Saturday, December 8, 2012

If the Truth Be Told





Hot Springs is full of Golden Agers (The Golden Age – Pericles) -  couples -  couples on Gold Wings. He is wearing combat boots and camouflage fatigues – desert sand. Big huge hogs (varoom varoom) with a big ass mama on the bitch seats behind him. She’s wearing black leathers with red & white stripes (US of A, US of A, of course of course). Dentists and accountants pretending to be bad boys, oh my! Christian motels and Christian ministries. Attend Cowboy church (Friday and Saturday nights as well as Sunday morning – ticket window). “Oh look,” says a lady at the spring, “this is the ivy that they sell at Wal-Mart”. She sticks her fingers in, “it feels just like dishwater”. The widows have all come to shop. Tour the Fordyce, the restored bath-house. Hell no. There’s a Hobby-Lobby at the mall just past the horse track. It’s Spring Madness – there are four games on – Wakeforset and Duke, South Carolina and Kentucky, Kentucky and Michigan, and Texas A&M vs. Texas. It’s a bit too much basketball. But what is the alternative – it is not chasing these blue rinses. Not that. God I hop not. No wonder men like sports – its their quality time. One minute on the clock – time out – South Carolina with a three point lead – 61 to 58. Carolina scores two. 12.2 seconds and another timeout – score is 64 to 61. A foul at 10.0. Carolina one...0.2 seconds – 65 to 61 – Carolina to the SEC championship game tomorrow. With two minutes and forty-five second remaining Iowa is ahead of MSU, 42 to 38. With three minutes and fifty-nine second to go Wakeforest is getting trounced by Duke. The second game of the SEC semifinals will be Florida and LSU. Tomorrow there’ll be a quarter horse racing at 1:30. Women want someone who will listen to them. They try to talk in the midst of the critical play. Did you hear what I said? Sure, sure. Thay’s why sports bars usually have the volumes turned off. So you can practice following the game without the commentary so as you can learn to listen (or to pretend ) to her while watching the simultaneously catching the real action. Life’s a game with a lot of practice and then you die. Too bad that you got redshirted.

The more accurately that something can be measured the more obscure its meaning becomes.

Reading the Bible
I love that passage
God gives a gift
I love that passage

Picking out a passage
Giving anecdotal stories
To what each of the verses
Means personally

‘Bear no fruit...’
A great color line
Just packed with truth
There is something All American
            Here

What He – with a capital ‘H’
Is saying is that He trusts us
With a little ‘U’

Now break it down
Piece by piece
Shop around
Gather thy daily bread

Break it down
Passage by passage
            Pick it apart
Word by word

Break it down
Bit by Bit
            It’s got God’s words
Right there in black and white
            And red if it’s Jesus speaking

God speaks in a plane language
So that we can all understand
It is all here
God’s plan for the common man

For anyone to understand
You only need to have faith
And God’s word will be revealed
So I am being told
           
“Everyone says I talk too much. If I talk too much let me know.” “No, no,” I tell her, “you’re fine. No problem.” “If my talking interferes with your wine tasting let me know.” “No, no,” I assure her, “my taste buds and by ears are not connected. I can do both. I can multitask. I can listen to you and taste at the same time. She thought this very witty. “I’ll have to remember that and use it myself sometime,” she said. Her name was Sou Sou or Fru Fru or something like that. It might have been Mou Mou. She bought two bottle of the red with a strawberry/watermelon overtone and a bottle of port, all produced here in Arkansas. “I thought you didn’t like the red?” “Oh I don’t. They’re for my son.” It’s seven already. Time for accordion and tuba. Smiley had said, “they’re our best friends in town.” She had talked about the guy sounding like Tom Waitts. It happened something like this – we were talking about polka at the art gallery (I don’t recall why we were talking about polka) and I was reminded of a band called Polkacide whose saxophone player sometimes played in the nude. He was the lover (she always used the word lover, never boyfriend) of a coworker. Tom Waitts had once tried to pick her (the coworker whose lover played saxophone in the nude) up in a park in Santa Monica, I was telling her. And that led to her mentioning this band, the one playing tonight, her best friends, the accordion and tuba. He sounds a lot like Tom Waitts, she said.

385 individuals own assets greater than the combine annual incomes of countries containing 45% of the world’s population

“Excuse me but is your name Martin?” and I shake my head. I was daydreaming (fantasying) about the young lady with the fuzzy white tam and the fuzzy white sweater and the little pug nose sitting across the room. I have to bring myself out of my trance - umpha umda umpf. “Martin?” No, I shake my head.  “What?” - umpha umda umpf. I can’t ever remember where I am. Sometime back I was at the Brewery. I remember that. “Are you Martin?” I remember the rep from the Sacramento Brewery coming in and changing out the kegs. Switching the SacBew from Red Horse to the IPA. He gave me a complimentary pint. “No, I’m not Martin,” I reply. But he hadn’t been talking to me. He was asking the guy two stools down. And it fact, the guy did happened to be Martin. Hunter S Thompson said he would be insane if it were not for writing. Come again? And Bukowski? Bukowski would drink until he passed out and then wake up and sneak out and go write all night because he said, you can’t sleep life away and you’ve got to do a poem a day or life is just shit. I feel something like that. It’s only 8:23 and it’s still light but I’ve had all I can drink. I go home and tomorrow morning I’ll write this all down at my coffee shop.

It’s an unfortunate fact about the flowers of geography that they don’t bother to work as hard on their appearances as places less favored by nature, like the muddy ford where London got its start, or the salt swamp from which Venice triumphantly arose – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010 p291

You can’t comprehend without appreciating the milieu out of which one of the possibilities manifests itself. History is much more that a parade of great men.

“Warning warning” (shades of Dr Who – Darleks – no that was “Exterminate, Exterminate; “warning, warning” was from Lost in Space). It’s the Giant Voice again. “This is a restricted area. Unauthorized entry is prohibited. Use of force has been authorized” The military unlike children are to be heard but not seen. They like to make big noises. Boom! Kings Bay – Trident submarines lurking - SLBMs – Kill kill – shades of robots on wheels (yet the submarines are in the silent service, right? – run quiet run deep – so what’s all this about noise? – it’s the army that bomarded Noriega with rock music). Where are those ruby slippers when you need them? Now hear this. Now hear this. Wa-u-wa Wa-u-wa. The sound of claxons. Alert, alert. All hand to battle stations. Kaboom – the Arizona splits in half. One down the smokestack. The General with his pointer poked at the image with a lone vehicle crossing the Euphrates and immediately after he across the bridge goes Kaboom and the General jokes – the was the luckiest man in Baghdad. Such fun and games. Support the Troops! Freedom and Democracy are just other words for nothing left to lose.

The more asymmetrical the conflict the more the weaker side will resort to irregular tactics

Modern war is not about two roughly equal nations-states clashing…It is about fundamentally weak forces – whether part of a nation sate or not – learning how to fight the strong – John Ralston Saul – The Collapse of Globalism, 2005 p259

Philip Marlow, Detective

Philip Marlow smokes a pipe, generally
Mr. Marlow plays classic chess games out of a book
Marlow turns down cases that he don’t think are suitable
He won’t take divorce cases at all – bread and butter

He doesn’t have to take cases that he don’t like
He may not like your looks – he likes the looks
Of that Madison in his hip pocket
Sometimes he takes a case just for costs

Philip Marlow isn’t a fish like Nick & Nora
Mr. Marlow doesn’t inhale Luckys like Mike Hammer
Marlow doesn’t ware a trench coat like the dirty cops
He has a gimlet in memorial to an old friend

One after another the connections are made
And he finds himself deeper and deeper into a case he didn’t ask for
Deep into the web of things where people can be nasty
Especially if they have money

It is not good to be conscious
When you’re trapped in a spider web
‘Ever kill a man, Marlow’?
‘Yes’
‘Nasty feeling, isn’t it’?
‘Some people like it’