I wish all things were level. / I mistrust mountains. /
There are things I dislike, / but none / is worth an argument. / I do take
pride in this: / I am a good neighbor – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999
p73
See little; say nothing
No tales tall or short
Nothing at
all
Long or small
The rich are loved for making actual the wishes of
everybody; while the poor, conversely, are despised as the lackeys of
unattainable desire – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money,
1997 p152
A slow cruise of the Great Lakes – the dirigible Zenobia is
taking passengers for a tour. It’s advertised right here in “Senior Living”. Many aged and the infirm have signed up. This is the cruise that they had always promised themselves. It was not as expensive as one might have
thought, but they were operating on a very tight budget. "We hovered over a
wooded island in the Lake Superior. Those of us who wanted to explore were
lowered down on a rope. The island was occupied by a colony of Amazons." Are
there lots of you Amazons out here in the woods on isolated islands near the border? What are they up to? The cruise mostly occurred at
night. The lights of cars on the highways were visible when there was no cloud
cover. Streaks of red and light lights pointed to glowing skies on the
horizon. No additional excursions on the
ground occurred. It was pretty boring, but then a cruise is about food and
drinking and they didn’t provide anything in that way either - a lot of nouveau cuisine and mineral water. Passengers were notified that it would be
BYO. There was a weight limit of 300
pounds per passenger self and luggage. There were scales at the boarding ramp. Many were obese. A pile of discarded items due to the weight limit piled up as they boarde. It was a lighter than air craft and it wouldn’t have been without this weight limitation. The ship landed somewhere in North
Dakota and disgoruged its passengers. It had run out of fuel and was low on
helium and there was no money for any more. A discussion was held as to whether
to take up a collection from among the passengers to replenish the Zenobia or
just let the passengers find their own ways home. Several of the passengers had a rare blood disease
for which there was a non-profit foundation with lots of money (too few
eligible recipients). It was looking for ways to disburse its funds. A grant
proposal was quickly written and faxed in. A credit line was set up. A bus was
hired and the Zenobia was left sitting in a wheat field. A storm arose. The
wind picked up. The Zenobia had not been tethered down. It was blown aloft and
away. It was last seen in the glow of a flash of lightning. That was around
midnight.
Is it important
As you die
Slowly and
deliberately
To remember
And there is so little time
To remember
it all
One last time
Choose
Choose just a few
But which ones
For a final
rollcall
And then
gone
Forever
Desire… is extinguished by sickness and death – James Buchan
– Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997
p125
I did some reasearch on this story but could not find
anything about a Zeppelin called the Zenobia. All airships druring that time
belonged to the Navy and there were only three – the Macon, the Shanadoaha and
the Los Angeles. I could find no reference to any private airships and no craft
that carried passengers or was lost in North Dakota. There was no mention any
similar incident in the press of the time and no mention of it in historical
accounts of lighter-than-air ships, but I have interviewed five people who
swear that they had a relative on that cruise. Maybe if I an identify the
un-named blood disease I can identify the foundation that provived the funds to
get the stranded passengers home. They may have some record of that
transaction. They might even have a copy of the funding application in their
files. The story of the Amazons on an island in Lake Superior I find dubious. I
think that it might have been a later detail added to make an otherwise mundane
excursion seem more exiting in the retelling. Also you would thing there would have been some type of law suite given the way the passengers were dumped in that North Dakota wheat field in the middle of the night, but then if was settled out of court those records would have been sealed.
When a group of them [buffalo hunters] walked into a bar,
they would reach into their clothes, and the last one to catch a louse had to
buy – Ian Frazier – Great Plains, 1989 p58
A coming of age
A new generational naming
Having run
out of letters
Generations
A to Zed
Generation by generations
A
generation ago
The coming
generations
Generation to generation
Self-generating
My
generation
This
generation!
The gay nineties then the naughts
I began - / but I found there / no beginning, / no part of
it. / The human condition formed / in clusters - / grew upon the vine / as
grapes – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p80
All books are interconnected
Not accumulations of wisdom
Or even of
knowledge
Maybe Aristotle would not agree
But you are
a spider
Yout web is in memories
That you
weave
Year after year sucreting
My interconnections are
My
obsessions
These are my confessions
And if the flower / Flowers / let it by all means / in
itself flower – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p85
English ladys call them Silver Ladies
Lepish Saccharina means
Sugar bug – sounds so sweet
They like their own company
So much
They often eat one another
Described in twelve pages
Of Teutonic text
Molt and mate
Molt and mate
And eat one another
That’s a Silverfish’s life
They regard man tenderly
We are good
But not that dependable
To be a victim alone is not an honor – Jean Amery – At the
Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a survivor on Auschwitz and its realities,
1980 p.ix
A culture is subject to a Heisenberg principle of sorts: you
can’t both describe it and know its becoming – you can either live it or talk
about it.
I spun on single wings / down / like a maple key but /
aimless / aimless. / What I felt / was empty – full of / emptiness – Theodore
Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p116
The man in the tan truck (who will later try to commit suicide)
is back – three days in a row now and the three people in a beat up black sedan
– back after skipping three nights – they ran over the curb at site #8 and
wanted to borrow a flashlight to check on the damage. The guy who is hard of
earing and talks constantly on the phone, got out and walked back to site #3
cursing in the dark. They have quieted down and have pitched their tent. Peace
reigns for the time being.
Only fever or poverty provoke visions. / Only love and
memory. / Not these paths on the plains. / Not these labyrinths – Roberto
Bolano – The Romantic Dogs, 2006 p41
If there ware no multiverse
We’d have to invent one
Or perhaps
several
For if the universe/multiverse
were
A
singularity
Science would be an impossiblity
Philosophy and poetry, in essence the story of and unhappy
love affair – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p234
Something small and black and fury and that can run like a
bat out of hell just crossed my path. It leaps and it bounds and it is gone. Later I see a red
fox. It was rather large for a fox. I’d never seen a fox in the wild before. A
blue van in sitting in campsite #8 with the motor running. It pulls out after I
passed by and the woman on the passenger side waved frantically and smiled. The
dog and I walk the campgrounds regularly and check on everything. Was she is
distress? It didn’t seem so. Maybe she just felt guilty at being so she
supposed caught giving head
A VIEW IN THE DANDELIONS: Full bloom / miles of / bull bloom
- / the eye / revolts - / dances in the heart - / nothing else. / It is the eye
/ seeing the eye – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p111
No comments:
Post a Comment