Up a Dark Street Monkeys Search for the Golden Fleece and Set Cars on Fire

What has a pattern is structure. Character is an individual attribute and not a collective one – character has no structure. Poverty is not a moral failure (well it is but not a moral failure of the poor themselves); it is instead a structural necessity.

She got her papers served – now she has a court date. She called his lawyer who told her that he was her husband’s not her lawyer and then charged his time not to her but to him. She wanted to know if she was supposed to get a lawyer too. What was he supposed to tell her? Nothing, He had been advised . Don't talke to her. But sometimes you forget to look at the caller ID. Gotta get new locks for the doors. They make re-key sets, but that would be too easy (and too cheep) and no one would make any money so they don’t stock them – maybe you can order them over the Internet it was suggested. Yeah, but I need to change the locks today. When did she come by? I didn't realize that she had.  Must a been before you got home – she had taken the rest of her clothes and some of his personal papers. The other day the door was ajar but nothing seemed to be missing and the place had not been rifled so I didn't think that anyone had broken in and besides that was Saturday morning and no one is up and about. I probably just left the door open after taking the dog for his morning walk. The neighborhood kids are about and causing mischief. But they do that at night and the early hours of morning. And all the police will do is tell you to get a shotgun. God who wants to be responsible for killing some kid  over a little vandalism. He got his baseball bat out and put it by the door and I began to lock my truck at night. I bought locks sets for the front and back doors and will have the current lock sets re-keyed and put on doors to the garages. Court date is for sometime in September. The lawyer’s retaining fee was rapidly dwindling. He had to supplement it..

Millions killed cheaply / have trodden out a path in the wilderness – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p83

Far far far away eyes
All I can do is give you
      Ten dollars
Next week I’ll have enough
      Again – If your down
On your luck – and if your
Down by the creek you may
      Also have far away eyes
      Tonight

The one word that happens to have no success can only be the last one for just a moment – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p116

If there be not peril to your own children it is immoral to be out killing those of others' regardless of the activities of their fathers.

The chimes of the Kremlin clocks / are the language of space compressed to a dot – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p34

It’s dark up the street
I thought it might be
       A car on fire
But no, just a
      Storm front
I look for signs of
      A funnel
There was lightening
In that direction last night
      But no rain came
      Of it
Branches scuttle across
      The road and the wind
Rattles the truck

Golden fleece, where are you, golden fleece? / The sea’s heavy waves roared the whole way. / Abandon the ship, its sail worn out / Odysseus returning full with space and time – Osip Mandelstam – Tristia, 1987 p35

Oh, sweetie – you’re spending all our money and we don’t have any
And Charlie that is true


So true Charlie, that is true
You tell it Charlie. You tell it true

In any man the best and the worst live side by side and sometimes mingle – and that what is worst comes through the corruption of what is best – Victor Serge – Memoirs of a Revolutionary

SUFFERING DOGGERAL
Do me another
The same
An ale and a dog
He won’t bite
So tame
With a side of kraut
It’s the same
Watching
The game
On Monday night
The quarterback
Came up lame

Imagine a century like a room so large, / a corridor so long / you could travel for a life time // and never find the door – Tony Hoagland – Donkey Gospel, 1998 p7

63% of all Americans sometime during their lives use some form of means-tested aid (otherwise known as welfare) for which being poor is the qualifier; but only 16% will receive it for five or more consecutive years. I wonder what the numbers are for wealthfare which is welfare in reverse (you only qualify if you have sufficient resources)? Every homeowner gets it, Walmart gets it. Even BP gets it.

No good story is quite true – Leslie Stephen

Rain Makes the Monkeys Mean - Run From Rapacous Monkeys - Run When You Hear Them Scream

A little rain, just enough to drive the humidity up into the unbearable category (a catagory 3 - not quiet a catastrophe;  the elderly poor are not yet dropping over dead, not yet qualifing for federal emergeny funding) – humid and hot, just what I like – sweat all day and into the night – feel sticky and crappy, not even a quick shower makes it any less miserable. The one item of modern technology that people say they couldn’t get along without is air-conditioning (at least those old enough to remember what it was like before every home had air – for those under fifty that one piece of technology would probably be some hand-held item of electronic wizardry).

Beyond flaws of recollection, it is a fallacy that those who were present can be trusted to know what happened – Max Hastings – New York Review of Books [March 11, 2010] p41

There is a fundamental contradiction for a politician who goes around begging for votes from you because they are the kind of politician who doesn’t go around begging for votes – but they don't have to beg  if they are independently wealthy themselves.

One of history’s most useful tasks is to bring home to us how keenly, honestly and painfully, past generations pursued aims that now seem to us wrong or disgraceful – John Carey

Under our economic system all social ills are structural – they are an admonishment to work hard, obey authority, exhibit loyalty, toe the line or else – except for the grace of the boss, there go I. We paper over them and blame the victims but never actually tackle any of these problems – and the solutions that we claim to implement are designed to allay any guilt we may have and to serve as another soruce of profit for the elite.

I could be dropped, blindfolded into almost any city in America, with nothing but the shirt on my back, and … I would be able to survive, comfortably, totally on my own… [but] I’m a bum eating out of the garbage, so what do I know – Ace Backwords

Jaywalking citations constitute one of the homeless person’s most frequent sources of contact with the larger society – constituting 40% of their contacts with the law. Petty quality-of-life offences constitute their days as they roam the streets waiting to be allowed back into  places of sleep. That and looking for a place to take a dump which also leads  them into contact with the law.

I am deathly tired of life, / I will accept nothing from it. / But I love my poor earth, / For I have seen no other – Osip Mandelstam – Tristia, 1987 p51

A record for new jobs created in May – the biggest gain in a decade – 431,000. But 413,000 were temporary US Census jobs – once in a decade – can it only be a coincidence that something that happens once each decade should break the record of the decade?

In America the sirens sing / Red smokestacks skyscrapers / Produce cold clouds / With their sooty lips – Osip Mandelstam – Tristia, 1987 p69

The really big one’s are on
     The inside, she said
With only her rear protruding
     From the blueberry bush
She may have been right, I’ve
     Never picked them
     Only blackberries
And with blackberries you stay
     On the outside, all of you
     Stays outside
But it wasn’t the blueberries or
      Even the blackberries
That was on my mind
Small game like rabbits know
     To hideout among the thorny canes
And snakes know to await their prey
     There,  while with mulberries
It is a whole different matter. They
      Don’t make a good pie only a
      Passable jam (syrup if you don't
            add pectin), but they are easy
To pick

The interesting thing is that you can start mowing anywhere. The lawn will get done no matter where you start mowing. And that seemed like an important discovery – Nicholson Baker - The Anthologist, 2009  p195

Thinking about where to begin intimidates one, puts off the actual onset of the start which does not have to be at the beginning – you can start anywhere, that is it secret of beginning. Well not for everything, it doesn’t work for relationships – starting at the ending is frequent, although we pass up many of them thinking about their endings.

In the beggar memory / first you’ll sense the blind ruts, / full of copper water - / and you’ll follow in the tracks, / unknown, unloving yourself, / both the blind man and the guide – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p63

Bushmeat – wild smuggled animal meat (monkeys, anteaters, giant rats, porcupines), usually smoked and sold in affluent markets at prices as high as $18 a pound by inbound travelers from tropical countries. It's a Parisian problem - Londoners are satisfied with overcooked and stringy sheep and mashy peas. If fish and chips is getting too damned expensive try whale and quail (or as the Americans say - surf and turf). Genetically modified salmon grow all year long. AquaAdvantage - what a non-poetically name, not as great as Orange Roughy (what was it called before the marketeers re-enginneered it - some type of trash fish I believe?).

We live on limited notions, dried out like plants pressed in a book – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2009 p26

On drugs the body becomes attuned to an altered source of consciousness; on the media the emotions become the source of an altered consciousness; and on books the mind becomes an altered state of consciousness

The most tragic thing about death, the most unacceptable thing for the mind, is the total disappearance of spiritual greatness built out of experience, intellectual exploration, knowledge, and understanding, much of it incommunicable – Victor Serge – Notebooks

After we are long dead and gone, our age shall be know as the “Age of Stupidity” – assuming of course there is anyone left to name it: The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, The Age of Steam, the Age of Stupidity and then the Stone Age again.

Truth, stripped of its metaphysical poetry, exists only in the brain. Destroy a few brains, quickly done! Then, goodbye truth – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2009

Geniuses should not be rich
Geniuses should not be beautiful
       That would make them gods
Then we should only wish
       To rip their guts out
       See them gored in the ring
And that is no way to treat a hero
And that’s why a lot of them
       Die young and those who don’t
       Go insane
Mad and dead heroes can be managed
        They are all  so well behaved


They are nameless. If you penetrate their cartilage, / you will be the heir of their princedoms – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p55

I Have a Thing for Monkeys it Seems But Not in That Way

It shall be another hot day – get out early while its still cool and walk the dog – find some A/C and hunker down for the duration of the searing heat - hunker down for life. This is life in the Sahara, a postmodern life. Enjoy it while there is still some reasonably priced oil. Become green, build with mud. Plant hard red winter wheat in your backyard. Victory gardens are on a comeback.

Elephant gun
Birdshot
Better mousetrap
Reach for the roach bomb
Road kill the other white meat
There’s a Bambi in my headlights
       Gun it! Damnit George!
Cow catcher shoving – bison shooting
        From the open train windows
This is sport
Keep on movin
Keep on groovin
Keep on keepin on
       Your long blond hair blowing in the breeze
       Looks lovely General Custer

By public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him – Immanuel Kant

Expertise is often private reason parading as public reason

In the free labor outlook, the objective of social mobility was not great wealth, but the middle-class goal of economic independence – Eric Foner – Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 1970 p16

Revolutions fail when they betray their universal solidarity

There is a life outside the law and it has many depths – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p46

The value of global illicit trade is estimated to be $140 
            billion:
       Illicit trade item           value at source
       Cocaine from the Andean
           region to North America   $38,000,000,000
       Cocaine from the Andean
           region to Europe           34,000,000,000
       Heroin from Afghanistan to
           Europe                     33,000,000,000
       Traffic in women for sexual
           exploitation                3,000,000,000
       Illegal smuggling of migrants   6,600,000,000
       Fake manufactured goods         8,200,000,000
       Counterfeit medicines           1,600,000,000
       Wood products                   2,500,000,000
       Wildlife and Bushmeat          10,000,000,000

I will not return my hired dust to earth / as a flowery white butterfly. / I want the thinking body / to turn into a street, a country, / where the vertebrate, charred body / will gather up the light ashes – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p49

The historical problem of capitalism has been the spatializaiton of privilege – geographic zones in which some capital was more equal than other capital. But this is a problem that derives from the state-capital framework. Capitalism's new problem is be how to segregate the privileged from Others  without being obvious – this is a problem of the security state-scarce resource framework (a crises in market access).

Everyone knows that people without health insurance are more likely to die. But are they?… Perhaps few people were asking, because the question sounds stupid. Health insurance buys you healthcare. Healthcare is supposed to save your life – Megan McArdlo – The Atlantic [March 2010] p32

A normal life provides one with the illusion of normalacy

This winter touches me / like a gift late in coming, / I love its wild reach / that develops out of uncertainty – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p59

Efficiency in the pursuit of stupidity should not be underestimated – we have yet to tap into the productivity of stupidity – perhaps technology shall provide the answer.

If you only look back [in the rearview mirror] you will end up in the ditch, but it helps to know where you have come from and who else is on the road – Margaret MacMillan

The illusion of significance is granted only to the worthy – there is no honor sleeping in your car - dented and scratched. But there is if it’s a brand new honking big RV where you can smile from the captain’s seat and wave at everyone while the wife is in back making herbal tea to be placed next to you in it own cozy cuppy to keep it hot in your  air-conditioned cabin with biological filtering. Meanwhile I can’t find a place to take a shit except in an old tin can which late at night I sneak out and empty onto someone’s lawn.

Poor is he who begs alms from the shadows / and is himself half-alive – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p64

It is the most round thing
     I’ve ever heard in my life
Or did I just misunderstand
     When the words came rolling by
     Bouncing like a ball
Did I invent this game of basketball
     With words that I misinterpreted
     What would otherwise have been
           Nonsense – which is
Unacceptable – like a dream, yes
But you can comprehend when
      You are in a dream
      Its when you are out that the
Difficulty begins – and it doesn’t help
      That all rules are internal
      To a sport or to a political
            Party like in pinball
And you can even do it blind
     Tommy did

So that the wondrous goods of Pushkin should not fall into the hands of parasites, / a generation of Pushkin scholars learn to read and write in overcoats with revolvers – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996

I Do Not Fib You But Monkeys Do

I finally got my property tax paid – It wasn’t that big of a deal, it really wasn’t. So why had I made so much of fuss about it. The lady was very nice – even had another county fax over a copy of my 2008 receipt (otherwise she said I’d have had to pay it twice – I had a copy in the truck but didn’t want to have to go through security again). It only came to thirty-five dollars and some change and there were no penalties to be paid. I was expecting a bill of a hundred dollars or more. But I did have to stand in four lines (well three lines but I stood in one line twice). Line B to be told to go to Line C (where the nice lady was - once I enter the data she said I'd have to pay what they told me in Line B that I owed) then back to Line B to be told how much I neeed to pay and then to Line A to pay what in Line B I had been told that I owed.. But I did not have to go back outside and then come back and go through security all over again – I always seem to manage to tip over the basket and spill all my change all over the floor and there is always some residual piece of metal that makes the detectors go off – this time it was the reading  glasses  in my shirt pocket and something in my wallet (probably the magnetic strip on a credit card). It wasn’t that bad – it really wasn’t, but God do I hate serurity checks. Now for the tags and the safety inspection. I need to look up the location of the nearest DMV. I still have five day remaining to get all this done.

Every emotion structures the world according to its own distinctive categories… It is perversity to evaluate those judgments, which presuppose engagement, by standards that exclude any involvement or engagement – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p56.

The inability of a democratic system to articulate what a people really want or think is the ultimate manifestation of corruption

The cage is a hundred bars of lies / the perch and the little plank are slanderous. / Everything in the world is inside out… Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996

Banana your way up
     The Cargo coast
Apple the doctor to the
      Maternity ward now
Cherry him with a flurry
      Of kiwied fists to the face
It was cantalouped to me
      And it lemons here on this fob
Grape the future with it
      To within three blueberries

One of the most distinctive and most neglected features of lying is that it is surprisingly hard to do… It is always easiest… to tell the truth, but the next easiest is to believe your own lie – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p46

What they are afraid of is not some mythical demand but the re-definition of the tradition

Sometimes a name seems our most arbitrary possession, / and sometimes it seems like the grain in a rock / like a sculptor’s hunk of Italian marble: whack it / and you might get either your first glimpse of a saint or a pile or rubble – Lucia Perillo – Inseminating the Elephant, 2009 p37

Long legged women
In flimsy summer dresses
Can anything be nicer
        Maybe with floppy wide brimmed
               Straw hats
        Gently pinching sand between their bare toes
        And tossing back long black tresses
I'm in the twillight of my desire

An empty canoe glides on a waterless river. / Among the grasshoppers the word becomes forgotten – Osip Mandelstam – Tristia, 1987 p91

A worker is someone who follows the money; they don’t concern themselves with secondary cares such as ethics and justice – a worker is a special kind of widget, that is all (except when they are a CEO). In recruiting workers the only consideration is the eligible candidate pool. Stockbrokers, bankers and politicians are all workers. Not all workers are good workers. Someone who just does what they are told is either a laborer or gun for hire; they may concern themselves with ethics and justice but do not let it interfere with their performance. They are good at what they do because failure is not an option. Some concentration camp guards are both laborers and guns for hire. Some concentration camp guards are workers. Most contractors are workers. Concentration camp guards who are workers and drone operators (who are all workers) are always good workers.They pay close attention to performance measures.

The truth is but one of the many victims of violated trust and willful manipulation – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 n p49

An estimated one million Americans were admitted for emergency room services last year as a result of abuse of prescription or OTC drugs – about the same as the number of admissions resulting in the usage of illegal drugs. Five years ago the admission of users of illegal drugs was twice that of the users of legal drugs.

Just as the expression of an emotion may be inappropriate even where the emotion itself is proper, an emotion may be absent where its expression is obligatory – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p52

Quadrennial Happenstances Involving Feathers

Given all the excitement this year generated by the quadrennial World Cup (the U.S. is going to the second round, hurrah!) and all the excitement generated by the Olympics – both occurring in even numbered years are there any quadrennial events that occur in off years (the odd numbered years): Why yes, there is - The Naccabiah Games (Jewish Olympics), the World Games, the Caribbean Games, the Chinese National Games, the Deaflymics (Deaf Olympics), the African National Cup, the All Africa Games and the Pan American Games. So why is it that all the importing stuff happens in even numbed years. We even call elections that take place in odd numbered years – off year elections. Is there something magic about even numbers? I don’t know – I am just posing the question.

If it didn’t happen – it should have happened or it might have happened but maybe not quite the way I said that it did happen. It might have appeared not to have happened at all but its happening may not actually have been improbable – we can’t write about what is not imaginable.

It would surely be unfair to call philosophers ‘liars’ just because they prefer to avoid the truth and talk about truth instead – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p43

With feathering
Your tail will not spin
But your propeller will

Self-deception further reinforces individuality by supporting the unrealistic dreams and fantasies that allow a person to cope and thrive in difficult or even impossible circumstances – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p50

Walter has now given us metal names: Moe Libdium, Al Minium and Maggy Nesium. He said that he has been too busy to develop the story line for Max Torque. A Peterbuilt truck smashed into a Starbuck’s coffee shop - it actually happened. Walter read it directly from the Chronicle. Frank Chu now has a club named after him, I say – It is called the Twelve Galaxies. Walter sais that he didn’t know who Frank Chu is Linda confessed her ignorance also. I tell them that that’s like admitting that you’ve never heard of Emperor Norton. But actually its is worse. Norton I was only Emperor of the US and Protector of Mexico, while Frank Chu, on the other hand, has twelve Galaxies to worry about. I didn’t try to explain Meg and my Christmas project to raise money to buy him a new pair of shoes. Any yes, Frank did make it to the St Stupid’s Day parade and wearing those oversized shoes – not as big as John Wayne Gracy’s were, but he had shoes that were hard to fill.

I’m at SFMOA with a cappuccino waiting on Michael again. I will check for voice mail this time as soon as I put down this pen. No, no messages. Cappuccino ladies are best enjoyed in the morning, Neon does not reflect from them admiringly and neither does the noon day sun. Dawn and dusk are their highlights. The lecture began at noon. I had told Michael to meet me at 12:15, which he did, so instead we went to the 21st Amendment for lunch. My feet are killing me - I though I was doing them a favor by getting sandals - but exposure to the air and the freedom to move has split the leathers that are my heels. So now I’m tiptoeing around, planning to stay near home and wearing socks. I’m also applying a cream to re-moisture the skin.

Survival without justice is inhumane

I am seriously contemplating suicide just not to witness the eventual failure of my life, but of course that would be another form of delusion, for to leave one’s life, one’s work unfinished implies the possibility of success, what is left unlived, untold, may contain the potential truth one always seeks – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p67

Drivers in the right lane are more likely to speed up and try to make it through a yellow traffic signal than is a driver in the left lane. For every extra second (beyond three seconds) that a light stays yellow, the likelihood of a driver pressing foreword (speeding up) increases by more than threefold.

We fool ourselves in order to fool others, and we fool others in order to fool ourselves. And to make it complicated (as it should be) we do not always know which is which, who is self, and who is other – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p43

The emissions of off highway engines (aircraft, marine vessels, off-road vehicles and stationary engines) are unregulated – aircraft results in 11% of the transportation derived CO2 and their green house gas emission are expected to rise 60% over the next ten years; marine vessels entering US ports account for 4.5% of US mobile-source greenhouse gas emissions and their pollution levels are expected to double of the next decade; non-road vehicles and engines account for 9% of US mobile source CO2 emissions and their emissions are expected to rise by 46% over the then twenty years.

The earth is either silent, or else it expresses itself clumsily, incoherently. It finds coherent speech only when it falls into the ‘zones of culture’; space which is at home with the word – Victor Krivulin, 1993

The more you read the more lose ends get connected (especially those lose ends that you didn’t even know were lose ends) and if they do not get interconnected, there is something wrong with your reading plan

All local history tends to commemorate only success – Charles N Glaab – Kansas City and the Railroads, 1993 p193

It is estimated that 14% of all Americans will be homeless at least once with having of them having to sleep outdoors or in a shelter

Salutations, black earth, be strong and alert / there’s a fertile black silence in work – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p32

Unlimited choice is a bad thing
Something without its opposite is no thing (nothing)
Eat all the candy and get sick
Getting old brings with it
      Lactose intolerance
To become an infant again without
      Being allowed to suck on a teat
This is just plain mean

Bodies touch, but do not rub / any membrane that might lubricate – Lucia Perillo – Inseminating the Elephant, 2009 p38

One is accepted, tolerated – but only in a de facto, secondary role

Interdicting Jalapeno Potato Chips at the Border

I’m hunting for the needed documentation – got to get my truck legal again – Dave lost the renewal notice – the title was in my back-pack and not in the glove compartment – I think I have proof of insurance in my wallet – I need to pay the property tax, get a safety inspection and visit the DMV (I've got another six days to get it done). At least I am underway – which is the hardest part, then expalianing why I didn’t make the deadlines (as if they even care but I always anticipate such a dialogue) and then the easy part – making out the checks. I Google Map the directions. I know how to get there. No excuses left.

Workhouse
Poorhouse
Guesthouse
Pesthouse
Madhouse
Jailhouse
Almshouse


They’re right every house is not a home
But what about the reverse - Is every home a house?


Municipal lodging house
Boarding house
Outhouse
Whorehouse
Slaughterhouse


Commitment, protection, administration
Home Sweet Home


Landlords
Overlords
My Lord
Yes m’lord
I’m up in my treehouse


A public house is not public housing
A publican's home is his own domain

Death smells lend protection. Winner of ripest warm-day-decay contest is not challenged by pack peers – billowing putrefaction blasts inspire respect and great kill pride. Meat-rot bouquet is prey smells best medal – Amy Grestler – Dearest Creature, 2009 r p34

The number of Border Patrol agents has doubled since 2003 to almost 20,000 today. The budget has grown from $1b in 2,000 to a requested $3.586b in 2011. The combined budgets of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is $17b. There are 650 miles of barriers along the Mexican/US border and everyone is screaming for more – the problem is that no one has any standard for defining what a secured border is (either that or immigration is now our bugbear for all that ails us)

Tim’s Jalapeno Potato Chips - First I lick the salt and flavoring from my finger after handling the first chip. It seems more salty than hot. Tim’s Jalapeno Potato Chip - But there is a diffident lingering hot after taste. I pop a whole chip into my mouth.

Crisp, crunchy chip texture. There is a loud crunching noise in my mouth. No heat yet. Now a slight sensation of heat. It’s starting to build up on the back right side of my tongue and a little bit in the upper back part of my throat - those places with the most physical contact with the chip. It’s not really that hot, but what heat there is is  persistent and  it is localized. I imagine what it shall be llike after a few more chips when my entire mouth and throat shall begin to tingle. The fire should be additive, the mouth will cry out for more as the body pumps endorphins into the system to counter this imaginary pain. It'll not be like a festering sore, but more like the day after a bad sunburn.

I go for the next one. I munch a second chip and let the chewed pulp linger on the left side of my mouth. Yes, the left side of my mouth is heating up niecly now.

The fact that the body is what it is capable of doing, and what any body is capable of doing is well beyond the tolerance of any given culture – Elizabeth Grosz

Walter’s neighbor who he had taken care of for twenty years died yesterday. He found her after she had not answered her phone. There probably wouldn’t be a funeral, he said, as there is no one to attend. She was born in Mississippi 88 years ago. A quarter Irish, a quarter black, a quarter Cherokee and a quarter who knows what. Walter just says that she died at home. She had never wanted to leave.

Even though what you write may not be literarily true before you wrote it, it did not even exist. Thought comes from actions not the reverse - thought does not predicate action. Without action we could not think - disembodied self let alone brain is a fantasy - a comic cosmic fantasy. We are constantly creating the world, otherwise we are dead - such is the essence of life - creating text, creating space, creating time, creating persona - and – destroying. Creation and destruction are complementary - one doesn’t happen without the other. And if I had not written it down who would even have know other than my self and I would long ago have forgotten it.

The failure of the commons is the common failure of  the market resulting in walls and   
        gas-masks
Not only do we not know what it is that we are choosing we don’t even know why it is
          that we should  be choosing
But choose we must
Put this object in my  market basket
     It is the subject
    A representation of my desires
"I have no great fondness for any of these shoes"
Quoted Mrs. Marcos
It is the relish of the fetish
     Which is so devilish

True cynics are often the kindest people, for they see the hollowness of life, and from the realization of that hollowness is generated a kind of cosmic pity – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p65

Waterboarding is an established tradition in medical practice having been once used as a remedy for the intemperate needing moral reform as did heretics and anyone else insane enough to want to protest such violent treatment under the guidance of expertise – torture is a vital remedy for curing what ails an imperfect world with all its moral backsliders that need to be dealt with efficiently.

Persona are not subject to the weather, they are not seasonal. They can be perennials however but that is not necessarily so. Humor is the trying on of a persona and standing in front of a mirror admiring the results. Regret and shame are not liking the image that you see. Sorrow is not seeing any reflection at all. Some people skip over cracks in the sidewalk, other attempt the Grand Canyon. Few of the later succeed. Most of the former are hindered in their progress. Neither strategy works for me.

Instead, I would rather that they shoplift. My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift… I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any longer than they need… The observation that shoplifting is the best option some people are left withy is a grim indictment of who we are – Rev Tim Jones “A Sermon For the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Dec 20,2009)

Susanna Stole the Elder's Mule - Took it for a Ride on an Elevator

A disembodied voice keeps repeating “Elevator coming” but noting happens until almost two minutes later – which is a long time in a conversation for nothing to happen – is this a conversation?  The car with its lighted cage descended. It stopped and its doors opened, then they closed. It is waiting. Someone with a bicycle pushes the button and the voice intones “Elevator called” and the door opened wide as if it knew that the man had a bicycle and that he wanted to take with him on the train. The cage ascends and the shaft goes dark. “Elevator coming”, I hear again and the lighted cage descends. I’m waiting for the Pittsburgh/Bay Point train, which is due in one minute. The cage ascended empty. I get on the train and plunged under the bay.

Susanna and the Elders by Thomas Hart Benton -
       … and there was something about a pair of mules
            which was what my grandfather did
                Made a living matching mules
            And Benton was a Missourian too
           My grandmother smoked a corncob pipe
               Like MacAuthur did and my father
               Watched him come ashore, Oh well


She said that she liked to watch me shave
She had liked to watch as her father did
           When she was a little girl


And when she quit getting excited by my small gifts
           She also stopped watching me shave
I liked to watch her bath. I sat on edge of the tub
           And we talked and it had noting to do with my mother
                   
But she said that it made her feel self-conscious
Everything then just started to get
           Too damn fucked up


(When you’re in love you’re so goddamn self-conscious
            That your skin crawls – it becomes an addiction -
            but it may cause skin cancer it turns out)


Then she started informing me of what she had
            Put on lay-away and that I was to buy for her
She was very busy now and I was not to just drop by
            Any old time


There were a lot of things she needed to do
And she said she had little patience for any of my nonsense


I lost track of her, heard she had gotten married
            Some sailor that she had meet at the beach
            On a vacation to the coast


I still get a tightness of the groin splashing in water
Getting the mules to furrow a straight path is difficult
             It all seems so strange – even yesterday

Tears are round, the sea is deep, / Roll them overboard and sleep – W H Auden

It’s the serendipitous connections that make reading memorial especially if you read ten books simultaneously ten pages at a time – repeatedly discovering the same obscure words, unknown authors repeatedly cited, scenes taking place six blocks from where you sit – I just watched a rerun of that movie on tv. And when it happens repeatedly you start looking for logical connections – some significance – any significance. And it is the stretching of relationships and the denial of coincidence that causes us to invent what had not been preexistent, what makes life more interesting - good readers bring more to the reading than do good writers – but it takes good writers to get us curious and maintain our attention. Readers reading for meaning (plot for example) never get beyond being manipulated by an author-  which for them is enough. . Icarus depicted by Breughel – two poems – two writers – Auden and WCW. Not just his falling into the ocean but all the activity of the townsfolk – Icarus was (still is) only a tiny figure on the horizon of the canvas.

Dung is informative, complex – full of news flashes from the body’s interior. Shit’s an encyclopedia, volumes of urgent correspondence your organs wrote, if only you knew how to read. What is learned from smelling shampoo? … Washing is book burning – Amy Grestler – Dearest Creature, 2009 p33

The Indian woman sat across from me. She had hands clasped in her lap and kept pounding her thumps down and mouthing words that she silently keep to herself. She sat quietly with her eyes shut, her purse firmly grasped and her legs crossed. Her fringed silver net serape reminded me of conquistador armor. Was it a prayer to the blessed mother or a native incantation, or was she just trying to remember her grocery list. Maybe it was a form of meditation but then I’m getting my Indians mixed-up. She was not that kind of Indian.

The wind blows
        Spicy sheets of water
They race down the street
        Whipped up by chefs


Now it comes pouring down
As to make it hard to see
As if trying to see the cake
        Beneath all of this icing
Isn’t it about time that the groom
        Joined hands with his bride
        And helped her cut a slice
And this their first joint symbolic act
        Kissing does not count
        Unless done in a kitchen

An expert is someone who knows how to properly frame an issue in bureaucratic terms, any issue that lies within their domain of expertise

Re-enacted often enough, everything becomes mundane and your attention is drawn to the esoteric or to the unfamiliar. Constantly ensnaring and reaching beyond, the mind struggles on to both know and to learn. We spent five hours at hashing out a mission statement – it was productive time but a very exasperating experience. Now it is time to spring forward on hour.

Desire need not culminate in sexual intercourse, but may end in production. Not the production of a child or a relationship, but the production of sensations never felt, alignments never thought, energies never trapped, regions never known – Elizabeth Grosz

Dead Yellow Monkeys Floating in Oil Wash Ashore

The Happy Planet Index shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. The United States doesn’t do too well. It measures the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. Efficiency – well being; isn’t that what the ideologs proclaim that “free markets” do (well they shall proclaim  that's because our markets are not free enough)? The United States isn’t doing very well.

1000 volumes a year / ooze from the minds / of dead monkeys / and yet / we are still too dull to understand them – Ted Berrigan - No Going Around Cities, 1981 p95

It’s an alright kind of place when you have no where else to go. Death is the end of the line. But first there is this misery. It’s not the worst, but it is hard to imagine that anything could be worse. Hundreds of bodies. “less sweet than cows – less fragrant than horses” – one meal a day, watery gruel and hot black coffee then shoved out into the streets before the sun comes up on a gray blustery day.

Life smashes itself on the summits of mountains / or doesn’t smash itself / But the night doesn’t care // The night doesn’t care about anything / And sometimes I don’t care either – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p175

Those who censor themselves are not free to not censor themselves

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness – Tennessee Williams

On top of the slump
When property had already lost
        46% of its value
Now this


The median calculation is
An Exxon Valdez every
        Five days


$4.3 billion in property
       Value lost
From the Louisiana
       Bayous to
Clearwater Florida
Is being predicted
      Which  of these is the least
      Of our worries


And then an apology
I apologize BP that the
President is extorting $20
        Billion from yourself

And then China
Lets lose the Yuan  to float
    Out into the Yellow Sea

The persuasive power of repetition, clarity, and simplicity is something that people who set out ‘to win others’ trust – marketers, political candidates, speech-writers, suitors, and teachers – already have an intuitive sense of, it they’re good at what they do – Drake Bennett – The Boston Globe

Family men and family women
Begin arriving in their sedans
It must be ten o’clock


Their saucers and D cups
     Get bussed
The tomatoes and the beer
     Get trucked
All the bears and the bulls
     Got trained
All the tourists headed for Bangkok
     Get planed
I told her we could go to the moon
     Get aboard my rocketship
We were so bored that we all
     Got on the slow boat


"We’re all going to China"
We sang


That satisfied them
Then they got back into
     Their sedans
And drove back out into
     Their suburbs

Time is all gone / There is only the sure thing in these cycles of hurricanes / Time is all gone / The evening bruises itself alongside its forest – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981o p175

Librarians are increasingly our unofficial social workers for the homeless. It’s access to a bathroom and a shower that presents a homeless personage his greatest challenge. A place to hangout without being roused or having your eyes poked out.

You loved puddles / and tide pools, dear friend. Now / you are dead and I’m left not high / enough and not dry, wavering in the rain, only snails and a spotted / dog urinating on geraniums for company – Amy Grestler – Dearest Creature, 2009 p25

It's An Alright Kind of Place Where Nothing is Unusual

There are the give-aways so many give-aways – one after the other – no explanation or commentary – have here this little juicy tidbit and its pure gold. Who was to know? No forewarning of what is to come. No flashing neon solicitating attention – hey!, pay attention to this – its for your own benefit – the ten most frequently viewed, the ten most popular – no not any of this. How much trouble each one was is not known – how difficult each one’s birth was is not known – how each one rose to the surface is not known – how each one came to written down is not know. All that is know is that here it is. See here they are swimming among the words, they are awash is the ink. And this is not all that there is either. When the sun is out and at just the right angle many can be seen swimming lazily in the water where previously there didn’t seem to be any – maybe only that big one over there [a finger points to stage right], but only if they move and a glitter of light [a bright beam of orange lights is directed at stage center] hits their scales just right then can they be seen – pure gold – koi - so many but it takes concentration and patience – scarce resources – so many things to do – so little time – so many demands.

Men do not respect those whom they must obey – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p226

Really Existing Socialism – socialism as has been practiced rather than as an idea. Really Existing Free Markets – markets that really exist rather than the idea of free markets. Really existing is always a moonshadow.

The term [socialized medicine] has been a powerful political weapon – even though nobody can quite define what it means. The term was popularized by a public relations firm working for the American Medical Association in 1947 to disparage President Truman’s proposal for a national health care system. It was a label, at the dawn of the cold war meant to suggest that anybody advocating universal access to health care must be a communist. And the phrase has retained its political power for six decades – T R Reid – The Healing of America, 2009 p11

It rained – then, the sun, it came out
The pavement glitters – the air hangs
      Heavy
Then it comes again – the rain
      Pours down
Time moves on, so does the rain
      The rain moves on
Only puddles remain  while time leaves
      Us ever worse off

Tune up the dawn’s motor / While I sit on the edge of my eyes / And click off the entry of images – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p93

To remain sane you may need to see the world around you itself as insane, and although you will feel that the technical definition of this insanity that you have diagnosed could  be applid to you, don't. You no longer exhibit any of the symptoms of this insanity yourself  – you remain standing looking towards the horizon, watching the cities as they burn. That piller of salt - that one back there - that was my wife.

When we don’t have much information to go on we often allow the beauty of a phrase to validate its truthfulness – M T McGlone

If we are mystified and stymied and willing to go to our death for false causes such as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict – than what chance do we have of confronting any real threats

In turning people against each other, the class system of authority and judgment-making goes itself into hiding; the system is left unchallenged as people enthralled by the enigmas of its power battle one anther for respect – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p 150

I loved here but she was
     Queer
I thought her strange
Tis’ why I loved her’
But she lost her exotic
     Appeal
What had once seemed
     Charming
Became simply annoying
And I had to move on

One can never retreat from life, but one can always escape from thought, and yet to have lived is not enough, to have loved is not enough, one must talk about it constantly – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p61

The pavement is bone dry
There is no water in the gutter
The creeks are still running high
The blue-jays are in flight
You can step on the brakes
      And not slide
You come to a halt
      And look about
Nothing in anyway
      Seems unusual

To get people to think carefully and to prevent them from making silly mistakes, make them work to process the question; making the font hard to read, the cadence awkward, and the wording unfamiliar – Drake Bennett – The Boston Globe

Casserols that Shout About Umbrellas for Monkeys

Oh shit! I forgot my reading glasses – I’m sitting here in the truck waiting for 7 O’clock when the café will open up and I’m trying to read this book – which I am able to do so long as I squint. When the Café opened I got out and there they were in the front left pocket of my shorts – the same pocket in which I keep my wallet. Good, one less thing that I shall need to buy – another pair of reading glasses. Every time that you discover that you really don’t need to buy that, will that is a bonus, sort of like earning a couple of bucks on a scratch card. Later I bought a microwave oven and a collander instead.

Out of boredom, we warm ourselves / By a bonfire. Perhaps centuries will pass, / And the kind hands of blessed women / Will gather up the light ashes – Osip Mandelstam – Tristia, 1987 p57

Arizona is a trendsetter – forget about the troubles of California when it comes to stupidity. A bankrupt state wants to loan out its law enforcement to the Federal government for free – to save $25 million in salaries it will forgo $175 million in tax collection. The first reaction to hard times is to create problems that you can deal with and divert attention away from anything that reallly counts. And here I had though that California was crazy for spending half a million dollars to incarcerate a man for stealing candy worth a $1.99. Arizona wants to joint the fight against terrorism by eliminating “gun-free zones where there’s absolutely no one who could defend themselves if a terrorist incident happened.” Yes Arizona is the new reality, inventing a non-reality in order not to have to face up to a reality that contradicts its vision. And if Obama wants to run for re-election he must show his birth certificate to Arizona state officials. And wouldn’t that present an interesting court case if he were struck from the ballot of that state – the publicity might even help his re-election bid. And if he negotiates a green-gas emission treaty or implements an emissions program – that would also have to be approved by the state legislature - it is the law in Arizona. . So now they are calling for the military on the border – I don’t think I’d want the military occupying my state if I was insisting on flaunting it's constituting authority – that is just plane stupid. “We don’t want to be owned by the EPA or the drug cartels”. We no longer need to look to California for our entertainment, now we have Arizona.

“Less is more” has its adherents in architecture, design and fashion but not in technology – try buying a car without electric windows or a cell phone without a camera. The demands of less affluent customers in developing countries may be changing this (not so much by their own demands as much as the need to expand the consumer base).

Class is not… a system that forces people to become schizophrenic. These divides in self [that occur in a class structure] are rather a response that occurs because men are greater than the system they live under – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p210

Although you man pay dearly for it, like love, authenticity cannot be bought

An historian who would convey the truth must lie – Mark Twain

Market Socialism – faith in the invisible hand of Adam Smith – the believe (faith) in the self-corrective effect of the aggregation of individual decisions in free markets – it is the one incidence in which the capitalists also proclaims theirs belief in socialism – this may be changing, capitalism is expected to increasing find a ally in socialism (a type of socialism which I call neo-capitalism – winner take all except when there is a lost and then put your hands out and expect government to pail you out). Socialism will become capital's savior (Lord and Christ) - a tolitarian union of capital, the state and religon with capital holding the trump card.

You see, casseroles can shout too. Everything can – Pablo Pacasso

How much are you willing to sacrifice to achieve a state of normalcy when normalcy is only that which you have become accustomed to – is it the fear that you have more than you justly deserve?

A sort of laughing sound came out of his throat, the kind of sound you make when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry or get sore – Jim Thompson – The Killer Inside Me, 1991 p171

Homo sacer: the one excluded form the civil order who can be killed with impunity – Al Queda’s number three man (along with his family) killed by a drone attach in Pakistan. “Strange Fruit” sang Billy Holliday.

People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave – Howard Zinn

It’s not just what you’re buying. It’s what you’re buying into – Starbuck ad campaign – Talk about truth in advertising!

Only 19% of Americans know all of their neighbors by name and 28% don’t know the name of a single neighbor (24% know the names of most of their neighbors and 29% know the names of some of their neighbors). Less than half of Americans talk face-to-face with neighbors about community issues – it makes no difference as to where they live – urban, suburban or rural, but education and income do make a difference – the higher their education and the higher their in incomes the more likely they are to have thses conversations.

Possession of the qualities of a “good” worker is inversely related to years of schooling – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p177

Everyone lives in a community – many don’t realize it and many refuse to acknowledge it

During the lull in conversation, a hand-painted China plate explained, “You suffer the trials and transformations of middle age. Yes, there are annoyances and betrayals. Yes, love falls away. That doesn’t mean you give in.” For several minutes an atmosphere of gravity and forgiveness seemed to prevail in the kitchen. Pink and black peppercorns nattered happily in their grinder, “We who are about to be pulverized salute you.” – Amy Grestler – Dearest Creature, 2009 p17

Family intimacy ratings (percentage or respondents who said they had an intimate relationship with their:)
            Dog 94%
            Mom 87%
            Cat 84%
            Dad 74% - Happy Father’s Day Dad

The incessant pressure to choose involves not only ignorance about the object of choice, but, even more radically, the subjective impossibility of answering the question of desire – Slavoj Žižek – First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, 2009 p63

Yes you can survive anything, a parachute jump, a winter of starvation, a war, a concentration camp, even a disastrous love affair, survive anything, it’s a matter of stubbornness, but do you bring up that dead past afterward, no, you simply allow it to be, how shall I say, to be the central unspeakable event that changes your life and your work emotionally, but without going into the sordid details – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p51

The populist revolt includes attaching small blue buckets resembling sirens to the tops of automobiles and driving down the center median and filming your encounter with the police – to turn a populist re-action into a revolt requires astute performance art – (better yet strap the blue plastic bucket to the top of your head and run amok in the traffic) - to keep it reactionary, prop up your feet and watch your tv. The revolution will not be televised – it will be Utubed and Tweeted and Wikileaked. It only makes any sense if you’re a Muscovite. Otherwise you must discover your own territory of counterpower. All re-action is local while revolution is global unless it too can fist be co-opted.
All we can salvage from our passage through adult consciousness is irony or sarcasm – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p60

Ten o’clock time
For the church folks
To be arriving
And they do and they
     Get into their queue

The distance between our bodies / Are as great as those between our souls / Alone / Alone / Alone – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p95

By a count of BISs (bodies in pews – more commonly called butts in seats) only 18% of Americans regularly attend church.

Non-Christians rank Evangelicals just above Prostitutes form a list of eleven groups in regards to respect

A Third Tier College in a Podunk Town Still Will Cost Your $40,000 a Year

Ned Rorem keeps popping up, I know him – I have a volume of his tunes that he autographed for me – popping up like Bonnard’s bathing wife and Icarus plummeting into the sea – summer in Nantucket – never, never been there myself – there are some who think of New England as home, at least for the summer – after that they go back to Manhattan to work. Some (most) have to work – can’t take the summer off – me, I can go anywhere I want, I'm retired. Some go to the Poconos. There are even some real  Down Easterners. I am not one. Spengler keeps popping up too. What to you mean popping up? Well while reading there is a repetition of obscure (at least to you) names that you find recurring across lots of texts – and you want to know what is their significance, and maybe there is none, but coincidences like these are hard to accept, much harder than  to just make up a story. And who is Spengler? Spengler? Oswald Spengler – you don’t know him? And Schnitzler too as long as we are talking about Viennese intellectuals. He was a regular at the Café Griensteidl (Lenin went to the Café Centra, Hitler to the Café Sperl and Mozart to the Franunhuber – me I frequented the Royal Ground on Fillmore and right now I'm at a cafe next to a third tier college in a mediocre city)

I’m never not working. Even as I sit chattering of Kafka or cranberries, sodomy or softball, my mind is simultaneously glued to the piece I’m currently creating; the physical act of inserting the notes on a staff is merely a necessary afterthought – Ned Rorem

57% of Colombians and 23% of Chinese say that they intend to start a business within the next three years. Only 7% of Americans say they have such plans

The more a person becomes emotionally involved in rewards from higher authority, the more ‘dependent’ he becomes on someone else who is not a comrade for the things that give him self-respect – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p197

The value of US businesses acquired by foreign interest since 2001: $1,480,000,000

I’d be doing something, reading a book or something, or maybe I’d be with her. And all of a sudden it would come over me that I was going to kill her, and the idea seemed so crazy that I’d almost laugh out loud. Then I’d start thinking and I’d see it, see that it had to be done, and… Jim Thompson – The Killer Inside Me, 1991 p154

Since the 1970s the number of American in areas of concentrated urban poverty has doubled. Worldwide slum dwellers constitute 30% of urban populations

Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s the day-to-day living that wears you out – Chekhov

My street is a river
My mind is a sewer
Your libido is a prison
This atmosphere is uninhabitable
Cars creep about
        Ready to pounce
I’m the dog sniffing at her crotch
       She smiles and lets me
       Have my pleasure
It not my fault - I was minding
      My own business

And it keeps coming down
The creeks will be flooding with
        Cars stalling and washing
Away. Women and children screaming
Boom! Immediately proceeded by a flash
        The dog is hiding under the bed
Cover your head with the pillow
         Cry a river away
         Drive through it anyway


But for me it’s a love affair
       This effusive union
       Of sky and earth
When everything turns to liquid


Are you prepared to meet the Lord?
Be sure to put on clean underwear before
       You leave home today - You may
Get swept away in a flood

56% of the French think they may likely become homeless although the homeless rate in France is less than half of the homeless rate of the United States.

If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet – Robert Zagnoc

South Carolina charges a $5 fee for registering as a ‘subversive agent’. One filer paid in Confederate currency

I believe in the compound fracture / served with a sauce of dirty regret – Tony Hoagland – Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

Ratio of water to product required to produce it :
         Beer 300:1 (it takes 300 gallons of water to produce
                     1 gallon of beer)
         Wine 950:1
         Milk 1,000:1
         Coffee 1,120:1

The trees say good day and wait while the sun knots its tie and puts on its hat / So life is fine / Life with its terrifying speed – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p179

The Census is reporting that non-white minorities accounted for 48.6% of the children born in the US between July 2008 and July 2009. Next year, 2011, may will mark a demographic milestone when minority births eclipse birth of whites of European ancestry.

Future-dwelling pen pal: my own era repels me, / Where as other places, times, and climes beckon, / Is there not some way we can, by Christ’s grace // trade places? Even if only for a day – Amy Grestler – Dearest Creatures, 2009 p14

US domestic water usage – average usage – 168 liters per person  
            per day
        Washing clothes and dishes 24%
        Showering and bathing      30%
        Toilets                    34%
        Taps                       12%

So life is fine / And life applauds life / Smiles applaud the wind / Songs applaud the birds / Birds applaud the light / Light applauds the tree / Trees applaud the sky / The sky applauds the sun / The sun applauds the waves // And all of life is a theater of applause / So life is fine and can dance like the flowers – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p185