The idea was potentially worth millions.
The Science Project
Author: G. Paul Randall
Starfish Sutra is a poetry and writing journal, augmented by some photography and general blogging activity.
Recent Photos: Houston in January
There’s a variety of woodsy enclaves within Houston’s sprawling metropolitan car colony, including the Central Park of the South, Memorial Park, as well as a number of bayou parks. Little islands where the cars are not allowed and they have to sit in lots while their owners walk around pretending that nature still exists. I gravitate to these spaces and manage to find some wildlife to photograph as well.
Due to the ceaseless work of bacteria and fungi, dead things gradually melt back into the biosphere which is cyclically alive, trees falling into the hungry mouth of tomorrow’s forest, like eggs laying chickens.
What’s There to Like?
I'd rather see a smile than a frown And I'd rather be a naught than renown I like my yolks runny And I like my jokes funny And I like insurrections put down
The Novel Loses its Thread
un-baffled exhaust ports of an unseen muscle car breathe noisy fire, roar, then idle down to a purr abrupt report of a pistol then shifting gears as the motor fades into the distance, like self-conscious years writing their way to a halt at the index of a history text all the unprovoked thoughts run adrift, then assemble at sleep's door as the novel loses its thread just like a life lived in earnest innocent as a forgotten thing its power to provoke all played out on a Saturday night in Houston
Nutmeg Mannikin (Spice Finch)
First bird outing of the year was not bad at all. Encountered a small flock of these little seed-eaters at White Oak Bayou and was confounded as to what they were. Similar looking to female Indigo Bunting, but the bill size and shape eliminated that, plus there’s these scale-patterned black and white feathers popping out on the breast. Turns out to be the last featured bird in Sibley 2nd, the Nutmeg Mannikin or Spice Finch, another Houston area import/escapee from Asia. These are immature, as the adults have a scaled breast.
You can see on the right-hand specimen the lack of wing bar markings, good tell that these are not one of our grosbeaks. Without these photos to study I’d have never figured it out, I think. Always a thrill to find a bird that sends you into research mode.
Also seen there, a large flock of American Robin, a strikingly beautiful bird seen up close in detail.
And the Red-bellied Woodpecker, same time and place. A fast moving flock of Cedar Waxwing also came through. Only the second time I’d seen these, and the experience was the same: good sized flock appears out of nowhere, and disappears soon thereafter. Later at Buffalo Bayou I spend some time with a pair of Blue-headed Vireo and was unable to claim a satisfying photo.
Moving on later that morning to the Houston Arboretum I saw only a single Eastern Phoebe and a Yellow-rumped Warbler, then headed to the Eastern Glades at Memorial Park to acquire another life-bird, the Least Grebe shown above. These range down through Central America with parts of Texas being the north-most boundary of its range.
Beached
I set out early Saturday morning to camp on the beach at Bolivar Peninsula’s west end. I have converted the RAV4 into a micro-camper and wanted to give the new fixings another test run. I spent the morning in Galveston and took the ferry to Bolivar around noon.
The jeep photo was not desaturated or converted to B&W and the sky above that cloud bank was a bright grayish peach.
Sunrise on the gulf just East of the entrance to the Houston ship channel.
The tip of the peninsula is cordoned off for the bird sanctuary, east of this the beach is lined with camping rigs of various sorts and sizes. Ten dollar parking pass gets you a year of beach camping here, so it’s a fairly popular spot for RVs. Lots of birdlife with many wintering species staying here for the season without the burden of a ten dollar pass.
A vast winter sky holds no position in particular, but binds all within it to an inter-connectivity which teaches all things how to be.
Found this birder at the ship channel on the Galveston side before taking the ferry to Bolivar. Those are (mostly) Black Skimmers on the sandbar, wintering here by the hundreds every season.
One of the legendary Bolivar Mosquitoes. I photographed this one on the window glass after having had its fill of my bodily fluids and wishing then to escape. You’re welcome. A steady gulf breeze tends to keep them inland but that dies down at night and they will find you if you’re up and about early like I always am.
I intend to do some traveling next year, so expect more travelogue type stuff here. I will write another poem when one occurs to me and not before.
Happy Holidays
If there’s one thing Indiana Jones can’t stand it’s nazi sympathizing archeologists who leave their Christmas shopping to the last minute. I think we should all buy each other worthless trinkets (from a vendor in the street—no big box stores!) then bury them in the sand for a thousand years: voila! Priceless relics for everyone!
But seriously, may the blessings of all the wisdom traditions of gods and humans bring the enduring conditions for peace and calm abiding within the mind-streams of all the sentient beings, past, present and future. Svaha. Om.
Peace out, my friends.
Red-tailed Hawk
Caught this red-tail picking at the body of some little critter just off the busy path at the Eastern Glades, Memorial Park, Houston, TX.
Chipping Sparrow in a small flock at Houston Arboretum, early the same day.
Snowy Egret at Brays Bayou, Houston.
Buffalo Bayou offers some nice wooded walkways right in the heart of the metropolitan bustle.
The Back Nine
Adrift in the wilds for how many seasons—I no longer kept a count. The days don’t belong to calendars any more, the clock is an angle of light, the seasons become ciphers in broad strokes. Hadn’t seen another human face in scores.
I keep off the game trails lest I become game myself, but I keep tabs, know where they lie. The bears tend to leave me be, but you never know. I sling my hammock up in the canopy and it’s a real charge to hear them down there in the dark. Wondering how interested they’re becoming in me. I trap for meat, saving the rifle bullets for the attack that has never come. Bear, or wolf, or man, it seemed inevitable.
One day late morning, a whiff of campfire smoke. I plot a course of avoidance and three days later, again. I switch from avoidance to pursuit—I’ll go down in a fight if that’s the way it is. Damned if I’ll be prey. I pick up the pace, less stealth, weapon at the ready. Here’s some sign then, human tracks brushed over with pine needle, clumsy, done in haste. Ground cover is sparse here, stick pines scattered like tossed coins, reaching straight up, their lacy foliage lapping up the sunbeams high above. Then I see him.
A stick himself, wrapped in rags and a cut-down blue sleeping bag, a bulging lumpy kit slung over one shoulder, holding a golf club like to swing at a baseball pitch. Crazy hat looked like a nun’s habit. I leveled the Winchester at a sapling three degrees right of his heart. Yo, keeper. What say we ease into this.
Wilders know how to settle a sudden tension. Those that jump to guns are mostly dead by now, the rest of us develop a keen appreciation for alliances. Thing is, I had not had an interaction in so long I was livid with doubts. You forget how real it is when your nerves are lit for battle and your wisdom is calling for calm.
He lowered the club and I eased off the trigger. You tracking me? I ask straight up.
I am not sir. Headed east and south.
That rabbit fresh?
Yessir. Fresh this morn.
The kill swung from his kit, limp ears at the level of his thighs. He had clubbed it coming out of its hole, which impressed me mightily. My traps lately were always sprung or untouched and I had a hankering for meat. I had a bag of fresh mushroom and some radish and we were soon working up some vittles.
Trust is not a thing appears fully formed and time would tell. Camp divided, each to our side with a fire in the center. My Winchester leaned against a trunk behind me, his club in the dirt beside him. A damn golf club. Then it occurred to me.
Don’t tell me, you’re the ‘Lost Linksman.’ Our eyes met with fresh caution and curiosity.
Silly story had been making the rounds of the back country forever. Some country club dandy, not right in the head, tees off and slices into a wooded rough, gets lost. Keeps playing his lie and slices further into the wild. Terrible golfer, and with mental problems too, they say. Obsessed with it, before long he’s lost his ball and his way back. He retreats into survival mode, nothing but a wedge and a whiskey flask to fend off the elements. Years on, the sightings become more outlandish and legend-like, a kind of Bigfoot. Crazy man come at’ya roaring like a beast and swinging. They say his canines had grown into small tusks.
No man, he said. A smile crept onto his filthy, hairy face. That bob was nuts I tell you. This is his club right here.
You took it from him.
I kill’t him is what I did. Come at me like a bull hog and I bashed his skull with a cypress knee. The smile receded. His eyes cast downward at the pictures in his memory. It was right believable in the telling.
Talk is a dressing for the wound of life and liars practice a pointed kind of treachery. We ate charred hare and spoke of other things. Better days. All the troubles. We wonder where trouble comes from. The stars do seem to turn on a point within us, so when we see ourselves as the center of all things it feels inarguable. But it just ain’t so. I aimed to part with him the morrow, I being proven trustworthy of my own self and him not so.
We slept on the ground and come morning the camp perimeter was crisscrossed with possum tracks and he was gone. My Winchester was gone. In its place, a golf club, once wielded by the Lost Linksman himself. I mean, if you’re buying what he’d been selling.
Out here, the law is not practiced in court, it’s the ply of reason, catch as catch can. No hearsay, I am my own witness. At bottom it’s no less civil for the lack of wigs, robes and procedure. I picked the wedge up and swung it a few times. I’d never touched one before. I knew he’d try and cover his tracks. Knew too, he weren’t much good at it.
Photo: Village Creek State Park, Texas. ©2020
Fungi Amongi
Merlin Sheldrake talks about the amazing world of fungi. Warning: your basic ideas of what life is and how it all works may experience dizziness. He is a biologist with a PhD and a mesmerizing speaker.
