They hate each other one of them said. There is a lot of
hostilities. She wants to go back to the hotel. He was to cruise all the bars
where the beat poets had hung out. The Vesuvius next door. I once had a
conversation with Ferlinghetti there. His book store is next door. One of two in
the city named for Charlie Chaplin movies. Does he know anything about the beat
generation, I asked? Not really. He’s trying to find someone to as about where
Ginsburg read Howl. It not anywhere near hear. It’s over in Cow Hollow. It’s a
hardware store. In Ginsburg’s time it had been and old garage. She don’t give a
damn. Her feet are aching. Here ankles are swollen. She’s got thick thighs.
Three kids back in Milwaukee – two girls and a boy. He’s a dentist. Hates his
chosen career. That’s what happens when you chose money over anything else.
Probably dreamed of being a doctor and couldn’t get admittance. He asks Paddy
about Howl. Paddy don’t know. He’s a diving instructor when not tending bar,
not a poet. There aren’t any poets here anymore, just yellowing photos on the
walls of glassy eyed young men and a lot of tourist who want to soak up the
smell of history. They’re celebrities now but then they were just dirty
beatniks. Well not really celebrities, not like Puff Daddy or Madonna. Didn’t
get their fifteen minutes of fame from a million hits on their U-Tube video.
Paddy points towards me. He says, ask they guy. He a trivia nut. Knows
everything there is to know that no importance. They Little People disappear as
the guy approaches my table. Well, they don’t really disappear. As far as this
guy is concerned there were never there. They are never conspicuous. They come
and go. But are only there when their presence is relevant. But when evidently
present they are never conspicuous. Like when the barmaid delivers their
flights of beer. You want to know about Ginsburg, I say before he has a chance
to say anything. Yeah, he says, how did you know? I have a sense about that
kind of thing. I’m a two-headed doctor, you know. You mean a shrink, he said?
No, unlike you, I don’t have a degree. I don’t have a license. Sort of a conjure
man. Some would say a witch doctor. One of the little people whispered, your
carrying this too far. He thinks your’re full of shit. But he is fascinated buy
your story.
Who decided what
A people
want to see
It wasn’t the people
I know I’m
one
And no one asked me
What a people want
Is
irrelevant
To the
elected politician
In spite of what they say
Every
dollar is better
Than
a vote
Someone (or something) must have decided
Corporations are people too
Let’s not
forget
It’s not
just a body
But we’re the people
Are we not
And we’re quite willing
To go along
With the
program
And what is the program
I
asked
And just who did you ask
This
of
Anyone who would listen
And did anyone listen
No
I was told to mind
My own
business
This is my business
I
said
Do you make money at it
I
was asked
No, I said. And they said
Then it’s
not your
Business
Let those whose business
This
business is
Get on with
their
Business
The business of business
Is business
And it’s none of yours
Then whose business
Is it, I
ask
Not yours, I’m told
Infatiqualy
Even before the Revolution, America was a very iniquitous
society with the top 20% controlling 95% of the wealth and 60% of the
population with no wealth at all. In 1774 only 23.2% of the white population
had any form of wealth.
Water thinner than blood or under bridges; bridges // Crossed in the future or burnt in the past – Robert Pinsky – The Figured Wheel, 1996 p273
Most countries educate their populace either by investing
equally into every student or disproportionately more into disadvantaged
students. The US does the opposite – invests more into the advantaged student
than the disadvantaged student
Simple ain’t easy – Thelonious Monk
We abstract
Always
abstracting
Until nothing’s left
Abstractions
In concrete
vaults
Skeletons
Abstractions
Of
abstractions
With fading headstones
Inscriptions
Barely if at all legible
In a world of rich and poor, the only choice before you is
whether or not you intend to purchase a place among the haves – Thomas Frank
Cigarette dangling
Aiming his
Day-Glo Frisbee
To the sound of country rock
Clink – it hits the chains
Thunk. God Damn!
Another
tree
In his best white ribbed
Undershirt
and baggy drawers
He’ll put down the six pack
To take better
aim next time
Good luck, Joe
Thunk. God Damn it!
Better put
down your beer, Joe
I have never seen misery exceeding what I have witnessed in
the American cottage where disease has entered – Frances Trollope – Domestic
Manners in America, 1832
By the 1830s two-thirds of industrial works in northeast US
were women. In the cotton textile mills 80% of the workers were women and
children. 40% of the children were under ten years of age.
Anything worth doing is worth doing in excess
The only way we know that we don’t know something is when we
fail to find it out. The rules for what is knowable are ubiquitous and
invisible. They are predetermined and inflexible.
Questions disperse power; answers
concentrate power
A cigarette smoker today runs twice the risk of cancer as
did a smoker fifty years ago.
Shopping is the number one vacation activity of Americans
(Travel Industry Association of America)
The day when a day
Was all day
long
And the
night?
Will that could wait
Woe is he who does not dream and woe is he who only dreams
We came too late to a world too old
– Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical Chart, 2001 p41
Montgolfier balloons on the Fourth sailed upward as a hazy
blur rather than with a sizzle. It was nothing spectacular, rather caught in
the breeze and lifted up by the heat of a flare, drifting to the southeast to
disappear behind a line of trees on the south side of the lake. They’re being
released at several points along the west side. Fireworks other than snakes are
never subtle and these are so gentle. Its impossible to class them with the
multicolored starbursts. Symbols of a kinder gentler celebration.
Ships and men ought to disappear
when their hour came, to sink to the bottom out in the open sea instead of
being left high and dry to rot ashore - Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical
Chart, 2001 p43
An ubiquitous display of the flag is symbolic of the
imaginary community
Fanaticism is the only way to put an
end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul – Paul Coelho – The
Zahir: a novel of obsession, 2008
There was a young man from Kansas
Who ran off and joined Hamas
The CIA took notice
And sent a Predator on a mission
To fly up his ass
If you ask me, it was the Communists… But if it wasn’t the
Communists, mark my work, it was the Catholics – Agatha Christie – The Crooked
House, 1949
The oldest know recipe for Ravioli comes from England
(around 1300)
