quote unquote

for john bloomberg-rissman on the occasion of his 70th turn around the sun

I woke up one morning recently to discover that I was a seventy-year old man.  Is this different from what happens to Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis?  He wakes up to find that he's become a near-human-sized beetle. . .Our reactions, mine and Gregor's, are very similar.  We are confused and bemused, and think that it's a momentary delusion. . .These two scenarios, mine and Gregor's, seem so different, one might ask why I even bother to compare them.  The source of the transformation is the same, I argue: we have both awakened to a forced awareness of what we really are, and that awareness is profound and irreversible; in each case, the delusion soon proves to be a new, mandatory reality, and life does not continue as it did.

david cronenberg [introduction to the metamorphosis by franz kafka; 2014 (originally quoted in the column 'anti gravity' by steve mirsky; Scientific American, december 2020)] 

i thought when i got old loud music would only piss me off.  rather, i love, still, feedback, distortion, guitars, bass & drums.  i love rock&roll.  of every era.  but i had seen an article about 'heavy' music.  whatever that means to each auditor.  yet, it is an interesting subject to think about.  when i listen to rock&roll i like to crank up the volume.  but that doesn't necessarily mean 'heavy'.  black sabbath might be called 'heavy'.  they are one of the first bands to invent the genre of 'heavy metal'.  electrona artists that practice harsh wall noise, such as artists vomir, are heavy too.  i can handle heavy but loud?

i've been to loud, & even louder, concerts.  i recall when slowdive reformed.  their tour took them to s.f.  i was thrilled to see them.  i took my very good friend b.  both he & i were nourished on punk music.  we are no strangers to noise.  but seeing slowdive live was such a sonic bath b. told me he never heard a louder, heavier, band.  he didn't expect that.  

i was thrilled.  the syncopation & swirling guitars of slowdive, married to the vocal harmonies of the singers rachel goswell & neil halstead,  put me in a near trance state.  & yet, i can't say, for me, slowdive was the loudest band i had experienced onstage.  that honor goes to ozzy osbourne.

i am a huge black sabbath/ozzy osbourne fan.  ozzy, at the time, was reputed to be quite the wild man.  so when he & his band, the rhythm section of black sabbath - geezer butler on bass & bill ward on drums -, & guitarist zakk wylde, stopped at the old arco arena in 1989, i was sure to be a witness.  the arena was the second one for the basketball team the kings.  the kings arrived in sac in 1985.  they were the first pro sports team for my beloved town.  the first arena was this little box.  the second arena was a bit larger but its acoustics sucked thus earning it the nickname 'echo arena'.

& boy, did echo arena earn its dollars for horrible sound.  again, i was thrilled to see ozzy play with ward & butler from black sabbath.  i thought i should see the great rocker before his habits forced him off this mortal coil.  i recall many tunes both from the sabbath catalogue.  wylde's guitar was pure fuzz & feedback.  it was torture to endure.  i would've confessed to almost anything.  the vocals were muddied.  the great rhythm section sounded like plops of slurry.  & wylde looked like the rock god onstage but when he hit the high notes i felt my fillings fall out of my teeth.

holy shit.  that was some night.  the sound was awful but i do recall ozzy & co. were in fine fettle.  they rocked hard.  but that sound.  it was awful.  i've been to many many shows since then.  some, like slowdive, are very loud & 'heavy'.  but ozzy at echo arena in 1989 was off the charts, next level, kind of king shit.  i'm glad i was there for the show.  would i do it again?  the answer is yes, because, i do love rock&roll.  

for 10 minutes & 46 seconds this might be the best band on the planet

looking at photos of the olden times the old fart says, 'way back as i lived them old days they were all brand new'

poetry as a way of life: larry fagin

the cows of paso robles

1991.  i've returned to california & my mother hands me the newspaper want-ads.  it is early spring & the fire season is just heating up & the state is hiring part-time firefighters.  i'm a wannabe poet.  i've read my gary snyder & know that he logged some serious time as a fire watcher.  i've returned to school.  i'm taking classes & talked my way into a graduate poetry creative writing class.  the poet, dennis schmitz, was a dear chap & what i think of as a kind of coup i find out later is not uncommon.  schmitz was a sweet man who allowed many who asked to take his class to take his class.

i'm at the age where i am always up for an adventure.  i don't have a vehicle.  i borrow my brother's ford fiesta.  yep, you got that right.  an early 1990s model ford fiesta.  a small square with four wheels, made of plastic & metal.  we had earlier driven, a couple of times, to los angeles in that same car so i think driving it to san luis obispo should be a walk in the park, right.

i take my only suit, the one that i bought for my brother's wedding.  little did i know that the human body can still grow in its early 20s.  i must've grown about a half inch in the few months since my brother's wedding & my borrowing his ford fiesta to drive to cal fire in san luis obispo to become a poet-firefighter.  

oh the odes i would've written.  the drive down south was uneventful.  at lunch time i stop at a taco bell.  me with a couple of bean burritos & my biograph of dylan thomas.  across from me an old couple, in their 70s?, i don't know, but they seem ancient to me.  i know this pair was long married because they sat across from each, & don't say nothing.  not one word to each other.  utterly silent.  without looking at each other too.  i find that a little creepy.  i know pop songs sing the praises of not needing words with our beloved.  i'm here to be a witness & say, you fucking do.  talk.  talk to each other.  speak to your loved ones.  use the words.  cuz words are, most times, all we have for each other.  

wouldn't you know it ford fiesta are shit cars.  i finish my bean burrito lunch from taco bell, leave the old couple to their silence, & drive down the freeway.  do i know where cal fire is?  i'm young, i'm dumb, i'll figure it out.  i did stop at a rest stop, went to the bathroom, found a stall & put on my suit.  that is how i found that i grew an inch.  i'm fucked.  how the hell will i sit for a job interview.  a firefighter interview if i don't wear a suit? 

at this stage i'm committed to going thru with it.  perhaps i can wear the jacket over my oxford shirt & jeans.  professionally casual.  besides, the job is working on the line of california wildfires.  i expect to work 40 hours straight in a cal fire uniform.

fuck!! when i get to the outskirts of paso robles, a town i don't know nothing about, the ford fiesta explodes.  BAM!  the car seizes.  utterly.  i pull over the side of the road.  steam, or smoke, billows from the closed hood.  i manage to get the car to stop on the freeway shoulder.  i don't know what the fuck just happened.  the fiesta is dead.  & is steaming or smoking. 

a few minutes of disbelief pass by.  i get out & start walking down the freeway.  my head is down.  i don't look up so i don't know if people are slowing down or even stopping to help me.  i do know that later when i needed to traverse that same stretch of freeway on foot to get the auto mechanic who did the miraculous repairs that a few cars did indeed slow & signaled to me if i required assistance.

i walk the off-ramp & toward a gas station, & a pay phone.  a field filled with cows are between me & the pay phone.  it is a quiet early spring day.  at the time paso robles, famous for its wineries, was a fairly sleepy town.  at least it was at the section i was in.  some houses.  a lot of farm land.  & cows.  these cows all lifted their heads as i walked to the gas station to watch where i was going.  & when i walked past them back to my injured vehicle these cows again lifted their heads in my direction as if they recognized an outlier.  another weirdo who got off the road.  

i was stuck in paso robles for a couple of days waiting for the repairs to the ford fiesta.  the car overheated but the gauge that measured the engine heat failed so i couldn't know that the car was about to explode from the heat.  i missed monday's poetry class.  i did hear nirvana's 'smells like teen spirti' for the first time as it was broadcast on MTV.  finally, i thougt, music television got punk rock right.  i was fortunate.  i had a motel room to rent.  i just got my grant to attend school approved so i had money to pay for the motel room, a bit of food, & the car repairs.  & i had an adventure that i never would've experienced.

but what about the cows.  they were all chill but curious about this person who might have come from a rocket ship as far as they were concerned.  i can't speak for them.  but i've learned never to take cow philosophy for granted.    

i fucking love what jimmie durham is saying

another scene from the digital life

anna & i were watching a christmas hallmark movie.  you know the subgenre.  always a pair of beautiful people with terrific lives who are miserable & alone on christmas.  thru dint & trade & luck & a bit of santa's help these two people find each other & fall in love.  happily ever after. 

i'm a sucker for this kind of pablum.  a crude AI program can write these scripts.  & yet, sometimes the films feature an actor of astonishing range & proportion.  & i do love a good romantic movie.  

but tonight's feature was execrable.  i won't name it.  why would i.  almost all these movies have 'christmas' in their titles.  however, the male love interest, a man who hates all things christmas, is a writer.  this scribe is suffering from a massive writer's block.  

this is the 21st C so of course this youngish author composes on a laptop.  i don't blame him.  i do too.  yet, writing on a computer means that the writer does not have any need or even compunction to print a hardcopy of the text.  just open a file, start typing, delete when you must, arrange as you need to, & save your file.  

easy peasy.  but this is a movie.  a visual medium.  our young writer in this flick is stuck.  we've already witnessed his deleting a whole, mind you, a whole fucking paragraph of his work.  on his laptop.  later on, we see this shakespeare at his desk, hating christmas, while his love interest is in the house next door & making a racket, & he can't write!  to prove it, on his desk, beside his laptop, were several crumple sheets of paper.  the kind you would find in an earlier era of typewriters.  

anna pointed out the anachronism & mentioned she didn't see a printer in shakes' office.  we both use computers for our work.  & we hardly ever need to print out drafts.  i'm a poet.  i do keep a notebook, when i feel like it, but, hell, i write using both my laptop & the notes app on my phone.  so why the hell does this romeo need crumpled up pieces of paper to prove to us, the viewers, that he is so constipated he can't compose.

because, i guess, we still use paper to publish books.  & the mad genius poet surrounded by mounds of crumpled paper remains a strong image.  & yet, this error in the art direction of this particular film, as pointed out by anna,  had me in stitches.  it might be a while for our imaginations to catch up to our life in this digital century.    

another example why i love, still, humanity

for all those superspreaders & superspreader events stay sane/ stay healthy/ stay motherfucking safe

s.a. griffin i turned on the tv this afternoon while doing my weekly chores. the last 20 or so minutes of vegas vacation [1997] was playing. i like this movie. another adventure by the griswold clan from chicago as their bumbling, but well-meaning father, clark, played by chevy chase, leaps into the absurd. this flick is silly, fun & fodder for an autumn saturday matinee as i performed my weekly chores. i'd forgotten that the poet s.a. griffin is in this pic too. griffin plays a pit boss. he's probably in this movie at most around 2 to 4 minutes. griffin is a long working professional actor that's been in everything from tv commercials to sitcoms to hollywood movies to the stage. i watched griffin's brief turn as a pit boss who is fooled by rusty griswold, played by ethan embry, into thinking rusty is a wealthy man of the world. i like griffin. he is a good actor. he is also a great performer of his poetry. & i recall one evening when he & the rest of the carma bums, a group of poets that included john dorsey, ellyn maybe, & the late scott wannberg, who toured the u.s., bringing their neo-beat outlaw poems & songs state by state & city by city. robert hansen, publisher of POEMS-FOR-ALL tiny books & more, hosted the carma bums at his 24th st bookstore, the book collector. hansen had the most eclectic & wild & wonderful readings at the book collector. his little store was rich with books, chapbooks, broadsides, & other poetry ephemera. hansen loved the mimeo revolution era & had a deep catalogue of publications from that famed era of DIY poetics. grffin et al. are an extension of the mimeo revolution & so a perfect fit for hansen & the book collector. griffin possesses a cool charisma that i found to be what i call professorial punk rock. & he was a sweet man. we spent an hour or so shooting the shit after the reading. i found him open, generous & a good listener. he was also, i remember, as we talked, scoping the stacks of hansen's store. he must have purchased about a half dozen books. which is just what i do when i'm in a bookstore. or library. i think every writer is a book collector. after my chores i get on my phone & google s.a. griffin to see what i can find. i found, much to my amazement, video of that night when the carma bums ascended the book collector. the internet is proof of faulkner's dictum, the past is never the past. it hasn't even passed. i bought several books by the carma bums, individual collections & collaborations, & i recall griffin giving me a hug as we parted. i walked home to anna & nick [who was two at the time. he'll be sixteen next month!] & griffin & the other bums piled into their vehicles, each of us leading to the next adventure.

oh beauty, pierce my cold, hard heaert

          let the right one in

life lessons from the cats i've known

be cozy.  i am the king of cozy!

--leo 

kenneth patchen says. . .

 

life lessons from the cats i've known

life is briefer than you know.  stop & eat the flowers.

--ernie 

torn

summer streets & traffic

& the beat of cricket wings & police helicopter blades

approach the sun

 

language

what language do you dream in?

human 

quote unquote

 pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo et up yr nose with a rubber hose

--gaius sweathog catullus

peace & love to everyone one of you

 

quote unquote

the soon-to-be ex-precedent's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani held a press conference in the carpark of a landscaping business, next to an adult shop & a crematorium. Theme: ashes to ashes, dust to dildos.

--mark young ['wednesday newstrip' published on his blog gamma ways]

today was a very fucking good day the world won't be suddenly magicked into order, kindness & justice. the road before us is fractious & frought. & yet, for all my trepidations & fears i feel a relief. we are all stars in this movie. the narrative is written as we live it. we don't - won't - know what tomorrow & the following days will bring. the past is not a good map to use to help guide us to tomorrow. each moment is brand new. & it is up to us to make the movie we want. my son, nick, will be 20 at the end of the first term of this new administration. for him, this is just the very very beginning of his, & his generation's, life in this century. & the problems of our age are immense. how now do we take the next step? what comes next? how do we want to script & film this movie.

things to do on election day

it was like this, or a little different

it is like this, or a little different

jaan kaplinski

wake up

get out of bed

first cup of coffee

watch tv news

second cup of coffee

turn off tv news

read a little

watch a movie

read more poems

watch a documentary

do chores

go shopping

make dinner

& do laundry 

October-November 

Indian-summer-sun 

With crimson feathers whips away the mists; 

Dives through the filter of trellises 

And gilds the silver on the blotched arbor-seats. 

Now gold and purple scintillate 

On trees that seem dancing In delirium; 

Then the moon In a mad orange flare 

Floods the grape-hung night. 

--hart crane