Another aimless visit to the automatic haiku generator

Wasting some time, I decided to revisit the automatic haiku generator I discovered a year or two ago and haven't used since.  The vocabulary is severely restricted, heavily peppered with words like belch, shriek, defecate, rasp, demon, devil, flatulent - you get the idea.  

This was not a happy person who entered the words to be used in the haiku.  Anyhow, came up with three that were okay - and inadvertently erased one or two that looked interesting but came after a long string of really bad ones, so I reflexively deleted them.  Oops, but probably not a major loss to the world of poetry.  

birds stampede slowly
eccentric intense haystack
rusting, leaning clouds

childishly pure great
bright eruption marvelling
flame soars, leaning soul

contritely still quick
capricious waif darkens, barbed
eternal joyless

Baking Bananas

I once had a boyfriend who took me on a picnic at the banks of the Charles River.  He had cooked a special gourmet dinner - sole with sauteed bananas.  Hmmm.  It tasted the way it sounds - weird.

I have, on the other hand, encountered fried bananas at Chinese restaurants as a yummy, gooey dessert, and I am sure they would be good flambeed over ice cream, or in any number of ways.  I like them with cottage cheese, or in cereal.  I guess I have  pedestrian tastebuds.  Oh - and if they are very ripe, I like them frozen.  When you slice them and eat them, it is like banana ice cream.  Sauteed with sole - somehow doesn't do it for me.

Twice this week I have made baked bananas.  Here is my recipe:

Ingredients:
one banana (preferably in plastic bag)
one car
hot weather

Place banana in plastic bag, and place it in the trunk of your car on a day when it is 90 degrees and sunny.  Leave the car for several hours. When you return, much of the skin will have turned black, and the banana will be pulpy and icky inside.  Take into house and throw out.  Or, leave it on the kitchen table for a day or so thinking that maybe the part where the skin didn't turn black might be edible.  Pick up the banana to peel it and try out this theory, feel how disgustingly mushy the inside is, and then throw it out.

Variation:
Place banana in plastic bag, and place it on the passenger's seat of your car on a day when it is 90 degrees and sunny.  Leave the car for several hours.  Return to the fragrant aroma of a banana cooked to a pulp inside its skin by the sun.  Take into house and throw out immediately, having learned from the first method that it will be inedible.

I sacrificed two organic bananas for this inadvertent culinary discovery.  Read and learn.

Art from the past

This is a drawing I did when I was in my late teens.  My brother found it lately and transformed it into this nifty presentation.  Thanks, Pete.

My crumbling lady's head planter

I took this photograph earlier this spring.  My plaster planter in the form of a woman's head has seen better days - after just one winter, it is cracked and chipping, but perhaps that makes it look more venerable.

Arrayed around the planter are some of the stones I have picked up from the banks of local brooks.  Many of them have holes and fissures which I find fascinating.  Some of them have tiny crystals; others are unusual colors.  There are stones with inclusions, patterns, markings that resemble faces, letters, or animals; and then there are a few I look at and think - "Just why did I pick this stone up and take it with me?"

I also love smoothed-out bottle glass.  I have a chunk of what seems to be a very old soda bottle, because it is extremely thick glass; the letters on the fragment are "kist," which I just love, because it reminds me of "kissed."  I keep on thinking about incorporating it in a piece of jewelry made from found elements, but that is one of many projects I haven't gotten around to as yet.

I did find a real fossil a couple of years ago, and at a different brook, I found a petrified oyster shell.  I also discovered a small geode, which is nothing compared to the geodes one purchases, but is special because I found it!

The hellebore flowers crowning my planter's head have faded, and I must now consider what to plant in their place.  Perhaps a small-leaved creeper; or perhaps I should mound up the soil and grow some moss, giving her a velvety cap.  Decisions, decisions.  A lot of gardening awaits me this week.

Brooks, streams, creeks, and treasure

The tree and twisted roots in the foreground are usually well above 

the level of the water of Stony Brook, and the current is usually far 

tamer.  The wildly rushing current was mesmerizing.

I had some extra time several days ago, and took the opportunity to walk down to Stony Brook, which is - surprise! - a stony brook near where I live.

There had been a great deal of rain in the previous days, and the brook was more swollen than I had ever seen it, with the water rushing furiously along.  Rocks that were usually visible above the water were hidden beneath the currents.  It was beautiful, and the sound's effect was instantly anesthetic.

Often I wish I had a house with a brook on the property.  Being able to sit by the brook and relax to the sound of the water flowing by would be so life-enhancing.  But I recognize that I am fickle, and crave variety.  I worry that just one brook wouldn't do - I would soon be back exploring different brooks, streams, and creeks, searching for natural treasures: water-smoothed glass, shells, weird stones and pebbles, distorted branches . . .

I have a list of brooks and streams still to explore.  I need to get cracking - time's a-wasting, and magic awaits just out of sight, past the bordering trees, in the woods, on the banks of the brooks . . .  It's waiting for me, and for all of us.