Wherein Dave parks his car - the water of life flows - a justification for travel is provided

The Broadway Cafe - Westport Area  - Kansas City Missouri - October 10, 2009

It’s starting to get cold at night – turning colors – no longer predominately green like it was earlier this week - no frost on the windshield yet - time to think about getting out the jacket and maybe even the long johns. Dave was using the whole carport to park his car – Brenda gone to see her mom, I asked? No she left, took her clothes and left. It started with his daughter not calling her mom – and went upscale from there. I’ve got a hot cup of coffee and a warm dry well lit spot to read – what the heck! And with the cold weather my knee aches.

I think the chief purpose of my own traveling was to form a gradual enlarging picture in which the countries were the paints which went to form the world – Stephen Spender – World Within World, 1974 p181

The water lives
Runs along within the banks
     Well behaved and calm

Jumps and plays among the rocks
Sings a sleepy song
     Stays in bed
Gets angry and rages
      Out of bed and up
      To no good


Lay down by the sweet waters


Water rights
Water striders
Water blessed
Water wars


Calm waters
Blue water
Raging waters
Bitter water


Save water with low flush tanks
Wind powered stock tanks

Most writers allow their ideas to lead them back from terrifying solitude to the consolatory society of approximate and familiar phrases. As experience to them is the beginning of a journey where they soon arrive at already expressed ideas – Stephen Spender – World Within World, 1974 p93

The big woman gets on the bus. She staggers to the back bumping into everyone along the way, both those standing and those seated. She’s muttering disjointed phrases in a loud voice. She may just be repeating lyrics heard over her earphones. She seats herself right behind me on the backbench that runs the width of the bus. “Just another day in paradise” says the young man sitting beside me. When I had boarded he had only begrudgingly yielded just sufficient space beside himself to permit me to sit.

The 1930’s saw the last of the idea that the individual, accepting his responsibilities, could alter the history of the time. From now on, the individual could only conform to or protest against events which were outside his control – Stephen Spender – World Within World, 1974 p290

This woman is apparently ranting. People are emptying the seats around her. I’m refusing to be intimidated. I had had to fight to get this seat in the first place. The tough guy next to me pulls out a card and hands it to me. Gee I am thinking is this going to be one of those scenes like at the cinema where the man hands the teller a neatly typed note announcing that this is a holdup? No, it’s a business card. He promotes private parties on the Internet, he says. Before he gets off at Haight, I look at his card and say “good to meet you Jason.” Now it’s just the old lady and me in the back of this bus. And I am paranoid.

If today we face a world in which there is no grand narrative of social progress, no politically plausible project of social justice, it is in large measure because Lenin and his heirs poisoned the well – Tony Judt – Reappraisals, 2008 p125

I am having fantasies about what I would do if she were to pull out a big knife and start waving it. What would it feel like to suddenly and unexpectedly (will not unexpectedly because I was at that very moment thinking about that precise event) thrust into your shoulder blade the sharp cold steel point of this very imaginary knife. Pretty soon she managed to hoist herself to her feet after a great deal of grunting. She exits at Geary St much faster than she had found her seat in the first place. Six blocks later I also get off.

I sometimes think poetry / only describes / Now I take down the underwear / I washed last night from the various light fixtures / and can proceed – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems of, 1994 p267’

Factoid: Number of spam e-mails sent for every one that receives a response: 12,414,000

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally – V S Naipaul – The Return of Eva Peron with the Killings in Trinidad, 1981 l p67

“Stormy weather” is being pounded on the upright piano and a semi-retired cattleman is discussing busing. “Do you have anything that’s not bitta.”, he asks. Paddy says “from the South uh?” “Well yes, from Southern California. I worked in the Post Office. We sold stamps.” The piano player says he’ll be back in two hours at the commencement of Happy Hour. Paddy and the barmaid share an almond pastry that she had gotten at the bakery down the block on Columbus Avenue. The cattleman is going for a drive to Monterey. Paddy wipes down the bar. The fan overhead turns slowly. It’s ancient paddles rotated by an equally old electric motor and belt. The Manassas Mauler, Jack Dempsey, once worked here as a bouncer. Some famous criminal was supposedly trapped by the FBI in the basement, hiding in the John. That was back in the thirties. One of the regulars had claimed that the trough that ran along in front of the bar was so that the customers could pee where they stood and not have to interrupt their drinking. I doubted it but was glad he did not try to demonstrate.

Anyway, work, is not the word I would apply to what I do… we are frantically energetic, in spasms, but we are free, fatally free, of what might be called the curse of pertpetuance. We finish things, while for the real worker…there is no finishing a work, only the abandoning of it. – John Banville – The Sea, 2005 p30-31

This is Friday the thirteenth.

It was a good story, and if it was a string of newspaper clichés, it was only because what was being presented… as a good story, was a string of newspaper clichés – V S Naipaul – The Return of Eva Peron with the Killings in Trinidad, 1981 p32

The sun is coming out

The mailman is going

      House to house

There’s a break in the

      Clouds

The police are on patrol

Crime is under control

Old ladies creep about
      Wearing freighting wigs
      And fake noses

It’s so / original, hydrogenic, anthropomorphic, fiscal, post-anti-esthetic, / blandly, unpicturesque and WilliamCarlosWilliamsian / it’s definitely not 19th Century, it’s not even Partisan Review, it’s / new, it must be vanguard! – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems of, 1994 p265