Friday, April 29, 2011

surreality

it was/is a busy night in downtown/midtown. i don't know why. just lots of bustle, traffic, to-ing and fro-ing. i was walking down j st and heading toward the convention center. my thought was to turn right on to k st then proceed down to 21st st where i'd stop by time tested books. i've not been to the indie bookstore for a few months.

whoa. just as i cross the street to the convention center two dudes were on the corner with big placards with pics of obama doctored up so our president has a hitler-style moustache. printed on the placards was the name, lyndon larouche. you mean to say that that guy is still alive? holy shit, you've got to be kidding me. so these two fuck-faced dweebs are handing out flyers and as i pass they stick one in my face. 'help re-institute the glass-steagall act,' they said.

huh? i take the flyer and check my hearing. i glance at the flyer before putting it into my pocket. i walk the several blocks to time tested books where i browse for about 20 minutes and buy a selected poems by anne sexton [jim mccrary is singing ms sexton's praises and it's been many, many, many years since i read a poem of hers. i did enjoy that biography published in the early '90s and thought that sexton was a winning, if more than kooky personality] and hooked!: buddhist writings on greed, desire, and the urge to consume, ed. by stephanie kaza [shambhala, 2005]. then the rest of the walk home was uneventful if fraught with all sorts of pollens since it was a very windy day and my allergies were kicked into high gear so i felt like i was floating in some sort of alternate world.

which leads me back to larouche. fucked in the head, but i agree that the glass-steagall act should be re-instated, or a version of the bill separating commercial and investment banking, but i didn't think i'd ever agree with larouche on just about anything. i'd blame it on the histamines raging in my system but it just ain't that simple. the world is in a dark, corporatized place now and we have a political party, or parties, very eager to mcdonaldize the whole of government. it is so fucked up that i even agree with larouche on at least one thing.

it was strange and i felt like the poet paul eluard in that novel by milan kundera where the poet floats above the streets of prague. i experienced a dash of surrealism at the end of a long day. i kept the flyer and thought i'd send it to a friend in the southern part of the state who i think might get a kick out of it. i'd blame it on the wind too but no, this shit nearly blew me away.

3 Comments:

At 8:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Prague is the ideal place to float. Ryan

 
At 10:18 PM, Blogger richard lopez said...

perhaps someday i'll get to float in prague, ryan. coincidentally, i'm right now watching NO RESERVATIONS with anthony bourdain and he's sampling some of the local beers, and i understand these are some of the best beers in the world. i don't doubt that, at all.

 
At 6:38 AM, Anonymous Vaguely Quotable said...

You're always welcome, Richard.

 

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