Neon Lit Bright

It was cold this morning and I’m feeling poorly. I think I’m getting over it, whatever it is.  It's just cold enough to freeze. A very thin layer of ice coveres the wash buckets.  I have a headache. I have a queasy stomach. I go into town for coffee. The dog has to stay in the truck because I’m not sitting out side in this weather feeling the way I do. First, I take a sip of hot coffee. It’s almost too hot (the medium cup was too cold but the little one was just right). Let the big cup sit for a few minutes while I peruse my email. That’s better. Good but not perfect. Not the coffee (it’s perfect) – the world and I. I hate getting old. It’s everything and more that the old codgers have always been complaining of.

If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons – Winston Churchill

About 160,000 aircraft were produced during World War I. The average service life of an aircraft was about six months

If Hell is lighted it must be by Neon – Eric Wilson Barker

Ever Kill a Man, Marlow – Raymond Chandler

The average man is tired and scared,

And a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals

‘Ever kill a man, Marlow’?

 'Yes'

'Nasty feeling isn't it?'

'Some people like it.'

There is something compulsive about the telephone.

The gadget-ridden man of our age

Loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it.

But he treats it with respect,

Even when he is drunk.

The telephone is a fetish

I lit a cigarette.

It seemed like a couple of weeks

Since I had tasted tobacco.

I drank in the smoke.

“May I have just one puff?’

She came close to me

And I handed her the cigarette.

She drew on it and coughed

A fly-cluster of cars

Hovered in front of

The movie theater.

I went to the drugstore and ate

A chicken salad sandwich and

Drank some coffee.

The coffee was over trained

And the sandwich was as full

Of rich flavor as a

Piece torn off an old shirt

He had a grip like a pipe wrench.

He smiled at me benignantly now.

He was Mr. Big, the winner, everything under control

‘A half smart guy.’

She said with a tired sniff.

‘That’s all I ever draw.

Never once a guy that’s smart

All the way around the course.

Never once”

“Perhaps you don’t ever make passes at women in bars?”

“Not often. The light is too dim.”

I kissed her some more.

It was light, pleasant work

Get it through your lovely head.

I work at it lady.

I don’t play at it

Cop business is wonderful uplifting idealistic work

The only thing wrong with cop business is

The cops that are in it

After that nothing happened for three days.

Nobody slugged me,

Or shot at me

Or called me on the phone

And warned me to keep my nose clean

“He had a police record.”

She shrugged. She said negligently,

‘He didn’t know the right people.

That’s all a police record means

In this rotten crime-ridden country.”

For two people in a hundred it’s wonderful.

The rest just work at it.

After twenty years all the guy has left is a workbench in the garage.

American girls are terrific.

American wives take in too damn much territory

It was time for lunch but I wasn’t in the mood.

I got the office bottle out of the deep drawer and poured a slug

Nobody came into the office.

Nobody called me on the phone.

It kept on raining

I never saw any of them again –

Except the cops.

No way has yet been invented

To say goodbye to them

They had made a fool of me

But they had paid well for the privilege

You don’t shake hand with big city cops.

That close is too close

Cops never say goodbye.

They’re always hoping

To see you in the line-up

I bought her face slowly up to my face.

Her eyelids were flickering, like moth wings.

I kissed her tightly and quickly.

Then a long slow clinging kiss.

Her lips opened under mine.

Her body began to shake in my arms.

“Killer,” she said softly,

Her breath going into her mouth

A smell of kelp came off the water

And lay on the fog.

The tires sang on the moist concrete of the boulevard.

The world was a wet emptiness

Buy yourself a drink

While I shave

We had a drink and he left

By the back door,

Which he had jimmied to get in

Down these mean streets

A man must go

Who is not himself mean

Been spending too much money

In a joint that exists

For that purpose and for no other

In 1870 the top 1% of Americans owned 37% of the wealth and the top 5% owned 70%. The bottom 60% owned almost no wealth at all. This has not changed much in the last century, except that the richest 5% had increased their share. America contrary to myth has always been a non-equalitarian country. The equalitarian dream has always been just that, a dream. In America you’re free to dream.

Think does not mean what you think – Gilles Deleuze

In 1918 the amount of money it took for an average American family to live a healthy lifestyle was $1,600 a year. The average worker (including any additional income form wife and children) was $1,157 a year

In 1941 half of the new job openings nationally were restricted to whites. In Indiana, Ohio and Illinois 80% of the new openings were so restricted.

They were burning beef in their backyards, brown burly men, with beer cans. The beef black on the outside, red on the inside – Donald Barthelme – Sixty Stories, 1981 p102

During his rule, Napoleon attended the opera twenty-six times, more than any other 19^th century head of state. He was indifferent towards German music and towards a fair amount of French music, but he was passionate about the Italians

I think no one will be disappointed who visits the country (United States), expecting to find no more … than a vast continent… and a busy, hustling, industrious population hacking and hewing their way-through – Frances Trollope – The Domestic Manners of Americans, 1832

Adulthood begins

            With money making

Just enough know-how

            Sufficient for the effort

Money making

Never enough

            Never enough

                        Never

Money

            Marking time

No time to waste

           

Time is money

Money is time

            Its time

            Money

                        Money

Money

And it all ends

            With dementia

Which is itself just

            Another moneymaker’s

Opportunity

The last pirate scum of the western Mediterranean were languishing in Spanish or Moroccan jails, [or] serving hamburgers at McDonalds – Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical Chart, 2001 p205

Black males between 5 and 65 in New York City or Chicago have higher mortality rates than their counterparts in Bangladesh

24% of young Americans (age 25 to 34) live with their parents (or grandparents). This is up from 18% in 2007 and 11% in 1990. For the first time in modern history a higher percentage of young people live in mutigenerational arrangements than do Americans over the age of 85.

Three Percent Compound Rate

“Can it get any better than this?” It was his favorite phrase. In fact I never heard him say any thing else. He repeatedly asked it of me. “Can it get any better than this?” “It’s getting close,” I replied the first time. The weather was a little cool, but I was not complaining. I also thought it might be better if there had been fewer RVs about,  including his. Trail Dog is bored. He has a big tick on his lower lip. I try to pick it off but he howls and tries to bite me. OK, I give up. Later I was able to squish it. He licked the blood from my fingers.

US golfers last year played the fewest number of rounds since 1995, playing a total of 462 million. More golf courses have closed than opened for the last eight years. Last year 14 18-hole courses opened and 158 closed. Of the closures 97% were public courses.

Are You Tight? – Dashaill Hammett

‘You ought to have known I’d do it!

Didn’t I steal a crutch from a cripple?’

When the last pocket had been turned out,

I returned to my own chair,

Rolled and lighted a cigarette,

And began to examine the spoils

A good pair – neither of us would think of taking a life,

Unless assured of profit and political protection

Later , we tumbled out of the Hall of Justice

And into a machine

‘You do what you want, but if I were you,

 I’d tell him the truth or nothing.

I mean leave out the parts you don’t want to tell him,

But don’t make up anything to take its place.’

And he told me right out that ‘I’m a man

Who likes talking to a man that likes talking’

Talking is something you can’t do judiciously

Unless you keep in practice

‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!’

He said it oftener than that,

But that will give you the idea

At the strike of the gong it was

Five thirty-one and one quarter.

Eastern Standard Time

But he wanted results, it seemed, and not questions,

And so I wasted nearly an hour getting information

That he could have given me in fifteen minutes

My thick fingers made deliberate care,

shifting a measured quantity of tan flakes

Into curved paper, spreading the flakes

So that they lay equal at the ends

With a slight depression in the middle,

My thumb was rolling the paper cylinder’s ends

To hold it even my tongue licked the flap,

Left forefinger and thumb pinching their ends

While my right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam,

Right forefinger and thumb twisting their ends

And I lifted the other end to my mouth

But where knowledge of trickery is evenly distributed,

Honesty not infrequently prevails

Fifty years of sleuthing had left me

Without any feeling at all on any subject

I put the cigarette in my mouth,

Set fire to it, and laughed smoke out

The whole of that quality in mankind which strives

Toward simplifications of life’s phenomena, unifications,

Urged me to belief in connection

I took out my lighter, snapped on the flame,

And applied it to the end of the cigarette

I looked up at her and smiled,

Holding the finished cigarette in one hand,

The lighter in the other

I wasn’t sure I was going to like the party.

‘I like an even break or better,

And this doesn’t look like one.’

‘I see,’ she sneered.

‘You don’t think I’m naughty,

You think I’m bump.’

‘Behave, sister.

That’s no way to act.’

‘Jesus, you women,’

I said idly

She went down on her knees at my knees...

‘I haven’t lived a good life,’ she cried.

‘I’ve been bad – worse than you could know –

But I’m not all bad’

‘You don’t believe me?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘And you won’t forgive me for – for what I did?’

‘Sure I do.’ I bent and kissed her mouth.

‘That’s all right. Now run along.’

I’m not so hard to get along with,

I’ll play anybody’s game up to a certain point

‘Are you tight’

‘Not yet’, I replied

‘Why don’t you stay sober tonight?”’ She asked me.

‘Why not we stay sober tonight’, I told her

On my desk a limp cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled

With the remains of other limp cigarettes.

Ragged gray flakes dotted the yellow of the desk

And the green blotter and the papers that were there

‘Meet the biggest-hearted dick in San Francisco.

This guy will do anything for anybody,

If only he can send ‘em over for life in the end’

‘Shoo her in, darling’, I said.

‘Shoo her in’

I’d rather lie to her

Than have her think I’m lying

‘Stop me when you can?’ She replied arrogantly

‘Maybe you’d like a drink,’ I suggested,

Opening a drawer of the desk,

Neither the girl nor I wasted energy on conversation.

My client and I didn’t seem to like each other very much.

Murder doesn’t round out anybody’s life except the murdered’s

And sometimes the murderer’s.

‘That may be’, she said, ‘but it is all pretty unsatisfactory.’

Sometimes one has to make some allowance for stupidity… Why create additional complications – Leon Trotsky – My Life, 1930 p267

Tend trout line

Fill freezer

            Ice white

Stack ‘em

            Tight

Provision

            To last

The cold weather

            As per forecast

If strung like beads on a necklace all the virsues on earth would make a string 10 million light years long or about 100 times across the Milky Way. Up to 2% of the weight of the human body is composed of virsues and bacteria. The skin is our biggest organ, it makes up 10% of body weight.

Institutions do not contain; they constrain

A culture has porous boundaries. A society does not

Savages are easily satisfied with cheap beads in the following colors: dull white, dark brown and vermillion red. Expensive beads are often spurned by them. Nonsavages should be given cheap books in the following colors: dead white, brown and seaweed. Books praising the sea are much sought after – Donald Bartheleme – Sixty Stories

Albert Einstein had horrible arithmetic skills. A lot of what we call intelligence results from practice (discipline and persistence) at specific skills

I can’t imagine her with children, he thought. And I know that, whatever happens, I won’t be growing old beside her. He could imagine her in later years, amid books and papers, slim and elegant…., a single woman with class, and wrinkles fanning from her eyes, …a broken fan, a jet necklace, a record of Italian songs from the fifties, the photo of an old lover. My photo he fantasized. Oh, God, if only it could be my photo - - Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Nautical Chart, 2001 p199

American schools now have more minority students than they have non-Hispanic whites: 25% Hispanic, 15% Black, and 5% Asian and Pacific Islander, plus biracial and Native Americans. In the country as a whole whites are expected to become a minority in 2043. One in five children speak a language other than English at home

God and His Little Dog Gog

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)