20 Pounds of Sunrise

Before sunrise this morning, I sat inside my darkened house petting my 20 pounds of housecat.  Early in the morning is the only sure time he allows for such lavish affection.  He especially enjoys when I gently knead at is fancy perfume-bottle shaped skull.

Even with the windows of my house flung wide open, the air inside remained perfectly still.  Nothing outside stirred.

I reflected on my life.

I have always been surrounded by profoundly blue mountains, which is important.  I had a grandfather with a crooked arm but a kind heart.  I once owned a car for less than eight hours before totaling it in a head-on collision.  Twice in my life I have nibbled sweets that tasted exactly the way a rose smells.  I kissed the pretty girls.  I once drove my young daughter thirty miles just to show her an osprey nest.  I drove away slowly from my first life, but came back in a hurry.

At sunrise, I followed my cat outside.

For the first hour we worship the sun.

--Mitchell Hegman

Pretty Rocks

When I was kid, all I needed to be happy was a pile of pretty rocks.  I would spend the whole day quarrying through the rocks looking for the prettiest ones.

Now that I am retired and living smack on the diuvial fan at the edge of the Prickly Pear Valley, I am once again happy to spend my days browsing for the beautiful rocks swept down from the surrounding mountains. 

I have even fired up two rock tumblers to clean and refine my finds.

Posted is a photograph of a few rocks I recently found on my property.

--Mitchell Hegman

20 Pounds of Bill the Cat

I wrote a few days back about how my cat’s fur has been collecting seeds and burs from the now (marginally evil) ripening grasses and forbs around our house.

That’s only part of the story.

During the warm summer months, my 20 pounds of housecat fancies himself more the outdoor variety.   He spends most of his days and nights outside. Usually, you can find him hiding somewhat fearfully under my deck.

He has all the makings of an outdoor cat. 

He’s big (actually, fat).

He still has claws (from which he mostly sheds claw sheaths on my sofa).

He’s fast (at running inside when he hears an errant sound).

But mostly, he’s starting to look awful.  I think he has designs on becoming Bill the Cat from the comic strip Bloom County.

Bill the Cat (created by Berkeley Breathed, portrayed by John Byner)

--Mitchell Hegman

Be the Butterfly

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

—Rabondranath Tagore

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

—Richard Bach

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.

—Joseph Conrad

Demons and Angels

One night, while he slept, six black demons visited Micah.  The angels shouted at him using a hurried language he could not understand.   They tore off his arms.  They set scorpions free on his bed and then pressed their blackness into him.

Micah woke at the softest shoulder of morning.  Five tall, white angels surrounded his bed.  They sang the birthday song.  At the end of the song, the angels began clapping.

“If you clap,” one of the angels lilted, “we shall set you free.”

Tail curled, a scorpion suddenly flitted across Micah’s chest.  Just then, something Micah’s grandmother used to say came to Micah.  “The devil,” she would say, “is in the details.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Bad Candy

The Jelly Belly Candy Company has dropped two new jelly bean flavors into their mix: dirty dishwater and stink bug.

They taste perfectly awful, which makes them a sure winner.

The bad-tasting beans are part of something called the BeanBoozled game, which pairs sweeter beans with bad ones.  If you are lucky, you only grab the sweet jelly beans when you play the game and try to sate your sweet tooth.

Here are few example pairings:

1. Spoiled Milk and Coconut

2. Dead Fish and Strawberry

3. Stinky Socks and Tutti-Frutti

4. Lawn Clippings and Lime

5. Canned Dog Food and Chocolate Pudding

6. Barf and Peach

Here's the thing.  I didn’t attend college when I finished high school.  I didn’t see a clear career path there.  Had I known college might lead to job where I could design stinky sock flavored candy, I would have been in college before week’s end.

--Mitchell Hegman

Fame (Possibilities)

To my knowledge, there is neither a Ben Franklin nor a Sacagawea in my lineage.  I’ve descended from more common stock.  But in looking at the motley bunch that is mine, I can imagine a few near-famous things my ancestors might have been responsible for:          

—I can conceive that one of my distant relatives invented drunk driving.

—Maybe a great, great, great, great, great (not-so-great) grandfather of mine was the reason for inventing handcuffs.

—Possibly, there is a houseplant hypnotist in the mix.

—Invisible ink?

--Mitchell Hegman