Home
Sheepish Cat
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2200
The cat's running across the lawn, mouth bristling with feathers, she's caught a newly fledged robin and I bend down to take it from her, check it to see if it's all right, still alive, the cat looks sheepish as if to try and tell me she found it hurt and was bringing it to me, she looks indifferent to it, the parents have followed along and are squawking from nearby trees.
It appears to be all right and I settle it in my palms, smooth the feathers, it's unable to fly, the cat disinterestedly, innocently watches from the front step.
Now what?
I take the shrine to the beloved Fatima bird feeder and prop it head height in a nearby tree. I settle the fledgling in it, here he (she) should be safe, hopefully the parents can handle the rest. The cat, she's staying in the rest of the day.
By the next morning the robin was gone.
A rational man dogged by small superstitions
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1985
I'm a rational man dogged by small superstitions.
If I spill the salt I make sure to quickly throw a pinch over my left shoulder. I pick up pennies, there's the rhyme: "See a penny, pick it up, and then all day you'll have good luck" and I know it at least dates from the day when you could buy a beer with a penny, now there's nothing you can buy for a penny, still I pick them up.
I stare at funerals. If I'm off garage saling or to thrift shops I consider it a good omen if the bus is there, or shortly there, the time the bus takes to arrive is directly proportional to the success I'll have at the thrift shop/garage sale/ what have you. Reason only consoles me when the bus is late.
And there's a spell I have, the only one really, to bring the bus I light a cigarette.
Blender Helicopter
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1737
It must have been in Edmonton, I'm not sure why, it was familiar, definitely not Calgary, dream landscapes populated with forest and thrift shops.
I've taken the boy (a younger the boy) to the neighborhood thrift shop, it's not so far away, we're searching through the jewelry for religious kitsch, rosaries and such. And there's nothing there. I have something with me, I can't remember what it is, an invention of some sort...
There's nothing, but there's another thrift shop downtown, not far, and so we set out on foot. It's cool, evening, clouds in the sky, we're cutting through some sort of thick forest ? (Which is why I thought Edmonton, like Edmonton's river valley?) - there's a parking lot and a girl, she's blond, pinched face, she's nice but she doesn't get it, my invention, and as we continue on to the thrift shop she's heard thinking "I really feel like some potatoes..."
On the other side of the forest parking lot there's a road and we cross the road, more trees, and we see him coming through the sky. It's magical, really, the only way to describe it, there's this man wearing round glass & leather "Steampunk" goggles and he's standing on a blender, he's jury rigged a handle from a scooter or pogo stick onto it and he's using it to fly through the sky...
Needless to say our trip to the thrift shop is abandoned, for the moment, and the steampunk guy with the blender, he's cool, we hit it off well, he looks a bit like Dick Van Dyke, (who else?), he gives me the blender to take the boy on, only I have to get some more grape juice as it's done blending and won't fly until it's been refilled, and so I pop into a convenience store, the old-school ma-and-pop type, and sort through the freezer (it's all frozen orange juice!!) until I find some grape juice and ice and I go and refill the blender and the boy stands on my feet and we fly home to drink grape slurpees on the magical blender helicopter.
***
And there's some news flash, article, it says "Outa" but I can't read too well in dreams and when my eyes focus it says "Utah" and it's about how they've discovered the biggest dinosaur in the world, and they have a computer model of it done by some U of C scientists and beside it they've animated a model of Shrek going along and bashing it's bones with a club to give it scale...
I want my life to be like this..
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1756
Page 778 of 876