happy new year

it's 15 minutes before midnight here on the west coast.  i just watched a couple of videos, one from sydney australia, the other from aukland new zealand.  what a difference.  sydney's famed fireworks new year's celebration was muted with very few people.  aukland's was the opposite.  the streets were thronged with thousands of people.  new zealand has done a better job at managing the pandemic.  here in california we are pretty damn muted in our celebrations.  the virus is off the charts raging.  i don't know what 2021 will bring.  i couldn't have fathomed this time last year that in a couple of months we would be in a full blown pandemic.  how quickly the world changes.  or change, to use an expression, on a dime.  we are not done with our changes.  & i think of how we measure time.  nature doesn't give a shit what we call the year.  we can call it anything we wish.  indeed, in 1999, the famed paleontologist & science educator, stephen jay gould, said that it is humanity that makes the calendar so if we want to call the year 2000 the start of the 21st century, we can.  time is a real, physical thing.  but what we call it is made up by those who do the measuring.  in other words, the names of the years are an extension of time in the way that the exiled russian poet joseph brodsky said that countries are an extension of the space.  whether where brodsky reached for the dictionary the gesture would remain the same.  2020 is gone only to be replaced by 2021.  our problems remain the same no matter what we call the year.  we don't know what is waiting for us in the next 12 months.  we can't know.  & yet, because of my own stubborn optimism, i think that whatever hardships & travails & pleasures & joys await us in this new year, we will face them with our fragile humanity.  for better & for worse.  for i praise, in spite of all evidence, the human being.   

quote unquote 

Oh, it's just New

Year's. I'm 

not superstitious: 

the year may turn out 

very rewarding. Anyway 

I'm sixty-seven, 

and have high blood pressure, 

and probably shouldn't 

be doing speed at all. 

Let's reschedule!

--thom gunn 

['blues for the new year. 1997' boss cupid; fsg, 2000] 

goodbye 2020

'it's that little souvenir of a terrible year'

gorgeous song by the sundays & oh so apropos of 2020

Arkadiy Kots Band — Who Shoots At Workers

this russian band is named after a 20th C socialist poet.  one of the members, kirill medvedev [the dude on banjo], is a well-known poet & political activist who famously gave up the copyrights to his works in 2004.  the lyrics, penned by medvedev, are helpfully supplied by a person in the comments section.  but you can get the drift of meaning from the title of the song & the speed of the tempo.  the band, & the tune, may remind you a little of billy bragg & the pogues.  well, it does for me.  however, if we struggle with art & meaning in the united states of this young century, it is instructive & heartening to see how russian poets, musicians, artists et al. have been doing all this while.  

peace & love     

happy christmas!!

as we chill here at casa de lopez/bronson, waiting for the rain, which is expected to fall in about 20 minutes [for i do so love the rain, its sounds & smells], waiting for christmas dinner this evening.  to say this year has been challenging is one of the greater understatements.  what a time to be alive.  i am an unbeliever, yet i think we do need holidays & ceremonies that bind us together as we remind each other of our humanity.  times are dark, & still i am grateful for my family, my friends, my brothers & sisters in the art.  instead of dwelling on the darker parts of our species i think it is useful & instructive to remember that we are beautiful, & capable of great kindnesses.  i do not pray.  i don't think there is anything to pray to.  but still, let me say on this day, a wish, for us to know that we all share the same water & air; that we all live on this same muddy rock orbiting an ordinary star in an average galaxy; that we are all possessed with beauty as well as ugliness; & that all things come to pass.  what seems permanent is just temporary.  one human lifetime is enough.  & as the poet said, to live comes from the full knowledge of death into life.  we are here just this once.  my wish is for us to know it.  we are magnificent because we are insignificant.  we are beautiful because we are finite.  we are alive, right now, at this moment, in an extraordinary time.  make of it what you will.  despair & joy.  i want all of it.  i want to live into death.  i wish for all our species to practice humility & gratitude of our human being.  for we are all brothers & sisters & non-binaries, together, on this beautiful, ordinary planet we call home. 

dammit!  i just stepped outside.  it's too cloudy to see The Great Conjunction.  i am watching the livestream from griffith observatory.  it ain't the same as seeing it with my own eyes but i've been watching saturn & jupiter these last few days growing closer together.  & the technology of a livestream would be considered witchcraft to the people who saw this thrilling night time astronomical event 800 years ago.  astonishing times we live in.  scary as fuck too.  but i remember last summer in cayucos nick pointed his camera at saturn & retrieved stunning photos of the planet, her rings & a few of her moons.  these celestial things are always here, always above us, & will, most likely, outlast us.  & i am in fucking awe of the sheer beauty & majesty of our home, the earth, the solar system, & the universe.  we are alive.  we are sentient.  we need to be is alert, patient, humble, & pay attention.  as the late poet steve carey wrote, 'Oh, Mom, it is so beautiful'.

Deck the Halls with The Surfrajettes!

surf a socially distanced wave from canada on this winter solstice & night of the great conjunction! cowabanga & hang 10, dudes & dudettes!

saturday night  

wide awake 

eliot told us bad poets imitate

good poet steal 

it's one of those nights 

i wish i was someone else 

a different person who had my name 

a consciousness too aware 

of its own silliness 

& self importance like a creature 

in the phrase of nicanor parra 

neither stupid nor smart 

an angel made of sausage 

& ripe for the eating

i am what i am said popeye 

& too goofy to know the difference

sci fi days

i like looking at the cities & communities.  in the age of digital reproduction doing virtual tours of say paris or nyc is quite easy.  someone has posted a video tour of the neighborhood you like on youtube.  google maps & streetviews provide another way of taking the grand tour.  i recall using google streetviews to tour bromma stockholm once again.  the first time i visited that municipality was on a family trip way back in 1998. 

but what it is about the media that turns the familiar into something familiar & strange?  i just watched a few videos on youtube that focused on midtown sacramento.  one was a driving tour.  i know these nooks & streets like the back of my hand.  i walk in them all the time.  & yet, watching someone else taking me on the tour was another experience.  

perhaps it might be because we are living in a sci fi age.  this evening anna & i did some errands which involved driving to a home depot & a couple of other stores.  when we parked we put on our masks to go inside the store.  when we returned to our vehicle we cleansed our hands with hand sanitizer.  some stores let in so many people thereby making us line up spaced about 6 ft apart outside & awaiting our turn to enter.  the parking lots for big box stores are enormous & sadistically designed.  navigating them takes the patience of job. 

we all, or nearly all, of us carry phones.  these devices are powerful computers that help us organize & navigate thru our physical & digital worlds.  these worlds are collapsing unto themselves thus creating something brand new.  we parked our VW Atlas, equipped with a navigational system that amerigo vaspucci never could have dreamed up in cold sweat.  i locked our vehicle with a touch of my hand on the handle of the car door.  the SUV made that reassuring chirp that says, all secure!  

anna & i, masked up & ready to go, turned toward the store of our attention.  we passed on older indian woman sitting on a bench in the midst of this chaotic parking lot waiting for her family to gather her up.  while she waited she watched a video on her phone.  some of the vehicles looking for a parking space or leaving a parking space made that quiet hum typical of an electric vehicle.  the digital signs on the sides of the buildings apologized for being closed on account of the pandemic.  some stores are permanently closed.  the newly refurbished movie theater, the one that advertises brand new digital viewing experiences, is closed too because of the pandemic.  some of the buildings are being remodeled with scaffolding, light industrial equipment, ladders & cranes.  

inside the store are cameras & monitors & shoppers using their phones for myriad tasks.  i turned to anna & said, sometimes i feel like we are living in a sci fi movie.  the technology we use & take for granted is mind melting.  i wondered aloud that perhaps the next generation of vehicles will be all electric & tuned to the sound of our voices so that locking the car will require a voice command.  

in the early 1990s i read an article that claimed soon we will be reading on devices that can stream audio & visual.  alarmed, i took that article to one of my professors.  i was alarmed because i love books.  the physical things as well as their contents.  i did not - do not - want to live in a world without books.  my professor said that sounds like science fiction to him.  & yet, that is precisely what came to fruition.  & luckily, books as a physical medium are still present & necessary.

change is gonna come.  whether we want it to or no.  AI will become even greater.  automation will continue apace such as in manufacturing.  factories will need fewer & fewer people to make things.  however these things play out i can't say.  but they are happening & will continue to happen at even greater speeds.  20 years ago i would have flipped my fucking lid if i had seen someone sitting on a bench watching a video on a hand held device.  that is where we are.  now.  & soon the rocket ship, life, will take us to even stranger worlds. 

ready, steady, go

fifty-something skateboarder koan 

what is the sound of one ass hitting 

the sidewalk

Station Horizon (2015)

i've been waiting for season 2 of this swiss series about an ex-con who returns to his home village to run the family gas station.  interesting, is that the swiss village is americanized.  in other words, the villagers are obsessed with all things american.  i love seeing the united states thru swiss eyes.  i can't say it is a great series.  but i liked it  a lot.  unfortunately, the first season has been pulled from netflix so my uneducated guess is that i won't be seeing the second season.  pity.  for the show won me over, particularly the main character, joris, played by bernard yerles, who is a man doing what he can to save his family business all the while dealing with the eccentricities of his family & fellow villagers.   

Rob Stanton, 2017 National Poetry Month

i am, admittedly, a night owl.  it is nearly 1:30 am.  the rain just started & is coming down in giant barrels.  i think it knocked out the internet for a few minutes.  after i watched a video & clicked on another video my computer told me i was offline.  i looked out the window.  rain & more rain.  i can hear it loud.  but this is our digital age & the internet was back up in no time.  & back to youtube.  here is a short reading by the poet rob stanton.  i've long admired this poet who used to keep a pair of poetry blogs in the early 2000s.  it was his blogs that i first read stanton's work.  anyway, i'm happy to find this video of stanton reading a clutch of poems based on the paintings of luc tuymans.  dig it!

dark light [2019]

thumbing thru netflix last night looking for a movie to watch i find this flick in a couple of categories.  sci fi & action, i think.  the thumbnail of a blond woman in a corn field with the brief description of the plot that details the woman's daughter disappears from her bedroom had me thinking this is a ufo abduction story.  wrong.  it is the tale of a newly divorced young mother who returns to her childhood home in the country with her young daughter.  the dark light of the title references creatures who live under the house & in the adjacent corn field.  these monsters have a big flashlight for their eyes.  hence, their dark light. 

i knew i was in for some serious cheese to go along with all that corn.  still, the movie is better than the reviews it got.  jessica madsen, an actor previously unknown to me, plays annie knox, the young mother.  her daughter, emily, played by opal littleton, is a 10 year old coping with the trauma of her parents' recent divorce.  annie's ex, paul, played by ed brody, is a decent man who is doing his best to cope with his new life too.

soon the creatures make their presence known.  first by scratching between the walls, then by closing & opening doors, then by their klieg lights blazing in the nearby crop.  the monster design is not bad either if not very original.  soon, the object of their affections is young emily.  after a few jump scares emily is taken.  no one believes annie, especially after accidently firing her shotgun into the shoulder of paul.  the police take annie into custody.  she is charged with the murder of her daughter.

the plot flirts with annie's tipping over into madness.  yet, it is clear by all evidence given that the creatures are real & not the hallucinations of a young mother's mental illness.  a few rather large gaping plots holes remain & the timeline of the events grows a little fuzzy.  especially, when annie seeks the help of a cryptid specialist who has a hypothesis about these dark light monsters.  the less said about that sidetrack the better.  still, annie is a driven & solid personality very well essayed by madsen.  indeed, madsen's set expressions are pretty damn charismatic.  i believed her as a young mother tormented & determined to find & save her little girl.

the filmmaker, who both directed & wrote this pic, padraig reynolds, is pretty well schooled in fright flix.  he does a good job at building tension & framing his scares.  sure, the dark light creatures look a bit silly once they are fully visible.  but the moments when we find evidence of their being based on their massive eye light, such as when annie sees the lights in her corn field, is pretty damn effective.  

shot in tblisi, georgia, standing in for, well, i don't know, we are never told where this place is, but i think it is meant to be a part of the u.s. south?, the production is lean but the countryside is pretty.  a nice contrast to the menace inside & outside annie's childhood home.  the script is weak but the direction & photography are fairly solid.  but it was madsen who carried this movie & the reason why i continued with it until the very bitter end.  she is a solid, charismatic presence onscreen.  as for the creatures, i kept thinking, get a few scientists on the scene, will ya!  a new breed of humanoid apex predator is worthy of study & preservation, not fear!  

rainy days & sundays don't get me down

yeah, i've been battling a low pressure system of my own.  call it the blues, or the blahs, or 'a case of the mondays' [phrase taken from the film office space (1999)] .  nothing major.  & not much to talk about.  & yet, when i awoke this morning i looked outside the window.  the rain spattered glass.  a fair wind blowing.  & the air smelling newly scrubbed & my spirits lifted.  just like that. 

well, not quite just like that since we celebrated nick's 16th birthday yesterday.  & my blues had already begun to change colors on nick's special day.  i am astonished, happy, & humbled & proud to be his father.  a most remarkable young man with a keen intellect & kind personality.  i think nick gets his mind from his mother & his empathy from me.  however, i am a biased father who is amazed beyond reckoning that our son is growing, & developing, into his own human being.  it is, again, humbling, & wonderful to watch.

the rain.  how i love the rain.  as a young man, around nick's age, i loved to take long walks in the rain.  preferring walking to driving, or riding my bike, or riding my skateboard.  walking is a slower route.  you can daydream when you are walking.  you can see things that are a mere blur if you are driving, or bike riding, or skateboarding.  things slow down.  if for a little bit.  

but so, anna & did some household things.  i took a longish nap.  who'd have guessed that naps would be a source of great pleasure in middle age.  i was reading/listening a bit of tom verlaine, formerly leader of the 1970s punk band television [i've said this before, i'd love to read a book written by verlaine (his last name taken from the 19th C symbolist poet, & lover of arthur rimbaud, paul verlaine)].  i think the guitarist is an artist's artist where he disappears into his creations.  just as eliot said that the artist must lose his/her personality.  of course, tho, an artist who takes the name of an older artist is not exactly disappearing his personality but i get verlaine's drift.  he's a dude whose both shunned the spotlight all the while making art that is singularly his.  like catullus did over 2000 years ago, & cavafy did a hundred years ago.

now, i'm watching on youtube a TV movie called this house possessed [1981] starring parker stevenson, slim pickens & lisa eilbacher.  what & who?  this flick was made & released right before the video cassette era took off.  made for TV movies were common productions pitched to fill valuable air time on time slots, like monday & friday nights, on networks when the number of viewers was relatively modest.  sometimes these networks produced some gems.  sometimes the networks made movies that had the viewer wondering what the fuck were they thinking.

this particular flick was one that stuck in my mind long long after seeing it.  indeed, in the early days of the internet i'd google for it without remembering the name of the pic.  finally, some years ago, i found it.  lo!  it was uploaded to youtube.  is it a good movie?  so far, not bad.  but stevenson's character, gary, an overworked rock star in need of a vacation, is a stretch.  pickens is a damn good actor.  in nearly everything he's been in.  it is eilbacher i remember the most.  she plays stevenson's nurse.  they rent a large house that, well, spies, thru cameras installed in the premises, on our young couple.  & sets up some mischief. the house is possessed!  eilbacher is so lovely.  i had a huge crush on her.  & she can act rings around stevenson.  she set my teenage heart a-fluttering.  & is the main reason why i remembered this movie for so many years.  

& that is where i'll end this rant.  

back to the flick! 

when the impossible happens

at this time, or around this time, 

last year i was watching the chinese gov't 

building a hospital in wuhan to combat the virus

i was asked if i worried that the virus, which i 

think didn't yet have a name, would leap the 

borders & harm the united states of america

such is my ignorance & arrogance 

for within a couple of months 

it was clear that the virus was here

& the first case of community spread

was being treated at uc davis hospital

a mere mile or so from my house

then the eastern seaboard was hard hit

cities like nyc was under lockdown

& i remember the moment when i knew

the world had changed into something 

we still have no name for 

it was march & i was walking 

home from work pass the golden 1 arena 

where a kings game was set to play

thousands of fans were outside the grounds

& i thought that i would no way want to be 

indoors at a basketball game with a virus 

beginning its community spread

i was texting john b-r who told me that 

tom hanks & rita wilson tested positive

& the NBA cancelled all basketball contests

every person at the golden 1 arena had to 

go home without watching the game

& that the insulation that i was taught 

as a child that protected the united states from harm 

was permanently punctured 

never again to be repaired back in place

i felt that there is always a moment 

in our lives where we thought the 

impossible can't happen 

like war famine & disease

that moment when the impossible

ceases to be impossible 

& becomes inevitable

& i fear that is where we are 

in the united states 

the insulation has burst

& we wait in fear & wonder  

what the outside might drag indoors

 

Cal Expo Monorail Night Scenes at the Fair

this video of the monorail at the california state fair captures the sacramento mid summer heat & light so well.  light in california.  my home for the last 53 years.  a place i hope where i will die.  the videographer's done a magnificent job.  i love the fair.  i miss it.  we didn't attend the fair the summer before last for reasons i don't remember why, & the fair was cancelled this past summer because of the pandemic.  every year the fair is the same.  the theme changes but the fair proper, in essence, is always the same sort of attractions & exhibits years on end.  such is my reason why i love it so much.  what about summer 2021?  i don't know.  the vaccines, i think, will be rolled out en masse by mid-summer.  but i don't know if the vaccination rate, which i've read should be around 75% of the population for effective mass immunization, will be achieved by mid-summer.  i fear it won't be.  not by then.  however, we live in unpredictable times.  what i know right now is that the pandemic is fucking raging.  nearly 3000 deaths daily in the u.s.  & today we got a text on our phones from the california state government that warns us that community spread is out of control & to stay indoors as much as we possibly can.  the audio accompanying the warning text was imperative, dramatic.  i almost leapt out of my skin.  wear a mask.  avoid large gatherings.  once upon a time these things happened to other peoples, other countries.  not to america.  or so i - we - was taught.  what seemed impossible was impossible until that moment when it was possible.  like disease.  like war.  like famine.  like political instability.  we all live on the same planet, breathe the same air, & drink the same water.  we are no longer insulated in the u.s. anymore.  we are all human beings.  we can't get thru this alone.  so as i render myself into near incomprehension by the magnitude of our problems in this young century i can still sing, in the phrase of brecht, the darkness, within & outside of our selves.  & dig the beauty of a mid summer night at the california state fair.  

no man, i'm not limping

i just live

life

at a slant

it came from the trailer park!!!

i think this flick is jackie chan's 1st american feature.  it is the first pic i'd seen him in.  to say that i was obsessed with this movie is a vast understatement.  i must've dragged my brothers & friends to the esquire theater on the k st mall [now an imax movie house], right across the mall from that great scumporium the star theater which featured badly dubbed kung fu flicks from hong kong [oh, i went to school at the star theater!], about a dozen times during its run.  i loved the martial arts & was studying shotokan karate.  & i love exploitation/horror/kung fu movies so what is not to be obsessed by but the very charismatic jackie chan & his balletic skills at fighting.  i even had a poster of chan to decorate my room.  40 years on & this movie still rocks.  chan has made better, more adept & accomplished films, but this one, the big brawl [1980] (later renamed battle creek brawl) remains a favorite among my favorites.  

vino haiku

 

writing in a dead mall

i had this notion to bring my laptop & set up shop in the empty food court [no vendors, a few tables left over] at the country club plaza / this was a few years ago / after the last restaurant packed up & the sports store shuttered its doors / there was / is / a watch repair shop that i'd frequent / the country club plaza was a smaller mall but it did very well when i was young / but the retail landscape is changing / so is the shrinking middle class / malls have been slowly dying / now the pandemic really kicked them in the ass / i don't know how or what will survive this mad age / no one does / but i never did set up shop at the empty food court at country club plaza / i don't know what i'd accomplish anyway / people watching was a dead end / no free wifi either / perhaps i'd capture in words the fading worlds that i grew up in / the crowds / the blaring PA / the traffic / the many stores / even the bookstore where i discovered the poems of nyc jim carroll / whose book was spine to spine with jonathan livingston seagull by richard bach / & the verse of anne morrow lindbergh / i couldn't know the future anway / i barely remember yesterday / but if i could continue on in this mess with you / holding your hand / i think i might take up smoking / a pipe / ask for my slippers at the end of a hard day at work / as you work on the equations to solve cold fusion / & the world outside becomes something that we could never have imagined

gumshoe

if i was to be a gumshoe i'd want to be nick charles played by william powell in 1930s san francisco w/ the late summer fog to match the mood of crime while i saunter & jaunt thru the scum my mouth puckered from another bon mot my fedora worn at a rakish angle & an empty hi-ball glass in my right hand 

lines written while watching two seconds [1932]

the moments between edward g robinson's ass hits the electric chair & the pulled switched 

pre-code flick 

the notion that your whole life will flash by in two seconds 

how to sound dem-dees-&does 

& aw! why are you so sore?!

every hood wears a fedora & every gal is a dame

smoke like light waves in a room 

wow!  spy her gams!! 

life is the end of 

& death is the first electric flower