Thursday, March 31, 2011

Eek A Mouse!

 


It's usually light by the time that I make it to the wind farm north of Lafayette. I generally have another stop or two somewhere, and early for Northwest Indiana is an hour later for me, it being on Central Time. I passed through there twice this week in the predawn darkness though. The warning lights on the tops of the turbines are all wired to the same switch. They're all on at the same time; all dark at the same time. The scale is vast. It's spooky. It looks like some gigantic industrial instillation and seems menacing, conjuring an image of a blasted nightmare landscape. I know, however, that the windmills are set amid fertile fields awaiting planting, and rather than being sinister offer hope.

It's not fair: I don't want to go to bed at night, and I don't want to get up in the morning either!

I was cruising to work the other morning, the interior of my car lit only by the dash lights. I imagined some movement out of the corner of my eye and ignored it. I saw it again, looked and OH MY GOD, there was something moving! I found that I had changed lanes without looking and was headed for the median, away from whatever it was over there. Granted I knew that I had the road to myself at the time but still, one mustn’t overreact, it was only a mouse.

 

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Extra, Extra

 


I can see the headlines now: Rock and Roll Wins!
Murder will out
Secular Humanism
Duh!
I know, my naivete knows no bounds.

Yes, I'm going with this new identity. My birthday is coming up after all. I be a natural born fool!

Since I mentioned it I've been paying attention to the river. The sand inside the cofferdam is actually higher than that outside of it, which spreads itself downstream. The old shoal is still there, the sand deposited on top of of it, but the second channel of the river is gone. It's a single stream now.

The forsythia is blooming, and so are the daffodils. I love those cute little green dots that follow the arms of the Weeping Willow. I've been out on my bicycle and can't wait to do more.

 

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Everywhere a Sign -or- Changing Course in Mid Stream

 


The water has receded revealing that the channel of the White River has changed. There used to be a broad shoal dividing the stream in two at the bridge in Martinsville. The shoal might be there yet, the water is still high, but now there is a sizable sand bar deposited in the lee of that cofferdam the construction people built. The shoal was coarse. From the distance of the bridge like it looked to be made of rocks and pebbles, clam shells and debris. The sand looks fine and clean. There is one obvious piece of debris though: a huge tree trunk got caught by its roots on the edge of the cofferdam. The sand is inside the dam too, almost to the same level as outside, so I guess they're going to have to dig it out again. Today was the first day that I've seen them back to work.

Oh, that last post? Yes; another drunken ramble. I wasn't trying to be clever, but I sure imagined myself so. It's really nothing more than stream of consciousness, and its only purpose was to put something beneath the title, which is actually what I like. Perhaps I should clarify something though: I am no Tea Partier; heavens no. In my estimation their brand of fiscal discipline is irresponsible; liable to bring down the whole house of cards; throw the baby out with the bathwater (after its been saved from abortion of course). I best be careful what I say.

I think that I shall never see a billboard as beautiful as a tree. Why are there so many billboards when a third of them are simply advertising available billboard space? Oh, then you have the high tech billboards made of lights. They have multiple messages on them. I can't quite figure why though, it must cost more to advertise there. I guess people figure their ad looks better in lights but it's irritating because the ads change so quickly. I see something and don't quite get the message, look at the road, then look back to figure it out and the ad has changed. It's very effective.

Most billboards are just a nuisance but there are a few that I truly hate. I suppose someone thinks they're designed well but they disgust me. There's one on old 37 outside of Bloomington. I don't even know what it's advertising, I always look away. There were several that affected me that way sprinkled around the country when I was over-the-road.

There were billboards that I liked too; like when I was tired and almost out of hours, looking for a place to park. Give me a billboard advertising a truck stop ahead and I'd be very grateful. I could imagine a better way though. Take down the eyesores and put up transponders with a display in every vehicle. The driver could choose which messages they wanted to receive.

There's a billboard on I-70 over toward Terre Haute that's hawking advertising space. It says something like, “24 hour visibility,” only I noticed that it doesn't have any lights. It must be talking about some of the other available spaces.

There are other signs that I like. Mostly the old school ones without a current tenant. There might be several layers of ads all peeling off at different rates. It's abstract; it's beautiful. Then there are the empty boards that look to be made up of an older sign cut up into strips. Usually the strips are alternating right side up, upside down. For what reason that's done I can only guess but it's visually interesting, like an assignment in freshman design school or something. I saw a current add the other day that seemed to made of strips, contrary to the way its usually done nowadays. It wasn't that the add read as if it were done in strips, but a strip from an earlier add had come loose and fallen to rest on the workman's walkway. What was interesting about it was that the fallen strip looked exactly the same as the current ad displayed. I was traveling down the highway at high speed and wasn't at luxury to ponder it but didn't see any difference in the lettering. I wished that I could pass my cursor over it to reveal the old ad underneath.

Nowadays they print the ads onto a sheet of plastic and stretch them across the board. It looks cheap to me, the way that vinyl siding looks cheap on a house, and if they get messed up in the wind it's not so much interesting as untidy.

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

 

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Buddhist Extreemism

 


What you gonna do
in the midst of time?
Gotta feed yo family.
I ax u
Hoosier daddy?
Who's knocking at my door
The government or
legitimate.gov?
I prefer Black Cohosh.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

 

Apology

 


I heard the first mourning doves the other day. Their seductive cooing evoked summertime; an experience belied by my senses. I looked around, startled because the trees were still bare, the grass dry and brittle. There might have yet been piles of snow in the shadows.

My crocuses came up, but declined to open because it got cold again. They might be open now though, the sun is shining. I haven't been outside yet this fine morning. I can hear the birds singing; not in mourning, in what sounds to me like jubilation; though I know is just their way.

Do I need to apologize for my use of language? I don't know, I certainly don't mean any harm. In one sense it very definitely expresses my deep frustration at the state of society (again I hear Patti Smith, ”Outside of society...” OK, I'll get over it). That entire post was one of those drunken rambles that I was telling you about, that I later decided had enough merit to let stand. I dunno?

I'll say this because I'm proud of it: I was called a n---- once, by a black man in Memphis, TN. I took it as a compliment.

I'll not retract the word, but I won't use it again. I do apologize though; for the entire shameful history that necessitates my apology.

 

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Flood Warning

 


The geese are back. They disappeared so surreptitiously that I never realized they were gone; they who once dominated the yard. I'd seen a few V formations out on the routes but didn't give it another thought. Then, while doing a post trip inspection I rounded the back of the trailer and there were two couples; four geese on the surface of the pond. They were obviously already aware of me, though I was taken by surprise.

The next morning I was pleased to see that something else I hadn't remembered to miss was back: the gentle reflection of the warehouse lights off of liquid water thrown onto the sides of the trailers in the predawn darkness. It's been a “Canadian style” winter. I wondered early on how the fish could survive in a block of ice then forgot about it when winter became commonplace. I hope the fish survived; the pond's not very deep.

Damn the Goose shit!

With four inches of rain and a Winter's worth of snow melt the rivers in Indiana are high. More rain is not only predicted, it's falling. They're building a new bridge over the White River in Martinsville, along my commute. They built a cofferdam to pour a foundation or something. It was fun to watch the water rise against the dam day after day until one day it was simply gone; only a ripple, then not even that. They moved all of their heavy equipment away from the bank. I think they're going to have to move it further up; the water was already lapping at its treads yesterday.

I'd heard about real flooding but it was just an abstraction; until US 224 was closed in front of me due to high water. The first time that I saw the ROAD CLOSED AHEAD sign I had no choice but to make the turn, I was simply following the highway. I got into the left turn lane before the next Road Closed sign and while waiting for an opening noticed that everybody else was going straight ahead, regardless. “There's the bridge right there,” I thought, “the water's not too high. Maybe they just haven't taken down the signs yet, or maybe there's a way around it; at least I'll already be on the other side of the river.” So I put my right turn signal on and fell into line behind everybody else.

Two blocks up the street was barricaded. Beyond the orange and white boards the road disappeared into brown water. “Now that's high water!” I exclaimed, following the other cars up a street to the right. I was still hoping that I could get around the flooding. The first thing I saw, however was a sign that read “Weight Limit 8 tons.”

“Oops, I think I'm a little too heavy!”

Fortunately there was a business on the corner with a parking lot that I could turn into. It wasn't large enough for me to turn around in but it wrapped around the building to the closed road on the far side of the barricade. As I was backing up to go back through the lot the other way a guy came running out of the building and pulled back the barricade, opening the road for me. Whew, a potentially horrible situation was made easy. I had to go miles and miles out of my way but for no reason at all I'd started early that day and I was still on time for my appointment. Sometimes I get lucky.