August 10, 2009 - Coffee Break - 54th & Troost - Kansas City Missouri

More and more the school year is gearing up. The younger women faculty are showing off their summer tans. The smarter students (or maybe the more ambitious ones) are attending workshops. The clerical and maintenance staffs are reporting and puttng everything into working order. The chimney of the educational system is starting to emit smoke - soon they will be stroking the fires of learning again.

They are giving the numbers (housing prices and employment) the best spin that they can - what else can they do? But there a big difference between things getting better and things not gettng worse as fast as they were - one is when your parachute deploys and the other is when it does not but due to the drag of air on your body your're not falling any faster - somewhere at about 140 mph.

Something unknown is doing we don’t know what – that is what our theory amounts too. It does not sound a particular illuminating theory. I have read something like it elsewhere – The slithy troves / did gyre and gimble in the wabe – Arthur S Eddington

Out there one cicada is out chirring
     All the others
And as his chirring diminishes
     Another picks it up
In his territory a cicada will try
     To outdo everyone else
And its clear who made the most noise
     As the female makes her choice


All this noise about sex
So typical of us animals

For a long time now / I’ve chosen to corrupt way. / I had a choice. Or else, / simply, the merely easy. / Over the virtuous. Or the difficult – Raymond Carver – All of US, 1989 p194

COUNTRY MUSIC – Part I

Country music all morning long at the coffeehouse

Tammy Wyanette – that Alabama acent

     I can’t understand a word – George

    Where are you when you’re not drunk?

I’m pourd to be a coal miner’s daughter
No its not Tammy but what’s her name

     Moody – but that is his name

     Oh yes, Lorreta Young – no that’s

The actress and that was Robert Young who played Marcus Welby

And isn’t Moody married to that girl from Pigeon Ford

      Who looked so small standing next to Porter Wagoner

      And that suit of his – covered in big rhinestone wagon wheels

Circle the wagons around, I’m closing in on the name

I do know that her first name is Lorreta
     But who was that in “Nine to Five”
     It's a fiction that we get paid for our lunchhour
          Except on the factory floor where they need
          Three shifts of eight hours each to make twenty-four

I go on casually eating from the bowl /; of raspberries. If I were dead / I remind myself, I wouldn’t / be eating them. It’s not so simple. / It is that simple – Raymond Carver – All of US, 1989 p216

COUNTRY MUSIC – Part II


Then the name Barbara Mandrell pops into my head
     But this is not her either - she is another one
Wait! Be patient! It will come to me
Oh yes, Loretta Lynne

      The coffee house has been vacated

      That was some time ago
      It is uselses information when it comes
But at least it gets the question out of my head
And also the quandry as to whether
      I’m losing my marbles


And when the dots get connected
      Oh, it is so obvious
So now what’s the name of the tiny blond
Standing there beside Porter – Dolly, yes
      Dolly Pardon, that’s her name
      How could I have forgotten

See! The motor is running

Quite turning the key

Quite grinding the starter motor

      Get her out on the highway

      Open it up; put it on cruise
Feel the wind in your face
See the telephone poles flash past
       (but that was another age)
       Do they still have telephone poles anymore?

What I said was never exactly what I felt, what I feel was never what it seemed I should feel, thought the feelings were genuine, and right, and inescapable – John Banville – Body of Evidence p124

God, I’m making a mess

      With the coffee in this cup

I trimmed my mustache and can’t

      Do a thing with it

The liquid drains through my beard

      And dribbles onto my shirtfront

Leaving big brown blobs to match my
      Liver sports
God, I’m getting old

If you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you’re going to need a Dick Armey - David Shuster

Being a Buddhist priest

In this modern world

Means driving a red SUV

      To match you robe
But a little one
      Not an ostentatious big one


SUNDAY NIGHT: Make use of the things around you. / This light rain / Outside the windows , for one. / This cigarette between my fingers, / These feet on the couch: / The faint sound of rock-and-roll / The red Ferrari in my head. / The woman bumping drunkenly around in the kitchen… / Put it all in, / Make use – Raymond Carver - All of Us, 1989 p.257

From the Notebooks (#2 – January 19, 2004 - Oakland California - San Francisco/Millbare Bart Train.

This is the one-month anniversary of this enterprise – this journaling (I’ve begun calling them field notes – the name is still up for debate). The only restriction that I am placing on this effort is that I not commercialize it or make a product out of it until the anniversary of its first year (this should not be difficult as I don’t see any commercial possibility).

My niece, Leslie and I have gone to the Jazz House in Berkeley to hear a women’s orchestra with kelp, voice pipe, cello and percussion. I had stood in the Berkeley Bart station, gesturing wildly with arms and hands trying to explain my concept for the “John Walsh School of Acting”. Have you noticed that talking heads no longer wave there arms about. I think that thsy School would have been very short-lived and even John Walsh toned it down but that may have been as a result of a stroke. We also discusses how serious people come to be that way - do they wake up one morning resolving to be serious, were they born that way. I look around the platform and notice that no one in the station other than myself jumping up and down and waving their hands in the air. Do I become self conscious about this – hell no!

So how do you play kelp – we had discussed the options: you can rustle it, you can wave it in the air(that was my theory). We discovered that there are more ways than can be imagined. In this case the kelp was dried out and it was the bulbous part that served as a floater with a short section of stalkattached  that was being used as a horn. Cut off the top half of the bulb, add a moth piece (or not - she played it both ways) and you have an organic horn.

The bus stop smell like oatmeal this morning. I have no phone messages awaiting at work. Ade calls and I explain how to register to get IEA data. Keo wants some Dun & Bradstreet reports but does not have a charge number. My time sheet is due.

I am out of the office by 3:30 and sitting in the coffee shop by 4 listening to the Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack - solo guitar and voice. I was asked again if a novel was in the works - why is writing always associated with novels. Have you been published? Would I recognize your name?