Not to get everyone too excited....but I have a pedalboard. The Pedaltrain Jr. Not so big, not so small. Enough for a Crybaby, my fuzz/overdrive and a booster, tremolo and a delay–and maybe a beer cozy?
And I realized something hunting down delays the other day that I thought was amazing and important to share.
You know, I'm not a delay type person. I just want a little slap back for solos and some ambient stuff that is light. But Lordy did I try a lot of them! Did you know that there's a used Fulltone Tape Echo at Guitar Center for about $900. It sounded amazing. But not practical at all if I'm also going to have a beer cozy on the floor when I gig.
That is the sound. And if you can't get analog tape because its not practical to gig with? Who emulates it the best? I came across the Strymon El Capistan and it does sound oh-so-gooey and good.
From what I understand, the thing that separates a good tape emulator from a bad one is how close it can mimic the residue sound of the analog tape with "wow and flutter" which is almost like a modulation of the trailing delayed notes that you hear in real tape. Some sound real good like El Capistan. Some use a chorus type modulation or vibrato, like Electro Harmonix, and that sounds odd. Even the Empress Vintage Mod thing or Wampler, not so good for my ears.
The thing about tape echoes, is that they are so ethereal and gritty at the same time. I don't know how else to describe it, but if sexual asphyxiation had a sound–no, not the muffled sound, but what the experience seeks to achieve–this would be it, aurally.
And i want that sound. Oh do I ever. I don't want the sexual asphyxiation so much.
And after trying out different pedals, and not really being sold on any, I realized I've got this Bigsby on the guitar that I rarely use. But that is the sound! That light tremolo, slightly pressing it gives the sound of the modulated tape "wow and flutter" better than anything. (its still early in the game, but I think I'm right about this).
How about that! So I can pick up that TC Electronics Flashback Delay for now, because it sounds fine for the slap back and light ambient stuff, and use the Bigsby for the "wow and flutter."
Why the Flashback? Its sounds as good as others for subtle use, but also has a looper on it! Like 30 seconds, so that if I hammer it out, I can nail a live situation with Fred where I put down one JB guitar line and play the other on top.
Yes.
And then I can squash this shopping spree that's taken over my mind..this is what happens with free time in the Fall. I pedal shop instead of actually practicing to get the sound I need. That, and I watch John Boorman's Excalibur at least twice.
Oh, I want this:
http://youtu.be/YxAnchmi5ww
And thousands more
Best,
Me.
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Except they aren't insects; they're our relatives!
I did a bellyflop into the pool. I created a splash, but not the splash anticipated while climbing the high dive, giggling to myself, eyeing the spectators below laying out on their towels on lounge chairs, line shirts open, straw hats and shades and lotioned noses. My powerful cannonball? How did you fail me? How did the elements of wind, of inner fears, of self-professed contortions catch me, unfold me and flay me against the water in such a horrid way?
My stomach was red for days. Yes. Communist. It and comrade internal neighboring organs rallying against me, tired of my poor decisions. The mind would no longer control from the frontal lobe. Nutrients were rerouted away, cut off going north of the neck and held in reserves by the kidneys. The mouth–once the wooer itself–was wooed to the stomach's cause and would now feed for the GI tract with no input from head or heart. It was both ingestor, investor and spokesman for the southern cause. I admit, I didn't even realize till too late.
My tough, tough exoskeleton would soon be swayed into serving against my holistic wellbeing, as well. Its amazing what the need for feed and fuel can do to loyalty. Of all parts of my body, it never dawned on me that the exoskeleton–my tough exterior to the world I refused to please–would in fact fall in line with the gluttony and immediacy of the stomach's creed, churned out in backyard presses and stuffed in pockets from students to embarrassed professions the whole rebellion over.
Work songs: stomach gurggles to me, but rallying cries inside.
Marches: all along the GI tract.
My thoracic cavity and innards afeared dissent spreading through the veins–the very veins of health and commerce now of attrition! My thorax was all a' mess.
Thorax? Exoskeleton? A bug? Yes. A metaphor? No. I am a bug. I am a bug that belongs to a community pool (and racket club, in fact). The irony, if I know anything about my human readership, is that while laying out in the sun in our own half-open linen shirts, sandals by our side, lotions rubbed in and draw strings tight on our waists, we too slap at bugs that buzz around us. Except they aren't insects; they're our relatives!
Oh!
My stomach was red for days. Yes. Communist. It and comrade internal neighboring organs rallying against me, tired of my poor decisions. The mind would no longer control from the frontal lobe. Nutrients were rerouted away, cut off going north of the neck and held in reserves by the kidneys. The mouth–once the wooer itself–was wooed to the stomach's cause and would now feed for the GI tract with no input from head or heart. It was both ingestor, investor and spokesman for the southern cause. I admit, I didn't even realize till too late.
My tough, tough exoskeleton would soon be swayed into serving against my holistic wellbeing, as well. Its amazing what the need for feed and fuel can do to loyalty. Of all parts of my body, it never dawned on me that the exoskeleton–my tough exterior to the world I refused to please–would in fact fall in line with the gluttony and immediacy of the stomach's creed, churned out in backyard presses and stuffed in pockets from students to embarrassed professions the whole rebellion over.
Work songs: stomach gurggles to me, but rallying cries inside.
Marches: all along the GI tract.
My thoracic cavity and innards afeared dissent spreading through the veins–the very veins of health and commerce now of attrition! My thorax was all a' mess.
Thorax? Exoskeleton? A bug? Yes. A metaphor? No. I am a bug. I am a bug that belongs to a community pool (and racket club, in fact). The irony, if I know anything about my human readership, is that while laying out in the sun in our own half-open linen shirts, sandals by our side, lotions rubbed in and draw strings tight on our waists, we too slap at bugs that buzz around us. Except they aren't insects; they're our relatives!
Oh!
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
so that I can go back and play
It was a dark and stormy night, somewhere. Here, it is beautiful. A cool autumn day. The katydids hum their work songs, the occasional breeze through the branches holding still green leaves. The machinations of traffic in the distant are a low drone. More so, I hear an occasional bird chirp, their tiny throats distilling a quiet, bell-like message to resonate within their territory and through the skies. We turn away–we, the planet–from more sun, on a path towards the shorter days, the circumstance of less heat, the distance from the sun's grace. But we're cheery. We know what we have to do. We have to dance!
Or not. I have to type. I have to take in the honeysuckle scent, redistribute the feelings and sensory experience into a prose form. I have to. It is my dance. Though my limbs don't move but so much, there is a motion, miniscule that occurs. Not unlike the slowly turning and returning planet orbiting the ball of great fury, I am typing and my innards, my bones, my spirit is slowly and nearly imperceivabley wrapping or orbiting a self-attained purpose. Which is to dance. Or stretch.
My dogs are barking. I am in a regional area with regional sayings. Still, when I say "my dogs are barking" I don't mean that my feet hurt. Instead, I literally mean that my dogs are barking and throwing off my concentration and concentric motion across the consciousness of the "to dance."
Crap. I better go check this out.
"Hey! Shussh!"
Okay. It was just dogs barking at dogs. No, though I live in a regional place with regional sayings, I don't mean that hurt feet were hurting other hurt feet. I just mean that the dogs were barking and I let them back inside to their lush dogs beds. Sometimes, as much as I think they want to be outside, they really just want to sleep on those big comfy beds, have me rub their bellies. Or go for giant, adventurous walks to far off destinations like the park. But to just be in the backyard? Of course, for me right now, in this moment, the backyard is the big adventure. No wait. No its not. That's why I'm still typing, hovering over the cathartic experience that comes from touching base with oneself, searching for a direct path into the future with reference to the past. I'm in a different place, but this typing proves the purpose of going for the walk, the stretch, the exercise; not the new scents, but the appreciation for how those scents sensed before relate to where I've been long ago with the accumulation of new experiences, new phrases, a focused ability to achieve the closeness to the sense of wonderment.
A cataclysm could happen anytime. A word like "cataclysm" could come up at any time. I consider this a warm-up? A reaching out? A reorienting of myself to the values that I know will get me to get my other work done. To make some income. I'll sit and stare at my hands for hours, knowing that I should do the things I should do. That there are benefits to doing them and consequences to not doing them. But still, I need a little writing, a little orbiting, exploring, warming up, to get to that feeling where I can get my brain as a focused ray, not unlike from the light of the sun? to get this other work done so that I can go back and play.
Or not. I have to type. I have to take in the honeysuckle scent, redistribute the feelings and sensory experience into a prose form. I have to. It is my dance. Though my limbs don't move but so much, there is a motion, miniscule that occurs. Not unlike the slowly turning and returning planet orbiting the ball of great fury, I am typing and my innards, my bones, my spirit is slowly and nearly imperceivabley wrapping or orbiting a self-attained purpose. Which is to dance. Or stretch.
My dogs are barking. I am in a regional area with regional sayings. Still, when I say "my dogs are barking" I don't mean that my feet hurt. Instead, I literally mean that my dogs are barking and throwing off my concentration and concentric motion across the consciousness of the "to dance."
Crap. I better go check this out.
"Hey! Shussh!"
Okay. It was just dogs barking at dogs. No, though I live in a regional place with regional sayings, I don't mean that hurt feet were hurting other hurt feet. I just mean that the dogs were barking and I let them back inside to their lush dogs beds. Sometimes, as much as I think they want to be outside, they really just want to sleep on those big comfy beds, have me rub their bellies. Or go for giant, adventurous walks to far off destinations like the park. But to just be in the backyard? Of course, for me right now, in this moment, the backyard is the big adventure. No wait. No its not. That's why I'm still typing, hovering over the cathartic experience that comes from touching base with oneself, searching for a direct path into the future with reference to the past. I'm in a different place, but this typing proves the purpose of going for the walk, the stretch, the exercise; not the new scents, but the appreciation for how those scents sensed before relate to where I've been long ago with the accumulation of new experiences, new phrases, a focused ability to achieve the closeness to the sense of wonderment.
A cataclysm could happen anytime. A word like "cataclysm" could come up at any time. I consider this a warm-up? A reaching out? A reorienting of myself to the values that I know will get me to get my other work done. To make some income. I'll sit and stare at my hands for hours, knowing that I should do the things I should do. That there are benefits to doing them and consequences to not doing them. But still, I need a little writing, a little orbiting, exploring, warming up, to get to that feeling where I can get my brain as a focused ray, not unlike from the light of the sun? to get this other work done so that I can go back and play.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
the amount of times I've counted on my hand.
My food will soon be in the oven, and I will use the timer to time both its readiness and my headiness, for my feeling is that this post could meander and go nowhere, but with a set limit of time in the back of my mind, perhaps I will cut through and focus in on something that takes me somewhere, connecting.
Within limitation, I think one knows they can travel most succinct. Baby steps taken in one direction can get you the furthest. Less wandering, more pondering between steps for a sure-fire foot forward.
I have a picture in my head. Its more than an image, its flush and filled out with foreground and background. Lots of faded green of prints of yesteryear, a checkered tie, red and white rayon against a white shirt hedged in by the navy blazer. Its a double-breasted blazer, and its magnificent. Its my own, my true blazer and I'm made ready and done up for a date. My hair is slicked back and my eyes are watery from too much flash as this was the best and last of many photo attempts. My upper lip has a discoloration for its been my first time shaving. I am soon off to the prom!
A late bloomer, I'm undeterred that its not my own prom, that I'm a chaperone to my niece, that I'm just turning 48 and only now beginning to grown in whiskers that need shaving to preserve my youthful look. I've come to terms that I'm a little different, a little weird, a little wild.
Of course, and as brought up in the first paragraph, this mental picture is in looking back. And its been 20 years since that time and place. I was slimmer back then, a little more weird, a little more wild. Now, I get tired easily. I have my own share of crops to gather and fields to reseed. I love tulips but in this frightening post-2038 future, the tulips are more rare than ever.
Oh? What happened in 2038 to warrant the marker of "post-2038"? Nothing in the grand scheme of things, nothing at the level of world-shaking. But in my own personal life, 2038 was when I got it.
It. I got it then. It was delicious.
Oh! Also 2037 was the year of the Dutch drought, and the poor tulips didn't fare so well. I'm sure, though, if I were to write this in 2040, that within the two year period all the tulips would be back and flourishing. Science has its way of melding with the heart's intent.
And also the heart itself; I have a pacemaker at this point in my life. Not for medical reasons, but in this scary, post-2027 future, people opt for pacemakers that some say are controlled by the government.
Yup. But people say crazy shit all the time. I just got mine put in because I had not yet purchased a new smart-heart-phone the previous decade, and lo and behold! my contract with Verizon was up and with the discount perks get affordable. Its amazing what we as a people can do in this amazing post-2019 cyber world.
2019? 2027? Just years, don't worry about them till they come up.
And get you.
I'll never forget though, the actually ver tumultuous years between 2015-2017, leading up to the feelings of relief and redemption found in 2019 and subsequently in 2027. "Pie-fights," you say? "What a wicked metaphor!" I reply.
I can count on my hand the amount of times I've counted on my hand the amount of times I've counted on my hand.
Within limitation, I think one knows they can travel most succinct. Baby steps taken in one direction can get you the furthest. Less wandering, more pondering between steps for a sure-fire foot forward.
I have a picture in my head. Its more than an image, its flush and filled out with foreground and background. Lots of faded green of prints of yesteryear, a checkered tie, red and white rayon against a white shirt hedged in by the navy blazer. Its a double-breasted blazer, and its magnificent. Its my own, my true blazer and I'm made ready and done up for a date. My hair is slicked back and my eyes are watery from too much flash as this was the best and last of many photo attempts. My upper lip has a discoloration for its been my first time shaving. I am soon off to the prom!
A late bloomer, I'm undeterred that its not my own prom, that I'm a chaperone to my niece, that I'm just turning 48 and only now beginning to grown in whiskers that need shaving to preserve my youthful look. I've come to terms that I'm a little different, a little weird, a little wild.
Of course, and as brought up in the first paragraph, this mental picture is in looking back. And its been 20 years since that time and place. I was slimmer back then, a little more weird, a little more wild. Now, I get tired easily. I have my own share of crops to gather and fields to reseed. I love tulips but in this frightening post-2038 future, the tulips are more rare than ever.
Oh? What happened in 2038 to warrant the marker of "post-2038"? Nothing in the grand scheme of things, nothing at the level of world-shaking. But in my own personal life, 2038 was when I got it.
It. I got it then. It was delicious.
Oh! Also 2037 was the year of the Dutch drought, and the poor tulips didn't fare so well. I'm sure, though, if I were to write this in 2040, that within the two year period all the tulips would be back and flourishing. Science has its way of melding with the heart's intent.
And also the heart itself; I have a pacemaker at this point in my life. Not for medical reasons, but in this scary, post-2027 future, people opt for pacemakers that some say are controlled by the government.
Yup. But people say crazy shit all the time. I just got mine put in because I had not yet purchased a new smart-heart-phone the previous decade, and lo and behold! my contract with Verizon was up and with the discount perks get affordable. Its amazing what we as a people can do in this amazing post-2019 cyber world.
2019? 2027? Just years, don't worry about them till they come up.
And get you.
I'll never forget though, the actually ver tumultuous years between 2015-2017, leading up to the feelings of relief and redemption found in 2019 and subsequently in 2027. "Pie-fights," you say? "What a wicked metaphor!" I reply.
I can count on my hand the amount of times I've counted on my hand the amount of times I've counted on my hand.
Monday, September 10, 2012
but I've already fabricated so much.
I am the rainbow. I am the bands of color united. I am the specific bands of color, the vibratatory display of light made visual at specific frequencies that is phenom known as color. I'm less a free-for-all drum circle at your college dorm room. I'm more the organized sound of ritual drumming found in communities all over, and to me, particularly wonderfully done in areas as the Ewe of Ghana.
Yes, Ghana. Where I met Rhea. She was working there through Blue Cross, Blue Shield. There was no organizational jurisdiction in that area–the coverage couldn't cover that far from HQ back in Jersey. But still, she was there canvasing, putting up flyers, instilling the power symbols of big, bold blue crosses and shields for future generations raised in the shadow of their bold fonts, and when, G-d willing, the "Double Blue" (as it would, G-d willing, one day be called) would come to dominate the planet.
Yes, Rhea. I called her Ghana Rhea, of course. Actually, her real name was Betty, and this story really took place in Denmark. But the truth is, I got gonorrhea from a girl working for an insurance company while overseas in Copenhagen that I met listening to Ewe ritual music from Ghana at the Womex music conference, and that she later took me to her dorm room where I joined in their drum ungoing Copenhangen drum cirlce, and would later contract gonorrhea, presumably from Betty (who I know refer to as "Ghana Rhea") but I've already fabricated so much.
Yes, Ghana. Where I met Rhea. She was working there through Blue Cross, Blue Shield. There was no organizational jurisdiction in that area–the coverage couldn't cover that far from HQ back in Jersey. But still, she was there canvasing, putting up flyers, instilling the power symbols of big, bold blue crosses and shields for future generations raised in the shadow of their bold fonts, and when, G-d willing, the "Double Blue" (as it would, G-d willing, one day be called) would come to dominate the planet.
Yes, Rhea. I called her Ghana Rhea, of course. Actually, her real name was Betty, and this story really took place in Denmark. But the truth is, I got gonorrhea from a girl working for an insurance company while overseas in Copenhagen that I met listening to Ewe ritual music from Ghana at the Womex music conference, and that she later took me to her dorm room where I joined in their drum ungoing Copenhangen drum cirlce, and would later contract gonorrhea, presumably from Betty (who I know refer to as "Ghana Rhea") but I've already fabricated so much.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
...like a nudgey hound dog. I empthasize.
So the hum? The guy next to me humming. Am I as distracting to others as he is to me? He's fidgety. He needs to hydrate. He's staring at more women than me. He's wearing white socks and tevas. If I ever get to that point? Well, I'm sure its the natural order of things. All composite styles decay. Laughter and forgetting dissolve the friendly barriers between caring and not caring.
Now he's playing the beat with his coffee cup. He's ogling the fatties, too. This guy is not well. He's lonely and seeing women pass by in all sorts of colored pants and tops and its rainy outside; his focus is as scattered as the rain drops and he doesn't know how to make his next move, be productive, get it done. He's a pitter patter of the fallen. A decent into a kind of low-key madness.
He's not me. But I could be him in time. And why not? Everything I complain about him I project from myself, of course. Why wouldn't I? I am I? Okay? But lets see. I'm going to smile, take a deep breath, project a relaxed state to him, to myself, to my next line of written reasoning so that we (me and my mind) can come together and do the twist and go somewhere fun together.
Like Spain? Yes I do. I do like Spain. So? Go with it. With Spain. Spain of the imagination, home of Glass Eyed Joe, or Glass Jawed Pete? From "Punch Out;" he carried a rose in mouth. Or was that the Flamenco Don? Or the Don Hogan Pony Rider Express, trampling dirt roads past adobe huts and thatched roofs and thatched thongs on the beaches towards the Alamo on the Georgia coastline? Pre-nascent rum drinks and cocktails of tall wheat grasses. Custard pies of color, but not taste or consistency. Mud Honey played throughout the night?
I was once like you (the previous paragraph person). But I was taller and darker and full of piss and vinegar. I shared towels with minors. I laughed at television shows on penguins. I was culpable of mela culpea without understanding or spelling it correctly.
Oh, I fancied myself a good time. Me. A separate voice, from the paragraph two previous to this. And I am tall! Taller than a tack of.....ok. Time to pull back a second. And slow it down and get my posture together, and punch this fucking asshole in the head next to me if he keeps humming and looking over my shoulder? Maybe he is? Maybe he just saw what I wrote?
Are you reading this? Guy next to me? No? Well, are you reading this? Guy from the third paragraph from the top? A wink for me? A sly dog to sell from the pet store? Push the boundaries. Or pull back; same thing when a smile becomes the relaxed state you want. A shoebox diorama conglomeration with lego figures. A bottomless pit of circumstance. A fancied shoe polisher that also does dishes. The Hubbell.
Really, the guy next to me is a like a nudgey hound dog. I empthasize.
Now he's playing the beat with his coffee cup. He's ogling the fatties, too. This guy is not well. He's lonely and seeing women pass by in all sorts of colored pants and tops and its rainy outside; his focus is as scattered as the rain drops and he doesn't know how to make his next move, be productive, get it done. He's a pitter patter of the fallen. A decent into a kind of low-key madness.
He's not me. But I could be him in time. And why not? Everything I complain about him I project from myself, of course. Why wouldn't I? I am I? Okay? But lets see. I'm going to smile, take a deep breath, project a relaxed state to him, to myself, to my next line of written reasoning so that we (me and my mind) can come together and do the twist and go somewhere fun together.
Like Spain? Yes I do. I do like Spain. So? Go with it. With Spain. Spain of the imagination, home of Glass Eyed Joe, or Glass Jawed Pete? From "Punch Out;" he carried a rose in mouth. Or was that the Flamenco Don? Or the Don Hogan Pony Rider Express, trampling dirt roads past adobe huts and thatched roofs and thatched thongs on the beaches towards the Alamo on the Georgia coastline? Pre-nascent rum drinks and cocktails of tall wheat grasses. Custard pies of color, but not taste or consistency. Mud Honey played throughout the night?
I was once like you (the previous paragraph person). But I was taller and darker and full of piss and vinegar. I shared towels with minors. I laughed at television shows on penguins. I was culpable of mela culpea without understanding or spelling it correctly.
Oh, I fancied myself a good time. Me. A separate voice, from the paragraph two previous to this. And I am tall! Taller than a tack of.....ok. Time to pull back a second. And slow it down and get my posture together, and punch this fucking asshole in the head next to me if he keeps humming and looking over my shoulder? Maybe he is? Maybe he just saw what I wrote?
Are you reading this? Guy next to me? No? Well, are you reading this? Guy from the third paragraph from the top? A wink for me? A sly dog to sell from the pet store? Push the boundaries. Or pull back; same thing when a smile becomes the relaxed state you want. A shoebox diorama conglomeration with lego figures. A bottomless pit of circumstance. A fancied shoe polisher that also does dishes. The Hubbell.
Really, the guy next to me is a like a nudgey hound dog. I empthasize.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
A saunter a sway.
Today is Tuesday and the bells are ringing. They are the bells of Tuesday.
They are made of bronze to signify the day and its placement in the hearts and minds of the people. Its like a middle period, agrarian, bronze-age feel to the people. That is what Tuesday feels like. Its a day that feels like the early advent of smelting has just begun and that new discoveries are ahead.
Wednesday has its own bell, a more refined bronze. More pure in makeup and sound. Thursday could only be a bell of iron, and Friday is a bell made of copper wire, with Saturday and Sunday bells ringing from prerecorded bell tones. Monday? People throw stones at each other in the center and their yells are the primitive bells.
Yes, its tiny I'm told. Their metaphor for each week day is, if metaphors could be measured in weight, miniscule. Yes. I grew up here in this village till I was old enough to run away. Why?
For one thing, the Lincoln logs I played with at the hey-day of boardgames were supplanted by walrus-tusk instruments and cordials after-bed humpback tourniquets. Tie it tight to stave off the flow to the nose ear eye mouth lungs. A liquid form of everything exists in a liquid form. Last chance to bite down hard on the last chance to bite down hard.
It suffices to say that I needed to stretch it out. Go for a walk. Get moving and grooving on the day, the work load, the load-in time, the laugh track for a new generation. So I ran away.
I left my wallet in Tampa. It had too much wad in it and I said, "No, I leave this behind." And I kept moving. A saunter a sway.
They are made of bronze to signify the day and its placement in the hearts and minds of the people. Its like a middle period, agrarian, bronze-age feel to the people. That is what Tuesday feels like. Its a day that feels like the early advent of smelting has just begun and that new discoveries are ahead.
Wednesday has its own bell, a more refined bronze. More pure in makeup and sound. Thursday could only be a bell of iron, and Friday is a bell made of copper wire, with Saturday and Sunday bells ringing from prerecorded bell tones. Monday? People throw stones at each other in the center and their yells are the primitive bells.
Yes, its tiny I'm told. Their metaphor for each week day is, if metaphors could be measured in weight, miniscule. Yes. I grew up here in this village till I was old enough to run away. Why?
For one thing, the Lincoln logs I played with at the hey-day of boardgames were supplanted by walrus-tusk instruments and cordials after-bed humpback tourniquets. Tie it tight to stave off the flow to the nose ear eye mouth lungs. A liquid form of everything exists in a liquid form. Last chance to bite down hard on the last chance to bite down hard.
It suffices to say that I needed to stretch it out. Go for a walk. Get moving and grooving on the day, the work load, the load-in time, the laugh track for a new generation. So I ran away.
I left my wallet in Tampa. It had too much wad in it and I said, "No, I leave this behind." And I kept moving. A saunter a sway.
Monday, September 03, 2012
The Busuki variety. There I'm done.
It was blue, if it was red, if it was pink, or silver. It was in a color flux, and as we know, color is only attained in the reflection of light, so that this thing of perpetual changing color could never truly blame itself. It blamed the sun.
It sat on the man's desk neatly within itself, staring out the window at the sun and dreading todays appear in color, if it would change in front of the man it so adored. It hoped for nothing else to remain one color and one color only, so that in its steadiness, the man so very often absent, would stop running away and sit and spend more time with the thing.
"Oh, to be a thing of changing color!" bemoaned the thing of changing color. "If only I stabilized, the man would stabilize and stay with me forever. Oh, the pencils will finally stop laughing at me, the pictures stop posing in their lovely captured multitude of colors, the envy of the whole room. The lamp will stop making false claims that its light can cure me, for I know it would only leave me yellow and weaker than now!"
The thing wasn't always like this. Its earliest memories were only of life on the desk, no further back nor to any other place or state of being. The present condition was an expanding always; consciousness with memories never particularized to time, but forever lived and relived as lessons, boundaries enforced, the kind of breaking in a wild stallion receives. The thing had an "I" and the "I" first liked the pictures. It recognized in the many colors its own shifting many colors, though each color presented itself one at a time, sometimes two at most. It was in a state of staring, without speech, without motion, its attention trained to itself and back to pictures and back to itself. And in doing so, the thing realized that while it looked back and forth, the pictures only attention was to other pictures down the line of the desk and wall.
The object experienced a passing of time, as staring more and more at the colors in the picture and within itself revealed new details. With each new color, each new object on the desk, the thing recognized a cycle of consciousness followed by a period of sleep and an awakening back to conscious, a first look at the surroundings, and the presence of new details first experienced in memory and then seen in the surroundings.
The object became aware of a distance voice, a cooing, the man came into focus and then left. At another time, the man came back, within the thing's vision, and each time the man appeared it was in a changing color of body, in which the object recognized something more akin to itself. The man would frequently break up the cycle within the things' consciousness with his presence coming and going, imparting a second sense of time or marker within the state of consciousness for the thing to recognize.And tra la la la la.
It was the holidays. The thing had gathered that much over such a great period of time. The thing had divided conscious periods into many different quad and sub periods. In doing so, he felt disdain for the pictures, the pencils, the lamps, the other objects that cared nothing for the man of changing colored torso and legs. But mostly, the thing still hated the sun. He hated how it made him feel so good, but made him change in ways the man never changed, in ways more akin to the picture, with greens and reds and pinks and this thing would contain more than one color at a time, and then at times the colors were gone.
Oh screw it. The thing is an indoor Rhododendron. The Busuki variety. There I"m done.
It sat on the man's desk neatly within itself, staring out the window at the sun and dreading todays appear in color, if it would change in front of the man it so adored. It hoped for nothing else to remain one color and one color only, so that in its steadiness, the man so very often absent, would stop running away and sit and spend more time with the thing.
"Oh, to be a thing of changing color!" bemoaned the thing of changing color. "If only I stabilized, the man would stabilize and stay with me forever. Oh, the pencils will finally stop laughing at me, the pictures stop posing in their lovely captured multitude of colors, the envy of the whole room. The lamp will stop making false claims that its light can cure me, for I know it would only leave me yellow and weaker than now!"
The thing wasn't always like this. Its earliest memories were only of life on the desk, no further back nor to any other place or state of being. The present condition was an expanding always; consciousness with memories never particularized to time, but forever lived and relived as lessons, boundaries enforced, the kind of breaking in a wild stallion receives. The thing had an "I" and the "I" first liked the pictures. It recognized in the many colors its own shifting many colors, though each color presented itself one at a time, sometimes two at most. It was in a state of staring, without speech, without motion, its attention trained to itself and back to pictures and back to itself. And in doing so, the thing realized that while it looked back and forth, the pictures only attention was to other pictures down the line of the desk and wall.
The object experienced a passing of time, as staring more and more at the colors in the picture and within itself revealed new details. With each new color, each new object on the desk, the thing recognized a cycle of consciousness followed by a period of sleep and an awakening back to conscious, a first look at the surroundings, and the presence of new details first experienced in memory and then seen in the surroundings.
The object became aware of a distance voice, a cooing, the man came into focus and then left. At another time, the man came back, within the thing's vision, and each time the man appeared it was in a changing color of body, in which the object recognized something more akin to itself. The man would frequently break up the cycle within the things' consciousness with his presence coming and going, imparting a second sense of time or marker within the state of consciousness for the thing to recognize.And tra la la la la.
It was the holidays. The thing had gathered that much over such a great period of time. The thing had divided conscious periods into many different quad and sub periods. In doing so, he felt disdain for the pictures, the pencils, the lamps, the other objects that cared nothing for the man of changing colored torso and legs. But mostly, the thing still hated the sun. He hated how it made him feel so good, but made him change in ways the man never changed, in ways more akin to the picture, with greens and reds and pinks and this thing would contain more than one color at a time, and then at times the colors were gone.
Oh screw it. The thing is an indoor Rhododendron. The Busuki variety. There I"m done.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
I was there. I saw it. I caused it.
And it was in those dwindling days of the empire that a new dance was born. Born of terror, in fleeing from hordes, barbarians, turn frock neighbors. It was born of thunder and lightening, as in those days great storms took root over the countryside weeks at a time. It was born of hunger, as the crops suffered pestilence and neglect, and their first fruits taken by mercenary soldiers with little to heed else their bellies.
I was one of those soldiers. The shear adrenaline, say of charging into a side street melee through a village crazed me for days. Coming down from the rush, I'd feel such damn hunger, I'd run through the unburnt fields to pick a' corn, sing a' song, pick a' corn all day long till my hunger satiate.
Mayhaps that's how it all began? There's no need to put myself in the center of things for any reason other than curiosity for cause and effect (its why I took up soldiering in the first place. The hitting of things then looking at how it was smashed up.
In the corn field, winding down from the rush of battle two days before, picking a' corn and singing a' song, I heard a' scuttering through the dense shucks. I dreweth my short sword and spat, hacking my way through with some seriousness, making my presence known with full gruff of creatures in greater portion than I would ever be especially in my unarmored state, nearly as naked as those knaves who go abouts getting plundered on our weekend retreats.
Slicing through and caught notice of damaged growth and there a few feet beyond spotted children, two and three hidden, huddled, shaking, mud smeared, tattered. I stared at them, my face with as much warmth as those idols in their town square after we knocked their heads off. Though somewhat absent from my present mind, I began to whistle a happy whistle. I tapped my sandal in the mud for a beat. I rolled my eyes and sheathed my sword. I unsheathed corn and played a mock flute for the children. They giggled hesitantly to each other and then at me. I took a piece of gold from my ear and tossed it to them. I said, "Boo!" quietly for the ghosts of their ancestors we'd unearthed in our sacrilegious zeal.
They looked at the gold, then back at me and one started to cry and shake her finger at me. She was angry. I said, "Then dance!" We circled each other, clearing a space in the corn, a circle. I took off my belt, dropped my short sword and various daggers and brushes. We continued circling, sizing each other up, a hawk to a pigeon, heads bobbing, a go-go beat beatboxed by the other children gathering, a dance unseen before crafted to meet the new aims of the neglected children. Neglected in home, hearth and now war, they would go on to be the greatest generation, regarding this particular dance.
That's how I think it all happened. I was there. I saw it. I caused it.
I was one of those soldiers. The shear adrenaline, say of charging into a side street melee through a village crazed me for days. Coming down from the rush, I'd feel such damn hunger, I'd run through the unburnt fields to pick a' corn, sing a' song, pick a' corn all day long till my hunger satiate.
Mayhaps that's how it all began? There's no need to put myself in the center of things for any reason other than curiosity for cause and effect (its why I took up soldiering in the first place. The hitting of things then looking at how it was smashed up.
In the corn field, winding down from the rush of battle two days before, picking a' corn and singing a' song, I heard a' scuttering through the dense shucks. I dreweth my short sword and spat, hacking my way through with some seriousness, making my presence known with full gruff of creatures in greater portion than I would ever be especially in my unarmored state, nearly as naked as those knaves who go abouts getting plundered on our weekend retreats.
Slicing through and caught notice of damaged growth and there a few feet beyond spotted children, two and three hidden, huddled, shaking, mud smeared, tattered. I stared at them, my face with as much warmth as those idols in their town square after we knocked their heads off. Though somewhat absent from my present mind, I began to whistle a happy whistle. I tapped my sandal in the mud for a beat. I rolled my eyes and sheathed my sword. I unsheathed corn and played a mock flute for the children. They giggled hesitantly to each other and then at me. I took a piece of gold from my ear and tossed it to them. I said, "Boo!" quietly for the ghosts of their ancestors we'd unearthed in our sacrilegious zeal.
They looked at the gold, then back at me and one started to cry and shake her finger at me. She was angry. I said, "Then dance!" We circled each other, clearing a space in the corn, a circle. I took off my belt, dropped my short sword and various daggers and brushes. We continued circling, sizing each other up, a hawk to a pigeon, heads bobbing, a go-go beat beatboxed by the other children gathering, a dance unseen before crafted to meet the new aims of the neglected children. Neglected in home, hearth and now war, they would go on to be the greatest generation, regarding this particular dance.
That's how I think it all happened. I was there. I saw it. I caused it.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Gargadoodle. Do.
Sometimes you have to go with what you know. Its hard to go with what you don't know, because you don't know how to do it. It would be called a leap of faith, but in doing so, your leap is built off of something previously known. An entity or action with certain credentials. An offshore platform for bank accounts. A place to shout out loud with old friends, a den for the witches of Eastwick, or New Brunswick. Or a stick to throw for a certain hound dog mentioned in the last blog to chase down and chew upon...
...The ground gets softer with each step towards the creek. The whole area was once under water, from the winding of the waters path to a mile back up hill towards the cul d sac. Even up to a month prior, where we tread would have been ankle deep in water. The frogs still made their presence known, hopping from mud beds and into twigs, washed up leaves, tiny ferns and bramble. Footprints in the mud could belong to a raccoon, a badger, or perhaps the one we were looking for; a creature known as Gargadoodle.
She was long and tall and swayed like a willow tree. She wasn't Gargadoodle. But she knew of Gargadoodle. And I didn't care about Gargadoodle one bit. I cared about her. I wanted that deep hurt look she gave to stare into my deep hurt look I once craved to send back at the world, but now only wanted the balance achieved like that of the left and right hands of two'sies held tight.
You see, Gargadoodle was a ploy. To know him was to love him. And in loving him I became a vehicle for love to focus on my equal opposite. I hoped it was she beside me, both of us nearly ankle deep in mud as we came closer to the creek, our paddles packed tight in our waterproof bags, our inflatable raft lips ready to press against the mouth of our oxygen tank, our journey to find Gargadoodle on track.
Why Gargadoodle? The name, I mean? I don't know. I could always go back and find a different, less silly name. A more mature sounding name. A more sly, deft allusion to something reflexive showcasing my wit and literary might. But nay. My one day lady love out there will share a love of the name bespoken before. Gargadoodle. Do.
...The ground gets softer with each step towards the creek. The whole area was once under water, from the winding of the waters path to a mile back up hill towards the cul d sac. Even up to a month prior, where we tread would have been ankle deep in water. The frogs still made their presence known, hopping from mud beds and into twigs, washed up leaves, tiny ferns and bramble. Footprints in the mud could belong to a raccoon, a badger, or perhaps the one we were looking for; a creature known as Gargadoodle.
She was long and tall and swayed like a willow tree. She wasn't Gargadoodle. But she knew of Gargadoodle. And I didn't care about Gargadoodle one bit. I cared about her. I wanted that deep hurt look she gave to stare into my deep hurt look I once craved to send back at the world, but now only wanted the balance achieved like that of the left and right hands of two'sies held tight.
You see, Gargadoodle was a ploy. To know him was to love him. And in loving him I became a vehicle for love to focus on my equal opposite. I hoped it was she beside me, both of us nearly ankle deep in mud as we came closer to the creek, our paddles packed tight in our waterproof bags, our inflatable raft lips ready to press against the mouth of our oxygen tank, our journey to find Gargadoodle on track.
Why Gargadoodle? The name, I mean? I don't know. I could always go back and find a different, less silly name. A more mature sounding name. A more sly, deft allusion to something reflexive showcasing my wit and literary might. But nay. My one day lady love out there will share a love of the name bespoken before. Gargadoodle. Do.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Or will be so...in the future!?
A hunting we will go, in our tuxedos, for in a moment's notice we may need to dance and sip champagne.
We're out in the wilderness. A slice of heaven, Parksdale, Missouri. A skyline from here to ya-ya. I bet those clouds go all the way up.
I was being stared at, as usual, by a hound dog. He was panting an easy going smile. He tried to maintain eye contact, and I with him, as we in the group munched cold chicken on the heated rocks, the opening of the trail within the over wise dense bushes, dense like a homemade pesto. Dense like a fire-brick pizza. Dense like a backyard game of hopscotch. The trail was dense like everything we left behind in old New York.
Except, it was a different kind of dense. It was uniform. It was in the natural world with a natural order. Sure, the backyard and stoop squabbles down 5th by the Bowery were if nothing natural. Natural to the area, to the squalor, the glint of sun off bricks, reflections distorted in show-room mirrors where person and product shown back in unified and deified light. Natural like the young girls flipping their hair at anyone with the fleeting attention that papa couldn't deliver between working night shifts and drinking away day shifts. Natural as the word "bupkus" spit between Spanish and Italian by men in shirtsleeves playing dominoes to beat the afternoon heat.
But we were in a real nature now. Natural as natural only in the density of the unification of what it was that made of the thing. Examples? Just go outside and breathe the fresh air, you termite. Stop burrowing into my bad writing for a taste. Its out there.
So anyway. Me. The group eating. The hound dog staring. Parksdale, Missouri. The sun was going down and we were getting sleepy, overheated in our tuxedos. Still awaiting word from the party ahead on whether to make camp and take out the partyfare, the champagne, the whistles and blowers and mad-cap laughs.
It was almost New Years. Did I mention that? Yup. Almost. It was a month away, and we were doing reconnasance to see if an outdoor hiking biddy party in tuxedos could be done for our farewell to the year 2887.
Did I mention it was the future? And we all had dog ears as a genetic mutation? And dog ears had us? And dogs were still dogs, but we could empathize more because we could all hear really good, and listening is the key to empathy? I think I forgot to mention those parts.
But its all true, nothing but the true, so help me Trudy.
Did I mention the hound dog was named Trudy? Or will be so...in the future!?
We're out in the wilderness. A slice of heaven, Parksdale, Missouri. A skyline from here to ya-ya. I bet those clouds go all the way up.
I was being stared at, as usual, by a hound dog. He was panting an easy going smile. He tried to maintain eye contact, and I with him, as we in the group munched cold chicken on the heated rocks, the opening of the trail within the over wise dense bushes, dense like a homemade pesto. Dense like a fire-brick pizza. Dense like a backyard game of hopscotch. The trail was dense like everything we left behind in old New York.
Except, it was a different kind of dense. It was uniform. It was in the natural world with a natural order. Sure, the backyard and stoop squabbles down 5th by the Bowery were if nothing natural. Natural to the area, to the squalor, the glint of sun off bricks, reflections distorted in show-room mirrors where person and product shown back in unified and deified light. Natural like the young girls flipping their hair at anyone with the fleeting attention that papa couldn't deliver between working night shifts and drinking away day shifts. Natural as the word "bupkus" spit between Spanish and Italian by men in shirtsleeves playing dominoes to beat the afternoon heat.
But we were in a real nature now. Natural as natural only in the density of the unification of what it was that made of the thing. Examples? Just go outside and breathe the fresh air, you termite. Stop burrowing into my bad writing for a taste. Its out there.
So anyway. Me. The group eating. The hound dog staring. Parksdale, Missouri. The sun was going down and we were getting sleepy, overheated in our tuxedos. Still awaiting word from the party ahead on whether to make camp and take out the partyfare, the champagne, the whistles and blowers and mad-cap laughs.
It was almost New Years. Did I mention that? Yup. Almost. It was a month away, and we were doing reconnasance to see if an outdoor hiking biddy party in tuxedos could be done for our farewell to the year 2887.
Did I mention it was the future? And we all had dog ears as a genetic mutation? And dog ears had us? And dogs were still dogs, but we could empathize more because we could all hear really good, and listening is the key to empathy? I think I forgot to mention those parts.
But its all true, nothing but the true, so help me Trudy.
Did I mention the hound dog was named Trudy? Or will be so...in the future!?
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Did they have hobbies? Did they think about him? Cats.
That's why they call me bloggy Monday. Because I said so. Its the reason and I'm the rhyme. I'm the scheme and the dollar sign. I got deals that Cohen can't match, my optics latch to the latest catch and color me blind.
Its time to unwind with another installment of GC Subconscious.
Dog wind chime mutt strutt mcGoo.
If I could add one more element. Mountain man Wanted for Rodeo, Mixed Genre Beard-Oriented Confederate Send-Off, engagement, one-night only.
Shallow dissapear into the abysss. The shallow abyss.
Some people go into nature to leave the complications of the everyday and to meditate, perhaps seeking unity through the memories past that made up key moments in their lives. They need to leave the distractions for the unity of motion and intention in nature. And they do.
They do. I should. They go, I stay. Process of salt water in my veins, I'm ship on my mental sea in need of high tide while standing still I still rock along.
Oblong is the shape of my rear end from so much sitting, still my mind goes a mile a minute. In Euro, it would be a kilometer per three fourths a minute. In liters, in litters, a kitten hero arises, a cook, on Schemerhorn, not far Atlantic from me.
The management of the building didn't know what to do with the litter of backyard kitties born one cold December day. Many were given away, but one runt couldn't be placed with a decent home. So the little lady of the Management, Delorita, took in the baby cat. Named him TinTin de'Clawed. Made him a chef. Gave him lessons in pastries and rudimentary basting of meats. Told him that a good chef always tastes, a great chef spits up hairballs. It wasn't true, but the cat couldn't understand English, anyhow.
But he understood the showing. He understand the demonstrations and took to it like a substitute for cat nip. He chased the "laser pen" of knowledge all around the kitchen and through his years, learned all sorts; knife skills, herbs, soups, timing the courses, and of course, how to make friends with the mice so they stay away–for simply chasing them only leads to cartoonish behavior, and letting them be is nip for the health inspectors.
They were a team, Cat and Delorita. And they cooked! Mostly for family meals.
Many times cat looked out the window. Thinking about his brothers and sisters in their homes? What their lives were like? Did they have hobbies? Did they think about him? Cats.
Its time to unwind with another installment of GC Subconscious.
Dog wind chime mutt strutt mcGoo.
If I could add one more element. Mountain man Wanted for Rodeo, Mixed Genre Beard-Oriented Confederate Send-Off, engagement, one-night only.
Shallow dissapear into the abysss. The shallow abyss.
Some people go into nature to leave the complications of the everyday and to meditate, perhaps seeking unity through the memories past that made up key moments in their lives. They need to leave the distractions for the unity of motion and intention in nature. And they do.
They do. I should. They go, I stay. Process of salt water in my veins, I'm ship on my mental sea in need of high tide while standing still I still rock along.
Oblong is the shape of my rear end from so much sitting, still my mind goes a mile a minute. In Euro, it would be a kilometer per three fourths a minute. In liters, in litters, a kitten hero arises, a cook, on Schemerhorn, not far Atlantic from me.
The management of the building didn't know what to do with the litter of backyard kitties born one cold December day. Many were given away, but one runt couldn't be placed with a decent home. So the little lady of the Management, Delorita, took in the baby cat. Named him TinTin de'Clawed. Made him a chef. Gave him lessons in pastries and rudimentary basting of meats. Told him that a good chef always tastes, a great chef spits up hairballs. It wasn't true, but the cat couldn't understand English, anyhow.
But he understood the showing. He understand the demonstrations and took to it like a substitute for cat nip. He chased the "laser pen" of knowledge all around the kitchen and through his years, learned all sorts; knife skills, herbs, soups, timing the courses, and of course, how to make friends with the mice so they stay away–for simply chasing them only leads to cartoonish behavior, and letting them be is nip for the health inspectors.
They were a team, Cat and Delorita. And they cooked! Mostly for family meals.
Many times cat looked out the window. Thinking about his brothers and sisters in their homes? What their lives were like? Did they have hobbies? Did they think about him? Cats.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
the buzz of bees
A constant buzz was in the air. The flowers were full of them, but also the tall grasses, the beach sand, the low lit cabins at night. It was nearly the end of summer and like the bees, whose sound they emulate, the plants, trees, humans, even inanimate things were all getting busy.
I was in Cabin 9 with my new friend, Patrice. She was one score past seventeen. I found her milling about the supplies store with her cat in a bag peeking out. She'd seen a lot in her days and still loved to boogie down the aisles as the Isley Brothers played over the tiny speakers. There was little room for bass coming from those speakers, planted high on the ways, still Patrice swayed from corn starch to baked goods humming low notes to fill out the needs for the song.
I saw her in the check out line. I distracted an elder lady, pointing to the gum and slipped by to be behind her. Patrice saw my move, and when I put down the plastic bar to divide her purchases from my own on the rubber belt to the cashier, she took the bar in hand and gave me a smack on the arm.
At first alarmed, I then took one of my farm fresh eggs and threw it at her shoes. She laughed a deep and intense laugh, her tiny frame shuddering, her long, blonde curls thrown back with her body an arc to boom out her continuous laughter with force to reach through floorboards below and through my very shoes. A quake.
The quince paste? She rubbed in my face.
The mustard? I got on her skirt.
The kumquats? She made me do squats, bending low and taking a bite with each dip.
The cashier thought us crazy. We were. But not crazy enough to know how to get to the next place to elongate our craziness. We paid, offered to clean, but instead were pushed out by broom and it seemed we were buddies to be.
I flipped a coin. She caught it in the air. I said I didn't care and we'd go to cabin 9. We did. We made a feast of frozen things in the oven–which all came out spectacular. We made like the bees. We were busy. We played Yahtzee. She sneezed a few times, I took that as a mating sign. I dove for her and we made the most out of the dwindling sunlight, the summers final offerings in powerful scents and smells as the sensory world would again be shepherded by old man winter into the luminous final stages of the year.
We were people of the fall, anyway. Apple pickers. Tree climbers. Collectors of all things nuts. We were predisposed with a genetic understanding of winter and the shadow of death. We were star children betting on a place beyond death, though just below the furrowed brow, in some furrowed frontal lobe, we unconsciously understood that pain and suffering to get to the next astral plain would be unbearable. We were like onions. We felt compassion for them–that's why we cried each time cutting a peeling them, thinking of all the layers we'd sliced away, heated in the skillet of final agony, becoming translucent, ghost-like but oh so flavorful! All in order to make it to the next stage, the next showtime, the next performance if karma was a cooking show, surely we'd been through the prep stages. Surely.
But it wasn't up to us to name the time and place of presentation. It was the show's producers, the cosmos–and one got the feeling, especially while laying out at the beach dropping eggs on each other, pushing away the hungry hermit crabs and shooing away seagulls–that maybe the cosmos were askew. What if they hired the wrong host for the show of shows? What is said host wasn't ready with lines memorized, the corporal being prepared to deliver with conviction when the cameras began shooting?
Oh. It was illuminating and the purple from the night sea, the inky inkiness so apparent in the last chapters on the road; we succumbed in slumber and woke to find ourselves as ourselves, curious about this person wrapped well in our arms as ivy, shaken as whole milk to butter, the buzz of bees.
I was in Cabin 9 with my new friend, Patrice. She was one score past seventeen. I found her milling about the supplies store with her cat in a bag peeking out. She'd seen a lot in her days and still loved to boogie down the aisles as the Isley Brothers played over the tiny speakers. There was little room for bass coming from those speakers, planted high on the ways, still Patrice swayed from corn starch to baked goods humming low notes to fill out the needs for the song.
I saw her in the check out line. I distracted an elder lady, pointing to the gum and slipped by to be behind her. Patrice saw my move, and when I put down the plastic bar to divide her purchases from my own on the rubber belt to the cashier, she took the bar in hand and gave me a smack on the arm.
At first alarmed, I then took one of my farm fresh eggs and threw it at her shoes. She laughed a deep and intense laugh, her tiny frame shuddering, her long, blonde curls thrown back with her body an arc to boom out her continuous laughter with force to reach through floorboards below and through my very shoes. A quake.
The quince paste? She rubbed in my face.
The mustard? I got on her skirt.
The kumquats? She made me do squats, bending low and taking a bite with each dip.
The cashier thought us crazy. We were. But not crazy enough to know how to get to the next place to elongate our craziness. We paid, offered to clean, but instead were pushed out by broom and it seemed we were buddies to be.
I flipped a coin. She caught it in the air. I said I didn't care and we'd go to cabin 9. We did. We made a feast of frozen things in the oven–which all came out spectacular. We made like the bees. We were busy. We played Yahtzee. She sneezed a few times, I took that as a mating sign. I dove for her and we made the most out of the dwindling sunlight, the summers final offerings in powerful scents and smells as the sensory world would again be shepherded by old man winter into the luminous final stages of the year.
We were people of the fall, anyway. Apple pickers. Tree climbers. Collectors of all things nuts. We were predisposed with a genetic understanding of winter and the shadow of death. We were star children betting on a place beyond death, though just below the furrowed brow, in some furrowed frontal lobe, we unconsciously understood that pain and suffering to get to the next astral plain would be unbearable. We were like onions. We felt compassion for them–that's why we cried each time cutting a peeling them, thinking of all the layers we'd sliced away, heated in the skillet of final agony, becoming translucent, ghost-like but oh so flavorful! All in order to make it to the next stage, the next showtime, the next performance if karma was a cooking show, surely we'd been through the prep stages. Surely.
But it wasn't up to us to name the time and place of presentation. It was the show's producers, the cosmos–and one got the feeling, especially while laying out at the beach dropping eggs on each other, pushing away the hungry hermit crabs and shooing away seagulls–that maybe the cosmos were askew. What if they hired the wrong host for the show of shows? What is said host wasn't ready with lines memorized, the corporal being prepared to deliver with conviction when the cameras began shooting?
Oh. It was illuminating and the purple from the night sea, the inky inkiness so apparent in the last chapters on the road; we succumbed in slumber and woke to find ourselves as ourselves, curious about this person wrapped well in our arms as ivy, shaken as whole milk to butter, the buzz of bees.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
dirk storm strum the accordion.
On the life and death of Willard Oates. No, wait, on the life and death of Willard Oates. No wait. On the life and death of Willard Oates. No, not yet. On the sanctimonious sanctions on the life and death of Willard Oates, and Johnny Hasbeen.
Hart strings hammer lock click bang. Sausage party, too many men, disruptions. No need to fight now, no need to right wrongs, no need to get by with all the caviar. Women heal women heal women heal. Heal toe, cha cha cha. Simple, elegant, secret element. soda fountain fought and fighting, hold the torch there's no more hiding hard up hamstrings no more running tired dirk storm strum the accordion.
Monday, August 06, 2012
so that would actually not be surprising there
Richard was on the mic, the spotlight beamed solely from his neck up. All else was dark. He wasn't doing well.
Yes, even the lighting guy turned on him after a series of bad puns and ill timed elbow scratches. Was Richard once again doomed to bomb? Was his life as a rising comedic star to be dashed? He had to think fast.
And that was his problem. He was thinking. He should have been doing. He wasn't seasoned enough a working comedian. In fact, he only had one good line but it took him far and wide. One one minute joke, and then nine minutes of fluff he could do nothing with.
That one line, more a curse than blessing. For years he'd been doing open mics on the lower east side. The night before (sometimes the hour before) he'd write on a cocktail napkin the five things wrong with a selected topic, usually found in a newspaper, in the trash, near the cafe the open mic took place. The crumpled quality and creases could make funny word play out of any metro topic.
And he was tolerated. By those also thankful to at least be tolerated, they laughed, and with unease. It was a sickening five hour weekly ordeal for all those involved, like a waiting room to a dentist who only stole a tooth a visit till the once bright-eyed and bushy tailed–still remaining bright-eyed and bushy tailed–looked a little crazy with gaps in their radiant smile.
Somehow, Richard got hold of one good joke about dogs and it stuck. The first time used,an October Monday, he started with a smile and a pause and spat it out. There was a surprise chuckle from those seated which echoed to the back bar. The chuckles spread like the chuckles of the Irish, with a twist at the end as if questioning the light fare of the humor, like the first time as a child realizing you could hear yourself laugh in your head verse laughing out loud, and then experimenting with the feeling and sound.
It was so good a joke that Richard got standing handshakes coming off stage. The top jokers actually put down their notes, which they only consult in between acts, and looked him in the face. It was a look of hard-earned, begrudged respect. A crowd of ten elders gathered, funny men who legend had it had sold jokes to cable tv shows. They asked him to do it again next week. Richard was if anything curious. He agreed, but still had to compute in his head what he did right. "Why so funny?" he wondered.
The next week and the week that followed he could do no wrong. They all waited for the one joke within his otherwise horrific list of zingers based on the summer city heat index. Each set he placed this golden egg in different settings within the otherwise rotten eleven; the top, the end, the middle, the middle-end, the top-top. He got to be a real craftsmen devoted to creating an arc to his act, to looking cold and hard at his lists and ask aloud, "Is this shit?" He started tweaking everything.
And then he got the call from Warner Brothers. Not "the" Warner Brothers, but Joyce Brothers brothers Warner and Timmy. I should have written Warner and Timmy Brothers, come to think of it.
Anyway, they wanted to book the act they heard so much about, had come to see a few times themselves. So they did. Gotham! Phil's! Gerties'! Comedy Madness! All the big venues, Richard did his act. And the people kind of loved him? He at least got by. They didn't mind the stink as long as the one funny joke acted as a breeze, fresh air clearing out all the stale jokes left behind from the night, from the day, from their own jobs, lives, lies, license to laugh.
Richard, again, was, if anything, curious. And he couldn't really take being a one joke man, simply because he wanted to know why. Why was it funny? Why was the rest of the material so bad. What is the secret formula that can be tapped and applied to make shit into gold?
He'd been told one must steal, beat, and break to get inside a joke. And he tried it all. At home he'd shut off the lights, draw the curtains and take out a gun. He'd hold it into the air and address the joke. He'd make his demands for the secret. He'd pull the hammer back and wait. Ge got tired of the approach day after day and decided to bribe the joke. He held up ham sandwiches, bottles of brandy, girlie magazines (the joke sections), but still nothing.
He'd write down the joke and think about each word. He'd rearrange them, retranslate them, sub in one for another. Still nothing was illuminated. And another gig was only a day away. He started to sweat.
Yeah, so back to the top. The spotlight is a guillotine. Richard knows his time is up. He's over thinking. He was told not to, but he can't stop thinking about not over thinking. So he does what any sane person would do, he over-over thinks with the idea that if the engine in his mind goes fast enough he can transcend time and space.
He wakes up the next day in 1955. Oh wait, it was New Years Eve, by the way. Of the year 1954, so that would actually not be surprising there. I should really edit this.
Yes, even the lighting guy turned on him after a series of bad puns and ill timed elbow scratches. Was Richard once again doomed to bomb? Was his life as a rising comedic star to be dashed? He had to think fast.
And that was his problem. He was thinking. He should have been doing. He wasn't seasoned enough a working comedian. In fact, he only had one good line but it took him far and wide. One one minute joke, and then nine minutes of fluff he could do nothing with.
That one line, more a curse than blessing. For years he'd been doing open mics on the lower east side. The night before (sometimes the hour before) he'd write on a cocktail napkin the five things wrong with a selected topic, usually found in a newspaper, in the trash, near the cafe the open mic took place. The crumpled quality and creases could make funny word play out of any metro topic.
And he was tolerated. By those also thankful to at least be tolerated, they laughed, and with unease. It was a sickening five hour weekly ordeal for all those involved, like a waiting room to a dentist who only stole a tooth a visit till the once bright-eyed and bushy tailed–still remaining bright-eyed and bushy tailed–looked a little crazy with gaps in their radiant smile.
Somehow, Richard got hold of one good joke about dogs and it stuck. The first time used,an October Monday, he started with a smile and a pause and spat it out. There was a surprise chuckle from those seated which echoed to the back bar. The chuckles spread like the chuckles of the Irish, with a twist at the end as if questioning the light fare of the humor, like the first time as a child realizing you could hear yourself laugh in your head verse laughing out loud, and then experimenting with the feeling and sound.
It was so good a joke that Richard got standing handshakes coming off stage. The top jokers actually put down their notes, which they only consult in between acts, and looked him in the face. It was a look of hard-earned, begrudged respect. A crowd of ten elders gathered, funny men who legend had it had sold jokes to cable tv shows. They asked him to do it again next week. Richard was if anything curious. He agreed, but still had to compute in his head what he did right. "Why so funny?" he wondered.
The next week and the week that followed he could do no wrong. They all waited for the one joke within his otherwise horrific list of zingers based on the summer city heat index. Each set he placed this golden egg in different settings within the otherwise rotten eleven; the top, the end, the middle, the middle-end, the top-top. He got to be a real craftsmen devoted to creating an arc to his act, to looking cold and hard at his lists and ask aloud, "Is this shit?" He started tweaking everything.
And then he got the call from Warner Brothers. Not "the" Warner Brothers, but Joyce Brothers brothers Warner and Timmy. I should have written Warner and Timmy Brothers, come to think of it.
Anyway, they wanted to book the act they heard so much about, had come to see a few times themselves. So they did. Gotham! Phil's! Gerties'! Comedy Madness! All the big venues, Richard did his act. And the people kind of loved him? He at least got by. They didn't mind the stink as long as the one funny joke acted as a breeze, fresh air clearing out all the stale jokes left behind from the night, from the day, from their own jobs, lives, lies, license to laugh.
Richard, again, was, if anything, curious. And he couldn't really take being a one joke man, simply because he wanted to know why. Why was it funny? Why was the rest of the material so bad. What is the secret formula that can be tapped and applied to make shit into gold?
He'd been told one must steal, beat, and break to get inside a joke. And he tried it all. At home he'd shut off the lights, draw the curtains and take out a gun. He'd hold it into the air and address the joke. He'd make his demands for the secret. He'd pull the hammer back and wait. Ge got tired of the approach day after day and decided to bribe the joke. He held up ham sandwiches, bottles of brandy, girlie magazines (the joke sections), but still nothing.
He'd write down the joke and think about each word. He'd rearrange them, retranslate them, sub in one for another. Still nothing was illuminated. And another gig was only a day away. He started to sweat.
Yeah, so back to the top. The spotlight is a guillotine. Richard knows his time is up. He's over thinking. He was told not to, but he can't stop thinking about not over thinking. So he does what any sane person would do, he over-over thinks with the idea that if the engine in his mind goes fast enough he can transcend time and space.
He wakes up the next day in 1955. Oh wait, it was New Years Eve, by the way. Of the year 1954, so that would actually not be surprising there. I should really edit this.
Friday, August 03, 2012
if they in fact had a happy ending, all of them, as stars.
They called her The One. She was followed by The Two and The Three.
They were former inmates at Sing Sing.
Not the prison, but the song. They were backup singers. They did stints in the 60s. Two week runs, six nights a week, five hours straight with forty minutes on and twenty minutes off.
They were last in Boston. A lot of mob bosses owned the clubs. They particularly liked the swing music and being an r&b combo, their group only knew one. So they played Sing, Sing over and over, five times a night, six nights a week.
The band had no horns. And that's when the singers stepped in to mimic the parts, hand motions and all. 1 = Gladys, trumpet. 2 = Ethel, clarinet/ alto sax 3 = Josephine, trombone.
Otherwise, they sang back up for Aretha type songs while Fats McGee played piano and sang, all the way from New Orleans to country western to cool jazz. Rogers on bass, Timmy on drums, Leroy on guitar.
Fats & His Tummy Rubs was the billing for they way they sang and presented the tunes in nightclubs across the northeast and down south.
At first the girls liked the gig. They were fresh-faced, had heard of Fats through the same church circles in which they themselves met; few times a year at pageants and youth conferences.
But you know how these things go. No? Well, I got to get back to practicing so without having to throw anything crazy in the mix, lets just say they all got along and became stars. All of them. They are remembered today as the Pointer Sisters (I'll have to go on wikipedia, read their bio and see if they in fact had a happy ending, all of them, as stars. But for now, lets go with it).
They were former inmates at Sing Sing.
Not the prison, but the song. They were backup singers. They did stints in the 60s. Two week runs, six nights a week, five hours straight with forty minutes on and twenty minutes off.
They were last in Boston. A lot of mob bosses owned the clubs. They particularly liked the swing music and being an r&b combo, their group only knew one. So they played Sing, Sing over and over, five times a night, six nights a week.
The band had no horns. And that's when the singers stepped in to mimic the parts, hand motions and all. 1 = Gladys, trumpet. 2 = Ethel, clarinet/ alto sax 3 = Josephine, trombone.
Otherwise, they sang back up for Aretha type songs while Fats McGee played piano and sang, all the way from New Orleans to country western to cool jazz. Rogers on bass, Timmy on drums, Leroy on guitar.
Fats & His Tummy Rubs was the billing for they way they sang and presented the tunes in nightclubs across the northeast and down south.
At first the girls liked the gig. They were fresh-faced, had heard of Fats through the same church circles in which they themselves met; few times a year at pageants and youth conferences.
But you know how these things go. No? Well, I got to get back to practicing so without having to throw anything crazy in the mix, lets just say they all got along and became stars. All of them. They are remembered today as the Pointer Sisters (I'll have to go on wikipedia, read their bio and see if they in fact had a happy ending, all of them, as stars. But for now, lets go with it).
Thursday, August 02, 2012
lighthouse on the lake shore up north
Ship-shape and shapeless at the same time, Bernadette swaddled her baby in a towel and headed down the main drag towards the pharmacy.
"I'll take two of these," she declared to the boy behind the counter. She held up a glass pacifier. The boy looked at the baby and then back to Bernadette.
"You want the glass ones, ma'am?"
"Yes, I do," she replied, "two of them."
Bernadette caught the boy's glances. She signed and moved through the aisles and racks of greeting cards and old folks rummaging. She picked up her paper bag, paid and left folding the receipt for her dress front pocket.
She walked Greene street towards the pier as the sun set, giving the baby boy a slight bounce on the cobblestone. She thought of her sister up north and the upcoming baby shower. She'd have to plan quick, take the train on a Thursday to make the most of the weekend. Baby showers in the bigger cities. She wondered if people brought their young children; would a baby ruin the surprise, dampen the anticipation and excitement when they start behaving as babies do?
She'd never had a baby shower of her own. She kept things quiet and liked it that way through the lean years and as the family gathered a little wealth unto themselves. Had a partner in her good husband, holding similar interests and hobbies. For one, she liked holding the bills on her lap while painting. Specifically, she enjoyed acrylics on the paint-by-numbers. She'd follow the instructions, sometimes mixing her own shades for a #1 blue, and giving a fade to the skyline with a little dab of orange and a smidgeon of white.
As she made her way to the water, a few stars out, the little one under her arm cooing, she thought again about her sister, the dresses they wore, the patterns they used. How different will it be? With Bernadette's oldest child just starting pre-school, the age difference could play out how between the siblings? Will they fight more or less? Will they share secrets? She always held an image of her sister as her pretty little thing, through it all and all. When they smiled together, strangers took notice, strangers that otherwise passed them by as two more children about their games.
"There are mines, and the jewels inside," went the night song they'd sing. Bernadette and her sister shared the room in those early days, their voices low hum, a beacon through the darkness between their beds. She'd sing and imagine the two of them going down a mine like in the Saturday morning movie she'd seen, and toiling and chiseling, flashlight helmets in the dark, finding ores of brightest green and orange and yellow. They'd chip away huge chunks of it. Not like jewels worth millions, but like the cookie chunk found in a sundae at Frannie's Homemade.
Down at the pier, she could smell the rain, a muddy lake water, catch a glimpse from the lighthouse on the lake shore up north.
"I'll take two of these," she declared to the boy behind the counter. She held up a glass pacifier. The boy looked at the baby and then back to Bernadette.
"You want the glass ones, ma'am?"
"Yes, I do," she replied, "two of them."
Bernadette caught the boy's glances. She signed and moved through the aisles and racks of greeting cards and old folks rummaging. She picked up her paper bag, paid and left folding the receipt for her dress front pocket.
She walked Greene street towards the pier as the sun set, giving the baby boy a slight bounce on the cobblestone. She thought of her sister up north and the upcoming baby shower. She'd have to plan quick, take the train on a Thursday to make the most of the weekend. Baby showers in the bigger cities. She wondered if people brought their young children; would a baby ruin the surprise, dampen the anticipation and excitement when they start behaving as babies do?
She'd never had a baby shower of her own. She kept things quiet and liked it that way through the lean years and as the family gathered a little wealth unto themselves. Had a partner in her good husband, holding similar interests and hobbies. For one, she liked holding the bills on her lap while painting. Specifically, she enjoyed acrylics on the paint-by-numbers. She'd follow the instructions, sometimes mixing her own shades for a #1 blue, and giving a fade to the skyline with a little dab of orange and a smidgeon of white.
As she made her way to the water, a few stars out, the little one under her arm cooing, she thought again about her sister, the dresses they wore, the patterns they used. How different will it be? With Bernadette's oldest child just starting pre-school, the age difference could play out how between the siblings? Will they fight more or less? Will they share secrets? She always held an image of her sister as her pretty little thing, through it all and all. When they smiled together, strangers took notice, strangers that otherwise passed them by as two more children about their games.
"There are mines, and the jewels inside," went the night song they'd sing. Bernadette and her sister shared the room in those early days, their voices low hum, a beacon through the darkness between their beds. She'd sing and imagine the two of them going down a mine like in the Saturday morning movie she'd seen, and toiling and chiseling, flashlight helmets in the dark, finding ores of brightest green and orange and yellow. They'd chip away huge chunks of it. Not like jewels worth millions, but like the cookie chunk found in a sundae at Frannie's Homemade.
Down at the pier, she could smell the rain, a muddy lake water, catch a glimpse from the lighthouse on the lake shore up north.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
dog, cat, mouse, broom; dog, cat, mouse, broom.
A writer is to their handwriting as an owner walking their dog.
I lifted that line from my old notebook. Now to tease it out. A dog's snout can sniff up a whirlwind of scents, but we, the owners, can't lay claim to the olfactory of our beloved animals. We can just see that they enjoy what they're doing. And vicariously, we feel joy in doing, sensing, the doggie busy-body.
Isn't that enough? You, the selfish, who would lay claim to both beast and burden? Let it go. Let them have their way. You don't need to micromanage your dog or cat with bird songs. You still have the dishes to do, by the way. And bills to pay.
And when winter comes along, if those bills aren't paid, are you gonna be able to afford Jordy's new four-leg sweater in the cold months, his once luxurious fur thinning out through his exponentially sped up doggie years?
Focus on your own olfactory. Take joy sensed through your own five. Stop stopping off at the hamper to huff on yesterday's merits. Stop climbing down the ladders you've risen just to rise again and admire the view of past competitor's receding hair lines.
These are the dog days of summer, I've been told. They are followed by the cat days of fall, chasing the mouse days of winter, and the mouse shits on the broom of spring that knocks about the dog, cat, mouse, broom; dog, cat, mouse, broom.
Coda
Soften the softener used in said laundry when you do finally wash out the clothes stored in said hamper of the past glories.
The dryer sheets of the mind add nothing to the design and cleaning the lint before is futile. Only clean after.
Sensory deprivation will get you no invitation to the ball. On the other hand, trying to own your pet's best senses will only get you invited to the pound.
Without construct, there is only missed opportunities to destruct.
Without a claim, you will still most likely be allowed to retrieve your dry cleaning. But its a hassle.
I lifted that line from my old notebook. Now to tease it out. A dog's snout can sniff up a whirlwind of scents, but we, the owners, can't lay claim to the olfactory of our beloved animals. We can just see that they enjoy what they're doing. And vicariously, we feel joy in doing, sensing, the doggie busy-body.
Isn't that enough? You, the selfish, who would lay claim to both beast and burden? Let it go. Let them have their way. You don't need to micromanage your dog or cat with bird songs. You still have the dishes to do, by the way. And bills to pay.
And when winter comes along, if those bills aren't paid, are you gonna be able to afford Jordy's new four-leg sweater in the cold months, his once luxurious fur thinning out through his exponentially sped up doggie years?
Focus on your own olfactory. Take joy sensed through your own five. Stop stopping off at the hamper to huff on yesterday's merits. Stop climbing down the ladders you've risen just to rise again and admire the view of past competitor's receding hair lines.
These are the dog days of summer, I've been told. They are followed by the cat days of fall, chasing the mouse days of winter, and the mouse shits on the broom of spring that knocks about the dog, cat, mouse, broom; dog, cat, mouse, broom.
Coda
Soften the softener used in said laundry when you do finally wash out the clothes stored in said hamper of the past glories.
The dryer sheets of the mind add nothing to the design and cleaning the lint before is futile. Only clean after.
Sensory deprivation will get you no invitation to the ball. On the other hand, trying to own your pet's best senses will only get you invited to the pound.
Without construct, there is only missed opportunities to destruct.
Without a claim, you will still most likely be allowed to retrieve your dry cleaning. But its a hassle.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.
"There is no room at the inn."
I'd been hearing that all day. From inn to inn as we inched our way down the crowded Gotica area of Barcelona. I was surprised, because I knew this area as the tourist section with hostels, hotels catering to a crowd with limit currency.
And Spain's overall economy being what it was, I was confused. If Chester Cheeto was in "Less than Zero" which character would he have played? This ran through my mind all day, and at every stop, I'd ring the bell, be allowed to enter and first ask the inns keep this very question.
Sometimes I'd deliver the line while holding a large bag of cheetos against my chest as display, with the other hand stretched out, a single cheese snack club held between my fingers ready to bop the peoples on their noses.
In one case, the inns keep rose and bellowed, "There is no room at the inn!" Mostly they say it quietly, so I was taken aback by the venomous retort from said inns keep.
"Keep it down," I said in Castilian (it even kept the identical rhyme in translation). "People are sleeping." I went in behind his desk, helped myself to the clean white towels, returned to my side by the entrance, faced in, turned up my nose, dropped the towels and ran up the stairs giggling. He gave chase, caught me in the corner. My friends were left wondering down the stairs, probably going through the shampoos. But up on the third floor I was alone with the burly man inching closer.
I brandished another cheeto, held it up high in the air. "Don't get any closer!" But he kept coming and a thought occurred to me that I'd never actually used one of these outside of the practice range. Hell, I'd never even eaten one outside of elementary school systems of the Northwest, where I was packed and shipped every year to follow my father in his base stations through a failed military career.
No. I was in trouble and that was a fact. But it was do or die and I didn't ask why when the inns keep was in reach. I just faked left and then dove headlong into him, cheeto swinging, felling its victim.
Have you ever seen the neon orange of a cheeto covered in blood? Imagine that. But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.
I'd been hearing that all day. From inn to inn as we inched our way down the crowded Gotica area of Barcelona. I was surprised, because I knew this area as the tourist section with hostels, hotels catering to a crowd with limit currency.
And Spain's overall economy being what it was, I was confused. If Chester Cheeto was in "Less than Zero" which character would he have played? This ran through my mind all day, and at every stop, I'd ring the bell, be allowed to enter and first ask the inns keep this very question.
Sometimes I'd deliver the line while holding a large bag of cheetos against my chest as display, with the other hand stretched out, a single cheese snack club held between my fingers ready to bop the peoples on their noses.
In one case, the inns keep rose and bellowed, "There is no room at the inn!" Mostly they say it quietly, so I was taken aback by the venomous retort from said inns keep.
"Keep it down," I said in Castilian (it even kept the identical rhyme in translation). "People are sleeping." I went in behind his desk, helped myself to the clean white towels, returned to my side by the entrance, faced in, turned up my nose, dropped the towels and ran up the stairs giggling. He gave chase, caught me in the corner. My friends were left wondering down the stairs, probably going through the shampoos. But up on the third floor I was alone with the burly man inching closer.
I brandished another cheeto, held it up high in the air. "Don't get any closer!" But he kept coming and a thought occurred to me that I'd never actually used one of these outside of the practice range. Hell, I'd never even eaten one outside of elementary school systems of the Northwest, where I was packed and shipped every year to follow my father in his base stations through a failed military career.
No. I was in trouble and that was a fact. But it was do or die and I didn't ask why when the inns keep was in reach. I just faked left and then dove headlong into him, cheeto swinging, felling its victim.
Have you ever seen the neon orange of a cheeto covered in blood? Imagine that. But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.
Monday, July 30, 2012
No, it is the end rhyme.
We lost everything in order to save time. But now where are we? Back to our ancient civilization starting again.
The grain needs harvesting, I don't know what to do?
The clean water is in retreat, where to begin collecting, purifying, storing?
The neighbors are eyeing my wares and its their advantage to just take. They have more children on the way. Its not about needs, its about one growing tribe, and with whom shall I invest my early loyalties and strength in numbers? If proven honest and true to them now, maybe in my wizened years, their grown boys will at least deputize me, give me some clout over the others fallen, as the community attempts to rebuild. For every collective effort, there are those who fall out of line, those who's behaviors don't jibe, those who ask for too much. We're expected to survive, make it through another day, another prodigy on the way. At least in various circles within circles. This tribe I'm interested in. They are loyal to themselves and have a moral imperative to grow strong throughout what is not of the tribe. They are a collective Self. And Other will be harnessed to engrossify their kind.
The broader overlapping circle includes all those living in the 4th Ward, post-flood, post-starvation years, post rise and fall of the last with ammunition, and in the here and now. We have a moral imperative based on a loose connection, an idea of humanity, to move forward. To beget. To forget and beget and forget and beget. And to rebuild. As the circle grows larger, the connectivity looses its hold, and inner turmoil brews. The strength is in numbers, but how the numbers hold. Within the folds, there is more strength (or will) within a smaller number that can move through the larger, less committed.
Anyway, I'm teasing something out I can't get to. But I'm throwing in my lot here.
Read aloud, "I'm smoking like a joker. Something like a small girl."
They don't rhyme, do they? But they do. Maybe just the way I pronounce things. Its not the end rhyme, but the run-up to the end that does something.
No, it is the end rhyme.
The grain needs harvesting, I don't know what to do?
The clean water is in retreat, where to begin collecting, purifying, storing?
The neighbors are eyeing my wares and its their advantage to just take. They have more children on the way. Its not about needs, its about one growing tribe, and with whom shall I invest my early loyalties and strength in numbers? If proven honest and true to them now, maybe in my wizened years, their grown boys will at least deputize me, give me some clout over the others fallen, as the community attempts to rebuild. For every collective effort, there are those who fall out of line, those who's behaviors don't jibe, those who ask for too much. We're expected to survive, make it through another day, another prodigy on the way. At least in various circles within circles. This tribe I'm interested in. They are loyal to themselves and have a moral imperative to grow strong throughout what is not of the tribe. They are a collective Self. And Other will be harnessed to engrossify their kind.
The broader overlapping circle includes all those living in the 4th Ward, post-flood, post-starvation years, post rise and fall of the last with ammunition, and in the here and now. We have a moral imperative based on a loose connection, an idea of humanity, to move forward. To beget. To forget and beget and forget and beget. And to rebuild. As the circle grows larger, the connectivity looses its hold, and inner turmoil brews. The strength is in numbers, but how the numbers hold. Within the folds, there is more strength (or will) within a smaller number that can move through the larger, less committed.
Anyway, I'm teasing something out I can't get to. But I'm throwing in my lot here.
Read aloud, "I'm smoking like a joker. Something like a small girl."
They don't rhyme, do they? But they do. Maybe just the way I pronounce things. Its not the end rhyme, but the run-up to the end that does something.
No, it is the end rhyme.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
And then we can do the dance
Something in the air in the last weekend of July. Happens every year. People realize
one more month of summer fun, and the stickiest of months, the least pleasant. Better make something happen.
It feels at first like a good natured collusion, people calling people, reaching out, no desperation in their voices (yet), still hope because technically its still July.
But when August hits, ho boy. Things are going to get kooky. The itch to make good on promises promised every time thinking about summer when off-season. What to do, so that we can all leave the sweet months behind with a memory or two, a downhill bike ride, a kayak trip, a leave-it-to-Beaver montage. A laurel wreath constructed solely from other people's merit. A fictitious ferret like creature climbs around the bar, sniffing at drinks, paws and claws in people's spaces, an inching around, an anxious hunt for fun. There's more than one. Again, people seem good natured starting the night, hopeful to find their summer love, but it can turn ugly.
Its turned ugly in me, twice. I get short-tempered. I get tankard. I need a lanyard that says "don't get too close" or, the way things have been as of late; "if you can read this sign, my eyes are up here."
Ladies, I know you need a little summer thrill, but I'm not the type, necessarily. And the more you ogle my torso, the more I feel inclined to go somewhere else with my wares and withdraw from public. I'm not a piece of luggage for you to store your emotional needs. I'm not a physical play gym for the worldy-despondants who think me the angel incarnate for a one time orgiastic fling.
I could be. But woo me softly. No onslaught of the genial towards a quick seduction. Keep it light at first. Make me laugh. Buy me a drink. It helps me relax. I want to have fun, too, with you and your friends, in the bedroom, feathers and french ticklers and the cat o' nine tails. But I have my own baggage, luggage, I lug around, and I can't just jump into your sensual world without first entering the neutral head/ heart space of friendship. I need to see myself transcendent of my past hurts and hurrahs.
And then we can do the dance.
one more month of summer fun, and the stickiest of months, the least pleasant. Better make something happen.
It feels at first like a good natured collusion, people calling people, reaching out, no desperation in their voices (yet), still hope because technically its still July.
But when August hits, ho boy. Things are going to get kooky. The itch to make good on promises promised every time thinking about summer when off-season. What to do, so that we can all leave the sweet months behind with a memory or two, a downhill bike ride, a kayak trip, a leave-it-to-Beaver montage. A laurel wreath constructed solely from other people's merit. A fictitious ferret like creature climbs around the bar, sniffing at drinks, paws and claws in people's spaces, an inching around, an anxious hunt for fun. There's more than one. Again, people seem good natured starting the night, hopeful to find their summer love, but it can turn ugly.
Its turned ugly in me, twice. I get short-tempered. I get tankard. I need a lanyard that says "don't get too close" or, the way things have been as of late; "if you can read this sign, my eyes are up here."
Ladies, I know you need a little summer thrill, but I'm not the type, necessarily. And the more you ogle my torso, the more I feel inclined to go somewhere else with my wares and withdraw from public. I'm not a piece of luggage for you to store your emotional needs. I'm not a physical play gym for the worldy-despondants who think me the angel incarnate for a one time orgiastic fling.
I could be. But woo me softly. No onslaught of the genial towards a quick seduction. Keep it light at first. Make me laugh. Buy me a drink. It helps me relax. I want to have fun, too, with you and your friends, in the bedroom, feathers and french ticklers and the cat o' nine tails. But I have my own baggage, luggage, I lug around, and I can't just jump into your sensual world without first entering the neutral head/ heart space of friendship. I need to see myself transcendent of my past hurts and hurrahs.
And then we can do the dance.
Friday, July 27, 2012
maybe I should. Maybe I should.
The contestants lined up, engines purring and as the clock reached to half-past midnight, those purrs turned to roars. Those roars turned to shrieks as half-past midnight stretched on into a temporal suspension. Those shrieks turned to signs of relief as two past half-past midnight came and went.
There was no flag, no girl in white twirling a banner. There would be no race through the flood gates. There would be no honor at stake, no pride won or lost, nothing but the comfort in turning off the engines, putting down the remote controls, putting the suped-up matchbox cars back into the contestants dark trench coats, and back into the dark we all went.
I caught up with Gary on 4th and Baldingder. We ducked into the deli for a couple beers in brown paper. I hadn't noticed too good in the light what he was rolling with at the canceled race. I asked him about it. He pulled out a retro-fitted two-fist knuckle sandwich that I eagerly dodged. I shook my finger at him. I wouldn't get instigated into his fight. He knew this too well, and in hindsight I wondered at him trying to hit me with two fists at the same time, an awkward and slow attack. Almost no attack at all.
How's that? Lucien. Lucien first hipped me to an idea that you could weave letters together to form words. They could be words you learned in school, but they could be from the street. Lucien was the devil. He's since retired and in the tedium of retirement, took me on as a shipmate as he set sail through the twilight of his life.
Now, when I say "weave letters together" and "the devil" I don't mean to say there is sorcery going on. Just language. But language can have power, if we give it credence. By credence, I don't mean the band, but maybe I should. Maybe I should.
Timer's up.
There was no flag, no girl in white twirling a banner. There would be no race through the flood gates. There would be no honor at stake, no pride won or lost, nothing but the comfort in turning off the engines, putting down the remote controls, putting the suped-up matchbox cars back into the contestants dark trench coats, and back into the dark we all went.
I caught up with Gary on 4th and Baldingder. We ducked into the deli for a couple beers in brown paper. I hadn't noticed too good in the light what he was rolling with at the canceled race. I asked him about it. He pulled out a retro-fitted two-fist knuckle sandwich that I eagerly dodged. I shook my finger at him. I wouldn't get instigated into his fight. He knew this too well, and in hindsight I wondered at him trying to hit me with two fists at the same time, an awkward and slow attack. Almost no attack at all.
How's that? Lucien. Lucien first hipped me to an idea that you could weave letters together to form words. They could be words you learned in school, but they could be from the street. Lucien was the devil. He's since retired and in the tedium of retirement, took me on as a shipmate as he set sail through the twilight of his life.
Now, when I say "weave letters together" and "the devil" I don't mean to say there is sorcery going on. Just language. But language can have power, if we give it credence. By credence, I don't mean the band, but maybe I should. Maybe I should.
Timer's up.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Me with me "yee-haws" and they with their "cay-jun".
The only thing that really matters is that there is the finite. No. Wait. I can't grasp that. Too abstract.
The only thing that really matters is to keep moving, and let some sort of rhythm take place as the type, type, type goes. Something stirs inside me, a combination of key strokes and the sound of the words in my head, and a summoning of the dead...(no, not the dead, that was for the rhyme).
No, but it is something in the combination of rhythm and meaning of words, how one pushes the other along that can generate something new. Not something odd for the sake of odd, but careful foot paths along the river bank while walking in reverse can give direction in which way to turn, if at all needed, and in this one can then choose to drown or make it back to the bungalow....
....there were three of us staying at the family owned bungalow. It had been my uncle's, back when I called him Munca', back thirty years he signed the papers, for I was almost two. You do the math.
It was charming, this cabin, run down like our friendship; me, Leroy, and Labeouf. In cajun country, children grow together like kettle a' corn, both sweet and savory and tough. Not too popular in the rest of America, indicative with its pop culture matinees and movie theaters popping corn with its extra salt and butter smothered.
We were of a different cloth. A simple folk growing up, tossing the football, playing our fiddle and accordion and all said with a lovely dialect and pronunciation I lost when moving west.
It was part of the problem at hand. They still called me names behind my back, "The Wild One" "Kentucky Grass" "Shoot 'Em Up." There had been opportunities post high school in Lexington for all of us to pursue our goals in applied science with metallurgy. As a child, even spending summers in this very same wood framed house by the river, I dreamt of American industry, a return to glory of manufacturing solid products. The other boys had drum sticks and board games. I pretended to solder with my hair brush on the benches under the spruce trees.
I met Leroy and Labeouf young, but we never knew our shared love till we were older, by chance coming upon a Fernand Léger's "The Discs in the City" in a downtown red-light shop, snuck off from our field trip class to the dentist.
All through shop class and part time work at Thibodeaux's Body Shop, we dreamed of what we knew. Stories about going west, of a clay colored blue, like our own river's silt deposit but with a possible strength to strip out the alloy.
And when I got to Poly-tech in Lexington, I didn't turn back. I quickly lost my Cajun accent for the urban inflections. I brought my fiddle from my shoulder to rest under my chin. I met a girl who shared the love of metallurgy. We seduced each other with existential bent poems themed on the morning moments;
"Like liquid alloy in the morning, molten, unable to take a shape, the coffee whistles but still can't cool me the summer sun is no match until I'm poured into my vessel, a substance, a soul that takes me aches and all, as I withdraw and into being shapeless shape shifter knows no place to linger but I would gladly still in this blue clay for you simple soil with no alloy yet, yet you'd allow me to be as such as we twirl together."
And so we had problems, going back to the present, me and my two friends in the bungalow, the run-down cabin of my youth. But we worked in out. Me with me "yee-haws" and they with their "cay-jun".
The only thing that really matters is to keep moving, and let some sort of rhythm take place as the type, type, type goes. Something stirs inside me, a combination of key strokes and the sound of the words in my head, and a summoning of the dead...(no, not the dead, that was for the rhyme).
No, but it is something in the combination of rhythm and meaning of words, how one pushes the other along that can generate something new. Not something odd for the sake of odd, but careful foot paths along the river bank while walking in reverse can give direction in which way to turn, if at all needed, and in this one can then choose to drown or make it back to the bungalow....
....there were three of us staying at the family owned bungalow. It had been my uncle's, back when I called him Munca', back thirty years he signed the papers, for I was almost two. You do the math.
It was charming, this cabin, run down like our friendship; me, Leroy, and Labeouf. In cajun country, children grow together like kettle a' corn, both sweet and savory and tough. Not too popular in the rest of America, indicative with its pop culture matinees and movie theaters popping corn with its extra salt and butter smothered.
We were of a different cloth. A simple folk growing up, tossing the football, playing our fiddle and accordion and all said with a lovely dialect and pronunciation I lost when moving west.
It was part of the problem at hand. They still called me names behind my back, "The Wild One" "Kentucky Grass" "Shoot 'Em Up." There had been opportunities post high school in Lexington for all of us to pursue our goals in applied science with metallurgy. As a child, even spending summers in this very same wood framed house by the river, I dreamt of American industry, a return to glory of manufacturing solid products. The other boys had drum sticks and board games. I pretended to solder with my hair brush on the benches under the spruce trees.
I met Leroy and Labeouf young, but we never knew our shared love till we were older, by chance coming upon a Fernand Léger's "The Discs in the City" in a downtown red-light shop, snuck off from our field trip class to the dentist.
All through shop class and part time work at Thibodeaux's Body Shop, we dreamed of what we knew. Stories about going west, of a clay colored blue, like our own river's silt deposit but with a possible strength to strip out the alloy.
And when I got to Poly-tech in Lexington, I didn't turn back. I quickly lost my Cajun accent for the urban inflections. I brought my fiddle from my shoulder to rest under my chin. I met a girl who shared the love of metallurgy. We seduced each other with existential bent poems themed on the morning moments;
"Like liquid alloy in the morning, molten, unable to take a shape, the coffee whistles but still can't cool me the summer sun is no match until I'm poured into my vessel, a substance, a soul that takes me aches and all, as I withdraw and into being shapeless shape shifter knows no place to linger but I would gladly still in this blue clay for you simple soil with no alloy yet, yet you'd allow me to be as such as we twirl together."
And so we had problems, going back to the present, me and my two friends in the bungalow, the run-down cabin of my youth. But we worked in out. Me with me "yee-haws" and they with their "cay-jun".
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