It is my duty to guard the wedding invitations as I sit here sipping at my Ceylon Breakfast tea. Finally I have something useful to do and not too taxing either. Oh, but the responsibility – am I up to it. Sitting on the Dock of the bay watching time, tweet, tweet, tweak. Barbara Grainer was also into Otis Redding on Thursday - Up on the roof top. I look around suspiciously to see if anyone is lurking around waiting the steal the invitations.-report any suspicious or unattended luggage or packages. She had been sitting here gluing of twigs and lavender, but she ran out of glue. She has gone off to get some more hot glue sticks. Will you be here for ten minutes, she aked? Yes, I say, but I can’t imagine anyone rushing in and making off with your invitations. I know, she says but you don’t know how much time I have invested in these.
The dissimulation of a supposedly given disgust with ‘the obese, the disabled, the deformed, the mentally ill, the grotesquely ugly” can be narcissistically savored as a moral victory - Winifried Menninghaus – Disgust: theory and history of a strong emotion, 2003
She seemed to be disappointed that I through her invitations not worthy of being stolen. So when she returned I told her that I had had to beaten off a would be theft with a stick. She thanked me kindly for my heroic efforts on her behalf. My invitations don’t like the sun, she says pointing to what is obliviously a spring of lavender on a stick which had been glued on to the left side of the invitations. Lavender, she said. Lavender and cedar, I say. Lavender and creek stick, she says. I pick one up and smell it. Lavender and creek stick, I repeat after her. There was no cedar smell to it. I go back to reading. She returns to the tedious task of addressing the invitations.
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be - Yesterday. Now I long for yesterday.
Man can never quite believe that women aren’t as revolted by semen as men feel they should be - William Ian Miller – The Anatomy of Disgust, 1997
Peter can not get the seventh deadly sin out of his mind. We have together come up with a list of six. We are missing the seventh - disgust, stupidity, contempt, jealousy, hatred, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, lust and pride (we agreed on glutton, greed, envy, lust, pride and sloth). This has become an obsession with him. In order to make sure that it remains an obsession, I give him my mobile number and tell him to call me as soon as he remembers.
He scorns the ordinary alphabet, which yields at most only a grammar of thoughts and adopts the symbol, the metaphor, the ideograph. “He writes Chinese.” He creates an impossible world out of an incomprehensible language, a lie that enchants and enslaves men – Henry Miller – The Wisdom of the Heart, 1960 p4
Justice Clarence Thomas is the only African American who camps – a big RV of course. I have not run into him yet. The court is in session but does that matter. He could just as well not be up there – and send in his vote. How was it that I am supposed to cast my opinion Chief? If he runs his generator all night and proclaims executive privilege, I’m going to complain to the Camp Host (he drives an RV too).
The disappearance of racism in America is a prosthetic memory
Nearly all economic models of ‘development’ rely upon an unattainable assumption: that the discovery of new resources… will always come to our rescue, enabling us to postpone, indefinitely, any final audit - David P Barash – The Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept 4, 2009)
I reviewed three writers’ magazines at the Mechanics Institute. One contained inside stories of screen writing written by members of the Screen Writers Guild for wantabe members of the Screen Writers’ Guild and the other two were about the writing business. There is nothing worst written than writing about writing. Literately critique for the semi literate, is that too much to ask - I don’t give a damn about the writing business
Hostile data - information contradictory to our cherished beliefs
There are no longer any sidewalk tables at the bewery. Its has something to do with their liquor license. We are on probation says the bartender, Josh. Is that for thirty or for forty-five days a regular asks? This will be a whole new place he, he says. Will there be rap music, someone asks?
Josh’s standing reply to everyone is “What’s Up my Friend?” He quite smoking two days ago and is now chewing gum. But he (thanks my friend) says he still smokes pot so maybe the two days do not count. You know that it takes seventy-two hours to get that nicotine out of your system, I tell him. I only smoked a dozen a day and they were ultra lights, he replied. So I don’t think I have much nicotine in my system, he replies. Well good luck with it anyway. When you get out an old shirt from the closet that you haven’t worn for a while and you notice the smell of smoke on it, then my friend you will know that you have quite. I’m on my second Doppel Wiesen and am starting to get a flushed sensation in my cheeks and these were only half pints. I can no longer make out the writing on the page of text that I am trying to read -“(Metaphor : A practical introduction”
Two dollars my friend. - Do the right thing Josh - So what did you learn today? - He didn’t mean wrong, he just knocked on the wrong door - Street justice, my friend - fucking New York - You get my pint?
Poetry is a bunge cord
Between the concrete
And the abstract
Or the concrete and the
Overpass
The tragic age, when all that which is forever denied us makes itself felt with nostalgic force – Henry Miller – The Wisdom of the Heart, 1960 p11
His name is Horton! Norton? No Horton. Who? The Pigeon. The pigeon has a name? Doesn’t everybody?
There is a bass tournament underway upon the lake - $8,000 in prices - $125 entry per boat – out at 3:45Am – weight-ins at 7:45, 9:45 and 11:45. Rooster tailing across the lake, sliming the hull again the water and the roar of 250 hp outboard motors. A good Southerner loves his horsepower – fish faster – hunt further.
No I will not explain, it to you. I’ll say anything / rather than explain it to you. Even things that sound true – Stephen Dunn – What Goes On: selected and new poems, 2009 p126
For no Utopia ever dies alone. It takes its counter Utopia with it – Huysmans – Against Nature
So was the death of socialism also the death of capitalism too? Not yet. Then perhaps socialism isn’t dead yet either.
We do not wonder about what we do not know about
But we do fear it, whatever it might be (or not be)
I find myself anticipating almost things – almost everything; not airplanes following from the sky, not a tsunami, not a nuclear blast from an ICBM (although there are people who do and can tell you the odds). Most of this vigilance is a wasted effort, having to worry about things that are highly improbable. And especially since it is unlikely that you can take any action to prevent such a disaster (although you can re-located to the mountains and thereby avoid the hazard of a tsunami but then you might get buried in an avalanche). Nor is it likely that any of those scenarios will occur, right here, right now, to me. What you should be watching about is a car swerving into your lane or a car slamming on its brakes right in front of you or maybe someone opening a car door into traffic and you taking it off and maybe killing the idiot or at least seriously injuring him (who would have the liability, would it be shared, how much legal troubles would you have?). Then there are the mundane items like changing traffic lights, merging lanes and stop signs. You’re hands and feet are tense awaiting the command - turn the steering wheel a little to the right, tap on the brake to slow down a little, step on the accelerator and speed up a bit. Some people think the horn is mechanism for control other vehicles. Also don’t forget the turn signals – keep everyone alert to what you intend to do. And of course if not an automatic you need to engage the clutch to prepare to accelerate or decelerate – that is something else to worry about – get ready, put your left foot down on the peddle, wait, not yet, not yet, now – is the clutch disengaged? Yes, I think so – now shift the gearshift – which way? Down and to the right and then down again – that is if you are already in fifth. How would I know? If you jam it down and it grinds – that will be reveres and yes you were in fifth.. Finally I pulled into the driveway and took the vehicle out of gear, engaged the parking brake and got out to open the garage door. God, driving is tiring.
I inserted the key and turned it. The garage door opened about a foot and started to close again. I try again. I look under the door to see if someone was backing out. No. I look around. There is a woman in a red SUV waving at me from the far lane of traffic. She was trying to use her remote at the same time as I was trying to use my key. They - the proverbial they - had provided her with a remote but they had not given me one. But then I had not asked for one either. Eventually we both got parked. If I drove everyday all this would be automatic but I don’t. God I like public transpotation.
My “Perversion of Autonomy” was lying on the coffee table at the Mechanics’ Institute Library as I pursued the latest issue of New Scientist. The word ‘Perversion’ caught the eye of every old man that passed by - they all stopped to stare, but no one had the chutzpa to ask what it was about and I didn’t offer any unsolicited comment. I was expected it to be picked up and someone try to check it out but no one did. They just plopped down in near by chairs and when to sleep once they figured out that the book wouldn’t attack them. So I show Walter my book on Perversion and tell him about the guys at the Mechanics’ Institute.
Walter is reading the latest issue of ‘Scientific American, noting that they was nothing in it about the new planet. I then told him about reading ‘New Scientist’ and the library. Did it have anything in it about Mars, he asks? Yes, I reply. Was it the latest issue? No, I reply, it was a January issue but I had not read the magazine for fifteen years so they are all new issues to me. You sure it wasn’t ‘American Scientist’, he asks? No, it was definitely ‘New Scientist. That’s the weekly, he asks? Yes. The one that cost two hundred and fifty dollars? Yes. That’s why I don’t read it, he says.
In order to desire something else ‘fundamentally’, we must be stripped of space and time, we must live in a minimum of relationship with a site, a moment – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 p31
Trail dog and I did a four-mile loop without a nap after setting up camp. I am starting to get into shape. It will soon be three weeks (20 days today) and I am starting to feel fit. One of these days I’ll walk TD into the dust
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,.” / Beckett had one of his characters say, as if it might be best / to invest others to speak certain things / we’ve thought and kept to ourselves – Stephen Dunn – What Goes On: selected and new poems, 2009 p128
A rain is coming. There is a darkness on the horizon
I am awaiting the flashing and booming
A squall line would be nice – but no this time
It shall just begin to drizzle
And then it gets to falling steadily but soon ebbs
The is no crackling of ozone in the air
A breeze has begun to blow
The living, whose sole virtue is to wait, gasping, for something which is not death – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 p33
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