Tag: cicadas

With Art and Word – 6th March 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

With revolutionary thinking
We will knock down the wall
Of the Kool-Aid drinking
Prisoners in it’s thrall

Rise up from your slumber
Take up your arms
You are many in number
Hearing the alarms

Battle with art and word
Against the unfairness absurd

Submitted to dVerse – Slumber
7th May 2024 – Submitted to FOWC with Fandango

Today I’m feeling:

Pretty positive though my shoulder is giving me some gip.  Something isn’t right in there and I can’t stretch or roll it out.  I’ve done very little arm exercising for the last couple of months and may just try and push through the pain to get back to it.

Today I’m grateful for:

Amy and everything she does to make our house a home. I don’t want to take her for granted.

The best thing about today was:

My grade 10s not turning up for class allowing me time to organise another classes’ worksheets, staple them together and gift them back to the students. I felt good doing that, even if they just throw their work away. At least I made the effort to present their work back to them at the end of the semester.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I lost my cool with Amy when she got overexuberant whilst drunk. She was in a good mood and playful but I was tired and eating and when I didn’t know what she was doing as she tried to put her fingers in my mouth I pushed her arm away. Unfortunately that then set her off and blew up into a fight. Now we are both in a bad mood.

I will try to make her feel better but also just feel like going to bed and sleeping already. I don’t have much patience for drunken antics these days, I’m old and tired when it comes to that. It doesn’t fill me with excitement anymore.

Something I learned today?

2024 marks a special year for cicadas in the USA. It is the first time since 1803 that two specific broods of cicadas (one that emerges every 13 years, and one that emerges every 17) should be emerging together. This co-emergence won’t happen again for another 221 years.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

My vile deed was pushing Amy’s arm away and initiating a tiff. I should have been (even) more patient or be more assertive in a different manner.

I bought some cream chup-a-chups to give to my grade 9 students for their graduation ceremony tomorrow.

I took this picture because I got home to melting cats (again!)

There goes my dream, looked good on paper -1st June 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Callen the gallon – those were days alright. Sweaty five-minute warm-up. Sound makes a sound – still Heavy Vegetable swirling around all the time.

Yesterday was filled with so much beauty it was almost too much to bear – it was outstanding green, green, green – Amy not impressed by the photos – “it’s my country – this is normal – this is why I want to see other places.” I get it, of course.

Up into the mountains skidding sliding – bemused villages staring. Akha church ceremony – it was Sunday. It was great – very lovely sounds. Some places so quiet, others cicadas like chainsaws.

Gap teethed stooping old ladies, “okay!”, smokers sitting in shade – pineapple groves – where to go? – is this a road? What are you doing to me Google Maps!? Buddhas everywhere. KwanYin everywhere. Miles and miles and miles – could I see the ocean?

Hours later I’m crispy salmon skinned – Magma CDs – play them one day. Das Damen – Jupiter Eye is upside down – why? Dazzling Kilman – must be close by. *

Cooler – big rain – 30-minute blackout. Oh no – it’s okay. Cold nighttime air, can wrap up warm. What are you gonna talk about? Nothing – it doesn’t matter – enjoy that coffee – keep the cup filled with coffee. Keep your heart filled with joy. Don’t fight it, the struggle is over, everything is changing. Embrace it. Gives thanks. Give love. You’re a lovely human bean.

Fatman report

Weight: 79.9kg
Resting heart rate: 53

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that De Lanna is open again so I can sit by the river with a coffee.

*writing this sitting next to my CD collection and perusing in thought

To-do list

  • Take the weekend with you – smile
  • Share your positive wishes to others and yourself
  • Savouring and random acts of kindness
  • Connect with someone – find out what they like ½
  • More blog posts ½

I struggled today to be honest. On reflection I think it may be somewhat connected to my sunburn – it is really bad on my arms and it’s not that it is painful or that I feel hot but I think I just got zapped of energy.

I got annoyed with two of the boys doing the filming because they weren’t paying any attention to the work. George rightly pointed out that it’s up to us to create the environment that we want to see but I was too tired and cranky to think about it anymore.

After lunch, I sat and closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I felt much better after that and then, funnily, Dylan and George both got tired and sleepy too.

George can come across as quite bossy sometimes though he obviously has the best of intentions. It often rubs me the wrong way and sometimes I’m not confident enough to deal with it in a positive manner. I’m still very insecure about things and feel I have to prove a point. It’s my problem I know

I’ve been writing and reading all these things but still can’t seem to act on it. I don’t ruminate so much on things but a dark mood can be brought on by the smallest slight.

Anyway, I’m putting the tiredness down to the sunburn and the crankiness due to the tiredness. Tomorrow is another day (though the sunburn will still be there).

There’s a tremble, and a rumbling, inhale- 27th December 1994

Terrigal
~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Out this window, through the vertical blinds, the insect screen, through the sun reflector and beyond our verandah and garden, the houses descend into the small valley and up the other side pushing for position with all the green rainforest, palms, ferns, gums and bamboo.

The rooftops visible in the sway of wet green leaves, where the crickets hang out buzzing around, their insane chatter carrying through the air – thousands of singing messages – here comes rain, here comes sun.

Grey and black clouds dominate the horizon, the air dank and still in my windowed vision, all quiet and anticipatory.

But now it’s time to leave this paradisiacal view and head out over the hill that we live on and down past the beach to the bustling village, buzzing with it’s human insects going about their merry way.

Out of our door the humid air clings shirt to skin and push push push the legs up the hill, short but dramatic, to meet the dirt track through the forest between scattered dwellings.

The crickets see your approach and snap into sudden silence as you pass the tall broken barked trees they inhabit(shh, here he comes!). The air drips moisture from the leaves high above, the ones that touch the sky. Odd insects buzz around often looking for some cool fresh blood to suck on – be quick, flick of the wrists – the Australian wave.

As the hill flats out and you begin to descend the other side, through the trees and buildings, the roar of the ocean beckons you forward, waving all the time. At the end of the road, the bottom of the hill, the sea stands before you far and wide and at it’s edge the crashing glory of the white crested waves, dotted with wet-suited bodies waiting on the big one.

Skirt the beach along the main road where traffic piles up because in this town pedestrians get right of way and that upsets the hoon element in their flash cars, boom box stereos blasting. The crowds are bustling from beach to shop to cafe and not much else. Young bronzed blondes hang round in threes, hanging out, being cool, playing the games of teenagers on the lookout for love, and I’m sure the surfers aren’t interested because they’re thinking about a different sex wax entirely and so the girls get themselves more beautiful and scantily clad in effort to swoon some dude away from his board but they’re still only interested in catching waves and so it goes on, this place a hot bed of sexual frustration. Maybe?!

The pace is slow and what the hell, there’s no hurry, those waves keep coming. These tough old legs carry me back home where, on the telephone wire to our house I spot something odd hanging on and its kinda long and thin and has four thin long double jointed legs and it’s a praying mantis – as long as your forearm and thicker than a hotdog. I hope that sucker doesn’t spot the gap under our front door!