July 1, 2009 - - The Caribou - Homewood Illinois

61.5 º - overcast with clouds 2900’ above ground level  – visibility of 10.0 miles – wind 1.- mph out of the NNW – humidity 74% and a dew point of 53º - Home, Sweet Homewood – The villages of Homewood and Flossmoor once again sponsoring Movies in the Park – Journey to the Center of the Earth in Patriot Park. Meet tonight at the library to discuss contemporary and classic films – Big Fourth of July Parade

I ventured to the library and flipped through a few reference books, the kind of instant history that comes from compiling old headlines, and was struck by how much news is death, pure and simple – John Updike

How much can we take

It makes the heart break

Ed McMahn, Michael Jackson

          Farrah Fawcett and now

          Its Billy Mayes
It’s all just too much
          All at once


And even at this very moment
Who knows who is being birthed
Excluding, of course, the sons and daughters
           Of celebrities themselves
But for them celebrityhood though probable
Cannot be guaranteed

Shouldn’t a supernova go off
Ever such time – foretelling our fortune

I have had people wander in and out of my life who think they mean more to me than they do. They believe you have thought about them more than you have. It isn’t always that they just want to feel important; it’s some kind of mysterious misunderstanding that often puzzles and sometimes bewilders you – Lillian Hellman

Something comes along
And shakes your foundations
            Shatters your daydreaming
            Vehicular homicide in the mind
Something overheard, hinted at
Something totally unrelated and misinterpreted
Sometimes one gets too comfortable, arrogant
             About one's thinking
Its time to liquefy the cells of the brain
Turn into quicksand its cow paths
             Time to reconnect all the dots
              Like a kaleidoscope kept turning
The patterns getting boring and wow!
             Something totally unexpected
             Never to be repeated

A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory – Keats

The trouble maybe that
              We all live conventional lives
                           Or at least try
Success is how ordinary
               You can live
Everyone wants to be
                           Exceptional
               But not in this way

How sour the knowledge travelers bring away! / The world’s monotonous and small; we see / ourselves today, tomorrow, yesterday / an oasis of horror in a desert of ennui – Baudelaire

And what is

          All this death

Such a private matter

What does it matter
I’m sorry he died
          I say him on TV

Asceticism… is not necessarily a denigration of the body… Rather, it is a way of surrendering to reduced circumstances in a manner that enhances the whole person. It is a radical way of knowing exactly who, what, and where your are, in defiance of those powerful forces in society… that aim to make us forget – Kathleen Norris

There is a difference
Between what you do
            For yourself
And what you do
            For others
One is better than
            The other
Will not so much better
Which is a value judgment
The one is so satisfying
            Wishing for the
            Monumental, the eternal

Workmen loiter before urinals, stare / out windows at girders tightly strapped to clouds – John O’Hara

She gets in her van
And she’s gone
           Soccer mom
Busy day ahead
Hunting and gathering
Fledglings to fill
          With name brands

“Are you dishing art?: John’s most sophistical, / Jimmy seriousest, Kenneth large, locomotive, / laughing like Midas of the Closed Fist. / When to the silent generosities I stumble home – O’Hara

Deaths for July 1 – Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum, Wolfman Jack, Michael Landon, R Buckminister Fuller, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Erik Satie and Harriet Beacher Stowe

From The Journals (Notebook #1 - 12/23/2003 – San Francisco)
-

Hello!

Do you have Prince Albert in a can?
Yes we do.
Well let him out! We hang up and all laugh

That lovely smell of the fluid that collects in the bellybutton, poke the finger down into its recesses and upon pressing forward in the right spot trigger an almost orgasmatic sensation, but best of all take a whiff of that wet finger and fall off into a deep sleep. But  try not to do it too often – its not that it’s toxic  – but the fluid need sufficient culturing time like a  fine wine. Try it with the wife, try it with a stranger. Mates share fluids like monkeys pick  off each other's lice.

If you can work without living, why should you not be able to live without working

The Razzel Dazzle of the third person. "Fred is so out there".: This Marine Lt Col”, “This American” “Ollie North would never…”, Julius Caesar crossed the …”