Capital Accumulation and the Art of Fishing - I Head Homeward Out of Homewood



Leaving Homewood for Kanas City - photo by Chet Chylinski

 The tent has a design flaw – which I discover during the first heavy rain – it will require a beach ball to correct. I tried a county park along the Cedar River below the bluffs. I followed an RV down a dead-end gravel road – there must be a campground near about if it is going in (see, everything has its utility, even an RV) but there were only three non-electric sites and they were poorly situated (as always) and cramped. It was not worth the three dollars I would save. I like the idea of flush toilets and showers so long as I can stay away from the overhead lights, but especially I like my privacy.

At the most general conceptual level, mediation means dealing with reality through someone else – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p8

Fishing is second only to camping in popularity among visitors to Viking Lake – bluegill, red-ear sunfish, large mouth bass, channel catfish, crappie and walleye. Any size of motor is allowed on the lake so long as no-wake is created. Do to the number of complaints visitors are required to clean up after their dogs. In addition to the lake there are 16 walk-in silt retention ponds that hold bass, bluegill and catfish. The world’s largest coffee pot and cup is nearby. There is no designated storm shelter in the park.

The “breathtaking banalities” / one only accomplishes in / retrospect. Hindsight - / they cal it – like the / backend of a horse. Horse’s ass, would be the way – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p412

I am again the sole tent camper – there are RVs over beyond the restrooms, but they do not count as I can’t see them for the trees. What you don’t see and what you don’t hear does not exist. I notice that there seem to be no airline routes crossing over this part of the country – no contrails by day, no blinking red lights at night. This is the first time that I’ve ever noted their absence. Last night there were three tents on the hillside above me. There was a conversion van down where the road made a loop back just before the group campsite. Dinner is on. The fire has been laid. The dog has wolfed down his hotdog. It is quite except for when a train roars by. The tracks are to close to the campground – it is rare that one is not in constant contact with the transportation infrastructure – a freeway, a jetway. The whistle of a distant train is good. The clickity-clack of a fast freight is bad.

The rainbow is stooping over the Chrysler Building / like a spineless trout, ugly and ephemeral / it is no sign of hope when things get ugly – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971 p324

It rained in the night. I almost got lost in the cornfields in the dark and in the rain. As a wee lad I was warned about getting lost in cornfields but even then I knew that if you just followed the row you would eventually come out of the field on the far side. But this was not a familiar field and I didn’t even know in which direction camp lay. I finally figured that I was on the far side of the lake from the campgrounds. It would be much shorter to return the way that I had come. I found the trail again. It was quickly getting dark. I had a long ways to go. Then it started to rain but not very hard – more of a drizzle that a downpour. Up ahead I could make out the turnoff for my campsite - finally. Then we (the dog and I) were there. I got a fire started. The dog went to bed.

I resolved it, I / found in my life a / center and secured it – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p317

It is 86 and there is no shade
All alcohol prohibited in the park
I drink a beer anyway
It’s no big deal that it’s so hot
At this time of season the flowers
Are all yellow and purple
A little hummingbird flitters by
And orange butterflies sip
The last of the nectar


With every breeze elm
Leaves rain down
The walnut trees are already barren
Except for their husk encased nuts
That look like little sour apples
Most everything is still green


And by mid-afternoon the sun
Has gone behind a still leafy tree
And I am sitting in its shade
And most of the beer is gone
And what is left is lukewarm


A breeze rustles the remaining
Leaves and frogs crock
Insistently
And I know that summer is over
And that winter is coming

Now the violets are all gone, the rhinoceroses, the cymbals / a grisly pale has settled over the stockyard where the fur flies / and the sound / - is that a bulldozer in heat stuck in the mud – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971 p346

The foundations of schooling are rooted in alchemy.Pedagogory for the masses is an outgrowth of alchemy and it has been co-opted into the theory of capital accumulation.

Truth is a small / stream one steps over, / wisdom an insistent preoccupation – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p504