August 2, 2009 - Broadway Cafe - Kansas City Missouri

Its noisy sitting out here on the patio, this lawn mowing is a necessity with all this rain – the vacant lot behind had gotten a little seedy – Senator Jolleen is due at nine for her weekly community meeting – I’m finishing up Hubert Harrison and Abu-Lughod. I had too much beer (last night) with Paul – at least five – it took me fifty years and he only half of that to get so cynical but maybe it is the zeitgeist – it takes a fool to have big dreams in these times – but the question remains – where do we go from here – what can you do that will give meaning to your existence (other that slobber in your beer, screw around and procreate – maybe there isn’t, how sad). Begrudgingly you might admire the dedicated souls who only want to make money or get into heaven.

[It is] better to vote for that which you want, and not get it, then to vote for what you don’t want – and get it – Hubert Harrison [The Coming Election, The Voice Oct 18, 1917]

Call it quits
Gotta do it

         Every night

Nothing sincere

Inauthentiicity rules

         Except for the fireflies
         Blinking in the night

Once we’ve done a thing more that three times over, the act becomes a habit and its performance a necessity of our daily life – Soseki Natsume (I am a cat II, 1979 p13)

WALKING ON WATER

The faithful – The beautiful

Have faith – Take time

Interfaith - Intercept

Faithful to – Faithful too
Taken on faith – Taking on water
Having faith – Walking on water

Daylight… comes in two intensities; either it is not enough to see by, or it sears the sight. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak – John Banville (The Book of Evidence, 1989 p4)

The inflationary cost of loyalty inducement is the ultimate downfall of any system

Sunshine, unlike other things, is distributed fairly – Natsume (1979 p29)

And isn’t the past inevitable / now that we call the little / we remember of it “the past” – William Matthaus

A fiesta with the queen on a float (its really the local butcher’s truck and she’s high up on top waving and at sixteen she really thinks that she is royalty in her white gown with silver glitter) and little girls in tutus are doing cartwheels down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. All the females whom I had ever been acquainted with were watching or in the process of getting their kids or grandchildren out the door and finding a place from which they can see. There is Ila my sister. There is Socorro my secretary when I was in Bakersfield. There is my first love, the first one that let me go all the way and the grade school cook. Over there is my Latin teacher. There is the lady who sat next to me on the flight to London. That is thee nurse’s aid from my dad’s ‘assisted living’ facility. And what does it mean when everyone from every phase of my life is gathering in this one spot – not that they are getting acquainted with each other; they are all just gathering to watch the parade go by. They probably are not even aware that there is this commonality to their lives and even if they were told they would probably only shrug their shoulders – the have more important things on their minds (they are all mothers or grandmothers now). And it is only women and babies who are gathering along the parade route and it is only young girls who are in the parade – and I know them all (where are the men? Maybe they are watching from upper story windows as I am doing).

The urban “love at last sight” discovered by Benjamin and Baudelaire, that produces a sexual shudder with a simultaneous shock of recognition and loss, is more than a melancholic passion; it reveals itself as the miracle of possibilities. “Love at last sight” strikes the urban stranger when that person realizes he or she is onstage, at once an actor and a spectator – Svetlana Boym (The Future of Nostalgia 2001 p254)

Constant change in itself is a tool of social control – it turns everyone into an exile – subject to the commercialization of nostalgia

The real secret of the ruby slipper is not that there is no place like home, but rather that there is no longer such a place as home – Solman Rushdie (The Wizard of Oz, 1996)

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I said, “a forge, and a scythe.” / I talk to myself like this. / Saying names of things - / capstan, hawser, loam, leaf, furnace – Raymond Carver [All of Us, 1998 p97)

From the Journal (#1 - 01/14/04 - San Francisco - Royal Ground – California &  Fillmore)

There is a man in a dark suite, yellow tie and a white button down shirt standing, just standing, in front of the ATM machine and smiling. He has a pocket full of mobile electronic devices. He has just moved away from the ATM and is now standing between two empty tables. He is in front of the window that faces onto California St. He is facing towards me. He does not sit down. He does not pace back and forth. He just stands there. I quietly whisper to Walter - “see that guy with the yellow tie? He is conducting surveillance”. “FBI, CIA, or Treasury Department” asks Walter. “No” I say “I think he is doing a marketing survey”. He (our man not Walter) calls Denise on his cell phone. He gives his name. It sounds like ‘Shanks’. Finally he sits down and begins fiddling with his phone. He dials it and puts it to his ear. He not talking, probably listening to his voice mail. He does not take down any notes. He dials again. No answer. ‘Click” goes the top of the cover as he flips the device shut with a flick of his wrist and he lays it upon 5h3 table with a single long fluid motion of his arm. He’s done this many times before or else he practices it a lot at home, like I used to practice lighting a match still attached in its matchbook with one hand (and yes I did singe the pad of my right thumb on occasion). A leather jacket clad Indian gentleman enters and introduces himself to the our man. The both walk out together.

I have started reading back my notebook entries. Not only silently to myself, but out loud also - to others. This morning right after the suit left I read the passage that I had written about him to Walter and Linda.

An unknown man on my left had been listening to. When I got to the part about the man not sitting - Walter says “but he did sit down”. “I know”, I tell him “but that comes later”. I finish reading and the eavesdropper turns and says “I thought he as a cardboard silhouette” I read this same passage to Michael as well as the part about the cool cat with yellow pants. Later I read the later passage along with another selection to David. That’s when he asked when the book was coming out. I assured everyone that I had not written anything about them, but of course they would be unable to verify this without reading the entire ouveur. Will they now be reluctant to converse openly with me? The answer to that hypothesis proved to be a resounding no! - In Walter’s case, it made him even more talkative.

“Well Linda do something, so that I can write about it” I say. “I could take down my pants and moon the staff” she replies. “And I will write about it” I promise. She takes a cigarette and walks outside for a smoke. “Writing is such a minimalist activity“, I tell myself. “You selected a bit from here and a piece from there in the rich panorama around you as the only record of anything having taken place”

“I’m immortalized”, says Linda after she returns and I read her my new entry. “Yes, your bare ass and a cigarette for posterity”, I tell her. I announce the theme for today - “It will be posteriors, derrieres, rumps, bottoms, buttocks – in plain English -. asses”