Fixing stuff, myself included…
Heat Wave
Yes, here in Baltimore we are under the throes of summer dog days and it’s April! We had a slow moving thunder storm that came in the late afternoon yesterday. From the third floor window, I see brilliant sunlight on new spring green leaves forming a flat pattern against rumbling, three dimensional, charcoal skies. It’s a Photoshop sky, or is it an oil painting sky? Hmmm… I feel the creative urge forming. Perhaps I to am a slow moving thunder storm creating patterns to reflect back? What sort of havoc will I inflict on my sister the earth as my center passes over her. Is she thirsty? Shall I offer her my water, or shall I withhold it until she cries out?
I thought you were talking about the weather.
But, then I’d need to add an audio event to Photoshop. Rewrite the entire program, which I have yet to understand the underlying mechanics of. Furthermore, it would be impossible to explain my obsessions without going into so much detail as to render them incomprehensible.
Huh?
Okay, I’ll tell you what Mr. Potatoehead said when I asked for his take on the nature of potato mentality.
It was in late October of last year; all the gingko leaves had achieved the highest color of yellow available to them. Mr. Potatoehead had been confined to his bed for two weeks, due to a broken foot which wasn’t healing properly. Ms Potatoehead had long since passed away. I was among those of us, who had taken it upon ourselves to help him out with various tasks, during his recovery process. Well as luck would have it, when I arrived at my appointed hour of availability, (it still remains a mystery just who was in charge of the scheduling) he was in quite a pickle. Now the nature of this particular pickle is something that stories are made of. Up until this time I had always believed that life was a complicated affair, which none of us would ever figure out. Here’s the pickle part: in his rush to get dressed, and of course also due to his cumbersome cast he had gotten his foot with the cast wedged between the tub and the toilet.
Why was he getting dressed in the bathroom?
Over the course of his two week confinement, the bedroom had taken on a mind of it’s own, and refused to let Mr. Potatoehead do anything at all within it’s territory, except sleep upon it’s bed. All of the clothes had been thrown into the bathroom, along with his shoeshine box, an old mustache comb, a brush, two novels and his snorkeling equipment. You can imagine there was not much room left to maneuver in. While standing on one foot on top of the toilet, trying to get his sock on the good foot, he had unwittingly slip off. As I surveyed the chaos surrounding him he said, “if you won’t carry me over to the Village Pub, I’ll crawl over there.” Not a word about the unruly bedroom, or any explanation whatsoever of his strange new bathroom decor did he utter. He was hell bent on getting to happy hour, and suggested the removal of the toilet as a means of freeing his wayward foot.
Meanwhile, the bedroom was fuming over the untidy mess Mr. Potatoehead, and his caretakers had strewn about, before the bedroom had assumed authority over all it’s occupants. Shoes tried madly to dashed for cover under the bed, only to find that the space was already taken by a shivering frightened blue felt hat, an alligator belt, three computer programming manuals, and the telephone begging the last remaining, and totally shaken jar of moisturizer, who used to live on top of the dresser to call 911.
I managed to free Mr. Potatoehead’s foot by gently rocking the cast back and forth, and agreed to carry him over to the Village Pub. Down the stairs and out the front door we went. I set him on the front stoop, and as I was pulling the door closed I heard the bedroom issuing orders to all who were still within:
One, you will not try to escape.
Two, you will not give any allegiance to Mr. Potatoehead, or any of his friends.
Three, you will be allowed to remain where you are, only if you’re willing to attend vacation bible school.
It was at that moment that I turned, and asked Mr. Potatoehead, “just what exactly is the nature of potato mentality?” His reply gave me hope and made me realize that the world was quite comprehensible after all. He said, “potatoes by our very nature are quite friendly; we have so many eyes because there’s so much to see. We do not suffer from a mind body split as you do; thus our entire physical being is our mental landscape.
“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
–Rene Descartes Bedroom