rescue mission

On a mission to rescue. Recuse from abuse. Rescue me. Fontella Bass. Fontanelles des belles. Rescue thee. Rescue we. Protect deliver free. Free delivery is never free. Litany of loss and mercy. Loss of loss equals gain of what. Return on investment. Rescue me. Rescue you them it. Who rescues whom. Who rescues what when where. Holy mother protector. Deliver us from evil, and good too. Father mother protector, cradle our limbs. Angel baby brother sister, set us free. Rescue mission: sleepers awake dawn upon us. Missionary position: prostrate in prayer. Rescue mission positions: swoop or swoon; sink or swim. Litany of dolor and dulcet notes. Rescue rescued dog and dyslexia. Salve of saving: lend a hand give a heart. Surrender to win. Susurrus wind. Swarming swamis swimming ashore. Rescuing rescued multitudes one and all. Who does what to whom how when where why. Any reason to rescue no excuses no questions asked. No answers lost. On divine letterhead humans inscribed.

lockdown

They've locked down the toilet paper. It sounds like a line straight out of "Desolation Row," right after "they're selling postcards of the hanging." Same cadence and mood. In this case, who are "they"? They are the owners, managers, or maintenance staff of the building housing a coffee shop I occasionally frequent. (Let me get away with the oxymoronicness of "occasionally frequent.") I happen to know one of the owners of the building; have known him for decades. He confirmed my suspicion that the lock placed on the toilet paper dispenser seeks to prevent the theft of toilet paper. He added that they (a different "they" than in the first sentence) were losing a significant amount of "bath" rolls every week from the various "bath"rooms with public access. Permit me to clarify. The lock does not prevent you from taking a sheet, two-ply or whatever-ply, from the roll. It's not like that. If you were so inclined, or obsessed, you could unspool a stream of sheets, hundreds. You can still steal sheetly. In that case, you could steal one roll of toilet paper, and it would then be your choice as to how to surreptitiously transport it out of the restroom. Presumably, re-creating the roll shape would be both awkward and too visible. Without a cardboard tube as a core, would it even be possible? No, you would probably want to neatly fold layers of the thin paper, forming a book, as it were, which could be slipped into one's pants, underwear, briefcase, knapsack, or backpack. The toilet paper dispenser lock we are talking about is a lock on the receptacle or holder that holds in the roll. Typically, a second roll drops down by gravity when the first roll is depleting. Most likely, the toilet paper thieves were taking one or both rolls. Clearly, they were toilet paper thieves, not borrowers. Borrowed toilet paper that is returned? Ewwww. Gross. 

In some cultures, this wouldn't make much of a difference. The toilet paper dispenser would not be locked because there would be no toilet paper. Restroom "customers" would employ other means of cleanup other than toilet paper, a topic I'm not willing to explore right now. 

At first glance, toilet paper theft might evoke a response along the lines of, "Are you kidding? Locks on toilet paper? They don't even do that at Penn Station! What's next? Locks on water fountains?" On further reflection, you might think: who are the toilet paper thieves? I suspect it's homeless people. But that might be a biased conclusion, however tentative. We can't rule out needy college students, large families, sufferers of diarrhea, the mentally ill, hoarders, or eccentrics. (These are not mutually exclusive subgroups.) Whoever, he, she, it, or they are, can you blame them? The bathroom is in an urban setting. Users punch in a code to use it. Despite efforts to limit use, it gets a lot of traffic from a downtown urban population. Since "drugs" are often mentioned as a cause of civic woe (they don't mean drugs; they mean illegal pharmaceutical substances; again, another different "they"), we can pose this question: how much does a roll of toilet go for on the street? Is it enough for one to get or maintain a high of any sort or a purchase of that other drug, alcohol, or a single loosie cigarette? I don't know. 

I am curious, but only mildly so, about the success or failure of this preventive gesture. Had someone been caught in The Act? Not the act of taking a shit; the act of making individual a bit of intended communal property. Wait! It's a unisex bathroom. Did you assume it was a male thief? Maybe not. Maybe female. Is there not arguably a greater female need for this product? Maybe not. 

As for preventive measures, could there have been a community forum to address this issue? (I almost wrote "tissue.") How about a pay-it-forward initiative? At one local coffee shop, customers can buy medallions for coffee or bagels. The medallions are placed on a wall, and people can cash them in if they can't afford it a coffee or bagel. Could something like this be done for toilet paper? (Why stop there? Consider how transformative this practice would be on a community scale for an array of social needs. Consider how radical this is.) 

What charge would the thief or thieves face if apprehended, red-handed, as it were? The penalty for conviction? I know: community service. 

Cleaning bathrooms. 

problems without passports

Space rocks of this size [460 feet or larger] are so-called 'problems without passports' because they are expected to affect whole regions if they collide with Earth.  18 March 2019 BBC News website

I wish someone had told me my problems needed passports -- at least some of them apparently do. I simply could have refused to apply for my problem passport and left the problem in outer space, or wherever passport-required problems are stored. Granted, even a problem with a properly issued passport can be kept at bay via visa restrictions. Everybody knows that. I don't dare ask how one applies for a problem passport, who issues it, which metaphysical countries require it, and what the expiration date is. Let me be frank: why would anyone want to apply for a problem passport? To what good, or cui bono as we were taught in our high school Latin classes. I suppose in accord with some sort of Freudian-Jungian psychology theory, one should face one's problems, not bury or "stuff" them. And this isn't just the advice touted in the realm of psychology or psychiatry. Many religious and spiritual belief systems teach that awareness leads to enlightenment. If so, can't we merely say, "Okay, I'm aware of Problem X. Got it. Next!" Oh, you say, we have to face and work through our problems? If you say so. But why go out of one's way? Don't we have enough nonpassportable problems without having to sign up for more? And one could safely assume that the passport problems are heftier, more intricate, and more ominous. Who needs that? Who's to say we don't have something big at work here, such as World Peace? If governments stopped issuing passports for problems, such unsettling matters would be confined. Consider how nations agree on travel quarantines to stem the spread of terrible sicknesses like the Ebola virus. Yes, the host country, so to speak, still has to manage the crisis, but it's contained. A moratorium on the issuance of problem passports might conceivably isolate the world's problems so that they can be "domesticated," if not solved or cured. Having said all that, I suggest that we aren't talking about problems on such a grand scale. I submit that problems requiring passports exist on a much more personal level. I can't verify this, but I imagine that passport problems, or more accurately problems with passports, are vexing, tense, dramatic, daunting, and life-changing. Nevertheless, they are phrased and formulated with stark simplicity: Why? Why not? Yes or no? When? Should I? Shouldn't I? Oops! I just realized I unintentionally tipped my hand. I accidentally allowed you a glimpse of my own problems without passports because I mistakenly equated simple and challenging questions with problems. Since when did a question become a problem? Hunh? But back to the beginning of this meandering maze of speculation: who issues these passports for problems? Since when? And just who do they think they are? What do they get out of it? (That's easy: control. That's what all passport issuers seek.) Back when I was in junior high (before they were called middle schools), we used to read "The Man Without a Country," a short story by Edward Everett Hale, published in 1863. (Go ahead, Google it. Or Duckduckgo it.) The protagonist renounces his country and is left to spend his days at sea, countryless, adrift and unwelcome everywhere. You can see where I'm going with this. Would it be so bad to be similarly cast at sea never permitted to enter a country with problems, navigating the world's waters without a passport for problems?

Bureau of Premonitions Annual Report

Premonition Incident Report: 3 February: Cynthia Applebottom dreams of a multi-vehicle crash involving several dozen fatalities.
Correlating Result: On 23 March fourteen grocery carts collide in the produce section at SuperMart, crushing 27 avocados.

Premonition Incident Report: 14 March: Anil Singh Kumar experiences severe abdominal cramping and has a vision of mass poisoning from listeria.
Correlating Result: 18 March: 8 members of a fraternity and 12 members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians report vomiting and severe headaches.

Premonition Incident Report: 1 April: Tomiko Andrea Ikea notes a feeling of frozen water flowing down her spine and the number 9 repeating in her head.
Correlating Result: On 2 April a group of nine white-water rafters were frostbitten on an expedition in southern Chile, near Antarctica. 

Premonition Incident Report: 23 June: Baxter Hummington III feels a constriction in his throat, faints, and awakes to the chirping and tweeting of sparrows.
Correlating Result: 25 June: 1.75 million Twitter followers of Donald J. Trump experience nausea, delirium, paranoia, and loss of consciousness while reading his tweets.  

Premonition Incident Report: 3 July: several hundred thousand respondents report bright flashes of multi-colored light accompanied by thunderous, concussive booms.
Correlating Result: 4 July: Thousands of cities, towns, and villages across America celebrate Independence Day. 

Premonition Incident Report: 15 November: Olivia Humboldten dreams of an invasion of flying ghouls and goblins seen by thousands of witnesses.
Correlating Result: 22 November: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

gesundheit

Achooooooo, my body roared onomatopoetically. I was driving. The notion that you can't keep your eyes open while sneezing haunted me. (I have since learned that some people can do it, keep their eyes open during this natural-reflex blast that can reach 200 mph. I'm not one of them.) I could tell I was in for one of my violent sneezing jags. An allergy thing. Comes out of nowhere, then stops when it wants to, no matter what I do: blow my nose, throw cold water on my face, change direction or position, or locale, pray, grovel, beg. I can sneeze 15 or 20 times like this. maybe more. It's exhausting. Does your heart really stop when you sneeze? Is that why people wish divine blessings upon the afflicted? Or the alternative safe and secular cry of "health!" in German? These days, even that is controversial, for god's or God's or gods' or goddess's or goddesses' sake. As if one became an atheist or agnostic apostate by exclaiming "God bless you!" Gawd. Achooooooo again. The lake on the right, where a year or two ago a woman driving slid or wandered off the roadway and went into the lake and drowned in water only several feet deep. I tried. I did. I tried to open my eyes. And, no, forget about the popular nonsense that your eyeballs can pop out if left open while sneezing. I had never heard of that silliness until I did some fake research for this fake article. Acheeeeeeeeeew! Here we go. Ahhhhhhhchaw! I can't pull over. There's the abutment, the wall, holding up the train tracks, the 10' 9" overpass, tragically hit so many times by inattentive truck or bus drivers. Open eyes come in handy in this stretch. Why these sneezes? Reach in back for the tissue box. Blow nose. Twice. While driving. Throw tissues on the floor. Gross. But I have to drive. Achooooo! When will this stop? Is it humanly possible for me to exert more effort, more concentrated focus and control, to keep my eyes open. I'd settle for keeping one eye open, to drive; the one eye of the drunk trying to drive but here I was stone-cold sober withstanding a sneeze attack, a sodden gale-force ambush. And what about ACHOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHA willpower? A try-harder, try-some-more, exert-more-will society expects the will to reign supreme; believes The Will (der Wille), Willpower (die Willenskraft), can prevent or conquer woeful habits, addictions, or like-minded disorders. Really? Try it for a sneeze, cough, or diarrhea. Try willpower for an incontinent bladder, projectile vomiting, or the slip of the tongue you really did not want to vocalize. Try willpower to abstain from the last potato chip in the bag, the first chocolate, the just-one-more binge episode tonight on Netflix. Willpower is overrated. Back to driving, navigating the lake parkway at dusk. Achoooooiiieeeeee! When will this end? Exit the parkway. Onto the boulevard. Ah. Breathing. Ah. Easier. A creeping invasion of calm. Home. Sneezeless.

rewilding

He said rewylding. With a Y. I said what. New to me. Looks Olde English. Drop the Y. Rewilding. Meaning what. Back to nature. The way it was. Not exactly pristine. Less of the human stain. More of the falling rain. Riverine innocence. No, not quite. Gentle footfalls footprint. Let it be. Let them be. Let us be. Native naked nature. Reforest. Rewater. Recharge. Restore. Resilient. Re future generations. Regarding the stillness. Sacred mysteries. Back to harmony. Before Adam. Before Eve. And ever afterward. Prologue. Epilogue. Dialogue. Stillborn monologue. Sense of place. Here and now. This not that. Suchness. Mirabile dictu. Mirabile visu. 

Unmoored

we rode a ferry

anchors aweigh

poses proffered

tossed aside

touched ashore

two of us

an island

so long ago and far away

moorings mourned

one door closes . . . again and again and again

Karl and I sat by the door. It was wintertime. Berlin. Several times in the past we had met at this same smoke-hazed Unter den Linden coffee shop to conduct business, interlaced with personal revelations, asides, and disclosures. What sort of business. Marketing concepts, content, mailers, brochures, slim jims, as Karl called them. But this time it was just us, discoursing discursively. No agenda. None I was aware of. True, there's always some sort of agenda, even if it is no more than get coffee, talk, drink, restroom, leave. Coffee and convo. BAM. The door slammed, sending tremors through the entranceway and derailing our verbal freight trains, barely on track in any event. How are the kids. One is in Fiji, righ-- SLAM. The door again. Maybe we should move over here. Too cramped. The back of my chair would butt against the table where Madame Defarge was knitting beside the guillotine. We needed space for some semblance of the cone of silence in case we were to drift into food porn, sedition, erudition, nihilism, co-dependency, or state secrets. Too cold to prop the door open. Don't they know this really bother-- BAM customers, at least these two customers. I mean this is bad marketing, don't you think. Curiously, some patrons would exit, we would brace ourselves and wince, and yet no crashing thud. Like some elaborate torture, we did not know when and if. How about one of those tables in back. Occupado. Do you have a sledgehammer on you. To the barista: Is there anything you can SLAM do about that door. We're aware. I know, but... Try to ignore it, just live with it. And what are your kids up to. How many grandchildren do you have. Say, do you have a question mark I can borrow. How old are-- BLAM. My brother Hans used to live what seemed like a yard from the S-Bahn train tracks on Warschauer Strasse (I wish I could make that elegant double S). The whole apartment would shimmy and rattle. It was just there. The tracks. The train ruthlessly on schedule. A trope. Background. Black noise. SLAM I thought we could do the drop here, the brush-off. Veteran spies shouldn't have to shout their secrets or write notes to each other back and forth. BAM Hand it off to me as you get cream for your coffee and as I'm returning with a croissant. Hide it in the croissant, you say. SLAM The jolt interrupts the pass-off, and I drop it on the floor, the napkin, the diagram, the schematic, the codes, stick figures, my venial sins. Out of nowhere, Mrs. (Madame to you) Defarge drops her needles and picks up une serviette d'espionage en papier. BLAM Now I get it. They knew. They knew all along. She knew, surely. The door closer, or door check, if you prefer, was removed on purpose. No one told us. No one told me. I can't answer for Karl. SLAM And Madame Defarge is out the door, the one unchecked. She's gone. Unchecked. No one stopped her. Karl, why did you ask me here. Tell me that. BLAM. Can you. SLAM.