The price of fog
Fog this morning until around nine. It’s different this far inland, denser, not thicker, there just isn’t any airiness. Swamp fog. There’s a song I always associate with inland swamp fog;
There were stars though when I was a kid, all of them, I could see from my side yard. It’s funny, I know the constellations from here, but there’s a yellowness to the air now, even with the auto industry packing up it’s bag, leaving overnight, no alimony or get well soon card. It’s more like a malaise, a virus, than pollution. One piece of the environment remains exactly the same; June bugs come out in August around here. I had one land on my windshield the other day. I haven’t seen many healthy June bugs up close, even fewer live ones. I pulled over and we stared at each other for a few minutes and then she flew away.
I’ve been hearing their screechy chalkboard song every day. I’m comforted by the notion that I can be sentimental and find beauty in something so … obnoxious, the most objective adjective I could find. Awful was the first second and third word to cross my mind. If I wanted to gaslight someone into thinking nature had gone mad, I’d train a June bug to sing every time dudes heartrate got under eighty. Heh, I like the idea of training a June bug, it’s silly enough to laugh at. And, dark too. They are the cousin of locusts. If I could train a June bug, the military application of training locusts isn’t far behind.
Every now and then a book or movie is made, where the good and kind and well-meaning inventor never thought that the military would be interested. In American movies it’s often a branch of the American armed services. Sort of like in baseball movies the little guy, underdog or cinderella story’s defining moment is playing the tigers. Seriously, the tigers. Why they got to be the bad guy? During the cold war the Russian military was always the bad guy.
About half way from here to Detroit is Dearborn village, a sort of museum for Edison and Ford. Edison has been getting shit for holding Tesla back. How do you give a dead guy shit? I don’t know, it seems the age of flicking shit. It wasn’t ever a secret the relationship between Edison and Tesla, but there didn’t used to enough people taking sides to make an argument out of it. It’s not like American history dropped Tesla. For the most part Ford and Edison were famous for streamlining inventions. Ford did not invent the automobile, he invented the assembly line. If you are in Dearborn village don’t forget to go to the gift shop and get some fudge or maple sugar Dutch boys, depending on the season.
I’ve been thinking about when I leave here again, I guess it’s making me sentimental. Though its still uncomfortable being inland and nothing but trees on the horizon. It feels like I’m trapped, in a physical way, the mental ways in which I’m trapped are by agreement, it’d be worse without them. June bugs are a crazy ass thing to enjoy. There seems to be a lot less skeeters this year. I think we had a snow fall as late as May, but the last real frost was April. I haven’t a clue what a skeeters life cycle is like. I know in three decades I was never bit by a skeeter in Oregon. Not in town, not deep in the woods, not by rivers or lakes. Some people said they had been, but you know some people are full of shit, most people lie now and again for no reason whatsoever, and some people don’t actually know what a mosquito is. None of those people are from Michigan or Alaska. Alaska for size, Michigan for quantity and a longer season.
My most recent feeling about global warming is that I hope I’m dead first. Who knows, come Thursday I might be told how long I have left in months. I’ve done a lot of health care bitching recently, even posted some of it here. I neglected, I think, to mention, my neuro-ophthalmologist had her secretary fire me and, at the same time, refer me to a regular neurologist in her office for a second opinion on my MRI;
“What does that mean?” I asked the secretary.
She repeated it slower and louder.
“What … why does she want a second opinion.”
“I don’t know.” Well of course she doesn’t, that’s why she called.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have a brain tumor. I don’t think the secretary knows I have a brain tumor, she didn’t seem to have enough guile to feign ignorance, of course, she doesn’t know that I don’t. The impression I got from the event alone was sort of that my neuro-ophthalmologist just didn’t want to put up with my shit any longer. Or, I have a brain tumor and she doesn’t know how to put up with my shit. When my internist, literally twenty yards down the hall, was tired of putting up with my shit she just cut all my meds and didn’t schedule a next appointment. It’s okay, I was busy that day that wasn’t scheduled. I was kind of hoping the neur-opath was going to do that back in March. I don’t know whether I’m being played or patronized the way they patronize the terminally brain tumored.
Texas Radio and the big beat. It’s like a band of June bugs with a rhythm section and slowed down. Have a day and be nice to each other.