The cat is stalking the dog and hissing – the only damage it has done as of yet is to those who get between it and the little dog – I bear a few scars and Leslie has many. I’m afraid that that cat will kill that little dog so I lock the mean cat in the basement. Then I fear that I may not have closed the door tight and that the cat may have gotten out – it meows a lot and throws itself against the door making a banging noise. But I have gone out and I sit here fearing that when I get home the dog will be dead. Maybe I should have been doubly safe and have locked the dog in the bedroom but it’s too late now for I am not there. Otherwise the cat is affectionate, but right now my fear has gotten the better of me and I imagine burying the dog in the back yard and hitting the cat with the shovel and burying it in the same hole. No that cat is just following its natural instincts and didn’t intentionally do anything evil. No it should not deserve that. I decide not to kill it. But I will keep it locked in the basement for I don’t ever want to see it again. But no, I tell myself, the door is probably secure and nothing is amiss. I hope I hear the little dog barking when I go to unlocked the front door.
If you never do anything for anyone else / you are spared the tragedy of human relation- // Ships – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p125
The Whitehouse is claiming bragging rights for the effects of the stimulus package and proclaiming that three million jobs have been created. The average cost of job created comes to only $270,000. That seems rather expensive but if you calculate the cost of local government created jobs (thought development tax incentives) is seems cheep. Locally created jobs average about $500,000 each – of course you have to factor in jobs destroyed by increasing the costs to already existing businesses (big boxes replace mom and pops). But still what is the payback period when expending $500,000 or even $270,000 to create aminimum wage job mostly of which come without benefits that have to be picked up by other government programs.
There is a trend for female ornamentation to distinguish sexual availability (pubertal or marital status), while male ornamentations tends to distinguish rank and frequently puberty, but seldom marital status – B S Low – Sexual Selection and Human Ornamentation, 1979
Greenwich Mean Time is no longer used for the base term for global time keeping. It has been replaced by UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is used by NOAA satellites as their time reference. The Navy as well as Civil Aviation used the letter ‘Z’ (phonetically Zulu) to refer to the time at the prime meridian - www.greenwichmeantime.com. The world is divided into 24 time zones. For easy reference in communications, a letter of the English alphabet has been assigned to each time zone (less the letters ‘I’ and ‘O’). The ‘clock’ at Greenwich, England has been given the designator ‘Z’. Pacific time is designated as ‘U’. Eastern time is ‘R’.
It seems that among men and women of action… the mind, overtaxed by the need to attend to what is going to happen in any hour’s time, commits very little to memory – Marcel Proust – The Captive p31
Life is a process of discovery; discovering that you’ve been wrong and from this experience new hypotheses are derived – which in all probability will also be proved to have been wrong.
A “change of heart” is in fact the alibi of people who do not wish to endanger the statuesque – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p20
St Dominic’s’- my neighborhood Catholic church - the sweet smell of old stone and wood and years of incense burning. The church ladies are arranging the altar, watering the flowers. They leave me alone, self assured that I would know how to use this space to conduct my spiritual life. Priests are available for private penance and instruction if requested.The place is / not found but seeps / from our touch in / continuous creation, dark / enclosing cacoon round / ourselves along – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p169
Will the pews have that St Mary’s smell of softly brushed ebony locks? No, its more homogenized than that. The masses of bouquets are being carefully tended to up front, far away, at the other end of the nave. The odor of burning candles whiffs along with the breeze. The space is enclosed in the perfume of paraffin. When the sun is cloud blocked nave has a gloomy appearance with a little bit of light entering from the high stained glass windows.
He could not establish a connection in his mind between the absurd trivialities which filled his day and the serious business of putting words on paper – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p31
Mass celebrants are beginning to arrive , no this is a bus tour disembarking. There is the snapping of flash bulbs and the sound of a diesel engine running out front. They are Hispanic pilgrims from a single big bus. They space themselves out among the front pews and the various alcoves of their saint of choice. Kneeling and praying they are swallowed up in the cavernous space. Talking in whispers. Lighting candles. There is the sporadic flash of a pictorial keepsake. And yes outside stood a large charter bus.
For the possession of what we love is an even greater joy than love itself – Marcel Proust – The Captive p44
I move on to a small café on Steiner Street between St Dominic’s and the recreational center’s playing field with a large cappuccino. It’s a woman’s place. Chocolate covered roasted coffee beans, free, one per customer. The sun is shinning though the front window warming this hand with which I write. The musty smell of religion has not yet left me. I am wondering about the Catholic Pilgrim industry. How large is it? Who are the major players? Who constitutes a tour and why? What do they visit and how many stops to a day? How many days on the road and where do they stay at night? What is involved in putting such a tour on the road? Is it a niche market or does the industry include other than Catholic pilgrims, say Civil War Buffs also?
It is not at all certain that a merely moral criticism of society may not be just as ‘revolutionary’ – and revolution, after all, means turning things upside down… two viewpoints are always tenable. The one, how can you improve human nature until you have changed the system? The other, what is the use of changing the system before you have improved human nature?… The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another… The central problem – how to prevent power from being abused – remains unsolved – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p23
I have more questions than answers, but having answered the question of why GMT is called Zulu time earlier today, that is just fine.
For you can only create if you can care – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p70
The street trees on this block all lean downhill to the south. I think that it is due to the prevailing wind. The interludes of sunshine never last long, one came and went in the composition of this line. An old white man jumps out of his car and wants to get into a fistfight with a local black lady after an altercation in the middle of the street. He finally restrained his pink ass and got back into his car. I could hear horns honking as he sailed through the stop sign up the block, still full of rage and indignation - getting pinker all the time. What shade was his anger this afternoon?
At the time of the American Revolution more than 60% of all European immigrants had arrived as indentured servants. Roughtly half of all immigrants who arrived in American as servants did not survive their term of indenture.
Get ahead
Get some tail
Give a hand
Get a leg up
If you don’t have
The heart
I hope at least that
You have guts
He was of a single mind
The spineless son of a
Bitch
All head and no heart
So two foot it
High tail it
Show us your back
Side
You yellow-livered
Bastard
He’s going home. So the war, to all purposes is over. That’s enough reality for the West. It’s probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit – – Michael Ondaatje – Anil’s Ghost, 2000 p286
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