About Dogs and Cats and their Buddies. And some little jokes.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

A DOG may bark to express how they're feeling, for example, when they're excited, frustrated, bored or scared. If a dog feels threatened, they may bark to tell somebody to stay away or to leave. Other times, dogs may bark because they want something in particular, such as their favorite toy. And also because they are dogs. Otherwise, they’d be texting or IM’ng you what they’re thinking. Like if they are anti Trump or pro Trump. 🐈🙂🐕

“PETS or cats and dogs have the ability to help strengthen relationships,” says Michael Hamilton, a veterinary orthopaedic. “They help us to be more patient, caring and loving towards one another. The unconditional love you receive from a dog or cat is extremely rewarding.” So next time you check Tinder out, invite your dog and cat to sit with you for their opinion as you surf through profiles. (Mr Hamilton is actually a cat so I concur with his professional findings.) 🐕😉🐈

DESENSITIZED, made less likely to feel shock or distress at scenes of cruelty or suffering by overexposure to such images. That’s what happens to us humanity who spend our 24/7 sitting with gadgets or screens. The dog or cat wakes us up from stupor–to remind us it’s time to walk, food bowls are empty, and litter box has to be cleaned. Sometimes we get shocked to reality upon knowing the dog buried a bear arm in the yard or the cat dragged a dead python into the kitchen sink. 😐😑😴

SNIFFING is just something all dogs do to get the lay of the land, mark their regular routes in the neighborhood, and sniff out familiar scents. Scent sniffing also helps them understand if something, or some new dog, is in their area. Arrow is different. She sniffs and scrutinizes spots for DNA samples and all that shit. If she finds something strange, like hints of hostile interpolators, she reports to Fizz at forensics in the house for further study. Ching types these findings on her laptop. 🐕👃🐕

CATS have both a short-term and a long-term memory, so not only do they think, but they also remember. While that doesn't tell us exactly what they think about all day, it does tell us that they are likely to have relatively complex thoughts and feelings about things. Yup, really complex, these personages koolcats. For example, Fizz googles a lot of info after watching a bird or fish video on YouTube, or I bet she snuck into my Facebook page while I was asleep. 🐱💻🐱

WHY do dogs chase cars? Natural evolution: They simply have the instinct to chase, and a quick-moving car appears just like their prey. Training your dog to stay immobile or by your side can help so that chasing cars becomes a thing of the past. Or your cat can teach your dog the ninja art of ignore-it, quit the drama. Fizz told me that Arrow barks and sometimes chases cars as a theatrical ploy for silly attention. 🐕🚘🐕‍🦺

LOTS of reasons why cats love boxes. Main one is because they're confined, enclosed spaces. Cats are ambush predators and finding confined places where they can hide, hunt prey and feel safe and warm is an instinctive behavior. Snug cardboard boxes fit the bill perfectly. Like ninjas. Cats are also into siege and infiltration, ambush, reconnaissance, espionage, deception, and later bodyguarding with their fighting skills in scratch-face martial arts, including tiger’s claw ninjutsu. 🐱🎁🦊

DOGS can recognize us, and do look forward to seeing us each day! As for cats? A similar study out of the University of Tokyo confirmed that our favorite felines can distinguish their owner's voice or face, but they don't necessarily react. They’d be like, “So you’re home, okay. What do I care? But if you have the time, please clean our litter box.” 🐈🙃🐕

SLOW NEWS DAY, a time when media organizations publish trivial stories due to the lack of more substantial topics. I stopped watching news on TV for years now. Sometimes I just ask Fizz what’s up on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. She’d usually say: “Anti Trump, pro Trump, but more anti China.” So I simply go back to Facebook. 📺📰📺

WHY do cats sleep on different beds? Cats like to regularly switch between different sleeping locations to protect themselves from fleas and other parasites, so it's best to provide them with a few different beds situated around the house. Ching and Fizz have a number of beds or cushions in the house and a dozen in our bedroom. I simply squeeze my body somewhere in there, especially that Arrow already owns my bed. 🐱🛌🐱

RECOMMENDED. Music. “Rubber Soul” by The Beatles.

“Rubber Soul,” the 1965 album by The Beatles. This LP earned highly favorable critical response as well as huge commercial success, topping sales charts in Britain and the United States for several weeks. But that wasn’t a big surprise. This is the Beatles. And this is the Fab Four growing up. Indeed. 

       The album title derives from the colloquialism "plastic soul" and was the Beatles' way of admitting to lack of authenticity compared to the African-American soul artists they admired, so says Wiki. After “A Hard Day's Night” in 1964, it was the second Beatles LP to contain only original material.

       And so John, Paul, George, and Ringo started thinking, pondering, ruminating. What ensued: Sharp maturity in their lyricism, more spark and shimmer on guitar tones + sitar, harmonium, fuzz bass and definitely alluring instrumentation and arrangement. Pop, soul, folk, East Indian dalliances. This effort is more art than product. The earnest, depth and improvisational melodicism that carried onto “Revolver” (1966) and “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967). 

       My standout songs are John Lennon handiwork, though of course credited as Lennon/McCartney: “In My Life,” “Norwegian Wood,” and “It's Only Love.” But then, don’t you forget George Harrison’s “Think for Yourself” and Paul McCartney’s “Michelle” will always be for anybody’s Michelle. 🎼🎹🎼

HOW IT WAS.

Compiled from my previous Facebook posts. 

When was the last time you climbed trees? I bet you won’t even do it to rescue your cat. You’d call 9-11 for the Fire Department, I am sure. My childhood was about climbing trees. Pick some mangoes, catch combat spiders (yuck!) fetch my tied-up kite, just climbed trees for no reason. I was like Li’l Boy Tarzan. Those accentuate/d the wild abandon of early youth. Freedom. These days, children “climb trees” only via VRs, while “surfing” the net, or watching YouTube. 🌳🌴🌳

Me and my brothers would gather in one room to watch “The A-Team” and “Wok with Yan” when there’s no basketball on TV, 1980s. Remember Mr. T as B.A. Baracus? The harshest cuss word then on television was “You fool!” And “Wok with Yan,” a Chinese/Canadian cuisine cooking show with Stephen Yan. Recall these words on his apron? Wok & Roll, Wokking My Baby Back Home, Wok Around the Clock, Wok the Heck, Wok Goes up Must Come Down. LOL! 📺🤣📺

The “banga” or water dispenser that is made of clay. I bet there are more of these in the barrio? Not many houses in rural villages of my youth had running/tap water. So peeps would heat/boil water and then stock `em up in “banga.” Rainwater was usually saved, flowed from the roof to bamboo tubes into giant drums–for washing dishes, watering plants, and laundry. Rice was also cooked via clay pots in the outdoor kitchen clay “oven,” fired up by wood. Life then. Alive. 🧺📞📻

Typewriter. In 1575 in Italy, Francesco Rampazetto invented the “scrittura tattile,” a machine to impress letters in papers. Improvements ensued through the years. The first typewriter to be commercially successful was patented in 1868 by Americans led by Christopher Latham Sholes. Ah! Typewriter days. Writing was less physically “complicated.” Internet technology has a lot of advantages but it also ushered “justified” complexities that are not needed. 📺☎️📸

I was born into a culture of walking. In grade school in a mountain/mining town, I walked 4 miles to/from school. Me and grandpa Severino used to walk to the open market, almost everyday, while he taught me how to read. Billboards, store fronts, jeepney and bus sign boards. Hence, when I was living in New York City, walking 20 blocks (!) to the subway wasn’t so big deal. These days for years now, my walking ritual is set every afternoon, with the babedawg. 🚶🚶‍♂️🚶

Smoked fish. Foods have been smoked by humans throughout history. Originally this was done as preservative. In more recent times, fish is readily preserved by refrigeration and freezing. AI may even do it, ha! In the Philippines, most popular smoked fish is “tinapa,” which is often made from blackfin scad or “galunggong” and milkfish or “bangus.” A relative in the province used to smoke fish in his house, as business. The delicious aroma stayed in my mind. 🐠🇵🇭🐟

Remember how we used to engage in conversation, or discuss and debate, easy banter or intense jousts? Barbershop, cafes and diners, backyard barbecues and porch tea. College days? Steps of Arts/Sciences building and school canteen. Luneta Park in Manila, Washington Square Park, Pritchard Park. And then the Internet was born; Social Media followed. Less face to face interaction, sadly. Suddenly we forgot how to talk as grownups or communicate as humans. 🗣👥🫂

When the family lived in a mining/mountain town in the Philippines, me and friends would go up the hills and pick ripe guavas during summer. We’d climb trees or simply reach and pull them up from tinier trees. Guavas were abundant up there. Culinary pleasure. Medicinal wonders. The fruit is used for “sinigang” broth/stew, turned into jam, and other food delights. The leaves, when boiled, washes bacteria off wounds or a warm bath with it eases up fever etcetera. 🫒⛰🫒

A kid delivering newspapers in the morning was an image that inspired me as a boy. My grandma always reminded me of the wisdom of toil at an early age. My first “paid” work was in a printing press folding newsprints off the giant Webb/Heidelberg machine. I was 10. I spent my salary on books and LP records. I was a professional beat reporter at age 13. So proud of that. Times have changed. Parents of a “working child” go to DSS reprimand. Child abuse? 👦📰💵

Filing stuff. During typewriter days, I used to maintain my own filing system at home. Cut-out newspaper/magazine articles, neatly-catalogued photographs, some in binders. In these internet days, we “file” stuff in hard drives, thumb drives, and iCloud. Yet if you ask me what is more secured? Uh huh? I have 7 laptops, majical cellphone, dozens of thumb-drives, google docs, blogs, Yahoo and Gmail inboxes. Safe? Nope. So bring me back to the 1980s! 📰🗄📰

Photos: 123RF. SEARCA.

THOUGHTS in The Morning.

I READ. Read read read. And jot down notes. In New York subway, airport lounge, or Greyhound coach—I read. In the bathroom, I read. In a Vegas bingo social, I read. When I was little, and I read news or heard it on radio or dad told me this and that, I’d go read more to recheck if those are BS or not. I am still that “kid.” The only way to learn, relearn, and unlearn is to keep on reading. 📰📚📰

IN the past, I used to shrug off talks of “emotional support animal” as prescribed by mental health professionals. Those were the years when I used to walk rich people’s dogs in West Central Park in New York City as backup income to writing/editing. I didn’t realize how valuable those dogs were to their “mom and dad.” Until I co-existed myself with dogs and a cat. Without them, I don’t know. No pills, no meds, no therapy. But no Arrow and Cyd? I don’t know. 🐕💓🐈

I AM an old dude. I had hospital "adventures" as well. Wear and tear to a hyper spirit. But I have never felt healthier since a 2000 surgery in New York. I was offered a choice: Medication or surgery. Surgery! After the knife "gig," I moved to the mountains, cooked food, worried less, cushioned the drama with love poetry each night. Those are my "meds." The most body irritation I get in the last 4 years is pollen allergy, that's it. Did I just make myself clear? 🦐🦋🐙

PINK it! Decades ago, it was Yellow. And so Pink! floods the Philippines these days as the opposition gears up for May 2022 national election. New prez! As I told a friend per my wicked pragmatism, election is election. Most often, it is a popularity game or contest of numbers. But I’d like to read the program platform vis a vis current pressing issues. In politics, I don’t care about faces, parties, and colors. Though I obviously dig the color Pink. Uh huh. 🐙🦑🦐

DAMP earth of new birthing. Falling leaves offer a bed of reflection. Seasons in the heart, the evolution of the spirit. Until we age, with thousands worth of mileage of experience aching on our back as reminder, we don’t ruminate nature like this. Environmental activism isn’t about political narcissism. It is all about appreciation of life itself. In ruins, we see lessons; in blooming, we see hope. And then we take care of ourselves as one community. 🦋🍁🐓

AS I take babedawgs Arrow and Riley do their morning bathroom ritual in the backyard, Fall time’s wilted dryness remind me of coming Winter froze. But this giant taro-like plants are still alive. Plus a few flowers. Yet seasons, nature’s seasons do influence how “seasons within us,” mental/emotional state, ebb and flow—especially in these “isolated” days. Tough mostly. But then as long as doggies like Arrow stays hyper-active, ruffling my days no end, life stays alive and well. ?✍️👀

IMPLOSION, the phantom danger that scares me more than the virus. Humanity’s mental state. Good, memory of the past—good or bad—offers some light because we got basis for comparison how to live amidst the scourge. A vinyl and old book purchase at Goodwill is joy. Greens and flowers rest to give way to froze but the Goddess stays to keep earth alive. White and blonde right now (LOL!) but no added meaning to that. That’s what I saw and bought at Goodwill Outlet. It looks good, too! ?✍️👀

THE coming froze. Autumn decay to more winter of our discontent? I hope not. The yard gives way to falling leaves, zip line’s frolic mutes, yellowjackets have left, and I plucked the last flowers of summertime color. I try to capture nature’s color on my art studies and a few canvasses and sketchbooks. Hoping these will light the dark, uncloud the haze. But then, drama! The Bee Gees and the babedawgs and koolcat always come to the rescue! ✍️👀✍️

WELL-meaning and dear friends ask, am I okay? Am I sad? Well, I am no superdude. I got drama as well. I drink a glass of wine and a shot of Jim Beam at night. Or two PBRs. My daily consumption limit. Then there’s sports TV, Netflix et al, lovable babedawgs and a koolcat. But my drama stays. No need to share TMIs. Boring. In Zimbabwe, vaccines aren’t so available. In Haiti right now? Google it! In Afghanistan, they hope for light amidst the dark. At least war is over. My personal drama? What drama? Wanna talk about paella? 

MY slumbertime dreams are episodes of relentless activity. Almost the reverse of my waking-hours reality of relative inertia. My dreams are mostly interfaces of my past life in the Philippines when mom was still alive and America, pre-Covid. Life in color albeit in usual dreamscape incoherence. So when I open my eyes finally, I feel mentally tired yet physically motivated. My life’s drama stays but a new set of energy ensues. For more written words, more colors on canvas. More healing. ?✍️👀

MOST of the time, I am already awake hours before I climb out of bed. Somehow, that ritual adapts with the dogs’ “morning” schedule, LOL! I usually spend an hour or two fiddling about and reading through my Homepage. I’d like to know what others are thinking. This morning, I also spent time on the front porch, sketching. Hips and breasts. ?✍️👀

Facebook Posts of Years Ago.

Posted years ago, almost ten years ago? 

FACEBOOK is fun as long as you don't take it seriously. 

       Try these samples: Trump has lots of dandruff, that's not good for a president. I just voted, look at my face. I saw this lady on Sam Edelman boots that looked like wading boots. My mom is a nasty little rightwinger bitch! You know that I just read Hillary emailed Michelle this awful squirrel casserole recipe? Assange just hacked my ex-husband—Julian is my hero! By the way, I will be cooking Beef Bourguignon tonight but I guess, uh, no. My deadbeat boyfriend couldn't even hold it for freakin' three minutes! I think I will break up with him tonight. Bernie would have waived my parking tickets. Look at my new socks—recycled from spring rolls wrappers. President Kirk is a moron! 

       These are mostly posted by peeps who are as old or older than I am. And yes, all end with “Namaste to y`all!”

WHAT's good thing after an election? Time to bring out the notepad and list down what have been promised. Time to REALLY figure it out if those make sense--and then begin the true duty or responsibility of a citizen. Expectation check. Time for deliveries. Since the truth is, whether you voted for Trump or Hillary or still meditating a Bernie mantra--you are going to pay the rent this month, swipe a debit card for gasoline, and provide yourself and family health insurance. Let Life resume! Taco, please!

AFTER the primaries, it seemed very clear that whoever the Republican Party's bet was, it is still very likely that that candidate will beat a Democratic Party rival. Why? The problem isn't the GOP. The problem is the Democrats' mass base--it is already cracked. In the same way that rank `n file Conservatives are angry with President Obama's administration, a huge chunk of the other side (mostly Bernie Sanders followers) also feel betrayed by the outgoing president's two-terms. But then the Right remained tight—not exactly the hierarchy per se, but their voting bailiwicks are formidable—and even spread through some states that were first thought as majority Dems. 

       Meantime, the GOP in Congress built a wall against Obama's signature bills in re immigration reform and gun control et al.  Those stayed as is Bush's time. Also, within the Dems, Sanders should have acted as a party stalwart and not a so-called people liberator. Instead of rallying his supporters toward Clinton's side to ensure the defeat of Trump, he distanced himself. Trump's victory of margin isn't a landside, it was close. Which means, if Bern people voted for Hillary and not the 3rd option—or they didn't boycott the election, the Democratic bet would have a better chance of winning. 

       At this point, the Democratic Party needs a lot of regrouping and rethinking—on how to at least narrow the gap or vacuum in their house and backyard. Meantime, inhale exhale—and enjoy some tacos.

TRUMP is what he is. Hillary is what she is. Bernie is what he is. Obama is what he is. Frank Underwood is what he is. These are individuals with their respective "I am what I am" that stays in them--that is why they ran as President of what is supposedly the strongest nation in the world. We can't just change them no matter how we namecall or judge them. 

       But what must change is people's attitude and behavior on election time. The only way to winning is via a united front. And a united front makes a strong nation--irrelevant who sits as President. A united front installs a leader--a united front brings down a leader. However, a divided throng only brings forth a bad Taco. That is the truth. ✍🙃😉

When The Madman Speaks his Mind...

INTERVIEWED by Michael James for Trick with a Knife, "magazine-blog on artistic sphere” (April 2010)
http://trickwithaknife.com/?p=510

[1] I know you travel much and perform voraciously-- is this more important/equally important to the books and poems poets publish? Can you 'do more' this way'?

First of all, I grew up—or started writing poetry—around a culture that has a rich, flowing oral tradition. Poetry was performed or delivered right in the village right here right now. Even up to now, graphic novels (“komiks-magasin”), fiesta pageantry, and formulaic/melodramatic movies are the main entertainment escape route of most people in Philippine countrysides…
In the context of publishing, we know it’s a ruthless jungle out there. Getting published these days is tough. But why do desire to get published, anyway? Money, fame? These are acceptable pursuits, but as I grow older, I tend to gravitate back to my roots: Why do I write? I just want to reach out, share my story, make people happy even for few hours at time. I’d rather be in front of people—very intimate, very personal—than have my books rot in a Barnes & Noble shelf. That feeds the ego, but then… should I stop writing/reading just because I am not published? No. I love this (performing) gig and I will do this gig till I die.

[2] You're from the Philippines and write for THE PHILIPPINE NEWS-- do you find your country under represented on the global scene?

I used to write for Philippines News, the oldest Filipino-American newspaper in mainland US, and distributed nationwide and in Canada… I handled the largest bureau, the Southern California bureau where majority of the 4.5 million Filipinos in the US work and live. I did my best… The Philippines should be amply represented (in the US or the global community), could be. But most Filipino publishers in the US don’t see it that way… Before Philippine News, I edited another Fil-Am paper in New York City, and then I came out with my own, The Independent. You must ask me, why am I in a predominantly white community in North Carolina and opted to publish (and mingle) here. Says a lot, indeed. Filipino journalism is back home in the Philippines… that’s where flesh and blood happen, not here. Filipino publishers here have different motives…

[3] How do we integrate? I don't mean hybridization, where we lose culture and homogenize. I mean more like your TRAVELING BONFIRES FOR PEACE project --- how do we unite under choiceful peace without yielding to a totalitarian superpower?

We just’ve to break barriers and bridge bridges. We just have to get out of our comfort zones and hang out with all ethnicities out there. The Traveling Bonfires is trying to serve that quixotix vision-mission… I know it’s hard. But the fun that comes with sharing stuff and things supercede the difficulties. I am rockin’ and I don’t think I’ll ever tire mixing myself up with other cultures… We can’t hybrid or homogenize, but we can hang out and chill. I don’t want to dream like it’s nirvana, I want to dream and enjoy little bits of reality, you know…

[4] There's this statistical idea that I recently encountered in ADBUSTERS, talking about how computerized interaction has increased depression. That your time spent interfacing with this electrical/digital conduit leaves you way more vulnerable to depressive states. And yet this medium is essential for communication with "those unseen". And since the internet, a large aspect of computerized interface, is by nature a literature rich environment. We as artists use it to spread our message... still, there is a large portion of the world without internet access. There is no true question here, but I'd like to hear your reaction to this information.....

Well, moderate. Moderation is the key… I am not addicted to anything so I think I am fine… I will be more depressed if I don’t go online. This is my “office” (I work online to feed myself) and this is where I connect with family (who are thousands of miles away). I can’t give this up… but I can give up a PBR or strawberry cake or sex anytime, man… Besides, I don’t have a (cultural) translation to depression. But I know what sadness is, it’s a human truth. Human truths happen and our emotional/mental chemistry as human beings don’t say, we are “depressed” all our lives.

[5] I remember from our time performing and hanging out, you love to cook and eat. What is your favorite food to make?

Actually, I eat anything… Back in the islands, we eat all of a chicken anatomy. I cook based on what my friends want me to cook. I have been to many cultures and savored food and spices and herbs and all kinds of ingredients—that I am confident I can whip out a cool dish anytime. I can make the “Bizarre Foods” dude a run for his money.

[6] They say 95 percent of Serotonin is in the stomach, so how much do you think hunger informs creativity as a pleasurable act?

I don’t know… When I write or do some creative act, I just do it. I know what hunger is but it didn’t stop me from creating.

[7] Here's a cheesy question, but I'll still ask: Can art save? Do you find TRAVELING BONFIRES changing things through the fact you are taking initiative to spread the message, the concept itself, or is it the art that induces change?

Yes, I do. I believe art liberates and frees the spirit; art instigates and fosters change. Art is powerful. Artists could be a gargantuan force as a movement… The one giant arch-enemy that deters this is profit, big business. Independent art—I mean, those devoid of corporate encroachment—could rise up and be one and fight the giant machine, you know what I’m saying? We artists just have to believe that we can overcome.

[8] Where you're not writing or reading poetry, what types of literature seem to invigorate your mind?

I like work that is written instinctively and randomly. I like literature that doesn’t abide with physical form… because literature and art are human expressions. You don’t scream out of anger, cry out of sorrow, or laugh out of joy, and say, “This is the way to do it properly…”

[9] What about life, period, catches your attention?

Fun, fun is cool… I like to be smiling and laughing as I breathe my last breath of life.

[10] You've pioneered your own litmag/news pub THE WANDERER--- how is this a different way of sending out a message than your personal writing?

The Traveling Bonfires and all the publications and projects that I conceived, I hope—should not reflect the way I am as an individual. There are stuff and things that I want to pursue in life that I find it hard to pursue because my personal demons get in the way… My personal writings or work is me, the private me. But my community projects aren’t necessarily me. I published another paper in Asheville called “Blue Sky Asheville” where minds and thoughts from all sorts of spiritual/religious/cultural mores met. Just like The Bonfires—I like it that there are no doors, no windows, it’s all open… come one, come all.

--Pasckie Pascua
Asheville, North Carolina

FOUR NIGHTS and FOUR DAYS in TRYON

Literary open stage at Upstairs Artspace, walk to Rogers Park, mung beans soup and a standup comic candle, and rainy nights of warm disquiet…

LEAVING TRYON tonight…
Tryon—a quaint little town 45 miles south of Asheville and almost the same distance to the batcave—is the birthplace of my revered blues sky and soul river diva, Nina Simone. Four nights and four days… punctuated by a “quietly” endearing Friday evening at Upstairs Artspace (“contemporary art gallery and arts education center”) where I read and shared a few poems to the “literary open stage”—on invite from artist-friend Bonnie Joy Bardos.
I will be back here in a week’s time…
I was able to whip out less than 400 words (part of my 2,000 words+/a day goal) in all of four nights/four days, which is pretty sparse—but that’s not the real deal. The deal is, right at this moment, I feel like I could seduce and inspire my harman/kardon Toshiba laptop to churn out 10,000+ words tonight, to the aftermidnight blue, and till the sun wakes up. The hot juices are flowing to a river of sweet wine—I just’ve to seize these moments on paper (or comp screen) before I jump off a waterfall, laughing…
Poetry…
So before I get “personal,” which I should not—I say: “Love good, live good, and eat only good food!” See you later, superhomeys!

--Pasckie The Dude
5:23 PM. 16 Aug 2010
Tryon NC