Driving Monkeys on the Goodnight-Loving Trail

I hear someone yelling “Fred, Fred, Just the man I wanted to see. I need a strong back.” It is Jeff and he wants help moving a TV – it’s not a flat screen he informs me, its as deep as it is wide. And it was. And it was bulky. And it was heavy. And it was awkward to pick up, but we only had to carry it twenty feet. It was getting it to fit on the stand that was the problem. It was like manipulating an object wider than the jam through the opening of that door – it can be done but it becomes an engineering proposition. We got it done and he bought me a beer. I finished my book and returned it to my truck that I had parked around the corner in order to retrieve another book when I heard again “Fred, Fred”. This time it was Joe who was on the patio smoking, “Where are you going?” I didn’t take the time to explain but got my book and returned. I joined him on the patio where I informed him that he had lost his bet with Brian. You owe me a buck, I told him, for every year that you are off – he was off by eight years.

Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love – Chris Hedges

For a motivational coach – failure is success – you didn’t try hard enough (some would have you believe that God is a motivational coach) – you need more of what they have to offer. Beware of schemes that do not provide for graduated success. There is always a catch – it is never their fault. It is always your fault. Some predict with the collapse of the Prosperity Economy there will be an even greater demand for positive thinking and thereby motivational coaching – some industries are always recession proof. More of the same that causes the problem is usually the solution to that problem. Yep, that seems to make sense to me. Get rid of all of the negativity – go out and buy. We need more motivational speakers. Many many more. We can grow this economy with coaching alone. We can spend our downtime attending motivational seminars and maybe we can get the governement to pay for it or at least quarentee loans for our seminar fees and the purchase of their books and their tapes and their tailsmen so we can begin to grow this economy - Oh yeah!

We cannot read the tombs in the eastern prairie, / Who slew the Franks, who / swam the Yellow River – Basil Bunting – Collected poems, 2003 p114

My new bumper sticker reads: “Obama a Socialist? - I Wish!”

To embrace risk for the sake of the group required no justification. But a risk incurred for oneself? He told himself coarsely: “To live only for oneself is barren – like masturbation” – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p22

Tis a morning of cowboy music
         The dobro in clinking
         The man in the hat
                Is yodeling
Oooh oooh ha oooh
…. from riding the prairie
Oooh oooy ha oooh
The sun is glaring
The grass is waving
My butt is aching
          Sitting in the saddle
          All these hours
I take off my big hat
I whip my brow with a red bandana
          I mop the sweat from my eyes
I ride sleepily behind
          A million drowsy cows
          There is the smell of phoo
                 In the air. It is
Sweet

I would harness ten bulls to my voice / and pass my hand through the darkness like a plough / And in the depth of the watchful night / the eyes would flare at the labourer’s earth – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p79

Keep me in the loop
I’m going the extra mile
We’re all on the team together
          Here
          After
          All
While multitasking along the way
          There should
          Never be no
          Down
          Time
          Today
Deviation produces distrust
And an insufficient return
          Cash
          Flow
          Is
          CRITICAL
Success means
          Saying YES
And YES is a performance
           Measure in itself
YES! (And I jabbed my
          clenched left fist
          in the air)

The hoops of danger tighten without warning and you can’t breath – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p38

I wish I may, I wish I might upon the first slug I’ve seen tonight

Every act of perception is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination – Gerald M Edelman

I am sure that it was therapeutic but now I know more about Muriel Whitcome than ever I wanted to know - and I hadn’t wanted to know anything to begin with. She claims to have made a big deal to get it produced in Hollywood but the bartender and I have our doubts. I am somewhat intrigued by her ability to shift character and see herself in the third person. I have read about forty pages of the manuscript she had dumped on the bar and refuse to read any more.

James Taylor - Sweet Baby James - Call me if you want to. I’ll come running…

A mason times his mallet / to a lark’s twitter, / listening while the marble rests – Basil Bunting – Collected poems, 2003 p59