I recently had a couple of articles published to the Advanced Leisure website. It's run by a couple friends of mine. It's a cool site, in its infancy. I'll include below links to the two pieces I have written for the site, so far. Both are bird-related, and one has sketches of herons by both me and my wife.
Gray Heron
https://www.advancedleisure.com/lifestyleanddesignarticles/grayheron
A Tidbit on Pipits
https://www.advancedleisure.com/lifestyleanddesignarticles/pipits
This is the fourth and final installment of my trip to Tijuana in 2023 with members of Burlingame Presbyterian Church. In this installment, we finish the house for Ivan and Enalit. The black widow meets an untimely death. I finally visit the mysterious Amor Store. And Peter burns his cherished pants...
Follow this link for the post...
We go out and build houses for families, the same house every time. You meet the family but who knows what happens when the house is done and you go back home. We get the family's bio and we are excited to talk about the family and the work we do; how much good our work is doing the family. No one asks me to do this, of course.
We're all in tents, more or less the same abode. There are daily water limits. Supposedly. There's a sign referring to a limit, but I've never seen it enforced. So much happens just by way of suggestion. If anything unusual occurs, it's a big deal. Like the guitar-playing security guard. Or the security guards in general. They don't seem like the most formidable security force. There is a fence around the Amor campground, but it's not an imposing obstacle. It's short; it sags; it could easily be sidled over. But no one ever tries to get in; and no one ever tries to get out because who would do that, it's not done.
We rent our vans from a place called Car Rental Help Center. Quintessential post-modern genericism. I'm dreading going back to that place, even now. We turn our camp keys in when we leave and then we head back across the border. And once we get back to San Diego we are "home." It's like we were never even gone.
We got the pad done today. We call it "the pad" but it's really the house's concrete foundation, a rectangle of cement, water, sand, and gravel measuring eleven by twenty-two feet. And we constructed all of the wall sections, seven of them in all.
The family for whom we are building the house is really friendly. And happy. They are Ivan (age 26) and Enalit (24) and their two children, Keila (7) and Matias (3) . Ivan has a factory job in Tijuana making $85/week, so he wasn't around until later in the day but when he got there we were pretty close to being finished with the pad. He and his wife were standing at the foot of it taking photos. They moved to Tijuana from Chiapas (southern Mexico) in 2022...
This is part two of my 2023 Tijuana trip blog...
The author describes his experiences at Lambert Airport in St. Louis, his flight to San Diego, and his initial impressions of the city. He vividly details his observations of the people and environment at Ocean Beach, recounting encounters with surfers, bums, and musicians. The narrative then shifts to the author's preparations for a camp venture in Tijuana, concluding with reflections on border crossing and the group's arrival at camp...
Click here for the first installment of my Tijuana 2023 Travelogue...
Somewhere in the
lamp-lit dark of
this hospital parking lot
aye, yes, the hospital I was
born at, a killdeer
beseeches the night.
It’s got a nest to protect
a shallow scrape, it’ll
break a wing if it must.
Ambulances come & go.
For a moment, leaf smoke wafts
while LEDs burn bright
and it’s quiet, even peaceful.
The beer helps, engines idle.
A wind sock lit in orange
dangles lazily on the
hospital roof in a
mild November breeze.
The night shift leaving in threes
makes me nostalgic for exit.
Leaves litter the grass below a
healthy-looking ash.
The ash gleams leafless
in this blue-white
hospital parking lot light.
The first time I was here I
arrived safe in my mother’s belly.
Dad had just finished mowing the grass.
Now I remember. Even when I can see forward
that forward is never enough.
I awake at two-something in a
start. Is that Mom, coming out?
A tall woman in boots, headed this way,
unmistakable, alone. Dad
on a bed somewhere inside. I rifle through
my pockets in search of keys;
she is only getting closer. I find
them under me, hit the button,
clamber out of the back seat to greet her and
take her away along empty streets
to the place we all called home.
Nearly two years after I went to see my friend Phil in Arkansas, I have finally typed up my account of the trip. He was in home hospice in Russellville, accompanied by his father. Phil passed away about a month after I was there.
1
When a place changes your life you need to sing about it. And you ought to. You can’t allow anyone, anything, or any other place to get in your way.
2
Most of my packing is done. I’ll be leaving headquarters and heading out to the frontier. I’ve had to pack a little earlier than expected because someone else will be moving into my room here first thing tomorrow.
I still need to roll up my air mat, do some grocery shopping, pack the cooler, slice up some cheese, make a couple bags of beans ‘n’ rice, fill the big water container, fill the solar shower, and make detailed records bit-by-bit as the hour of departure draws more near.
3
Impeachment coverage on public radio. Highway 100 headed out of town, headed to the frontier. Look out Mr. President, look out cedars. Missouri ground white with snow, the sun not strong enough to melt it...
In 1986 my dad’s favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, lost the World Series in heartbreaking fashion to the New York Mets. The Red Sox had twice led the Mets late in Game Six, repeatedly coming within one strike of winning the game and thereby the Series. But bad relief pitching and an infamous miscue by the Boston first baseman allowed New York to prevail in extra innings.
I was seven years old so I don’t remember the game well, but I do remember my dad moving from one room of the house to another, depending on how the game was going, believing superstitiously that how and where he watched the game could affect the outcome.
The next spring my mom bought me some clothes from an erstwhile store called Venture. Or it could have been Glik’s. What I remember is that among those clothes was an orange t-shirt that I really liked. The Mets wore uniforms with orange trim and their logo is orange on blue. The t-shirt disappeared. I asked my mom what happened to it. Apparently my dad had banned the t-shirt on the basis of orange being a “gang color” but I suspect that the shirt reminded him of the Mets.
~
You can’t make your bed while you’re on it. That’s what my mom would say to me as I tried to straighten the covers atop my bunk bed, the higher of two bunks in the bedroom I shared with my younger brother. At the end of the bunk was a window that looked out over our driveway, toward the house next door where Domino the German Shepherd lived, along with the couple who owned the house. I could lie prone on the end of my bunk and look out the window, high above our driveway.
Even though my bedroom was on the first floor it felt like a second-floor view because our driveway sloped down as it ran from the street to the back of our house. On our side of the driveway was a lovely terraced rock garden that my mom looked after. On the other side of the driveway was a steeply slanted hedge of unruly ivy and honeysuckle that my dad sometimes clipped. The valley-like feel of the driveway put our yard at a remove from our neighbors’ yard even though they weren’t but twenty feet apart...
I have a poem appearing today in the summer issue of disquieting muses quarterly, aka DMQ Review. You can read my poem and the other prose poems appearing in the issue by clicking on this link:
https://www.dmqreview.com/sum23toc
The poem is called "They Were Monarchs." I wrote it a few years ago. I am grateful to the editors at DMQ Review for giving a voice to my work.
The Writing of John B. Randall 