When I Left the Alamo I Could Not Find My Car and Was Attacked by a Black Cat

The Alamo, San Antonio Texas

I’m over here in the rain to get the new truck registered and licensed. What you up to? Counting the raindrops. Or he might have said that he was trying to stay out of the rain. There is a man sitting in the comfy chair reading his Bible. He eyes me, trying not to be too conspicuous, looking at the titles of the books that I take out of my pack and place in a stack on the table in front of me. He wants to know if I am his kind but there is no Bible or other religious tract so he goes back to his reading of Ecclesiastics. He disapproves of course and of course I could care less, but not so little that I don't take note of it.  But he's not actually doing any harm so long as he in only reading it. The black cat is getting used to being chased into the basement and has convinced itself that it likes it down there in the dark and the damp. The dog is oblivious to the danger the cat presents but he as yet to get attacked without someone at hand with a pillow to swat the cat away, otherwise he would be dead. We have learned to not place our bodies between the cat and its prey.  It’s in the cats nature to stalk and this one’s defenses are easily roused by any quick motion and it is a stalker to boot. We name him Santa Anna.

I KNOW A MAN: As I sd to my / friend, because I am / always talking, - John, I // sd, which was not his / name, the darkness sur- / rounds us, what // can we do against / it, or else, shall we and ; / why not, buy a goddamn big car, // drive, he sd, for / christ’s sake, look / out were yr going – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982p132

The aches and the pains begin
       At sixty-two
Will I still love myself
When I’m eighty-four

Living with a whore – even the best whore in the world – isn’t a bed of roses. It isn’t the numbers of men, though that to gets under your skin sometimes, it’s the everlasting sanitation, the precautions, the irrigations, the examinations, the worry, the dread – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p149

Of the Americans who text message more adults admit to texting while driving (47%) than do adolescents (34% of 16- and 17-year olds).

The playful nip [of a dog] denotes the bite, but it does not denote what would be denoted by the bite – Gregory Bateson

Shop and  Dine on Columbine Drive - Some people get tunes stuck in their heads. I get phrases like this one stuck in my mind, turning them over and over like a lapidary barrel until they come out all glossy. I rush to find paper and pen and get them written down, and then I wonder why I had bothered. But at least now they are no longer rattling around in my brain – nematodes of the mind. I go into the Blue Door Coffee House on Clement for a cappuccino. Then to the Cornet to see Hellboy - the 1PM Matinee show – it’s cute and  it’s silly. Then I go to the Mechanics Institute library to pick up a copy of the IRS Schedule D. Now I’m at the San Francisco Brewery. It’s happy hours and I’m having a Dopple Weisen. And here I sit. Gee, I’ve taken to writing like goose takes to feather beds. We had the this four way conversation going. There was a British solicitor, a commercial truck driver and an airline pilot and everyone was envious of the other

I search for meaning, studying to remember / What the world was, and meant. Therefore I try / To reconstruct it in a dying ember, / And wonder, does fire make it lie or die? – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p140

A thought kept coming to me – something about becoming  comfortable in strange places – no longer being so dependent on familiar places. I think that the same brainworm had been gnawing in my skull the other day. I had intended to write it down but didn’t. Now it just seem inane. I had a dream in which I was riding on Muni. It must have been an articulated bus because it had those gray bellows. And I heard my name called and looked around and it was Marie. And I said…. And she said… And we both laughed

We quickly forget what we have not deeply considered – Marcel Proust – The Captive p31

I keep losing cars. I park them and then forget all about them and go on about my busienss.  I go and acquire more cars. I buy them. I don’t steal them. I’m not a criminal. Sometime later I remember that I had recently owned a 1947 Hudson Hornet, at least I thing I did but I have no recollection of where or when I last saw that car. And now there is a Nash Metropolitan parked in the driveway. It’s a cute little car. I am trying to explain this phenomenon to the doctor. I am telling him that I have done this a number of times but most of the vehicles that I lost track of were worthless anyway, but the Hudson , that one was worth a lot of money, I tell him. I usually bought old clunkers. What do you think happened to them he asked?  I pondered this. I suppose they just got towed off. Somewhere I had big bills awaiting me for impoundment charges no doubt? Had I accumulated many unpaid parking tickets? Were there warrants out for my arrest, I wondered? I instinctively knew that I should keep my nose clean.. This memory loss seemed to be quite specific and applied only to automobiles. Yet it did not seem strange to me that I should park a car and walk off and entirely forgot about it. I would walk past a car at the curb and it would seem vaguely familiar like a face to which you can not put a name. I probably bought many cars because they seemed familiar. I probably bought many cars of the same make, model and color. I may have bought the same cars more than once.

As if causes / could be smothered with the cry, / but the causes are forgotten / and the cry returns, / out of control – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p370

Twice as many people in India have access to a mobile phone as have access to a toilet

Instead of a truly personal, truly creative vision of things, we have merely an aesthetic view. Empty as we are, it is impossible for us to look at an object without annexing it to our collection – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p184