Moving Right Along

Speaking of big bees...

Snapped this one getting down to business in the azaleas outside the Concord Free Public Library yesterday while I waited for my true love to come back with the cart onto which we would load all our unwanted books as donations to the annual book sale.  It's almost that time again!

Weeks and maybe months of impaired reading really slowed my progress through the stack I bought last year.  And most of the ones I did finish (several of them reviewed at Goodreads.com)  are going right back where I got them, including this one:

I typically enjoy David Sedaris, and though this is not my favorite of his books I probably would have kept it except that this specific volume came to me absolutely filthy inside, covered in food and other stains possibly biological in origin.  I almost kept it as a morbid souvenir, though.  It's the last book I was reading right before I stopped being able to read altogether in February, it's the book I carried with me everywhere while being treated for my brain tumor -- you know, just in case I could suddenly make sense of it all and become self-entertaining once again, or at least distracted from my immediate plight -- and it's the first book I was able to finish after the surgery that restored my reading ability (mostly; still working on the speed around myriad tiny new rough edges).  All of that is either ironic or especially apt when you know that the very first story in Me Talk Pretty One Day describes having a speech therapist inflicted on Sedaris in grade school and the second half of the book is devoted to his life in France, including his struggles with the French language.

Incidentally, and speaking of ironies, the very last thing I was able to read all the way through before losing written language altogether for a little while was a LOLcat caption.  I remember remarking what I thought were unusually tortured syntax and spelling, even for that context, and thinking people were really starting to carry that particular part of the joke too far.

Heh.

We will not talk about the pain; we will only talk about the pretty. At least for today. Mostly.

Oh, fine:  pain first.

Pain 1.  I wore my new leg all day yesterday and all day today...until about noon.  At noon, by which time I had conveniently already returned home after a lovely, lovely morning amongst friends and lilacs, the chafing and pressure in unaccustomed places suddenly became so painful I could no longer stand.  So I stopped standing, dropped onto the bed, and slept for four hours under close supervision by my instructor.  And now a 2" x 6" (5.08cm x 15.24cm) strip of flesh along the inside top of my thigh stump is pretty much hamburger -- er, flank steak? har har -- but I will not show you a picture of it.  You're welcome.  Instead, feast your eyes on these glorious, inflammation-colored parrot tulips in a mass planting across the street from the Forest Hills T station.

Pain 2:  Somehow, somewhere, today I lost my beautiful, practically brand new eyeglasses, not the reading ones (thank goodness), but the black-rimmed walking-around ones, yes, the ones that give me depth perception, the $400+ ones with the gorgeous Persol frames that there is no way in hell that I can ever possibly replace, the ones which my true love bought for me (before quitting his lucrative but no longer enjoyable job) along with a matching (but "tortoise" rimmed) pair of reading glasses back in February, and which took about three weeks for me to get from the day we ordered the frames to the day Lenscrafters delivered the finished product.  ARRRGGGGHHH.  I am deeply, deeply peevish and sad about this.  They were my very favorite eyeglasses EVER.  (You can see me wearing them while sucking down peas in one of the silly photos here.)  Also, this kind of stupidity on my part does tend to make me feel like a hopeless black hole into which other people pour resources to no good purpose.  To be fair, I don't usually lose eyeglasses; I usually wear them 'til they break under the strain of old age.  I haven't permanently lost a pair of eyeglasses since 1989.  However, while this knowledge does tend to mitigate my self-loathing of the moment, it does nothing to mitigate my grief.  Even the tapioca pudding my true love bought me for consolation has done nothing to lighten my sadness over this and sits pale, cold and dejected in the fridge at this very moment.

Right.  So that's the pain.   On to the pretty!  Let's start off with a creamy magnolia bud, particularly incandescent in the early morning sun:

Yes, indeed, this gorgeous flower bloomed today on a tree at the Arnold Arboretum, where, with friends D., S., and esteemed correspondent Bipolar Lawyer Cook (hereinafter "BLC"), I was able to revel in a much anticipated excursion to the Arnold Arboretum's 100th annual Lilac Sunday!

BLC met us at the gate and kindly served as our guide, showing us a shortcut to the heart of the lush green hillside full of blooming lilacs in many, many varieties.

I took so many pictures of so many lilacs, more than I can show you all at once.

As scent triggers memory, so the sight of these photos triggers in my mind the scent of these flowers, clouds and masses of them in every shade from white to pink to deep, well, lilac.

Before long, I realized that all I wanted to do with the rest of my life was roll around in piles upon piles of lilac blossoms.  Really.  It would be enough.

A lovely, lovely morning, in lovely, lovely company -- and while we all enjoyed it together, we each also enjoyed it in our own unique way.

As you can see, I simply wallowed in it all.  BLC lurked voluptuously among the blooms, deep in heavenly scent while searching each limb of each bush for the best possible camera angle (click to enlarge):

Here is my friend S. looking somehow, to my eye anyway, very much like someone straight out of the Bloomsbury group.  I won't go on about why I think so, but tell me if you don't agree.  (Click to enlarge and judge for yourself.)

And while the rest of us frolicked among the flowers, my friend D., whom I often call "the dog whisperer," found her own pleasure. (Again, click to enlarge.)

And of course there were and are other things to see at the Arnold Arboretum besides lilacs, and we were suitably dazzled by many of them, too.  There were not just the incandescent magnolias (click to enlarge) --

-- but also the frilly azaleas, happily blooming even without a trace of scent.

And the bark of this cork tree growing in forms reminiscent of gothic cathedrals compels reverence, at least, and joy.

Dazzling.

The whole morning, in fact:  dazzling.  Wish you could have joined us.  Until you can some other year, this will have to do.

(click to enlarge)

Abandoning Jesus in Favor of Barbie

As you may recall, tomorrow is Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum -- and I get to go.  Why was there any question?  Because as you may also recall, my artificial leg had gotten so ill-fitting over four years, especially over the last two months, that I could no longer walk in it comfortably.  That leg, however, has been replaced!

My new leg not only fits me better than the old one ever did, but also represents some vast technological improvements, including in the fake foot.  However, in the world of prosthetics as with so many other things, sometimes you have to give up a little something with every gain.

In this case, I gave up a tiny little aura of holiness.  Perhaps.

These are my feet as they now stand.  Notice that the one on the right no longer resembles any part of Jesus, not even when clad in a sandal.  If anything, it looks like Barbie's Dream Foot.  (Or Skipper's, because it's perfectly flat on the bottom.)

It's very very shiny.  Even though it is a very shiny artificially pinkish color that matches no human skin I've ever encountered, the manufacturer went to the trouble to mold veins and toe wrinkles into it.  There are even wrinkles on the heel and around the ankle.

I find this effort hilarious, especially as it is completely futile for no sane person would ever mistake this for a "real" human foot.  And the truth is, I'd be just as happy with a shoe last of any color that functioned as well.  Honestly.  However, these may be the veins I present to the next person who wants to draw blood or inject me with contrast dye.  Tempting, you know?

I will write more about my genuinely fabulous new leg later, once I have had more of a chance to walk in it, and I will write more about Lilac Sunday after the event, hopefully also show you photographs of beautiful flowers beyond my own fence.  Until then, however, please enjoy these views from inside my fence, next to my front steps.

First, some of our own lilacs, planted by a previous tenant who knows how many decades ago:  (Click to enlarge.)

And now, another lovely plant that blooms at this time of year and smells divine, the viburnum:  (Click to enlarge.)

More later.  Stay tuned.

Not quite the tulip I was expecting, but I'll take it!

While I was awaiting brain surgery recently and contemplating the odds that I might get to meet Ceiling Cat soon, esteemed correspondent Ron Sullivan was kind enough to send me a lovely flower picture, one of the glorius calochortus she shot on one of her many fascinating and beautiful walks.  Ron told me there's a Flickr pool devoted just to calochortus, which she also informed me are native flowers also known as Mariposa tulips.

Spectacular.

I told Ron that I had planted a bunch of glorious pink tulips in my yard, that the squirrels seemed not to have removed all of them last summer, and promised that I would photograph them when they bloomed and post the photos here.

Well, I don't think that's going to happen.  Many of last year's bulbs (but not the daffodils!) were eaten, but also the promising little red, priapic spears of this years incarnation of those tulips never had a chance to develop before being romped upon by big dogs and then smothered in bark mulch by a well-meaning landlord.

However, the squirrels have definitely been busy in the garden planting as well as removing.

These "volunteer" sunflower sprouts are everywhere -- in the aforementioned mulch, in the lawn, in between plants in pots, really absolutely everywhere.  And I know exactly where they came from.

Also, I think this next item, which is growing in front of the drainspout in the front yard, came from next door.  (Click to enlarge. Consider putingt on sunglasses first.)

It isn't pink, and it's all alone, but it will do.

The Ideal War

I always want to tell people who feel that there is such a thing as an acceptable wartime loss, an acceptable amount of "collateral damage," just one thing:

You first.

Sometimes I imagine the ideal war.  In my ideal war, two knee-jerk dogmatist, megalomaniac politicians and/or religious leaders of wealth, power, and privilege either earned, stolen or inherited face each other.  One of them insults the other's banking practices, family connections, and golf game.  The other retorts in kind and adds something about the superiority of his own religion.  It is clear a fight is brewing, and that the outcome will determine who gets to Rule the World!

One megalomaniac then turns the conflict into a full-blown war -- by blowing up his own house.

The second megalomaniac retorts, "Oh, yeah?" and then blows up HIS own house -- and chops off one of his own arms.

The first megalomaniac screams "Die you filthy blot on the face of humanity!" or some such equally fine rhetoric, chops off his own arm -- and then drives a bayonet into his own belly.

Not to be outdone, the second megalomaniac makes remarks about the innate inferiority of the first megalomaniac's sexual practices, culture, and mother.  Then he drives a bayonet into his own belly and chops off his own leg.

And so it goes, until one of them dies or begs the other to stop.

Whoever "wins," whoever is left alive, gets to Rule the World!

And in that event, I'll bet a lot of things would be different than they are today, things like health care coverage and the number of wheelchair-accessible buildings and public facilities.  But I'm probably just fantasizing.