August 30, 2009 - Broadway Cafe - Kansas City Missouri

This blog is starting to get enough hits to get a higher priority by the search engines – indexed more often, higher on the hit list – success breads success. No different from the hit parade – the only question is can you dance to it. What is its dancibility on a scale of one to ten? Google now gives it a two.

Surely if criticism is anything worthwhile it must be a sort of history – not of course, in the Socratic sense, but retrospectively. It must alter the state of mind of the artistic audience, from mere wondering, contemplation of an inexplicable result, towards something more like sympatric participation in the process – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction p132

And it took two years before Joe caught on that my bohemian lifestyle was a choice – sort of like Thoreau – simplicity by choice, he said. Yes that is it. He had though I was just a bum (although his term was bohemian but that was what he meant) until I had told him what the salary I was making when I quite working. People don’t like be asked what they make, he had said. That is true, I replied and to most it’s a sign of their self worth and they never make enough and besides for many employers it is grounds for being fired to disclose it – they don’t want anyone to know how arbitrary it really is – would obviously be cause much discontent. Sneaky HR - we called them The Inhuman Resources.

When we strive to contemplate the genesis of meaning – to be one with the poet, as it were, while the term is still uncreate – then we have descended with Faust into the realm of the Mothers; then we are drinking of the springs and freshets of becoming – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction p132

And that someone could be deliberate about it is unfathomable to most people, their only model is to buy a big house and a new car and acquire debt and keep the little woman happy. And I told Joe, all of this would be impossible if I had had a wife – women like to have their feathered nests. Oh, I don’t know, Joe said, I am sure that there’s a lot of women who would find you fascinating. Fascinated yes, but to take up with me or even to put up with me, never. God, they say, I envy you. You’re living my dream. But none of them do it.

One day I looked up / and the answer was there / in the sky / it was no – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p260

I’m sure you’ve been told
Having just rushed
      In the front door
      Just to say this

That you look just like
      Ben Kingsley
Yes, but look here at
      My checkbook
And you’ll see that I’m not
He laughed and departed

One hardly knows where / one stands with / in the banal. Walls come / together with hardly a seam – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p194

Movie critics write reviews self-referencing movies, like academics write poems and like writers write about writers and bloggers are full of self-conceit – and I don’t give a damn for your non-contemplated knee jerk opinion and I don’t see why anyone else would either (maybe except for your momma).

A ‘Radical Monopoly’ [is] the dominance of one type of product rather than the dominance of one brand…. When one industrial production process exercise an exclusive control over satisfaction of a pressing need, and excludes nonindustrial activities from competition – Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p52
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Radical Monopolies – either you can’t (are not allowed) to do it yourself or there is no choice in how to fill a need: transportation (cars), health (doctors), death (undertakers), education (teachers), violence (soldiers and police), energy (the power grid or the gas station), construction (building codes), temporary accommodation (hotels) – your not allowed not to mow your lawn – you need to preserve property values (another radical monopoly – push everyone into home ownership – preferably with two thousand square feet and a big green lawn and with an island in the center and a commercial range in the corner of a manor house kitchen). It’s not that you would have chosen to do it otherwise, but that you don’t have that option – some people don’t like to walk, even though they spend an hour a day working out in the gym and derive ten miles to get there – I’m glad personal trainers haven’t yet acquired a ‘radical monopoly’ (but it’s coming).
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How often have you heard a politician say that millions of Americans “have no healthcare” when he or she meant they have no health “insurance”? How has a method of financing health care become synonymous with care itself? – David Goldhill – How American Health Care Killed my Father – The Atlantic Monthly, Sept 2009 p41

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Health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment method, not just for expenses that are unexpected and large but for ‘nearly all’ healthcare expenses – David Goldhill – How American Health Care Killed my Father – The Atlantic Monthly, Sept 2009 p41
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Table football invented

     By a poet

In the wet green meadows

     Of Galicia

Played on crude homemade

     Contraptions that wobbled

In the middle of the street
     Of a Mexican barrio
Played with blinking lights
     And electronic scoring
In urban American pleasure
     Palaces
This glass of beer is for you
     Alejandro Campos Ramírez
Arriba, abajo, el centro

The minor poet is appreciator rather than creator. He imitates because he must have his idea established, acknowledged, labeled in his own consciousness as ‘poetic’ before he can feel that he is writing poetry – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction p159

From the Journal (Volume 2 page 7) – January 20, 2004 – Royal Ground – California & Fillmore – San Francisco California

Cindy is back from Mexico - she says that Pepto Bismo makes her tongue black and her poop stiff. The Eagles are playing on the radio. Cindy is gathering her stuff - Zappatista dolls, leather bookmarks, a journal that she had found, coffee mug. She straps on her fanny pack, dons a gray serapes she had acquired on her trip and disappears. Her last comment was that she had only written two and a half pages in Mexico. “But”, she said “it was very small handwriting.” Cindy is a pest. Walter would like to acquire a big flyswatter.

Michael says “Leave me out of the journal all together.” I say “OK”. But I lied. If he only knew he has now been blogged.

Determinism requires a quasi-divine point of view in our description of nature. “So”, Michael asks, “how did the guys at work (the other Michael and his partner Andy) like the soap?” “My nephew Paul was home on leave from the Army, so I gave the basket to him instead” I replied. “So how did he like it? Did anyone say anything?” Michael was wanting to know. “My niece said that she liked them. I don’t expect to hear anything from the others. Its not in their nature” I tell him. “Oh” he says. Michael is trying to make a living crafting soap in his kitchen

‘Dean comes in third in Iowa - Kerry - “We’re coming and you’re going - and don’t let the door hit you [in the ass on the way out]”

Its 8:27AM and the sun is shinning - overcast skies and rain predicted through the weekend - “if you can’t stand on your two feet, don’t stand on mine” - Talk radio, God bless it.

Michael (the other one – both of them gay, one is sweet on me and the other a co-worker) and I have lunch at the San Francisco Brewery. I had my usual burger and a beer - Anniversary Ale. Michael had a penne and an Albatross larger. He didn’t like the sausage. “Too spicy” he said as he picked at bits of pasta. We discussed Bayard Rustin and my plans - would I stay in San Francisco?. Would I give up my apartment? Probably – too expensive with no income. Isn’t it about time to start thinking about what I’ll do next. I can change – I can change anything – but probably not everything, but some things – which things? Another job – no, too cynical for that. I’ll become a flauneur, a bohemian – a poet, a writer and artist. What about money – got enough to get by, no need to get greedy.

8:45AM and its time to catch the bus to the financial district. I no longer call it ‘going to work’. It’s collecting a pay check. I haven’t seen either Walter or Linda this morning. They probably spotted Miss Cindy and beat a hasty retreat before she had spotted them

No one knows what to say when you tell them you’re a writer. It’s like shaking someone’s hand and farting at the same time – John Barlow – Everything but the Squeal, 2008 p132