We got some beautiful Saturday afternoon WPXN action driving from DC to NJ. It was about 4:20, and brother, could you tell from the requests coming into the all-request show. It made for compulsive listening and kept me wondering why I don't tune the computer to that station more often. My daughter, on the other hand, has become enamored of old-time radio shows and DH has downloaded a bunch onto the iPod, so that's why she keeps nagging about Dragnet. It's resulted in some interesting conversations about cars, the death penalty, and smoking cigarettes.
The story you are about to read is sort of true.
[Scene: Car, that stretch of Helaware that's all tolls.] DH: Is this Country Joe and the Fish? ME: (Thinks for a minute.) No, Allman Brothers. My sister used to play it all the time. DD: (Sings along with guitar runs, trilling along in the booster seat.) [Next song cued up.] ME: This song sounds so familiar. It's something my brother or sisters listened to. It feels like around the same time as...I don't know, some kind of British progrock, same time as Tull, living in the past? DD: This song is weird. ME: Who the hell was this? (Sings along: "Just like your woman loves you...just like your woman loves you...") I know this song, I really do. How weird. [It is Andy Pratt's Avenging Annie, a pleasant earworm, and it is weird. One of the instruments listed is "Cat." I'm not sure how I feel about that.] DD: Can we listen to Dragnet now? ME: Just a few minutes. I want to hear the end of this set. [Long cymbal clash I can't even hear, but DH picks it up.] DH: This is Mahavishnu. Birds of Fire. ME: They haven't even started playing it yet. How did you know? DH: I've played this one a lot. ME: It sounds kind of like King Crimson. Are you sure it's not King Crimson? DH: If I know it from one cymbal, how would I not be right? DD: Has it been a minute yet? ME: I really know this song too. Everything is sounding familiar in this weird time-bending way. Jesus, what is the deal with that guy? Why does he want to kill me? Oh my god, his license plate says "three times a lady." [3X A LDY] DH: I've probably played it a lot. Since college. ME: (Forgetting DD is in car) You probably played it for me when I was high and it freaked me out. Oops. ME: (Sings along really loudly with There is a Light that Never Goes Out, probably traumatizing DD for life.) [DJ cues Roxy Music Remake/Remodel] DH: It's the all-Maria request hour. ME: Yeah, it's like we're sending them secret signals. DD: Can I listen to Dragnet? It's been WAY more than a minute.
Photo: If you can figure out the connection, I'll bring you back a zeppole.
I learned of the death of an acquaintance recently and I realized I still had a book she had lent me more than 20 years ago. Henry and June, the version of Nin's diary condensed with all the good parts. I have a lot of the long diaries, too, picked up in used bookstores over the years, where they always seem to be.
I have a lot of bad feeling about having this book--it's pretty evil to borrow a book for that long, and to not be able to do much about it now. I don't mind it when people even take my books, actually. I think they go where they need to. But most people don't feel this way, and I don't think they should just because I do, or that what is essentially my carelessness and diffidence is somehow more admirable because it's less possessive. Most people regard people who don't return books as the lowest of the low.
I'll need to make a donation to something she would have liked to try to restore the karma. The more courageous lesson I could learn is not to avoid getting in touch with someone, thinking, oh, they would just find it an annoyance to hear from me.
But it has gotten me dipping in and out of Nin and Miller again. Tonight I tried opening the book at random three times to see what we get. No one knows how much time they've got. That makes me want everything now. I know, it's a rationalization with all the grace and ingenuity of pleading a case of blue balls, but at least it's based in fact.
A summer evening. Henry and I are eating in a small restaurant wide open to the street. We are part of the street. The wine that runs down my throat runs down many other throats. The warmth of the day is like a man's hand on one's breast. It envelops both the street and the restaurant. The wine solders us all, Henry and me, the restaurant and the street and the world. Shouts and laughter from the students preparing for the Quatz Arts Ball. They are in barbaric costumes, red-skinned, feathered, overflowing from buses and carts. Henry is saying, "I want to do everything to you tonight. I want to lay you on this very table and fuck you before everybody. I'm nuts about you, Anais. I'm crazy about you. After dinner we're going to the Hotel Anjou. I'll teach you new things."
When I talk about her, Henry says, "What a lovely way you have of putting things." "Perhaps it is an evasion of facts." He says to me exactly what I wrote some time ago; I submit to life and then I find beautiful explanations for my act. I make the piece fit into the creative weaving.
The core of my being is touched by a body which overpowers mine, inundates mine, which twists its flamed tongue inside of me with such power. He cries, "Tell me, tell me what you feel." And I cannot. There is blood in my eyes, in my head. Words are drowned. I want to scream savagely, wordlessly--inarticulate cries, without sense, from the most primitive basis of my self, gushing from my womb like honey.
Damn books. She was only 58.
If I have a book of yours, please tell me.
Photo: Like Fred Ward. And Uma. And Uma's feet.
Headline: Miller wrote it. He lived a long time. He didn't even get started really until 40.
Here's another one I got from an attempt to work magic among the monuments.
The Jefferson Stone
One who knows but doesn't often say told me the story: In their time a stone was laid to mark the line, But in our time the line no longer lies there.
When it comes to when and how the stone was moved Most are dumb and others play so, but it's a fact That the stubby pointer of granite, placed to trip up Night stumblers on the nation's lawn, has had its Privileged distinction rudely chiseled from its face.
A decoy? A masked king? The work of our enemies Or of our protectors? It's a politician's periodic game To seek to shift boundaries, even to the way We measure time. Change the calendars! comes the command From men of reason whose grip on power starts to slip. Or perhaps it was the stonecutters who constructed the canals of Mars, Or a simple flock of sheep, nosing and shoving their fellows aside For the sweetest grass, beside that swamp our fathers called the Tiber. A meridian, after all, is only a convention, a relative Construction; we are free to move the center where we may.
And before the question leaves me, he has the answer: No, knowing all this doesn't make it any easier.
The error's magnitude shakes the poles; latitude And longitude unmoored, the straight tracks cracked, The cables that held the grid snap and coil like dreams of snakes, The freestone obelisk thrusts through the asphalt, The rings of the astrolabe clang to the concrete And are carted off for scrap by looters. Far off, on a vessel navigating the rising waters, The boy, climbing the rigging, lifts the glass And spies not a New World but an ancient one Rising from the sea. The heart was not Where you have been told the heart must be.
This is also kind of about WikiLeaks, which I was trying to explain to my daughter this morning. We had some deep discussions and questions about what you would do if you knew a secret that was hurting someone. When is it right to tell a secret? We worked some things out about going to a grownup (like me, she's still young enough for that).
But I'm still wondering about knowledge and what good it does. Will these leaks make any difference? Is it corrupted information to start with? What's the real motivation? We've been told for years now that information is the new currency, but it hasn't paid for my rent, grits or groceries yet. The CEO of Project Vigilant certainly seems to think it's worth something--I have to laugh that even McCarthyesque spying and snooping has been outsourced to a private corporation that is vigorously marketing itself by riding the headlines. Is my occasional sexting really worth something to somebody? Who? Why? And how much? Those are some journalist-type questions I kind of sort of remember from way back.
Photo: The Noyes armillary sphere, formerly residing in Meridian Hill Park. The photo's in public domain, so I don't know why it's got this guy's name all up in it, but his blog is a fascinating piece of work, so why not add a plug. I've got a note into the dude to find out what the deal is with using the photo.
UPDATE: It really is a great website; more sites about DC cartography, please! Anyway, he says he tags the photos that he hunts down and processes, which makes sense, and asked for a direct link the page that talks about the armillary sphere. Here we go, and thank you Mr. Schiller.
I have been annoying the shit out of everyone with this question since reading this New Yorker article on hospice and heroic medicine. It includes a case study of a man whose daughter asked him the question as they were trying to decide on the value of undergoing a heroic procedure. He said as long as he could eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV, it would be worth being alive, so he underwent the procedure, which made him a quadriplegic, but gave him 10 years more during which he did those two things, plus writing some books. When he began to have difficulty swallowing and other problems, he decided to go the hospice route.
I enjoy talking to a relative who's a hospice/end of life nurse, very skilled and experienced. She has just about had it with the pain people are often put through to stay "alive." The major problem with people facing death is the dishonesty--or difficulty in admission--of doctors, who insist on trying everything, and the dishonesty of loved ones, who insist on trying everything, no matter how brutal.
The sense I have is that if hospice consists of having the best possible quality of life in each moment until death, then we are all in hospice anyhow, aren't we?
My dream is to have the will of the individual respected, as much as I might disagree with their will. Of course this issue got turned into a cynical political ploy by those who don't want to stop making money off people's desperation and those who fear death and can't admit it, and so oppose universal health care.
Here are my three things--and all must be met, or the deal is off, and it's morphine and weed for me until the end, if I'm lucky.
1. I need to be able to create and communicate using complex concepts, at the least in the level I now enjoy. 2. I need to be able to pray (meditate, ritual, intend) for others through interaction with nature, even if that simply means feeling sunlight through a window. 3. I don't want to be so appalling--appearance, raging, violent, smelly, cut into pieces--that no one but a strong-stomached medical pro can stand to be in the same room with me.
That's mine. Yours?
Photo: Robert Wyatt, who creates and communicates using complex concepts, more so than I do.
Pasta's on the boil; time for a poem. I got two last night/this morning, thanks to the full moon. There was some dispute over when the full moon happened this month; different people's calendars said different things, which does happen sometimes but seemed to happen more this month. One astrologer said this indicated that you needed to think about where you are and where you want to be and when you feel the moon is full. Relative.
Anyway, got two and one is structured and meaningful in a larger way, I hope, and the other is rambling and self-indulgent, so of course I'll share the latter.
"Aspiration and Literature"
The shaman shakes his rattle At the base of the monolith, Releasing the directions, and my own Ritual begins. Each breath a struggle To transform poison into magic. The lead Filtered out of the water I sip From a plastic cup. The stink Of the river after a punishing rain. The squish of the grainy mud, held in place By invasive weeds on this patchy lawn Beneath the sinking monuments. The snake Crushed beneath the horse's hoof. The face You say you see in the soot on the plinth. The chemtrails lit orange in the sunset. The homeless man walking out of the pit toilet Under the bridge. The swarm of gnats Over the pool, in the last gleaming. The radio keening And thumping from the open car window, the car waiting, Smoking. And when we're alone, I might just tip her. She slides down the pole like a certified stripper. My own keening. My own thumping. My own ecstasy. The night-approaching Wind on your skin. The skin below your waistband. My hands remembering the feel of your skin stretched Over your hips. My own hair trapped in the hair Of your chest. Every lie that has brought me here. Every cruelty, every snap of rage, every loss, Yours and mine and theirs and every death We don't yet know. The god of art and games and song, Bedecked with flowers, stone, still, at the center of it all.
Pasta is mush. Maybe I can still work with it. No wonder Plath was always in such a bad mood. She kept trying to cook and write at the same time.
Photo: "Aspiration and Literature" statue by Fraser, photo by M.V. Jantzen, Creative Commons.
"To live outside the law, you must be honest." Well, OK, except that by a certain age, everyone including yourself is usually so heavily invested in your dishonesty, and those investments are so heavily leveraged. Nobody really intended it, it's just that getting to honesty is such an involved process that discovering it and then putting it into practice needs to be done in delicate increments to keep the whole thing from crumbling before you've got the new place built to move into. Too severe a change and the whole thing topples, much like the markets today.
Anyway, heard and felt a few honest things over the last week of travel. Country matters, mostly.
Pitchfork Ain't No Hoe City of the Broad Shoulders for Pitchfork festival. I want to hate on hipsters, but damnit they ride bikes and care about music, so I'll forgive those too-tight pants and eccentric facial hair.
Pavement: If you get a chance to get a Virgin ticket, go for it for them; they're tight and kind judging from Chicago performance. Major Lazer with Diplo and Switch: Chinese lion dancers, daggering from a ladder, beautiful dancers. Truly was a Band and Show. Even some hipsters got beyond doing their bend the knees a bit and head-bob dance. St. Vincent: In love with the guy playing sax, flute, everything else. Beach House: Took the heat off and that's OK. Surfer Blood: If Brian Wilson really had been who he started out pretending to be. Plus, from West Palm Beach, got to love that. Big Boi: Plays the hits, too much reliance on the big screens.
Behind the Music: Visited the 1913 Atwood Historic Planetarium, a big steel can with holes punched in it. You ride a platform with creaky wooden benches into it and it closes down over you and maybe three others, including a highly hilarious irreverent woman doing docent duty, and you see the night sky of Chicago 1913. Also, dinner at Publican, one of those trendy places where they use the whole animal and put you at communal tables, but corn/pistachio/peach salsa, OK? We ended up next to a Pitchfork writer and her paramour and they couldn't have been sweeter; were headed to the Surgical Museum the next day, which sounded interesting, but hell, when you're from DC and have Walter Reed AND the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, it's hard to get impressed. Then they left and on our other side we had a pair of insufferable foodie snobs who almost kept me from staying for the blueberry-lemon-lavender tart. I didn't eat any organ meats at the restaurant. And yes, I'm a medical-museum snob, so shoot me. (And I'll know how to extract the bullet, the old-fashioned way.) Oh, plus: Stayed in haunted hotel! Met three ghosts and took them to the Planetarium.
Life's a Garden, Dig It No disrespect to Chicago, but loved, loved, loved Floydfest. Saw way, way, way too much to go into, but, in order of loveness: Low Anthem: Acoustic set and on the big stage, ghostly songs and an eerie little antique organ. Deer Tick: The big surprise, what rocking guys. First set sweltering and tight; second day drunk and attitudinal (but in a good way!) and reminding me of the 'Mats. Cover: Maybelline as it's meant to be. Konono No. 1: 105 degrees and rising, danced my ass off. Could have been doing covers, how would I know. American Aquarium: Just boys singing strong songs about heartbreak. Came back second day announcing to the crowd how they'd never camped before but they loved it and had done mushrooms the night before, although that was certainly dishonest because there was no such thing happening at that festival. Cover: Thunder Road, pretty dumbass sincere, except it was interesting to hear sax solo on pedal steel guitar. Holy Ghost Tent Revival: So emotional! So horn-tastic! Was too busy dancing to hear if they did a cover. Pimps of Joytime: Played a bedtime concert pretty much right outside my tent, while people danced and did hoop trapeze tricks on a giant fire-breathing metal dinosaur. Was too busy dancing to hear if they did a cover. Big Daddy Love: Acoustic just standing around in the Garden section was the best; on the big stage later it got a little plain jam band. Hackensaw Boys: Cover: Bluegrass jam on Another Brick in the Wall. Behind the Music: Dance Afire did a real performance--not just the wow, how do they do that w/o setting themselves on fire wow look at that type fire dance and not that hokey Cirque stuff with a sort-of halfass newage storyline either. This was symbolic and unified and meaningful and the music and costumes--everything fit and worked for the place, and this is just seeing one 20-minute performance they did. It really opened my eyes.
But the very best things that happened were that two people said things that will give me sparks for some time. I was camped down by the late-night music, which also was where they had the agriculture booths, who were having some workshops and were also just up for talking and wandering. When I can sit and talk about dirt and nettles with a soft-spoken man, who then throws in the word "alchemical," well, that just about makes my weekend. Lots of talk about food, medicine and pleasure; my sense is that people have a hard time seeing food as medicine but no trouble seeing medicine as pleasure. I'm thinking making that into a functioning, flowing triangle, food-medicine-pleasure, might help a lot of people. Sorry about the non-exact quotes:
"Nothing can give you anything beyond what is put into it." That's from the biodynamic farming expert, talking about improving soil, but I'm going to make hay of it in some other ways. He also talked about feeling the travels and history of your food as you take it into yourself; feeling the needs and the wants of the earth in the air itself; and I'm feeling like, hey, maybe I'm not insane, and maybe I need to be reminded of that once in a while.
"I think Americans have these problems because we reject the bitter; we only want the sweet." That's from the guy with Backyard Revolution, a group that could use more support, I'm thinking. It was about greens, but again, I'll stretch it out like a single chicken into many meals to come. This is someone who found about 10 food and medicinal plants growing in the meadow border of the campsites alone; we didn't even have to get into the woods to find anything interesting. One more quote: "Take something wild into your body every day." That's worthy of needlepointing on a pillow, at least.
On the way home, stopped in Lexington in accordance with our policy not to eat in chain places off the highway but to actually go into the towns and see what's up; unfortunately a ghost hitched a ride and demanded that I play several Steely Dan songs before departing back south down I-81.
I've been thinking of changing the name on this blog, but I think I'll just keep it til the term evolves back into meaning simply the animal.
This bastard below's been driving me crazy all week, and I woke up at 5, with one of my sleeping daughter's languid, long, skinny arms flailing me in the face, feeling like I had it. (She's sleeping with me to soak up as much security as she can before she goes off to camp by herself.) I can only aspire to the brevity of the epigraph.
The River, from the Other Side
"I go to sleep on one shore, wake up on another." --Raymond Carver
I. I always suspected the side Where I lived was the comfortable side. Today I look on its green slopes, But I'm not sure if I was right. Peligroso, Peligroso, There are signs on both sides, Some rusting at the bottom of waterfalls.
I've watched people on the rocks Of this side, from that side, And wondered how they did it. Here now, I see there are paths, Some wide enough for two, passages Between the points and slabs. I rest my hands flat on the blazing rock And read the hatches in the stone, in my skin. What's crossed won't be uncrossed; Not a step taken back.
II. The guide gave me the reasons Women are better climbers: Patience was the first. They scan, Imagine alternative scenarios, Then act. The second is the hips. It's not in your arms, it's never In your arms, he tells me. He tells me: You can do this. (Like they say to you in labor: You can do this. But I couldn't Let go, I couldn't clutch at Those hands and pull.)
III. I think I believe I'm like A drowning person: Don't Touch me, I'll drag you down, too. Throw a stick my way, let something Come between us, save yourself, but I would die before I took your hand. A lifetime has tried to teach me What I touch, I hurt. I could believe this is true Of the rocks and the river, even these.
He's on the rock above me, Already carrying the lion's share, Still reaching out his hand.
Photo: Seneca rocks, third-scariest thing I ever did.
This is the season for goldfinches in the mornings; they always travel in groups, often three. I would love a feather if it didn’t mean pain for the bird. I found a red feather just before beginning a trip recently. I’ll believe it was from a cardinal. I’m seeing a lot of them lately.
And close encounters with a few woodpeckers. Once, running, and I slowed a bit to watch one on a tree not two feet away, just at eye level, his head back and coolly determining where to nail. Each time I’ve seen them, I’m surprised at how big they are. I would call these sightings auspicious.
On that note, I’ve been feeling a lot of compassion for men lately, probably because of encountering quite a few of them, typically in their 40s, tearing themselves up about not being enough of this or having accomplished that. They are running themselves down for everything from not being astronauts to not having Situationist abs. Or, I guess, Situationesque would be a better word. In short, they’re talking like girls, and I don’t mean that in a mean-gym-coach way, but in a “damn, friend, how could you let Them bring you down like that” way.
And these are extraordinary men talking this talk. Great artists, great fathers, yes, great lovers, too, men who make you laugh, men with enough courage to actually show others something of their inner lives, men who can survive in the woods with a lighter and a piece of rope, men you could talk with all night. And there they are, letting themselves be declared worthless by Wall Street. I can only quote: “That place is dead anyhow.”
Despite being filled with compassion and delight, my brain and heart remain not the most pleasant places to be at all times. Witness what happened yesterday, as I was heading to the Westfield Shoppingtowne or whatever the fuck they’re calling it now, it used to be Wheaton Plaza, for a new pair of glasses, and there I was at the five-corner crossroads, a busy intersection far back into history even for animal migration, so it is alive with energy, most of it scary, today, and the radio was talking about BP, and I had a vision that made even me uncomfortable in its icy cruelty:
I see my huge hand as the hand of Eris, plucking fat white grubs from the office suites of Halliburton, of Blackwater, of Massey Energy, of BP and all the rest, harvesting them and shaking their slimy selves off my hands to fall on the decks of my boats in the Gulf. They will be my cleanup slaves. There they’ll sleep, when they seldom sleep, in the holds head to foot. They’ll drink the brown water that comes from taps in Appalachia, slurp quivering gobs of transfat and corn syrup from rusty ladles, when I let them feed. They will scrub and swab the seas themselves, and I will pay no mind when dizzy from thirst they fall face flat on the decks, when crazed with sun they leap into the Gulf and drown themselves; I won’t care what tumors grow in what soft places or how they hack and puke on the poison that sinks into their lungs and skin. They didn’t care when they did it to my mother. I am implacable as the sun. They opened this wound at their peril. For once, the cleanup won’t be done by the ones who need the money. It will be done by the ones who need killing.
And the ship….the black raider…disappears out to sea…
I know, it’s wrong, it’s scary, it accomplishes nothing, it only devalues me, myself, it’s unladylike, and it’s damned dangerous to evoke Eris. But once in a while I have to let that inner Johnny Cash fury out.
So I give myself an order to remember: they are someone’s child, they are someone’s lover, there is no end of blame, and you share the blame, rinse and repeat, as long as the water holds out.
So, solar eclipse, total, July 11, around 3:40 Eastern, 19 degrees Cancer. It operates like a super new moon. What are you going to start? What will you hit the reset button on? What will you begin to create? What gifts will you ask for?
People have to remember to craft their wishes carefully. The great writer and spiritual woman Luisah Teish addresses this in a funny way. One morning in her rituals she opened her arms and called out for Oshun to rain love and abundance down on her. She met a man she knew (and liked) while on the subway that morning; he was carrying a large burlap bag of black beans and as he reached out to her, the bag broke open and beans poured down on her.
They call it being a horse, when you're possessed by a spirit. I've never experienced possession; surrender and trust do not come easily to me. That's what this poem is about. The rune for gift is an X, two wills intersecting, leaning together.
X
The gift comes Wrapped in so many layers You begin to believe the Giver is mocking you As you get to the center you see He did it Because it is fragile
The Batman, a reliable source of bits like this, passes along the winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest, for the worst opening line of an imaginary fiction: For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.
Someday I'll win this thing, but they keep getting better every year.
Condolences to The Batman for the recent loss of his cat. Big Guy was an extraordinary companion and will long be missed.
I spent the weekend camped near The Gamelatron, the World's First Fully Robotic Gamelan Orchestra, created by Zemi17 and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. It's kind of like what would happen if you mated a prayer wheel and something out a Quay Brothers movie. It clanged and clattered and gonged at all hours of the day and night, and I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it. It could turn a simple exchange, such as "Does your Swiss Army knife have a corkscrew on it I can borrow?" into a moment fraught with drama and import, if you happened to say it during a point when all the cymbals were going off at once. Plus, it was great to just go into its temple, lie down, and take in the sound.
Forgive the mixing of cultures here--my mythologies in poems come from a post-apocalyptic culture where spiritualities are under stumbling reconstruction and as likely to contain pop culture deities as ancient ones. A world much like...our own (doom dooooooommm!).
Brazen
Some tones are intended to welcome spirits, Others to banish them. And then There are transgressive spirits, who, heedless, Sweep in on a breeze to provoke An errant chime to sound.
The singing bowls are forged and polished as instructed, Their brass rings true. The snake-hiss and shiver Of each slice of metal sounds in accord. The tongues of candle flame, in correct number, aligned. Gold cloth enrobes the temple; the gold cloth of the path To the door is in place. How this path blazes Beneath the seekers' feet! All this is fine talk, And can be read in heavy books Of alchemy, planets, philters, and sigils.
But my longing persists in this wondering: Why, why, you can give me no reason For the caution against filling the bowl with red flesh, Transmuting myself into liquid and vapor, That the dross might be siphoned From the gold, as I myself resolve.
Image: Cats Cooling Off on a Boat, Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
Knew this MF would show up eventually. Some equate it with Saturn. Bonds and boundaries can be helpful, until they're not. I hold with the interpretation of this card that points to the pain of projecting one's shadow onto someone else, blaming/seeing others' faults when you're really looking in the mirror. The one interpretation of this card I won't accept is that which counsels against enslavement by desire. Desire is a gift that leads to freedom. It's the refusal to own desire that makes self-enslavement. But like The Big Lebowski says, shuffling off in his bathrobe and huffing the nitrous out of the whipped cream cans in the dairy aisle under the 3 a.m. fluorescents, hey, man, that's just my opinion.
The Devil
Bring to Burn
Fear of the flip and the whip And the pull of the chain, fear of change, Fear of pain, fear of fulfilling the cycle Of self-fulfilling, fear of another Direction, fear of love and the lack of love-- The chain is engraved with not enough She is not worthy, he finds fault It is the same damned thing, it is One damned thing after another, Fear moves them to strain against the chain A move in another direction would loosen, Fear of losing the one damned thing They know, have always known, that pulls them together, Fear of losing the tug of the past, Fear of breaking, fear of the links falling slack, Fear of losing by stepping loose-- If by their own steps and not by the beast's Direction they moved, one step, another To another, the star above would flip To shine like their skin, their eyes Themselves for all to see-- If they would love, What demon could hold them?
Who doesn't like some Tilda Swinton, for verily she is smokin', brilliant, and possessed of an enviable fashion sense and an arguably more enviable design for living. We may get a chance to see her new movie if the kids' camp shifts to another home this evening, and we indulge in the suburban institution of date night. My reward for sitting thru all the kiddie movies. I was worried it would be just flat-out Italian food porn, which seems to be the go-to meme for women with a case of the Bovaries nowadays, plus is in bad taste with the end of the world approaching, but this review makes it sound like more than that. It is not safe for day camp.
BUT click on that above link and do a search for the word "ticklish" and you will read one of the funniest sentences ever and spew coffee in a way that will make children laugh. DH has actually created a little song out of one of its memorable phrases.
The other night after we got them to bed, DH made us omelettes while I paged through the magazine, and this short piece on Christopher Hitchens also caught my eye. I've always had a thing for him, though I know it's so, so wrong. (Plus, he's waxed, and I prefer men au naturel.) (And you know what's funny, a friend had a facebook thread about sense memories during first kisses, and so many of us mentioned tobacco scent. Results could have been skewed by age (smoking was still OK in the 70s) and/or the high proportion of artists, of whom four out of five prefer bad boys.) Anyway, he has a dinner game where you substitute the word "dick" for "heart" in a title.
Me: Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Dick. DH:Dick and Soul. Me: Obscure Christian Slater movie Untamed Dick. DH:Pure Dick. Me: What the hell is that? DH: It's a classic piece of sports writing. About Secretariat. Me: That would make sense. Ashtray Dick. DH: What's that? Me: Song, by Captain Beefheart. DH: Captain Beefdick.
The Winnah!!!
Behind me: Little Falls trail. Before me: Folklife festival with three or four children.
Been seeing some kids' movies; Toy Story III last night. They're so meta that it's a little sad. Layers on layers and never the true, the blushful quest story or whatever. Simulcra babies in 3-D never getting near the source. (BTW never would have written something like this if it weren't for hearing/reading Rick's work.)
The Superhero's Love Interest
She's got a pretty good job, And she's good at it, despite The sexist boss and the corporate overlord. Her lover packs some weight, He's got some money and a sweet place, High over the city, hell of a view, but she doesn't see it When the camera catches him Stiffing a waiter or shoving her cat.
She doesn't know about the superhero's secret, But she doesn't laugh behind his back. In the morning, in the elevator, Sometimes they lock eyes, And it's weird, but not in a bad way. She never asks about the bruises.
That doesn't stop her girlfriend From speculating about that skinny guy Who's always getting into some kind of trouble. The love interest shrugs. "Maybe he's in Fight Club," She says, licking some salt from the edge of her glass. "Maybe he goes to a dominatrix," her girlfriend giggles. The love interest gazes at the band, setting up, and murmurs: "He doesn't have to. I could do that for him."
Bret Easton Ellis and mix tapes just go together like chocolate and peanut butter, or sunglasses and hangovers. Saw him read last night: funny, charming, thoughtful, generous. Didn’t disrespect any wimmen movie directors that I heard. Like the meta on the new book. Know what it’s like to not want to let go of characters; keep stabbing at that vein. One thing that struck my vein was him saying a trigger for American Psycho was his “disappointment with the world of adults.” That’s common to our generation, but now that I am fully adult, I’m simply disappointed with myself. Cut out the middleman, no pun intended.
Mix Tape #3
I’m going to save that song for the end— You know, that sick swoop inside you When the chemicals have all been pissed away And you’re hollow again. A holy feeling,
That’s one of the funny things about hangovers, That whiff of rebirth. Pain means you did it again, You’re still alive. We’re set up to get off On this cycle: Tension, explosion, end.
So you start the tape with taut beats And flutters. Then move into noise. I’m good at putting these together, good At knowing how to end. You get tired
Of being good at knowing endings. You’re not so much looking for a big surprise As for that thump, barefoot, dancing On the ground, and—-take a look around--
These are the ones left with you, This is what you are hearing now, This is the place you have ended up, This is what you came here for.
Wanted to top this up with a stirring epigram and was looking for that Baudrillard canard about culture growing like hair and fingernails in the grave and found this memorable quote instead: “Baudrillard: Full of shit, but will get you laid.” Discuss for your next class. Sportswriters do indeed rock.
No poems about cats, but this one came in while I was running this morning. Maybe it is about cats. I see one, anyway.
Two of Cups
Open
Balance can consist In one Hand open, Accepting The other's cup.
I don't know; too newage postery? But that's what you get some days. Also thinking about Rilke's two solitudes. The two cards in the tarot deck are always about balance, but this one is traditionally about love, which has always been for me more a ride than a balance. So it's a card that needs some internal reconciliation. Maybe some friend who gets science has an interesting idea or two about equilibrium and velocity and cool words like that. Feel free to enlighten me.
The guy one plot over in the garden said I can have all the thyme I want from hin. This is a dangerous offer, as I have never been able to grow the quantities of thyme I want, though I discovered a good-condition plant under a comfrey today.
I am a bad, bad community gardener. My plot is the ghetto, the trailer park, the wrong side of the tracks, what you will. Weeds and things gone to seed and real plants compete and climb over each other like some vision of lost souls in Hell painted on the wall of a Northern European cathedral. It's my bad luck that the head of the Rules Committee has the plot right next to me. She stands like the Wall between Pyramus and Thisbe, between me and the Source of Unlimited Thyme. She's got her eye on me.
I think writing poems about plants is subversive because it's what people fucking EXPECT old lady poets to do. This year the lovage and caraway went to seed, and BA sent me a recipe for aquavit.
Bolter
It's the closest action They have to manage an escape-- Send the thick shoot out From the center, stalk Charged with the mission--perpetuate.
Sudden, intense heat, or the Conviction that heavens will open If only they reach, starts them bolting.
The lettuce was first to go, Its frills turned bitter, Then caraway, coriander, dill. Even the fennel, licorice-cool, Bronze, imperious, shook its feathers In anticipation of the end, Raised a crown of golden pollen That stained my face as I bent close To taste it; soon solidified into seed.
"I have never seen so many plants Bolt so soon," I remark to the woman Working the plot next to me. She hums assent, abstracted, And scans the sky for planes.
If I weren't on an oxytocin high (oh for heaven's sake, it's not that, it's just my love for humankind and puppetkind), I wouldn't consider it, but here I go, thinking it might be a good idea to submit some poems here and there. It leads me on a hunt through the year-old and older, and leads my husband to yell at me for not spending the time on doing novel revisions instead. I know, I ought to, but once in a while I need to feel like I have some skin in the game.
I doubt this one will find a home anywhere literary, but I have a feeling there may be someone out there who will like it. It's part of a series about Lilith.
IV. Desert Companions
“Dance with the pretty witch.” —Faust
Only one writer got it right: The man was made of earth But I was made of fire. Under the blazing sun I tend my lions, wreathing their necks with chains Of flowers my touch alone can make bloom here. They groan and purr under this soft restraint.
Ostriches speed by, their fancy feathers bouncing; They need no adornment. Nor do I; wings and hair Are enough to inspire a gaping glance if anyone came near.
I seek out a shady cleft of rock When it’s time to nurse the serpents.
The circles around the eyes of the owls Glow like stars above me in the night. We screech to each other in delight.
Unlike other times when I've had to learn the hard way how much I suck at something, when it came to photography, I had never had a doubt: Epic Suck. (Wasn't someone just talking about Monica Lewinky's birthday? Well.)
But when Favorite Cousin called, neither of us let that stand in our way. He writes about just about anything and everything for a Florida zine run by about the nicest guy you could want to know. FC was slated to write about the PIL show, and asked if I'd come along and take photos. Even on his worst day, FC is a better photographer than I am, but disability issues make taking photos at a show like that just about impossible. (Overall, it's pretty crappy trying to go to a club when you have mobility problems. It didn't seem as bad when we went to Drive-By Truckers together a while back, but this one was really damned uncomfortable.)
Uncomfortable for me, too. I'm writing something that has a photographer character, so I couldn't resist trying it, even though there might as well have been no film in the camera. I was up front there with the real photographers who were all doing those moves out of Blow-Up or something, with the big, big real lenses, and I'm like, fuck if I know how this thing works, what I'm seeing. I'm going to do something really stupid and Mr. Lydon won't realize I'm a nice half-Irish lady and will spit on me.
I tried, truly. But you can see for yourself.
I'm pretty good at embroidery.
I think it's fear of tech, at base. I grew up in a world of don't-touch-that-you'll-break-it when it came to anything that wasn't organic. Men were the only ones allowed to touch electronic equipment. I was unclean. Suppose I ought to shake that, though I don't know if there's time left. Plus, I'll still have the problem of not being able to separate my vision from what is there to see in reality. I am also invisible in photos for the most part. Part of that is people don't actively seek to take pictures of me, and I'm uncomfortable with it, but even the law of averages in some of the crowds I run with don't catch up with me. Invisible woman. Maybe I'm a vampire? And if I am, maybe I can make some money off it, cool.
It was a great show nonetheless, very shamanic; he reminded me of Patti Smith that way. He knew how to shape the energy, though few were riding his wave. It's a DC thing. We don't get swept up and under so easily.
I felt like I was beginning to get rid of the albatross. Several, some with whole names and personalities, and some just shadows.
Thank you, FC. But I must never, never touch a camera again.
To continue in the freeloader vein, DH brought home from work a review copy of Maggot by Paul Muldoon. Most of the poems are too hard for me, but there's a translation of Baudelaire's Albatross I like very much. It opens with a fragment of a BBC report of seabirds dying from eating plastic cigarette lighters, thinking they are squid. Gives a whole new meaning to "pour s'amuser." And it ends: "again and again he's dragged down by the weight of those wings."
We’ve all been burned, waking with the vision and the need to Hunt the one who must hear, petition at the gate, battle Inquisitors, don improper garments, shatter the strategy. “Sire, this is your sign, take it.” And my hand closes on air. Pulse race slowing, the sword’s weight palpable still on my palm. Escape equates to heresy. With heralds and hoofbeats we Rush into engagement, but the voices that guide us don’t shout.
The ones who hang out drumming and hooping on Sundays will get this one. I've always wanted to do something with some of her trial narratives, maybe sometime. A close initial reading might reveal an unexpected gift. After she jumped out of the tower that time, they told her another escape attempt would mean an automatic conviction of heresy. She replied that wanting to escape was perfectly reasonable.
My daughter broke down crying in the car the other evening when she heard on the radio news that the oil had reached Florida. I don't know what to tell her.
I'm infuriated when I hear people talk about the seafood or the tourist industries. Yes, but what's happening here is on such a larger level than that that it is inconceivable. Global emergency, worse than bombs, and we're all moving dream-slow, like we're wading through, um, oil. Our lives have changed forever, you know.
Writing is going nowhere and feels like it never will, just a colossal waste of time. But what else will I do with myself? I drew a card and waited for voices last night, but after 12 hours of writing for hire and being treated like the maid, there was nothing left.
I was talking to a woman I like yesterday evening and noticed for the first time the scars on her wrists. Of course I'm too polite to ask. But sad.
Tests said I'm still anemic, which means more and worse tests.
I will go pull weeds and stomp on ants now.
My friend is here for the weekend and my daughter is healthy.
Here's astrologer Jeff Jawer's bite-size bit: The New Moon in Gemini sows seeds of ideas that can excite the intellect and spark a variety of connections and conversations. Mercury, Gemini's ruling planet, forms supportive sextiles to philosophical Jupiter and inventive Uranus, setting off brainstorms of innovation and originality. The Capricorn Full Moon Eclipse, though, insists that we come down from the clouds of possibility and commit to doing the hard work necessary to make real changes here on planet Earth.
How can you run for three hours without an iPod, is what people seem to want to know most. I did a trail half-marathon in a leisurely 3:22 yesterday, walking the last mile and a half because of knee pain (might be IT band again, might not; a few days will tell). I still want to attempt the 50k before I'm 50, which gives me a year and a half. (And at my pace, it might take a year and a half to run it.) But if the IT band is back, I might be stuck with 10-milers forever. There are worse things.
I also saw two copperheads.
So I run through pain sometimes, and there is a lot of pain, there's no getting around it. My great discovery arrived by accident, as they do. I found that through my alternating of three basic thought patterns is associated long, sometimes painful runs with pleasure, sometimes great pleasure. First there's the union with the earth and what it gives: In my polymorphous perversity simply putting my right hand down on one of the Grandfather rocks on Bear Island can make my head spin happily. Then there's the association with creative pleasure; writing poems and prose in my head when I run. The third secret--and there must always be three--was recalled to me recently by the wise counsel of a friend who recommended: "Next time you're standing around in line or traffic getting impatient and angry, think about the last orgasm you had."
TMI? Well excuse the fuck out of me. Did you happen to see the sign up top that says "blog"? TMI is intrinsic to the medium.
My ongoing games of "who would you do" on the trail keep me in the moment; when the moment becomes too painful, something similar to my friend's advice gets me out of the time and place that's troubling me. Of course, a man would be the source for that advice and arguably would find it most useful. It's a little more difficult for women. Oh, that's not what I meant. I mean women are more apt to ponder not only the event itself but those precipitating and succeeding it, i.e., "well, that was fun, but I'm still mad at him nonetheless," or, "will that be the last one ever?" or, "why couldn't it have been with this or that person, instead?" or, worst of all, my sisters, and you need to STOP this, "was I too fat/loud/silly/strange/etc." At that point, one needs to cycle back into living in the moment, and touch a rock or something.
Sometimes I also think about landscaping or health care policy.
But never baseball.
Photo: from the NPS website, Bear Island, where the rocks are like none other.
At the advent of the Third Emperor My comfort was unmatched: Even the screech of the pea fowl an Unbridled proclamation of the security Of my position. The Second Emperor, A man of peace, extended His policy to my person. Sometimes I smell The next city burning.
I walk the garden, Jewel-green beetles hop and Dragonflies hover beside me. My path has become uneven, rocky, Riddled by tiny holes I now understand Are made by snakes. The old palaces may burn, and my birds, And even my books, but in this empire I will not be very much alone.
I was looking for my Kenneth Rexroth 100 Poems from the Japanese for some kind of epigram to kick that one off with, but all I could find was 100 Poems from the Chinese. So I started casting around online, and still didn't find anything, but check out these poems that fell into my hands:
2 poems by Yosano Akiko (1879-1942):
Another look like his mixed me up again— you really do play tricks on me, don’t you, gods of love.
Yesterday felt like a thousand years ago, at the same time I feel your hands still on my shoulders.
Poem by Takai Kito (1741-89):
A tumble, fall, crash, then silence— cats in love
And a Rexroth translation of a Geisha song:
When it’s the man I love he goes by and doesn’t come in but men I hate — a hundred times a day.
That thick club You ease against the earth— One touch of damp And it comes alive! The peasants gasp and scatter, Spreading rumors of miracles.
And our eyes meet again, Like every time, in every town We’ve done this trick. We work as one. We’re good, Aren’t we? And then we run, Fleeing the bishops and burghers.
Contrary to all caution, The older, the easier. Between bouts, I’ve wondered, On long winter travels, why We keep it up, keep going around, Keep coming back. For us, now, The miracle is not in the wood, Nor in the sprout, and not In the bread and coins tossed our way, But in that look, just after, The dizzying venture into the other’s eyes, A world ever new.
Not to get all Stevie Nicks on you, but a NYT review of the new Robert Hass selected poems throws in the "Randall Jarrell[’s] definition of a poet as someone 'who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.'"
Despite predictions, no lightning struck this weekend; no poetry struck me either, not even a filthy limerick. But I might have opened up a whole new level of reality, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially when your nose is poised over the corner of a credit card on a breezy summer's day. Not that I'd know anything about that.
ATTENTION X-MEN and comics in general fans, a special announcement of a new publication: I once wrote a comic with this guy, about a pharmaceutical factory/prison colony on Mars. Good times. This is what he's up to now--creating a new series of The Futurians.
So, to give thanks this weekend on what appeared to me to be not only the best but the biggest PDF ever, in so many ways, not in any order: the giant popping and unfolding wavy fan thing by Quentin; Sparkle Pony memento mori; Idea Dome for letting us worship the mind and use the LED hoops; Ludo O'Dillo's Pub and Celtic Cinema for providing a bench out front for me to lie down on in an "anemic" crise (some young women passing by asked my friends watching over me: "Is she real?" and crept forward to investigate; I mumbled something about a performance art piece evoking my Irish heritage, but no one ever hears me); the woman in the white bikini under the black light; Dan Van for the birthday cake; the black snake I almost stepped on while out running Saturday morning; the DC Burner Choir for giving me a chance to play; Elvis for the water; and all the people who grow things and understand the ley of the land.
Photo: Luna moth, pre-flame, University of Maryland.
Got a shit ton of pay work tonight but my husband wouldn't let me use the laptop unless I wrote something for myself first. He is not my patron, nor does he patronize.
For My Patron
I could create cathedrals From my breath, my fingers spires, Ribs a nave before the altar heart. My patron trusts stone.
I would use clay, scrabble And mound the firm earth, Shape it under a layer Of slip, supple as flesh. My patron has no faith In this substance; he specifies Block stacked on block.
I tried to respond to some of the interesting comments folks have been leaving, but blogger did some weird error thing with the comments recently. Perhaps it will calm down. I do really like to hear the comments. I also need to write about 20 different things, but the bell just rang--back to the pay work!
Writing poetry is such a weirdass thing to do. And reading it to other people even more so. I'm always like WTF? Then I go to something like the Cliff Lynn/Rocky Jones production last night [would give a link but it's pretty much wholly facebooked] and I get it. It's everything ELSE other than creative pursuits (and playing and hanging out and food and love and, OK, healing too) that is a weirdass waste of time. Why do we do anything else?
I think it has something to do with coming to poetry pretty late in the game. I wrote a couple poems in college, but was known as a fiction writer/journalist. Then in 1995, I was home from work for a week taking painkillers and it reminded me of some feelings and I wrote a poem. Then there was a day in July or August, 2006 I think, and I was running on the C&O towpath and a poem came into my mind. It gave me something to think about while running, because I don't wear an iPod. Then that just kept happening. My poems are old-fashioned and I'm probably doing it wrong.
I'm so creepy and dull about poetry, I have no training or academic background, don't know what I'm talking about, as worth listening to as a right-winger saying "I know what I like!" I'm also slavishly, sometimes ickily devoted and promotional to people who run readings and do presses and such, because it can be so fucking hard and I want to just be a Big Fan and say how wonderful they are.
Having said all that, sometimes I'm on target in spite of myself, and I bought a book by Le Hinton last night, and if you don't do it too, you're doing it wrong.
They also let me read a poem in time for me to get back to DC and get the fishnets on in time for the fundraiser. And to dance to some DJs who were also doing it wrong in the best way possible.
Here's the poem, which happened because I was at the beauty shop yesterday and saw a sign that said "your hair can save the earth." They're filling oil booms with hair. And I was reading this at the same time; Oniony but sharp enough to have fooled several major news outlets, and therefore me, until I could get to where I could check it out.
Beauty Shop
Is it a myth that hair and nails Grow on in the grave? These vain snips, Dyed buttercup and crimson, may The multitudinous seas incarnadine. The engineers are looking for A way to stop the bleeding. Been there. Their defenses booms and concrete, Like fighting fire with counter burns. The seas, like us, contain multitudes, We suck up the oil, The fish suck up the oil, The soil sucks up the oil, And so it is that I suck Up a blot of old Dick Cheney. When I die, I'd prefer to be burned.
The Singing Acupuncturist gave me a great gift last night, a whole bottle of Ant Essence. Chinese herb blend--real ants in it.
She asked me to think about what I desire, and I could barely muster up a puff of laughter. I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think: "You? Desire? Ludicrous." But that last word is too melodramatic. Let's substitute "inappropriate." Bureaucratic language is what's required to dry me up entirely. Cough and the dust scatters.
I lie awake in bed feeling every joint and tendon adjust in tiny increments to each position I try, like I'm in a 3 a.m. yoga class. This will mean I'll be falling asleep over my computer at work tomorrow. Pay work is like some horrible abusive relative who's had a stroke and now I have to take care of and feed and change if I want a place to live. The minute I have a thought of my own she's up there screaming like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford combined.
The 3 a.m. parade begins: I have said and done and even worn all the wrong things, I have not done anything I'm supposed to do, there is such a pile of things I must do that even if it were not absurd to have desires I would never be allowed to pursue them, I have nothing to give and no one wants it anyway, no one has anything to give me and I wouldn't be able to accept it anyway. "You're supposed to be counting your blessings and thinking about how lucky you are," hisses Joan Crawford, hanger in hand.
The Singing Acupuncturist calls this "self-lacerating." This is Saturn conjunct Sun, with a particularly tricky Mercury retrograde for icing. As usual, my daughter is the one exception. We have been laughing for days over a comic called Johnny Boo that she got at free comic book day. It's a comic about being bored.
I'm able to think of one desire I might be allowed and might fulfill: To go into the woods. Though I might encounter a Beltway's volume of WASP Labrador-walkers and Latino commuters and half the Sidwell Friends cross-country team, every trail in the woods feels mysterious and alluring to me. I am eating ants and stepping on ants and hoping to conjure up ant power.
Photo: The air conditioning went out in our apartment and the guys are here fixing it and here I am with a big old picture of Adam Ant in shiny party pants up on my screen. That freon will make you see some funny things.
Open the bags and show you what I got this weekend with my daughter in NY: 1. Little red notebook from Kiosk. 2. Physical contact with Hart Crane's bridge, which Davetree turned me on to so long ago. Long ago for me, not for him of course. 3. Physical reassurance that a friend is doing OK--just OK, but OK--when I ran into her by chance outside Carnegie Hall. 4. Great concert by the Whitman kids. Not-so-great Mary Poppins. Almost did a bait-and-switch on my daughter in the tkts window and told her they only had tix left for Fela!, but she's too smart to fall for that shit nowadays. 5. Cupcakes with Hot Friend E. 6. More $5 fake pashminas. 7. A poem about the Marina Abramovic exhibit. Let me inflict the former upon you now.
The Butterfly on the Bicycle Seat
Show them what you're made of, girl! Show them all--what's underneath, What's inside--they'll always pay for that. Show them the pile of bloody bones, The rotting doll--at seven you knew The meat on your own bones, That day on the beach, you saw The end of the piece, every bit cleanly bleached. And the encircled figure sketched In dried-blood-color lines, Its reach not the ideal of man's capacity But evidence of the master scientist Performing experiments in endurance. You know, the one with the pin. Seven years later, with your own blood, You wrote: "I began to paint my dreams."
It's a little from things in the exhibit, but the part about the DaVinci is imaginary. I don't much like Salvador Dali, but I'm really fascinated with his bizarre vision of Millet's The Angelus, and it got me thinking of a different perspective on a famous image. It's probably still too awkward for now. Can we blame it on the notebook?
Photo: The artist from the artist, used without permission. If I'd picked up a Mary Poppins image I'd be in jail for sure. I'm racked with guilt as it is. If you look here tomorrow and there's no picture, it's cause guilt won.
Mourning has a hierarchy No less than any social construct And it's just; don't upset them When they've had enough. It's often to the same preacher Who proclaims: This is the time For you to remember and to share That falls the delicate duty Of pulling the prodigal aside, And in the shelter of a brotherly arm, Whispering: Don't make this about you, now. I've seen a few whose doors In life were thrown open, In death, rest behind a velvet rope.
The circle of kin can be forgiven A preference for hired mourners-- Who know the dress, the decorum, The proper pitch for the wails-- To the peculiar, the peripheral, The ones they never could understand Why they always kept showing up.
The new deadline for finishing my book manuscript is April 14. New moon. So many stupid work interruptions. I'm furious frustrated over not being able to write what I please. I want to write about a very good writer who died but it just doesn't seem right even if I could. I want to write about Massey Energy but that could take years. And I really want to write about Erykah Badu, but the perspicacious Wanda Sykes has pretty much said it all.
PS: Perspicacious is a good thing to call someone. Someone called me it in a letter to the editor once. It was then I discovered that it doesn't mean sweaty.
I found a playing card, 7 of spades, near the railroad bridge when I was running, so I'm obliged to write about the 7 of swords. Can't ignore a cosmic demand, even if the offering is so rusty it creaks.
Seven of Swords The Reader at the Fair
The reader may not want To discourage or dismay; She may want you back. She may want you To tell all your friends, Share your wonder, even with a few.
So we know strategies, Cloaks against the gusts. Ensuring continued patronage Means creating diversion: It may be out of balance, But it's not a lie.
How else to answer the questions, Does he love, and Will I live, And the one they're all pealing out Nowadays, What must I do To say, to show, to be My true spirit, my art, my self? They falter, and tell me All the ways it's impossible To reach what they desire.
The card says this: The wind comes in from the left coast, The one traditionally given dominion Over illusion and intuition. This is Your path, though not always taken In such elegant boots. Flags signify A freshening trend.
Two points of upright, practical counsel Ought to be enough: Get some Fresh air and exercise. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Take these five points too:
We are all hustlers and barkers. Not one of us is worth the earth we plod over. So, if the spirit moves you, dance. If the spirit moves you, steal. Steal with joy.
She looked like a greyhound with a litter of Labradors up there. All the handsome men from her film leapt and waved and hooted, and she stood off to the side, accepting some hugs, in it but not of it.
I loved Near Dark and I don't know that I've seen a better vampire movie since. Insomnia had me up and watching Point Break at 3 a.m. the other night. It's an anti-distaff version of Showgirls, really, that bad, but in the middle of it all there's a ridiculous, overlong bravura chase scene on foot that still leaves me shaking my head. And her usual male ensemble--all charming whenever they're in motion. They parkour, they surf, they even fly, because they can. Even Keanu is less like a robot for a change.
I don't get out to too many current movies anymore, but I'd say Hurt Locker was the best I saw last year, that and Anvil. She had the writing (which killed Point Break, which was supposed to be that holy grail of productions, Tapping the Source) on her side for once. The rhythm was astonishing. Whenever someone started losing their cool, it would build, and then you're watching the El Greco St. Jerome military shrink go kapow or something. The image from the film that was used in the promotion, of the circle of IEDs and wires, is more than documentary; it's iconographically chilling somehow, it reminds you of something ancient and horrifying, the dust and the wires and the shapes in a circle emerging from the earth.
Anyhow, the Oscar award to Kathryn Bigelow was accompanied by scattered commentary that she only won because it was a "male" genre, and that a true feminist triumph would only be realized if a woman won for doing a "womanly" genre (romantic comedy. That's ours. Tell it to Wilder and Cukor. We don't get horror, action, war, western, disaster, or even Biblical epics! It's so not fair!).
So Bigelow is not a "real" woman; Johnny Weir is not a "real" man; President Obama is not "really" black, on and on. After a bit of this, I have to wonder why it seems to be so much easier to question the person than it is to question the rules of admission to the club.
Back to my cave to try to finish this thing. No, not that thing, that other thing. And that thing too. Plus I have to go let clients insult me and tell me what an awful, awful writer I am. I have been insufficiently demoralized, and I've got some catching up to do.
My own peregrinations confined to shuffling between snow canyons splotched ochre by abstract expressionist canines, I'm living vicariously through the DC public library. Because I'm oh oh oh so busy, I've had to renew Will Self's Psycho Too to try to finish it, and then there's the giant brick of the new Patricia Highsmith bio, which is so exhaustively written and oddly structured it takes an act of will to penetrate a page. Doesn't matter; I have to know.
But Self is like listening to my self as I would be if I had a decent education and more talent. Running is my derive, not walking, and I'm deprived of my derive in recent days. So get you a copy of this book, with its fine fine Steadman illustrations, and journey if you will with Mr. Self from JG Ballard's Shepperton digs to Dubai, ending in Ibiza among a party "too old to rave, except against the dying of the light."
Back to work. I'm attempting to work to the music of a French internet radio station that specializes in 70s rock. They just played Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue followed by a bit of French movie dialogue, followed by Creedence's Penthouse Pauper, and then Disco Lady. Civilization's contents.
I'll blow the cobwebs off while the snowmegeddon soup cooks. Been working on a project that demands two hours a night, plus the working for a living, plus home, plus a fun project I'm writing on. I keep having to say no to potentially fun things to do. But even that's not giving me enough time. So after tonight, no poems, no blogging, and horrors, no facebook (except for official Choir business) til April. I couldn't quit cold turkey. I'm just doing what they call in distance running a "taper."
My two library books this week, E. Ethelbert Miller's The 5th Inning and Mick Wall's When Giants Walked the Earth, a biography of Led Zeppelin, have so few things in common, you don't even need a hand to count them on:
1. They both rock.
2. They each can be consumed in small, convenient, bite-size bits.
There the similarities end. Miller's memoir is a carefully structured series of poetic, detailed meditations on age, writing, love, race, and baseball.
Led Zeppelin had a lead singer who started out in a band called Hobbitstweedle.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and they don't mind if they do.
I can't get through more than two pages at a time of Giants, and it's not only my packed schedule that's to blame. Wall's crazy overwriting, yeah, I know, pot meet kettle, makes every sentence an adventure, let's say that. One minute you're hearing about Jimmy Page stealing every song, arrangement, and riff that's not nailed down, then you're inside Bonham's bass drum (Page wouldn't let him use a double bass because the resulting rhythmic complexity threw him so far off base), and the next minute you're in the Edgewater Inn, figuratively speaking. I actually was there once, on business, writing about people doing a genomics project. It has been restored to become a lovely place, with a huge lobby full of fireplaces and comfy chairs and board games.
Anyway, I took to opening it at random before falling into a coma at night, and here's the kinds of things you open up to on any given page:
"Thirty-four-year-old Johnny Bindon was a nasty piece of work...a London 'face' who counted among his friends the Kray twins and Princess Margaret, and who would serve several prison sentences before being accused in 1979 of murdering another underworld enforcer named John Darke in a club brawl. Both menacingly intimidating and apparently hilariously funny depending on his mood, Bindon's favourite party trick was to balance as many as six half-pint mugs on his erect penis. Bankrupt at the time of being hired by [manager] Grant, the only thing that assuaged his violent temper was the vast amounts of marijuana he smoked. With both Page and Plant now receiving death threats before the tour had even begun, G had decided he needed someone like Bindon along for if and when things got rough. The trouble was, with someone like Bindon, things were likely to get rough sooner rather than later. As Alan Callan would observe, 'He certainly wasn't hired for his dinner conversation.'"
Interesting sentence structure and comma placement aside, how deliciously weird is that? And there are like 450 pages of it, on and on. Of course, as DH says, it would be more remarkable if it were pints. And with all his writing, Wall never answers the really important questions, like how the hell did they come up with Kashmir, and were those half-pints arranged vertically or horizontally?
Maybe I need to read it backwards.
Photo: Miss Pamela Des Barres, formerly of the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company.
