Complaint of the Pondering Pig
Such an uncomfortable life we’ve led the last few days. Would you mind dreadfully if I sit down and complain for a moment? It won't take long and I'll feel ever so much better. After our long journey across the continent we’ve landed for a few days at Grandma's mobile home on the California coast. Interrupting her neat and tidy schedule and not knowing where to flop. Trying to remember to squeegee out the shower and wipe it down with a cloth provided for the purpose.
Well, our horse Gabbin is enjoying the rest anyway. He winked at me as he dug into his oats. He said he talked to a red fox coming through the iceplant below the neighbor's retaining wall at dawn this morning. Fox said he's doing fine in between the mobile homes. Lots of cats to eat.
The German home cooking here is tops. Grandma makes cabbage rolls just like they did in her home town in Lower Saxony when she was a little girl. With white sauce, not tomato sauce. Mashed potatoes and gravy and a special kind of cole slaw she learned how to make when she was waiting table at a fish n chips place in East LA in the Thirties. It's fabulous even if you don't like cole slaw.
No internet connection of course. We’re talking an 87 year old lady who won’t even push the ‘on’ button on my computer because she might break it. So here is the closest place with free wi-fi, temporarily the office of the Pondering Pig:
Office of the Pondering Pig
Why do people want to come to the California Coast so bad? I can’t figure it out. Here's what it looks like around here...
Hey, palm trees in the parking lots. Not bad.
Plenty of shopping for everyone...
Did I mention the parking? Unbeatable. And every lot has palm trees. I think it's a law.
Well, people are strange. They have strange desires. I'm glad I'm a pig - - yet pigs have strange desires too – here‘s mine: I want to live in a nice little nineteen twenties bungalow out on the edge of town. Still has the original wood paneling and plenty of room for books. Big garden with tomatoes and chilies and cantaloupes getting ripe and a fast cable connection and a little office where I can write The History of the Talking Pigs in peace and every once in a while gaze out my window and there is Patrushka, the princess who married a pig, in her floppy sunhat doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? Out behind I can see our horse Gabbin standing by the fence gabbing with the other horses about all his adventures since he came to live with us.
Who could ask for more? Well, actually...since you asked, I still want to go to Europe every year and hitchhike down wet northern highways to an overgrown, haunted spa where dukes and duchesses took the waters in 1827. And I still want to find the ruins of Great-Great-Great-Grandma Pig’s farm on the misty flatlands of Ostfrisia where my ancestors Hisko and Gerhardt Pig built the dragon that frightened off the Duke's soldiers.
Wait, I’m not done complaining yet…I don’t want to live in a 1970’s subdivision ranchburger with corroding aluminum windows, the garage made over into a huge room nobody knows what to do with, there's nobody home but me on the block but the driveways all have gigantic pick-up trucks parked in them and there’s a big German Shepherd behind the chain-link fence next door who won’t stop barking. Could I not live there, please?
Right now at least one of my readers is saying, “Hey, what’s with this pig? I live in a 1970’s subdivision and there’s a big pickup truck in MY driveway and I have a big German Shepherd and he’s really nice. So what’s wrong with that, you stupid pig?”
If so, I refer you to the Comments section below. We have learned to give free expression to all and welcome your comments, no matter how rude and unfortunate. It’s just not for me, not for Patrushka. We're not Seventies people. In our little hovel we neither wear bump-toed shoes nor play disco music. Except for “Shake, Shake, Shake Your Bootie” of course. We read William Wordsworth and walk on the cliffs at midnight reciting "The Lay of the Last Minstrel". We tune in our crystal sets to see if we can pick up Ashtabula. We have tea by the fire with just a tot of brandy in it. I spend a lot of time blathering on like this while Patrushka calls the doctor.
Hey, thanks for listening. I think I really do feel better!
Well, our horse Gabbin is enjoying the rest anyway. He winked at me as he dug into his oats. He said he talked to a red fox coming through the iceplant below the neighbor's retaining wall at dawn this morning. Fox said he's doing fine in between the mobile homes. Lots of cats to eat.
The German home cooking here is tops. Grandma makes cabbage rolls just like they did in her home town in Lower Saxony when she was a little girl. With white sauce, not tomato sauce. Mashed potatoes and gravy and a special kind of cole slaw she learned how to make when she was waiting table at a fish n chips place in East LA in the Thirties. It's fabulous even if you don't like cole slaw.
No internet connection of course. We’re talking an 87 year old lady who won’t even push the ‘on’ button on my computer because she might break it. So here is the closest place with free wi-fi, temporarily the office of the Pondering Pig:
Office of the Pondering Pig
Why do people want to come to the California Coast so bad? I can’t figure it out. Here's what it looks like around here...
Hey, palm trees in the parking lots. Not bad.
Plenty of shopping for everyone...
Did I mention the parking? Unbeatable. And every lot has palm trees. I think it's a law.
Well, people are strange. They have strange desires. I'm glad I'm a pig - - yet pigs have strange desires too – here‘s mine: I want to live in a nice little nineteen twenties bungalow out on the edge of town. Still has the original wood paneling and plenty of room for books. Big garden with tomatoes and chilies and cantaloupes getting ripe and a fast cable connection and a little office where I can write The History of the Talking Pigs in peace and every once in a while gaze out my window and there is Patrushka, the princess who married a pig, in her floppy sunhat doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? Out behind I can see our horse Gabbin standing by the fence gabbing with the other horses about all his adventures since he came to live with us.
Who could ask for more? Well, actually...since you asked, I still want to go to Europe every year and hitchhike down wet northern highways to an overgrown, haunted spa where dukes and duchesses took the waters in 1827. And I still want to find the ruins of Great-Great-Great-Grandma Pig’s farm on the misty flatlands of Ostfrisia where my ancestors Hisko and Gerhardt Pig built the dragon that frightened off the Duke's soldiers.
Wait, I’m not done complaining yet…I don’t want to live in a 1970’s subdivision ranchburger with corroding aluminum windows, the garage made over into a huge room nobody knows what to do with, there's nobody home but me on the block but the driveways all have gigantic pick-up trucks parked in them and there’s a big German Shepherd behind the chain-link fence next door who won’t stop barking. Could I not live there, please?
Right now at least one of my readers is saying, “Hey, what’s with this pig? I live in a 1970’s subdivision and there’s a big pickup truck in MY driveway and I have a big German Shepherd and he’s really nice. So what’s wrong with that, you stupid pig?”
If so, I refer you to the Comments section below. We have learned to give free expression to all and welcome your comments, no matter how rude and unfortunate. It’s just not for me, not for Patrushka. We're not Seventies people. In our little hovel we neither wear bump-toed shoes nor play disco music. Except for “Shake, Shake, Shake Your Bootie” of course. We read William Wordsworth and walk on the cliffs at midnight reciting "The Lay of the Last Minstrel". We tune in our crystal sets to see if we can pick up Ashtabula. We have tea by the fire with just a tot of brandy in it. I spend a lot of time blathering on like this while Patrushka calls the doctor.
Hey, thanks for listening. I think I really do feel better!
Labels: Across America, Homesick, Photos by Patrushka, Sorrow of Life
posted by Christopher Newton at 2:40 PM
17 Comments:
Hi Chris,
I've been following along in the background. Not much for me to comment on, so I haven't chimed-in in a while. Sounds to me like below the surface your heart is at peace with how things are going. Welcome back to California.
Hope to be seeing both of you one of these coming days. Jen and her fold were here last week.
Let love lead the way, bro'.
Ok, ok. Enough complainin'. What you got now, mon ami, is a place located near the western edge of America. Maybe it's borrowed, but now is the time of returning, your thought jewels polished and gleaming. Now is the test of the boomerang, tossed in the night of redeeming.
It rhymes nicely.
Thank you, Mr. Chronicler. Very nice indeed. I particularly like the part "see how they run like pigs from a gun". I find that sensitive and understanding of our plight. I just don't see how he could have written that awful "Little Piggies" right after, which is one long insult, so please don't quote it to me anyone.
Interestingly enough, we also have close relatives in the walrus business. But no eggmen, to my knowledge.
The plight, it would seem, is the angst of the existential pig in the post-modern world. It is place of time and space and evolution into the weirdness of a warped reality that relies not on spiritual revelation but on daily clamoring for nothingness.
But now is the time of returning, the redeeming. A boomerang that does not return is but a stick. So too, a pig that does not return to the sty is but a wild boar, daily rooting for nothingness.
Consider the plight of brother Job. Family and friends forsake him, his wife to the point of telling him to curse God and die; his firends telling him he had to be in the wrong and all the bad stuff happened because he deserved it. "Get on with life" they tell him.
But, being Job, he has to persist in his refusal to "Get on with life", avoiding throwing himself into the nothingness of dire existence.
Job grieves but does not budge. His was not a physical journey of returning, but his redemption was real none the less. He was spiritually "tossed in the night" and he returned a respectable and sanctified pig and not simply a stick.
When I said I found nothing to comment on in your Blog, what I meant was that I found nothing original, or new, to comment on that had not already been adequately commented on by the others in this well-rounded cheering section, so called. I, too, think Patrushka's photos are outstanding, and Bro Piggo, with a degree in English Literature, is living up to his potential.
But I can throw in something here, if I may: I think Job's sin, if you could call this a sin, was in his thinking along towards the conclusion of the story, that God had been treating him a bit unfairly. This does appear to be what is happening.
The truth is, however, there is no unfairness or unrighteousness at all in God, ever, no matter what may seem to be the outer appearance. This is sometimes hard to realize. It was for poor Job, but he came around, and his situation came around too.
And this, I believe, holds true in our own lives too. We can trust in the Lord's infinite goodness with all of our might.
Absolutely amazing! First of all, thank you Leo, for interpreting me to myself. I thought I was writing about "Shake Shake Shake Your Booty" and what foxes eat in mobile home parks along the California coast. So having an critic while I'm still alive is a big help. Sometimes I look at my stuff and wonder, is he deep?" (If you pick up on that 1950s pop reference you get an A+), but mostly I just settle for low comedy. Sort of an idiot savant, you might say.
I still don't see quite how Job fits into the whole picture, but I do appreciate your insights. I liked the part about the egg-man too.
Above goes for Gary and the Chronicler too!
You need a lesson or two in complaining. I was all set for a big rant when you said you had some complaining to do....
....come over for coffee some time and I'll show you how to REALLY rant up a good complaint.
Seems like Job did slip into the comment section through the back door. These things happen!
The Chronicler's last comment taken from Viktor Frankl's observations, "...you can strip a human's possessions away from him, but man always retains the ability to choose mentally how he will react to a situation," is a good reminder to me of the potential power over life's circumstances our mind possesses. Thanks.
Hey Paula, I've never been much good at ranting, try as I might. But I don't think I'll bother learning - there's so many people who rant so well and so often. But the coffee sounds good - in fact, we're leaving for Alberta right now so put the pot on.
I like rants best when Bonnie Rideout plays them. She's my favorite Scottish ranter.
It was Chris's fault that we got on Job. First he refers nebulously to a "plight" which Chronicler queries with a confused, "Did I miss something?" Being a critic by nature and, dare I say somewhat a ponderer too, I felt it necessary to chase the obvious rabbit, as it were. Job, always a good metaphor for existence, was
somehow a fitting aside.
I'm at a loss for the '50's pop reference, but I did flash on a number of pondering posts from December having to do with foxes. What do foxes eat in Mobile Home Parks? Is it different in southern California from what they eat in, say, Big Sur or Carmel? What of the Marin foxes? Are they Vegan?
Ewan MacColl, now there was a ranter. Husband to Peggy Seeger and brother-in-law to Pete and Mike, he was born of Scottish parents. Aside from being a communist and army deserter and all around rabble-rouser, he found time in between rants to write "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" hardly a protest song.
I guess we all have our moments.
20 comments! Man! What a pig!
I have to counter the pig's comment that he doesn't rant very well. You just have to be there in person. He does a great rant when he gets on the subject of injustice or little girls in bonded slavery, let me tell you. Watch the sparks fly!
Hey Pig, if you get to Alberty, look us up. Three Hills...its small enuff, ask anyone where we are! We'll find you, we'll follow the blogtrail!
I thought we had a pretty good rant/discussion/dinner chat last night on the subject of "modern." Good thing there were some handy dictionaries around. I think my poor mom was clueless though. She has a pretty quiet life when the pigs aren't around raising their voices and banging their trotters on the table!
Hey Paula and Spoke, - Just wanted a good cup of coffee, and we hear down this way that Paula's can't be beat.
"As through this world I ramble,
I've met a lot of funny men.
Some rob you with a six-gun
Others with a fountain pen.
But pigs will never rob you,
They'll only take your time,
And drink up all your coffee:
That is their worstest crime."
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