I don’t do Halloween.  Not because it’s pagan or satanic or anything, anymore.  It’s not; no more than Thanksgiving has anything to do with the harvest or the Pilgrims.  Just because it’s just a silly holiday that holds no personal meaning for me, and I need to stay well hence from candy. But in each of the past several years, I’ve tried to write something for Dia de los Muertos. I wrote this on Sunday and Monday, to lay out as this year’s offering.

Saying Goodnight


It’s dark. The night has gotten in the house and taken every corner, every closet, for itself, except where he sits at the desk.  He has just the small green hooded lamp which illuminates a book and leaves the rest of his study in gloom. Beyond the open door, he can barely see the hallway, which leads to his kitchen, his bathroom and the world.

The sun sets early this time of year, touching the trees in the park while folks are driving home from work. He walked out at five to watch it pause, then fall into the sea. Since he also saw the sun rise – bold and warm even in the end of October – rise up and stand all day and set again, he knows this dark that holds the house is just the shadow of the world. The black curtain that lets the pavement cool, and the grass take a drink of fog and sleep.

The mind is locked in with its secrets, behind windows smudged by dirty hands, shutters tilted to show a tide of floating dust. But in this house, the sun comes in and shafts of light fall on all the places where his people rest.

Of course the house is haunted. Why wouldn’t it be? His grandfather comes to him on Sunday afternoons in autumn, and on hot summer days. They sit on the sofa and wait for the game to start. They sit for hours, until he gets up for a drink and comes back to find the old man gone. Outside, the children laugh and play.

His grandmother comes with a softness of singing. She is seen at the stove, making breakfast, or hanging bedclothes on the line. She appears in pink and pale yellow, in a posture of prayer, or at the sink looking out at the infinite sky.

At the door of his study, at the best range of his lamp’s light, he stands. Down the hall, he can make out the furniture shapes. The back of the sofa, a table’s edge. He could go down just a few steps, and hit a switch: The lights over the dining room or the smooth, bright globe in the kitchen. Everything would be bright and clear.

No. He closes his eyes and slowly turns, hoping that whatever channels serve to join the bookend worlds are open. So maybe when he looks, he’ll find his dog asleep on her side again beneath his desk. Though he’s alone in the lamplight, he knows she must be near. So near that it should make him cry. Maybe she’s resting by the piano or beside his bed, somewhere in the shadows he has not dispelled.

Now he starts in the hallway and goes from room to room, turning on every light. Even in the closets and the hood above the stove. The porch light, the garage.

Goodnight, I live in the incandescent world.
I love you, forever, but the moon is up
and if I go out along the street, apart
from the lights of the house,
the moon may throw my shadow on the earth.



© 2005 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
2nd Draft 11/2/05
all rights reserved

Something became – like weak government or strong cheese – horribly corrupted in the JavaScript which serves to display the Blogroll you see in the right column.  I misapprehended the matter as a problem with my Blogger template, and wasted a couple of hours trying to fix it.  Then of course, I had to replace the Bloglines JavaScript anyway.  Oh woe.  Oh well, the blog looks pretty good now, don’t you think?  Yeah.  

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

I must say that it seems this George Bush fellow just can’t seem to catch a break lately. His war deceptions are coming home to roost, and now he can’t even get golf applause for trying to save mankind from sick birds.

Hey W, I got an idea that’ll save you a few bucks outta that $7.1 Billion. Two Words: Extra Crispy.

Every night about this time – say, between 10 and 12:30 – I hear the same noise from my kitchen.  It’s the sound of an icemaker dumping a cube.  Sort of a cross between a pop and a thunk.  

I’ll bet you hear similar sounds coming from your kitchen, right?  

The problem is, I don’t have an icemaker.  In fact, there’s nothing in my kitchen that should make that kind of noise.  

Just in the interest of heading off a stray premise, my condo isn’t haunted.  And even if it were, you’d think a poet’s ghost could come up with something just a bit more creative.

Oh, this is a wonderment! Democrats in the Senate closed its doors in protest of the war on Iraq. Republicans are outraged, which just leaves me tickled.

“The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said. “Never have I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution.”

Oh, and it’s high time, Billy boy. Y’all been needin’ a good slap, not to mention a swift kick in the ass.

This is cool. I always enjoy it when Google changes its logo for a holiday, because they’re so creative.



That must be a fun place to work.

See what I mean?  If James Dobson is glad about the nomination, it just can’t be a good idea.  

I got this from MoveOn.org today:

Dear MoveOn member,

This morning, with his administration growing weaker by the day, President Bush caved to pressure from the radical fringe of the Republican Party and nominated Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. Alito is a notoriously right-wing judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He has consistently ruled to strip basic protections from workers, women, minorities and the disabled in favor of unchecked power for corporations and special interests.

That’s why today we’re joining the fight with an emergency petition to the Senate, calling on them to stand up for ordinary Americans and reject Alito’s nomination. We’re aiming to gather a quarter million signatures and comments in the next 48 hours.

Can you sign today?

http://www.moveon.org/stopalito

I agree we don’t need a man on the Supreme Court with a poor record on civil rights. We don’t need a Justice who appeals to the extreme reactionary fringe who pull Bush’s strings. We need a person who will uphold the Constitution to the greatest possible good of us all. So I don’t think Samuel Alito is a wise nomination. Bush is just giving in the to the suction from the far right wing of his party.

Time for us all to stand again and yell, “Shenanigans!”

I see in the news this morning there’s a call for Bush and Cheney to apologize for actions of the people who work for them – meaning Scooter. And I got an e-mail from MoveOn.org, the subject of which is Indicted! White House Caught In Iraq Cover-Up.

On this beautiful Sunday morning, maybe someone should point out that, while Bush and Cheney owe us and the planet a great many apologies, and the whole war has been steeped in a massive cover-up, Scooter hasn’t been convicted. And his indictment in itself isn’t proof of the cover-up.

If you and I talked on the phone today, do you think I could swear under penalty of perjury to what we said, if called to testify on Tuesday? No. Not unless I made meticulous notes, and only read from them at the hearing. Nobody I know has perfect recall, so in order to convict Scooter, they’ll have to prove not only that he lied, but that he had the intent to lie.

So the indictment only proves that the prosecutor persuaded the required number of grand jurors that he has the requisite persuasive evidence that Libby lied about what he discussed with people, concerning elements of the cover-up. And in his grand jury testimony. So yeah, things look grim for Scooter. But If you want direct proof of the cover-up, that’s easily found in the public speeches of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

So let’s not all get on our high horses over this. Yet. We all know these guys are mostly assholes, and Bush and Cheney deserve to be boiled in oil for the tragedies of this misbegotten and immoral war. But one is innocent until proven guilty in the USA, and I don’t know for sure but that Scooter is simply a career politician who screwed up. Maybe he had bad counsel.

At sunset this evening, I stopped on my way home from watching the Fresno State game with my folks, to go for a walk on the bluffs near my house. Above is a photo of my neighborhood. (Click to enlarge.) It’s pretty out of date. All that brown area from the freeway to the ocean is a nature preserve now; all replanted with beautiful native scrub plants. The street at #3 is gone, and there’s a smaller, eco-friendly clay and gravel parking area. It’s really a nice park.

Anyway, I parked my truck in the lot at #1, walked straight toward the ocean, then turned toward #2. My plan was to make it back to the truck, via #2 and #3, in somewhat less than my personal best of 18 minutes. I made it in 16 minutes, 22 seconds. And I would’ve made it in 15, except that I had to stop at #2 to be sniffed by a very large but friendly Rottweiler.

As you can see, I’m as far as I can get from #1, the safety of my truck, and at least as far from #4, which is my house. No place to run, no place to hide.

I’m telling you this just by way of saying Thanks God that Mr. Rottweiler was friendly. He was off leash, his owner was 30 feet behind him, and he could sniff my hand without tilting his big, beautiful head.

I’m not afraid of dogs. I wasn’t afraid of Mr. Rottweiler. But I am afraid, when I stop to think about it, of being seriously injured by anything at all. Big dog, power tools, motor vehicles, it’s all the same. I just don’t relish the concept of being anesthetized, stitched up, and kept overnight for observation. I hate the thought of being bandaged, unable to bathe or button my fly or type at my computer. So when I saw the big black and tan gentleman, I stopped and waited for him to reach me, sniff me and smell Happy, and decide I wasn’t a threat to his owner, or his supper.

The dog and his owner were friendly, and went on their way, turning to your left at #2, which pathway leads to the seal rookery via that line of trees. The owner said “Sorry if he scared you,” and I said, “No, not at all. I love dogs.” But the truth is, as I’ve expressed here before, keep your fercryinoutloud pets on a leash, for their safety and mine. If I’d had Happy with me, she’d have piddled all down the front of my shirt.

Read all about it.

My favorite points:

>Libby’s indictment is a political embarrassment for the president, paving the way for a possible trial renewing the focus on the administration’s faulty rationale for going to war against Iraq — the erroneous assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.”

>Democrats suggested the indictment was just the tip of the iceberg. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the case larger than Libby and “about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president.”