Tiger, Pinky, the Lady Acupuncturists,
and the Belly Rub Heard Around the Block.

I realized today Tiger must truly miss the people who were caring for him and feeding him when he was homeless. He lived by Shoal Creek and Pease Park in downtown Austin next to a small acupuncture clinic in an old home that now housed a complement of four female practitioners. He loved them. Really! Like only a cat can do. They made soothing salves from Chinese herbs and would repeatedly treat his serial streetfighting wounds, some of which were serious and one of which on a back paw was threatening to become gangrenous when we adopted him one freezing winter afternoon. A long gash on the side of his neck was healing well thanks to Chinese herbs at that time also.  They fed him morning and evening and kept fresh water for him. At dinnertime, he'd be waiting at the glass front door and all his lady doctor friends would gather and eagerly pour out the door to see him. He'd immediately flip onto his back exposing his big soft orange furry belly, and they'd start rubbing him and talking sweetly to their Pinky, which is what they called him. We love you, Pinky!  You're my Pinky!  Pinky!  You sweet, sweet boy!  We love you, Pinky!  By then Tiger would be squealing loudly with excited delight and pleasurable abandon.  The lady acupuncturists loved when he did that and they'd laugh and laugh with wide beaming smiles. This made Tiger all the happier and he'd squeal with delight some more, and they all would become exhilarated and delirious with joy.  Once his belly rub had ended and mutual peak happiness tapered into bliss, he would gratefully and energetically eat his dinner before any cat or raccoon competitors could appear, and he likely enjoyed excellent digestion after all that squealing and laughing. Then he'd find his place for the night, probably close to the creek near the bamboo so he could hide and hunt insects, frogs and lizards, and dream his dreams of survival. To his lady acupuncturists, Tiger will always be their darling sweet happy happy Pinky.  For months after we brought Tiger home, I'd show the lady acupuncturists pictures of Pinky-Tiger at home in the cabin and in the woods.  They'd missed him so!  They looked forward to seeing the photos.  The photos helped make their day.  They reminded them how much they loved him and he loved them. Now Pinky is Tiger of the Mount Bonnell woods, of course, and that's because a cat psychic told us he'd rather be called Tiger, that he preferred something more dignified and adventurous.  After all, he survived the urban primeval almost all by his lonesome.  His full name now, by the way, is Happy Lucky Rocky Tiger, which is what I further named him.  If you're going to lose a great name like Pinky, you deserve a world-class new one.  But he's still Pinky at heart and by any other name, especially when he rolls onto his back and offers up his soft drum of a furry tummy to his new humans.  He doesn't squeal like he used to, but that's probably because he's found a home and is now a Tiger of many names and speaks with the soft urgency of first-world needs.  We here with him in the woods are exceedingly grateful for that and become deliriously joyful at times just seeing him lying on his back on his counter or when he jumps down, runs and slides inside the overturned paper grocery bag on the floor waiting for playtime to begin, at which time we become the ones squealing with inner delight and outer laughter as Tiger begins swatting at the wand toy through the paper bag until his big paw breaks through and his claws grab his prize.  I have to tell you, he's not the only one around here who has won a prize.

Little Galaxies


A round gauzy spider web
in full dappled sunlight
coated in bright stardust
angular to the inclined hillside plane
floats and undulates on waves
of cool breezes lapping its world
and at the center of that spun floating galaxy
the spider hiding in plain sight
in its mighty wondrous shifting creation

Mysteries solved.

LEAVE HITLER ALONE!!!!!

[Not really. Never leave Hitler alone.]

            The U.S. Senate Republicans censured and censored Senator Elizabeth Warren for reading aloud from a text by Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s wife. This is far worse than a misogynistic slapdown and an authoritarian crackdown. It is the first Confederate artillery barrage fired at the United States' Fort Sumter in 1861 by the devil incarnate, the desperate Slave Power.. The mad-hatter fun and games are over, if we didn't know that before.
            First, there are no longer any Republicans. They have eagerly engineered their own psychotic break, which is a more than charitable description of their devolution into purposeful madness, and become 21st Century American Nazis, not an exaggeration. Consider them the Founding Fathers of the Resurrected Reich, however their Machiavellian mad-scientist impersonation turns out.
            The only question today is at which historic Station of the Swastika could their ratcheting reign of vengeful terror possibly be halted, if at all, by what will remain of American institutions and what will become of our people. The former Republicans have jettisoned any lingering reluctance about how much violence they will indirectly incite and directly use to forestall what should be their gradual natural subsuming into our demographically evolving democracy. They are such political and personal cowards, and fiends, that they would rather lose their souls, and you lose your lives, than learn how to successfully compete on an even playing field with everyone else.
            Poor little monsters! They are terrified of losing their Entitlement and merely remaining entitled. Self-stroking their most damnable dreads and fondling their stark projectile fantasies, they've driven themselves to believe their craven time has finally arrived, one way or another, and for their own sakes are willing to offer up in living sacrifice the up-and-coming generations to a brutal fate. Never before has an American ruling clique so greatly tempted the inalienable parricidal instinct of their own children.
            I, of course, am not encouraging parricide and instead am urging caution by our myopic star-crossed new rulers, for everyone's sake, even for their pitiful grouping. I don't expect they'll change course though, as they aren't smart enough or mature enough to realize the perfect storm they're whipping up will overwhelm them as well, their cunning be damned.

                         Ant Jesus and Uncle Larry           

I watched an ant poking around a spot where the kitchen wall meets the countertop.  The ant suddenly disappeared seemingly into nowhere.  After looking more closely, I sealed off a short almost invisible crevice at the spot.  Now the ant's mates seem to be stranded in the kitchen area.  They've apparently set up a hidden camp somewhere, maybe under the stove or the microwave.

When evening comes, they scamper out and patrol for a crumb or a drop. There's about 15 to 20 of them who will appear around the same time.  They walk down into the sink and back up and out again.  They investigate a piece of leaf debris on the floor and walk away unrequited.  They climb to the top of the vertical paper towel rack, I imagine for more than the view or because they can, as if it weren't a veritable Everest for them.

Each night I put a piece of cat kibble on a paper towel near the sink, and the ants will soon begin to assemble and snack for a while.  There's no need for them to starve to death.  Once the throng has more fully arrived, I very gently lift their entire pasture including their boulder of a snack and transport them out the back door onto the stoop where they continue their nibbling.

I wish I could know if the new ants that continue to appear each evening are the same ones I've been putting outside who are simply finding a way back into the kitchen for the meals.  It's not that I'd stop giving them their evening snack or harm them in any way.  They've become like family.  I want to continue to treat them as such.  I just want to know for curiosity's sake, though I've become happily enough resigned to living with the little engine of activity and mystery that is the ant.

My kitchen ants remind me of the bathroom ants I met while staying in a big ramshackle cottage on the island of Montserrat in 1978 where I rented a room in the springtime in a local family's home.  I'd never witnessed the relaxed way to live with ants until this family, and the ants, showed me what peaceful coexistence was.  I had been so naïve, thinking ants were an enemy, one of countless species of enemies across the natural world.

At the end of a hot Caribbean day, inside the bathroom, the ants would file down the wall from the edge of the ceiling to the little bare sink.  There they'd each take their turn at a drink from the moist end of the faucet before joining the parallel line of ants heading back up in the opposition direction to the ceiling, back from where they'd come, their thirst sated.

The ants were friendly and relaxed.  They understood they had nothing to fear from the family and now me.  There was no harm done.   Neither ant nor human worried at all.  It was live and let live, like Jesus would want. The Ant Jesus, I mean. Maybe the human one too.

No Villain

Free will
is to chill
be still
and fill
with good will
not harm or kill
cant ever pay that bill
so chill
with all God's chillin
be good willin
chillin
and fillin.