Michael Munas' Journal

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Two-Cycle Oil and Cut Grass
Part of what has made me, has much to do with mowing grass. When I was little, it was always much more about mowing the baseball diamond, than playing baseball. In fact, when neighborhood teams were picked, I was usually included at the very end of the team selections with something like "you can have the rest" and I was always happy with that. I wanted to mow - not play baseball.

This is probably why for my "mid-life crisis", that I spent nearly $14,000 on a John Deere X585 tractor instead buying a fast motorcycle or sports car.

I started tearing down and repairing my dad's 1957 Model 3100 Lawn-Boy when I was in my single digits. Of course it didn't make mom very happy when I cleaned the greasy/oily parts in her concrete laundry tubs. There were always half-hearted arguments over it, but I certainly wasn't going to stop.

In my teens, I used the mower to follow my dad in his walk-behind Gravely (Model 120-L) to trim several of the residential lots that remained from the last of my grandparent's farm.

After my father became sick in the nineties, I took the mower home and used it for several years until the engine compression had tailed-off substantially. I attempted to find piston rings for the unit for years but even the old well-established Lawn-Boy/OMC ^* dealers had none. Last year, I finally found a machine shop that produces custom made rings for vintage engines and purchased them for a reasonable $11/set.

So in the past few weeks, I've been cleaning parts in the sink again (except there's no one to complain about the mess) and yesterday I was mowing with it again. Scout even tried out the "new" ride and liked it :)

^*OMC (Outboard Marine Corporation) once owned and manufactured the Lawn-Boy brand.

Brownish-green
I've been trying to figure out just what it is with chipmunks. They run really fast but it still takes them forever to cross the road. Plus, there are those intermittent pauses en route -- which appear more to be randomly driven by a tensioned-string-trolley contraption than by an animal's free will.

* * *

I like the grassy areas in business parks that aren't watered in the summer because they're crunchy brown and have tufts of clover and vetch. Aesthetically, they feel more pleasant and green than the watered, fertilized, and chemically-treated lush that grows closer to the constructed appurtenances.

While never the same: chipmunks, the lawn and many other things come back just fine, anyhow.

In my quest for World Domination
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
~ Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1887

It's taken nearly a year, but I have finally amassed 450 paw points. So soon I'll have enough gathered to make the 500-point 'Cat Play Cave' the new secret world headquarters for one of my most powerful minions.

Oh wait, it's out-of-stock...

I don't really envision taking over the world with the Crystal Studded collar or a 14lb box of Fresh Step. I need a new plan.

What Scout and I did last week
We rode this:

to stay here on Bald Knob with no electricity or running water at 4800':

We saw this in the morning:

and did this for fun:

It was also the first time in years that I've clearly seen the Milky Way.

Igloos made of sugar cubes
Deep inside, I crave for snow to be as warm as the texture of a growing home -- this would be mixed carefully with a dash of polio vaccine and the school-smell of curing enamel.

I do know the weakest parts of me are in my heart and history every day and without them, I would be lost.

Anywhere: like a place along I-70, Maynard Road or Ruggles Avenue

I used to wish I could slow the summer change of a field. If I stayed there longer than usual, I could perhaps savor that mark of time, and this in turn, would be my great rebellion against inexorability.

But if that really happened, I would never know the course of what we are given and ultimately lose. It's really there to help us understand what matters, if we ever do.

Even though I miss dandelions, it is certain that daisies, queen ant's[sic] lace and buckhorn growing harmoniously at the foot of a long-abandoned coal refuse pile is just as fine to reckon -- as is, anticipation.

* * *
Styles change forever, and the
"sea, on the tide..."

The Life of Ants
And now summer, with bashful peonies
that lay precious heads to the ground,
is what the whole of life has been.

Securigera Varia, I've been invaded

Purple Crown Vetch is considered "invasive", but I grew up around land reclamation, so it is as much a part of me as anything else. The petals are parturient and somewhat remind me of clover. It will be my favorite flower of the week.

I rode a quick twenty trail miles last night and finally saw killdeer nesting in the gravel. I really like the rings that define them, how they balance on thin tall legs, and the way they scurry from their nests. I pretend I am able to 'talk' to them but I'm sure they are thinking I'm simply invasive.

* * *

Professor Charles Soludo is always sending me e-mails about the percentage of the $20,000,000USD that he wants me to have.

Hey, 419 - that's Aretha Franklin!

"as small as the world and as large as alone"*

My father built this little Homasote clubhouse when we were young. It had a front porch, a tile floor and a real double-hung mini (showroom sample) window in the back.

He named it "After You" and even hung a small professionally lettered sign with the name inscribed on it.

My dad never played baseball or catch with me and rarely said "I love you" - but he spent so much time with us and for us.

The clubhouse is gone, that picnic table in the foreground is gone and I am probably older now than he was when he built the clubhouse, but I still clearly remember the color of the floor and the smell inside the walls.

* * *

* maggie and millie and molly and may

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

~ e.e. cummings

Epidemiology: always, ALWAYS
She said her heart was going a thousand miles an hour -- waiting for news that wasn't going to be good. She told me he was "always, ALWAYS" clean-shaven, but for the past few days, he just couldn't. And then she tried to pay me for "a cup of coffee with just a little cream".

It reminded me of when the one time in all recorded history, my mom's bed was left unmade.

* * *

I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay
so long,

I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with
you, but I know I came well and shall go well.

~ From: The Sleepers, Walt Whitman

The Pleasure of Paying Attention
If you recount how good life has been to you,
then usually very few people even notice.
If you write about how tragic life your life is
a few more show up to affirm and concur
but if you write how you've been violated
an entourage readily appears with a noose.

* * *

"Our father was married twice," continued Humanist. "Once to a lady named Epichaerecacia, and afterwords to Euphuia"
~ From: The Pilgrim's Regress, C.S. Lewis

The best stuff is cooked with the burner set on high

I can do 'most everything to care for myself and I can even take care of others.

While I can make my own, sometimes I wish my mom could make me just one more of her grilled cheese sandwiches. She usually burned them, but that really doesn't matter.

Funny how you never realize that you might someday miss seeing your mom in the kitchen every morning in her chenille bathrobe coughing down an Eve Cigarette and a Nescafé instant coffee.

Little Cities of Black Diamonds
Rode in the Tour De Forest this weekend. We intended to ride the 32 mile course but made a wrong turn and ended up on the 45 mile course through the Wayne National Forest. The "several challenging hills" were pretty intense -- Scout and Cinderella did a great job for never having done a big road ride and braved 25 miles of it. I got lost one more time and by the 49th mile finish I was ready to be done as well. :)

The End

Anticipation: often as good as what is being anticipated

Ten seconds before the three o'clock bell on the last day of school before any summer.

* * *

When leaves are nearly quarter-size
ruffled, folded-fresh and wrinkled green

Al with the broken tail
This is what Scout and I saw on our Kiawah Island bike ride last Sunday....

and was as close as I dared to get with my cell phone camera.

Duncan Model 60

12 minutes for a penny - C'est plutôt cher!

Now I can finally charge my kids to park in the driveway! Not that I would, but five feet of 2" Schedule 40 pipe is more expensive than I had originally imagined.

Note the pretentious red Ferrari disguised as my 1991 Tercel.

Warm shoulders/dusty knees

leaning against my truck
in a space that is gone
like so many wheatfields
and as many summers

* * *

Our minds pressed and guarded
While our flesh disregarded
The lack of space for the light-hearted
In the boom that beats our drum
~ From: "Accidental Babies", Damien Rice

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free
Compulsion that runs through the veins, courses like a neighborhood kid running for the safety of home base.

* * *

Boggs is the name of the train station that was once along the Montour Railroad - now it is a stopping point for bicyclists and hikers. At first it didn't seem like much - a little kitschy sign and and a picnic table.

I met the man who takes care of Boggs. Just to the right of the view on the photograph, he has planted all sorts of flower bulbs, perennials, shrubs and the like. There are concrete paver-slabs that wind through his little garden. He doesn't even live close to this place but chose to adopt it. I didn't ask him, but I wonder if he made the sign. I suspect we all need a place.

* * *

The further away a person walks from you, often says something more about you and less about them.

* * *

I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh
is enough,

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so
lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this
then?

I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and look-
ing on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that
pleases the soul well,

All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

~ Walt Whitman, "I sing the Body Electric", Leaves of Grass, 1892

When robins nest, they chirp a certain way and when it's evening they chirp another way.
I can't describe the differences but they are part of how I was made in each summer.

Green Pepper Walls and Water Ice
The cast of long-long shadows is easily more scary than anything the dark could ever muster.

* * *

This reminds me of of spring and when my cheek was smooth.