JENNIFER ADJUSTS THE TEMPERATURE OF THE WATER

I’ve arrived at my summer home. Dave and Patty have come and gone. (It’s now July 12 I’ve left – it got too hot without any AC. I promised I come back next year if they put in electricity, but with budgets the way they are, I’m higly doubtful that they will. And besides it ok for a little while but I don’t know that I like playing the role of the responsible adult). The sheriff’s deputy came out and talked to the troublemakers. The refugees from Prophet Chuck Profit are still there across the road. The ORVs are longs gone. Deputy Brian tells me to call whenever I feel uneasy (but the only time that I called was when the guy in the next campsite committed suicide). The heat comes and it goes. The tomatoes grow and grow. Occasionally a breeze blows and rustles the leaves. I can’t get up or the dog will claim my chair. He wants to nip at me if I try to make him move.  He thinks he’s in charge. He needs to be disabused of this notion, but he’s so cute and so small. The battery is dead. The refrigerator smells. Everything goes into the cooler while I do a through housecleaning. I need to buy a generator but I hate the noise they make.

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

JENNIFER TAKES A SHOWER

Another Friday night – three parties tonight here in the campgrounds. But the two gay dudes couldn’t get their tent set up and left. The guys with the guitar left before ten. That only left the group throwing the hatchets but they quieted down around midnight and left early the next morning. I picked off at least thirty ticks today, not including the ones that Trail Dog brought to bed with him. Someone had trapped a raccoon and brought it out here to let loose. The first thing that it did was to attack Trail Dog. Mister, mister, a big raccoon is attacking your dog. I feared the worst. Poor little guy. I ran as fast as my flip-flops would let me go - flap, flap, flap. He was ok – he’d chased of the critter off and was prancing about. He doesn’t know enough woodcraft to keep out of harms way. I’m always expecting him to get bitten by a snake when he has his nose in the leaves poking about. He is beginning to lose his curosity of turtles – they refuse to play, clam up and hid away

But all the world’s ones come out by two / for a four-legged waltz of whom and who – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989  p34

It rained last night – lovers are at it; out early. They are in their mid-thirties. Mid-live liaisons – breakfast from brown-paper bags in the park. Of the modern conveniences, electricity is the best. But then it’s not really a convenience in itself is it? It is plastic. It’s what you can do with your life. My advice Benjamin is plastics. Get into plastics.

There I was: Sentencing myself to death / by red ants and also / by black ants, traveling through empty villages: / fear that grew / until it reached the stars – Roberto Bolano – The Romantic Dogs, 2006  p41

Youth is focused on style

Age shifts it to content

            Time is running out

            For any meaning

A love brief as the sigh of a guillotined head, / The head of a King or a Breton count, / Brief like beauty, / Absolute beauty – Roberto Bolano – The Romantic Dogs, 2006 p37

Some coonass hunters running dogs show up as it gets dark. This is the first night that it was warm enough to sleep without wearing longjohns. When I have to get up in the middle of the night – unzip the bag and crawl out into the dark wearing only my boxers – I don’t freeze my ass off. For the fist time since leaving home I have a fellow camper. No they are just letting their dogs out to let them run. Though there were hounds barking down along the river last night, there is no one here in the campground this morning. The stars had come out big and bright. The sun is up now and I can no longer see my breath. The fire is banked and dying. I am packed and ready to head out. Eighty per-cent of campground fees goes to improvements and towards maintenance – hell, that’s a much better return on your investment than most charities.

One is taken hostage, if not to say prisoner, by space – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p196

In the heart of bohemia I write

Thinking of Spicer, Snyder or Rexroth

Here where they crisscrossed

Their aura is still here – this is bohemia

The Beat exhaled the word and puncturated it with jazz

And they did it right here on Columbus

Yes this is bohemia but the beat is gone

            Pasty men in berumuda shorts

            Checking out the sex clubs

Get frightened by Bush Man

            Down at the Wharf

            Take a photograph

‘X’ marks the spot

If small babies possessed the physical strength and co-ordination of adolescents we should indeed live in a destructive world – Anthony Storr – Human Destructiveness, 1972

Oh shit, I’m having transmission problems – its slipping badly. I check the fluid. It is low. There are several different types of transmission fluid. The wrong one will cause even more problems. The correct type was embossed on the end of the dip-stick. The manual says to drive for twenty miles and leave the engine running while parked on level ground. I couldn’t find the fill point. I asked someone. He said that its usually the same as the measurement point. How do you get it in that tiny hole. I go to Wal-Mart and buy a turkey baster. I get about half a quart it. You don’t want to overfill it as that will also cause problems according to the manual. It drives better now. There is no skipping now. Woo, I hadn’t budgeted for the replacement of a transmission after having just bought the vehicle. The next time I might not be so lucky (and I wasn’t and it happened on the some far off Montana mountain).

The things which are usually one way, / can as will be / another - / as if one took / something from one pocket, / put it in another,     and / said nothing about it – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p71

It means something

            Else – in South America

            The Disappeared

September 11, but on

            Second thought

            Maybe not

It always been the

            Same – the Return

Of the dictators

The fear – the need to

            Restore order

Gets translated into

             A nightmare

A restoration of order

            Violence as a means

                        To an end

No end is in site

            Violence is extended

            Across generations

Always the same

            In the name

Of security and well being

Its official – Its in the rules

            Your not allowed

            To hit back

There is sadness / and desperate / hatred / In the close-in / of winter / it becomes / unbearable – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p52

Both stupidity and beauty are in the eye of the beholder.

You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical…? We’re not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history… Corporate power has occupied the atmosphere – Bill McKibben – CommonDreams.org

For everything new that can be said, is there something old that can no longer be told?

Lights at the far side / punctuate / a coast / line / Those who live there / separated / from me – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p108

She sighed and heaved her chest

As  she said “Happy Thanksgiving”

            I know how she feels

This is the beginning of my darkness too

After solstice I begin to count backwards

                        [the days]

Until  I’m back to today

And then I give my thanks

And know that the sun shall rise

            On this wintery drearyness

And I replied, “And you have

A great Thanksgiving to”

But the turning is a long way away

            And I’m already in a bad way

The dead / stay with the living, / much as cut corn stalks, half-burried in / turned / wet soil – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p122

All geniuses are innovators of expressiveness

All the hideous new condominiums are made from the same stuff as the indifferent dreams of their occupants – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p198

Money and Pleasure Alone

Our early morning walk – fog on distant waters and a vacant woods – the start of a new week: the working part of the week (for some). Birds chatter. Two men in a boat quietly troll by propelled of a small electric motor churning slowly a small blade (and Archemedian screw). I heard voices and what sounded like a car door slamming. There is no one around.  I catch a glimps of movement on the water through the trees – two men in a boat conversing near the shoreline as they fished. It was his red cap that I spotted or maybe the flicker of sunlight on his rod as he cast – just a flicker of motion in enough for a sniper to take aim (a glint of reflected light). They are gone now and I bring out the mandolin. A wave slapprf against the side of the boat or the boat bumbed into some submerged stump. It sounded somewhat like a car door.  It is the brown birds that are difficult to identify. Some are the females of their species where the males are more brightly colored. Lots of birds are brown. My guidebook is organized by color – black, white, black & white, brown, yellow, orange, blue and yellow. I take the dog’s bowl back inside – the jays and the grackles also like dog food. The raccoons got into my garden (three five gallon pails) and dug up the herbs and scattered dirt around.

al ign ment / order / remade / these / disparate / things / light / five candles / one swift curl / incense / smoke /destroys serious intent – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p45

Square bagels and  a cello

A fresh pot of coffee

A lot of people, many stupid

            People

           

Gray rainy days

Umbrella days

A scramble for

            Locked cars

Soggy paper bags

            Stay in doors

Thinking of umbrellas?

Not much; not latey

            Not in a long while

Thinking of them today

            White plastic bucket

            At the door

Slip and slide

            On a wet floor

Simply an observer

Not yet a camera

Well prepared? Evidently

We agreed on six: gluttony, greed, envy, lust, pride and sloth

What about stupidity, contempt, jealousy, and hatred?

            We couldn’t agree.

They say that a little bit of stupidity goes a long way.

But money compensates a lot

They are always saying something

It’s an umbrella day

They say that too

Scattered showers could pop up at any time.

Carry an umbrella

Bordom and stupidity are linked.

One is an objective phenomenon

The other is a subjective one.

It’s hard not having to be stupid.

One of the options was “because I am stupid”.

I considered checking that box.

A puddle of water on the floor.

There is a need to be fastidious

And there is a compulsion to be stupid.

The homeless, the insane, the beggars and the cripples

Carry umbrellas with broken ribs

            Something found/Something borrowed

I don’t usually worry, but often enough

I worry that I worry too much

Do you understand? /What a poem is? / that the song is? / sometimes pedestrian / information / carved / by the action / of time? – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p133

The history of science is not constrained by its origins

History accumulates like rubbish before the portals of nature – Henry David Thoreau

The bay windows of dementia

Where OJ is our Achilles,

And Hillary is Helen

The bay window collect sunlight

And allows philodendra to grow

Watching TV makes you go blind

Self abuse is wealth generation

            And it is crowd pleasing

But we need stories

But do we need these

No sooner is a form seen than it ‘must’ resemble something – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p44

Why is it that the best breakfast is a boring breakfast – the same thing morning after morning (two slices of bacon, a diced potato, two scramble eggs – always fried in the rendered fat from the bacon, and a cup of coffee)? We will not tolerate such repetition at any other meal. We appreciate  some variation at lunch (soup and sandwich is ok but not the same kind day after day at least vary the meat – boloney, ham, roast beef; there are a thousand and one ways to make rahaman noodles). We demand variety at dinner (some think its ok to repeat the same menu for each day of the week, week after week – pot roast on Sunday, meatloaf on Thrusday, and Friday is spaghetti night). The later it is the day the more variety it is that we crave. Why is that? And if this is true wouldn’t it be our desire for a different mate each night or at least a change up in the position (Monday night is missionary night, Tuesday is for the dogs and on Sunday we abstain). Sex in the morning is so boring; hardly worth the effort to wake her up. Just let her sleep. Don’t bother! I’ll take care of it myself.

Time cannot be grasped or negotiated with, but it can be given accents… We transfer time into a transparent fabric of stressed and unstressed moment – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p126

Mankind – forever

            On the brink

Of moral collapse

But for the good cheer

            Of a few desperate men

            And I’m one I think

But then I rush out and buy

                        Birdseye

Where men have no beliefs or traditions or curiosity or power; money and pleasures alone seem real – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p124

Preeminence among contemporaries:

William Wadsworth Longfellow

Robert Frost,

Edgar Alan Poe

Elizabeth Bishop

Preeminence is no guarantee

‘Here is our Milton’

Reputations fluctuate

Tastes change

Different canons roar

The cassions go rolling along

Through Hitler we know what Nietzsche was not, through Stalin we know what Marx was not – Mazzion Montinari

ZOOT SUITS AND JUICY JUICE

Walter says that I don’t draw very good cars – i.e. I don’t draw things that look like real cars. I agree. Walter is an industrial designer and his own notebooks are filled with meticulous illustrations which had very neat block lettered text next to them. Everything is properly labeled and explicated. My idea of a car is just something that triggered a vague ‘Ah, a car?’ type response. This is all that I require, while Walter wanted you to be able to recognize the make, the model and the year and thought the illustration color should match OEM specifications. There would be no need for questions for every details would have been provided in the accompanying text. Walter asks Linda where she things Mr Yellow Pants gets his outfits and told her that he and I wanted to get similar matching outfits.  Since she worked in an upscale dress shop, he considered here and expert on fashion. “No!”, she replied, more a command than an answer. Then Walter asked me if I knew were the word “Zoot” came from, “as in Zoot suit?” “No,” I replied, “but I know a place in town where you can buy Zoot suits.” But Walter wasn’t really interested in getting a Zoot suit; no more than liked accordians or goats. He says that he don’t really like accordians or goats, he likes the idea of accordians and goats. I ask Walter, “Why do they run bases counterclock-wise in baseball?”

Sometimes he’s a cheat and a quack, but he is trusted and respected. He carries the news, the undercurrent gossip from house to house and that is worth the few extra pennies, even where they’re hard to come by – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p31

On average each American tosses away 7.1 pounds of trash a day (102 tons per lifetime) – the average Dane generates 4 pounds and the average Japanese only 2.5 pounds a day. New York City spends $2.2 billion annually on sanitation of which $300 million is for shipping trash out-of-state.

An application of judicial power that does not rest on fact is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous – US District Judge Jed Rakoft – 11/28/11

The largest land fill in the US, Los Angeles’  Puente Hills, produces enough methane to generate electricity for 70,000 homes.

America’s “grown-ups” as the political class likes to think of itself, have never had much patience when it comes to the “children”, as its mere citizens are known – Paul Rosenberg – 11/29/11

Nights in the woods can be lonely but the morning after is rewarding especially when then sun begins to clear the tree line. At last then there is hope for warmth to arrive. Freezing toes and numb thumbs can be invigorating but it is not what I would call fun. Something is hopping around in the leave litter behind me; probably birds pecking for insects. Rodents would never be so noisy – not if they want to survive. There is an owl up there in that tree. He is taking no notice. A rabbit hops through the brush. “Float Camp” means accessible only from the river. All those campsites along the Current looked enticing on the map but I can’t get to them. I find an accessible camp-site (identified by the nomenclature, “Recreational Area”). I am the only camper. Vehicles come down the hill, cross the bridge and then go back up again. Trucks use their jake brakes. It quiets down after midnight and then starts up again about six in the morning. It’s a whoosh (down) and a rattle tattle (across the bridge) and a shoosh (back up) in the dark. Except for these noises these woods would not have been that different from the ones the Roman Legions marched through into Germany – the creaking of leather of 1,200 legionnaires marching like the rustling of leaves on cottonwood trees. Fatigued men marching in the dark in the woods have no need to chatter;  it will not relieve this gloom and of course they have no pills to make pain go away.

A music / a music / an echo of music - / Sound not a sound / in the quiet north country - / the snow – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p20

The last time I’d seen him he had been down his luck. He is addicted to day trading. He was a mud hen. I had seen him downtown in a street front brokerage office watching the monitors while the latest stock prices post. His clothes were tawdry and he had a three day growth on his face. Now things are going better or at least at this moment – he’s got himself a rice doll and he is all dressed up in a gaudy mauve suit. She is hanging on for her life in on precarious spin with her fingers of her left hand tucked into his left back pocket and her right arm draped over his right shoulder. He was not getting away from her so as long as he still had any money left. He seemed to have a lot of friends. Mostly I had seen him when he had none.

Anyone brave enough to risk his bourgeoisie contentment at an early age will spend the rest of his life wandering if it was worth it – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p107

Sunday afternoons drives.  Loaded into the car and out into the country along gravel roads fussing and fighting and arguing all the way. Mom finally has enough – turn around and head home. She had  made the threat half a dozen times, “Now you kids settle down and behave or we will go home.” But it had been to no avail. Now we are headed home. The next time she will be left at hone and she won't complain (not audibly at least). Where are we going today? Where’re we going? You’ll see when we get there and rarely did we ever (actually go anywhere). There sis no destination for a Sunday afternoon drive. Later on the old man just got in the car and left. Not a word to anyone on Sunday afternoon. Not a word gone. He was home by supper time. 

Whoever expects the arts to overwhelm him externally with the force of thunder… will never get his money’s worth from poetry – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p123

All unions of people for the purpose of solidarity or cooperation are ultimately, if sustained, insurrectionary

I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what Americans think of capitalism – Republican strategist Frank Luntz

The aim of art is to construct cultural Trojan horses, something that it rarely manages to actualy do.

In the lonely business of sand castle construction, one learns that everything built by human hands is ephemeral. Accordingly, architects would be those people to whom the early experience of loss failed to stick… And the Writers? To all appearance, they have renounced the fight and cast their vote on the side of the sea – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p197

I write a poem

            Every day

Whether it’s needed

            Or not

Once, maybe twice,

             It actually was

But I can’t remember

            Which ones

                        Those were

The dream, as you discover when you write, is the fully authentic self – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p114

Those with boats are already on the lake. Breakfast is de rigeur with coffee and juicy juice. From now on for the rest of the day the heat will prevail. Beer and soda pop on ice are the drinks of choice. Bud lite must be kept ice cold or it tastes like horse piss. Be sure to put on lot of sun screen for your day out on the water.

The lights in the box have gotten brighter and flashier… but the truth dimmer and dimmer – Dan Rather – 11/22/11