JENNIFER’S VOICE CAN BE HEARD AS SHE SINGS IN THE SHOWER; SHE WOULD BE EMBARRASSED IF SHE KNEW YOU COULD HEAR HER. SHE HAS A NICE ENOUGH VOICE, MAYBE SLIGHTLY NASAL THOUGH. DOES JENNIFER HAVE A COLD?

Ed said that he was going to get the best of me. I did not take him literarily, I should have. I said you are more experienced (he was twenty years older than me) and that yes he might just be able to do that. It was not so much a matter of if, I said, but when. But you go ahead, I say. I total misread Ed’s innuendo. Later he says, you know what’s best about you? No, I say, I don’t. Could be your stomach, he says, and slaps me on the belly. I hear you, I say, I have given it a lot of attention it is a rotund beer belly. I should have caught on to his interest but I did not. But it isn’t, he says, what’s best about you is this, and he grabs me by the nuts and announces, this is. Well then, I say you’re not getting the best of me. Ever have a blowjob, he asks? Yes, I tell him, but not by a man. Why not? No inclination, I tell him. I have not even mentioned my tour of Blanchard Cavern (until now). Later he says, I was only kidding, we are buddies, right? I just want to advise you that the two fillies in the red car are firecrackers and that they are hot to trot. Ed is our campground host.

My neighbor comes over with some Jim Beam. This will warm you up, he says. Good for a dreary day, I say and it was. It had sprinkled earlier. Here’s hoping that it will burn off. Sleep well, I ask? Yeah, but my air mattress went flat. I didn’t put the plug in all the way. They got this pump that connects right into the car. Want some more come on over. We won’t be able to drink it all. If I had known that this was a dry county I might have. Thanks, I say. They lite a huge bonfire that night. Stacked wood six feet high.

I helped the ‘firecrackers’ with the red car set up their tent (more advice then help) and it didn’t get me anywhere (girls night out it turns out - only in the hills - these country mamas). They played Fleetwood Mac all night. This is what it’s going to be like from now on. This is what it’s like to have neighbors. This is what its like going to be like from now on. But it's not really for when the weather gets warmer the family camping commences. Kiddies and old folks put a damper on such frolicking in the woods. There was a murder of crows in the trees across the river. Beaver were frolicking during the dark or it might only have been carp spawning.

I nap in the afternoon. I am startled by someone familiar calling my name. Its my mother. How did she find me out here? Can’t be she’s been dead for a decade. I awake with a startle – who’s that?  What? Oh it nothing, just a raven calling from a near by tree. There’s a voice coming from the creek, … seven o’clock comes early. I hear an oar splash which gives the disembodied voice a context. I go back to sleep.

Traveling the self goes soft and pliable. You can recast your life in shapes you wouldn’t dream of when you’re stuck at home – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010  p158

Fortress America, DC

Redoubt USA

Democracy at work

Yes citizen, official business only

Construction site, sidewalk closed

            Your tax dollars at work

Beware citizen report all security breaches

Do your duty work hard and spend your money

Stay out of trouble

Don’t block the sidewalks

            (Don’t occupy public spaces)

This is your America

            Be proud keep it litter free

            Recycle aluminum cans

America be proud, wave your flag

Exercise your rights, bare arms

            Flex your muscles

This is our America, citizens

Shoot them before they shoot you

            Protect your democracy, buy American

Homogenized, sanitized, capitalized.

For your protection one in ten is deputized

            Fortress America

Tourist money and citizens with business only

            Lobbyists with lots of dollars

            Redoubt USA, vote and don’t complain

DC Fortress America,

Redoubt USA

Someone’s threatening your democracy

Threatening it from the inside out, citizen

            Tune in to corporate media, be forewarned

What about that citizen?

            Waves them flags

            Hate them ragheads

            Tie yellow ribbons

                        Around old oak trees

Fortress America,

Redoubt USA

Be a good citizen

                        Keep your mouth shut

                        Work hard and spend

                        Don’t play in the street

We are in the presence of neither a choice nor a conversion nor a desertion, but rather of a gradual ‘assent’: [he] acquiesces to the … world he discovers – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p48

Walter looks at what I’m doodling. Those are the horns of a young goat, he says. Oh, I reply. What can I say. I was intending to draw a bison. And, he goes on, you’re not using the correct colors for either a goat or for a buffalo regardless of its age. And are you going to be constantly looking over my shoulder, I asked him? I am. And when I’ve got you drawing properly, I’m going to help you with your handwriting. I can barely read it. See if you can’t keep a straight line and quite using the words “he said, she said, I said” all the time, he said. Try using ‘he commented” or “I pontificated,” he said. OK, I said

Everyday and every day she had to see that everything came out from where it was put away and that everything again was put away. That was their way. Any way, she came that way to be that way. In that way she passed each day and each day passed away which also was a night too – Gertrude Stein – Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, 2008  p10

Grandpa  sits at the head of the table

So that I can see everyone, he says

He wears a plastic blue cap and red plaid shirt

Grandma sits opposite him.

She says, the breakfast menu is on the back

They each study their own cards

And I go back to my reading

It chimes 9AM

There is a big grandfather clock in my room

The bed is brass high off the floor

I floated in my feather mattress
I don’t want to get up.

Breakfast is served on sleeping porch

Enclosed for more than a century

Make sure you show up for breakfast.

The owner makes it himself.

Verna opened the restaurant nine months ago.

She had run the corner ice creamery

That gal that opened Aunt Sassy’s  had worked for her.

And she is crazy, Verna claims

Blueberry pancake breakfast.

All that you can eat

I ate five.

Sweet Fish ate twelve.

He had just finished the Maryland Challenge

Yesterday he had hiked forty miles

He is taking today off.

This is the country and the phone service comes and goes

For no apparent cause

Jessie is late. She was taking the kids to school.

The waitress was talking up a storm with her when the phone went dead.

Jessie finally arrived. How dare you hang up on me, the waitress says.

I didn’t hang up, it just went dead.

You could call in but you couldn’t call out.

My Visa transactions was the first one that went through all day

Smoky the Bear and Peg Leg finish their breakfasts

They are waiting for a 9:30 ride into Fredrick.

For Breakfast I have chipped beef over home fries,

One egg scrambled,

An English muffin and coffee.

I take the first bite of my croissant

And with the first sip of my coffee

I’m awake.

Too bad I can’t be served in bed

Flaky layers of croissant between the sheets

I roll over into a dollop of cherry jelly

And dripped coffee all down my chin

Nor would the would wait,  the sun is shinning down

No, no – breakfast over a campfire

Rain – Rain – Rain – I should grow webfeet and quack.

Breakfast and coffee – hunker down until the rain stops

The menu items are named after movies

I have the ‘Grease’  (hash browns, onions, peppers, mushroom, bacon, cheese and an egg on top).

I could have chosen the egg omelet – Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Get the idea, sure is cute

Breakfast and coffee, but especially coffee.

It’s brisk and chilly and everyone is bundled up – coats and hats

Except for me, wandering around in shirtsleeves.

Hell San Francisco summers are colder than this.

Esta bueno.

Free breakfast to him meant an English breakfast.

He searches for more to eat.

Su esposa arrives and he announces that they must go out.

His hunt for food is relentless.

Su eposa sits patiently with a cup of coffee.

He is a big man.

I wanted eggs and bacon,

And the old man leaves discontented

He only drank coffee in the morning.

He had his newspaper tucked under his left arm

You just have pastry?

And he left

Readers of symbols are forever at the mercy of desire – Donald Antrim – The Verificationist, 2000  p100

I’ve been watching movies in my sleep – critiquing the camera shoots and the scripts, editing the story lines, redirecting a scene here and a scene there. None of them are films playing at the cinema. These are movies that I am creating in my head. Damn it I wish I had a camera. But its only a dream. And these narratives continue as I awake from the nap. I am conscious that I’m awake and I’m conscious that this narrative is a dream, but I want to find out how it will end and the imagination and the dream states merge and I don’t go back to sleep until the credits roll – and there is my name, directed by, screen play by, but I don’t recognize any of the names of the performers – can’t afford any big name stars.

Last night’s movie - this older woman appears on a vaudeville stage (maybe it wasn’t vaudeville as the time period is the present). She teams up with a much younger man whom she has taught to play the keyboards. He doesn’t actually play it - he stands back and then launches himself at the instrument and pounds out a single cord with a pawing of his big hands at a strategic moments in her song. They both have long blond hair – hers is a wig, his is his own. She lives in a shoe and their act is a great success and they are driven around by a chauffeur who makes snide remarks to the camera about the differences in the ages. She has lots of kids, most of them teenagers. It continues, but I can’t remember any of the rest of it. As far as the movies that I’ve made so far this one is not one of my better ones but the rest are much better. There will be no Academy Award nominations. No lifetime achievement award for me.

Curious strangers, the world and I / Is there no stranger curious for me - / with a moon in his pocket and a golden key? / For my heart is locked up and I might die / with only a wishbone old and dry. // Oh who has the key to the golden city? / And the taste of the honey in the moon? – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989 p30