I remember now

The last time I deleted and started another blog by importing posts from the old blog, on WordPress, the graphics and pictures do not transfer. Like the famous, Paul is a Hermit II blog and the not so famous, Paul is a Semi Hermit blog. Good times.

I best leave things as they are.

That sounds suspiciously like back-peddling, huh? I believe you all know me better than that.

UPDATE: When you do your links, delete mine. You were brave and kind. Thank you.

Due to circumstances

this blog will cease. It’s everything I can do to keep from deleting it at this moment.

I said I would not. I have archived it though,  by the end of tomorrow, this blog will disappear.

For those long suffering souls, thank you. I’m sorry, I’ve enjoyed a good run and you.

Hurricane Bertha

Who knows anyone that has named their baby, in say, the last ten years, Bertha? There is nothing wrong with the name and many names are, after all, cyclical. What does it take for the NWS to update their lists? Although, maybe it’s just being a hermit puts me out of touch with one more thing in society. There may well be a lot of five year old Berthas running around.

I suppose Google would know. They know all, or intend to; it wouldn’t surprise me to see a new religion, or at least a cult develop, with a thing for Google. They won’t have me until they change that name. Yes, finally, a word I don’t like which doesn’t begin with a ‘B’.

Someone brought to my attention relating to an earlier post, that instead of looking to dispatch a spider on my wall to it’s happy hunting ground, I should, at least, think about capturing it and releasing it to the wild, which is anywhere outside my door. Maybe, but whose to say it wouldn’t, in an angry state, weave one of those invisible webs you walk into, now and then, outside which gets all over your face? Then you walk around for the next 30 minutes thinking the spider may be somewhere on you. But where? Cave dwellers are prone to these.

I do have a heart

I’ve discovered something. Like a tin man who has just returned from Oz.

You all don’t like talking, seeing, thinking about, anything to do with spiders. At least, not how I write about them. Or, much worse, the way I write. Oh, let me sit down, I think it’s the big one, ‘Lisabeth, I’m coming to join you, honey.

Either way, to accommodate, I’m bumping the offending post down one and I’m keeping this offending post short.  Why don’t I just write another post? I’ve discovered to blog, one needs a passion, knowledge, ability, to blog long, steadily and dare I say, captivating. Really, who wants to have the neighbor over for coffee if all they’re going to talk about is spiders and their past? 

Rita Rudner: “When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.”

Arachnid suspicion

They say spiders are beneficial to us, in general. They do eat insects and you have to like that.

What I don’t like is seeing one in my bedroom. Especially the ones who are walking on a wall and the second you move, they stop. You have to think they’re watching you, watching them. Kind of like a mutual what is it - cause I assume we’re an it to it too, - going to do now? Unfortunately, for the eight legged intruder, I’m probably looking for something to do it in with.

Spiders and other creepy, crawly things have their place and it is always where I can’t see them. Neither do those little caterpillar-type insects with the long hairs belong in here, ever. What could they be doing in here? They have woods and forests and brush and wood piles, all the places I am not. They even have the neighbor’s house. Yeah, I know that’s not nice.

The most important concern is what do they do after the lights are out? Even worse, when I’m sleeping? Just how close do they come and of what interest is the space around me to them? I don’t have bugs. Although it may be interesting, I really don’t want to wake up some morning tied down like Gulliver with an arachnid on my nose. Looking at me. What do you want said the spider to I, and my bedroom serving as it’s parlor.

I like that word, parlor, it connotes friends gathering, playing parlor games, quiet conversation, all the while, being watched, by who knows what. Parlor doesn’t begin with a ‘b’, for one thing. Now, let me be clear, I like a lot of ‘b’ words. I think it is only words with a ‘b’ followed by a ‘u’ that vex me, or maybe an ‘a’ too, the sound they make together. The rest of the alphabet, any other vowel, or say, an ‘r’, following a ‘b’ is good. I think.

UPDATE: See category below; Kidding. The cave rarely has such creatures.

I will give you the moon

I’d like to see someone try.

What is the attraction of the moon for those infatuated, or serious about another? Or, is that even true anymore? Do young lovers even look at it? There have been a lot of songs written about it in love’s sense; I’m not sure about that lately though, I haven’t kept up. Anyone know?

It is a dusty rock reflecting sunlight brilliantly, fully, partially, or not at all. It being gray, that’s kind of cool it reflects light. Coming around in night or day as on a bus schedule, or bills. Maybe it is the size, the only thing easily identifiable ‘up there’ at night. I’ve got the Big Dipper down, not too sure of it’s little counter part. I think there are a couple of them, if you go by me.

Maybe it’s just because it’s there when certain feelings manifest, maybe it’s because when you look at it, it reminds of pleasant, happy times; just like certain places here do. A marker in life, a place to come back to. I know the even more generous will give the stars too, if the moon won’t do..

Kind of strange. I love the practices we humans do, perhaps not all of them, the good ones, those not harmful to another, those we try not to do, anyway.

Just got an email, everybody in the district did, saying my state rep. would be making an important announcement tomorrow, downtown. Yeah, like I’m going there. Why not just say what it is in the email? Maybe we’re being redistricted. Maybe Godzilla has awakened!  Sigh…

Love conquers all, part two

You’d like to think it does.

The rest is anticlimactic. I worried a lot, because not everyone liked Americans. She did not care, her family did not and I was welcomed into their home. Think of it, a foreign army in this country and you, brought one of them into your home. Some people would not like it, or you.

So, we sat, she and I, in the dimly lit room and I told her, though she knew already, how I felt and proposed to this girl. She spoke so quietly, we both did, talking about the difficulties lying in the path of acceptance and traveling half way around the world to an unknown, so far from her home. She had the maturity, I’m not sure I ever have, but she may have had her heart broken, by it all, she was fragile that way.

I had no idea what I would do to bring her here, back then, it was openly discouraged by the Army. In fact, they would actively try to make it impossible. I knew I would try.

She said she could not and I, the same then as now, did my best to change that and could not. We spoke a long time till I had to leave. To this day, I cannot remember what became of that ring. It all seemed to matter not at all, I just knew, when it came to mind, it was gone.  I rode back to the seminary, in whatever they were called, late, in the quiet, over a mile, a faceless man behind me peddling away, not caring what might happen. The next day, I had to get back to my base, over 45-50 miles away and was told nothing was going to Saigon, itself 30-35 miles away. I had to get back or be in serious trouble. So in a land of some enemy, I went through the ARVN camp, flagged down another bus full of Vietnamese and cast fate to…, who or whatever. Then, it was still God. I got back.

I sat all the way by a teenage boy, younger than my nineteen years and he did his best to engage me in the English he knew and I returned in the best Vietnamese I knew. I wished he would leave me alone, to my thoughts. My mind begged him to be quiet, but I believed in why we were there and said nothing to quell the irritation.

For less than a year after returning home, she and I corresponded. She sent me gifts on my 20th birthday; she was like that. I still have some letters, I had a picture which I’m sure someone discarded, on purpose. She spoke of nothing then but coming to America someday. She wrote she had passed her exams and hoped to attend the university in Saigon. She felt inferior because of the problems her country was going through and she said “she was afraid that my people, especially my family, wouldn’t like her, an ugly girl.” I should scan these few letters, maybe even share one, they are old now. It would be nice, for me, if some of you could see how she spoke and wrote our language.

We never had physical contact, not a handshake, never kissed, not once, and I was always referred to as, my dearest Paul, by her.  I had never gone on a date with any nationality, nor thought I would ever care to, I would have been happy, looking back, never to have done so.

There were years of war to go, it was still a time of cautious optimism, the first big waves of Americans were just arriving, What was to happen, long after, when troops were withdrawn…

This is not a story about, the war, which was simply a backdrop for the story, the means in which the story formed. I do not participate in, and have little patience for groups of veterans sitting around trying to one-up each other with tales of, oh yeah? Well, listen to this. Except among those very few you were with, it is meaningless. To me. But I understand.

 It was my fault the writing stopped less than a year after leaving.

Love should have prevailed, in these times, it would have, or stood a much better chance, just as effort and trust should now have stood. Even so, the hermit is of poor character, then and now.  He belongs in a cave.

Love conquers all, not always.

People can do really dumb things when love rules the heart.

When I was a young man, overseas in the service, I had been in an advisory group in a town called Mytho. While there, I met a young lady, during an exchange of music brought about by some U.S. aid worker. It was really, simply a cultural thing; this is an American soldier, these are Vietnamese people. Only two of us went. They played music for us and talked, we talked, borrowed their guitar and sang Tommy Roe’s, Sheila, for them. At least they didn’t laugh cruelly.

 I and this girl, Tuoi, became friends and I visited her house, always under the supervision of her parents in the next room. Were we allowed to do this? Not really, but since we were allowed to go to town in a jeep with at least one other guy most of the time, it was almost the same. We talked about a lot of things. A few times, a friend or two of her’s came. There’s a lot of stuff I’m leaving out.

When the unit I had been with in the U.S. was sent over, I transferred to be with them, Northwest of Saigon, to the Cambodian border, and near the end of my tour, I asked for and got a three day pass to return to Mytho. I caught a truck going to Saigon and while there, bought a few things, including an engagement ring.  Then I got another truck to an old seminary in Mytho where the U.S. detachment was based. Right next to them were a group of ARVN soldiers, with poorer housing, their families with them.

No one bothered me, I met and drank with old friends I had left, one night. Tuoi and I exchanged letters often and I was to go to her house the next evening. To avoid complications with officers, I snuck out through the ARVN compound, they knew me and we liked each other, I had to stop and talk, given my life-long penchant for being early, it didn’t matter. I caught a bus into town outside their camp,  These were not your normal buses, people, chickens, animals, produce, even bicylces put on top and often people too. Yes, I had a folding stock M1 carbine that I, found somewhere, that was it and had to bargain with a group of rickshaw drivers, they didn’t pull them, they bicycled them,  in Mytho, to take me to her house. Three wheeled contraptions, you sat in front on a seat wide enough for a couple of people.  He sat behind you, not a good thing necessarily. Was any of this allowed? No. Love makes you do foolish things. I was comfortable enough among these people though. I liked them.

I arrived while it was still light and was greeted by this, most beautiful girl in white, dark eyes, long, raven hair, a demeanor quiet, shy but confident and gentle. Going inside I saw on a large round table, a huge feast, more Vietnamese food spread all over the place then I could ever imagine. I was honored and I knew it. We sat down, it was all for us, me really, her family never came in, but could hear, there was no door, just a cloth covering. These people could not easily have afforded what was before me.

Better do this in two parts, getting long. When I do, you’ll realize, gee, the Hermit has been weird all his life, not just now. It’s okay, maybe not that I am, but that you know. In my foolishness, I ate little and perhaps disappointed them, I had not come to eat.

Where, did I put those apple seeds?

I knew it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080627/ts_afp/usspacemars

Speaking of Martian soil:   “There is nothing about the soil that would preclude life. In fact it seems very friendly,” said Samuel Kounaves, the project’s lead chemist at the University of Arizona in a telephone press conference.

“The soil you have there is the type of soil you have in your backyard,” said Kounaves. “You may be able to grow asparagus very well.”

But I don’t like asparagus. Least I don’t think so, because it looks funny, to me. It’s an “A” word but even so, apple trees would produce more oxygen and if we could figure out how to keep it from blowing away in the solar winds or freezing or whatever it would do, (I hope a real scientist never comes here) then we could start recreating earth’s atmosphere for me and isn’t that worth billions?

 

Twitter

I’m just not a Twitter person. I signed up for it, like so many other things, just to see.

To see what it was, because I am, a curious person. Here’s the problem. I keep wanting to talk to people, comment on their comment and while you can do that, it’s not often done. Twitter seems to be a place to leave a comment on where you might be, in your day, in your mind.

It’s probably rude, but I don’t know, to address something said, to converse, to acknowledge, or, in my case, to tease, since that is what I do. Simply waving, how do, is a faux pas. (what’s that mean!) Maybe it isn’t. I like installing things, I don’t like reading Terms of Service, or protocol. I like manners, respect and think that should carry a person every where but maybe not on Twitter, because I keep wanting not to be. It’s like there are a bunch of hermits, not to life, to each other.

It’s strange to see one you like but can’t talk to, just like, yeah, you can come in, but just sit there and be quiet. Or, you can talk, just so it isn’t to me, or anyone else either. What’s popular about that?  Maybe I should read it’s purpose? Oh, bother.