Thread: Some random scribblings

I've been scribbling down stuff for years.. some good, some bad, some ugly. Found these today in the garage when I was cleaning up cat shit. These range from somewhere between good and bad.. to bad, and I'm thinking from the late 80's. I'll stop if ya's gag, otherwise, I might turn over a few more cat turds and see what I can find.


On friends drifting away
I would soon be graduating from college; it was the last summer-term, pretty relaxed, only one or two classes, and we were all getting the uneasy notion that life would be much different in another year.

Sitting on a front-porch, evening fills the sky
We try to catch and stop the sun
Stop another year from slipping by



On being alone
I took a post-college house-sitting assignment at an old 17 room manor house. Everybody I knew was pretty much gone, I didn't have a car or a girlfriend, and I would be starting my first job in a few months. In short, I was bored out of my skull and feeling like my world had vanished in a puff.

Awake at night I sit alone
Defying sleep, still sifting through
Debris left clinging to the day
A single lamp upon the desk
Illuminates my emptiness
In self-defense I turn away
And close my eyes

Smoke spirals from a cigarette
And hangs upon the stagnant air
My thoughts escape, surrounding me
Drifting off to nothingness
Smashed against an ashtray full
Bent and crushed, my dreams and goals
They burn with life
As hot though not as bright



On fucking up
This just came to me while I was painting one day. I was so impressed with myself, I grafitti'ed it onto a wall I was painting. My buddy Dave came over, saw it, and predictably called me a fag. But he still drank my beer. It sounds like something some other fag would write.. so I dunno if I accidentally stole it or not.

A fool paints himself into a corner
And beats upon the floor
An artist does the same
And paints himself a door


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here's my feeble feedback.

first of all, they're all great.

the first one is very simple and direct. it also describes how i was feeling during graduation and the end of school in the last couple months.

the second one is really smooth when you read it, which i like. it's not choppy and confusing. i can really feel the frustration and disappointment at the end with the whole cigarette scene and words like "smashed", "burn" and "broken".

the last one is amazing. i have a thing for short little poems like that. they make me smile. another one i love is "The Turtle":

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

A fool paints himself into a corner
And beats upon the floor
An artist does the same
And paints himself a door

Quite brilliant, yes.

well thanks, folks. So far, I guess I'm my own worst critic.

I guess I can slap up some photos too. I'm mostly an outdoor/nature shooter, but I've got a tendency to take a lot of my grandson too.. Of course, I like to combine the two and capture him interacting with the outdoors.

One of my favorites is this one.. Just shooting at the ground on Caldwell Fork in the Smokies (practically my backyard). The funny part was, just out of frame, you would find horseshit.



Makes me almost smell the season (aside from the horseshit, of course).


I love this one... and I've got it framed and hung. My grandson is the only other person in my family who has ever taken a real interest in the mountains. I started him when he was 3 in the Summer and this was from a half year later in Winter. It speaks to me of his surprising confidence in marching toward unknown adventure, small, but supreme in his confidence.



I've also got one of him on the same hike, peeing behind a utility box by the side of the road. His quote was, I recall, "When a guy's gotta go, he's gotta go".

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The rhododendrum is the king of the understory in the Southern Appalachians. June is the month that this shrub, which grows big as trees in the moist conditions of the mountains down here, flowers in mad profusion. We've got two varieties, the larger-leafed white rosebay, and the smaller-leafed purple to pink catawba. I prefer the catawba when it's in flower. Both can form thickets, hells, slicks, lettuce-beds, patches, etc... as I call them, that can make cross-country travel not a matter of miles-per-hour, but rather a matter of hours-per-mile. Voluntarily and involuntary expletives are the norm when threading a route through this stuff (and just try to use a map and compass when all around you is impenetrable green). Interestingly enough (perhaps) is the fact that rhododendrum is often referred to locally as laurel, though laurel is more properly the mountain laurel, with pink-highlighted hexagonal white flowers that bloom in May, a bit earlier than the rhododendrum.

Here's catawba rhododendrum in all its' glory.





Its' neighbor, the flame azalea is no slouch either.





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The 1,000 square miles inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are my stomping ground. I've stomped 3,500 miles through the park, but sometimes you gotta switch hands, so to speak, to keep from getting bored. So I've put in a miscellaneous 500 miles elsewhere.

One such elsewhere, on the Tennessee/North Carolina border is Roan Mountain and the Roan Highlands. This is one of those places that you'd expect to see Hobbits, and the locals hunting them.

At an elevation of 6,285 feet, the summit of Roan Mountain is a 1.6 mile, 773 foot climb front the parking area at Carvers Gap. It's an easy climb, unless you're a flabby out-of-shape pussy. So for all you flabby out-of-shape pussies, here it is.




The boulders at the summit would be a good place to hide from roaming Nazgul. And remember, one should not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light.

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Originally Posted by Flavour of Night

I guess I can slap up some photos too. I'm mostly an outdoor/nature shooter, but I've got a tendency to take a lot of my grandson too.. Of course, I like to combine the two and capture him interacting with the outdoors.

One of my favorites is this one.. Just shooting at the ground on Caldwell Fork in the Smokies (practically my backyard). The funny part was, just out of frame, you would find horseshit.



Makes me almost smell the season (aside from the horseshit, of course).


I love this one... and I've got it framed and hung. My grandson is the only other person in my family who has ever taken a real interest in the mountains. I started him when he was 3 in the Summer and this was from a half year later in Winter. It speaks to me of his surprising confidence in marching toward unknown adventure, small, but supreme in his confidence.



I've also got one of him on the same hike, peeing behind a utility box by the side of the road. His quote was, I recall, "When a guy's gotta go, he's gotta go".

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This picture is wonderful, and I loved what you showed us about cropping it. I also noted that there's a perfect heart just above the arch and to the right side of it... I remember seeing a whole collection once of natural hearts that someone photographed, and it was charming. I have one that forms from the dust in my driveway in a spot that's recessed just a tiny bit, I guess. I can sweep the driveway and it disappears, but it's back again soon!

wow.. cool, never noticed the heart!

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