Lost Connections, Misplaced Alleginces, More Confusions - Ithyphallic Projections

19⁰  - another week of below freezing temperatures are ahead.  It was after dark. Bang, bang. I stuck my head out of the door, someone was screaming. Help! Help!. It was coming from across the street. A pickup truck was blocking the road and an SUV was spinning its tires in the ditch. I grabbed my phone. I put on my shoes. The SUV was now gone. You Ok? You OK? Need an ambulance, I asked. No! Want me to call the police? Go ahead. And then after my 911 call he had second thoughts – he might have an outstanding warrant for an old speeding ticket. They might just arrest him instead. I tried to get his story straight as I talked to the dispatcher. A vehicle is on the way, she said. How long will it take. It is an emergency response, sir. It will be there as soon as it can.

All private property… has always required police protection but in the paradigm of immaterial production there is an expansion of immaterial property, which is ever more volatile and uncontrollable, posing new security problems – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p180

And when the police cruiser arrived it shone a bright light in our eyes. The man that had been run over was hollering for them to turn it off. I said, they need to make sure that they themselves are not at risk (meaning that we were not armed and did not appear to be menacing). Then they got out and approached on foot and he began to relate his story. The tall officer bent over and pulled something for the snow bank. It was a piece of vegetation. Things are usually not what they appear, he said. The truth lies somewhere else, he proclaimed. That’s for you to figure out, I said and left.

As Mallarme once told Degas, literature is made up of words, not ideas – J G Merquior – From Prague to Paris, 1986  p29

Paddy starts to draw a Doppel Weisn. I say, NO, NO, Something cold and light this time. How about an Albatross this time and he draws it. I am refreshed. After miles of beaches, sand dunes, ice plants, spruce trees and concrete and except for the ride out and the ride back in, I have been walking, walking, walking, in the heat, in the surf and across the dunes and the hills, discovering Bufano anew along the way.  The first two I just happened across. It was a serendipitous triumph. I shall inventory all of his works in the City. Then I shall visit each one.


Benny Bufano public sculptures:

• - Madonna - Great Meadow, upper Fort Mason
• - St Francis - City College
• - Sun Yat-Sen - St Mary’s Square
• - St Francis II - Taylor & Beach Streets
• - St Francis III - Grace Cathedral
• - The Penguins I - Sidney Walton Square (Front, Davis & Jackson)
• - The Penguins II - Pine & Powell Streets
• - Bear & Cubs - 530 Parnassus St
• - Polar Bear - Randall Museum

The Seahawks and the Bears
Does Seattle stand a chance?
             Not a pray, she replied
I had already closed that town’s
            Chapter I thought.
            That education was over
                   I thought. I had
             Healed, I though

My lost love had died in June and now
            After so many years
            I could finally grieve
I found a death notice. But no
            Obituary. Complications
            Due to malaria I was told
            I had found
The clue in her daughter’s novel
            Her photo on the jacket

            Mother and daughter looked alike                
“To my mother Dr Angelina Mbauya”
It has been thirty years since Seattle
            I had long counted
            Her among the dead
For a short while a reconciliation
            Had seemed possible
            But not now; it had all 
            Been in my head
As it turned out neither team
            Would be going on
            To the Superbowl
But there remained a gnawing
            In my stomach
            About how it could have been
            And all the anger I never got over

The more metaphorical the relation between us and the animal concerned (as in the case of birds), the more metonymical are their given names, borrowed from our daily environment. Conversely, the more metonymical the beasts’ relation to us (as with dogs), the more metaphorical, or ‘symbolic’ the nicknames will be. The pattern is therefore inversion: what most resembles is exactly what differs most – J G Merquior – From Prague to Parise, 1986  p50

It is a slow evening. I decide to try Eldo’s. That will only leave one brew-pub in the City that I have not yet visited. I’ll make the final minutes of its happy hour. Running into Michelle on the street had delayed my arrival. “What's Happening?", I say as she hailed me down. "Just taking a walk", she replied. "I didn’t mean at this specific moment," I say. "I mean with your life." Our courtship had been that way too, talking past each other. She was looking for a man and I was just looking to see if I was looking and if she might worth looking at. We had both just talked past each other till we gave up and just nodded hello. She thought I should have done something and I was wondering if I wanted to do something. I mention work. "Oh", she says, "I don’t work there any more." "I know", I reply. And I say, "I don’t go there very often anymore." "I’m on my way to EldosJuda. I conclude that she must have found someone who wasn’t just wondering. I continue north on up Ninth Avenue.

Eldos attracts a twenty something crowd. I am tolerant of being the only gray hair. I reach out and shake an offered hand. No, I don’t know who it is. Their rules not mine. Sports is a big thing here, I don’t know that I can reach out that far. Only I and an Asian woman are drinking dark beers, everyone is drinking pales. Innocuous jazz plays on the stereo. But San Franciscans are a gregarious sort and they mix will with about any one. The guy next to me is hollering “Score”. I look up. There is a hockey game on the monitor, but there had been no score. There is nothing out of the ordinary happening in the game and I look at him. He’s on his cell phone - I’ll take to you later - and he signs off. He chuckles to himself. And the hockey fan says “one more for the score” and pushes his glass towards the bartender. A pale ale of course.

Among his profound struggles (and it is a question all serious poets put to themselves) is with what to do with the particulars – Dan Chiasson – New York Review of Books, Dec 9, 2010 p41

It takes a poet to not know

And make a fetish of this

It is a duty to establish

            The difference

Between what is not known and

What it is to not know

The business of thinking is difference qua difference – Martin Heidegger – Identity and Difference, 1969