Gabriela posted my recent poem and song Manifestations of Morning’s Sounds on MasticadoresUsa // Editora: Gabriela Marie Milton.
Thank you, Gabriela!
Manifestations of Morning’s Sounds on MasticadoresUsa
Gabriela posted my recent poem and song Manifestations of Morning’s Sounds on MasticadoresUsa // Editora: Gabriela Marie Milton.
Thank you, Gabriela!
Off Center & Not Even 
My pleasure Timothy. Excellent work 👏👏👏
I love your music and poetry on Masticadores! It’s fabulous!
Thanks, Holly. I appreciate you.
How sweet is that precious creature. So sweet! Nicely done at Timothy.
Thanks, Holly.
It’s really a beautiful post , every section!
How wonderful is that?
It’s weirdly wonderful. Most of the time I note that sounds and go one about my business. That morning there seemed to be a perfect storm of noises, so I recorded them.
It’s a gift to be able to stop and really listen or see or whatever… and to actually do something with it? A whole ‘nother level!
As much as I like our sunshiney clear days, cloudless sunsets like the last two nights are boring.
I could not agree more!
Congratulations, Tim. I loved both poem and song. I felt as if I was right there with you, seeing and hearing it all.
Thanks, KT. You probably remember them critter sounds from growing up in the sticks.
Yes, I surely do. Lol
Take it from the person who was once known as Dances with Goats on Tilios, that was brill.
You were a goat dancer. How much fun is that? I used to fight with the billy goats when I we a kid. They could be awfully mean and aggressive. Thanks, Shey.
I was never quite a goat dancer… That was a somewhat entertaining incident shall we say.
You earned a great name from it.
It’s one of these small places, where names spread like wildfire …..
We are heading for the hills today But hey, gimme time and I may tell you this story yet … as in tomorrow.
I would love to hear it. Have fun in them thar hills.
Well Timothy, we never got further than round the corner when we had a puncture. There you go BUT ..looking on the bright side..??? At least it never happened in the middle of nowhere or we would be there yet x
Funny you mention a puncture. I got one of those on Wednesday when I ran out to the Apple Store to pick up a new computer. It was especially hell getting a flat in a sports car. No spare, only a pump. Do you think I could find the cigarette lighter to plug the pump into in my sports car so I could pump up my tire? No!
I limped to the CarMax which is two doors down from the office and they filled the tire for me. I drove to Mazda. Do you think the folks at Mazda could find the cigarette lighter on my sports car? Five Mazda mechanics were searching high and low. Finally one looked it up and found it’s way up under the dashboard on the passenger side of the car where you can’t see it without a powerful flashlight. Even a tall guy like me with long arms can barely reach it. I suppose if you are small you can crawl under the dash and reach it. Now I know.
The puncture was a sidewall wound, so, of course, I needed a new tire. Did they have a tire? No! It’s a special sports car size tire, and special order. I thought “Oh! No!” it’s going to take forever!” It took Porshe three weeks to get a tire for my boss’ Taycan. It turned out they got it in two days, so I got the new tire put on it today.
When I dropped the car off at the dealer this morning, the young woman who gets the cars ready to go into the garage said: “I love these cars! I’ve had all the Miatas but this model!” I asked her about them, since she didn’t look to be over 25 and the Miata debuted in 1989. She named all the Miata models and then she showed me a photo of her Mazda Speed 3 which is the same color as Laurie’s Mazda Speed 3. I don’t know her name, but obviously she’s Mazda Miata Mary.
She said Miatas are so much fun to drive. I said: “Yes they are! Until you get a flat!”
God’s sake Timothy. Life is one hell of a complicated at times. We have had a lot of trouble with the front passenger tyre and I think it is cos we bump up the kerb to get parked. We are right at the bit where the single track street widens. It is very hard to park in the space otherwise but we have got planning in for a car bay so. I reckon it is the coming down off the kerb that does , cos the going up, is low cos a neighbour has a driveway there. Anyway chuck in the pressure sense. This is the second time it has needed to be replaced. And the car is not that old. This could have been worse in that if we had been up at Loch Lee without a phone signal and no way of changing that tyre. The garage is generally really fast but yesterday they had a queue. So my walk was the one home from the garage after we passed the cut off point re getting to Loch Lee etc. This involved crossing a local spaghetti junction, where the signals take forever it is one thing waiting there like in normal gear but in full hill gear… (Just as it is another thing going into the wilds in normal gear ) But ken whit??? Plainly drivers thinking she must be on a ound Scotland hike, all braked!! Seriously get you the goat story later xxxx
Car issues never end. It sounds like you got a walk instead of a hike. But as you said it happened before you were out of cell range.
yeah. I know we go on about what about the old days with no cells. Well yeah but cars came with jacks and you could remove a wheel yourself. Not know they way they are put on. Inf act we were but one of a queue ranting re that yesterday. Okay…so the goat story. This involves a loo plug, some loungers and who was probably the island gangster. So we have this fancy room up the hillside on the cliffs in a place probably owned by the island gangster. And at night the goats, that run wild there would leap onto the terrace plainly looking for the party and when they didn’t get one, they would spend the night battering the shutters. So seeing this pile of broken loungers at the far end of the terrace, I thought it would be a fab idea to make asort of barricade. I can see now that given these were mountain goats, as ideas went, it was not one of my better ones. So one day the the gangster’s handyman appears round the side of the apartment to take away the loungers cos they are broken. So In an attempt to be sociable and explain what they are doing stacked up the wall like that, making them no end of difficult to get down, I attempt to explain. But despite having a little Greek –bear in mind there was very little English spoken in the places we sought out to stay in– the word for goat went clean out my head, so I thought instead I will do a little bit of clopping on the stone terrace in my fancy sandals and stimulate horns on my head. And you know this seemed to do the trick, cos the guy went ‘Ah!! Goatos?’ and he did the horns too and I was that happy at being understood I was still going ‘Goatos,’ when he took the loungers away. Okay so where does the loo plug come in? Well see the reason the Mr wasn’t there was that he’d pushed the loo button top earlier and cos he had suntan lotion all over him, it stuck to his fingers and he dropped it down the loo, where it was flushed away. He then said to me, ‘ it is the sort of thing you do all the time,’ when I asked him how he could have done that. So I said ‘ With all due respect I have never flushed a toilet plug down a toilet especially not in Greece where the plumbing is awful so you better go down the hill and explain to Mr Ilias, how you have wrecked his plumbing, cos I sire ain’t.’ And that was where he was. Anyway he comes back in one piece and about an hour later, there is a knock at the door and it is the handyman back who says to the Mr, ‘Here is the key for the next door apartment, the part is on order from Rhodes and will be here on the Ferry in two days time.’ in perfect English. So that night as we stroll past the little eateries, every waiter who was standing at every eatery was standing at the door, doing little goat dances. The island rep told me Dances with Goats is what they were calling me. And they still were the following year.
Don’t you hate it when people feign not understanding or speaking English? That’s a great story. Have you worked it into any of your novels? The loo plug is another story. At least you got access to another loo.
On taking off wheels, I was going to take off the wheel with the bad tire and take it to the dealer so I didn’t have to pump it up and drive on it. Do you think I could loosen the lug nuts? Hell no! I put a breaker bar and all 200 pounds of myself on that bar and the nuts didn’t budge. I don’t have a pneumatic impact wrench, so I had to pump up the tire and drive the car in to the dealer for them to replace the tire. Even if I had a spare, I would never be able to change the tire myself because the nutty mechanics drive the lug nuts on so tight that a bionic man would not be strong enough to lossen them.
That is the thing these days re wheel nuts. In the old days..hell you got the jack out the boot, you jacked the car, your loosened the wheel nuts, you fitted the spare and you got to the garage asap. The first time we realised this could not be done any more was like in the mid 199o’s, where, blocking the Tay Bridge access, we shoved the new car onto the verge and then looked complete bozos. We had never heard of the fancy hydraulic wrench that was needed to remove the damned wheel. Re the katzikas?? The goats. As we say here, the guy was having a laugh. He kind of looked over ‘sheepishly’ …couldn’t do it goatishly after all, as he spoke. The funny thing was, we got the keys to a studio room that we had booked a few years before that for our anniversary. At the last, the day before we set off, cos we were the travel company’s longest clients they phoned to say the people having the actual best rooms on the island couldn’t go and would we like that open plan apartment at no extra cost… I naturally said yes. So yeah, funny that too,. (BTo… it was not the first time we got keys to somewhere else in Greece, the first year we went to the back end of beyond with two young kids, the well pump all broke–yes that was how remote that one was– and they gave us keys to a place quite a bit away. I have to tell you, we broke the water supply there too… ) My God, we had some times on these wee islands looking back x
It used to be we could do a lot of work on cars ourselves that we can’t consider doing in the least these days. Your wee island adventures are precious memories. So much fun. Thank you for sharing them.
Aw, these were wonderful times truly, so many precious memories. There were the most epic journeys to get to them too. Ones where you held to your bairn and grabbed the suitcase from the bottom of the pile in the 60 seconds you got tae get aff the hydrofoil, one where the coca cola cabinet rolled up and down the huge sitting area in this leaky old tub and this party of Danish travellers got off at Halki, I think it was and utterly refused at 11 at night, after 5 hours of this plow on through the mounting waves, to get back onboard. Oh yeah, great times.
Cars? Well my dad could repair anything but once they got ‘computerised’ … that was it.
WHO’S THAT CUUUTIEE?! 😍😍😍
Hi Sam. That’s the neighbor’s goatlet. It was 26 hours old when I took that pic. You can see more of her at https://wp.me/p1yQyy-6EZ.
26 HOURSSS 😍😍
I have not seen it in a while, but I hear it and the others going bah bah bah every day.
That’s wonderful, Tim!!!! You know I loved this …and that goat too! 😉
Thanks, Marina.
It was a magnificent morning poem. I even listened again 👏👏👏🌷 My family knows your voice now.. 💖
I hope you family survived?
HAHAHa 🤣. They love you. They say “oh is that your friend Tim” and the cats and Hunter start playing lol
Happy to hear that.
👏👏👏👏
What a cute picture.
Thanks, Roberta.
Cute kid.
Thanks, Teri.
I must have forgotten to do a comment on your site. Your poem was absolutely amazing Tim. I enjoyed it so much. I think you are an excellent poet. BRAVO my friend. Love Joni
Thanks, Joni. I did not post it before Gabriela. I only posted it as a pass through to her site.
I like this. I feel like many people talk about nature as though it is so quiet and peaceful, but that wildlife is awfully loud sometimes, especially when you want to sleep! The instrumentals and incorporation of the animal sounds were very good
Thanks, JYP. Actually, I have visted friends in town and it was much quieter. We have a lot of noise both manmade and natural in the country.
It’s different kinds of noise. I lived right by a train track once, which was annoying. But then I have also been camping before and awake at 3 or 4 AM because the insects were so loud.
The train tracks are about a mile due east of us. When the temperature inversion is low, the trains sound like they are on the ditch bank a few hundred feet from us. The casino about 5 miles east of us has an amphitheater. When the inversion is low, I can hear the concerts more clearly than the people in the amphitheater. We’ve sat out on the deck and enjoyed some pretty big name bands. ZZ Top and Cheryl crow came through really loud and clear. People I know who attended the concerts said they were so loud they could hardly make sense of the sound.
Free concerts are a nice perk!
Went over for a view! Sweet piece, Tim!
Thanks, Resa. I appreciate that.