Grapefruit/ Dis-corded

~For crying out loud.
0- Now what?
~ We are victims of technology not beneficiaries!
0- er, you want to put that into plainer English?
~ My Blackberry's battery is dead.
0- Oh. Yes, that's much clearer.
~ You know what I'm talking about.
0- I know the black thing isn't working. You want me to figure out why?
~ No. I can figure out why. I want you to think about the larger picture.
0- The wha?
~ I should wait until you've shaken off your night of sleep.
0- Actually, I'm at my best right now, I'm just messing with you. ☺
~ Well, this is serious. All of us in this modern world would be helpless without all of our gizmos.
0- I'm aware of that. It's why I constantly send out warnings to you about being so connected.
~ Connected. More like hogtied.
0- Voluntarily, I might point out.
~ I don't think this is helpful. I want you to think about what would be a better time to be human.
0- Really. Reallllly? You don't mean that.  You mean how can you live your life better and less connected?
~ Yeah. Yeah. I've got to go figure out if it's the cord or the USB port or both or is this the device and if it ..
0- take a deep breath. and hold it.
~ I can't... an hour's gone by.
0- shh. take a deep breath...
~ I'll give you fifteen minutes.
0- ☺☺☺♥

Grapefruit 3-26

0- I forget. Am I the mind or are you?
~  um. How can you forget?
0- Um is not an answer.
~  Boy.  Can I ask why we are up so early?
0- This isn't early. If you were working, this would be late. It's almost six.
~  Just because you can't find your way back into sleeping is no reason... .
0- Oh, I just remembered. I'm not the reasonable one. I'm the mind.
~  What are you talking about? The mind is where all the reasoning is done.
0- Just a myth, my friend. You, the conscious one, are the only one of us who knows what is.
~ But, I thought.
0-  That's right. You do the thinking, I'm in here with all of your emotional baggage and garbage.
~ Don't do that.
0- What?
~ Use interesting words. Like now I want to know what the suffix -age is all about and if there are any other words using it.
0- You mean like roughage and entourage?
~  Are they related?
0- Only that they are probably French in origin.
~  I like you.
0- I like you.
~ So, do you want to know what are my thoughts about today?
0- Sure. Hey. Is it raining like they said it would?

Grapefruit 3 24

ALL days are glories,
some days it's just easier to see.








(Grapefruit Diaries are conversations I have with myself while cutting up the morning fruit.)

ALL days are glories, some days it's just easier to see.
~ That's nice. Who wrote that?
I did.
~ What? Just now on the stairs?
Yeah.
~Really?
Weren't you listening?
~Yes....but I thought you were remembering a line from something.
I don't think so. Let me try to remember and you do a Google Search for it.
~Okay.
(pause for search and thought)
~ I got nothing in Google.
I'm pretty sure I just thought it up. I do that you know.
~Still sounds like the opening line of a song.
Maybe it will be, but for right now, it's just the opening line for today.

==
More at http://transitionalspecies.blogspot.com/ 

Grapefruit Diaries 3/22

-- Gotta go.
+ You're all raring today as they say.
-- Yep, let's go.
+ Don't want to talk this out.
-- Waste of time today. It's all clear.
+What is?
-- I'm telling you, just let's go. I've got the list in my head.
+ Oh,  a list.
-- I'm gone already. Try to keep up today.
+ Yeah. We'll talk tomorrow about today.

Grapefruit Diaries 20 March

- Red biscuits.
+What do you mean 'red biscuits'?
- I, your brain, just thinks of these things.
+ Red Biscuits. Huh.
-Yeah, while you were putting the eggs in the pan, I thought 'red biscuits'.
+ There's no such thing.
- There is in your mind.
+ Well, you might be trying to remember some Southern stuff because we are out of bread.
- Sorry about that. I really wanted that extra toast yesterday afternoon.
+ So, this morning, no bread, so I decided to make some eggs and rice, kind of Louisiana style.
- They make red biscuits?
+ Not that I know of. I put some red pepper flakes in the rice, maybe that's the trigger.
- It was pretty clear.
+ Yeah, most delusions are.
- Is there more coffee?
+ Red Eyed Gravy. You were trying to remember Red-Eyed Gravy.
- I don't even know what that is.
+ You don't know what red biscuits are either.
- It's Spring today. At 12:35.
+ I know. We are going to the park to eat lunch and read and take pictures.
- You think so?
+ Well, that's the plan.
- Yeah, yesterday morning you planned to have some bread left over for this morning.
+  Have some more coffee.

Grapefruit Diaries 3 Did I miss the Ides?

As I reached for the grapefruit this morning I remembered that I had forgotten to remember something. I had meant to look up what exactly is an Ide.

Note: I already know that "IDE" is not a word you can play in Scrabble, although it is a word found in some crossword puzzles, kind of like the word
ADE. Clue-4 Down-Summertime Treat.

Right.

But not a three letter actual word. Scrabble and Crosswords are part of my world, a bigger part these days than I would have imagined say, a year ago. I do a Crossword every day, some not so successfully, some I knock out over a cup of tea before it, the tea, gets cold. I play Scrabble on line and in person. This week will be the first Springtime meet-up of the Friday Night Orphans of Love Scrabble Association. Applications for membership are open. I have two friends who, as I do play for the love of the game, and tooth and nail to win. Challenges occur very often but I am always trying to slip a word or two through if I can. It's important to remember that QUA is valid, QUI, QUO, QUE are not.

I like to look up the meanings of the words even though it's not necessary to know the meanings in Scrabble, you can play XI or XU or QI, but I like to know that the middle one there is a Vietnamese coin. (Who said the words had to be in English?? The Scrabble people did....but they like to stretch English juuussssst a bit.)

There is no such thing as an IDE, an IDES however, is variously defined as a feast day of March and also May, July and several others months, usually on the 15th day but also on the 13th in some months which I will have to go look up now because, even though I read about this only minutes ago, the CD-ROM (not a word in Scrabble) didn't process all of the information.
.....
It all, of course, has to do with the Moon and Market days. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Months

...
So, I missed the Ides of March and we have shifted time so much that this year the 15th marks the New Moon of March, not the Full Moon which doesn't arrive until the 30th. Wine and Cheese on the roofdeck for sure.

Grapefruit Diary 2/ A Proper Census of My Household

If I filled out the Census Questionnaire properly, it would be a dozen pages long and take me most of the rest of the month to complete. It asks how many persons live at a particular place, the place where I am, but it never says whether to exclude any of those who only live here in my head.

 First, there is me, there is I, yes, Person Number One, yes, I am.

(My brain wants now to talk about how many households fall into conflict over which of those who live in a household is the Number One Person. Whew. I sent my brain back to bed.)

I, person Number One, do live here, but there are days, and the questionnaire asks about this, when it doesn't seem like Person Number One is here, that he is off traveling or floating or trying to find certain shapes in cloud formations.
In the morning, after waking and cutting up the grapefruit, I do find clues he was here - the ends of eaten shrimp, a half a' tomato left on a saucer, the keys near, but not on the hook. So, should I write in that Person Number One is not always here, but that I could not say where he goes?

Then there is Joe. You know, Joe Nation, there's another wreck of humanity for you. Oh yes,. You say, oh no, he's not a wreck, just a bit leaky when it comes to shortening the stories he tries to tell.  Right. Ain't there gonna be some discussion coming about over whether he ever calls anywhere home. He said that, not me. Of course, he is the main problem with this census thing because he is the one who keeps bringing people home and depositing them around the apartment like so many hats, lamps and books of ancient languages.

Some have names. That's good, because the sheet is supposed to be filled out with names.
CALVIN (Nasca) BARAMON - I don't know him, but he has dogs which are quite likable and three cats which do not shed. He plays guitar.
EDDIE GYMEP - A Russian, I think, maybe from the Ukraine. One of my coaches.
YALOR and CLIP'SE DAKOTEE - they are sisters or cousins or brothers. They laugh at meals and mumble comments during movies.

My uncles live here, did I mention them yet? Ah. Okay, just in order of either birthdate or how I remember meeting them.
Bud, the youngest but see below.
Frank, answers the phone
William, fills out the paperwork except for this census
Pat, known for his ability to mix up eggs.
Eddie (Don't get him mixed up with the coach.) much nicer, takes photos.
O'Sky -the family's last hippie guy
Cornelius  (Con)- can sing more Irish songs than anyone drunk or sober
Paul - makes the bed up every afternoon, likes to fold towels
Mick - Tries to keep quiet, but isn't allowed.
Edward (He hates Edward as a name but we already had two Eddies) Of course, as the actual youngest, his philosophy of life is that we are the stupidest folks on the face of the Earth and about three-quarters of Mars.
Bertie/Birdie/Birdue/Bir-debt, who sometimes thinks about smoking on the fire escape or getting a tattoo.

Tomorrow, if the grapefruit speaks of them, I'll list off all females around here. oogod. They are crammed in every corner, line half the shelves in both the closets and are constantly picking at my food. I am swept away by all of them.

The Grapefruit Diaries (1) 3/14/2010

Confession
I have been holding out on you. Every morning I have coffee, toast and a half a grapefruit for breakfast. I put the toast in, the coffee on and, while cutting up the grapefruit, I have a conversation with myself which I alway intend to pass along especially if it's at all interesting. I never do.
It's a shame, it's my shame and things are going to change (insert blues riff here) Maybe the weekend rain made things different in the mind.

I don't know about your mind, but in the early morning before anything about the day has really started to become real, my brain spiels out the oddest observations like:
-Did you see that? (It's speaking to me now.) You put the toast in and the coffee on.
- Yes, I say, I saw/see that, what of it?
- Well, it speaks of how we fit words together in particular ways, if you'd put the coffee up, you'd be putting it in a cabinet. If you use any other preposition other than 'on' the whole meaning of the sentence might be changed.
-Right. What else you got?
-Four hours is a long time to be stuck in traffic.
-God, yes. (The mind is referring to a friend who was coming to dinner last night and got caught in a traffic jam on the West Side of the George Washington Bridge. It took him fours hours to go the last three miles into the city ----and he still insisted on paying for dinner.)
-There won't be a sunrise this morning, even though it coming up an hour later.
-Have we moved on from waiting for four hours to cross the bridge?
-Oh...um, (Tries to think of something which never works.)
-Okay, never mind, I'll say it, You never know what is going to happen, so be ready.
-I was going to say that you got your kitchen counters really clean while waiting for him to arrive.
-Yes, that's true.
-And yesterday, when the Internet and the cable was out, you really got a lot of writing done. Or, at least, you got a lot of ideas down on paper instead of just thinking about them.
-Are you saying I should unplug a few things?
-I was thinking you had some interesting dreams last night about running in the breezy sunshine and that thing about the cheeseburgers and OH that mother and child and the anaconda.
-The toast is up. (hmmm----you put it IN but you take it OUT when it's UP.)

I going to sip this coffee now.


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