Monkeys Hang from the Palm Trees in Homewood Illionis

I begian volume sixty-two of thsee journasls while on the train without even having finished number sixty-one. The Southwest Chief, it is heading towards Chicago – bearing down on Chicago -  a tropical landscape where once the Mississippi Valley lay – all this rain has resulted in this lushness – I could see the palm tress and the banana fronds waving in the breeze – the banana boats are waiting just off shore.  The ice shelves are all melting and the beachfront is  encroaching (too bad for all you had spent your retirement accounts on beachfront property - now you are at sea, underwater as they say – Are you pissed at the Corps of Engineers - what did you pay taxes for anyway?). But yet they still manage to plant corn and soybeans, gotta produce more ethanol. I had only ten pages remaining in that temporary abandoned volume, but I didn’t want to carry both  it and this  blank volume as I hiked from Union to Millennium Stations transversing the Loop from west to east. I was trying to cut what I took to what would fit in a single backpack. I was worried that the weight of the pack on my back would aggravate the pinched nerve in my neck that had been keeping me awake at night for the last two weeks, but instead it did the opposite – it seems to have corrected the problem - at least for now.

My ‘extraordinariness’, if I had it did not lie in my being exceptionally clever or even gifted. It lay in a strong grasp of my uniqueness in time and space, in simplicity. I was aware that I was different from everyone else in the same sense in which everyone is different from everyone else – Stephen Spender – World Within World, 1994 p41

People trust scientists even when they distrust their findings. People believe that scientist will solve all of  our social problems. People have faith in the power of a God who will do his work through these men (and some women) of knowledge. The common man (and woman and child too) is no longer worthy of direct intercession with this new God even as he intercedes to get them that new set of tires for their old car (why didn't you trade it in and get a klunker rebate - wouldn't that have been easier?). You just gotta pray hard enough. If you don't get what you want, then you havn't prayed hard enough or sincere enoung  Even as they think this talk of Global Warming is a political conspiracy, they believe that if by chance it turns out to be true (and you can never be sure, not absolutlhy unless it comes straight from the Bible) then God shall provide the scientists with the solutions that are needed, either that or he will beam them aboard (beam me aboard Scotty). People trust the scientists to come up with the answer even when they disagree that there is a problem – it is our modern religion. We are modern modern men in every every way.

We rarely pay conscious attention to the flux of Time, and when we do, more often than not we again refer to the coincidence… the clock hands… It’s half past three… I was just leaving when the telephone rang – Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen – The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, 1971 p71

I’ve never been into future
       And may never go there


Some people are said
       To live in the past


But this is untrue
       We are all right here

Except for you dear
       Reader - you live
       In the future

We threw the corpses into fires / and the acrid smoke they gave off made our eyes red / and the smoke / and the dust / and the sun on the pavement and the flames from the houses and the gun powder / dried our mouths more / and soldiers stopped fighting to cough / and were wounded while they coughed / and dropped to the ground still coughing – Ernesto Cardenal – With Walker in Nicaragua

Growth is about some people being happier and some less happy – or considering that the rich countries have reached the ‘futility limit’ of some people not becoming less happy while most people do become less happy

The over determination of the physical environment renders it hostile – Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p60

Monday is burger night
A melt and a side of kraut
      Please

And Indians (quite short) carring firewood. / Behind gray huts. / Gold – colored coconut. / And up above the green volcano / blowing out a lazy puff of smoke / into the blue air – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p28-29

The hero has to be reborn
The genius knows how to unlearn
The prodigy does not need to be taught


The creative never die
The poor have had enough
The wealthy can’t get enough


The privileged are always afraid
The politician has yet another ass
                 To kiss
The sun will eastward arise


This old world has a few more
                  Revolutions left
The galaxy is on tour
The universe if falling apart

I admired the way she was staying a single step in front of her madness in the way that so many of us do by merely watching the clock where each tick brings us safely over the lip of the future, our madness a split second behind us – Jim Harrison - In Search of Small Gods, 2009  p46

For $14,000 you can get a 45 day program designed to wean you from your pathological addiction to the Internet. Internet addiction is not yet a recognized aliment according to  the American Psychological Association so you won’t be able to pay for it with your health insurance. There are already many such clinics in China, South Korea and Taiwan (where they take this new addition more seriously), but as of now there is only one such clinic the United States. What are the warning signs of Internet addiction –
apparently they are very similar to alcoholism according to Dr Kimberly Young:
     - preoccupied by thoughs of the Internet
     - using it longer than intended and for increasing amounts of time
     - repeatedly making unsuccessful attempts to curb usage
     - jeopardizing relationships, work and school
     - lying to cover up extent of usage
     - using the Internet to escape facing depression
     - physical changes in weight, frequent headaches and the development of carpal tunnel syndrome


Poets and clowns have always risen up against oppression of creative thought by dogma. They expose literal-mindedness with metaphor –  Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973
p61

12,000 years ago the earth warmed up 18ºF in twenty years. It was largely due, it is believed, as a result of the freeing of sequestered methane from permafrost and from seabed sediments as the Earth emerged from an ice age. How methane clathrate responds to changes from a temperate to a warm climate is unknown, but freeing just 10% of the sequestered methane into the atmosphere would be equal to a tenfold increase in CO2

And perhaps you’ll see, Claudia, that those poems / (written to court you) inspire / in other loving couples who read them / the kisses that the poet did not inspire in you – Cardenal p36

You can be sure
      That it has been
      Thoroughly read
All dog-eared and
Broken backed


Let it flop open
      To an underlined passage


Not out of respect shall
      It remain pristine


Bay Boards an art project - I’m at Fifth St and Mission – The Bus stop poster here reads: “Here, 1852: You’re scaling the slope of a five-story sand hill. Now…”

Two centuries in seven blocks. WWW.STILLHERE.ORG. Now I am on the #27 headed for Mariposa St for a meeting on the San Francisco International Arts Festival. The KQED receptionist did not show such an event on her schedule. Nor did I have a contact name. She told me in broken English that conferences were sometimes held in other buildings and sent me to 2929 Mariposa. There was no KQED office there. She may have meant 2727 which was the office of BAVC. I gave up. I caught the #27 back downtown.

The pavement is wet but only a few cars have their windshield wipers on. It started sprinkling as I left home half an hour ago. This is the dawn of a new umbrella day

Once he was a banker or a stockbroker. Now he is just a retiree with a stoop as he walks. Do you remember the excitement of being in charge? Are you full of resentment that you are no longer treated with respect?

Walter wants to play ‘Night Moves’ “Not with me” I tell him “maybe Linda will play”. It’s a new game that he has invented. “But I have to work out the rules”. “How can you play if you don’t know the rules” I ask? “Will I have the basics. You only use knight pieces and a chess board. You set all the knights up like in checkers and they can make the same moves that knights do in chess - two up and one over or one up and two over” “Or one back and two over”, I say. He continues, “When you land on a square occupied by the opposite colored knight it is captured. The last person who can make a legitimate move is the winner. “The name is a pun”. “Yeah” I reply, “I figured that one out.” “I have finished two boards” he continues. The last game that Walter concocted was based on ‘Chutes and Ladders'” and had been named “Goats and Tigers”

Linda is taking Bumper to the Silver Poodle today for a shampoo and trim. “Does she enjoy this”, I ask? “Oh, heavens no. She is so frightened. She is frightened of everything. I think it has to do with her going blind” Linda says. “Maybe she needs a seeing-eye-person” I tell her. “She has one. Me!”