BULBUL GETS OUTPLAYED

I was outdoors just now hanging some CDs over my strawberries. I do this because of the hiyodori. That's the brown-eared bulbul, who with his small tribe has been ravaging the tsubaki flowers for the past couple weeks there beside the garden, where he can keep a good beady black eye on my strawberries as they flower and swell into the sweet redness that he so loves.

He got squawkingly upset when he saw me doing something near his strawberries: I was putting up some old CD copies to dangle spinning and flashing in the breeze above the deluxe fruity enjoyments that are in fact as mine as anything can be that does not involve monkeys (regarding whom all bets are off when it comes to outdoor mineness), but this was the hi-tech, teachable me vs. a one-track bird who, working on this small portion of my vast ignorance, last year got my strawberries.

This year will be different. He can't read worth a damn of course, so for all he knew this could be anybody from Dylan to Beethoven to Miles Davis to Frank Zappa to Lou Reed; this could be Fiddy Cent, this could be Lady Gaga. Take that, bird. Boy did he screech, so clearly not knowing which was what.

My strawberries look sweeter already...

OUTSIDE THE BOX

A somehow suitable conflation of ophthalmology and punk parameters-- who are we to impose prior restraints on unexamined possibilities?

There are certain times in life - and you don't know what they are until you get there - and there are certain states of being that require certain inexplicably ritual implements to be used in ineffable fashion - and you don't know what or how before you get there, either, but for some reason implicit in a muggily oppressive rainy season afternoon yesterday on the side of a mountain in Japan a stack of had-to-be-edited-right-now medical papers mysteriously generated a certain spiritmindsoul (SMS) warpfield that was of a certain shade, density, texture, flavor etc. and called precisely for a not immediately identifiable accompaniment, what was it, what could it be, the SMS asked in no certain terms: mint candy? chocolate? some lemonade? a cup of coffee? No, mundanity was the least of it, this was way out there-- a plangency was needed-- an evocation was called for-- some seminal nostalgia-- an artifact plucked from the depths of time that would somehow relate to... and be at home in... yet comfortably obviate, ocular surgical syntax and related matters, with volume2max... ah yes: Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Waitin' for My Man, Heroin, Sweet Jane, Pale Blue Eyes, Beginning to See the Light, perfect editing rhythm yet ophthalmologically appropriate.

Syntactic surgery performed in a keyboard flashdance, way outside the box.