these same thoughts people this little world

Thoughts of recent days:

handclapping: makes for good music pretty much automatically

my new life motto: righty tighty, lefty loosey.

my visit to the winchester mystery house: bizarrely fascinating. Sarah Winchester was one crazy bird. I read about that house back in fourth grade or so when "true ghost story" books were intriguing me. I never did forget it, but it got shuffled away, and when I was reading House of Leaves last year, it elbowed its way back to consciousness. I looked it up on el internet, and lo and behold, it's in San Jose, ever so close to my then future destination of San Francisco.

If you've had a nightmare of being trapped in some sort of nonsensical house with strange passageways and endless and confusing series of rooms, you've pretty much been to the Winchester Mystery House. What's weirder is the touristyness of it and its location smack in San Jose among the multiplex and snooty shopping streets. All in all worth the large amount of money I spent to go there. I bought a keychain of the enigmatic stained glass windows, the text from one being the title of this post. I also bought a commemorative coin on which I could imprint x number of characters. I tried to put my new life motto on it, and it came out:

-MJIGHTTXTIGHTY._ LEFTY LOOSEY

Clearly took me a little while to get a hang of the printing machine.

And now, a new section from what is now just being called Thomas:

*

And the girls have set up the birdfeeder again.
Peanut butter weds seed to nailed bottlecaps.
The branch’s sturdiness belies my inner strength.

If the birds flock to it, to what would they flock otherwise? Telephone wires
and abandoned churches comprise America and the birds are the only ones
who get that.

The farms where birdseed is grown consider bird pest and clientele both,
and that is also America.

When you struggle for analogy I want to throw
you one but I can be more patient than these birds
who flock but never queue. The feeder
is painted over with birdflesh.

*