July 12, 2009 - Broadway Cafe - Kansas City Missouri

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Well I’m Back in Ol' KC again, forever escaping and returning and it’s raining and I again have my usual window seat having arrived early enough to make a claim upon it. That’s Michael there behind the counter with his friendly little red teddy bear beard. Haven’t seen him in over a year – since having left North Town. Michael! It takes him a good pregnant pause but he comes through with a big grin – he knows who I am even with my shaved head and this new beard and all this time and the displaced geography (that’s the hardest – placing a name with someone out of context). How are you doing? I hoped that I’d run into you here. Just back in town – got back last night. How long you been here? A couple of weeks. He insisted on buying me my coffee this morning and I gladly accepted the offer – we slapped each other on the back – two big burly men hugging.
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Soup – the ultimate dish

Not as thick as water
Not as thin as a sauce
Everything must swim
And fit onto a spoon
If you can eat it with a fork
         Or cut it with a knife
          It ain’t soup

Whole days would go by, and later their years drifting like a bridge against the sky – JohnO’Hara

The disappearance of community life has meant that there is no longer anyone who is widely know other than the celebrity – hence small town gossip has been replaced by celebrity gossip – our faux neighbors live more fulfilling lives than do we. Anxiety is the basis of consumer society.

The swell of the heart is not landscape / but the fatal pull of the moon at our roots – John O’Hara

The more ubiquitous
         The phenomena
The more insidious
         The consequences

The happy ending is the happiest lie of all – Kathleen Norris

If the family sedan’s
          Odometer can give us
The Millennium a year early
What has the “Father Knows Best”
          Metaphor done to our politics


To too many it is a natural fit
To others a monster aroused
         From its slumber by
         Nuclear testing


Must I forever be haunted by

The ingratiating Eddy Haskell
         Gee, you look nice Mrs. Cleaver


You should pick your heroes
          Wisely. They will growl old
          And you never will

You can see the creatures die and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you’re gone. You have finally understood that you’re dealing with a maniac – Annie Dillard

To see this artifact
Its necessary to immerse
     Oneself in the mire of time
But It is a mistake to think
     One is looking at the past
For What one is really doing
Is looking forward
     Into the present

Perhaps in all great works of art, the true function of the imagination is paradoxically, not to imagine – in the sense of inventing or transforming – but to see; to see the reality which is concealed by habit and the phenomenal world – George D Painter

This day is full of
      Thick thighed ladies
       In short pastel skirts
This is Kansas City
And they are on they way
      To church

From “The Journal” (#1 – Jan 4, 2004 – San Francisco, California)

“Explanations were becoming obese”

At Royal Ground – Walter was on a roll, he was on about getting animals drunk - starting with the dog, then the cat, we moved on to birds and alligators. Would alcohol bring out the man in the beast as it seemed to bring out the beast in man. I had my doubts. A drunk gerbil might be ok, but  I did not wish to encounter a drunken lion or an orangutan on smack.

There was a Diane Arbus exhibit at the Mordern (SFMMA) – the anti-portrait - psyches frozen in stone holding up the portico. Her individuals isolated in the center of the her frame - Small groups symmetrically arranged. A 2D slice of depression, where their  presence will go on forever, where nothing else will ever happen to them and perhaps to ourselvdes -  - it will never get any better, it will never be any the worst - time is frozen here in stone (silver iodide crystals to be more exact).

The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band was strutting though Chinatown for a Sunday afternoon funeral. One block down I catch sight them again on Jackson St as they pass the ally off from Pacific. Shall I catch up with them? No, instead, I dash into the San Francisco Brewery for a Gripman’s - black with a little foam - chocolaty - served slightly cool - not cold

Pink plastic shopping bags - a true Chinatown souvenir

Today I’m off to the Management Center at 9AM for my first writing workshop - grant writing – there is also a workshop on finding your own vice at the Great Well Lighted Place for Books . That workshop will be a couple of weeks. I’m engaged in attempt to re-invention the mundane - This morning I decided to switch the blanket that I placed on top of the quilt so that the quilt is now on top (the blanket is in its conventional position - between the sheet and the quilt) - I didn’t do it - but I spend several minutes contemplating doing it. And there are other routines which need startling -getting up, taking a piss, brushing my teeth (the whine of the Soncicare has become routine and thereby soothing), shaving, getting dressed, opening the curtains, making the bed, stuffing my pockets with their normal contents (wallet, keys, change, pen), selecting a book to take with me and grabbing this notebook. It’s only then I rush of to the coffee shop - oops forgot my pen – must return. Oh yes, I brush my hair too.

The routine…awareness is the beginning of transgression


To be unheard is not the same as to be silent