Charles Bukowski says that writing a poem should be like taking a shit. When you turn around its just there and if it’s good, well it really stinks. I’m in the southwest corner of Iowa. Corn, corn – corn feed cattle, corn fed hogs. In one end and out the other. The body is a donut.
I had forgotten the instructions on pitching my new tent and I bent a pole. The Labor Day campers were leaving just as I arrived. Are you interested in selling your extra firewood, I asked. Well, let’s see! It cost me six dollars a bundle. But I figured he had enough junk to pack back to Council Bluffs without hauling the firewood back too and I was right, he said I could have what was left. I gave him five dollars. It was enough to get me through eight nights with some to spare. The signs all said “Save our trees buy only local firewood.” But the emerald woodborer infestation was traveling east to west and I was going the opposite direction.
Tectonic slips and brutal human violence provided random time-capsules of unhistorical lives – – Michael Ondaatje – Anil’s Ghost, 2000 p55
Daylight savings time may actually increase the use of energy rather than reducing it’s usage which has always been its primary reason for having been implemented – greater usage takes palce as fanss and air-conditioners are turned on more during the extended summer day and usage of gasoline increases as people take more trips to shop and to dispersed sites of recreation (lakes, golf courses, ball parks, etc) There is even evidence for an increase in traffic accidents and an increase in the rats of suicides and of heart attacks during the extended hours.
Every writer, especially every novelist, has a “message”, whether he admits it or not. All art is propaganda… On the other hand, not all propaganda is art – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p56
Geometry
Lines of affection
Angles of dissatisfaction
The hypotenuse of truth
The arc of consensus
This geometry of life
Early in life the line is straight / made straight / against the grain – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p119
Odds of an apocalyptic event occurring in near future (Scientific American Sept 2010):
Solar superstorm (knocking out power grids and computetes)
5% in next 15years
Killer pandemic 50% in 30 years
Runaway global warming 50% in 200 years
Supervolcano 1% in 1,000 years
Nuclear war 3% in 10 years
Giant asteroid 0.000001% in 100 years
Either we are God, or God isn’t – Balzac
What we admire about the rich is their ability to get away with what we are not allowed to – what would either bankrupt us or land us in jail – we mistakenly think that they are thumbing their noses at authority. This is delusional they are authority.
The drama of our time is the coming of all men into one fate – Robert Duncan
Decisive leadership means having eliminated (either in reality or in imagination) any means of backing out – or at least to believe that your followers would not tolerate such a thing. To be human tis to resrve the right to say ‘No’ to one’s own greatness
Once he has been under the spell of the vast, luminous silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation existing in the midst of something that is absolute – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p427
health problems associated with their former lifestyle. However new findings seem to indicate that there is a real difference in the mortality rates of lifetime abstainers vs heavy drinkers (including former drinkers) with the later living longer. Moderate drinking (one to three drinks per day) is associated with the lowest mortality rate.
This is a poem about a horse that got tired. / Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. / I want to go home. / I want you to go home. / This is a poem which tells the story, / which is the story. / I don’t know. I get lost – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p156
In a true labor market it would be labor who would have the choice rather than capital – to choose the work, to choose the rate, to chose the hours. Labor has none of these. Labor has the choice to take what’s offered it or starve.
Just because something works in a particular way or can be made to do so doesn’t mean that it was intended for that purpose – David P Barash – How Women Got Their Curves – 2009 p122
Money money money bolo - ching, ching - money, money bolo -- uhee - money, money bolo - sheaka - money, money…I’m trying to figure out how to write ‘sound’. I know it is not with capital letters and I know that the quote marks are unnecessary, but you cannot write pure sound just as you cannot depict pure color in words. They all need context. The Uptown Church of Christ as a sing posted outside – “Bible Answers to Bible Questions” – is in not indicative to all “expertise”
I am shut out from entering Sacred Heart. It is locked up. And as it contains no shrine I guess it is not open expect during mass? Or is it the neighborhood in which it is located? I need to do a little research on the Internet – find out the open hours for all the Catholic churches here in San Francisco:
Sacred Heart 10AM Mass on Sunday
Church of the Nativity - Polish Sunday@ 9:30 - 240 Fell
St Agnes, St Benedict, St Ignatius, St Vincent de Paul, Star of the Sea, Our Lady of Fatima
The door opens / There are no snakes. / The head is on the table / And her eyes / gaze at me, / pale blue, but / blank as the eyes / of zombie or angel, / with the stunned / lack of expression / of one / who had the same as nothing – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p272
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