Friday, June 20, 2008

Friday, Solstice, and Bacteria

Today is the longest day of the year. And I feel like 10 miles of bad road that sank into a swamp (or maybe a castle nudge-nudge-wink-wink). Great stuff, na? Apparently the abscess that was doing its best to turn me into the Elephant Man managed to send out infiltrators before the assault on it late yesterday afternoon. Because I awoke this morning feeling like I had the mother of all colds coming on. My chest feels something like I'd imagine a coal miner's to feel after a bad day at the office. How cruelly ironic that I'd have a chest full of crap after I quit smoking.

I guess I can actually say that now: "after I quit smoking." Let me pause and take that in for a moment. Okay, I'm done. It's not the word "after" that's a wonder, it's the context for it. It's always been used in future tense before. As in, "I can do X 'after I quit smoking'". I've never stayed quit long enough to use it in the past tense. As in, "I X'ed 'after I quit smoking'". So pardon me while I get used to this.

If nothing else, all this crap in my chest coupled with all the other influences will make the idea of relapsing too horrible to contemplate.


A few days ago I ran into a charming couple from Pune, India at the dog park। Being something of an Indo-phile, I struck up a conversation sticking to the "usual" topics I'd discuss with my other friends from the sub-continent. Nothing more controversial or enlightening than the latest trends in Bollywood films or music. The woman - whose name I later learned is "Neesha" (Hindi: नीशा) - mentioned that she'd written a book. That alone is enough to perk my ears up, then she went on to say that it had done fairly well in India - especially for a non-fiction work. Then she dropped the real bombshell. At the book launch, she was joined by Shabana Azmi -- who's famed all over India both as an actress and a politician. I found it remarkable that someone so influential took the time to do a book reading -- especially for a non-fiction work. Until I learned more about the book's subject. I won't go into details here (mainly because I haven't read it yet), but if you want to know more you can go to http://baba.niya.org/. In brief, the book is about a humanist and Gandhian named Baba Amte and the work he did for the betterment of less fortunates in his 94 years.

You just never know who will turn up at the dog park.


Worth 1000 Words, But Needs A Title
Occasionally I enter stuff in competitions and I've considered this shot for such an effort.I Need A Title!Trouble is I have no title for it. Usually "Untitled" is fine with the people running the contests, but I don't like to submit untitled work. (I'm just weird that way, okay?) So I thought I'd offer it for consideration since there are so many creative people out here in the blogosphere.

And no, Iwon't tell you whose pants they are.Stumble This!

2 comments:

Her Roo-ness said...

so...running and not smoking.
shit, we gonna have to sign you up for the tofu hut!
:)
all the cool people with knee caps in tact and healthy lungs hang out there when others are outside in the rain/cold/heat sucking weeds.

good job.

also. I think you should call the photograph, 'hip deep in trouble.'

Mojo said...

Hey Roo thanks for stoppin' by! Quitting smoking I can do (I'm doing it!). But running ain't evah gonna happen. Even with intact kneecaps, the other pieces of my knees would put a stop to that very damn quick.

And it's funny... if you knew whose pants those were you'd understand just how appropriate your title suggestion is. Spooky.