Large Fierce Mammal

My Esteemed Friend Martin, of Crime Scene Man fame was once in the employ of a police agency in a small Nova Scotia town that had come to contain a population of White Tail Deer of, let us say, unsound proportions. One day, while on patrol, he was driving a street running along the edge of a field that met the roadway in a steep descent so anything approaching the pavement from that direction would be above a driver’s lines of sight until very near. That’s how he hit a Deer, breaking a headlight and I don’t remember what all else.

The vehicle he was driving was sent to the repair shop his employer used for such things and was returned to service with speed, good as new. Until on his first shift back from days off, my Esteemed Friend Martin took it on patrol, drove along the same road at the base of the same field, and suddenly heard a loud thump on a rear door. That was when a Deer hit him. The door was crumpled a might, and I don’t remember what all else, but back to the shop it went with orders from the Chief of Police for it, and the rest of the fleet, to be fitted with “deer whistles” in case whatever was causing Martin’s one-man epidemic was catching.

As to the Deer in question, in both cases they got up and ran off in the way Deer have of absorbing unbelievable trauma and then running away to either heal, or pause to check if they’re being followed, feel unwell, lay down, and expire.

Now on to more recent events. (more…)

Source: Yore Mom

In my over 40 year career of advising clients in the methods and madness of protecting their persons, property and interests, I have been consulted many times for recommendations on solutions to problems that were so wildly unlikely to manifest as to be undetectable on any actuarial table as a potential cause of death or material loss. Persistent hand wringing pearl clutchers traditionally get steered in the direction of their insurance company with instructions to lay out for them the same concerns. If those mercenary bastards fine people are unable (or unwilling) to quote a premium, or addition to the premiums of an existing policy, I would take that as evidence that even they haven’t thought of adding it to their revenue generator.

This came to my mind from a brief conversation with the operator of an annual Hallowe’en themed attraction, specifically the Haunted House operated by Noggins Corner Farm in Greenwich, Nova Scotia. Greeting people before they enter the “Haunted House” and explaining the safety rules, she made mention of certain behaviours not being permitted on the grounds that they would violate their, “Haunted House insurance,” adding, “Yes, that’s a thing.” (more…)

One is never too young to learn these lessons. As to the kid, I have no idea how old he is. Got your nose! (Cute is Cute by TheFulkrum.)

“Darkness, as it inspires me, isn’t limited to expressions of evil, mayhem, and bad outcomes. Something can also be considered “dark” if it is unknown, misunderstood, or incorrectly interpreted. So, depending on your sensibilities good reader, I believe that if the title of the series, let alone its author, didn’t dissuade you from stepping inside, then you will find some modicum of entertainment in what follows. Nevertheless, you may also come to find, albeit too late because by then the arrow will have already found its mark, that some portions are best avoided by those imbued with that tortured combination of empathy, clarity of visualization, and a propensity for nightmares.” ~ Dark Sentiments 2012 – Day 1: Another Harvest

“None are innocent. There are only those weak enough to believe they are, and those strong enough to revel in the knowledge that they are not.” ~ Ye Diary of a Madman, Jacob Strauss, Magus of the Shining Hill, London 1940

Let Us Speak of Darkness

By LFM

Let us speak of Darkness,
Of what is and isn’t that,
No entry level nonsense,
As mere plumage on a cat.

Let us speak of Darkness,
How it lives by darkest moon,
With its power undiminished
By the brightest light of noon.

Let us speak of Darkness,
With its very name a ruse,
It grows fat on hate and ignorance —
Beware the paths you choose.

Let us speak of Darkness,
The unknown, misunderstood,
And find the joy of knowing
There are different kinds of “Good”.

Let us speak of Darkness,
Sloughing innocence like scurf,
He keeps what he can take and hold
From weakness on the turf.

Let us speak of Darkness,
Jolly Lovers of the Shade,
And let the meek inherit
All that innocence has made.

Does the World exist to torment you and trample your dreams, along with your best efforts to achieve them, into the dust with a cackle? If you answered yes, then tonight’s Feature Artist is here to help. (more…)

“When young Georgiana Crimsworth finds blood on her sheets and thinks she’s dying, she spirals into fear imagining what’s going to happen to her body.”

And so is framed tonight’s Dark Sentiment, Period Drama; a short animated treasure produced at the Ringling College of Art and Design brought to us courtesy of TheCGBros.

Dark Sentiments indeed! (more…)

The seemingly lowly leaf of the Bay Laurel tree, but appearances are deceiving. (Source here)

In this age of divided loyalties and unending crisis, some cower. Some assert themselves from the perceived safety of throngs screaming a common slogan understood differently by each throat and hearing ear. Some look to a saviour. Still others understand that if there is a saviour, in the hour of need it’s going to have to be them because the “first responder” in that moment is already there well before any finger dials 911.

Of those latter, some label themselves and others as “sheep dogs”, “wolves”, and “sheeple”. Their every move, the way they dress, the words they speak, the tattoos they wear and the bumper stickers they apply to their vehicles, identifies their chosen way of being, because a lot of them want everyone to know it.

The risks associated with much of what one sees abroad upon the land, including that part of the land called “the Internet”, are obvious. Unless you’ve chosen your audience with discretion, you are making yourself a target. Anyone can be gotten to no matter how prepared, but he sleeps best who doesn’t hide a key to the back door of his castle in plain sight.

But there is another subset that is both well represented and hard to spot unless you know what you’re looking for, and that’s the point. I speak of the Grey Man — variously defined as, “An average, forgettable man who does not draw attention or stand out in a crowd.” Note that this isn’t a recent development. Spies and assassins have been doing it forever.

Sheep dog, wolf, sheep, grey man, however you see yourself, I am here tonight to tell you that all of these epithets fall short of the mark you should be aspiring for.

I say, be as the Bay Leaf.

Be As The Bay Leaf

By LFM

The unassuming Bay Leaf, known to ancient Greece and Rome
Is in your kitchen, like as not, and in most every home.
To leave it out when called for is impossible to hide,
“What does it do?” is understood by everyone who’s tried.

It looks like many common leaves you’d find a day afield,
And whoever first espied its ways is ne’er to be revealed,
Much is lost from then to now for mysteries remain,
And he who’d name it “common” would had better think again!

The Bay is what it is no matter what travails befall,
Boil it, bake it, steep it, it will stand before them all,
Coming out unaltered ere it joined the bill of fare,
And leaving things much better for its simply being there.

And he who fain would masticate this gentle leaf of power
Will find himself in battle pressed more hotly by the hour,
For even when its done its job, Bay’s vigour isn’t spent,
With back of throat sensations urging sinners to repent!

To staunchest chews it shows disdain to hold its shape and poise,
To swallow any part forbids the utterance of noise,
So bring the best to everything you touch whate’er befall,
And hold thee to this guidance, be as Bay Leaves one and all.

Back on Day 8 we had Pig. Today, Oh Sheep!, a six-and-a-half minute dark comedy in the form of an animated short film from the ever fruitful Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH., brought to my attention by the Filmbilder & Friends YouTube channel. (more…)

Still Life With Feathers and Tincture (Mrs. LFM — click to enbiggen) Read on for more on this.

The elements of the picture at the top of tonight’s Dark Sentiment combine thoughts placed here seven years ago as Dark Sentiments Season 8 — Day 3: Of Mini-miracles, Odd Synchronicities, and Sublime Messages, and more recently in On the Weihnachtsjäger Trail.

The feather gifted to me, and spoken of in the former, is the longer of the two. A jar of tincture made from the Monotropa Uniflora (Indian Pipe in the vulgar tongue which we will employ from here) spoken of in the latter provides the support all else rests upon, and brings us directly to the story of the yellow feather with its black tip and white quill.

That feather is from a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus), a species of woodpecker common to my environs. Notwithstanding the common nature of its source, this specific feather came into my possession by the kind of uncommon circumstances that most would consider coincidental, mildly unusual perhaps, but otherwise in no way representative of any form of “Communication“. But I am not “most”.

My discovery of Indian Pipe, and equally its discovery of me, is a story for another day. The matter of the Flicker feather came from the second year of my studies into the Nature of its Medicine and my finding that unlike the previous year, it had begun appearing in  the woods very near my home. Leaving there to walk straight into the woods one soon found a well worn path that went at first straight from its start for about 30 paces, then made a 90 degree right turn to run straight another six paces, before making another 90 degree turn, this time to the left, and thence running straight through for a distance that has no bearing on this story.

Indian Pipe begins to make its appearance here in July and so I begin looking for it from the first week of that month. So it was that in the second week of that July, and on a whim, I headed off into those woods and just after making the first right turn on the aforementioned path espied a large eruption of Indian Pipe pushing up through the carpet of pine needles directly ahead of me, just off the path where it made its left turn. The plant’s colour and position made it impossible to miss, and drawing closer to examine it, I soon learned that the number of stalks was even larger than first appeared, with many still hidden beneath the loam. Turning back homeward, I immediately spotted another growth nearly as big to the left of the short central path in the dog leg formed by the 90 degree bends, and another very small one — no more than three stalks by appearances at the time and much smaller in height and stalk thickness than the rest — growing about a pace and a half off the path, on the edge of a small clearing where we would occasionally go to picnic. (more…)

Representative sample of a “best day ever” highlighting both the ephemeral nature and extreme subjectivity of the interpretation. (Buffalo Hunt by self-described “Artist by night”, deskridge. See more on the Artist’s website here. Click to enlarge.)

“Best day ever!”

An all too common utterance from the mouths of the same subset of the Great Unwashed who seasonally prattle on about their “Resolution” for a new year, and the check boxes (most of them fated to remain unchecked) on their “bucket list”.

Spoken as though the speaker is dead but refuses to acknowledge it. Like there’s only one such day to a customer and they’ll never have another. As though they’re the same person frozen in stasis from the moment they became a vampire a week before puberty kicked in so their sense of what a “best day” even is will remain forever stunted.

As offspring of Adventurers, the LFM Sons are steeped continuously in an atmosphere of teachable moments hung on a framework of mental and physical challenge. Their understanding of people, heritage, Tools, the meaning of being the Animal called Human. Food, its flavours and contexts, meaning and origins, stand in extreme contrast to that of not only their contemporaries but a large component of the “adult” population within their sphere. As vital contrast, all this is backlit by Tradition and Ancestral History.

It is not unusual to hear some variant of the utterance, “Best day ever!” coming from one of them on the trail, at the serving of a meal, or a combination of the two seasoned with some wider experience. Occasionally the question is asked of me or their Incomparable Mother — “What was YOUR best day ever?” — uttered from an understanding drawn of their own lived experience that life is dynamic, and so a “Best day” of a month ago may have since been supplanted in the new reality of the one being asked.

For my part, and in answer to that question, I certainly  have had, and fully expect to have, many Best days, however none of them will be Best ever, nor even Best so far. That would imply I indulge in some kind of sorting or grading system and that, my fine Boys, runs a bit too close to examining the dentition of an equine endowment for my liking. The final ruling on my own Best days will come when I stop having days altogether, but I will posit that at that point, I will have had the Best of everything Real and True in this world.

To that I would add that a Life well Lived is not about seeking and experiencing a single “Best” day, but rather “Best” days that are part of a larger framework of Worthiness. Worthiness for the Day, and for the very Best of travelling companions.

Secret Ingredients

By LFM

Seek for those things that need to be sought,
Catch onto those things that need to be caught.
Teach thou those things that must needs be taught,
Then repeat all again lest life matter for nought.

Source here.

Back on Day 3 we had a word from Maestro Adam Crown that, if you haven’t yet heard, you should go and lend an ear to now. We’ll be hearing from him again tonight as we look at a question that is both Naturally simple, and made more vulnerable thereby to being convoluted by certain elements in society to benefit the dark side. The road to Hell and all that.

He achieves no benefit to himself or the greater good who willfully undertakes to render himself harmless. He may be made that way no matter what, but to intentionally follow that path is not, in itself to assume a mantle of goodness and moral virtue. Rather, that one who is willing and able to bring force to bear in the face of imminent harm or death, has studied the realities of such encounters to the point where his skills aren’t limited to those of the fight, and willfully looks first to every other reasonable option beginning simply with his way of being in the world — that one, I posit, may lay claim to the epithet of “good” vessels of moral virtue because they are decidedly not harmless. Although only those bent on committing outrages upon him and that which he holds dear, will ever meet that side of him, their number tends to include a subset of the aforementioned “harmless” who find disquiet in in its mere existence.
(more…)