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There is always at last one unsated morning mosquito – the runt of the litter – it’s never bold enough and won’t survive. Then Dave and Nick Nick came along. Dave sits down in a chair at my patio table and the dog hops up into my lap. Later I put the dog up onto the table while Dave and I talk – mostly about the weather and how truck fuel can gel in the winter if it is cold enough. He almost died once, he said, when the fuel line on the second tank gelled. It hasn’t been really cold in the last ten years, he says. At the depot he claimed they used a propane torch to get the fuel to flow. And in Siberia I had seen them light fires under trucks to do the same thing. And I doubted that anyone would know that the climate had reached its tipping point and gone beyond until it had already happened and it was too late. Just another Mastodon caught in the ice. The dog sniffs around and then settles down to licking itself and gets a big bonner. Dave says that he tells Brenda that she ought to stud him out. Does she have papers on him, I ask? She says she does, but I’ve never seen them. We talk a lot about the weather but don’t do anything about it. Air-conditioning, Joe claims is the one modern invention that he could not do without. But Joe claims to be a Luddite. And I try to explain to him that a true Luddite is not against technology per se, but against the lack of control over its local impact. All technology is a done deal and it’s only a matter of time until we become nostalgic for the way things used to be. Having a decision over its imlementation is a forgotten concept, and isn’t that what democracy is really about – how we are to live and make real decisions?
I met two women. / One of them loved opera and the other / was a drunk who’d done time / in jail. I took up with one / and began to drink and fight a lot. / The way this woman could sing and carry on! – Raymond Carver – All Of Us, 1996 p.88
John Banville writes (in Body of Evidence) ‘his flies were open’. Is it a plural like the pants and the slacks and the shorts that it (they) adorn? Shouldn't it be singular as it joins the two halves of those pants, slacks and shorts; those two halves that make them plural in the first place – shouldn’t it have been ‘his fly is open’. I was writing about a crazy lady (see previous blog) and wrote ‘madwoman’ but that just didn’t seem right. There are crazy ladies and madmen, but not crazy men and madwomen.
All of us, all of us, all of us / trying to save / our immortal souls, some way / seemingly more round- / about and mysterious / than others – Raymond Carver – All Of Us, 1996 p101
The only safe thing to do is nothing
And noting is what being safe is
The inferno of the living is not something that will be, if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno that we live every day….There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first one is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is riskier and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then let them endure, give them space – Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities, 1974 p165
What is a list? An arrangement
Of words or statements that
Have some logical connection
(or maybe not). Well then
Is a paragraph a list? (obviously
Not) – having some logical
Spatial or temporal connection.
Is not a story a list of events
Is not an argument a list of inferences
Is not a Commonbook a list of quotes
Is this a list?
I know more than I express in words, and the little I can express I would not have expressed had I not known more – Vladimir Nabokov
When I become
Conscious
Of my own presence
It’s awe-inspiring
And intimidating
I try not to do it
To often
The long process of his dying wearied and exasperated me in equal measure. Of course, I pitied him, too, but I think pity is always, for me, only the permissible version of an urge to give weak things a good hard shake – John Banville – Body of Evidence, 1989 p46
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To call down vengeance, you should have at least been a victim – and if vengeance is deserved that should not be difficult to demonstrate.
Essayists who stake everything on writing the kind of spangled style that glitters in the limelight near the top of the tent must wish sometimes, as they sweat to keep a sentence alive, that that tightrope could be laid down on the ground – Clive James – Cultural Amnesia, 2007 p32
From the Journals (#1 - 01/16/2004 - San Francisco - Royal Ground, Fillmore & Calfornia) - THE MENDOCINO DEPARTS FOR LAKESPUR
I’m sitting here on a bench enjoying a bit Schaffberg & Beggre semisweet chocolate with a cup of Peet’s on one of the benches facing the water behind the Ferry Building (Schaftfberg & Beggre maintain a boutique outlet inside). I’m watching the catamaran Mendocino as it pulls in to disgorge a load of passengers from across the Bay. A woman approaches and says “any one sitting here?” “Not at the moment” I reply. She sits down, “but I guess there is now” I add – the initial words of politeness end in silence unless someone takes the plunge. Let a glance or a phrase go unaddressed and any chance is dead. “Great place to eat lunch” she says “Did the fog clear yesterday?” “I don’t know” I tell her “I didn’t pay any attention to it” “Are you from around her?” she asks “Yep” I reply. The Mendocino is now boarding, a light load - maybe fifty or so. A few stragglers are making their way up the ramp. “Yourself?” I ask. “Down from Lake County to pick up my husband” she replies (that can kill any chance too). We sit the rest of the time in silence. I finish my coffee and begin writing. She finishes her take out and then gets up and disposes of the container in the trash receptacle to my right. “Have a good day” I call after her. “And you too. Thanks for sharing your bench” she replies. “Oh, its not mine” I tell her “it was just here”.
A twelve foot cat boat with a blue and white sail passes on the bay behind the loading ferry. The membe of the ferry’s crew is talking with someone on the dock as the occasional traveler boards. The boats engine hums with a throb and there is a swoosh of water exiting its idling jets. The pilot is at the wheel, the last boarder is on
The speaker announces final departure for Larkspur. The three crew members on the gangway are stirring – They amble board. The gang way is raised. A crewman comes out onto the bow to release the line there. The ferry starts moving backwards as the volume and pitch of the engine’s rumble begins increasing. The Container ship ‘Genoa Bridge’ sails in towards Oakland. The Mendocino makes its turn. The engines throb ever louder as it accelerates forward with a twin spay of water sprouting up from the rear of each of its hulls. The ‘Genoa Bridge’ is not heavily laden even with all those stacks of containers on its deck. The bow and its red water line project high above the waves. Perhaps it is carrying empty containers back to Asia. It fades away to the right headed for a passage under the Bay Bridge. The Sausalito ferry ‘Golden Gate’ berths at the just vacated slip. The ‘Genoa Bridge’ is sounding its horn at a steady pitch as it crosses below the bridge.
Time to buy another notebook. This one is almost filled.
“It’s one of the darker tunnels in Canada” dialogue from “The Station Agent”. Another attempt to make conversation or to fill in the gap. You must really be comfortable with someone to not feel uncomfortable during the silences
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