In which the Hero regales you with descriptions of decaying organic matter

Apotheosis The Vug

“The report of my death was an exaggeration”
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Episode I

In which the Hero regales you with descriptions of decaying organic matter

Prolegomenon

It has been more than three years since my heart-wrenching departure from the fatherland, and I have become both more and less peripatetic, more and less the warrior-poet of Die Momente. For those of you who were with me then, I have a confession to make. I made a promise that I had no intention of keeping when I spoke of a final, concluding installment of my bi-weekly travel narrative. Please believe me when I say that it was not my intention to break any hearts. Rather, I merely sought an immortality of sorts. I hoped to live on as a small shard of expectation (is it too bold to say of hope?) embedded deeply, maybe even comfortably, in your minds.
I have decided it is time to return to my literary career, to cast my silly little tirades into the howling maw of the storm – that vast, ineluctable, vertiginous beast INTERNET – for what purpose? For the same purpose that undergirds every blogger at his or her outset: shameless, masterbatory self promotion.
Though it is not the sole purpose of this undertaking, I shall begin by promoting myself generally…

Chapter I
Where I Am Now
In several concise bits

Bit the First: Spousal

We got married on August 29th, 2009. If you were not there, you are to be most pitied, as it was, to be concise, badassery manifest. I now have another half: Cynthia Elizabeth Linsenbardt. It is spectacular. However, as I assume is the case with everyone else who has “married up,” I can not permanently shake the feeling that I am half a mistake away from being exposed in the eyes of my wife as the farce that I really am – cobbled together from the leftovers of poor decisions, grapefruit pulp, and Saturday morning cartoons.

Bit the Second: Feline

We have adopted into our new family a noble beast whom we christened Augustus Deathmachine Poopmonster Linsenbardt. Aside from displaying the gnawed off ends of lizards to us on our kitchen floor, Gus enjoys lounging on our bed, singing, and chasing his – not tail, I assure you – but right hind leg. He does not bury his excrement.

Bit the Third: Horticultural

My radishes are sprouting. My spinach is, too. The carrots will come. The catnip and parsley are questionable, but I have not given up hope. I have never successfully grown a bonsai from a cutting, but I’ll be damned if I’m giving up. Beets and garlic …

Bit the Fourth: Professional

People pay me a fairly large amount of money to shout at, lecture, and tell esoteric jokes to children ages 5 – 15. I am also a tutor and substitute teacher.

Bit the Fifth: Domestic

My wife’s Job provides us with free housing in the Santa Cruz mountains. All these damn trees block my view of the nearby roads and buildings, but it’s free, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I have hotwired 1 appliance, contracted poison oak, torn out roughly 1.5 square feet of carpet, chiseled 3 portions of a door frame, installed 1 shelf, juiced 7 tomatoes and 1 cucumber, and extended 1 drain pipe.

Chapter II
What I Am Now
An expository essay

I have never been comfortable with the appellation “artist” applied to myself. “Philosopher,” maybe. “Visionary,” or “Sage,” even. It would be a lie if I said I did not consider it fitting to consider me a “prophetic, storm-riding warrior poet of glory and doom.” But “artist,” never.
However, I have dabbled in art for as long as I can remember. It brings me great joy, and I have even adopted it as something more than a passing fancy, even taken up trying to improve myself in the field. Only now, though, have I made an attempt to monetize my little known mediocrity. Which brings me to the more pointed promotion of self I have in mind for this grand undertaking: the promotion of my newly christened internet store.
I am unprepared, at present, to give any sort of advertisory summation of the themes, methods, or value of my small body of available work, so to speak. I am hoping to expand on these capacities as time goes on and use this as my VOICE to the proverbial art connoisseur. You can find my work at the following:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/DanielLinsenbardt

Chapter III
I Am A Hot Compost Heap
an explectanation

I have been able, in our new home, to put together a compost pile. There are two basic kinds of compost piles or heaps. The first is called the “slow compost pile.” It is so called because it has never been able to run very fast, nor perform particularly well in compost elementary school. Also, it is little more than a pile of decomposable materials left out to slowly become soil.
The second is the “hot compost heap.” Captain of the compost wrestling team, socialite, and the dream date of all the female compost heaps, hot compost heaps are the irrefutable cooler of the compost mounds. They also actually generate warmth as they break down decomposables.
How does a compost heap become “hot?” There are two things required. First, there needs to be a good mix of “greens” (high nitrogen organic materials) and “browns” (high carbon organic materials). Usually a 3 to 1 ratio is about right. A little bit of soil into this mix (for the microbes) and only one more thing is needed: mixing. You need to turn the heap to mix up all the various elements in order for the proper reactions to occur to make rich, succulent soil.
If you don’t mind me getting some metaphor on your shoes, please allow me to explain how I am a hot compost heap … of art. I take great care to have the right mix floating around in my psyche. Comic books and science fiction are the starter, amended heavily with Russian literature and classical philosophy. I throw in a fair amount of math curriculum (for the microbes) and dust the whole with a liberal amount of public radio and Chopin to neutralize the smell, and I am a heap with high potential for rich yield. As long as I turn the whole cocktail, I can be amending my garden and potted plants with abandon for years to come.
Why the sappy, poorly composed metaphor? Because I have created this blog to be the pitchfork that turns the hot compost heap of me. As the owner of the pitchfork and the creator of the heap, I expect to be doing all of the work, but it would be silly and ungrateful of me to turn down any help you, my readership, might want to offer. So, please, if you have any eggshells or grass clippings to throw in the mix, or if you just want to give the pile a few turns, it would help me ensure a high and regular yield.
I don’t know what this means.

Epilogue

So begins my glorious, scrotum-tightening (thank you, Joyce) saga. I hope you have enjoyed it, and will return for more in the future. You can look foreword to more of my meticulously constructed metaphor, mind-withering wit, and vicious rhetorical prowess as well as vague explanations of my art, vain declarations of logistic foresight and planning, charming anecdotes from my life as a husband, educator, and hypno-ninja, and any number of yet more glorious and multisyllabic explosions of artistic genius on this newly birthed ball of encoded potentiality: Apotheosis The Vug.