Large Fierce Mammal

First published on October 13, 2019

“Man is the ultimate apex predator by design, and our footprint upon the world bears this out without question. Yet the Human brain, with all of its baggage, regards the world no differently now than it did when riding astride the skull of our cave dwelling, fire building, flint knapping ancestors.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 10 — Day 12: Predator and Prey

You’ll remember those words from last night’s Dark Sentiment. Tonight we will be staying the course. First, a story.

It was the Summer of 1972. The place was Montreal in La Belle Province. I was 15, there visiting my Maternal Grandmother who was walking with me.

We were on a busy sidewalk bordering Ste-Catherine Street when I saw her, and the first thing that grabbed me was the way she walked. I had seen pretty women before that day, but she was something else entirely.

I remember how her long dark hair moved in the warm breeze that gently pressed that black dress against her body with just the right amount of intention. The cut was demure, the effect everything but. I remember that just to look at her was to experience an exquisitely physical pain that couldn’t be pulled away from.

The closer she got the less anything else existed, and for the first time in my young life, I knew what a beautiful Woman looked like. Moved like. Smelled like, for as she passed by me on my left I caught the slightest tantalizing hint of her scent. As though attached by a string tied to the most primal part of my brain, my focus remained where it was and followed her, thankfully still sufficiently under conscious control to prevent my head from turning to crane awkwardly over my shoulder. Still, in mere seconds I found myself looking the way she had gone to find her looking back at me with a slight smile.

The angels sang.

Je me souviens.

Je me souviens.

My ever observant and astute Grandmother brought me back to what remained of the world with a softly spoken observation — “I think she liked you.”

The next time I met a Woman who affected me that way, I married her and made babies with her.

With this story in mind, go thou now to any busy street or publicly accessible space wherever you can find one, select a vantage point from which you can watch the throng without looking like a stalker (the most important part of being one I might add), and observe what goes on. Be patient, and enter into the enterprise absent any time constraints. It will take as long as it takes.

You will come to realize that almost everyone in sight is somewhere else, riding in a vehicle running on expectations to a destination the passenger — certainly not the driver for there isn’t one — has already arrived at. Ignored by each is any hint of realization that the concept of the “self-driving” car is less technological achievement than metaphor.

That you, Goode Reader, have kept your head in the game long enough to successfully complete this exercise brings joy to my black heart, for in so doing you have joined the blessed ranks of those who understand how Splendour is missed in the world, reserved only for those deemed by the Universe as worthy of its revelation. Those who know unseen to be something quite different from absent.

Weep not for the willfully blind. They will leave more for our kind.

Until tomorrow.

First published on October 4, 2018

Depiction of the fifth circle of Hell, by Stradanus (1523 – 2 November 1605) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradanus

Anxiety, like feeling stressed, depression, anger, boyhood, and a plethora of other ordinary human conditions and responses to the tides of Life, has been deemed in this age of ours “not wanted on voyage” and thus consigned to the lists of treatable pathologies. In the old days, by which term I have come to refer to most of my life up to now, we reserved such a branding for cases in which the condition has come to preclude the victim from any meaningful participation in the society that surrounds him or her. An impairment of engagement in what, at any given time, might be referred to as “normal” life, but now rejected wholesale as being too normalnormative. In such cases, hope only lay in seeking the counsel of clergy, later professional psychologists, and of course, there has always been suicide.

Decant your favourite mood enhancer, Good Reader, and relax while tonight’s Dark Sentiment examines the matter.

Anxiety

By LFM

Anxiety’s a nasty thing
Of thorny claws and poisoned sting.
It feeds on joy and shits despair,
Is hard to kill and far from rare.

It crawls inside its victim’s head,
And fills the place with turds of dread.
It pisses on each happy spark,
Then giggles in the hopeless dark.

But though the thing is hard to kill,
There is this little poisoned pill
That some have found to be a cure,
But only if the drug is pure.

The drug is Truth, and truth be told,
This bitter pill, quaffed down with Bold’s
The one known cure to end the reign
Of cloying doubt and self-disdain.

I will admit it’s hard to find,
This bitter Truth I’ve here defined,
So let me offer this wee guide
To clear the path to joy denied.

To sweep away the clouds of doom,
For that you’ll need a bigger broom,
A shovel too, that’s stout and wide,
To clear the shit against the tide.

When all your joie de vivre has fled,
So dooms and failures fill your head,
And on bad outcomes you would dwell,
You swim the fifth-most arc of Hell.

Hell’s not exclusive to the dead,
It’s but a choice you make instead
While you still eat and draw a breath,
So every day’s a living death.

Both good and bad will come along,
And either one is worth a song.
Their balance though, that’s up to you —
Your choices made, and things you do.

You only know the things you know
And more, the further on you go,
Fear not to act, don’t hold your breath!
In stillness you’ll find nought but death.

So live, and learn, and be fulfilled,
Up to the day your heart is stilled.
Don’t let your joy of life depend
On vague despairs it all will end.

Of course it will, but while it lasts,
Why let small sours spoil repasts?
Or dim the flavours of your joys
To feed a thing life’s joy destroys?

For in a life of any length
Some days will be a test of strength.
Know you may win or you may fail,
And even winning, not prevail.

But dazed and bloodied, don’t forget,
To show the foe you’re not dead yet.
Seize the day with all its toils,
Don’t doubt you’re worthy of the spoils.

Anxiety’s a nasty thing
Of thorny claws and poisoned sting.
It wants to make your head its lair —
Go hunt it down and kill it there.

First published on October 9, 2017

Lessons

By LFM

To raise a child is one of Nature’s fundamental things,
For offspring must be taught to thrive amid the hurts and stings.
The world abounds with things that rend the heart, that bruise, and pierce,
And bitter Truths, like he may lose, however True and Fierce.

Some curses will be comely while some blessings be disguised.
Some enemies you’ll have to make, some need be recognized.
The smoothest, brightest path’s not always where your feet should walk.
The sharpest blade has met the stone ere cuts the thorny stalk.

The wise are called to Learn and Teach, and do in equal measure.
Seek thee not those ones who’d teach, but solely for their pleasure.
And through your life you’ll find a mentor’s tied to time and place,
As when you’d learn to shoot a gun, or tie a proper lace.

There’s time to sit in quiet, and there’s time to stand and fight.
There’s time to be the darkness, and a time to be the light.
The greatest skills are learned when “simple” things elude your ken,
And down is but the trail head on the path to up again.

First published on October 19, 2016

Hotrod Bristle was inspired by the song Hotrod Lincoln, recently brought to mind by something revealed to me by the Esteemed Jay Heathman, which makes it partially his fault. The remaining share of the inspiration lies with the Woman I’m wed to, and the picture above that’s making the rounds right now, about which she said that if she had a broom, that’s the kind she’d want. So far as I know, the image was plundered by thousands from Pinterest without credit. My compliments to its creator, and I will be most pleased to give credit where credit is due if that person ever comes to be identified.

Before you go any further, you may want to prepare your mind by toe tapping your way through this …

Also, for those uneducated in old school broom construction, brooms are traditionally made from “broom corn”, often simply referred to as “bristle”, and from which “bristle brooms” are created. That should be all you need to know to come to grips with the title of today’s feature presentation.

Hotrod Bristle

By LFM

I was drivin’ one night down the open road
When the roadhouse beer just had to unload,
I pulled to the side and shoved ‘er in park,
In the dust of the shoulder I was makin’ my mark.

I was moanin’ relief to the stars in the sky
When a flash to the east done caught my eye,
The crickets got quiet, not makin’ a sound,
And my boots felt a rumblin’ from deep in the ground.

Then from up the road came a thunderin’ blast,
From a tiny dot that was growin’ fast,
No place to stand just holdin’ your dick,
I put it away and I zippered it quick.

Like time slowed down, I could see it all,
A black haired woman on a fire ball,
Like the bastard child of a broom and a Harley,
Pipes red hot and soundin’ gnarley.

Right up through the hog ran the haft o’ the broom
Just squirmin’ and throbbin’ like the pecker o’ doom,
Lookin’ one part wood, and three parts gristle,
Bleedin’ letters of fire sayin’, “Hotrod Bristle”.

What she put in the tank fer to make it go
Is somethin’ I don’t think I ever will know,
But outa her tailpipes, like glowing coals
Blew things that looked like burned out souls.

Then all at once, right before my eyes,
With cleavage to die for and gleamin’ thighs,
In skin tight leathers, all shiny and black,
My jeans got tight and my jaw got slack.

She smiled at me and she winked her eye,
Then knocked me flat as she blasted by.
When she rang my bells with her screamin’ missile —
I fell in love with that witch on the Hotrod Bristle.

I never saw her again, but I’ve tried and tried,
I’ve pissed by that road side, and sat there and cried.
Tried to call her back, but I don’t know how —
The Hotrod Bristle’s long gone now.