October is Sterling's month

October is Sterling's month. His death
has a date, around October 11, but
you can't fix it so completely because
the dieing happened on a Friday nite
at 6 o'clock in the evening, to the effect
that when the time creeps up on you
the days of the weekend don't fall each year
at precisely the official calendar date.
There's no way around this expansive blur
of the timing one direction or another
most years.

But in any case, the annual remembrance
must be planned for, plotted -
as, if not faced consciously, it will rise
like a secret tide of mooded illness of spirit,
of soul sickness. But if faced, it can be
prepared and practiced as a liturgy
of conscious remembrance of Sterling's dieing
and of Sterling's living.

Nature herself usually takes the first step
toward preparation and remembrance.
The autumnal signs, the semiosis of the wind
and cold and turning of leaves, even ever so
infinitesimally, now play like a piano-man
on my very bones, and I can hear
the slow rising tide of the blues.
The remembrance of Sterling's death is coming,
all the October signs tell me.

October belongs to Sterling.
October is a season of my heart, flooded
and, swimmingly, I'm loaded to the gills
with Sterling. I swim in the slowly rising tide,
and recall the steps of the liturgy
for this moment of my personal liturgical year.

October is Sterling's month.

Groceries List

Yes, I must remember to put Oliviana on my list - that's the margarine made of olive oil. Basic Foods at Gerrard Square, so it's a long walk for Oliviana.

And I need that dark-red tipped lettuce (the red says there's iron in it, and I need some of that). Another BF item.

No lettuce on hand rite now for my sandwiches, you know with tomato and baloney (okay, spell that "bologna" - should I call it "blogogna" - but then you get into Gog and Magog). Check the corner convenience store for Schneider's 100% Beef baloney that the owner has been getting in, on my suggestion (I actually washed the plastic packaging all-labelled and took that with me to the store and showed it to the lady of the family, behind the counter that day ... they're from Sri Lanka. Well, they've already sold out their first order of baloney (3 packages, she said last time I looked), leaving in their fridge only that chicken baloney substitute that the supplier pggy-backed on her order, my suggestion. Yuck.

Then there's the hunt in the triple-stacked bins tucked into the shelves of Aisle 3 at BF, the bins being the gimmick they use to keep the tins of tuna and and other canned meats so that they don't have to be neatly stacked. I go to the bins for the Equality brand, it's the cheapest at BF, but I only like this brand's tuna when it's packed in water a-n-d of the variety "Light Chunk Style." Can't stand the "Flaked" variety, but too often the "Chunk" cans when you get them home actually open to reveal mostly flakes anyway. False advertizing, Equality!, low-brow brand of Basic Foods, low-brow subsidiary of Atlantic & Pacific food-oligarchocorporation. But thank you for getting the All-Natural Peanut Butter onto the shelves so voluminously - after I launched my one-man campaign to thwart the hi-sugar brands monopoly on your shelves!

Two days back, I bawt some stuff, not to duplicate today:

√ green peppers (2)
√ broccoli (2 stems with flowerettes)
√ salmon portion freeze-packs ($10 a package)
√ Dempster's Enriched White Bread
√ bananas for breakfast with my Oatmeal (1-Minute Quaker)
√ Gold Seal tuna (no Equality brand tins available in the bins)
√ sardines (2 tins, tabasco-pack only, the other varieties have lousey tastes, but with the tabasco you actually get 2 tabasco pods in each tin)

That's all I can remember.

O yeah, go to the convenience story first, to check out the 2% Milk supply (Sealtest), check date stamp as the milk in these cartons goes bad before I can use up the whole contents for my daily Oatmeal breakfasts (with a sliced banana and a shake of cinammon). And check out the Schneider's all-beef baloney; avoid the individually-wrapped cheese-slices to add to sandwiches, as the off-brand they carry tastes offal - hmm, buy a Kraft individually-wrapped pack of slices at BF, save the packaging after using the single-wrap slices on sandwiches, and then wash the package, and take it to the owner of the corner store. Likewise, make a move to get the large plain Quaker Oatmeal packages on the shelves, instead of the little boxes of little packets of Apple Oatmeal, and Whatnot Oatmeal, but no Banana Oatmeal.

Oh yeah, at BF., get some fresh packs of spinach.

Opthamology & Optometry

The opthamologists are mapping my eye,
while the All-Seeing Eye, having mapped my I
from before my birth and tracked my days
on Earth, is now mapping my eye-doctors in
the process of their secondary map-making.
The All-Seeing maps my I and knows how to
get about within it,

even better than His seconds.

I go to the retina specialist whose Resident
deputized for the task, glares his pinpoint
little lite rite into my site, here-and-there-ing
as I slow-shift to the left and rite and up
and down and all around - for the mapping.
Doctor Wong comes in, his seconds report
the results. He checks, he asks them questions
to provoke their self-corrects. The chief
deputy then shows me his hand-drawn view
of the back of my eyeball, where the results
precisely locate a fleck of red along some
arterial track in the back southwestern zone
of softball tucked into the skull-bone

left of the nose.

Diabetes, is it swelling the artery with undue
pressure, puncturing the rear of the eye-ball,
horizontal to the left ear? Could be, must be
just a temp spot, or could be a vein-weakness
that will develop into a conflagration, render
the outside of my eye, what you see, a fiery
blaze of blood-shot haze, popping the eye

and maybe, just maybe, I'll die.

We've got to track it. If it's a minor event
that's on its way out, or is it a progressive
process of developing dire. We've got to track
it, to prevent a forest fire. Come back in
three months.

I'm being tracked for diabetes putting too
much pressure on the veins in the back
of my eyeball and exploding them one by one
until I'm blind, perhaps. I must make out
a will, and live my books to some deserving
student of reformational philosophy and
encyclopedia, someone really interested
in the history of American philosophy.

Now, I go to Doctor Chan for a wider
opthamologicification that will measure my
seeing-site in the form of an eye-glasses
checkup for the first time in eight years.
It wasn't at the hospital, but in his private
offices, where I return somewhat embarrassed
at the long time of self-neglect which now
becomes obvious as his staff checks for all
the eye diseases I may have contracted -
like glaucoma,

perhaps I'm in a coma,

and whatnot.

When the staff finishes , they turn over
their report to Doctor Chan, the main man.
I'm sent into his inner chamber where he
measures meticulously my site, my seeing,
my see-balls, left and rite. The results:
in the ate years since my last opto-measure
exam, my seeability has decreased just
a smidgeon, and my astigmatism has rotated
just a wee.

Of course, Doc gives me a new prescription
with the measurements needed for new glasses.
There will be a period of adjustment,
I'm advised, during which my site will blur
for awhile. But, I translate al this to mean
I won't have to get the new eye-glasses
for thse Internet-worn, TV-strained eyes, not
immeidately - as money is tite!

The All-Seeing Eye sees my plite, my site,
my nite, my day, my play, my journey
on the Way lit by His Word's Lite.

- Owlb