Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

quirks

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Pouring myself through the tubes of the internets, I noticed that some bloggers are following a meme in which they post several quirky things about themselves. [For example.]

Quirks are interesting. Everybody has them; some of us have lots, and are called quirky. Of course, some of us are simply nuts, but that’s beside the point.

I have some quirks. One involves checking the locks at bedtime, walking away, and being unable to remember what I learned when I checked the locks. Were they locked? Back I go, but not more than once. It’s not OCD, just HUA.

I’m not going to post several of my quirks, but I will share one more: I like to plop on my bed sometimes when I get home. I don’t get in bed, don’t undress, and I don’t lie down exactly; I just plop, or flop. Occasionally, I flounder just a bit. I walk up to the end of the bed, and fall face first. Then I like there a minute or two, get up, and go about my business. It’s not a nap and not much rest, but it seems to center me.

This quirk undoubtedly dates to my childhood. I think I did it in high school, and I’m sure I used to do it in college.

I can’t explain it, and I only do it a few times a month so I don’t get many opportunities to examine the act. Besides, critical inquiry would certainly ruin the experience. But I will say that it feels good to reacquaint myself with the horizontal axis of the corporeal world, in the midst of my ill considered, myopic striving for the Divine.

So what kind of quirky stuff do you do?

awww

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What in the world is the matter with Calvin’s mom?

He’s only 6 for cryin’ out loud. Make with the cookies already. Time flies, and before you know it he’ll be texting behind the wheel and putting the sedan in a ditch.

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Weather or Not

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A couple of days ago, I got a phone call. It was my Dad. He said, “Look outside. Believe it or not, it’s raining.”

So I did, and it was. Which is pretty cool, because we go for several months every year with no measurable rain at all. The Santa Barbara area is basically an arid coastal plain; in other words, a desert. This pretty little spattering didn’t really break the rule, because it wasn’t measurable. And it seems like every summer we get one bleak spattering, one wimpy thunderstorm, barely damp above the level of dry lightning. But it was nice – a brief reminder that God is in His Heaven, etc.

* * *

The wise old man was walking along the road in the rain, carrying his umbrella closed at his side.

His neighbor walked up to him and said, “Hey, wise old man, it’s raining.”

“I know,” he said.

“You’re getting wet.”

“Indeed.”

“Why don’t you open that umbrella?”

“Oh, my umbrella?” He held it out and looked at it, and showed it to his neighbor, as if the man hadn’t already seen it. “This umbrella?” said the wise old man. “Oh, it’s been broken for many years.”

“Then … oh dear … then why in the world are you carrying it around?” asked the neighbor.

“Because I didn’t think it was going to rain.”

* * *

This life is like that. I am a Fool, but in a good way. (A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. — Shakespeare.) Which reminds me of another one:

A student approached the Master and asked, “Master, what is the path to enlightenment?”

“Humility,” the Master answered.

“And how long is the path?” asked the student.

“How would I know?”


* * *

And weather or not it is clear to you, here is an old poem for today (I’m channeling Garrison Keillor) by your humble poet, from my chapbook Finding Oakland, published by White Plume Press.

Solstice

I thought I heard
the Summer die.
It was a small sound
and hollow.

He sat here with me
under this sky made of steam
with a tired smile
and his hat on the floor.

We only said Good morning
and that was always early
But there was one day
of rain,
one shower at midnight.

I hope he will forgive me
his sad sad death.

(c) 1992 by Kyle Kimberlin

spoken too soon

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The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach. -Aleister Crowley, author (1875-1947)

Crowley didn’t anticipate the Bush administration, and its manipulative, intolerant, medieval anti-science. They’ve been nothing but obstructionist with even their own climate scientists. And Bush’s stance on stem cell research has more in common with Salem in 1692 than the America of 2008.

meaning of life part deux

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So I was in the grocery store. I paid for my stuff and turned to find that the kid who was supposed to be bagging it was doing something else, which was holding me up. I thought something like, “Come on, kid, get a move on. I got a life to get on with here.”

Interesting. It says at least two things about my thinking about my life:

  • My life is not going on while I’m in the grocery store, and especially not when I’m trying to get the hell out.

  • My life is what is going to happen to me between the time I leave the grocery store and the time I die; and while I’m stuck in the grocery store, I feel that potential time getting shorter.

Now the other day, I wrote that the meaning one can find in one’s life is expressed in what one as done with that life, with the end of it is reached. It appears, on further retail examination, that I was wrong. At least, my thinking is incomplete.

Maybe one meaning of a life is in our hope, faith, expectation, dread; in the potential that we see in our dreams, our skills, our one of these days. Can we distill it even more than that? Everybody wants to be loved.

3 years

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So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

~Robinson Jeffers

Love Dogs

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An inquiry into ontology or just a letter to my dog on the anniversary of her passing.

“A peace above all earthly dignities,
a still and quiet conscience”

To Tasha
(August 1990 – August 12, 2005)
at the Rainbow Bridge

Dear Tash,

I miss you, old friend. It’s one of those summer nights, like those last few nights of your short and beautiful life. Do you remember the way it would get warmer in the late evening, before bedtime, after the breeze from the ocean died down? You’d expect the evening to cool, but it doesn’t seem to. It’s the kind of night that makes a little dog itchy. You had some itchy summers in this dank valley with its blanket of sour sea air, didn’t you? I’m sorry for that. The pills weren’t really so much help.

Happy is happy with us here, but you know that ’cause she’s not there. She’s doing fine. You loved her very much, so you’d want to know. She takes a lot of medicine, but she’s OK. The Santa Barbara itch is bad this year. We’ve kept her free of fleas, but there is that something in the air again, that bothers all the dogs. She’s getting lots of baths, since she can’t take the pills.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, about the meaning of life. I told him I didn’t think the question “What is the meaning of life?” makes sense. Because meaning and life are two different kinds of things. Like the sound of blue. Life just is – it’s an abstraction with a different answer for every life that’s ever lived, and there’s no way to know what it meant until you get to the end and look back.

A better question is to ask “What does a life mean?” And even then, the answer has to be, “it depends.” Which life? And what do you mean by mean? I guess in this context – meaning life – we’re asking to know its importance, it’s value.

So life doesn’t mean anything until it’s lived, just as music doesn’t mean anything until it’s played, like a toy under the sofa isn’t the same as playing with it. And a leash on the peg in the hall by the door isn’t the same as a walk in the sun. Living is as living does, am I right?

Since this is a letter to you — meant to be mailed by some far fetched intentions of love through the veil into Heaven — maybe you’re expecting me to try to assess the value of your life. No, little friend. I can only tell you that my heart has not been unbroken since the moment when I touched your face as the doctor took your life. I have not turned my mind from that time and place, not for three years. And I guess I never will. Maybe I’m getting used to it, but I gave up hope of getting over it. You understand. At the same time, I have so many happy memories. I thank God for the brief, amazing gift of you.

No, if I have a life to sum the meanings of, it’s mine. I admit I’m one of those guys who keeps assuming the need before the necessary end. Then I can only hope that as you lie with the others in the shade of the trees across the creek, you see me walking through this other world of turning time and think my living has improved. Maybe you wish I had been like this — a little more well in my body, in the world where bodies matter — back then, when you were here to walk with me. I know you understand.

I miss you, little friend. I wish we could start over. And if there’s any consolation, maybe it’s that time is always speeding up. The world is spinning in greased grooves, faster and faster, and every precious dizzy turn brings us closer to the day. Which is maybe tonight or maybe forty years, which is the same difference.

Now it’s midnight, and starting to cool off again. I should go to bed and say my prayers and get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow is another day. Or not, because nobody has promised tomorrow to me. But if it comes, and if the pale indifferent sun glows scattered through the morning’s vapor on the sea, thank God. I can go visit Happy and take her for a bath and a walk, and try to be a better friend to her than I was to you, and a better man walking on the good earth, trying not to stoop from his petty and fleeting concerns. And that, my fuzzy little well-remembered pal, is the meaning of a life.

DOG SONG

for Rascal

My song begins at sundown
when the twilight wind comes up.
A cold wind, brushing
my hair and my tail.

Butterfly light is shining.
Butterflies lift me at nightfall,
and nothing hurts me now.
Look, the light is brighter than …

See the little dogs come running!
See the bigger dogs come running!
See the kitties and dogs come together,
and all the animals singing.

by Tasha
January 2004
based on a Pima Indian song

* * *

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

— Rumi

meanwhile, back at the political prison …

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Tonight, just hours before the Olympic Games open in Beijing on Friday, PEN American Center will host “Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China: Silenced Writers Speak on the Eve of the Olympics,” an event to honor the work—and call once again for the release—of more than forty writers and journalists imprisoned by the Chinese government for expressing dissenting views.

Poets & Writers

I gotta be honest with you. I haven’t been able to figure out why Beijing was chosen as to host the Olympics. It’s polluted, both literally and figuratively. China’s record of human and civil rights violations, and illegal occupations of sovereign lands, is even worse than America’s. What’s next, Burma?

On the other hand, maybe the Olympics serve a good purpose: to drive the host country toward at least some pretense of compassionate governance and egalitarian co-existence.

why women should vote

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I’m breaking two general rules of Metaphor with this post: I’m getting political, and I’m posting something without attribution. But I think this, which I received by e-mail from my Mom, is an important comment on human rights.

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of “obstructing sidewalk traffic.”

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the “Night of Terror” on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So next time I hear a woman say she doesn’t feel like bothering to vote, or that she’ll vote for McCain because Hillary didn’t win the nomination and she doesn’t like Obama, I’ll remember. Suffrage is about suffering, not about big ugly Victorian hats and long funny dresses. Women fought hard for the right to vote, which never should have been denied them in the first place. And to disrespect that right – for any of us to disrespect it – is to dishonor their memory.

Brilliant

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Author Sells Shares of Royalties for Unfinished Novel

Poets & Writers: Tao Lin, the author of two poetry collections, a novel, and a story collection, last Thursday posted a rather unusual offer on his blog. For two thousand dollars, readers can purchase a 10-percent share of the royalties, including all U.S. serial, reprint, textbook, and film royalties, for his unfinished novel, which is tentatively scheduled for publication next year by Melville House, an independent press in Brooklyn, New York. Tao, who writes on reader-of-depressing-books.blogspot.com about how he recently quit his job and needs money in order to have time to write, is a poetry editor of 3:AM Magazine.

Why that’s brilliant! That’s the best idea I’ve seen in hours! I mean he came in, he threw it on the floor, and the cat licked it right up. That’s how great it is. All he has to do is get 10 investors, then he’ll have $20,000 to live on while he writes a novel. And they’ll own all his royalties, for a book which he projects will sell at last 13000 units, with a great chance of a lot more. You can do the math: this is so brilliant, I wish I was wearing rubber boots.

gmail at 7 gigs

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Hey check it out, gmail is 7 gigabytes now. The limit on gmail is constantly increasing, incrementally, day and night. When I first started using it a couple of years ago, it was a little over 2gb. This is very cool.

Just for comparison, remember those little flat floppy discs we used to use? You could store dozens, maybe hundreds, of emails on a floppy. 7gb is something like 6300 floppy discs. When I first started using Web mail, Yahoo gave you 3mb of storage, Hotmail have you 2mb. 1 gb is 1000 mb. And it’s free.

Yahoo mail is unlimited now. Which is great. But the features just aren’t there, like conversations that keep sent mail and incoming mail together, and labels. Labels let you organization mail by multiple topics or people, instead of deciding on just one folder to put them in.

I’m using 16% of my limit, and I have about 12,000 conversations stored. Some conversations have several e-mails, so that’s a whole lot of e-mails, kids. Plus I often store large photos and videos in my gmail account.

You can use gmail with almost any email account – like Cox, verizon, even Yahoo. And it’s much better than messing with a downloading software like Outlook or Outlook Express, in my opinion.

So I guess I’m sayin, I really like gmail.


gmail.com