• mrinvisibleman
      • hello mr invisibleman
      • Username: mrinvisibleman
      • In response to: "What do you do on the side?" On the side I raise three kids & try to keep their habitat clean. I chauffeur, tutor, landscape & occasionally take a vacation. Or medication... whichever.
  • mrinvisibleman's latest answers
    • I'll never learn...........

      • Rainy night on Church St.

        I shouldn't be let out alone at night,

        it's never a good idea.
        Alone, dangerous, susceptible,
        a little crazy....

        I shouldn't be alone at night.

        I crave it;
        the dark,
        the quiet,
        the silence,
        all while my own noise fills the space
        that no one wants to know anymore.

        I shouldn't be allowed to have the night,
        for my thoughts to run awry.

        ... I just shouldn't be allowed.....

      • answered by mrinvisibleman on 09/16/2010
        0 favorites
        0 comments
    • The Heebie Jeebie Dance

      • I think it was 2003 when the tent caterpillars came.
        They pitched many a mass campground
        among my trees & shrubs that year.
        I noticed them first on the Elder tree,
        still young & spindly at the time,
        but no longer a sapling.
        It's lowest branches were above my head by then.

        I forget the reason I came down the deck stairs
        & walked across the grass to the fence line.
        (it was true grass then. It's all moss & weeds now.)
        My terrible memory only recalls my stopping beneath the elder.
        I looked up & reached for one of those low branches,
        only inches from my face, really.

        Inches away & reaching for branches
        covered in swathy bundles of webby nests,
        squirming on the inside & about to burst
        with hundreds of spiky haired, sticky caterpillars
        on a starving rampage for food.

        My heart races just writing about it!

        When I was about 4 or 5 I was underneath such a tree,
        just after the camperbugs broke free of their tents.
        They dropped from the trees with more weight than I expected.
        I could hear the thunk when they hit the ground.
        I felt the solid tap when they dropped on me,
        like bits of hail as a storm is just beginning.

        Of course I looked up, too,
        saw the squirming masses covering the branches,
        swarming the tree everywhere I could see.
        They climbed back up the trunk from the ground
        where they twisted & bumped themselves around
        until they could gain footing for the trek through the grass.
        My horrible imagination tells me I was barefoot, too,
        but that's probably not so.

        That's when I did my first memorable Heebie Jeebie Dance.
        As the infestation tried to crawl up my legs,
        stuck to my shirt, wiggled & tangled in my hair
        I began screaming hysterically & running in a panic,
        slapping myself everywhere I could reach,
        & peed my pants before I stopped crying an hour later.

        I'm happy to say at the age of 30 something
        I refrained from peeing my pants beneath the Elder.
        Nor did I slap bruises onto myself,
        but I did run & scream like a teenage girl.

        I called a friend, paid him to strip the Elder
        of it's infestation & burn it to ashes
        like my dad did when I was a kid,
        while I watched from the house w/ my siblings,
        like witnesses to the execution.

      • answered by mrinvisibleman on 07/31/2010
        0 favorites
        0 comments
    • Memories Forward

      • Japanese Green Maple

        I remember the first time I saw the Elder Tree,
        called so because of its potential for greatness
        in what will be my elder years.
        Also because I don't know what kind of tree it really is.

        It stood just a foot high or so, having grown wild
        on my back fence line when all was wild back there.
        It was weak in the trunk but rooted well,
        like every good sapling should be.
        To see what it would look like as a big tree,
        I let it grow, tended it, took a liking to it.

        Seasons later it provided a bit of shade,
        and allowed me to trim the branches
        so I could walk beneath it w/ ease.

        Years later, I see its trunk is fat & solid,
        twisting its branches outward & upward
        forming a stairway of sorts to its upper canopy
        just begging for young boys to explore.

        I'm happy to say they do,
        & that my tree welcomes them into its fold,
        supporting them & giving what they desire...
        A branch to hang from, one to do flip tricks on,
        others to lean against & camouflage w/ for wargames,
        a veil a leaves for spying,
        and a broad width of shade across the yard
        on the hottest of summer days.

        In years to come, those same branches
        will fatten enough to support a swing,
        either for grandkids or my elderly self to rest upon.
        They'll hold a tree house worthy of the Robinsons, I hope.
        It's grand height will most definitely shade my kitchen,
        currently a hell pocket of Satan's heat when a burning sun shines.
        I'll need that in my old age.

        I stood beneath the Elder Tree today,
        one hand upon a hefty branch at shoulder height.
        For a moment I thought vertigo had set upon me
        as I felt a sway & wondered why the pasture tilted.
        Then I thought, it's like it's breathing....
        (sometimes I have freaky thoughts in nature settings.
        The Happening is a message & I listen)

        Of course, it wasn't breathing at all.
        The wind gusts pretty good
        through the back stretch of my yard,
        swirling in all directions sometimes.
        I'm in a dell, I suppose,
        the land rising on 3 sides,
        spilling into a pasture on the 4th.
        I felt the wind pushing the still young branches
        & of course, the thick weight of the tree pushing back.
        That's all.
        (Or is that how the tree breathes?)

        This tree likes me, I thought.

        I had an unhappy tree in the front
        until earlier this year.
        It struck out in angry ways each season
        as I tried to help its patch of land.
        It made me bleed, tore my clothes,
        stole my hat, broke my glasses,
        & nearly knocked me unconscious more than once.
        All that before it shit plums on the grass for 3 months.

        I had it put out of its misery in February.
        Already the scape feels more solid under my feet,
        and I'm less likely to come off the front hill swearing.
        Or bleeding.

        I've plans to give a tree back,
        because the ground so obviously wants one.
        It keeps trying to seed pines & madrona,
        both prolific already in the surrounding acreage.
        I can't live in a forest though.
        I at least need a clearing within it for my house.
        So I'll give the front hill a maple this fall for a centerpiece.
        Something green & Japanese, lacy leaved & fine.
        Japanese maples like me, too.

        ...And in my decorated forest clearing
        perhaps I'll sit in the gazebo & finish my memoirs.

      • answered by mrinvisibleman on 07/25/2010
        1 favorite
        0 comments
    • Fighting Mr. Peeves

      • Long-hair plume grass

        "I hate it when you do that."
        "Do what?"
        "Procrastinate."
        "How do you know I'm procrastinating? Maybe I'm thinking."
        "You're not thinking. You're daydreaming."
        "I thought you said I was procrastinating."
        "In your mind? Same thing."
        "Jerk ............. What do you want me to do instead?"
        "Fix the yard."
        "Well, I hate it when you do that."
        "What? What do I do?"
        "Work like an insane man & expect me to keep up."
        "You don't have to keep up, just... stop staring."
        "I don't know how."
        "What do you mean?"
        "I don't know how to stop staring. I'd have to stop thinking.
        Oh, wait! I'm not thinking. I'm procrastinating."
        "Daydreaming."
        "Whatever."
        "Maybe if you moved while you were 'thinking,'
        or focused on the task at hand, or.... .. what?"
        "You are the worst teacher I've ever had."
        "What?!"
        "You heard me."
        "How can you say that?"
        "Because you don't teach me, you just tell me what to do.
        You tell me how I've done it wrong,
        how much better you'd be if you did it yourself."
        "I don't do that."
        "Then where does that feeling come from?
        That feeling that I'm too backward to ever succeed in your eyes."
        "... not my eyes. ... That's not me you're angry with."
        "......I know. ...... It's just so hard to tell the difference sometimes."
        ............. "I know."

        "You know what my real peeve about all this is?"
        "What?"
        "That I've no idea if I'm arguing with you, myself,
        or some other figment that just lies to me.
        The one thing I know, that never changes,
        is that the yard looks like crap until I work like an insane man,
        but I don't expect anyone to keep up with me.
        You know that, right?"

        ........... (stare).................





      • answered by mrinvisibleman on 07/22/2010
        0 favorites
        0 comments
    • Overheard at My Own Funeral

      • Funerals don't really happen in my family. We have wakes, gatherings at someone's house that last for hours, full of conversation, pictures, stories.... much preferred over memorials in an awkward funeral homes, or the out & out funerals w/ caskets.

        So my funeral would definitely be a wake, probably @ my house, in which case......


        Fly Swatter

        If I were a fly on the wall it would probably be on the outside of the house, on the deck most likely. I'm pretty sure someone would get the green fly swatter from the kitchen & give me chase. Before I need a second funeral as a fly, I think people would say, "... Doesn't this yard looks fabulous?"

      • answered by mrinvisibleman on 07/16/2010
        0 favorites
        0 comments

  • See all of mrinvisibleman's answers