There's Gotta Be Rules - But You Don't Have to Obey Them

We go fishing. I have the carry the dog though the thickets. He is a burr magnet. Otherwise I have to spend half my time pulling the burrs out of his fur. I carry him under my right arm. In my left hand I  have my rod and reel. After a dozen casts I get bored. I need to brush up on my fishing lore (what lures rule and what not). There is a lot that I’m not doing right and nothing that I am doing well. He’s picked up some more burrs. I dig them out. He doesn’t whine and try to bite my hand any more. He prefers that I do it rather than do it himself. He licks my hand as I put back tuff after tuff of of his long hair from the hooks of an embedded burr. I pick him up, tuck him under my arm, pick up my rod  in the other hand and hike back to the road.  There are four deer drinking from the stream. They run off when they spot us. It is getting hot. I am getting heated with my sweat shirt on and totting this damn dog. I  shall have a beer. Its Ok because it’s almost noon.  One has to have rules to live by: no sex with chickens, no drinking before noon. I found a day-glow green lure in the woods. I am making a collection of these found lures. Now I have two.

Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage;  there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world – Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness

I almost got clobbered by a dead branch from the big tree that stood above my trailer (aka The Duck). In the night a storm blew in. I had been warned. I could hear something hitting the roof of the trailer but I thought it was hail. Two big branches came down in the wind. One almost hit the shelter and one almost hit me. It landed five feet behind the trailer. I could see the big hole it made in the soft dirt where it hit. It landed facing away from the trailer. I was lucky. I had heard sirens in the night. The dog shivered from fear of the thunder. I went to sleep. I guess the hill behind me got clobbered by a tornado. Big trees were uprooted and toppled. Metal roofing was twisted and wrapped around the trees that were still standing. I didn’t think anything about it. My power didn’t go out. I didn’t know anything about it until I left camp in the morning. I saw the damage where it has hit the top above me. Wow, that was very close. I was tucked in behind a berm at the bottom of the hill. I was lucky.

The difference, finding the / difference: earth, no heavier / with me here, will be no lighter when I’m gone – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p243

Power of the people – electioneering

Power for the people – rural electrification

Power to the people – popular uprising

We don’t want to impose our solution by force; we want to create a democratic space – Sub Comandante Marcos

Housecleaning – make the bed, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, clean the stove,  water the plants. The battery has gone dead again. Time to feed the dog again. Again and again, the same old thing.

Scientists of poetry / they are burning Newark / and when she went away / I turned in my sleep / and the deepest synapse of my bran / sparked and broke – Hugh Seidman – Selected Poems, 1995 p4

A big attack by the Germans is imminent.  We are throwing together every man they can be found find to re-enforce this area. They are putting together volunteers from all over the nearby front. Many did not yet even been issued uniforms, especially the young boys, but also the lunatics from a nearby asylum. Mothers had been dropping off there younger sons all morning, many were no older than six. There was a guy who claimed to be a professor of artillery. He was selling uniforms. In his opinion blue and pink were the ideal colors for an artilleryman – a blue tunic with pink pantaloons. Some of the veterans bought his uniforms for the youngest of the lads and dressed them up so their mothers could see them and be proud before they went back home. Us veterans intended to keep our distance from these proud lads.

The destruction of representational images is the destruction of a hierarchy which is no longer recognized. It is the violation of generally established and universally visible and valued distances – Elias Canetti -  Crowds and Power, 1978  p19

The Italians began to dance. They played arias arranged for mandolin, guitar and zinc accordion. Some of the women could not keep quiet. Men liked to hear women talk. Turn off here. This is the route James took on his journey into Jerusalem. Someone is behind me muttering the lyrics. He said that roses in a weed patch are no better than my sister. I told him to take it back. I suspected that it was an insult but I was not sure. Now I didn’t mind so much as long as he directed his insults at myself but to bring my family into this was just uncalled for. I was not particularly fond of any of my three sisters but one has to draw the line somewhere and this was the line that I drew. I am now ready to stand up and fight.

In Handel’s and Mozart’s time the public was annoyed ‘not’ to hear a new work – John Adams – Hallelujah Junction, 2008

A cool breeze blows out of the west. The clouds have disappeared. It is still cold but it is sunny. It is not bone chillingly cold but cold enough to want to keep your hands tucked into your pockets. It is time for a hot cup of coffee. This is when I miss having access to electricity. The microwave is so convenient when it comes to warming up a cup of coffee.

A woman put me down & Freud / smoked twenty cigars a day. / My friend spoke of prophets / & profit. The air conditioner / makes the living sound – Hugh Seidman – Selected Poems, 1995 p31

Make the bed, walk the dog, take a pee, take your meds and brush your teeth. Prepare and eat breakfast, wash the dishes. We’re getting on with this day. The coffee pot is already empty.

All the great classical communities conceived of themselves as cosmically central, through the medium of a sacred language linked to a superterrestrial order of power – Benedict Anderson – Imagined Communities, 1991 p13

Creationism is bad science; but Darwinism is not itself bad religion.

[What] the political class can’t accept [is] that the common demand of the current protest wave is for democratic revolution. We want them gone. We want power – Ben Manski 10/3/11

Bad explanations beg more bad explanations while good explanations beget better explanations

The way that can be spoken of is not the true way – Tao Te Ching

The consumer is the real job creator

Each morning they seize their weapons and go out and fight. They kill each other in sport, but they stand up again; it is not real death. Through 640 gates they re-enter Valhalla, 800 men in a row – Elias Canetti -  Crowds and Power, 1978   p44

Keep Bees, Weak Knees - It's All In His Head

I think I have lost a sock. How can you lose a sock in such a tiny space? It can’t be lost. I will not let it be lost. It has to be here somewhere. But I have looked everywhere. No you haven’t or you would have found it. I’ll look again. Maybe I overlooked it before. No, that’s not the problem. This is flustering. I cannot find my other sock. It’s got to be here somewhere. You took it off last night. You haven’t gone anywhere since. There must be something your overlooking. Ah, I took off my long johns too. Maybe it’s still in one of the legs. I check. Yes there it is. You bad boy you.

Creative artists don’t make art in the negative mode. One doesn’t suffer through the agonies of forging as personal language, of wrestling something out of nothing simply to react against an oppressive father figure or merely to rebel against a received way of doing things – John Adams – Hallelujah Junction, 2008 p102

He has music in his head. He’s not drunk. He’s not on drugs. That’s the way he is. He is into sixties rock.  Most everyone ignores him. But someone is trying to talk to him but he finally gives up. It was impossible to get in there with him and there is no other way. Most of us know this intuitively and don’t even try. He drums on his table top. He is singing or something vaguely similar to singing. But he is cognizant enough to stop his performance when two policemen enter for their morning coffee. The officers know him. They play with him and then got bored and move on when two more uniformed officers enter. He stares over at the four officers and says, “Chuck Mangione” as if that was who he thinks he is or maybe he just meant he was performing a Chuck Mangione number. “This is a great neighborhood,” he tells the officers. Then he turns away and looks at the TV. He is still grooving to his music, but otherwise he has being quiet. Neil has to go to work. “Time to look busy,” he says. “Doing anything important today,” I ask? “It’s not allowed,” he replied. Neil leaves to go peck at his lever and hoping for a few chicken pellets. There is profound wisdom somewhere, but not in here, not today.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. – G K Chesterton

The prison is a factory for producing delinquents. Delinquents have their utility in a surveillance society.

It [the collapse of Enron] was not the first episode to feature grotesque bonuses for insiders, or a fawning press, or bought politicians, or average people being fleeced by scheming predators. But it was the first in recent memory to bring together all those elements in one glorious fireball of fraud – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Aug 2011 p7

With my trailer, I am now a property owner – a respectable citizen not a vagabond in a tent. It makes a world of difference in everyone’s eyes. Before I  was someone to be avoided now I am a valuable member of the community. I am a member of society now and no longer just a delinquent who must be watched out for. I am a property owner.

We owned things, but we needed someone to own us, and so we have the gods – V S Naipaul – The Masque of Africa, 2010  p132

This is my last day at this campground. Some guy has slept overnight in his beat up truck. Now he was looking for a place to piss. The toilet is locked up for the winter.  He pissed behind it ignoring me as I walked by with my dog.  His truck is warming up. It shimmies and it shakes. He zips up his fly and ambles back towards it. He is wearing a white straw hat. He get back in and drives off. There was a lot of stuff in plastic bags in the back of the truck.

The ebb and flow of the population bombed out of their homes [was] a rehearsal for initiation into the mobile society that would form in the decades after the catastrophe – W G Sebald – On the Natural History of Destruction, 2003 p34

We should all become criminals, then we all will once again be undifferentiated. It is either that or we all become billionaires (once being a millionaire was considered sufficient). There is never enough either when there is nothing to be got or when there is more that can be got.

Whoever was tortured, stays tortured - Jean Amery – At the Mind’s Limits

Why do old women want to chase after old men? I know what old men want, they want some one to cook and clean up after them . But what do old women want?

I mean, baby, you / may be kind but your beauty Sweetie is such // many a man would run himself through for / hating your guts every minute that he died for you – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p220

Keep bees

Graze sheep

Knee deep

Gracious leap

Into my lees

            Again

Down to seeds

And stems again

The worst that can happen in war is to parish together; and this spares them death as individuals, which is what they most fear – Elias Canetti -  Crowds and Power, 1978   p73

I’m reading Stieg Larsson. I’m thinking herring and a beer would be good. There are scattered puffy clouds coming out of the north. Fallen oak leaves rustle across the road.

The problem is / how / to keep shape and flow: // the day’s died / & can’t be re-made: // in the dusk I can’t recover / the golden bodied fly / that waited on a sunfield leaf – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p249

I take a walk down towards the marina. Business is slow. Should pick up tomorrow. Should be back up in the fifties, he said. In regards to his advice on pan fish, good crappie fishing on the mud bank where the stream flows into the river channel. Business? Oh, I’ve seen better days. Summers are Ok. Enough to pay the bills, I inquire? His wife’s from up around Belton, he says. He asks me if  I knew the Roses? No, I say, you know the Ramseys. He didn’t. I didn’t mention  that the Ramsey I knew was Samuel and that he had fought in the Civil War – at Boggey Depot on the Union side.

UTENSIL: How does the pot pray: / wash me, so I gleam? // Prays, crack my enamel: / let the rust in – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p190

I’m eating cheese and crackers and drinking wine with a nice view of the lake and the dog is off to the side digging burrs out of its fur. A cold wind blows in  from the north. There is a lot of fire wood about. I have only one beer left. Shall we drink wine by the campfire tonight. Yes, I reckin’ so.

During intense political debates when animal metaphors are used, real blood will flow – V S Naipaul – The Masque of Africa, 2010  p226

The Necessities of Life

I laid out my firewood and covered it with a tarp to keep it dry. I’m having a hot cup of coffee on this cold day. I drink the whole pot. I have to get up and go outside in the cold to take a whizz. It hardly seems worthwhile, but you can’t spend the whole day lying in bed trying to keep warm. The nights are already ten hours long and that is too long to have to lie in bed all that time and most of the day. Now what did I do with my glasses. Never just put something down in any old place. You need to have a designated spot – when you take them off your face always put them there or they will be lost. The same goes for your wallet and keys. It is one of the rules of getting old. The other is that you have to piss a lot. Oh, there they are on top of the refrigerator. What are they doing up there? If you can’t remember why you certainly won’t remember where. And when you get old you don’t have to make a fashion statement  anymore (well you do anyway but you don’t care about what it is) but you have to be sure that you change your underware frequently so that you don’t smell of stale urine.

The oat fields said oh / And oh said the wheat field as the dusting / combine passed over / and long after the dust was gone. / Oh they said / and looked around at the stubble and straw – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972 p2

Take your pills, brush your teeth, put on clean underwear, take the dog for a walk – drink and be merry. The dog insists that I walk him first. Breakfast – bacon, hash brown potatoes, black beans and coffee

It’s dark – I take a lantern

I came out here to take

            A crap

I sit there and grunt

Elvis Pressley died like this

            He died for my sins

I refuse to die for yours

Not alone here in the dark

            Sitting on the crapper

It takes a while but

            I do what I came to do

And I return to my warm bed

            This is were I wish to die

I am fortunate

            There is enough

            Toilet paper

Don’t you just hate that

            When there isn’t any left

Even in the middle of the catastrophe, individuals and groups were still unable to asses the real degree of danger and abandon their usual roles – W G Sebald – On the Natural History of Destruction, 2003  p63

Teatime outside in the sun – bread and jam and butter with a beer chaser. Listen to Shostakovich. And now the sun is going down. They are extending the number of slips at the marina. The welders are now headed home in their diesel trucks. The sheriff makes a loop through the park.  The sun is red on the western horizon across the James River. It is time to start a campfire. I eat my evening meal: penne with garlic butter and broccoli florets, an avocado and banana salad and a glass of wine

Defending Medicare and Social Security may be all well and good, but what happened to utopia? – Beverly Gage – New York Times Book Review – 9/18/11 p24

The questions asked when setting up a project are never asked after that project is in place. The project itself is the answer. Afterwards the only relevant questions relate to the mechanisms best needed to implement the project.

Rich countries now have a semi-conscious plan [for responding to global warming]: what ever happens we’ll have the money to cope – Simon Kuper – Financial Times

The function of the judicial system is to create criminals who become the raw materials that the carceral network then turns them into delinquents.

Criminals have traditionally been devoted to their mothers and vise versa. It is a poor criminal whose mother will not attend court to say that he is a good boy at home in an attempt to mitigate the sentence he is to receive – James Morton – The First Detective, 2010 p37

8:45PM and the rain is letting up – drip, drip, drip – Bread and jam

I believe in God and I believe in free markets – Ken Lay, CEO of Enron

A society’s principles should be imperfectly realized otherwise they constitute a form of tyranny

Leave me this black rich country, / uncertainty, labor, / fear do not / Steal the reward of my mortality – A R Ammons – Collected Poems, 1951-1971, 1972  p37

We are allowed to reform the mechanisms that implement the project but we are not allowed to question the project itself

We are unable to learn from the misfortunes we bring on ourselves… We are incorrigible and will continue along the beaten tracks that bear some slight relation to the old road network – W G Sebald – On the Natural History of Destruction, 2003  p67

The camper-shell (man and his son) with the red boat leave. The wind blows and rustles the dead oak leaves. It’s chilly. I retreat to inside my trailer. I drink some hot coffee. Later I’ll have a bowl of black beans with tortillas. There is a big storm brewing. The other two campers depart. I am alone except for a few fishermen. Moisture laden clouds roll in from the south. They are riding up and over a cold front. I gathered up the firewood that the other campers had left. I stow away anything that might blow away.