JENIFFER REACHES FOR HER TOWEL. IT’S NOT THERE BUT SHE SEES A SIX FOOT COCKROACH WITH IT WRAPPED ARONUND HIM . JENIFFER NEEDS TO STOP SELF-MEDICATING. GREGOR GIVE ME THAT TOWEL AND GET OUT OF HERE, SHE SCREAMS AT THE COCKROACH

Everyone is gone. I have the place to myself or at least I do for tonight. I would be out sailing but there is no breeze. I am drinking the last of the moonshine. Alcohol and weed makes for a laid back feeling. I am contemplating but I am not sure what it is that I am contemplating. I woke up this morning with an exaggerated sense of self-importance or maybe it was insignificance. It was so long ago and I can barely remember. Today I’ll be back on the road again.

Money becomes time

When time became money

Appearances are not self-explanatory – Guy Deutscher – Through the Language Glass, 2010  p14

I leave the Café Treste which sufficient time to make the 12:30 concert at St Patrick’s. I’m a block down Columbus. City Lights is across the street. In front of the bookstore is the bus stop.  I see a lady with red hair who seems to be waving at me. She is. It’s Leslie.  I wait for her. She’s on her way to work at the Children’s Museum at Fort Mason I turn and walk along with her. The great thing about not working is that you don’t have to stick to an agenda. Later I head out to Ocean Beach. I bask in the sun and take a walk along the beach. Little purple sail boats. Dragon kites high above the sand. What looked like a blanket of purple iris petals blanketed the sand above high tide. They didn’t smell like flowers. Dead limpets. The kite masters untangled their control lines looping their kites clockwise and then counterclockwise – elderly Chinese men. A large wave crashes ashore. I stop by the Beach Chalet and have a Park Chalet Amber. The barmaid said that she’d give me taste the hand pumped Dee’s Bitter Ale. I wait. She forgets. The view of the beach is fantastic from up here but the bar faces away from the window and I can only see the ocean from its reflection in the mirror. It’s only three-thirty. This is a tony place. Too upscale for me. I go back to North Beach, my regular spot. Cynthia and Paddy are bickering like lovers. They are telling each other how much they dislike each other.

The way to move upon water / Is to work lying down, as in love – James Dickey – The Whole Motion, 1992  p66

Lift the seat when you pee

If there is a urinal plese use it

            Instead)

Save the stall for the shy pee-ers

And if you must lower the seat

            When finished

            Shame on you

If you didn’t lift the seat       

            It’s a rotten experience

            Sitting in someone’s pee

And don’t forget to flush

            Thataboy!

After a few minutes of this, [he] stopped alerting us to snakes; it was too like shouting “Fly!” on a warm evening in a barnyard. There a lot of snakes… Nothing so well represented people’s sense of being violated by the [flooded] river as the image of the cottonmouth in the child’s crib – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010   p124

What is important and what is not. There is not…Oh, my pen just ran out of ink. That is important, I think

Venue 9 closed down last night and now they’ll put up a parking lot - Paradise. We all made rain together - snap your fingers, rub you our palms, slap your thighs, stomp your feed and then do it all again in reverse (feet, thighs, palms & fingers). Goodbye Venue 9

Photographs provide an alternative way of looking into history. Not into general history – but into a specific moment, a specific place. It is as if we have reached into the past and created a tiny peephole – Errol Morris – Believing is Seeing, 2011 p31

The world does not exist without its smells

And the well worn stone steps

And the polished wood of dark oil stained pews

The nature of the artificial is that it

Leaves nothing behind

Each day the world is scrubbed clean

Without need for charwoman

            With her lye and antiseptic

And Franco served Primo a banquet of egg dishes

Those who wanted to get out, he told him

Have no further need of them

Franco had made an elaborate pun

            (you have to be Spanish to understand,

            We might have served calf fries instead)

But Franco has no humor

Evil laughs but is not funny

Amoral brutes certainly commit torture, but in their hands it doesn’t become part of a legally sanctioned system – Cullen Murphy – The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2010  p77

Not since Nazi Germany has any country been so prone to waving the flag as hasn been done the United States since 9/11 (although there was no shyness about waving it before then either).

The Inquisition with its stipulation that torture and interrogation not jeopardize life or cause irreparable ham, actually set a more rigorous standard than some proponents of torture insist on now – Cullen Murphy – The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2010  p76

As a word carp is so crap – Martin Amis

And this particular perversion

Needs all the actualizing it can get;

Beside it Joyce’s pendent for excrement

And Burroughs’s interest for scaffolds

Seems sadly quaint

If your heart

Rejects it, retreats from it,

That’s age, that’s time

Fucking with you

Sucking the life from you

A persuasion is not conviction

All we know

For certain is

That what he will write,

Would not have been composed,

Be guessed at,

By anyone else

A man fights....

With his asshole

Power comes...

In the form of anger,

Up through the asshole

Contrails of more

Distant airplanes

Incandescent spermatozoa,

Sent out to

Fertilize the universe

The problem was much deeper that the failure to understand… [They] did not even understand that there was something there to understand – Guy Deutscher – Through the Language Glass, 2010  p133

I go out with the Hobie. The wind dies down. Next time bring the dog and a six pack. A woman will do you no good on such a small boatn (of course the dog won’t either, but the beer will).

The first two commandments for any great thinker: (1) Thou shall be vague, (2) Thou shall not escape self-contradiction – Guy Deutscher – Through the Language Glass, 2010  p136

I remember that I wanted to inhale myself – A Artaud

I have moreover

I definitively broke with

Art, style and talent

I mean that

I curse anyone

Who is going to consider them

 As

Works of art,

Works that

Aesthetically

Simulate

Reality...

None of them,

To speak exactly,

Is a work.

They are all attempts,

That is to say blows – probings or thrustings

In all the directions of hazard,

Of possibility,

Of chance

 Or

Of destiny

I have never

Studied anything,

But lived everything,

And that has taught

Taught me something

I have thrown

The communion,

The Eucharist,

God and his Christ

Out the window

And have decided...

I remember that

Ever since I was eight years old,

And even before that,

I always wondered who I was,

What I was,

And why I was alive?

I remember at the age of six

In a house, a number 29, to be precise,

Just as I was eating my afternoon snack

I asked myself what it meant

 to exist,

 to be alive,

What it meant

 to be conscious

of oneself breathing,

And I remember that

I wanted

 to inhale myself

In order to prove

 that I was alive

And to see if

I liked being alive,

And if so,

Why

In the long journey out of the self, / There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places / Where the shale slides dangerously / And the back wheels hang almost over the edge – Theodore Roethke – The Far Field, 1964

Two deep tokes and I was in slow motion watching everything as if in a microscope. I could concentrate on every little detail, one detail at a time. There were immense gaps of contemplation before anyone spoke and then they spoke with slow deliberation. People who I had considered dull suddenly had become wise. I’m two tokes over the line.

The mark of an exceptional mind is its ability to question the self-evident – Guy Deutscher – Through the Language Glass, 2010 p31

Love is not rational

Love is not blind

Love is a lot of things but

Love is not everything

Love is defiantly not eternal

At least no more than hate is

For me the Crimean War is the ‘perfect war.’  It was started for obscure reasons, was hopelessly murderous and accomplished nothing – Errol  Morris – Believing is Seeing, 2011 p36

The cicadas begin to chirr as the air begins to heat up. The leaves rustle in ripples as if at the beach. The sounds intensify in pitch, in volume as waves break.

Put down those seed in your hand. / These trees have no yet been planted – James Dickey – The Whole Motion, 1992 p49

JENNIFER SCREAMS, “WHO’S THERE, IS THERE SOMEONE THERE?” NO ONE ANSWERS. SHE THINKS SHE HEARS BREATING.

The heat of the summer – unusally hot; drought across America; expect higher food price; gasoline is just below four dollars; people shall starve in Africa – is disapating. It got below sixty last night. After Labor Day I shall head south, but northeast Michigan for now. The Hobie has been pulled up on shore. The potted plants have been watered.  eEverything is stowed away . Put the tomato plants indoors. Check the tire pressure. Is the hitch secure? Hook up. Checkoff everything of the inspection list. Do it twice. I'm off. See you down the road.

I take the #38 out to Ocean Beach and walk over to the Beach Chalet. It is crowded today. Too crowed to sit and savor a cold beer and its noisy to boot. I walk over to the N line terminus and take the Metro back and stop at Eldo’s for a Cal Fornicator. “That’s a double bock. Are you sure? Are you familiar with the double bock? It’s pretty malty.” “I’m sure” I assure him. God that was worth all the hassle. “Happy hour all day today.” “All day Sunday? Every Sunday?” “Yes - it’s happy hour all day Sunday, every Sunday except for the barley wine.” My tape worm says to me “come back again.” Another Cal Fornicator next Sunday maybe.

The tourist thrives on the uncanny, moving happily through a phenomenal world of effects without causes. This world, in which he has no experience and no memory, is presented to him as a supernatural domain – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010 p17

Hot hot hot    

            Barely bearable

Give me another

            Cold beer

Cradled in the hammock

            Narry a breeze

Guzzle lots of alcohol

            And pass out

Wake up after it gets dark

            Disorientated

I love candle light, / said the Moth, / It makes suicide more romantic – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989  p90

I want to go to the state fair (any state fair) and hand out ribbons like that one behind the bar that reads “California State Fair 2003 - Third Place” I once got a red ribbon for my cow at the county fair. I spent a lot of time in the hot sun curry combing her. The junior under ten category – me not Betsy my cow. I sold her, my Guernsey cow. Then I moved into town.

[General George Armstrong] Custer’s fame is the victor of fancy and myth over complicated history… [He] finally ran into the largest off-reservation gathering of Indians ever in one place on the continent, and gave them what was possibly the last really great time they ever had – Ian Frazier – Great Plains, 1989  p180

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

He became Shakespeare

As he was tired

            Of being nothing

Or at least returning

            To being nothing

Upon exiting the stage

Having delivered

            His last line

After he died, he discovered himself standing before God and said to Him: I, who have been so many men in vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God’s voice answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare, dreamed your own work, and among the forms of my dream are you, who like me are many, yet no one – Jorge Luis Borges – Collected Fictions, 1998 p320

It’s a release party. Lots of young people talking about bands and tours. Something called “Big Ugly”. I have no idea what “Big Ugly” is, but I like the name. I am going to guess that its an e-zine. The photographer, Tom, says “yes” that’s what it is. “What chu want boss?” “What do you have on tap?” “Newcastle.” “Then Newcastle it will be then.” I liked being called “Boss” – the gray haired dude. They are having a reading. I can only hear a voice. I  am sitting behind a pillar. I move over one bar stool. “Johnny Walker Back” and the big old fashioned cash register goes bling bling blink. The call for drinks keep on coming, the register keeps on blinkity blinking. “A Shirley Temple,” the guy next to me tells the bartender. The dollars are pouring out of bottles and into the till, bling bling blinkity bling. I had never actually heard anyone call for a “Shirley Temple” before. Oh of course in comic strips and those thirties black and white movies of high society, but never for real, right here in real life with colors, right her in real time without lines. It was quite a little jolt to actually hear someone say, “A Shirley Temple please.” A women is reading a piece she wrote about witnessing death sentence executions in South Carolina and the cash register is going blink blink blink and the bartender is not interested in my five dollar bill. She says she has witnessed five now and her editor is calling her “Lady Death.” As far as I can tell, so far, I have been the only witness to the Twenty-First century. I have an obligation to get it down and get it down correctly. It is a big responsibility. I take my job seriously.

Never disown your mad superstitions, / bad habits, unclad fantasies. / Those are the riches of your personality – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989  p194

It was a bad choice

It cost her, her life

It would have also cost his

But he  had abandoned her

            To her fate

Antonio, the chariot is here… You are about to see Jesus – Angola Prison Warden Burl Cain to about to be executed prisoner Antonio James

The human mind partitions – natural things in lots of two or three and artificial things into sets of either seven or ten: natural things like – you and me; true or false; the good, the bad and the ugly; the father, the son and the holy ghost; - artificial things: the seven deadly sins, the seven wonders of the world; the top ten songs of 1976, the ten top grossing films of all time.

Every graveled path, every ditch, has been projected along latitude and longitude lines of the township-and-range survey system. The farms are squares, the fields are squares, the houses are squares; if you could pluck their roofs off from over people’s heads, you could see the families sitting at square tables in the dead center of square rooms – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010  p104

Apple pie

Pumpkin spice

Roll the dice

Boil the rice

Crack the ice

Isn’t it nice

I love everything about my iPhone; Steve Jobs made this iPhone; therefore, I love Steve Jobs – however faulty [this syllogism is, it] makes a certain kind of emotional sense – Sue Halpern – New York Review of Books, 1/12/12 p24

Olney Illinois – City of White Squirrels – people kill the normal ones so their town can make its claim to fame. Toronto was know for its black squirrels. The lady at the park said that there are not as many as their used to be. She thought it was due to migration. I thought who ever it was that was killing the regular ones was probably also dead. There is no longer the distinction there once was in being able to claim that you are the “City of White Squirrels” – not in the age of the Game Boy anyway.

The more nature got out of control the more people measured it – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010  p107

(From the Journals – September 14, 2004, Toranto, Ontario) A black squirrel just crept across the pavement in front of me and went in among the purple flowers and clock on the spire of St James Cathederal strikes noon. What a oddity – a black squirrel. Then another. I’m wondering how common black squirrels are. Do squirrels come in other colors. There must be albino ones somewhere. Yes, the Internet list a town in Illinois and one in Ohio with populations of white squirrels.  Then the first one returns and and joins a third black squirrel behind me. Black squirrels are more common here than brown pigeons. The first one had back with a nut clutched in its cheeks. How cute with those big pointed ears with the hair standing up straight.

When savages are pitted against civilization, they must go to the wall; it is the fate of their race. Much as we may deplore the necessity of such a state of things, it is absolutely necessary, in order that the onward movement of civilization may not be arrested by the antagonism of the aboriginals – Cooktown (Aust.) Herald – June 24, 1874

The park vibrates with autumn colors – purple and yellow –pink roses, but purple is the dominant color. Then a little chipmunk darts across the sun-dappled sidewalk and into the bushes, skirting along the purple flowers. It is a normal chipmuck as far as I can tell. How many stripes? I don’t know it was too quick for me to count them. The bees begin their laborious process of gathering pollen. The quiz folks at the pub last night had correctly responded ‘honey’ to the question, ‘what is the only food that does not spoil?’

Trickery is often a too simple and convenient explanation – Errol Morris – Believing is Seeing, 2011 p45

Should I go back to Olney tomorrow and sit in the park and look for white squirrels? The lady said that she say one here yesterday. It was a hundred in Olney, but by the time I got to the Walbash in had dropped to 94.

[The Bush] administration’s threshold for which an act of torture begins was the point at which  the Inquisition stipulated that it must ‘stop’ – Cullen Murphy – The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2010  p77

At Charlie Hooper’s there is still no Lieney Red

It’s not our doing but that of the distributor

It is the only domestic that is not domestic

That is not a Bud or a Miller or a Coors

Tuesday was one-dollar domestic draw night

I had a Bully Porter at $3.50

            Not bad but more than a dollar

Today is Thursday and all draws are two fifty

So it does not matter that they have no Leiney Red

I drink Kronenbourgh 1664 instead

And I had some chili cheese fries too

As if he once was someone’s son / but not now. He’s the carpet slipper / guests hear scratching overhead – W S Di Piero – Nitro Nights, 2011 p21

JENNIFER IS STARTLED. SHE THINKS SHE SEES A SHADOW, A MOTION ON THE OTHER SIDE OF HER FROSTED GLASS SHOWER DOOR. SHE REACHES FOR HER TOWEL. ITS NOT THERE.

It might be late morning, I don’t know the time. The sun will be overhead in another hour or another hour and a half. I could check the clock on my cell phone. Yesterday passed so fast. Yesterday is past. I remember it being 3:34 and then the sun was going down. Anyway it is peaceful and calm and I am thinking about having to pack up and move on. And I am almost finished reading this book. Every step is a step over the line. What line? I don’t know. Most of the time we only find out later, if at all. But somewhere there is always a step over the line never knowing what step it will be or which line that it is. This time is now gone, its potential had been exhausted.

Five centuries ago daemons haunted our world, with incubi and succubae tormenting their victims as they lay asleep in their beds. Two centuries ago spirits haunted the world with ghosts and ghouls harassing their sufferers at all hours of the night. For the past century aliens have haunted our world – Michael Shermer – The Believing Brain, 2011  p90

Dragonflies sound fierce

Damoiselle in French

And to the Dutch, little misses

The damselfly is just one

            Of many

The chatter of a machine gun

Tires on a gravel road

The chirrr of a bug

That the Russians call Strakosa

            A nervous noise

The pleasure potential of perversion… is always underestimated – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p63

Linda is going to give it a try. She’s going to Little Rock to teach. She will give it a chance. But she says, “it may not be what its cracked up to be. If I don’t like it I’ll go to Texas Tech and get a degree in Ophthalmology. That’s an eye doctor”, she explains to Rachel. “You can make two hundred thousand a year.” Then she leaves to wake Eric up. An ATVer comes in to get a day pass. They sell them over at the cash register. Good recreationalists are the ones who spend a lot of money on equipment. That’s why bowling is neither a recreation nor a sport ( although there is the cost of  the ball and the shoes and oh yes those obnoxiously loud bowling shirts). A good recreationalist is a good consumer, and hence a good citizen.

Most minds oscillate between sense and nonsense, / The rest don’t oscillate at all – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989  p193

“You have any leftovers? I can warm them up for him [Eric]. Spaghetti or anything?” “I might have some spaghetti,” Rachel replies. “Depends on how much he wants to eat.” “That’s not very much,” Linda replies. And Rachel goes back to cleaning the silverware. “What else can I feed him that is quick?” This must be Eric. He is a big guy in baggy shorts. He drove over in a red Hyundai. He bought his own cereal with him. “Sandy says to tell you, you’re looking good, Eric,” Rachel tells him. Linda puts down a plate of garden salad and spaghetti along with some Wishbone dressing in front him. He is sitting where Rachel had been polishing the silverware. Only Rachel, Linda and Eric are in here now. Grandpa and that other woman, the waitress – probably his daughter, but not Linda’s mother, have both gone. She was probably the one that they had referred to as Sandy.

In utopia, you lose the battles and you lose the war too but it bothers you less – Charles Bernstein

Butterflies are like dandelions

Butterflies alike as the tides

Butterflies as alike as the flowers

Butterflies as stars

Butterflies are emotions

Butterflies are…

Butterflies alike as…

Butterflies are like that

Wherever the sun lies / light is evident. / Where it is dark, / light was. / The heat of blood / or salt – the burning rocks / of silence. / Where the sun lies / is now – did – is not – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p186

In San Francisco 41% of all traffic fatalities are pedestrians. In New York City you are twice as likely  while walking to be hit and killed by a car than you are to be murdered by a stranger (whether walking or not - you not the stranger - if fact you might even be running).

There are so many ways in which there is no crime. A goat comes into this story too. There is always coincidence in crime – Gertrude Stein – Blood on the Dining  - Room Floor, 2008 p87

Henry Miller was censored for writing

            Eroticism

But open a book on insects

            And read. And Miller won’t

            Seem as pernicious

That night, as thousands of worker ants mill about

The queen inside the bivouac,

The male walks across the bodies of the workers,

Who seem to lift him as he goes,

As if to make his step lighter.

He smells his mate.

She alone among all the ants in the colony is his size

And has a similar physique.

Even in the low, dappled light of the bivouac,

Both bodies glisten,

Their armor being polished to a high sheen

By the licking of so many attentive workers...

Stop, stop Angie says, she is

            Turning red

She agrees with me

            Yes, they are very sexy

Lick me until I weep

            Make my body glisten
Let both our bodies be polished

Poetry… is – a probe into the as-yet-unfamiliar zones of consciousness – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p238

By 2020 40% of the world’s college graduates will be from China and India. The US and Europe combined will only produce about a third of the total.

There is no further guess. Everybody knows, and they need not say. That is why everybody talks and nobody says they do. Not by and by, there are no secretes about what everybody knows and still they do not complain – Gertrude Stein – Blood on the Dining  - Room Floor, 2008  p71

The Cardinal

Fluttered skyward

Pink as back light

            Against the sun

It flew

In the form of a thought-sentence, the germ of the fragment comes to you anywhere: in the café, on the train, talking to a friend (it arises laterally to what he says or what I say); then you take out your notebook to jot down not a “thought”, but something like a strike – what would once be called a “turn” – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p94

In the early part of the last century only one in ten of the patrons saloons actually drank – most of the regulars hung out there to socialize. Saloons were a working men's club. Carrie Nation chased them out and back home. Home is no place for a man to relax. Nowadays they buy bass boats instead. 

Make flurid mistakes. Laugh more and wash less. / Eat more chocolate than beans. Fuck often – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989  p195

A dead ant is a dull ant

            Ants are all in what they do

They don’t flap colorful wings

Over meadow blossoms

They don’t have metallic armor

They don’t have pretty colors

And besides they are so small

Ants are not attractive

In glass cases

Stuck with metal pins

But it is easy to spend an afternoon

Watching them scurry about

Marching in columns with green leafs held high

And waging war on each other

Lie out a jelly sandwich and watch them gather

For the latter [the non-intellectuals] there had never been a universal human logic, rather only a consistent system of self-preservation – Jean Amery – At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a survivor on Auschwitz and its realities, 1980 p11

Evil isn’t unleashed

            By daemons

Evil doesn’t come from the

            Barrels of guns

Evil originates from well

            Intentioned men

Who have forgotten how

            To be kind

There is nothing more seductive – and dangerous – then being listened to – Donald Antrim – The Verificationist, 2000 p64

The left handed sugar bowl is a chamber pot

In terms of poetics, the ability of OWS to exasperate and indeed thwart the pigeonholing of the mediocracy is one of its triumphs – Charles Bernstein

The truth will not

            Set you free

For the truth is cut

            Of the same cloth

As the Emperor’s suit

And the Emperor’s new

            Clothes look

Just like the Emperor’s

            Old clothes

J Edgar Hoover without menace is like Boris Karloff without bolts in his head – Russell Baker – New York Review of Books, 1/12/12 p4

JENNIFER’S VOICE CAN BE HEARD AS SHE SINGS IN THE SHOWER; SHE WOULD BE EMBARRASSED IF SHE KNEW YOU COULD HEAR HER. SHE HAS A NICE ENOUGH VOICE, MAYBE SLIGHTLY NASAL THOUGH. DOES JENNIFER HAVE A COLD?

Ed said that he was going to get the best of me. I did not take him literarily, I should have. I said you are more experienced (he was twenty years older than me) and that yes he might just be able to do that. It was not so much a matter of if, I said, but when. But you go ahead, I say. I total misread Ed’s innuendo. Later he says, you know what’s best about you? No, I say, I don’t. Could be your stomach, he says, and slaps me on the belly. I hear you, I say, I have given it a lot of attention it is a rotund beer belly. I should have caught on to his interest but I did not. But it isn’t, he says, what’s best about you is this, and he grabs me by the nuts and announces, this is. Well then, I say you’re not getting the best of me. Ever have a blowjob, he asks? Yes, I tell him, but not by a man. Why not? No inclination, I tell him. I have not even mentioned my tour of Blanchard Cavern (until now). Later he says, I was only kidding, we are buddies, right? I just want to advise you that the two fillies in the red car are firecrackers and that they are hot to trot. Ed is our campground host.

My neighbor comes over with some Jim Beam. This will warm you up, he says. Good for a dreary day, I say and it was. It had sprinkled earlier. Here’s hoping that it will burn off. Sleep well, I ask? Yeah, but my air mattress went flat. I didn’t put the plug in all the way. They got this pump that connects right into the car. Want some more come on over. We won’t be able to drink it all. If I had known that this was a dry county I might have. Thanks, I say. They lite a huge bonfire that night. Stacked wood six feet high.

I helped the ‘firecrackers’ with the red car set up their tent (more advice then help) and it didn’t get me anywhere (girls night out it turns out - only in the hills - these country mamas). They played Fleetwood Mac all night. This is what it’s going to be like from now on. This is what it’s like to have neighbors. This is what its like going to be like from now on. But it's not really for when the weather gets warmer the family camping commences. Kiddies and old folks put a damper on such frolicking in the woods. There was a murder of crows in the trees across the river. Beaver were frolicking during the dark or it might only have been carp spawning.

I nap in the afternoon. I am startled by someone familiar calling my name. Its my mother. How did she find me out here? Can’t be she’s been dead for a decade. I awake with a startle – who’s that?  What? Oh it nothing, just a raven calling from a near by tree. There’s a voice coming from the creek, … seven o’clock comes early. I hear an oar splash which gives the disembodied voice a context. I go back to sleep.

Traveling the self goes soft and pliable. You can recast your life in shapes you wouldn’t dream of when you’re stuck at home – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010  p158

Fortress America, DC

Redoubt USA

Democracy at work

Yes citizen, official business only

Construction site, sidewalk closed

            Your tax dollars at work

Beware citizen report all security breaches

Do your duty work hard and spend your money

Stay out of trouble

Don’t block the sidewalks

            (Don’t occupy public spaces)

This is your America

            Be proud keep it litter free

            Recycle aluminum cans

America be proud, wave your flag

Exercise your rights, bare arms

            Flex your muscles

This is our America, citizens

Shoot them before they shoot you

            Protect your democracy, buy American

Homogenized, sanitized, capitalized.

For your protection one in ten is deputized

            Fortress America

Tourist money and citizens with business only

            Lobbyists with lots of dollars

            Redoubt USA, vote and don’t complain

DC Fortress America,

Redoubt USA

Someone’s threatening your democracy

Threatening it from the inside out, citizen

            Tune in to corporate media, be forewarned

What about that citizen?

            Waves them flags

            Hate them ragheads

            Tie yellow ribbons

                        Around old oak trees

Fortress America,

Redoubt USA

Be a good citizen

                        Keep your mouth shut

                        Work hard and spend

                        Don’t play in the street

We are in the presence of neither a choice nor a conversion nor a desertion, but rather of a gradual ‘assent’: [he] acquiesces to the … world he discovers – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p48

Walter looks at what I’m doodling. Those are the horns of a young goat, he says. Oh, I reply. What can I say. I was intending to draw a bison. And, he goes on, you’re not using the correct colors for either a goat or for a buffalo regardless of its age. And are you going to be constantly looking over my shoulder, I asked him? I am. And when I’ve got you drawing properly, I’m going to help you with your handwriting. I can barely read it. See if you can’t keep a straight line and quite using the words “he said, she said, I said” all the time, he said. Try using ‘he commented” or “I pontificated,” he said. OK, I said

Everyday and every day she had to see that everything came out from where it was put away and that everything again was put away. That was their way. Any way, she came that way to be that way. In that way she passed each day and each day passed away which also was a night too – Gertrude Stein – Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, 2008  p10

Grandpa  sits at the head of the table

So that I can see everyone, he says

He wears a plastic blue cap and red plaid shirt

Grandma sits opposite him.

She says, the breakfast menu is on the back

They each study their own cards

And I go back to my reading

It chimes 9AM

There is a big grandfather clock in my room

The bed is brass high off the floor

I floated in my feather mattress
I don’t want to get up.

Breakfast is served on sleeping porch

Enclosed for more than a century

Make sure you show up for breakfast.

The owner makes it himself.

Verna opened the restaurant nine months ago.

She had run the corner ice creamery

That gal that opened Aunt Sassy’s  had worked for her.

And she is crazy, Verna claims

Blueberry pancake breakfast.

All that you can eat

I ate five.

Sweet Fish ate twelve.

He had just finished the Maryland Challenge

Yesterday he had hiked forty miles

He is taking today off.

This is the country and the phone service comes and goes

For no apparent cause

Jessie is late. She was taking the kids to school.

The waitress was talking up a storm with her when the phone went dead.

Jessie finally arrived. How dare you hang up on me, the waitress says.

I didn’t hang up, it just went dead.

You could call in but you couldn’t call out.

My Visa transactions was the first one that went through all day

Smoky the Bear and Peg Leg finish their breakfasts

They are waiting for a 9:30 ride into Fredrick.

For Breakfast I have chipped beef over home fries,

One egg scrambled,

An English muffin and coffee.

I take the first bite of my croissant

And with the first sip of my coffee

I’m awake.

Too bad I can’t be served in bed

Flaky layers of croissant between the sheets

I roll over into a dollop of cherry jelly

And dripped coffee all down my chin

Nor would the would wait,  the sun is shinning down

No, no – breakfast over a campfire

Rain – Rain – Rain – I should grow webfeet and quack.

Breakfast and coffee – hunker down until the rain stops

The menu items are named after movies

I have the ‘Grease’  (hash browns, onions, peppers, mushroom, bacon, cheese and an egg on top).

I could have chosen the egg omelet – Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Get the idea, sure is cute

Breakfast and coffee, but especially coffee.

It’s brisk and chilly and everyone is bundled up – coats and hats

Except for me, wandering around in shirtsleeves.

Hell San Francisco summers are colder than this.

Esta bueno.

Free breakfast to him meant an English breakfast.

He searches for more to eat.

Su esposa arrives and he announces that they must go out.

His hunt for food is relentless.

Su eposa sits patiently with a cup of coffee.

He is a big man.

I wanted eggs and bacon,

And the old man leaves discontented

He only drank coffee in the morning.

He had his newspaper tucked under his left arm

You just have pastry?

And he left

Readers of symbols are forever at the mercy of desire – Donald Antrim – The Verificationist, 2000  p100

I’ve been watching movies in my sleep – critiquing the camera shoots and the scripts, editing the story lines, redirecting a scene here and a scene there. None of them are films playing at the cinema. These are movies that I am creating in my head. Damn it I wish I had a camera. But its only a dream. And these narratives continue as I awake from the nap. I am conscious that I’m awake and I’m conscious that this narrative is a dream, but I want to find out how it will end and the imagination and the dream states merge and I don’t go back to sleep until the credits roll – and there is my name, directed by, screen play by, but I don’t recognize any of the names of the performers – can’t afford any big name stars.

Last night’s movie - this older woman appears on a vaudeville stage (maybe it wasn’t vaudeville as the time period is the present). She teams up with a much younger man whom she has taught to play the keyboards. He doesn’t actually play it - he stands back and then launches himself at the instrument and pounds out a single cord with a pawing of his big hands at a strategic moments in her song. They both have long blond hair – hers is a wig, his is his own. She lives in a shoe and their act is a great success and they are driven around by a chauffeur who makes snide remarks to the camera about the differences in the ages. She has lots of kids, most of them teenagers. It continues, but I can’t remember any of the rest of it. As far as the movies that I’ve made so far this one is not one of my better ones but the rest are much better. There will be no Academy Award nominations. No lifetime achievement award for me.

Curious strangers, the world and I / Is there no stranger curious for me - / with a moon in his pocket and a golden key? / For my heart is locked up and I might die / with only a wishbone old and dry. // Oh who has the key to the golden city? / And the taste of the honey in the moon? – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989 p30