Author: johnbrandall

John Randall is a writer living in Missouri. His interests include camping, running, walking, cutting and burning wood, messing around with magnets, foraging, and listening to podcasts, many of them about baseball.

I Don’t Know What It Is About A Field

~ johnbrandall

In eastern Butler County the fields opened up, took on the wispy gold of uncut hay. Not long after that hills appeared. I could see the outcome of geological events, the hint of a rock facade where the road cut through. But the grass didn't mind the hills and it ran long and uncut up and down the slopes still. A valley appeared, a vantage, a vista. I thought of some of that scene from Dances With Wolves where they creep up to a crest and look down to see a herd of buffalo grazing in peace.

It would've been a good place to stop but I was going 75 and I was only an hour into the drive. It's a spot to think about, for another. A spot worth reaching over into the glove compartment and pulling out this notebook for, an emergency notebook, never been written in before, the two notebooks I did bring secure in my bag.

I'm east of Wichita, KS on U.S. Highway 54, where Butler County ends and Greenwood County begins. Hay, cow ponds, the cattle so dark against the golden light of the field, dark against the blue of the sky, against the shapely hills.

FDR had some sort of windbreak tree-planting program. A shelterbelt. I never gave much thought to windbreaks, to trees as a line against the wind. This tree I keep seeing, that is so prevalent, must have been one of the trees of choice for the shelterbelt planting. It's often got a lopsided crown and most of the time its trunk splits into two not far from the ground, a couple of feet, maybe less. This tree, whatever it is, is not at Farm. It's a Dust Bowl thing. Kansas, Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, northeastern New Mexico.


Continue with Part One of this travelogue...

2019, Year Of…

~ johnbrandall

Year of the dumpster, beached on the street like a malevolent whale.  Year of the winking stop sign, of constantly yellow lights. 2019, year of the home run, of rain, of record heat, of polar vortex.  Year of the tweetstorm. Of walls and rejections. Year of running water, of family, of learning another language, of learning how not to take things for granted.  Year of choking to death on vomit in a hotel room, year of death of talent by suicide.

Year of unchecked mergers. Year of the podcast, of restaurants closing, of buildings that will be empty until they collapse. Year of body rags cut from old clothes, of rubbing alcohol, of witch hazel.  Year of CBD. Of bird versus bunny, year of more and more mass shootings and no one doing anything about it.

Year of groggy mornings, of bags under my eyes, of sleeping by myself, of writing poems, of hiding.  Year of swimming laps, of AirBnB, of appreciating a picnic table in the shade in the park. Year of compound interest, of Jupiter and Scorpius, of the opossum, of the narwhal tusk, of the whip-poor-will's song.  Year of playing tennis again with my brother. Year of cuñado, year of farmer’s markets. Year of next year, if I’m lucky, again...

To continue with 2019...

Encounter with an Iberian Woodrat

~ johnbrandall

Like the jigsaw puzzle suddenly nearing completion the pile was virtually gone. I had used the tarp to drag the piled debris to a new bonfire-to-be in the pasture. After the pile down below went up so easily yesterday afternoon I figured we could easily get this pile ablaze before dark.

The locust limbs split and hauled away, the thorny vines extirpated and lofted onto the pile, the only element of debris remaining where the brush pile once sat was a collection of tree detritus: twigs, leaves, the maroon pods of the honey locust. It was a curious collection, somewhat familiar-looking. I was grabbing at this melange with gloved hands and tossing some of it on the tarp to be hauled away. Doing this I stepped into a depression, wide but shallow. I started to get an inkling that I was disturbing a nest...


The full account is available here...

Pages from An Old Woodshed

~ johnbrandall

I've been clearing out part of the shed. One of the bays. I think of it as a future café, or perhaps even a place to sleep. I'll show ya. I'm taking certain old items—tire, rim, an old heavy plow, pure iron, the weight—and moving them into a different shed. A junk shed.

Now I'm taking my drill out there to reinforce the structure a bit. This is my playground, my school, my office, my church.


To read much more, including a new theory of the universe, continue here...

Dead as A Hammer

~ johnbrandall

Transportation, from here. I am to be embossed. I am to be onboarded. Research project, thesis: No Illegal Volunteering. I could use all available verbs if only I'd remember their names. Campus tour, drone survey. An orchestra strikes up a concert in a neighborhood night. While I was sleeping y'all raked leaves like mad conductors by moonlight.

Ice melt, glacier swim. Take your kids into foreign policy day. Naive holiday, PTS electorate. Oh, their suits are so clean. Their teeth are so white. As if they were getting paid to show them.

Let it fall, let it fall like rain. Like votes, like natural causes. Well ... his heart stopped. Sometimes they just do. Eventually sometimes is now. Liver spots under my eyelids. No one knows what they look like but me.

Get thee to bed. You got Russia in your head. Arctic circle, Missouri highway, Ozark river. Where campfires burn in the distance, some see a constellation.

Trip to See My Siblings, Sept-Oct 2019

~ johnbrandall

Game via radio, Chicago feed. Pat Hughes, Ron Coomer, Zach Zaidman. The Cubs take the lead on an Ian Happ double. The regular season is almost over. Can you believe it? Like a wink. Wild pitch, Cubs add a run, it's 3-1.

We say it every year, and not just about baseball, but: where did the season go? Where did the time go? The months like water, like sand, like air. A temperature that will change and what can you do about it? No, nada.

As we drove north-northeast from Springfield today the skies were mixed. To the west, dark skies. Confused, malformed clouds. A blue darkness. We were along the flatness of Illinois. The sky extended as far as we could see in any direction...


North, to Chicago, go on...

The Only Bluff in Iberia

~ johnbrandall

Farm Party prep gone awry

Rain,
Light rain tonight,
Missouri farm.
After the neighbors have helped,
After they have asked after us
Who are growing up here
Six days a year.

Mice droppings on divan.
Recluse on back porch, ghost-brown.
Dust and dauber carcasse.
Somehow the lights still work.
Weeds, stickers, tag-alongs.
Jimson weed and bramble...

Full poem...

Sonata With Pines

~ johnbrandall

...What follows is my translation—a flawed translation—of part of a Pablo Neruda poem...

1.

We do the tired math of eggs
in the land between the lands.

We don't remember their happiness,
we forget their dentures.

They sleep the sugared sleep
on extrapolated divans.

That they would know certain stones,
carrying light and secrets,
bearing a greenish hue.

2.

What is the reason not to exist?
Where are we carrying ourselves to, otherwise?

A good change of clothes
and shoes and socks of work

Introduce a little land
to give our love new kisses.

Drink up the clean air
from now until you rule.

3.

When I went from broom to broom
guided only by my hat

I didn't find anyone who knew the way.
They were all worried.

They were trying to sell things
no one had ever asked for

until it was clear
that we'd played out our sunrise.

4.

And half the sky, the whole ramp
conformed to the song.

And spoke with all the people,
even with those who were picketing.

We forgot how quickly
our teeth lost their enamel.

We forgot about our fevers,
our slew of minor ailments.

We had a newfound prowess
as we turned our mother's earth.

Notas de Maleta de Tijuana 2.0

~ johnbrandall

What follows is a thorough, categorical examination of what I took with me to Tijuana when I traveled there on a mission trip with members of the Burlingame Presbyterian church this past July. I wrote this mostly for my own benefit, in order to pack smarter next time I travel, to Tijuana or to anywhere. Writing this out, which I did on the first full day I was back at home, also serves as a sort of trip debriefing. It's a different way for me to record an account of the trip, albeit in a more straightforward and less lyrical style than what I wrote while I was actually in Mexico (which can be found here)...


Click here for the rest of the pack notes...