The puzzle that is me

When last we met, I had just happily purchased a pen and notebook at the bus station kiosk and was rushing back to my seat to record my thoughts. I'll pick up there in my next post. I'd like to talk about what had happened earlier in the day. I indicated that my emotional receptors were at an all time high; I was on edge after a family visit. I hadn't reacted well to the gift of the buttons.

Our community garden has been a huge success. In many ways it has been a garden and educational center for adults and children alike. Some condo residents, recent immigrants, unfamiliar with the concept of "plots", often just plant items any where they see ground. You may head out to your plot number 1806 one morning, as I did, intending to sow another row of beans, "Hwæt", which is "Lo" for those not fluent in old English. You discover that someone has planted six pepper plants in the row you had carefully cleared the day before. I can't tell you the time I spent tracking the individual down and explaining the concept of property rights. "Yes, it is a community garden, but the gardens are assigned". Eleven words, but when English is your second, or maybe third language, that's a major speech to try to comprehend. Thankfully, like riding a bicycle, skills learned during three years of Peace Corps are never totally lost. Pantomime, hand gestures and French can go a long way.

One of our garden's "Captains" has a two year old daughter. She's learned some entomology: ladybugs are cute and like to walk on your hand, but bees don't like to be picked up. "Sting" is a new part of her vocabulary and is used to describe most flying insects. She's also learned a civics lesson or two. One morning she helped Mom "dead head" some marigolds. During a lapse of supervision, this little two year old apparently wandered over to a neighboring garden and "dead headed" some tomato plants. Not any tomatoes; the gardener's pride and joy, big mothers, very rare! Boy that was an exciting morning.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) was quoted as saying: "Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them". His works were, and still are, the first encouragement to a child to "think outside the box." "I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells". 

I have good days and bad days, but I am afraid I am becoming an adult. As the gardens were showing their first, of hopefully more bounty, the two year old and I would play a game. She would bring me either a fist full of pebbles or tiny slivers of lettuce. It took me a while to figure out the required responses that would meet with her approval! Often by the time she traversed the twenty feet to my plot she would have lost all the lettuce or mashed it to a pulp. Either way, I learned I was to accept and eat the bounty, invisible or not and make sounds of approval. The pebbles were real tricky. I'll admit I did not have a clue. How I made the connection I don't know. After the first couple of pebble gifts, she was obviously upset that she hadn't received the proper response from me.  I followed her back to her Mom's plot. I noticed that she had a pile of these pebbles carefully arranged in the corner of the garden. The next time I was ready. I had collected some pebbles and had my own small pile. When next she handed me her gift, I pointed to my little pile and added the ones she had just given me. I was rewarded by a squeal of delight.

I have books that will never be read, music that will never be played. I have no need or inclination to dress up. I wouldn't know where to look in my closets for a tie. I wear tee shirts collected from charity bicycle rides. My glassware consists of souvenir cups scavenged from NCAA basketball games. My meals are prepared in either a wok, rice cooker, one of several sauce pots or just cooked in the microwave. Don't worry if you are ever a dinner guest. I'm a good cook, just don't expect the meal to be served on fancy china or see matching silverware. Having no need for more, I should have no expectations, or feelings of disappointment, when presented with a gift. My god, I can go "yum: when presented with invisible lettuce leaves by a child.

However in the adult world I become like anyone else. Needing nothing, gifts still get unconsciously labeled and compartmentalized in my mind. I can't help myself. Some get the label of great, or over the top; others humdrum or just plain strange. This weekend I was given an envelope of buttons. I was told that I could choose any that I may like. I have two in front of me now. One says: "Support our Heroes", the other "Kitt is my copilot". I'm not a fan of Heroes. Not that I don't like it, I've just never watched it. I'm someone who waits for syndication. I can still catch an episode of Friends I may never have seen. I only this year discovered House. I've done an internet search and found that Universal Media Studios (the studio behind the shows - not just shows on NBC) - is doing this PR campaign to raise awareness of their TV shows for Emmy Nominations. And they're doing so by offering free buttons for all their shows, including Knight Rider! Judging from the enthusiasm I've detected in some of the posts, this is a big deal. Obviously the individual offering me the buttons thought so. In reality, they were absolutely the perfect gift for me. They served as the catalyst for this story. I also used to enjoy Knight Rider. However, I just didn't know how to react. They didn't fit neatly into my gift database. "Did not compute - please resubmit". I didn't even say thanks.

I felt it, like the weight of the air on a humid day. The person who gave them to me is an individual who is sensitive to those social graces. I didn't even say thanks. I know he was hurt. I know "Adults are just obsolete children" and I can say: "the hell with them". I guess I must now include myself in that group, adults. However, I don't think the button giver has made that leap.

That's where my head was as I sat in the bus station dirty cap precariously askew on top of my earphones, well worn backpack and my fingers nervously tapping metal buttons in my pockets.

• Sitting on a park bench
• eyeing little girls with bad intent.
• Snot running down his nose.
• greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.

• His restless eyes leap and scratch
• At all that they can touch or catch.
• And hidden deep within his pocket
• Safe within its silent socket
• He holds a colored crayon

I will continue soon with the story of "The woman with the dog, the bus driver and the escaped convict".

For now, you may enjoy reading: Like a poem poorly written.

Also, may I recommend for your enjoyment: There's no going back.

Whether they are made of pork, as is most often the case, or of beef, veal, buck, goat, chamois, venison, sheep, wild boar, or horse, cured meats (salumi in Italian) were born of a need to conserve meat for months after the slaughter of the animal. Salting, smoking, and air-drying are the three processes by which fresh meat is transformed into a long-keeping staple.

While all meats are salted, some are smoked, and others are simply air-dried. Italians have been making an amazing array of cured meats for thousands of years using both noble and humble parts of the animals they raise. The ancient Romans prized the spicy pork sausages crafted in the southern region of Basilicata (called Lucania then, and giving rise to sausages named Lucaniche still eaten today). And, fond of intensely tasty foods, they smoked or salted whole pig thighs, yielding savory Prosciutti not unlike those still made in mountain villages across Italy.

Two thousand years later, pork remains Italy's favorite meat for curing. Pigs are especially prevalent in areas where there is a notable cheesemaking tradition: after all, wherever there is cheese, there is excess whey, which, combined with bran and corn, becomes perfect feed for pigs.

The Silver Surfer (Norrin Radd) is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero created by Jack Kirby. The character first appears in the comic book Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966), the first of a three-issue arc fans and historians call "The Galactus Trilogy".

Originally a young astronomer of the planet Zenn-La, in order to save his home-world from destruction by a fearsome cosmic entity known as Galactus, Norrin Radd made a bargain with the being, pledging himself to serve as his herald. Imbued in return with a tiny portion of Galactus' Power Cosmic, Radd acquired great powers and a silvery appearance. Galactus also created for Radd a surfboard-like craft — modeled after a childhood fantasy of his — on which he would travel at speeds beyond that of light. Known from then on as the Silver Surfer, Radd began to roam the cosmos searching for new planets for Galactus to consume. When his travels finally took him to Earth, the Surfer came face-to-face with the Fantastic Four, a team of powerful superheroes that helped him to rediscover his nobility of spirit. Betraying Galactus, the Surfer saved Earth but was punished in return with everlasting exile there.

Stan Lee enjoyed the character and decided to feature him in his own individual title in 1968. John Buscema was penciller for the first 17 issues of the series, with Kirby returning for the eighteenth and final issue. The first seven issues, which included anthological "Tales of the Watcher" backup stories, were 72-page (with advertising), 25-cent "giants", as opposed to typical 36-page, 12-cent comics of the time. Thematically, the stories dealt with the Surfer's exile on Earth and the inhumanity of man as observed by this noble yet fallen hero. The Silver Surfer comic book series became known as one of Lee's most thoughtful and introspective works. Englehart writes that Buscema and Lee were "pouring their souls into the series".

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