The Smell of Success, at Last - Then Bang, God Shots Out My Brains

Blood on the Hoodoos - Route 12 Utah

Functional foods: modified foods purporting to provide health benefits. In 2008 this was a $31b industry. In the US unlike Europe such claims do not need to be substantiated. Activia (a yogurt product) makes a claim in its US advertising that it “helps regulate your digestive system” In Europe it is only claimed that it contains an exclusive bacterial culture and that it is a source of calcium and Vitamin B12 (which is true of all yogurts). Food manufacturers in the US claim that having to prove their claims would cost too much and take too much time. And we know that they wouldn’t be allowed to say it on TV if it were not true.

And then suddenly she said – I think this was it – “You’re a man with a soul.” I didn’t try to deny it – I was too happy, I guess, when a whore tells you you’ve got a soul it means more somehow. Whores don’t usually talk about souls – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p143

People move on
You never encounter
         Them again
They re-deploy
They dis-inter
Your letters are returned
          “Addressee unknown”
Life goes on


The last remaining elder was
           Buried this morning
In the afternoon I paid cash
For the last vehicle I would own
I leave no accounts unsettled


I have a less innocent body
But the mind remains spotless

That was fifteen years ago. / Tony is dead, the block where I lived / has been torn down. The mind / is an impermanent place isn’t it, / but it looks to permanence – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p384

So I visited St. Mary’s this morning - Our Lady of the Maytag as she is affectionly known. At the perimeter – along the hedge, I pick up a musty smell and bend over to sniff – how would a dog take in St Mary’s?. Yes, that smell is coming from there. Recently snipped leaves have oxidized along their cut edges and fresh shoots with greenish brown growth have shot two inches high in places. It’s not the smell of a recent trimming I surmise. But this would not have been of interest to a dog.

I am not sitting on the ballasted of the frontcourt over the parking lot of the cathedral. This is were the tour busses park and disgorge their pilgrims. There is money to be made in pilgrimages. No buse is parked here right now. The sun has just emerged from a cloud and there is slight breeze which should aid in the detection of ambient odors. The court is constructed of brick and marble. River pebble sin concrete constitute the pathways. I go inside the cavernous enclosure of sanctified space. Concrete and wood are the smells. Cheep ink and newsprint emanated for the Archdioceses’ newspaper to the left of the entrance. The mass of concrete shoots skyward.

He told it as if it were incidental to something else. It rang true to me. If it had been a lie, he would have made more of it – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p136

I sniff the back of the pew immediately in front. It does not smell of polished wood but of the oil from thousands of long black tresses of woman who have sat there during mass one at a time – fingering rosaries, one bead at a time. I am now alone. One man with a limp clumped, clumped past wearing hard soled shoes that echoed off the bricks and the poured concrete of internal pillars as he made his way to a shrine in an alcove. Three tourists came and left. It is quite except for the Muni buses outside traveling along Geary Street . I shall sit here in silence a little while longer relishing the solitude within this arching space – this holy agitator of God. The creak of wood expanding breaks the stillness of the ton upon ton of concrete bearing down upon me.

Bong, bong, bong - a bell above somewhere above signals eleven. I walk around the Sanctuary. There is a sweet smell white lilies held over form yesterday’s Easter Sunday mass. And there is the smell of freshly oiled wood, devotionally, slavinglly rubbed in by ancient hands. These smell coalesce in the southwest corner near the shrine of “Our Lady of Guadalupe”. That is also the warmest and best lit corner in this voluminous space.

Sometimes the night takes you with it, wraps you up and rolls you along, leaving you washed in sleep at the morning’s edge…. And sometimes the night goes on without you – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p237

If you can’t be happy
Be as happy as you can be
And if you can’t
         Then pretend

It is only when one is not fully happy that one is meticulous about time – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p225

Median wealth in the United States:

Woman of color – age 36-49        $5
Single black woman                 100
Single Hispanic woman              125
Black man                        7,900
Man of color – age 36-49        11,000
White woman                     41,500
White man                       43,800
White woman – age 36-49         70,000
White man – age 36-49          117,000

“You’ve said that only a few of us can read and write.” “Isn’t that true?” “Of course not! We can all read and write, just like you. And we would, if only we’d had lessons.” – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p383