What Americans Believe

God, it was horrid. I got up to pee in the middle of the night. The room started spinning. I though it was my eyes. I blinked them several times. Round and round went the room. I felt nauseous. I had to lie back down. I closed my eyes. This is better. I brake out into a cold sweet like I do on a turbulent airplane ride. I hope I don’t vomit. God this is horrid. I hope it goes away soon. I hope its goes away period. I wouldn’t want to live like this. What if it doen’t go away.  I still hadn’t managed to pee but that was only a minor problem at the moment. I got up later. It happens again. I felt nausous. I lay back down and await daylight. At least then I thought I’d be able to orientate myself. It is a long night. I manage to find the aspirn. I spent most of the day in bed. That’s how I know I’m ill; I stay in bed.  The equilibrium is better but the stomach doesn’t feel so good. I don’t have an appetite and that is good as I’ve been trying to lose weight. The doctor said twenty pounds and I’ve almost managed thirty.  I’m afraid that if I eat I might throw-up. This is one way to lose weight, but not a very good way.

It’s the function of utopianism to provide us with the distance from the existing state of affairs which allows us to judge what we are doing in the light of what we could or should do – Andre Gorz – Reclaiming Work, 1999, p113

After the heat of the day

It’s time venture out again

Back onto the streets again

After dark to the bar for an ale

Its a night of the blues again

I’m sitting here talking to a young woman

‘Oh, you just like big tits and curly hair.’ she says

            I didn’t deny it

‘I strapped on a Stratocruiser

And learned to play from the old guys’

‘I love the blues,’ She says

She was saucy and cute and young

So how did we go from there

            To Cervantes and Lorca

‘She is teaching, now’, she says.

Teaching high school Spanish in Little Rock

She says married sex is the greatest

Been married six weeks now and she cries into her beer

That’s really what the blues is all about

Talking about what you ain’t getting

At a teacher’s convention

            She sees someone she knows

And I debate a fourth dark ale

Oh what the hell.

One more night of the blues

            And I ain’t gettng anything either

I’m sure blackmailers never arrive in buses – Agatha Christie – The Secret Adversary

The road to hell is paved with economic efficiency

The object of art is to blur our preconceptions

The only way we know that we don’t know something is when we fail to find it out. The rules for  determining what is knowable are not predetermined.

They are a strange couple, mainly because they are not a couple. There is no familiarity between them. He instructs. She obeys. They never touch. They rarely converse, mostly he instructs. Perhaps this weekend was a big mistake. Having a kayak each may not in itself be enough.

We’ve removed the poetry from our technology – more generally we have removed art from our everyday lives. Technology demands a technical language just a does engineering and economics. Poetry about computers, Predator missiles and mobile phones – I’ve not read any. Cornfields  steam locomotives and gramaphones maybe but not recently. Thre is no poetry in a Mac or obtaning one’s GPS coordinates of hooking up the TV to a satillete.

Illinois is a spring burning over the husks of last year’s corn – Richard Curry Esler

The constant wind – a roar in my ears (or maybe it’s just a build up of wax). It sounds like a radio broadcast of a baseball game. Classic Red Barber or Vince Scully. This is not bad in itself, but some times I try to listen and catch the score. I can hear the roar of the crowd or maybe its just static. Sometimes I can actually hear what Vince is saying. And I cheer when the Dodgers score.

I don’t know what just is, I said. Truth interests me though. Not general truth if there is any, but the truth of particular things. Who did what and when – Ross MacDonald – The Drowning Pool

Individuals provide desire; society provides motivation; culture provides the rationality

Projects over run their own logic and principles

Displaying one's body under a shining surface and in tight clothes is a means of self-staging that relegates all who gaze to a role of mere spectatorship. One can be erotically attracted to such a staged body without necessarily wishing to penetrate it. For since it reflects light, the shining body offers resistance to the external gaze, and closes itself off to interpretations that seek deep meaning and the satisfaction of erotic desire. - Hans Ulrich Gumrterch – In 1926, 1997 p104

It’s raining. It’s been raining most of the night. It will probably rain all day today. For the last two days its been cold and gloomy. Today will be the same.

Goals are usually couched in terms of the models they operationalize, what we cannot do is measure against what might have happened had things taken a different turn, been conducted according to a different agenda, have followed an alternative model.

Were there is a well-established idea or way of looking at things, it is extremely difficult to find an alternative way even if one is already available. It is not the ideas we do not have that block our thinking but the ideas that we do have – Edward deBono, 1972

Responsibility is to systems; not to people; love is what we owe to ourselves and others. But love does not produce money unless we equate it with sex. Make it fungible

The English equalivant of the Haiku is the Limerick

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices – William James

When a person tries to deceive a dog during play, he succeeds 47% of the time. When a dog tries to deceive a human, he succeeds 41% of the time

Ted Bundy changed my life – Ann Rule p459

‘United We Stand’

And other placards

            All over

            His truck

Those symbolic yellow ribbons

            Across the

            Rear window

            So many

That he can hardly see out

Not a single pink one

            Those are for uterine cancer

            But close enough

These are about killing the

            Bad guys

And cancer is a bad guy

            Too

Our economic system

            Is cancerous

“Kill Capitalist Bastards”

That should be a red ribbon

            I suppose

Don’t see any on his truck

If one is standing still and bareheaded, and exhales a deep breath, one can actually hear one’s breath freezing a moment or two after it has left the mouth… It is rather like that produced by the movement of sand on a beach when a wave washes up – Robert Falcon Scott – Voyage of the Discovery vol.1, 1907 p273

In theory it only takes 17% of the American electorate to elect a majority in the US Senate

Neon Lit Bright

It was cold this morning and I’m feeling poorly. I think I’m getting over it, whatever it is.  It's just cold enough to freeze. A very thin layer of ice coveres the wash buckets.  I have a headache. I have a queasy stomach. I go into town for coffee. The dog has to stay in the truck because I’m not sitting out side in this weather feeling the way I do. First, I take a sip of hot coffee. It’s almost too hot (the medium cup was too cold but the little one was just right). Let the big cup sit for a few minutes while I peruse my email. That’s better. Good but not perfect. Not the coffee (it’s perfect) – the world and I. I hate getting old. It’s everything and more that the old codgers have always been complaining of.

If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons – Winston Churchill

About 160,000 aircraft were produced during World War I. The average service life of an aircraft was about six months

If Hell is lighted it must be by Neon – Eric Wilson Barker

Ever Kill a Man, Marlow – Raymond Chandler

The average man is tired and scared,

And a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals

‘Ever kill a man, Marlow’?

 'Yes'

'Nasty feeling isn't it?'

'Some people like it.'

There is something compulsive about the telephone.

The gadget-ridden man of our age

Loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it.

But he treats it with respect,

Even when he is drunk.

The telephone is a fetish

I lit a cigarette.

It seemed like a couple of weeks

Since I had tasted tobacco.

I drank in the smoke.

“May I have just one puff?’

She came close to me

And I handed her the cigarette.

She drew on it and coughed

A fly-cluster of cars

Hovered in front of

The movie theater.

I went to the drugstore and ate

A chicken salad sandwich and

Drank some coffee.

The coffee was over trained

And the sandwich was as full

Of rich flavor as a

Piece torn off an old shirt

He had a grip like a pipe wrench.

He smiled at me benignantly now.

He was Mr. Big, the winner, everything under control

‘A half smart guy.’

She said with a tired sniff.

‘That’s all I ever draw.

Never once a guy that’s smart

All the way around the course.

Never once”

“Perhaps you don’t ever make passes at women in bars?”

“Not often. The light is too dim.”

I kissed her some more.

It was light, pleasant work

Get it through your lovely head.

I work at it lady.

I don’t play at it

Cop business is wonderful uplifting idealistic work

The only thing wrong with cop business is

The cops that are in it

After that nothing happened for three days.

Nobody slugged me,

Or shot at me

Or called me on the phone

And warned me to keep my nose clean

“He had a police record.”

She shrugged. She said negligently,

‘He didn’t know the right people.

That’s all a police record means

In this rotten crime-ridden country.”

For two people in a hundred it’s wonderful.

The rest just work at it.

After twenty years all the guy has left is a workbench in the garage.

American girls are terrific.

American wives take in too damn much territory

It was time for lunch but I wasn’t in the mood.

I got the office bottle out of the deep drawer and poured a slug

Nobody came into the office.

Nobody called me on the phone.

It kept on raining

I never saw any of them again –

Except the cops.

No way has yet been invented

To say goodbye to them

They had made a fool of me

But they had paid well for the privilege

You don’t shake hand with big city cops.

That close is too close

Cops never say goodbye.

They’re always hoping

To see you in the line-up

I bought her face slowly up to my face.

Her eyelids were flickering, like moth wings.

I kissed her tightly and quickly.

Then a long slow clinging kiss.

Her lips opened under mine.

Her body began to shake in my arms.

“Killer,” she said softly,

Her breath going into her mouth

A smell of kelp came off the water

And lay on the fog.

The tires sang on the moist concrete of the boulevard.

The world was a wet emptiness

Buy yourself a drink

While I shave

We had a drink and he left

By the back door,

Which he had jimmied to get in

Down these mean streets

A man must go

Who is not himself mean

Been spending too much money

In a joint that exists

For that purpose and for no other

In 1870 the top 1% of Americans owned 37% of the wealth and the top 5% owned 70%. The bottom 60% owned almost no wealth at all. This has not changed much in the last century, except that the richest 5% had increased their share. America contrary to myth has always been a non-equalitarian country. The equalitarian dream has always been just that, a dream. In America you’re free to dream.

Think does not mean what you think – Gilles Deleuze

In 1918 the amount of money it took for an average American family to live a healthy lifestyle was $1,600 a year. The average worker (including any additional income form wife and children) was $1,157 a year

In 1941 half of the new job openings nationally were restricted to whites. In Indiana, Ohio and Illinois 80% of the new openings were so restricted.

They were burning beef in their backyards, brown burly men, with beer cans. The beef black on the outside, red on the inside – Donald Barthelme – Sixty Stories, 1981 p102

During his rule, Napoleon attended the opera twenty-six times, more than any other 19^th century head of state. He was indifferent towards German music and towards a fair amount of French music, but he was passionate about the Italians

I think no one will be disappointed who visits the country (United States), expecting to find no more … than a vast continent… and a busy, hustling, industrious population hacking and hewing their way-through – Frances Trollope – The Domestic Manners of Americans, 1832

Adulthood begins

            With money making

Just enough know-how

            Sufficient for the effort

Money making

Never enough

            Never enough

                        Never

Money

            Marking time

No time to waste

           

Time is money

Money is time

            Its time

            Money

                        Money

Money

And it all ends

            With dementia

Which is itself just

            Another moneymaker’s

Opportunity

The last pirate scum of the western Mediterranean were languishing in Spanish or Moroccan jails, [or] serving hamburgers at McDonalds – Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical Chart, 2001 p205

Black males between 5 and 65 in New York City or Chicago have higher mortality rates than their counterparts in Bangladesh

24% of young Americans (age 25 to 34) live with their parents (or grandparents). This is up from 18% in 2007 and 11% in 1990. For the first time in modern history a higher percentage of young people live in mutigenerational arrangements than do Americans over the age of 85.

Three Percent Compound Rate

“Can it get any better than this?” It was his favorite phrase. In fact I never heard him say any thing else. He repeatedly asked it of me. “Can it get any better than this?” “It’s getting close,” I replied the first time. The weather was a little cool, but I was not complaining. I also thought it might be better if there had been fewer RVs about,  including his. Trail Dog is bored. He has a big tick on his lower lip. I try to pick it off but he howls and tries to bite me. OK, I give up. Later I was able to squish it. He licked the blood from my fingers.

US golfers last year played the fewest number of rounds since 1995, playing a total of 462 million. More golf courses have closed than opened for the last eight years. Last year 14 18-hole courses opened and 158 closed. Of the closures 97% were public courses.

Are You Tight? – Dashaill Hammett

‘You ought to have known I’d do it!

Didn’t I steal a crutch from a cripple?’

When the last pocket had been turned out,

I returned to my own chair,

Rolled and lighted a cigarette,

And began to examine the spoils

A good pair – neither of us would think of taking a life,

Unless assured of profit and political protection

Later , we tumbled out of the Hall of Justice

And into a machine

‘You do what you want, but if I were you,

 I’d tell him the truth or nothing.

I mean leave out the parts you don’t want to tell him,

But don’t make up anything to take its place.’

And he told me right out that ‘I’m a man

Who likes talking to a man that likes talking’

Talking is something you can’t do judiciously

Unless you keep in practice

‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!’

He said it oftener than that,

But that will give you the idea

At the strike of the gong it was

Five thirty-one and one quarter.

Eastern Standard Time

But he wanted results, it seemed, and not questions,

And so I wasted nearly an hour getting information

That he could have given me in fifteen minutes

My thick fingers made deliberate care,

shifting a measured quantity of tan flakes

Into curved paper, spreading the flakes

So that they lay equal at the ends

With a slight depression in the middle,

My thumb was rolling the paper cylinder’s ends

To hold it even my tongue licked the flap,

Left forefinger and thumb pinching their ends

While my right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam,

Right forefinger and thumb twisting their ends

And I lifted the other end to my mouth

But where knowledge of trickery is evenly distributed,

Honesty not infrequently prevails

Fifty years of sleuthing had left me

Without any feeling at all on any subject

I put the cigarette in my mouth,

Set fire to it, and laughed smoke out

The whole of that quality in mankind which strives

Toward simplifications of life’s phenomena, unifications,

Urged me to belief in connection

I took out my lighter, snapped on the flame,

And applied it to the end of the cigarette

I looked up at her and smiled,

Holding the finished cigarette in one hand,

The lighter in the other

I wasn’t sure I was going to like the party.

‘I like an even break or better,

And this doesn’t look like one.’

‘I see,’ she sneered.

‘You don’t think I’m naughty,

You think I’m bump.’

‘Behave, sister.

That’s no way to act.’

‘Jesus, you women,’

I said idly

She went down on her knees at my knees...

‘I haven’t lived a good life,’ she cried.

‘I’ve been bad – worse than you could know –

But I’m not all bad’

‘You don’t believe me?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘And you won’t forgive me for – for what I did?’

‘Sure I do.’ I bent and kissed her mouth.

‘That’s all right. Now run along.’

I’m not so hard to get along with,

I’ll play anybody’s game up to a certain point

‘Are you tight’

‘Not yet’, I replied

‘Why don’t you stay sober tonight?”’ She asked me.

‘Why not we stay sober tonight’, I told her

On my desk a limp cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled

With the remains of other limp cigarettes.

Ragged gray flakes dotted the yellow of the desk

And the green blotter and the papers that were there

‘Meet the biggest-hearted dick in San Francisco.

This guy will do anything for anybody,

If only he can send ‘em over for life in the end’

‘Shoo her in, darling’, I said.

‘Shoo her in’

I’d rather lie to her

Than have her think I’m lying

‘Stop me when you can?’ She replied arrogantly

‘Maybe you’d like a drink,’ I suggested,

Opening a drawer of the desk,

Neither the girl nor I wasted energy on conversation.

My client and I didn’t seem to like each other very much.

Murder doesn’t round out anybody’s life except the murdered’s

And sometimes the murderer’s.

‘That may be’, she said, ‘but it is all pretty unsatisfactory.’

Sometimes one has to make some allowance for stupidity… Why create additional complications – Leon Trotsky – My Life, 1930 p267

Tend trout line

Fill freezer

            Ice white

Stack ‘em

            Tight

Provision

            To last

The cold weather

            As per forecast

If strung like beads on a necklace all the virsues on earth would make a string 10 million light years long or about 100 times across the Milky Way. Up to 2% of the weight of the human body is composed of virsues and bacteria. The skin is our biggest organ, it makes up 10% of body weight.

Institutions do not contain; they constrain

A culture has porous boundaries. A society does not

Savages are easily satisfied with cheap beads in the following colors: dull white, dark brown and vermillion red. Expensive beads are often spurned by them. Nonsavages should be given cheap books in the following colors: dead white, brown and seaweed. Books praising the sea are much sought after – Donald Bartheleme – Sixty Stories

Albert Einstein had horrible arithmetic skills. A lot of what we call intelligence results from practice (discipline and persistence) at specific skills

I can’t imagine her with children, he thought. And I know that, whatever happens, I won’t be growing old beside her. He could imagine her in later years, amid books and papers, slim and elegant…., a single woman with class, and wrinkles fanning from her eyes, …a broken fan, a jet necklace, a record of Italian songs from the fifties, the photo of an old lover. My photo he fantasized. Oh, God, if only it could be my photo - - Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical Chart, 2001 p199

American schools now have more minority students than they have non-Hispanic whites: 25% Hispanic, 15% Black, and 5% Asian and Pacific Islander, plus biracial and Native Americans. In the country as a whole whites are expected to become a minority in 2043. One in five children speak a language other than English at home