July 14, 2009 - Plaza Library - Kansas City Missouri

-
Kansas City - 83º (94 had been predicted), clear, wind – NW @ 3 mph, humidity – 63%. Doesn’t seem too bad at the moment for KC, but it can be a bitch in the summer (in the winter too). So why come back here in the middle of the summer – because everywhere nice is full of tourists or too expensive. I’m looking for a home – a small town with a coffee shop and a bar with a variety of draughts (not just Bud lite and MGD). Someplace to follow high school sports and more than a Baptist church. Where winter is not devastating and summer is at least tolerable. I haven’t found that place yet. Oh, yes – I don’t want to hang out with snowbirds at the local Hardee’s and if MacDonald’s is considered the gourmet spot, then screw it. Larry McMurty claims that the DQ is the community center of any North Texas town. With a good local library I can get anything I want to read through Interlibrary Loan even if they disapprove of my reading taste. I’m hoping that with the economy in the shape that its in I can find rental digs without having to sign up for a year. A spot to do some gardening would be nice. I’m not yet ready for a dog.

The duration of future pleasure bears no intrinsic or necessary relationship to the agony of current waiting – Stephen Jay Gould

The competition is on
Who knows who, who has one
     Spoken to or been
     Addressed by
We’re like that – holding out
     A hand with fingers
     Intertwined
The most celebrities
     Entertainers, sports figures
     The movers and the shakers
          The media darlings
Rarely are politicians or intellectuals
     Ever mentioned
I should know, you’d think
     That I’d would have
     Run into some
Dead celebrities don’t count
     Well maybe Elvis and Michael

Beauty cannot be loved fruitfully if it is loved only for the pleasures it gives. Just as the search for happiness for its own sake brings nothing but boredom – Marcel Proust

To be old is to be
     Out of contention
And we bemoan
     This condition
“I could have been
     Somebody”

They succeeded, they did keep the South placated, and in the Union, which was important, since if war had come in 1850, instead of 1860, the outcome might have been very different; the South had all its assets in place – and the North still needed to grow. And precious little thanks they’ve got from history for it – the dough faced Presidents. History loves blood. It loves the great blood spillers – John Updike

An April 9 Rasmussen Survey showed that only 53% of Americans believe capitalism is better than socialism (37% of those under 30) while 20% believe that socialism is better (33% of those under 30). But I believe that there is much confusion about what the words ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ really mean which has been caused by the radical right's use of the term ‘socialism’ to lambaste any solution to healthcare – calling it socialized medicine implying that the mess we have is capitalist healthcare and anything better is socialized medicine. What a lark – conservatives are creating a demand for socialism, although neither those in favor of or against have any idea what the term means. And without the ‘evil empire’ as a counter example who is to say what it means – they didn’t seem to have any better idea of its meaning than does Rush Limbaugh. And my fondest hope is that all of this will creates a real debate (which I doubt – we never have had the necessary preliminary discussions) about the nature of the ‘American Dream’. Have we had such a debate since April 1861 – and that one was cut short by a call to arms! But, oh, what joy are these statistics that show almost as many socialists as republicans (more if you only count those under thirty).

Average poets don’t just stand within their age, they compose it – David Orr

What you are taught serves not your needs but the needs of those who teach it to you. What you learn is to your own benefit.

They [cattle] are all breed beef: beef hash, beef hide, beef hocks. They’re a human product like rayon. They’re like a field of shoes… You can’t see through to their brains as you can with other animals; they have beef fat behind their eyes, beef stew – Annie Dillard

The Sarah Palin phenomena – so what does happen to losing Vice Presidential candidates? What are the chances that she will continue in a leadership role? About a third of tour former VP losing canidates are returned to the House of Representatives (1) or to the Senate (11), some serve in an appointed capacity; Ambassador (5), or a Cabinet Office (4); only one returned to state politics; 10 returned to private practice; two pursued other careers (as University President and a news commentator); and for eleven there is no record of a subsequent career at all (how pathetic to top of a distinguished career make a failed VP attempt). Only four remained rising stars – Franklin D Roosevelt (Governor of New York and later US President), Earl Warren (Supreme Court), Joseph Robinson (Senate Majority Leader) and Nicolas Butler (Columbia University President best known for his anti-Semitism). Chances that Sarah’s star will continue to rise – 1 in 10. Best chance - run for US Senate.
-

The Volvo door slammed. When we had bought that station wagon the year of Nixon’s landslide because it somehow showed you were a liberal, against Vietnam and for abortion and conservation, but it had always seemed to me to give a bumpy ride and mediocre mileage – John Updike
-

The mythology is all estranged

Hanging out their flags as if it’s

Rivers painting Washington’s

Crossing the Delaware

(Burnt on one corner in the

MOMA fire and severely smoke
Damaged) – Just like queers


To be still camping and swishing
When nothing contains any reality


Reality is a nude posing. Just carry on
Nothing real is going on
Such a rude awakening

He was a bit of a dude, a bit of a gangster, a solid family man with some flings on the side – a man in love with all the angles life can be approached by, with no time for books, for history, for doubt – John Updike
-

Obama is the boy toy

Of the paper economy

He’s mighty busy

Repapering the walls
Of his new house
It’s a fixer upper – he’s a flipper

Just as Herbert Hoover could not, in the end back away from the best economic advice of the 1920’s, Barak Obama is sticking with the “key men” of the 1990s – Kevin Baker

From the Journals #1 - 01/06/2004 - San Francisco - Royal Ground

“One hour and fifteen minutes and Click & Clack will be on”
“On 91.7 Click & Clack will be on in fifteen minutes”
“91.7?”
“Yep, 91.7”

Muni riders remember - front seats are for seniors and person with disabilities …Approaching one car Embarcadero in one minute…Next stop Castro Station

I Boarded BART at the Montgomery Station headed for the Berkeley Transportation Library to research the topic of emerging vs. established markets expenditures for road construction vs. road maintenance. It was for of the BP bitumen proposal. I was looking for data of highway construction and maintenance expenditures for Russia. And I didn’t want to be sitting there in the office.

Oakland City Center - 12 St Bart Station - I transfer from the Pittsburgh Bay Point train …Richmond in seven minutes…I get out at Berkeley Station walk towards the UC campus.

I have a sudden need to urinate. I’m on the second floor of McLaughlin and I am no longer looking for the Library. I am looking for a restroom, any restroom - noting on this floor - down the breezeway to Engineering - security lock - have to turn back. As I turn the urge gets stronger. I am waddling back down the breezeway - getting a little wet by still managing to hold on - upstairs or down stairs - down stairs is less strenuous. At the bottom of the stairwell is a floor guide. I’m in luck there is a restroom to my left (the direction of the arrow). I am now both waddling and holding my penis. Oh Oh, the front of my pants is getting warm. I make it around the corner - there is no sign of a restroom. I spot the women’s restroom on my right - where the hell is the men’s - then I spot it just as water begins trickling down my leg into my shoe.

Its no longer warm and comforting - its now cold, wet and chaffing my thighs. What did they make of big puddle of water outside the door, in the hallway. He says “Hello” and I say “Hello” as I walk out the door. I feel a little guilty about not cleaning up the puddle, but that would just have called attention to what had happened. I head off looking for the library.

I’m slowly changing my routine, puttering around in my Pjs. I do a little cleaning, reading on the bed and I hang up some clothes. I remove the shoes from the middle of the floor. It usually doesn’t bother me. I leave them were they are removed until I need them again. I’m sleeping later and enjoying the last few minutes of the coziness of a warm bed.

I did some Australian petroleum exploration success benchmarks for the Santos project in the afternoon and then called Dallas regarding some data for a marketing letter. I reply to an inquiry from London and provided them with some market research studies from Solomon. Otherwise it is all quite on the Western Front. From where will the next attack be launched? Not my concern, I am due for rotation.

Finished with today’s work and I’m at the Royal Ground by 4:15 after having picked up my laundry.

My strategy is to make them want to get rid of me and the more than they thing I want to stay the better my bargaining position (trouble is I can’t do any bargaining; bargaining is reserved - manno y manna). It’s hard to play a hand when you’re not allowed to sit at the table. I am attempting to make the problem their’s and the solution mine.

How nasty of an AH can I be - pretty damn nasty and loving the opportunity. I wonder, how much unemployment I would qualify for if they fired me – that would be the value of a zero sum game. I’m enjoying this game - move over Bevis and Butthead.

Everybody experiments with himself, improvises, makes experiments, enjoys his experiments; and all nature ceases and becomes art – Fredrick Nietzsche

July 12, 2009 - Broadway Cafe - Kansas City Missouri

-
Well I’m Back in Ol' KC again, forever escaping and returning and it’s raining and I again have my usual window seat having arrived early enough to make a claim upon it. That’s Michael there behind the counter with his friendly little red teddy bear beard. Haven’t seen him in over a year – since having left North Town. Michael! It takes him a good pregnant pause but he comes through with a big grin – he knows who I am even with my shaved head and this new beard and all this time and the displaced geography (that’s the hardest – placing a name with someone out of context). How are you doing? I hoped that I’d run into you here. Just back in town – got back last night. How long you been here? A couple of weeks. He insisted on buying me my coffee this morning and I gladly accepted the offer – we slapped each other on the back – two big burly men hugging.
-

Soup – the ultimate dish

Not as thick as water
Not as thin as a sauce
Everything must swim
And fit onto a spoon
If you can eat it with a fork
         Or cut it with a knife
          It ain’t soup

Whole days would go by, and later their years drifting like a bridge against the sky – JohnO’Hara

The disappearance of community life has meant that there is no longer anyone who is widely know other than the celebrity – hence small town gossip has been replaced by celebrity gossip – our faux neighbors live more fulfilling lives than do we. Anxiety is the basis of consumer society.

The swell of the heart is not landscape / but the fatal pull of the moon at our roots – John O’Hara

The more ubiquitous
         The phenomena
The more insidious
         The consequences

The happy ending is the happiest lie of all – Kathleen Norris

If the family sedan’s
          Odometer can give us
The Millennium a year early
What has the “Father Knows Best”
          Metaphor done to our politics


To too many it is a natural fit
To others a monster aroused
         From its slumber by
         Nuclear testing


Must I forever be haunted by

The ingratiating Eddy Haskell
         Gee, you look nice Mrs. Cleaver


You should pick your heroes
          Wisely. They will growl old
          And you never will

You can see the creatures die and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you’re gone. You have finally understood that you’re dealing with a maniac – Annie Dillard

To see this artifact
Its necessary to immerse
     Oneself in the mire of time
But It is a mistake to think
     One is looking at the past
For What one is really doing
Is looking forward
     Into the present

Perhaps in all great works of art, the true function of the imagination is paradoxically, not to imagine – in the sense of inventing or transforming – but to see; to see the reality which is concealed by habit and the phenomenal world – George D Painter

This day is full of
      Thick thighed ladies
       In short pastel skirts
This is Kansas City
And they are on they way
      To church

From “The Journal” (#1 – Jan 4, 2004 – San Francisco, California)

“Explanations were becoming obese”

At Royal Ground – Walter was on a roll, he was on about getting animals drunk - starting with the dog, then the cat, we moved on to birds and alligators. Would alcohol bring out the man in the beast as it seemed to bring out the beast in man. I had my doubts. A drunk gerbil might be ok, but  I did not wish to encounter a drunken lion or an orangutan on smack.

There was a Diane Arbus exhibit at the Mordern (SFMMA) – the anti-portrait - psyches frozen in stone holding up the portico. Her individuals isolated in the center of the her frame - Small groups symmetrically arranged. A 2D slice of depression, where their  presence will go on forever, where nothing else will ever happen to them and perhaps to ourselvdes -  - it will never get any better, it will never be any the worst - time is frozen here in stone (silver iodide crystals to be more exact).

The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band was strutting though Chinatown for a Sunday afternoon funeral. One block down I catch sight them again on Jackson St as they pass the ally off from Pacific. Shall I catch up with them? No, instead, I dash into the San Francisco Brewery for a Gripman’s - black with a little foam - chocolaty - served slightly cool - not cold

Pink plastic shopping bags - a true Chinatown souvenir

Today I’m off to the Management Center at 9AM for my first writing workshop - grant writing – there is also a workshop on finding your own vice at the Great Well Lighted Place for Books . That workshop will be a couple of weeks. I’m engaged in attempt to re-invention the mundane - This morning I decided to switch the blanket that I placed on top of the quilt so that the quilt is now on top (the blanket is in its conventional position - between the sheet and the quilt) - I didn’t do it - but I spend several minutes contemplating doing it. And there are other routines which need startling -getting up, taking a piss, brushing my teeth (the whine of the Soncicare has become routine and thereby soothing), shaving, getting dressed, opening the curtains, making the bed, stuffing my pockets with their normal contents (wallet, keys, change, pen), selecting a book to take with me and grabbing this notebook. It’s only then I rush of to the coffee shop - oops forgot my pen – must return. Oh yes, I brush my hair too.

The routine…awareness is the beginning of transgression


To be unheard is not the same as to be silent

July 4, 2009 - The Caribou - Homewood Illinois

This is the Fourth. Other than picnicing (BBQing, grilling) what is left of the holiday for the ordinary man (or child). They want you to leave the fireworks to the experts and they have done a pretty good job of eliminating this boy's fun. And there's nothing to grilling anymore either - all the rubs and the glazes come ready made, you only have to lite the carcoal (and if you watch the commericals that's no callenge either) - just rub the meat down and turn it every once in a while and follow instructions.

I miss the small town parade with kids on tricycles with streamers of crepe paper and plyaing cards clothes pined to the the spokes to make noise- those have been 'expertised' away too - having been turned into floats sponsored by the recreational equipment manufactures and the local real estate industry (well maybe not those guys this summer).

I say it's time for a revolution - a man must take his life back and line the experts up against the wall - if a man is to be a man. Bang, bang, bang! For every new 'industry' there is a little less of a man left. Fool, it's not the government that is on your back, it's your neighbor, the businessman. Our most insidious institutions are the private institutions. What about the government! Forget the government - they are incompentent - nothing to worry about from them.

Yes, up against the wall all you motherfuckers!
            Purveyors of bar-b-que sauce
            Pyrotechnical technicians
And you too real estate lady

There is a difference between an event viewed statistically, as it transpired among people who are absorbed into a historical continuum, and the same event taken personally, as a unique and irreversible transformation in one’s singular life… Since history always posits ‘more’ time, backward and forward, in this respect it is ‘less’ serous than a single, non-extendable life – John Updike

WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT SARAH


We didn’t talk (Frank Costello and Lillian Hellman)
           Much and only that once about Sarah
Lillian bought him a book
           On Regency-Empire furniture at his request
Starting with ‘The Artichoke King’ and then Lucky Luciano
            Louisana’s slot machines giving tithe to Huey
            Religion and crime have somethings in common


Making it to the top of the Luciano/Genovese crime family
            Organized crime was just another business
            Didn’t need narcotics and prostitution
Lillian refused the five hundred dollar tip
            “I guess I wouldn’t take it either, but then you and I
                         Are a lot alike, he said

Sarah had said she had been at Macpherson’s place. Said he

            Shot in self-defense. Her testimony she claimed saved him

            She had lost her husband and custody of her son

                         Polo players don’t like that kind of scandal

A third-rate runner, Costelled said. “And I ain’t no authority

            On what society girls think, but his face was all over

            Slashed form years of prison fights”
“But the Purple Penthouse?” Lillian asked


Dash and her had been trying to raise money
             To bribe some Spanish Republicans off
             Of the International Bridge
Costello peeled off Five-Thousand, “Friends of your
              Friends are friends of mine” She sent it
              To Marraux marked ‘anon.’


Lilian saw Sarah in the lobby of a San Francisco hotel
              She said that she never saw her again
But it would have been a hard guess as to who and
              Who had not died with a Teddy Bear
It was all junk, Lillian opined and said goodbye
Nothing of the past, nothing about Sarah was said


A woman very high in museum circles later said something
               About Sarah having died in Italy
But only Proust was ever really really sure of it all
               Two degrees of separation
                           Better than Kevin Bacon

More than ever, I’ve come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change – Kathleen Norris

Short change
Small change


Change of pace
Change lanes
Change places


At the exchange
Exchange value
Exchange vows

Gutenbergian societies already know: sex like eating, has a limit; a point of saturation can be reached and all the screwing in the world will not rattle bank foundations or bring down the walls of the Pentagon… Puritanism has overstated the gravity of the matter – John Updike

The whole art industry, even if carried to the extreme and exercised in every way for the sake of works themselves, extends only to the object-being of the works –Martin Heidegger

The statue of a god is only art so long as the stone actually retains its god

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future – Kathleen Norris
-
From the Journals (#1 – 1/2/2004 – San Francisco, California)

Back to the coffee shop (the Royal Ground – Fillmore & California) this morning - Walter has made another New Year’s resolution – which he tells me is to tell a whopper a day. I say - How is that any different than last year. And he is already trying to wiggle out of even this little commitment - if I tell the same whopper on successive days to different people will I be sticking to my resolution. No problem, I tell him - Your problem is going to be keeping it to only one lie a day.

It was raining today as I caught the #1 California to the Embarcadero Center. The buses weaved between cars parking, unparking and waiting to park in China town. Headed downtown to see Monster I get to the theater at 11:45 – I gave the kid a twenty and got- two fives and three ones given back in change. I am engineering my departure from the working life –there’s no going back now – I have set the process in motion – but I still have my doubts about the wisdom of all of this. I still have not accepted the finality of what I have done. I am using up vacation time and next week will have to put in some face time.

Why is it that Wurnos is such a compelling subject to me – I saw Amanda Moody’s one-person play “Serial Murderess" eight times - , and Wurnos the Opera / , and Monster the film  and a soon to be released documentary – there is something contrary to our mythology about women serial murderers - the transgression of the victim into victimizer - the madness of normality. Transgression is our greatest social fear – we are risk averse – something not planned can only be bad.

The Latte Express has six flavored coffees

Monster was a carnival Ferris wheel with red lights. It was important to note that the Ferris Wheel had red lights. The lady next to me on the bus is getting anxious. I had taken out my notebook and unpocketed my pen twice. And it was on the second time that I wrote “with red lights”. Some people get tunes stuck in their heads – I get these phrases – sort of like advertising slogans. I was sure that it was important to not that the Ferris wheel had red lights.

At Van Ness “Stinky” got on. Someone had scrubbed him clean and put him in fresh for the holidays – put still my nose could detect a reek – fermented shit and mingled sweat has a distinctly pungent smell – The Chinese lady in red sitting next to me was trying hard not to smell him either. She was no longer concerned about my sanity. It is very hard not too – when you try hard not to.

A lady got on to an omnibus on which Ben Johnson was riding. After a few minutes she says to him “Sir, you smell.” “No”, says Ben Johnson, “I reek you smell”. All duly recorded by Boswell.

The lady looked like she was meditating and I don’t know if “Stinky” really reeked but I could imagine that he did and that was the same thing. I got off at my stop and walked the block home, got my mail, put it next to the computer and sat down and wrote this. So I ask myself again, why is Arleen Wurnos the twenty first century’s first anti heroin? Is Sadam our first anti Hero?

Things that I decide I need to have - cell phone, lap top, internet connection and a digital camera (now I have them all – I need to make a new list, now)

Darkness is imminent, I’m still here at the Royal Ground. I just read this journal from the “Flaneur of Umbrellas up to this page. People enter and people leave - most of them are wearing sweaters (60%); the rest have on jackets (30% ), or like myself are in short sleeves (10%).

July 2, 2009 - The Caribou - Homewood Illinois

Ila and Jerry and Wrigley have gone to the lake for the Fourth – Joe came in from LA and they picked him up at the airport – they’ll get to the cabin at about sunrise. Katy will drive up today after work. I’m headed back to Kansas City on Sunday. Iggy is being needy – his usual antics – I’ve never met a cat that needed that much lap time – he’s a dog, Katy said. She’s right.

Have a great Holiday! You too! They’re exchanging holiday greetings here at the coffee shop – most everyone heads out of town for the holidays – to the lake – their lake, a friend’s lake – the family lake – the lake place of a friend of a friend – a rental (Joe has a rental on the lake – it’s rented for the holiday – David is his caretaker – David lives there year round – he’s studying to be a radiologist).

And the process of ferrying everyone’s car from the Lake s to John the mechanic here in Homewood was too complicated for me – everyone was driving someone else’s car – Katy had her dad’s SUV, Brian had just gotten his back but the air-conditioner was not fixed, David dropped off his Volva on the way to a concert in Wisconsin – Jerry was to drive it back as David would take Katy’s car back up to the lake – it was actually much more complicated than that, but the details escape me – they escaped be at the time – the complexity of modern American life – it’s beyond me.

Yet there is little that is confessional about it – he [John O’Hara] does not linger over aspects of himself hoping that his self-absorption will make them seem exemplary. Rather he talks about himself because it is he who happens to be writing the poem – John Ashbery

Stand over there

Listen to the
         Barbwire
It’s five o’clock
The sun has yet
         To come up
The meadowlarks
Are anxious
         To get to work

Beneath the seemingly literal and thus faithful translation there is concealed, rather, a translation of Greek experience into a different way of thinking. Roman thought takes over the Greek words without a corresponding, equally original experience of what they say, without the Greek world. The rootlessness of Western though begins with this translation – Martin Heidegger

It was in Harpers
Obama is the new
          Hoover
McCain should have
          Won
I thought so at the time
Then we could have been
          Properly primed


A premature revolution
Is worse than none
           At all


Obama is just too savvy
To be really radical

There is no way of telling people that they are walking around shining like the sun – Thomas Merton

My friend
You and I
We have
           More in common
          Then we admit
More than you have to
           A Nigerian
And I and a German
We are American
And we must make
             It do

He [Proust] generalized Illiers so that it should become universal, the paradise of innocent vision from which every human being is expelled at the end of his childhood. He shifted the known landscape of Illiers to give it the kaleidoscopic quality of a dream – the kind of dream in which, going a little past the furthest point reached in childhood walks on the outskirts of an inland industrial birthplace, we find ourselves in sight of Paris or the sea – George D Painter

Every sound belongs
              To a thing
It’s one of the thingly
Things of that thing
Our senses collect
              Thingly things
And our minds assign
               Them names
They turn these thingly
               Things into names
To the mind the name
                Is now the thing

What is the poet for if not to scream / himself into a hernia of admiration for all / paradoxical integuments: the kiss, the / bomb, cathedrals and the Zeppelin anchored // to the hill of dreams? – John O’Hara

To be a demographic
         That counts
There must first
         Be expressed
Some interest in your
         Buying power

For when a writer tries to startle, he is likely only to utter a cliché. He will only be profoundly original when he seeks painfully for a universal truth; and this will be most universal when it is most personal – George D Painter

Cowbell
Dinner bell
        Ding dong


Liberty bell
Let freedom ring

A dead ringer
Ring on her finger
         Ting-a-ling


Ring the bell
Send an alarm
          Making it safe
          Playing it safe
          It’s in the safe
Better safe than
          Sorry

Men and women are just like Tweedldee and Tweedledum, with what Jacques Derrida calls a ‘difference’. Not to be confused with what Nietzsche call ‘ressentiment’. – John Updike

From the Journals (#1 – 12/29/03 – Overland Park Kansas)

Now is the time to write – I have some time alone – I have skipped two days – not having made any entries.

Paul had taken Alice’s car (He got out of the Army - went to chef’s school - accumulated debt - now he’s unemployed and wants to become an environmental engineer; Alice – well, she died of cancer two years later – I returned from Spain in time; and the car  its now here in Homewood being driven by Katy who is in her senior year at Northern – survived the campus massacre – has a new boyfriend).

I got up and drove Alice to work – I was still in my PJs (her Christmas gift to me – let’s see, what did I give her?) – I got her to work just in time – 7:45AM – the less you are paid, the more they care about things like that – punching the old time clock – When I got back to the apartment, I worked on the jigsaw puzzle – kittens on a cast iron garden bench – Alice always had a jigsaw puzzle going, usually spread out on the dining room table – the table was too big for the place, as was much of her furniture – acquired as part of the Southwest theme with which they decorated their Wichita suburban dream home – but then her husband Gary announced he was gay on Father’s Day – and everyone went their own way. It had been traditional when we were kids to do a jigsaw puzzle over the Christmas break – then we glued the finished puzzle to a sheet of newspaper and hung in on the wall – about the only bright object in the room.

Lorraine called – Alice was on good terms with her ex-mother-in-law – not as good as Larry Rivers was with his (no nudes of the ex-wife's mother),  but they got along – she had taken his announcement in stride although with a sense of mother’s guilt when her son announced his new sexual preference – but when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s that was a different matter – now Carla is trying to find a nursing home for him that accepts Medicaid . She was looking for Paul. She had not heard from any of her three grandkids – “We don’t need this do we?” she said to me. She said she would try to call him on his cell phone and I didn’t hear back from her so I assumed that she had reached him.

I ground up some Costa Rican coffee beans in Gary’s used grinder (he had given it to his mother who had then sent it over with Carla with the meatballs. Now it was home - back with its original owner – my sister, Alice.

Its quite now. Only the hum of the refrigerator and an occasional tenet coming or going. It’s a good time to get little writing done. I am forcing myself to get into the practice of thinking with pen in hand which is why I started doing these journals.

July 1, 2009 - - The Caribou - Homewood Illinois

61.5 º - overcast with clouds 2900’ above ground level  – visibility of 10.0 miles – wind 1.- mph out of the NNW – humidity 74% and a dew point of 53º - Home, Sweet Homewood – The villages of Homewood and Flossmoor once again sponsoring Movies in the Park – Journey to the Center of the Earth in Patriot Park. Meet tonight at the library to discuss contemporary and classic films – Big Fourth of July Parade

I ventured to the library and flipped through a few reference books, the kind of instant history that comes from compiling old headlines, and was struck by how much news is death, pure and simple – John Updike

How much can we take

It makes the heart break

Ed McMahn, Michael Jackson

          Farrah Fawcett and now

          Its Billy Mayes
It’s all just too much
          All at once


And even at this very moment
Who knows who is being birthed
Excluding, of course, the sons and daughters
           Of celebrities themselves
But for them celebrityhood though probable
Cannot be guaranteed

Shouldn’t a supernova go off
Ever such time – foretelling our fortune

I have had people wander in and out of my life who think they mean more to me than they do. They believe you have thought about them more than you have. It isn’t always that they just want to feel important; it’s some kind of mysterious misunderstanding that often puzzles and sometimes bewilders you – Lillian Hellman

Something comes along
And shakes your foundations
            Shatters your daydreaming
            Vehicular homicide in the mind
Something overheard, hinted at
Something totally unrelated and misinterpreted
Sometimes one gets too comfortable, arrogant
             About one's thinking
Its time to liquefy the cells of the brain
Turn into quicksand its cow paths
             Time to reconnect all the dots
              Like a kaleidoscope kept turning
The patterns getting boring and wow!
             Something totally unexpected
             Never to be repeated

A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory – Keats

The trouble maybe that
              We all live conventional lives
                           Or at least try
Success is how ordinary
               You can live
Everyone wants to be
                           Exceptional
               But not in this way

How sour the knowledge travelers bring away! / The world’s monotonous and small; we see / ourselves today, tomorrow, yesterday / an oasis of horror in a desert of ennui – Baudelaire

And what is

          All this death

Such a private matter

What does it matter
I’m sorry he died
          I say him on TV

Asceticism… is not necessarily a denigration of the body… Rather, it is a way of surrendering to reduced circumstances in a manner that enhances the whole person. It is a radical way of knowing exactly who, what, and where your are, in defiance of those powerful forces in society… that aim to make us forget – Kathleen Norris

There is a difference
Between what you do
            For yourself
And what you do
            For others
One is better than
            The other
Will not so much better
Which is a value judgment
The one is so satisfying
            Wishing for the
            Monumental, the eternal

Workmen loiter before urinals, stare / out windows at girders tightly strapped to clouds – John O’Hara

She gets in her van
And she’s gone
           Soccer mom
Busy day ahead
Hunting and gathering
Fledglings to fill
          With name brands

“Are you dishing art?: John’s most sophistical, / Jimmy seriousest, Kenneth large, locomotive, / laughing like Midas of the Closed Fist. / When to the silent generosities I stumble home – O’Hara

Deaths for July 1 – Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum, Wolfman Jack, Michael Landon, R Buckminister Fuller, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Erik Satie and Harriet Beacher Stowe

From The Journals (Notebook #1 - 12/23/2003 – San Francisco)
-

Hello!

Do you have Prince Albert in a can?
Yes we do.
Well let him out! We hang up and all laugh

That lovely smell of the fluid that collects in the bellybutton, poke the finger down into its recesses and upon pressing forward in the right spot trigger an almost orgasmatic sensation, but best of all take a whiff of that wet finger and fall off into a deep sleep. But  try not to do it too often – its not that it’s toxic  – but the fluid need sufficient culturing time like a  fine wine. Try it with the wife, try it with a stranger. Mates share fluids like monkeys pick  off each other's lice.

If you can work without living, why should you not be able to live without working

The Razzel Dazzle of the third person. "Fred is so out there".: This Marine Lt Col”, “This American” “Ollie North would never…”, Julius Caesar crossed the …”

June 30, 2009 - The Caribou - Homewood Illinois

Back at the Caribou – I expected you to be in southern Missouri by now – nope – got ill and spent the week at the lake – now I’ll wait until after the Fourth – hate to be out on the road during a holiday – know what you mean – probably something you got from the kids – whatever is going around you get it hanging around them – know what it was – some infection I suppose – one good thing, I lost a few more pounds – creating the new me – Oh, Shylock, that pound of flesh is what I owed you!
-

He didn’t want to meet any Communists. They didn’t have any money. He felt that it was all right for a man to go to jail for robbery, but to go to jail for fooling around with Reds was bunk – Richard Wright

First to disappear
         Was the spreading chestnut
         Under which the village
                  Blacksmith toiled
Then it was time for the elms to go

And now it’s the ash’s turn

          It’s already causing havoc

          So many broken bats

What will be next

          There’s talk of the

          Western pines

                 Another insect perhaps
When will it be our turn
                Monoculture and blight
                Seem to go hand in hand
What a lovely couple
They make

Little by little each one is not so young. One is still then young, little by little one is not so young – Gertrude Stein

Head and ears
Head or tails
Head over heels
Heart in hand
Hand on heart
With a heavy heart
Such a bleeding
     Heart
Lend me an ear
Keep an eye out
With a nose for a tale
What a whale of a tale

One can account for just so much of life, and then no more. At least not yet – Richard Wright
-

Red clover, white clover

          Roll over
Where the buffalo roam
          Is home

Among millions of people the deepest convictions of live are never discussed openly: they are felt, implied, hinted at tacitly and obliquely in their hopes and fears – Richard Wright

The GPS said
The GPS told him
To go there
He pulled in
And it said
‘Recalculating Route’

Ancient travelers guessed; modern travelers measure – Samuel Johnson And now days there no need for any of that – just look it up on the Internet

Its pathetic that the dog
Is man’s best friend
When the cow is so
Dear to his soul
Shepard, goat boy, cowhand
Swine header – rancher
Herdsman, stockman
And the dog is just there
To lick the pan and the
Hand of the man

Of all things, men do not like to feel that they are guilty of wrong, and if you make them feel guilt, they will try desperately to justify it on any grounds – Richard Wright

Coffee makes everything
      Right with the world
Beer and wine makes everything
      In the world right

That of all the ways of beginning a book which are now in practice though out the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best – I’m sure it is the most religious – for I begin with writing the first sentence – and trusting to Almighty God for the second – Laurence Sterne

Can you really be an artist
And also be anti-art
Goddamnit you surely can
So long as authority gets
Your symbolic middle finger
That is art’s inclination
        Anyhow
To flaunt the rules is oh so
Artsy fartsy
       Anyway
I did this; I did that
And so you must unless
Playing at a parlor game

In our blindness we have so contrived and ordered the lives of men that the moths in their hearts flutter toward ghoulish and incomprehensible flames! – Richard Wright
-

I’ve been to Chaco

I’ve seen the future
I’m unhappy and so
         Very very sad

There’s a time for reciting poems and a time for fists – Roberto Bolaño

June 24, 2009 - Round Lake - Sister Lakes Michigan

The weather is starting to get hot – for two days in a roll now- it’s got up  into the nineties – now I’m at the Lake – I once cautioned someone about calling it ‘The Lake’ (but that was a different lake) – It’s a form of arrogance – telling others that you have a cabin and are intimate with the lake enough to call it “It”(and probably they are not) – it is ok for The City which everyone (everyone who is anyone and that is all that matters) knows is San Francisco (unless of course your are talking about the financial district in London) – I called up to The Lake  earlier to make sure I made it for the pirate party and I did – the kids are swimming now – the pirate party will be later after it cools off but before it gets dark – arh arh, shiver me timbers matey!

It is more difficult to maintain a tradition of good cuisine than a tradition of great literature, as England teaches us – Octavia Paz

I found a watch at
The second highest point
In Iowa. The CCC had
Built an observation tower
The local college boys
Have a graduation rite
Get drunk and heave
A TV off of the tower
They had to hike lugging
It up a long trail but
Who gives a damn when
     You are smashed
And in the middle of
The night Kaboom ha ha ha
And during the toss his
Watch flew off his wrist
He was too blasted to notice
And today I have that watch
       Ha ha ha

What began as a liberation has turned into a business. The same thing has happened in sexuality as in gastronomy: the erotic industry is the younger sister of the food industry – Octavia Paz

An idea or form is born without any doctrine
In an act of spontaneous generation
As these flies spring fort form shit
Then it acquires baggage and
Needs places of storage
It is acquisitive of stuff
A revolution every twenty years
Said Thomas Jefferson
God redeem this stuff!
And a man of the people cries
And does much violence
And then he dies
And we are so much better
For it but begun again
To accumulate

By its nature what we see on the screen is the art of happening; we are given the gesture itself, not an account of it – Alain Robbe-Grillet


A lucky few are of
A natural archetype
There is no difference
Between them and the
Role they are playing
Who they play is who they are
There is much assurity of self
        In this
Others have to learn a personality
And wear it like a cloak
And there is always something
Doubtful about who they
       Are – they are never so sure

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body; - and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains – then certes the soul does not inhabit there [in the brain]. QED – Laurence Sterne

The pirate party ended with a treasure hunt. Dalton whose birthday it was in honor of will be seven on Friday – he is older than his sister Lilly and older than Maria who always comes with them, had a difficult time sticking to the directions on his pirate map – always wanting to wander over to the little boat that had taken Sarah and Mark across the lake – it did sort of look like what a pirate might row ashore from his ship - but eventually, with a little guidance from Katie they found treasure at each of the seven spots marked on the maps that she had drawn. All the adults had tattoos and pirate hats – some wore eye patches – some put their earring in their noses – and started using the paste on jewels as bling – one on a front tooth, one on the side of the nose – silly adults. The kids put their treasure in their treasure bags that they had decorated with stick ons (cross bones and skull, x marks the spot, jolly roger flag and paste jewels) and once back inside started checking out their booty (the pirate kind – what they had accumulated during the hunt – don’t count your jewels until you’ve fended off your enemies) and figuring out what they had acquired. This morning fist thing they got out their stuff (pirate booty) – they still have their tattoos on and Lillie is wearing three strings of pearls – Maria said that she slept with her other cheek on the pillow so that the tattoo would not come off – If you want to keep it forever (and she said she did) then you mustn’t go swimming today or ever again – Will not forever then but for as long as I can. All the adults are still sleeping except for Dave who got up early to go to work – he had gone to bed early too.

I mean, I mean and that is not what I mean, I mean that not anyone is saying what they are meaning, I meant that I am feeling something, and I mean that not anyone is thinking, is feeling, is saying, is certain of that thing, I mean I am not certain of that thing. I am not saying, thinking, feeling, being certain of this thing, I mean, I mean, I know what I mean – Gertrude Stein

You deserted him for me
You’ll desert me too
All women do
Don’t get their way
Desert if they get a chance
But now for one last chance
Hold out a little hope
If redemption should be evident
But by then it’s too late
It’s a false hope
Emotion has torn the anchor loose
You are adrift in the storm
All the jewels to be stolen
By jolly pirates

The media are not the message; the media are the society – Paz

A Receipt –

Fairway Stores Inc

Employee #6: Name – Ashley

Total purchase: $16.80

Total debit sale: the same

Item count: 12

2.46 lbs bananas

1.03 lbs tomatoes on vine

One red pepper @ $1.29

June 6, 2009 – 12:01 PM

Thank you for shopping

Fairway

We appreciate your

Business

Two leprosies and one degradation: submission to ideological dogmas, and prostitution to the market – Octavia Paz

Then we went out and sat on the barge – Dalton pretended that he was the pirate captain – This lake is getting bigger – no this is the sea for pirates to not sail around on lakes but on the sea and the sea is certainly big – Oh, Dalton replied and retuned to his tiller. Dalton had come and asked – can we go outside – sure, I replied, so long as everyone wants too – Wrigley and Kolby I already knew did, but Kolby was only allowed outside on her leash – she a runner and she is a jumper – oh what a wild one she is. The girls did – can we go on the boat, Dalton asked – why not and we all did – then they wanted to do the ‘snappers’ from their treasure chests – Carla has said last night, wait for tomorrow to do those – don’t run with them and don’t put them in your mouth – the package said use only under close adult supervision - go up there on the patio and throw them down on the concrete – eventually even Lilly whose a scartycat warmed up to the concept and was popping away and giggling – don’t use them all now or you won’t have any for later. Eventually Carla and Dan got up – they were looking the coffee – I had made a pot earlier but it was mostly gone – I had knocked my cup against a chair when preparing to go outside with the kids and spelt half a cup on the carpet – what’s this Carla asked in her bare feet, it’s wet – oh, I did that, I admitted. The coffee is stored in a canister that is kept in the refrigerator – I got it out for them and some zucchini tumbled out when I did – the refrigerator is stuffed to overflowing.

Losing our name is like losing our shadow: to be noting more than our name is to be reduced to a shadow. The absence of relation between things and their names is doubly intolerable: either meaning evaporates or things vanish. A word of pure meaning – is as impossible as a world of things without meaning – without names. Language makes the world habitable – Octavia Paz

Dec 22, 2003 – The Royal Ground – Fillmore and California – San Francisco, California

Breakfast at Kate’s Kitchen – The Framer’s breakfast - scrambled egg, English muffin - fruit or potatoes? – potatoes, please - bacon or sausage - no - no meat? - no – thanks - I find myself watching umbrellas, watching myself watch umbrellas. Wondering if this mean something – everything means something but is it really worth the time spent pondering it – we don’t know until we do.

In order to return one must venture forth; in order not to disappear in the void, he who sallies forth must return to where he started – Octavia Paz