June 24, 2009 - Round Lake - Sister Lakes Michigan

The weather is starting to get hot – for two days in a roll now- it’s got up  into the nineties – now I’m at the Lake – I once cautioned someone about calling it ‘The Lake’ (but that was a different lake) – It’s a form of arrogance – telling others that you have a cabin and are intimate with the lake enough to call it “It”(and probably they are not) – it is ok for The City which everyone (everyone who is anyone and that is all that matters) knows is San Francisco (unless of course your are talking about the financial district in London) – I called up to The Lake  earlier to make sure I made it for the pirate party and I did – the kids are swimming now – the pirate party will be later after it cools off but before it gets dark – arh arh, shiver me timbers matey!

It is more difficult to maintain a tradition of good cuisine than a tradition of great literature, as England teaches us – Octavia Paz

I found a watch at
The second highest point
In Iowa. The CCC had
Built an observation tower
The local college boys
Have a graduation rite
Get drunk and heave
A TV off of the tower
They had to hike lugging
It up a long trail but
Who gives a damn when
     You are smashed
And in the middle of
The night Kaboom ha ha ha
And during the toss his
Watch flew off his wrist
He was too blasted to notice
And today I have that watch
       Ha ha ha

What began as a liberation has turned into a business. The same thing has happened in sexuality as in gastronomy: the erotic industry is the younger sister of the food industry – Octavia Paz

An idea or form is born without any doctrine
In an act of spontaneous generation
As these flies spring fort form shit
Then it acquires baggage and
Needs places of storage
It is acquisitive of stuff
A revolution every twenty years
Said Thomas Jefferson
God redeem this stuff!
And a man of the people cries
And does much violence
And then he dies
And we are so much better
For it but begun again
To accumulate

By its nature what we see on the screen is the art of happening; we are given the gesture itself, not an account of it – Alain Robbe-Grillet


A lucky few are of
A natural archetype
There is no difference
Between them and the
Role they are playing
Who they play is who they are
There is much assurity of self
        In this
Others have to learn a personality
And wear it like a cloak
And there is always something
Doubtful about who they
       Are – they are never so sure

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body; - and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains – then certes the soul does not inhabit there [in the brain]. QED – Laurence Sterne

The pirate party ended with a treasure hunt. Dalton whose birthday it was in honor of will be seven on Friday – he is older than his sister Lilly and older than Maria who always comes with them, had a difficult time sticking to the directions on his pirate map – always wanting to wander over to the little boat that had taken Sarah and Mark across the lake – it did sort of look like what a pirate might row ashore from his ship - but eventually, with a little guidance from Katie they found treasure at each of the seven spots marked on the maps that she had drawn. All the adults had tattoos and pirate hats – some wore eye patches – some put their earring in their noses – and started using the paste on jewels as bling – one on a front tooth, one on the side of the nose – silly adults. The kids put their treasure in their treasure bags that they had decorated with stick ons (cross bones and skull, x marks the spot, jolly roger flag and paste jewels) and once back inside started checking out their booty (the pirate kind – what they had accumulated during the hunt – don’t count your jewels until you’ve fended off your enemies) and figuring out what they had acquired. This morning fist thing they got out their stuff (pirate booty) – they still have their tattoos on and Lillie is wearing three strings of pearls – Maria said that she slept with her other cheek on the pillow so that the tattoo would not come off – If you want to keep it forever (and she said she did) then you mustn’t go swimming today or ever again – Will not forever then but for as long as I can. All the adults are still sleeping except for Dave who got up early to go to work – he had gone to bed early too.

I mean, I mean and that is not what I mean, I mean that not anyone is saying what they are meaning, I meant that I am feeling something, and I mean that not anyone is thinking, is feeling, is saying, is certain of that thing, I mean I am not certain of that thing. I am not saying, thinking, feeling, being certain of this thing, I mean, I mean, I know what I mean – Gertrude Stein

You deserted him for me
You’ll desert me too
All women do
Don’t get their way
Desert if they get a chance
But now for one last chance
Hold out a little hope
If redemption should be evident
But by then it’s too late
It’s a false hope
Emotion has torn the anchor loose
You are adrift in the storm
All the jewels to be stolen
By jolly pirates

The media are not the message; the media are the society – Paz

A Receipt –

Fairway Stores Inc

Employee #6: Name – Ashley

Total purchase: $16.80

Total debit sale: the same

Item count: 12

2.46 lbs bananas

1.03 lbs tomatoes on vine

One red pepper @ $1.29

June 6, 2009 – 12:01 PM

Thank you for shopping

Fairway

We appreciate your

Business

Two leprosies and one degradation: submission to ideological dogmas, and prostitution to the market – Octavia Paz

Then we went out and sat on the barge – Dalton pretended that he was the pirate captain – This lake is getting bigger – no this is the sea for pirates to not sail around on lakes but on the sea and the sea is certainly big – Oh, Dalton replied and retuned to his tiller. Dalton had come and asked – can we go outside – sure, I replied, so long as everyone wants too – Wrigley and Kolby I already knew did, but Kolby was only allowed outside on her leash – she a runner and she is a jumper – oh what a wild one she is. The girls did – can we go on the boat, Dalton asked – why not and we all did – then they wanted to do the ‘snappers’ from their treasure chests – Carla has said last night, wait for tomorrow to do those – don’t run with them and don’t put them in your mouth – the package said use only under close adult supervision - go up there on the patio and throw them down on the concrete – eventually even Lilly whose a scartycat warmed up to the concept and was popping away and giggling – don’t use them all now or you won’t have any for later. Eventually Carla and Dan got up – they were looking the coffee – I had made a pot earlier but it was mostly gone – I had knocked my cup against a chair when preparing to go outside with the kids and spelt half a cup on the carpet – what’s this Carla asked in her bare feet, it’s wet – oh, I did that, I admitted. The coffee is stored in a canister that is kept in the refrigerator – I got it out for them and some zucchini tumbled out when I did – the refrigerator is stuffed to overflowing.

Losing our name is like losing our shadow: to be noting more than our name is to be reduced to a shadow. The absence of relation between things and their names is doubly intolerable: either meaning evaporates or things vanish. A word of pure meaning – is as impossible as a world of things without meaning – without names. Language makes the world habitable – Octavia Paz

Dec 22, 2003 – The Royal Ground – Fillmore and California – San Francisco, California

Breakfast at Kate’s Kitchen – The Framer’s breakfast - scrambled egg, English muffin - fruit or potatoes? – potatoes, please - bacon or sausage - no - no meat? - no – thanks - I find myself watching umbrellas, watching myself watch umbrellas. Wondering if this mean something – everything means something but is it really worth the time spent pondering it – we don’t know until we do.

In order to return one must venture forth; in order not to disappear in the void, he who sallies forth must return to where he started – Octavia Paz