Opening my Internet home-page today, found this missive from Mozilla Firefox:
Big corporations want to restrict entry. Fake news and filter bubbles
are making it harder for us to find our way. Online bullies are
silencing inspired voices. And our desire to explore is hampered by
threats to our safety and privacy. It’s time to join Mozilla and do our
part as digital citizens. Donate today to support programs that keep the
internet healthy, free and open for us all.
(1) It's not "big corporations"
trying to restrict Internet usage. (Are you kidding? Corporations want
ads, that's all.) It's the government seeking control, and sometimes rightfully so:
i.e., radical Muslims and Russian operatives being allowed uncensored access to the Internet. I applaud any
government that tries to limit any such radicals from posting their propaganda (via Firefox, for example).
(2) RE "Fake news and
filter bubbles making it harder for us to find our way." Are you
KIDDING? YOU, Firefox, are responsible for said
"fake news" appearing on any platform that you control. If fake news is a problem, then DO YOUR JOB and edit out the fake news.
(3) RE "Online bullies are
silencing inspired voices." Ha! I'm an Independent. And what's been
happening online lately is a concerted effort to stifle any voice that
doesn't correspond to current left-wing PC group-think. The leftists are the so-called "online bullies." Please maintain your independence, Mozilla, and don't align with the decidedly UNHEALTHY thought-fascists.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Not Situated
On quiet nights like this (what? Halloween?), I love my apartment. It's big (1200 sq ft) and pretty (I especially like the wall of white stone with fireplace), and there are a lot of things to work with, lots of decorating plans to potentially enact.
Trouble
is, the place is 50% placid, 50% ennervating. The "dudes" hanging out
from last April (when I moved in) thru July have been quieted thanks to
the firm actions of the apartment management. From July thru October,
the only "problem" I had was with the maintenance room being located
next door to my apartment. And I decided that I could handle those DUDES
banging around. Especially after a new "old guy" was hired; he's over
50, and since his hiring, the room is no longer a hangout. (As it should
never have been to begin with! Get out there and fix something, DUDES!)
As of early October , though, I have new neighbors on the other side of me: 20-something DUDES who have been blasting their music at various hours. There's also a new fat chick who lives behind me whose dog is a barker: for hours at a time, depending on when it gets triggered. Sometimes in the early morning, sometimes after 10pm, sometimes from 5pm on and on.
I can't relax. And, at $1300 per month, I want to finally be able to relax. One of the photos below shows the big stack of boxes left over from when I moved in last April: I don't want to discard them, because I might need them again this coming April! Another photo (by the kitchen table) shows a big box with an unpacked outdoor patio set. I initially bought this at my last apartment, thinking that my space there was relaxed enough to allow me to sit outside... it was not. Nor is my current space, even though it has a backyard area (fully in view of a whole bank of residents). In the spare-bedroom shot, you can see an unpacked carpet (new) plus framed turn-of-the-century Weehawken portraits that I have had from my last apartment and have STILL never hung anywhere.
I can't seem to get out of flux. Dang. $1300 should have bought me a bit of peace, I thought.
I can't seem to get out of flux. Dang. $1300 should have bought me a bit of peace, I thought.
Monday, October 30, 2017
Isadora Duncan harangue, 1915 American tour
"Don't you know what's wrong with you? It's those hideous brick buildings across the street! They would make anyone sick! That's what's the matter with you Americans! Why do you live in such ugliness? You are all going to die of it some day. It's going to kill you all, every last one of you... Where have you been, all of you, all your lives? Haven't you ever gone anywhere? Haven't you ever seen anything? Haven't you ever loved anybody? Hasn't anybody ever been kind to you? What is it that makes you willing to live with such hideous things around you?"
This is her screaming at an audience. This has been me screaming at the only audience I have -- on social media -- for the past 7 years, out of utter desolation and loneliness. True in a warped way, yet meaningless and emotionally self-destructive.
1895-1908 Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance
Clips from various dancers, but all imitated from Loie Fuller's original dance performed at the Folies Bergere of Paris. Imagine seeing this at the turn of the 20th century! How unique and interesting! (While the clips here are colorized, Fuller actually incorporated colored lighting into her club show.)
Isadora Duncan
I've always disliked Isadora Duncan. I didn't like her face to begin with; I didn't like the stupid Greek tunics. I thought the legend of her childrens' drowning and of her own death via scarf ("Affectations can be dangerous," said Gertrude Stein at the time) were part of her pretentiousness.
Her magnate lover, Paris Singer, helped me understand. When Duncan asked him why he stayed with her, he replied: "You have the most beautiful skin, and you never bore me." He eventually left her forever after he'd rented Madison Square Garden for her and she mocked his gesture in front of others.
After reading "Isadora: A Sensational Life" by Peter Kurth for the past few days, I like her much better. She's still pretentious (and obnoxiously slutty---sleeping with over 1,000 men, according to her one and only husband, the 18-years-younger Russian poet Esenin, himself a drunken slut).
But there's also something THERE. I think she was sincere in her desire to express a universal music in dance, and to teach others to express the same. I'm not certain, but I believe she is considered the founder of modern dance; she especially hated ballet and its rigid forms. Ballet still survives, of course. But so does Duncan's then-newfangled concept of "natural" dance which, combined with Loie Fuller's elevated, enhanced "skirt dance" performed in Paris (with accompanying light show) at the turn of the last century, are together the foundation of modern dance. (Fuller the modern, technological innovator; Duncan, the "back to nature," "free-love" purist --- both a radical departure from the established mores of the time.)
Her magnate lover, Paris Singer, helped me understand. When Duncan asked him why he stayed with her, he replied: "You have the most beautiful skin, and you never bore me." He eventually left her forever after he'd rented Madison Square Garden for her and she mocked his gesture in front of others.
After reading "Isadora: A Sensational Life" by Peter Kurth for the past few days, I like her much better. She's still pretentious (and obnoxiously slutty---sleeping with over 1,000 men, according to her one and only husband, the 18-years-younger Russian poet Esenin, himself a drunken slut).
But there's also something THERE. I think she was sincere in her desire to express a universal music in dance, and to teach others to express the same. I'm not certain, but I believe she is considered the founder of modern dance; she especially hated ballet and its rigid forms. Ballet still survives, of course. But so does Duncan's then-newfangled concept of "natural" dance which, combined with Loie Fuller's elevated, enhanced "skirt dance" performed in Paris (with accompanying light show) at the turn of the last century, are together the foundation of modern dance. (Fuller the modern, technological innovator; Duncan, the "back to nature," "free-love" purist --- both a radical departure from the established mores of the time.)
Saturday, October 28, 2017
George Jones & Tammy Wynette - "Golden Ring" (1976)
This video, of the couple who had just divorced the year before, is cute until the weird "spitting" episode that occurs in the last 30 seconds of the clip. Tammy recoils, wipes her face, shakes her head; George clutches her to him, mockingly wipes his own face... Very awkward to watch.
Friday, October 27, 2017
Cher - Gypsies Tramps And Thieves (1971)
But for this, there would be no Cher. She is so great here --- enough for the next 40 years or more.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
"Places In the Heart" Final Scene
I woke up at 2am yesterday with TCM on, and caught "Places in the Heart" for the first time in over 20 years. Here's the final scene (some in the pews are dead).
I could not stop crying.
I could not stop crying.
Rescue Fantasy
I don't have one. Truly, I don't. I never have.
I think, while growing up, that my mother's hard-core judgmentalism always somehow outweighed my father's abusive tendencies. I was emotionally abused by both parents, and frightened by my father, but the latter was always stopped in his tracks when he tended toward sexual abuse. For instance: At age 12, I was sunbathing in the backyard. My father came outside to join me. He then suggested that I take off my bikini top. I didn't feel comfortable doing so, and refused. He then went on a tirade that involved making me take down every single Bay City Rollers poster on my bedroom wall. Emotionally traumatic, but, as I always did, I immediately told my mother when she got home. I "got to" put the posters back up a day or so later. And my father never suggested such a thing again. (They divorced later that same year, so I luckily got to avoid any further sexual suggestions on his part.)
That said... Was my "telling" a "rescue fantasy"? I guess it could have been. But I also had a firm belief in the power of telling "authorities" and thinking things would then turn out OK. I didn't have to fantasize because, while I was often under great mental stress at home, I also had a sort of outward structure: My mother was never going to let anything TOO bad happen. (At the very end of their marriage, that year, my father finally pulled a gun on my mother after she wouldn't go in the bedroom with him after he'd come from drinking. He chased her outside and shot at her a couple of times. That was the worst I'd ever seen. I was relieved to discover that THAT was, indeed, the very last straw for her --- she then filed for divorce.)
So that's me. A shitty, violent dad; a mother drawing lines only after it came down to truly horrible stuff. I survived it. And I'm glad for the line-drawing. 99% of my adult life, I've been self-sufficient.
I do have a question, though, about someone that I've known for about 9 years now. When I met her online in '08, she had just lost 18 years of child support, was then being supported by an older Sugar Daddy. When he was declared senile by his children, she lost her sponsored apartment and was forced to beg relatives/friends for support. One old family friend paid her rent for year; after that, a fellow AA member gave her a spot on his couch. Even that is now about to end.
Now, this woman was raised rich; her father died early, her mother lost his money to vultures... I think she has a perpetual Rescue Fantasy.
I've tried to help her, for years, to get a job: Working up a resume for her, sending job notices that I found online, explaining how easy it was to get a simple, cushy part-time job with the state... No desire at all for any self-help. She'd prefer to sleep on someone else's couch rather than work for even a one-room place of her own.
She's nearing 60. At what point does the "Rescue Fantasy" end? Of course, it doesn't. Even when speaking to her a couple of weeks ago, she joked about a "Russian" rescuing her from her financial plight. (That wealthy Russian oligarchs might prefer 30-ish nubile young women to a 60-year-old didn't seem to deter her.)
Me in this equation: I care about her, but my idea of "rescuing" is offering a room for a few months and helping with a job search. Not sexy. Not the stuff of fantasy. Our internal needs don't intersect at all.
I think, while growing up, that my mother's hard-core judgmentalism always somehow outweighed my father's abusive tendencies. I was emotionally abused by both parents, and frightened by my father, but the latter was always stopped in his tracks when he tended toward sexual abuse. For instance: At age 12, I was sunbathing in the backyard. My father came outside to join me. He then suggested that I take off my bikini top. I didn't feel comfortable doing so, and refused. He then went on a tirade that involved making me take down every single Bay City Rollers poster on my bedroom wall. Emotionally traumatic, but, as I always did, I immediately told my mother when she got home. I "got to" put the posters back up a day or so later. And my father never suggested such a thing again. (They divorced later that same year, so I luckily got to avoid any further sexual suggestions on his part.)
That said... Was my "telling" a "rescue fantasy"? I guess it could have been. But I also had a firm belief in the power of telling "authorities" and thinking things would then turn out OK. I didn't have to fantasize because, while I was often under great mental stress at home, I also had a sort of outward structure: My mother was never going to let anything TOO bad happen. (At the very end of their marriage, that year, my father finally pulled a gun on my mother after she wouldn't go in the bedroom with him after he'd come from drinking. He chased her outside and shot at her a couple of times. That was the worst I'd ever seen. I was relieved to discover that THAT was, indeed, the very last straw for her --- she then filed for divorce.)
So that's me. A shitty, violent dad; a mother drawing lines only after it came down to truly horrible stuff. I survived it. And I'm glad for the line-drawing. 99% of my adult life, I've been self-sufficient.
I do have a question, though, about someone that I've known for about 9 years now. When I met her online in '08, she had just lost 18 years of child support, was then being supported by an older Sugar Daddy. When he was declared senile by his children, she lost her sponsored apartment and was forced to beg relatives/friends for support. One old family friend paid her rent for year; after that, a fellow AA member gave her a spot on his couch. Even that is now about to end.
Now, this woman was raised rich; her father died early, her mother lost his money to vultures... I think she has a perpetual Rescue Fantasy.
I've tried to help her, for years, to get a job: Working up a resume for her, sending job notices that I found online, explaining how easy it was to get a simple, cushy part-time job with the state... No desire at all for any self-help. She'd prefer to sleep on someone else's couch rather than work for even a one-room place of her own.
She's nearing 60. At what point does the "Rescue Fantasy" end? Of course, it doesn't. Even when speaking to her a couple of weeks ago, she joked about a "Russian" rescuing her from her financial plight. (That wealthy Russian oligarchs might prefer 30-ish nubile young women to a 60-year-old didn't seem to deter her.)
Me in this equation: I care about her, but my idea of "rescuing" is offering a room for a few months and helping with a job search. Not sexy. Not the stuff of fantasy. Our internal needs don't intersect at all.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Gordon Craig on Isadora Duncan
 |
| Isadora Duncan by Edward Gordon Craig. |
All things have only an imaginary existence...
For the remembering of an act --- "I went with her
through those lighted streets and we
bought our supper from three or four shops" ---
is greater than the act itself....
Beyond wonder wonderful --- that seemed and seems
as I see those shops --- that street ---
the lights, it becomes again so wonderful
that I turn sick with pain of gazing --- It is gone
by --- that glimpse.
----------------------------------------------
An earlier recollection of Craig, after seeing Duncan dance for the first time in 1904:
Only this can we say --- that she was telling to the air the very things we longed to hear, and till she came we had never dreamed we should hear...
Traveling Wilburys - Handle With Care (1988)
I've been uptight and made a mess
but I'll clean it up myself, I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success
Handle me with care
Oh, goodness
I've recently been in sporadic e-mail contact, via Facebook, with the subsequent "best friend" of the girl I loved my senior year of high school and "left" when I went off to college at UT Austin. (I put "left" in quotes because neither of us knew anything about "love." She and I were very close. Closer than I've been to anyone since. Once I went off to college, Ginny found a new "best friend"; she left me.)
A couple of weeks ago, I Facebook-messaged the friend: "Happy Birthday to Ginny!" (who had died in 1988).
She messaged me back, saying she'd called Ginny's mother on that day...
I replied back with my shallow memories: "I remember that Ginny always spoke harshly to her mother; and is her father still around? I remember that he always drank a dozen Cokes per day..."
What was I trying to prove? That I also had memories of Ginny's parents? Ginny and I used to want to explore different religions. We once tried to find a Unitarian church in Fort Worth and got lost. Her parents questioned us upon our return --- we didn't look like we'd been to church. I also traveled with the whole family to Georgia in the summer of '83 to visit Ginny's grandmother. The car trip, the hotels, the bedroom, the return...
At the time, I thought, "Oh, this is just the end of high school. I'm going off to college. I'm a hotshot. I'll experience hundreds of other intimate moments like this." In fact, I have never since experienced such intimate moments.
A couple of weeks ago, I Facebook-messaged the friend: "Happy Birthday to Ginny!" (who had died in 1988).
She messaged me back, saying she'd called Ginny's mother on that day...
I replied back with my shallow memories: "I remember that Ginny always spoke harshly to her mother; and is her father still around? I remember that he always drank a dozen Cokes per day..."
What was I trying to prove? That I also had memories of Ginny's parents? Ginny and I used to want to explore different religions. We once tried to find a Unitarian church in Fort Worth and got lost. Her parents questioned us upon our return --- we didn't look like we'd been to church. I also traveled with the whole family to Georgia in the summer of '83 to visit Ginny's grandmother. The car trip, the hotels, the bedroom, the return...
At the time, I thought, "Oh, this is just the end of high school. I'm going off to college. I'm a hotshot. I'll experience hundreds of other intimate moments like this." In fact, I have never since experienced such intimate moments.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Traveling Wilburys: End Of The Line (1988)
Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, doing the best you can
Well it's all right, as long as you lend a hand
You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring
Waiting for someone to tell you everything
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring
Maybe a diamond ring
Well it's all right, even if they say you're wrong
Well it's all right, sometimes you gotta be strong
Well it's all right, as long as you got somewhere to lay
Well it's all right, everyday is Judgment Day
Maybe somewhere down the road a-ways
You'll think of me, wonder where I am these days
Maybe somewhere down the road when somebody plays
Purple Haze
Well it's all right, even when push comes to shove
Well it's all right, if you got someone to love
Well it's all right, everything'll work out fine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line
Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive
I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive
It don't matter if you're by my side
I'm satisfied
Well it's all right, even if you're old and gray
Well it's all right, you still got something to say
Well it's all right, remember to live and let live
Well it's all right, the best you can do is forgive
Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Austria election: Sebastian Kurz set to become the world's youngest leader
The wave of the future. No more globalist, corporate control of countries.
Many artists are somewhat stupid
Love Joan Crawford as I might, when I've been in contact with local actors in local plays, and attended their shows and after-parties... They were silly and self-involved and downright stupid. Same with local artists at their shows. Local musicians? Eh... I went home with one one night and got to sit around in his living room talking to his roommate while the "musician" himself was off shooting up in a back bedroom. (Musicians, at least, don't seem to be pretentious --- they're just boring. Unless you like to sit around listening to them "noodling" for 6 or more hours an evening --- I don't. I've been able to stand it for about 45 minutes.)
I'm 52 now, and I've been around a bunch of people, in both academic and artistic environments... Scientists and business-people are actually the smartest. (In the academic environment, Liberal Arts and Communications professors are the dumbest/least original.)
I've currently spent 9 years of my life chasing after a so-called poet/artist that I knew from a poetry class back in the '80s. She was great circa '86. What she's doing now: Living with random people and off random never-quite-sufficient oil checks. And complaining because her sister gets to go on $40,000 ski trips. (Her sister married better than this so-called artist did.)
Her "dilemma" was interesting to me circa 2008. In 2017, though... I'm bored as shit with her. Nine years ago, I was a loser who couldn't find a job, and she was a loser who couldn't find a rich man to support her. Today... I'm making $16,000 more per year than I was making 9 years ago. And she: Still scruffing around and looking for a sucker to pay her bills.
I'm 52 now, and I've been around a bunch of people, in both academic and artistic environments... Scientists and business-people are actually the smartest. (In the academic environment, Liberal Arts and Communications professors are the dumbest/least original.)
I've currently spent 9 years of my life chasing after a so-called poet/artist that I knew from a poetry class back in the '80s. She was great circa '86. What she's doing now: Living with random people and off random never-quite-sufficient oil checks. And complaining because her sister gets to go on $40,000 ski trips. (Her sister married better than this so-called artist did.)
Her "dilemma" was interesting to me circa 2008. In 2017, though... I'm bored as shit with her. Nine years ago, I was a loser who couldn't find a job, and she was a loser who couldn't find a rich man to support her. Today... I'm making $16,000 more per year than I was making 9 years ago. And she: Still scruffing around and looking for a sucker to pay her bills.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Heart: Crazy On You
Happy Birthday, Ginny (October 11).
I didn't get either Heart or Rickie Lee Jones, her favorites, at the time.
I didn't get either Heart or Rickie Lee Jones, her favorites, at the time.
WE'RE ALL WATER by Yoko Ono
Happy Birthday to Ginny Haney today, October 11. She died at 22. She would have been 52 today.
She listened to this with me in 1983 because I absolutely had to hear it. Yoko and John are ridiculous to me today, but I still remember, and am grateful for, a 17-year-old Ginny's patience. (Probably why she abandoned me a year later!) :)
She listened to this with me in 1983 because I absolutely had to hear it. Yoko and John are ridiculous to me today, but I still remember, and am grateful for, a 17-year-old Ginny's patience. (Probably why she abandoned me a year later!) :)
Monday, October 09, 2017
Milquetoast Republicans Like Charles Sykes: No More
https://www.c-span.org/video/?433923-2/words-charles-sykes
Never-Trumper Republican Sykes (exactly the type of person that I hate worse than Hillary Clinton, whom I never hated until her disgustingly false behavior in 2016 and until learning the extent of the Clinton Foundation corruption; in fact, I voted for her against the nothing Obama in the Democratic primaries in 2008) and interviewer Tammy Bruce on C-SPAN while I was using C-SPAN to go to sleep Sunday night. Sykes was a complete generic Jeb Bush idiot (again --- I would vote for Hillary Clinton before I would EVER vote for someone like Jeb Bush).
Never-Trumper Republican Sykes (exactly the type of person that I hate worse than Hillary Clinton, whom I never hated until her disgustingly false behavior in 2016 and until learning the extent of the Clinton Foundation corruption; in fact, I voted for her against the nothing Obama in the Democratic primaries in 2008) and interviewer Tammy Bruce on C-SPAN while I was using C-SPAN to go to sleep Sunday night. Sykes was a complete generic Jeb Bush idiot (again --- I would vote for Hillary Clinton before I would EVER vote for someone like Jeb Bush).
Tammy Bruce, a conservative herself, calmly discussed with Sykes the
fact that Trump, while no Republican (thank god for that), was,
nonetheless, an agent of change who was attempting to get rid of both
Democratic and Republican orthodoxies... As I drifted off, I was
thinking, "Thank you, Tammy Bruce, whoever you are. You are asking sane,
rational questions of this epitome of Republicanism that I absolutely
HATE." The guy, Sykes, decried Trump for "acting bizarrely," among other
shallow and stupid things, like being a "fraud." (If there's one thing
that Trump is not, it's emotionally fraudulent: I challenge anyone to
name one thing he said on the campaign trail that he's not attempted to
follow up with as President.)
I ended up staying awake to watch the whole thing. I woke up the next day wondering who Bruce was. Turns out she's similar to me: Bisexual, feminist, Democrat up until 2008 (me, until 2012) --- when she (and I) realized that something has gone horribly wrong with the Democrat social experiment that began in 1968 or so.
I ended up staying awake to watch the whole thing. I woke up the next day wondering who Bruce was. Turns out she's similar to me: Bisexual, feminist, Democrat up until 2008 (me, until 2012) --- when she (and I) realized that something has gone horribly wrong with the Democrat social experiment that began in 1968 or so.
Former
radio host and MSNBC contributor Charles Sykes looks at the
conservative movement in America. He is interviewed by Tammy Bruce, Fox
News contributor and host of The Tammy Bruce Show.
c-span.org
Saturday, October 07, 2017
Friday, October 06, 2017
Trump: A Real Man
Compare how Trump reacts to an intruder to how Bernie Sanders reacted to the BLM gals. Trump is a fucking old-school Stud. I admire that sexy, macho lost breed.
RAW VIDEO: Activists disrupt rally featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders, weakling. Why I couldn't support him last year. Trump, on the other hand --- when someone charged HIS stage, he set his feet and turned directly to confront. A real man.
Trump and Sanders were the only candidates to address the outsourcing of American workers. Those were the two I was interested in. But when I saw Sanders give in to these radicals, I was completely repulsed by his weakness. Not to mention, when I thought about it, his complete ignorance of any concept of how the economy runs. Why wouldn't Trump be the best choice?
Trump and Sanders were the only candidates to address the outsourcing of American workers. Those were the two I was interested in. But when I saw Sanders give in to these radicals, I was completely repulsed by his weakness. Not to mention, when I thought about it, his complete ignorance of any concept of how the economy runs. Why wouldn't Trump be the best choice?
Wednesday, October 04, 2017
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Even the Losers (1979)
Well it was nearly summer, we sat on your roof
Yeah we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And I showed you stars you never could see
Babe, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me...
Yeah we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And I showed you stars you never could see
Babe, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me...
Tuesday, October 03, 2017
Tapped Out
The blessings were mixed, the whole mess licked clean
from a horsehair bowl some joker's dada had left him
Our avid lapping the envy of each starved cat
curled nearby, unpurring, eyes narrowed to watchful slits
skirting the edges, stilettoes mincing convincingly
Oh, the trouble we stirred up --- sometimes with splintery
wooden spoons pricking our outstretched tongues
Sometimes with blenders whose tops blew off, splattering walls.
We licked it like that.
------------------------------------------------
The trees of our land have scars
where pioneers nailed their barbed wire.
And when the worms have had their way
with flesh and wood alike
The rust still runs through ---
swallowed by the stubborn knots
of both fury and patience.
------------------------------------------------
The you that I miss was never there
We met in air, and dispersed with as little mass
Which came first
My wish, or the way you were
I was never sure
which way the wind blew
without clouds occasionally kind enough
to leave clues in a wide, vacant sky
--------------------------------------------------
All her incantations couldn't conjure
one last drop of even bad luck
from the dregs of Old Jude's bag of tricks.
(I am not ashamed
to say the heart stopped long ago)
Revival by needle, by glass, by knife
Every gash and prick alike
And this patron, once saintly, now too
all tapped out.
from a horsehair bowl some joker's dada had left him
Our avid lapping the envy of each starved cat
curled nearby, unpurring, eyes narrowed to watchful slits
skirting the edges, stilettoes mincing convincingly
Oh, the trouble we stirred up --- sometimes with splintery
wooden spoons pricking our outstretched tongues
Sometimes with blenders whose tops blew off, splattering walls.
We licked it like that.
------------------------------------------------
The trees of our land have scars
where pioneers nailed their barbed wire.
And when the worms have had their way
with flesh and wood alike
The rust still runs through ---
swallowed by the stubborn knots
of both fury and patience.
------------------------------------------------
The you that I miss was never there
We met in air, and dispersed with as little mass
Which came first
My wish, or the way you were
I was never sure
which way the wind blew
without clouds occasionally kind enough
to leave clues in a wide, vacant sky
--------------------------------------------------
All her incantations couldn't conjure
one last drop of even bad luck
from the dregs of Old Jude's bag of tricks.
(I am not ashamed
to say the heart stopped long ago)
Revival by needle, by glass, by knife
Every gash and prick alike
And this patron, once saintly, now too
all tapped out.
Monday, October 02, 2017
The Unwanted (Leaving Las Vegas)
I woke up to a massacre
I closed my eyes and waited for
Another fate than what awaited me
I could not guess what I had done
To dream the wrong end of a gun
(The living lure much more than I can flee.)
I'm sure it all began more civilly
With a note, perhaps: "Will you marry me?"
From an Elvis song, or from your first dead baby
I want to live, but I can't sing.
Just leave me at that. Leave me everything.
I closed my eyes and waited for
Another fate than what awaited me
I could not guess what I had done
To dream the wrong end of a gun
(The living lure much more than I can flee.)
I'm sure it all began more civilly
With a note, perhaps: "Will you marry me?"
From an Elvis song, or from your first dead baby
I want to live, but I can't sing.
Just leave me at that. Leave me everything.
Sunday, October 01, 2017
I hate Austin. I hate it with all my heart.
You're not supposed to say that about the town you live in, especially if you've lived in it, give or take, for most of your adult life.
Or if you've bought thousands of dollars of furniture upon your return to the town once you got a job and could afford it, thinking this was where you were going to end up as an old person.
I DON'T WANT TO END UP HERE.
With all of my heart, I don't.
SELF, GET ME OUT OF HERE. GET ME OUT.
GET ME OUT.
GET ME OUT.
GET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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A 10/2/17 post-script to the above: Jesus! I had no idea I felt that strongly about it while in my cups! Sober, I don't feel quite that strongly. Dilemma: Listen to sober or drunk self about true feelings?? :) Honestly, I don't remember writing the above. There are minor day-to-day irritations, and I certainly don't have any connection to Austin today, as I once did in the '80s --- the town has changed drastically and become drastically generic at its core, with only the veneer of its once-funky self... I guess I do hate it now. Used to be cheap and funky. Today, it's super-expensive (thanks to influx of tech people) and pretending to be funky. Do I hate it because it's truly lost its charm or because I'm too old to compete for anything in its future? I am truly upset that at 50K per year, I cannot live in a decent place.
Or if you've bought thousands of dollars of furniture upon your return to the town once you got a job and could afford it, thinking this was where you were going to end up as an old person.
I DON'T WANT TO END UP HERE.
With all of my heart, I don't.
SELF, GET ME OUT OF HERE. GET ME OUT.
GET ME OUT.
GET ME OUT.
GET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A 10/2/17 post-script to the above: Jesus! I had no idea I felt that strongly about it while in my cups! Sober, I don't feel quite that strongly. Dilemma: Listen to sober or drunk self about true feelings?? :) Honestly, I don't remember writing the above. There are minor day-to-day irritations, and I certainly don't have any connection to Austin today, as I once did in the '80s --- the town has changed drastically and become drastically generic at its core, with only the veneer of its once-funky self... I guess I do hate it now. Used to be cheap and funky. Today, it's super-expensive (thanks to influx of tech people) and pretending to be funky. Do I hate it because it's truly lost its charm or because I'm too old to compete for anything in its future? I am truly upset that at 50K per year, I cannot live in a decent place.
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