’m buying us a 3-bedroom condo in St. George, with an indoor pool, hot tub, sauna, and warehouse. This is not meant as a criticism of your mother. No, it’s just that the two of us like to live large and wide – but we’re restricted to a sardine can. When my ship comes in, when my ship comes in . . .
My, but we are pokey today. It’s already past 2 p.m. and your mother has to get ready for work at H & R Block in another hour – but we still have 2 more articles to rewrite. We just couldn’t get things together this morning. Too many misfires and false starts. I’m guilty of wasting much of our time with articles that we have already rewritten – they all look alike to me. Luckily Amy has a better memory and can tell when we’ve already done an article I’ve picked out to rewrite.
Amy is cooking pork short ribs wrapped in bacon, and I hope she gets to eat one before she leaves. I’ll probably leave mine until this evening – I just had a third of a microwave burrito that chewed like cardboard and tasted like an overwintering leather glove. Bleah.
I guess I better send this off. Roses are red/violets have bugs/If you were here now/I’d share lots of hugs!
Love,
Heinie Manush.
Hey Kids;
Your mother has been on my case for the last several months, wanting me to journal/keep a diary. As I explained to her, I only like writing for an audience. So I decided to resume these daily emails to you kiddies as a way to honor her request and keep my literary skills from rusting away. As I said yesterday, I’m pretty much only doing haiku from now on. It’s so obscure that no one can take offense at it. In fact, a reporter at the New York Times, John Schwartz, called one of my haikus today ‘nice.’ Which is a high compliment from any professional big city reporter. This is what I sent him:
an old skein of yarn --
golden bronze with long neglect;
stale wool smells like rice.
Does it make any sense? Not to me. I just wrote down impressions as they appeared in my mind from seeing a skein of yarn by your mother’s recliner. By the way, did you know we have 2 brand new recliners now? Thanks to Sarah & Jonny. They sold us their old ones. The only word for them is a Thai word – “sabaay.” Which means comfortable and more than comfortable.
I was teaching your mother to speak Thai during our daily walks at the Rec Center, since we walk a good 35 minutes each time. She learned about 28 Thai words, and some simple sentence and question constructions, but as soon as I taught her how to say ‘I don’t want to’ (may ow) she started saying that to me every time I suggested we learn some more Thai. Which is okay – we find other things to talk about now.
We talk a lot about food. Your mother and I watched a YouTube video on how to make Irish soda bread together. Then we went in the kitchen and worked on it together. I had previously tried to make Irish soda bread about a year ago but it turned out terrible so I dropped the whole thing. But there are days when I feel like I want to be doing more things with your mother than I am currently doing, and so I determined we would learn together and bake Irish soda bread together. Naturally enough, your mother did most of the work on the first loaf. Which turned out superb. You only need 4 ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. Then I started making the loaves, which looked like misshapen troll heads. Still, they weren’t horrible. Now that I’ve had some experience I make a loaf each day. That runs into a lot of buttermilk! And buttermilk is getting scarce in the dairy section of supermarkets around here. I wonder why? Your mother pretty much concentrates now on desserts. She made some Cheerios marshmallow bars this morning that look mighty good. I’m going to have one with my late lunch/early dinner at 4 p.m.
Next I think we’ll tackle donuts. Again, I tried making cake donuts last summer. I bought the donut molds and special mix and everything. But again, they turned out very crumby. Literally – they fell apart before I could get them out of the mold. So your mother and I will watch some YouTube videos, take notes, and try it again. Maybe this weekend, when she doesn’t have to work at H & R Block and we don’t have any rewrites to do.
That is, if no one kidnaps her for rides to the airport or for shopping trips. As you can imagine there are a lot of old ladies in our building who don’t drive. Up until 3 weeks ago they didn’t bother Amy with requests for rides. But then one of ‘em asked for a ride to the SLC airport, and the damn broke. Now every time someone knocks on our door I get a cold chill down my spine, thinking somebody is going to steal Amy away from me for long hours of pointless and boring shopping. Maybe I’m being selfish and unrighteous, but there’s a bus runs regularly half a block away and there are several good Senior rideshare programs available that cost very little. So why take my bride away from me? A ride to church I wouldn’t mind – it’s only 3 blocks away.
Oh well, it just goes to prove once again that your mother is a much finer spirit than I am. She is always happy to honor a request for a ride, while I do nothing but grumble about it. It might be different if these hitchhikers paid her a little gas money . . .
Well, at least we’ll get to watch one episode of Perry Mason together before she leaves for work this afternoon. I don’t know why, but the show keeps me enthralled – mostly by the look of the cars and the fashions from 60 years ago. The cars look like boats or rocketships and the ladies all wear white gloves and big ornate hates with feathers and ribbons. And the men all have skinny black neckties. Your mother and I cannot agree on the merits of Mr. Mason, as portrayed by Raymond Burr. During the intro he’s always looking up and giving a fiendish smile – I wouldn’t trust him with a bag of sawdust. But your mother insists it’s just a knowing and self-confident smile, meant to reassure the client. Me, I’m all for secretary Della Street and private detective Paul Drake. They are stand up guys – and gals. What we’ll do when we’ve finished watching al the showsl on Amazon Prime I do not know – maybe learn how to clog dance together. I tried to learn how to crochet with your mother teaching me, so we could do it together in the evening. But my eyes just can’t see well enough to count the loops. So I had to give it up. Still, your mother made me a pair of slippers. Very nice. Open-toed.
Right now your mother is sitting next to me in her recliner, eating sauteed greens with a bison burger. It’s making me very hungry, but I’ll wait until the soda bread cools off enough to slice – then have a thick slice with some sausage gravy and a fried egg.
We live like kings and queens around here, dontcha think?
Taa-taa for now, my little gerrymanders.
Love, Heinie Manush.
P.S. I’m emailing a photo of today’s loaf of soda bread to all of you separately.
a sparrow tumbles
and the heavens roar madly --
not so with my cash.
スズメが転がる
そして天は狂ったように吠える-
私の現金ではそうではありません。A laugh escaped once.
It was hunted down real quick
and served forty days
笑いは一度逃げた。
あっという間に追い詰められました
と40日間提供
Dear kids;
Well, your mother is in the kitchen right now. She’s making peanut butter cookies while talking on the phone to a Medicare huckster. I don’t know why she spends time with those apple knockers – they call her constantly, but don’t have anything to offer her that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. She will automatically get on Medicare on her birthday this coming April.
These telepests are always calling us old folks this time of year, cuz Medicare allows them the first 3 months of each year to sell their for-profit healthcare packages to gullible old folks. Your mother has now spent 32 minutes on the phone and been transferred 4 times to different so-called agents. I told her to hang up, but she don’t listen to me. As you well know! (It sounds like she is going to sign up with Humana – which is what I have.)
We continue to knock happily along together. The whole thing is still a wonderful miracle to me. I didn’t earn it and don’t deserve it. But I’m going to enjoy the h*ll out of it as long as it lasts!
We’re doing 6 rewrites each week day for Adam – which nets us the grand total of 30 dollars a day. We’ve finally got a routine in place so it takes us about 20 minutes to process each rewrite.
We go to the Provo Rec Center twice each day. In the morning we swim, and in the evening we walk and work out on the machines. I’m down to 295 lbs now.
Your mother is back at H & R Block again for the next 3 months. She works from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Right now she works here in town, just 2 blocks from our apartment. But they want her to go down to work in Springville in a week or two.
We do a lot of cooking for our Valley Villa neighbors. Today we’ve got a pork roast with parsnips in the slow cooker. Someone donated both the roast and the parsnips to us. Once Amy goes to work this afternoon I’m going to cook up some chicken livers we were given and use the blender to make liver paste to spread on bread and crackers. Yummo!
We were working on a novel together for a few weeks – but I’ve lost interest in it. I pretty much just write haiku nowadays. Here’s a sample:
the brown wooden fence --
a brown stone on the brown post;
the brown sparrow lands
The original haiku last line read ‘the brown sparrow shits’ but I figured your mother would find that too objectionable, so I censored it myself.
We were given a huge and hideous clown painting the other day. I wouldn’t put it up in our apartment for all the tea in China. So we plan on giving it to Sarah and Jonny as a housewarming gift. Bwa-hah-hah-hah!
We’ve both had bad colds, but didn’t go in to get tested for Covid. I went into the urologist last week. He did some very painful poking, just to tell me my prostrate is swelling like the Goodyear Blimp. He suggested invasive surgery, so they could drill a hole right through the dang thing – this would help me urinate more freely. But I opted for a more conservative procedure for now. Just taking some pills. I’ll have a teleconference with the urologist in February to discuss if it’s working.
Well, my little wombats, I think that is all for now. Please know that your mother and I pray for you and your families day and night.
Love,
Heinie Manush (my new nom de plume.)
We met at the Tri-State Convention Complex.
A business meeting for sales and tech.
Everyone wore masks.
I hadn't been to the place in years.
All grey cement blocks and black iron railings.
Echoes sounding constantly; tinny and muffled.
The elevator was out of order; so I walked.
Four flights of stairs; no biggie.
The glassed in pavilion was bright gold
with neon and sun lamps.
Way too hot. If you ask me.
I showed my vax card and started on the veggie tray.
Outside the pavilion it grew dark and cold.
People coming in late complained of the cutting wind.
And that the rest of the place seemed deserted.
"They took out all the plexiglass" said a guy next to me.
"The place is a ghost town" said a women wearing white boots.
Suddenly I was afraid to go find the bathroom.
But I had drunk too much sun tea. I wandered out.
Yes. The wind was very cold.
The bathroom was unheated. Full of scraps of paper.
The mirror over the sink was metal, not glass.
My reflection blended into the cinderblock wall.
I no longer dreaded being outside the pavilion.
And I noticed dozens of others from the pavilion --
wandering away in all directions.
I didn't want to go back in.
So I took the staircase down one story to
the concession stands.
They were all closed. Howler monkeys prowled
the empty deep fryers.
To join their troupe I made obeisance to the Alpha male.
Rancid vegetable oil is delicious.