I'm the middle photo, dressed for the angel gag. Ringling. 1976.
Got up at 5:30 a.m. Took my meds, washed down with the last of the Tang. I'm all out of juice now -- just 2 cans of Mountain Dew left. And a quart of milk. But rent is due, and once that's paid my food budget for July is just about nil until my Social Security kicks in on the 18th. I overspent these past 2 weeks on -- what else? -- books and exotic foods from the Asian Market. But at least the apartment now reeks of Thai basil and fresh dill weed -- very comforting odors.
Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that my Cannon ELPH 180 digital camera is broke -- when I turn it on it flashes the message "Name Error!" across the screen. So until I can afford another camera I'm going back to collage for my visual work, putting haiku on the back burner. What a loss for poetic literature!
I heard back from several more reporters overnight about my NYT profile. Bob Davis from the Wall Street Journal. Joan Vennochi from the Boston Globe. And Alicia Caldwell of the Wall Street Journal. So I've added them to my daily timerick list. And taken off a few deadbeats who never respond to my poems anymore.
As I'm writing this at 6:27 a.m. The Sunday Long Read posts on my email. I am the Senior Limerick Editor for them (as everyone and their dog must know by now) and so here is my column for this week, recorded for posterity here in my Sunday Diary:
TIM TORKILDSON'S SUNDAY LIMERICK
From Elite Daily:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "Congress is too old . . . They don’t have a stake in the game.”
From Tim:
Our Congress has reached a ripe age.
They’re getting too old, and not sage.
I think the time right
To tell ‘em “Goodnight!”
And make ‘em retire offstage.
Tim Torkildson is a retired circus clown who fiddles with rhyme. All his verses can be found at Tim's Clown Alley.
I notice the cuffs on my pajama bottoms are filthy; they're too long for me and drag on the floor. Ugh. I'd better do a load of colors this morning. I have just six quarters left in my change jar. Enough for one load.
But now it's time to turn my attention to the Book of Mormon. I've already said my prayers, on my knees. For a long time I said my prayers sitting in a chair with my head bowed, because of the osteoarthritis pain in my knees, but it just didn't seem right, so I started kneeling again. But now I'm beginning to associate personal prayer with pain, so I'm going to have to reevaluate my position. Literally.
Sarah just FB messaged me that they want me over for dinner this coming Tuesday, and not today. I was hoping for today because Sunday really drags when I'm alone and I tend to let sad memories crowd my feelings as the sun sets and my energy and fortitude ebbs.
(I keep getting pop-ups from ReImage for potential security breaches; one just came up now. I discontinued their program 2 years ago because both Madelaine and Adam told me I didn't need that kind of expensive protection on my laptop -- but their damn cookies keep popping up from out of nowhere. There. Deleted.)
6:40 a.m. I emailed Bob Davis of the WSJ this morning that I needed to cancel my online subscription to their paper cuz of the rising cost of my meds -- gotta make budget cuts somewhere. So he just sent me this email:
"Hey, we are going to get you a free subscription. We need such dedicated readers. Meet Suzi, cc:d here who can take care of you."
Isn't that something? I'll think about THAT all evening, instead of mooning over past mistakes and sorrows. It means I can keep reading new stories in the WSJ and making poems about them. The WSJ doesn't let anyone read any of their stories w/o a subscription. Their paywall is fierce.
Okay. 7 a.m. and time to pick a chapter at random from the Book of Mormon. Mosiah 20 looks good. I just love LDS.org for scripture study. I can make the print as large as I want and since I'm online I can stop and look stuff up as I go along. I read each chapter from the bottom to the top, just for a change of pace, so I'm starting with verse 26:
"And when the Lamanites saw the people of Limhi, that they were without arms, they had compassion on them and were pacified towards them, and returned with their king in peace to their own land."
There's a concept unknown in the modern world -- national compassion and retreat from a weaker country. Would that we had practiced some of that in Vietnam fifty years ago.
I think I'll make a poem to fit the verse:
Whenever there is strife among the nations, it is rare
to hear of armies that a drop of clemency will spare.
But even the most hardened troops may sometimes softly yearn
their murderous demeanor set aside and briefly spurn.
The light of Christ will work with ev'ry sinner who exists
to bring them gladly back from Satan's ever-blinding mists.
A warrior who robs and ruins in what he thinks his cause
may find the Prince of Peace has got a better set of laws.
There. I timed myself and it took me exactly fifteen minutes to write that. It's facile, of course, with no depth. Like a watercolor. But all I care about is that it declares my allegiance. Artists, especially poets, are mostly incapable of being loyal to anyone or anything except themselves. I struggle with that weakness constantly. Now I'll post it on the Ward Facebook page.
Okay. It is now 7:20 a.m. and I'm going to have some ramen noodles. It's Fast Sunday, I know, but if I take my meds and don't eat an hour or so later I get really sick. And I think I may start my laundry as well. It's nice that the laundry room is literally 20 feet from my front door.
8:00 a.m. The noodles were good; I cut up some scallions into the bowl and added two eggs to the boiling water so I could poach them while the noodles cooked.
I got 2 likes on my B of M poem on the Ward FB page while I was eating breakfast.
I started a load of laundry, a bit reluctantly because I remember my mother would never do laundry on Sunday no matter what. It was considered the mark of a slovenly housekeeper to do laundry on Sunday. Monday was wash day -- everyone knew that. Of course, mom would slave away in the kitchen making huge Sunday dinners. I particularly remember her roast ham, studded with cloves and draped with canned pineapple rings, and her lemon meringue pie. Anyway, that reluctance to wash clothes on Sunday has stuck with me all through the years.
Well, better get back to my B of M study . . .
Feeling flighty I instead read Elder Bednar's General Conference talk Meek and Lowly of Heart. Here's what sticks out to me from that talk:
I am very lacking in all 3 of these things. It makes me wonder if I can ever make it back Home worthy enough to see Heavenly Father as more than just my judge. I'll think about that while I floss and brush my teeth. I'm starting to feel tired again -- I always feel exhausted after a meal nowadays. So I may just take a little lay-down. Until the timer dings to put the laundry in the drier.
8:45 a.m. I went to put my load in the dryer and found a box of Lipton Cold Brew Iced Tea bags at my doorstep. Now who could have done that -- and why? I only drink herbal tea, and that rarely. I think Sarah likes iced tea, so I'll save it for her when I go over for dinner on Tuesday. I'm still feeling very tired, but will start on my daily timerick for my reporter friends while I wait for the laundry to dry. You get 35 minutes for fifty cents.
8:55 a.m. Found a story in the WaPo about a foiled robbery in a convenience store up in Canada. The tag line is "Chaplin would have been proud." That is an irresistible theme for me, so I'll send the reporter, Amy B. Wang, a timerick -- but won't share it with any other reporters on my list. Heck, I've got all the time in the world, so why not?
a guy who attempted some stealing
in Canada got the weird feeling
he was in a flick
that featured slapstick
because a girl fell through the ceiling.
Hah! Not five minutes after emailing this to Wang she emailed me back:
Omg. I was just reading about you in the New York Times. I’m so honored to get a “Timerick.” Thanks!
Amy B Wang
Reporter | The Washington Post
Twitter: @amybwang
I immediately emailed her back:
Thanks. What caught my eye, of course, was your mentions of Charlie Chaplin. That's a hot-button phrase for an old circus clown like me. I was beginning to think that young people had never heard of Chaplin, or wouldn't dare use him as a reference anymore. Thanks for restoring my slapstick faith in journalism! Tim T.
Her response to my email came back in another five minutes:
Ah, yes, of course the Chaplin reference would be a good prompt. Btw, is your Twitter handle @lefse911 or @torkythai911 (or both)?
Amy B Wang
Reporter | The Washington Post
Twitter: @amybwang
Now I'll add Amy B Wang to my daily timerick list. With her kind of adulation among reporters, I may get a write up in the WaPo before much longer! (She tweeted my timerick on her twitter account just now, too -- I gotta start doing more with Twitter.)
Oh phooey. I'm burnt out on rhyme. This is supposed to be a day of rest, right? So I'm gonna rework my daily timerick list -- the card I have it on is a mess and I can barely tell who I've scratched off and who I've added.
10:11 a.m. Okay. So my new list has 24 names on it -- including 3 professors from BYU who are my personal friends: Gov Allen, Bruce Young, and Dana Bourgerie. Gov is the guy who took me out of a homeless shelter in Virginia to stay with him and his family five years ago. May God set a flower on his head.
Think I'll take a shower to see if that perks up my mental facilities a bit. Then maybe write a nonsense 'appreciation' of Picasso -- the nonsense pieces I've been doing on painters are getting more viewers than anything else.
Amy just called. She's upstairs at Karen Allen's apartment and wants to bring down a box of Irvin mementos for me to look through. I said I'd like that. She said she'd call when she was ready to come down.
Better sort and fold the laundry.
10:53 a.m. Another response from my massive emailing of my NYT profile. This one from Nausicaa Renner, of the Columbia Journalism Review:
|
10:40 AM (9 hours ago)
 | | ||
Wow!! Honored to be one of the 22. Thanks for sharing.
Now what kind of a self-serving response should I send her? Heartfelt thanks, of course -- but what would serve my goal of more publicity as well? I think she's just a college student, and may never amount to much in the journalism world, so should I even worry about my response? I think I'll give her a bit of the 'old-timer remembers' routine:
Thanks.
I always enjoy being interviewed. It used to happen four or five times a week when I worked as a clown for Ringling many long years ago. There were a lot more newspapers back then, and a lot more local reporters who came down to the show to get made up as guest clowns and then do a full page spread about it. I guess we'll never see that kind of frivolous journalism again, will we?
Tim T.
12:22 p.m. Amy just left my apartment. She dropped off a box of Irvin's things for me to look over and then give to Steve. She said she is trying to finally get past his death and so is sending away the last box of his memories she has. She was very pleasant and soft-spoken and we talked mostly about her job up at Sun Valley, where she does accounts and lives in a company dorm for $200.00 a month. She said that everyone has to wear a red tag, which she showed me, on a lanyard -- otherwise there are snipers positioned throughout the Sun Valley Resort to take out interlopers w/o the red badge. She makes $15.00 an hour. I gotta get ready to set up the Sacrament in the Community room here.
Oh, I did write up a screwy bio of Picasso and posted same on my blog. It's already had 23 views -- more than anything else in the past 2 days. It was only a few months ago when everything I posted got six or seven hundred views in the first hour. But those days are gone for good, I reckon.
2:18 p.m. Sacrament meeting in the Community room went off without a hitch. I walked over to Fresh Market for a baked chicken breast and mashed potatoes w/gravy from their deli. Plus I bought a can of stewed tomatoes to heat and go with it. $5.29.
Adam just called. They got out of church early and he's bringing the kids over to see me! Think I'll just lay back and relax a little until they get here.
4:00 p.m. Adam and the kids just left. It was Katrina, Noah, and Diesel. I told Diesel as soon as Steve gets back from Colorado we'd make plans to go see the latest Jurassic Park movie. Diesel looked at my digital camera and thinks I just need a new SIM card for it to work again, so he's having his dad out in Virginia send me one. We played Uno -- Katrina and Noah cheated outrageously. I opened up a bottle of Moxie and gave them each a taste. It tasted okay to me, but then there was an unpleasant aftertaste. I'm suddeanly hungry for corn chips and salsa. Luckily, I've got some! Then I think I'll read some more of Joseph Lelyveld's book on Mahatma Gandhi, "Great Soul." When I tire of that I'll find some old movie on YouTube to stream for $2.99 -- and the day will be over with.
7:00 p.m. Well, I fell asleep for a bit while reading, then putzed around on YouTube looking for a movie to stream tonight. I'm going with Bogart and Bacall in "To Have and To Have Not." After that, if I'm still not sleepy, I'll try something by Hitchcock. The Gandhi book is turning out to be a snoozer.
Now I'm going to get on my knees to check in with Headquarters. I pronounce Sunday, July First, 2018, as officially Over. Tomorrow is already here.
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