The Weather in San Francisco by Richard Brautigan

It was a cloudy afternoon with an Italian butcher selling a pound of meat to a very old woman, but who knows what such an old woman could possibly use a pound of meat for?
She was too old for that much meat. Perhaps she used it for a bee hive and she had five hundred golden bees at home waiting for their meat, their bodies stuffed with honey.
"What kind of meat would you like today?" the butcher said. "We have some good hamburger. It's lean."
"I don't know," she said. "Hamburger is something else."
"Yeah, it's lean. I ground it myself. I put a lot of lean meat in it."
"Hamburger doesn't sound right," she said.
"Yeah," the butcher said. "It's a good day for hamburger. Look outside. It's cloudy. Some of those clouds have rain in them. I'd get the hamburger," he said.
"No," she said. "I don't want any hamburger, and I don't think it's going to rain. I think the sun is going to come out, and it will be a beautiful day, and I want a pound of liver."
The butcher was stunned. He did not like to sell liver to old ladies. There was something about it that made him very nervous. He didn't want to talk to her any more.
He reluctantly sliced a pound of liver off a huge red chunk and wrapped it up in white paper and put it into a brown bag. It was a very unpleasant experience for him.
He took her money, gave her the change, and went back to the poultry section to try and get a hold of his nerves.
By using her bones like the sails of a ship, the old woman passed outside into the street. She carried the liver as if it were a victory to the bottom of a very steep hill.
She climbed the hill and being very old, it was hard on her. She grew tired and had to stop and rest many times before she reached the top.
At the top of the hill was the old woman's house: a tall San Francisco house with bay windows that reflected a cloudy day.
She opened her purse which was like a small autumn field and near the fallen branches of an old apple tree, she found her key.
Then she opened the door. It was a dear and trusted friend. She nodded at the door and went into the house and walked down a long hall into a room that was filled with bees.
There were bees everywhere in the room. Bees on the chairs. Bees on the photograph of her dead parents. Bees on the curtains. Bees on the ancient radio that once listened to the 1930s. Bees on her comb and brush.
The bees came to her and gathered about her lovingly while she unwrapped the liver and placed it upon a cloudy silver platter that soon changed into a sunny day.

Reading...

From the comment section of Canada! How Does It Work?


"Canadians are less patriotic than Americans are, and sometimes I think that's a good thing and other times I think it leads to less investment in the political process of the country. By way of illustration, I read an article recently about a Canadian who purchased an old building somewhere in the states (Delaware? my memory is sketchy). Later, it was discovered that the building had been used as a barracks in the War of 1812. Local sentiment rejected foreign ownership of this building, and the Canadian was forced to sell it. Meanwhile, they recently discovered the remains of our Second Parliament under a gas station somewhere in Toronto, and the local consensus was to just leave it there and maybe excavate it some other time."

EXACTLY!!!!

As If This Isn't Lovely

I am in a sun-lit room
in the middle of the afternoon
with a cup and saucer of coffee.
And Cass croons his way through the airy room
I've got
a tablet full of notes in front of me
I can't hear a word of traffic
sweet tints of apple linger on my tongue
and the faintness of that headache slowly drifts away.

Save the Brain

Since I woke up this morning I have had an intense fear of getting dumber with age.
This is why I feel I can't stop going to school now, otherwise I'll just get worse at writing shitty papers I don't care about. I'm not even sure why this matters.
And why is everybody I know at school so sure of themselves? Why does school have to be the way it is?
I am not destined for a career in academics.
I should be working on a farm. Or in the bush. Or on a boat. Or open a pub. Or in a garden. Or in a clinic. Or at a library. Or be a lifeguard. Or become a carpenter. Or operate a food cart at the beach. Or work in daycare. Or in an old folk's home, where I'd read them their favourite books and bake cookies and listen to their old, mean, tired complaints.

A Woman Under The Influence

(click for full-screen to see it properly)

I saw this with Marla quite a while ago, and I still think about it all the time.
If you haven't seen it, see it.
See it see it see it see it see it.

Three Things

1. Sitting over the weekend in a hobbit house. The walls are lined with books.
2. Hot Chocolate
3. SLEEPING IN

I H8 LYFE

"...try to remember as often as you can that you are living your life right now. I know this is a basic idea, but with as much coming and going as there is it can be pretty easy to lose sight, maybe even forget- but it’s true as I type, as you read, as we aspire to greatness or as we fall - this is it. Regardless of who you become tomorrow or who you were yesterday this is you right now - so enjoy it."

I was just saying a couple of weeks ago that my main goal in life is to enjoy what I'm doing. Reading this was another reminder, as in the midst of everything right now I'm feeling ultimately stressed out because I've taken on too much.
I have for sure, not to mention my social life is a little insane right now which makes my mind stir crazy as I try to write papers (one of which is due tomorrow and I haven't started writing yet). Why am I doing this?

Breathe.

Whatever happens, everything is going to be alright. Right?

Liudvik

I'll admit that when I went to visit my great grandfather's grave today I (lovingly) said something like, 'You fuck.'
I sat cross-legged right on top of him in the cozy bed of moss. I figured he might be wondering who the hell I was and I wondered in return if someone who has had a lobotomy (therefore no real conscious mind when death comes about) - if they go back to their original (pure) state of mind when their soul floats about the earth and around their rack of bones?
In 1972 at the age of 73, he was buried nine feet deep in hopes his wife would eventually be interned atop of his casket. Not over her dead body, apparently. She decided the cemetery in Burnaby would be much better for her - the farther away, the better.
Stories float around within the family and I'm quite sure there was a time when my Grandpa, along with his mother and five siblings, fled their home with Liudvik chasing them with a giant kitchen knife.
It was Edmundus (Gramps) who got everyone out of the house when Liudvik lit the house on fire. I think this is when he was admitted to Riverview and given an experimental lobotomy. His state of mind was 'out of control', and at the time there was no other way of dealing with it than removing part of his head.
When the family went to visit it was always a dreadful affair, only happening due to obligation. He died alone years later.
His wife ended up living out her days in a church shelter and a few of his six children ended up leading fairly normal lives.


And that's just a wee excerpt from my family history.

Mathieu Charbonneau

Listen to this in an empty house.

I'm Not Kidding

LUPOSLIPAPHOBIA: An abnormal, persistent fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor.