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