Strawberry Fields

They don’t see the world as degraded. They view it as a world in progress. They see how much more access they have to the freeway out in the burbs than they had when they were kids a few years back. Their time slice is so tiny. Their historical framework is so restricted. They construe patterns from so few data points. They make a lot of false positive correlations. Things are more convenient now. The things they are used to doing are getting easier. The things that they wish to do are more affordable. It’s all good what is going on. They want to be part of it all. They are very proud of their contribution. It will be many years before nostalgia begins to set in. They are happy. They are enthauistic. They are willing to forsake the sparrow in hand for the kolibri in the bush.

Sound common sense is always trimmed to fit a certain conception of what is, and ought to be, and maybe – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p66

It is not the truth of a statement that matters so much as how well it is stated

I fine mute knowledge dangerous –  Elias Canetti

At the beginning of the twentieth century a large city – Chicago for example – might contain 80,000 large animals: horses, mules and cows. 600,000 tons of manure was produced annually and 20,000 dead carcasses had to be hauled away.

The notebook is the perfect literary form for the eternal Student, someone who has no subject, or rather, whose subject is “everything” – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign of Saturn, 1980 p190

I’m at the Café Trieste in North Beach. Power is out. They cannot make espresso. They have house coffee, kept hot on the grill. I have a house coffee and a buttered toasted sesame seed bagel. They do that with gas too. Many of their morning customers immediately leave when told that there is no espresso.  An old man is talking about the slots. It was in Tijuana, he said. “This old couple just went in together and … it happens sometimes. Yeah, I only saw it once. I was twenty three at the time and I’m sixty three now, so that was forty years ago. This woman has only three dollars which she puts in a single slot - bing, bing, bing - $2,800.  Right off the bat. I once saw this woman who was down $1,300 on the dollar slots and then she has to go out for more money. While she was away a man begins playing her machine -  bam, bam, bam – he gets three wins in quick succession. He rakes in $28,000. That woman was furious when she returned. That is my money she yelled. But it was to no avail.” “She should have had the management take the machine out of play,” the other man said…”You can’t expect a machine to be withdrawn from play for over an hour though. Boy was she ever mad”.

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work – W G Sebald – The Rings of Saturn, 1998  p182

Across from me two young women were studying for a nursing exam. You could tell  they were nursing and not medical students. Prospective doctors would never study together. They would be fearful that it might give their study partner an edge. It is late enough to begin drinking. I go to the Brewery. Daniel is scribbling on a sheet of paper that he has torn from a spiral notepad. It is the beginnings of a short story. Josh is behind the bar. I start with a half pint of doppelweisen. I make a reservation for the theatre for tonight. Soon it is time to go. I need to leave by six. Just about then Daniel looks up. “Hey there, how’s it going”, he asks? He looks at what I had been writing. “I’ve been working on two sentences all day,” he said. Then I head out to dance, dance the night away. I won’t be home until after midnight. I like it when the day has rhythm and there is noise and clamor and the cacophony drowns out the bordom. It helps when there is a strong backbeat.  A Boom boom boom de boom-da

The real pain is to feel one’s thought shift within oneself – Antonin Artaud

For us anonymous ones there is no imaginary game – we are the outcasts not the curators

To be free of “the world”, one must break the moral (or social) law – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign of Saturn, 1980 p53

I was in pain. It was only others pain that I found funny. I was wondering: did she pluck her eyebrows? I had many such questions to ask of young girls about their erotic grooming procedures. Would she like a drink? I ask her, “Do you want a Coke?” “I’m OK,” she said. Now I’m at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Balloons of carton animals float overhead. Do they every getting nauseous up there looking done on us, say when a gust of wind is about the free them from their tethers held onto by burly men. Do those animals ever have the urge to through up? What would it feel like to have ejecta from a cartoon mouse rain down upon one? And there was something worse. What if it took a shit up there in the air. It would be funny if it rained down on someone else. But it could be dangerous. I hoped they got out of the way. It’s tail went up. It dropped down on it’s rear haunches. Watch out. They only let professional hold on to its tether. They might have to let go and run. That would be funny. A storm moves in. It gets dark. Lighting flashes. Thunder rumbles. It begins to rain. The wind picks up. Several balloons get lose. One is caught on the gargoyles of a building across from me. The fabric rips. It’s gas escapes. A yellow fabric flaps in the wind. Christo has wrapped our parade route. The Reichstag is on fire. It’s my fault. We are all doomed to repeat history. We should have paid attention in history class. A beacon in the distance blinked. A craft was trying to land. It was a Zeppelin. There was a Swastika on its tail. Someone next to me is loudly saying, “The airship is going to make an attempt at landing in the rain.” It’s Herbert Morrison. I recognize your voice after all these years. "And who are you," he asked? 

Without stopping to think he too turned, after a few steps, to follow the woman: it was a quite mechanical consequence of their eye contact. He could see her body beneath her dress like a big white fish just under the surface of the waters. He felt the male urge to harpoon the fish and watch it flap and struggle, and there was in this as much repugnance as desire – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p952

There is a piano hanging

            Over me

Yesterday, I said something

            Wrong?

I need a place

Nothing is real

Let me take you down

Nothing to get hung

            About

Not for one moment, Walt Whitman, comely old man, / have I ceased to envision your beard full of butterflies, / your chaste, Apollonian thights, / your voice like a pillar of ashes: / patriarch, come as mist – Fedrico Garcia Lorca –Poet in New York, 1955  p121