easy does it

i'm not sure what it means, but this month is July. This feels like it is deserving of comment. Then again, there have already been many months. The group of consecutive days which we call July was named after an Roman Emperor. He was human but his ancestor (according to popular accounts, e.g. the Aeneid) was half-god. That makes him more God than me. Or that is what I have been led to believe. Julius Ceasar, as they called him, was at least more month-worthy. Tomorrow is my mother's birthday. And the day after that is my nation's birthday. Isn't that great? I will burst fireworks upon it. I will play a patriotic soundtrack. There will be Mel Gibsons on the occasion. Mel Gibsons and veggie burgers with cheese. These are traditions. Every day I must feed the dog that is not my dog. Every day I must feed the cats that are not my cats. The birds are not my responsibility. The tomato plants ARE my responsibility. This is an attempt to exert some control on my environment, an environment which is largely out of my control, out of all of our controls. Nevertheless this is an attempt. Wade through my attempts with me. Is this interesting to you? Are you learning something? Or are you nodding your head politely? Perhaps you do not have a head to nod. This was once the case with Al Gore. Upon meeting Nick Drake one day in his college years Al Gore exclaimed, "Polar Bears!" At which Nick Drake seemed to telepathically project, "I am Nick Drake. You are Al Gore. But we are only a tiny dot in space." This was unexpected, and Al Gore was momentarily uncomfortable. Then the next slide appeared (slightly late). Everything became connected. The personal became political became a tiny dot in space. The Simpsons and the Sun and a polar bear and all gold bricks as Thomas Rain Crowe says were only a tiny dot in space. You can only see the dot if you are a telescope, or on or in a telescope attatched to a complex mechanical space probe deep in space. You must be deep in space in order to understand the concept of a single pixel of everything. Already this may be confusing you, dear reader. Perhaps you blame it on my condescending tone. Perhaps you blame it on one political party or another. Perhaps, after all, it has been the homosexual agenda, distracting you, leading you astray. And yet the word 'astray' is only an 'h' away from from 'ashtray.' And both sound rather a lot like the Spanish word 'estrella' which (roughly translated) means star. This is perhaps only coincidence. However, I would be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to draw certain conclusions. For instance, I could conclude that 'estrella' is synonymous with 'star,' or that 'star' is a word. This is not very satisfying. Soon I must feed the dog from can and bag food for dogs. When we say that we are "feeding" a pet. What we usually mean is that we are making food available and easily accessible for that pet. Usually animals can feed themselves. The obvious exception is of course, the very young animals. They do not count, in the same way that prose so often does not count. I am wondering at the etymology of the word "freelance." Perhaps it comes from a distant time when artists carried weapons for their protection and for the protection of their honor. Writers seemed to have possessed honor from time to time throughout history. Take Lascaux as one example of a cave in which artists defended their honor. Lascaux was not a mistake (although it was a dirty cave). The handprints were real and they were made on purpose, or at least FOR a purpose. Therefore art history teachers will not scoff, though they be profoundly confused, and possibly stoned. We each have a ruler. This could be what Bob Dylan says to Nick Drake, or another musician-celebrity: "You gotta serve somebody." Nick Drake has a song which was only recently discovered. It was scratched on papyrus sheets rolled up in a clay jar in a cave in early France. Early just means deeper underground here. (You see how early can be a place?) The truth was all rolled up there in that cave. There were believers of several numbers and classes. We belonged to the upper-middle class, though we wished otherwise, and were told yet anotherwise. It was all a very confusing religion. But we made it. And I think we deserve a pat on the back.