watching a short documentary about the poet/novelist jim harrison who talks about his love of wine.  the poet says, young writers by the hundreds ask me for advice.  i say three things will save you: red wine, garlic, & dogs. 

that's all well & good for jim harrison.  i've no truck against his advice.  if it works for you, great.  

as for me, i say, what will save you is good beer, salsa, & cats.  

take from either as you wish.

old poet looking at a half-pipe

where are the skateboards of yesteryear? 

the best job for a poet

it's very spring-like here.  that's not unusual for february in these parts of the woods.  but when the days lengthen, the average daily temperature rises, & the local critters come scampering about like love is for sale, my thoughts & heart always, without fail, turn to the drive-ins.  the pandemic is hell on earth for a great many people & businesses but the drive-in theaters have seen a kind of small renaissance this past year because you can go out to the movies & maintain the required social distancing.  our local sac 6 drive-in theater was thriving before the pandemic.  it is doing very well now.  but as much as i love drive-in theaters & the culture of drive-in movies i've not been to the sac 6 drive-ins for a couple years now.  during the pandemic i've made do with staying at home with anna & nick & getting my drive-in fix via my memories, dvds, nostalgia websites, & youtube videos.  even with the sac 6 drive-ins open the culture of drive-ins have changed so much.  the eras of the car & car culture are over.  i mean over for the large portion of our society.  there will always be aficionados of gearheads to make the whole vibe still thrive.  & yet, i recall the mather auto movies where i saw flicks as varied as american graffitti [1973], sinbad movies with ray harryhausen fx, & bruce lee flicks etc etc.  mather auto movies shuttered in 1976 & the property was converted into tract houses.  i remember the single screen.  the playground [which is standard for drive-in theaters] was situated right below the screen.  i guess it was placed there so parents can both keep on eye on the kids & watch the movie.  the snack bar was in the middle of the lot so it was possible that if you were late the available parking spaces left were directly behind the snack bar building thus blocking your view of the screen.  the projection booth was another little building, a shack really, about 200 ft in front of the snack bar.  oh man, one of the greatest thrills for me was going to the snack bar.  not because the food was good.  snack bar burgers & pizza tasted gamey.  think of the swill you can buy at a gas station today.  now treble its oddity of flavors in a burger purchased at the mather auto movies circa 1973.  the food was, let's say, an acquired taste.  that didn't matter to me.  the snack bar was where the real drive-in experience was at.  for here you can find the coolest movie posters of recent & coming attractions.  you can smell the popcorn.  you can people watch the patrons of the drive-in.  you can hear the sounds of engines, music playing from car radios, the gabble of talk, the doppler effect of hundreds of staticky drive-in speakers, & the crunch of car tires over gravel.  but it was when my father & i walked back from the snack bar to our own family station wagon.  it was a sweltering sacramento summer night.  we approached the little shack of the projection booth.  the back lot lights were lit to allow for cars to drive away & out of the theater at intermission.  those back lot lights kept the drive-in theater in shadows but allowed for enough illumination to watch out for families spread out on the gravel on blankets.  drive-in intermission shorts - commercials that enticed you to go to the lobby to get yourself a treat - always played during intermission.  this hot summer night was no different.  i delighted in the light from the projector as it shined in the night air.  a steady bolt of lightning that attracted a halo of flying summer insects.  the door to the projection booth was open.  i peered inside.  the projectionist, a middle aged man, was sat in a ratty green la z boy recliner reading a thick paperback as the drive-in intermission shorts reeled thru their run upon the movie screen.  that sight thrilled me.  it still does.  for i believe any job is fit for a writer as long as it is honest & keeps the writer in what i call the three b's: beer, burritos & books [extrapolate your own needs accordingly].  but man, a drive-in theater projectionist!  read on the job.  write when you want.  & watch movies!  of course there are no more projectionists.  all theaters, or almost all theaters, have gone digital.  when nick & i were given a tour of the projection booth at the sac 6 some years ago - a real bucket list item for me - the manager pointed out that the movies were projected from digital arrays using either hard drives or internet streaming controlled by a central hub.  gone is the freewheeling projectionist & the art of threading 35 mm film reels into very hot projectors.  a lot of the old equipment was still in the projection booth, including an editing desk so the projectionist could splice together frames of the film stock.  when i asked why there was a toilet, just a toilet, no walls around it, the manager said that in the older days the projectionist could not leave the booth at all in case the film burnt or broke.  & yet, i think, if that old job of drive-in theater projectionist was still around, like i saw it on that blistering summer night, that would be the perfect job for the poet.  thick in the throng of drive-in life.  the hum of the reels as the film is fed thru the projector is a rhythm you can compose to.  of course i date myself, & dare risk nostalgia too.  we live in a digital age & the job & art of the projectionist is lost.  & yet still, i think of that dude sitting on his ratty recliner reading a thick russian novel - why not - & writing his jewel-like poems.  because that is what i'd do should i have been in his place.  why not, indeed.  

watching/listening to perserverance i think 'i turned into a martian'

i know we need to fix our shit on earth.  this is our home.  our only stand.  we need to make our home habitable for humanity & all the creatures of our varied eco-systems to thrive.  to stay alive.  we need to fix ourselves too.  the insanity of our species.  for we are part of nature not apart from it.  & when i see video of an autonomous vehicle landing another autonomous vehicle on another planet...i think when we put our better selves & minds to a task i think perhaps we might have even the slimmest of chances.  for when we look outward we also look inward.  & do what eliot said that after the journey we arrive home & see it for the first time.  we see our earth, & everything in it, is precious for it is tiny in the cosmos.  we are finite beings on a muddy speck of dirt in an almost incomprehensibly vast universe.  our fragility, our finality, our period ordinariness, makes this earth, the only home we know, the greater thing that needs us to find our footing, our balance, our harmony, as we simultaneously explore the planets & stars, & make a better bed for all living things on earth.  for this i hope.  for as we explore alien terrains & stars we come to know that this planet earth is our only home.  

Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video)

old fashioned days

funny

watching videos of 

the old fashioned days

everything we see

e.i. model t cars & ice men deliveries

in horse drawn buggies

it was all brand new 

& hi tech

for them

then

an atheist's prayer

would god like a chocolate chip cookie

spring window

the whistle of the train in the near distance 

diy poetics

i learn from the film writers of exploitation cinema that to make the work you want to read you have to do it yourself  

use whatever materials & means you have at hand 

make your art & put it out there if by digital platforms or homemade chapbooks

& remember what dickinson said about fame

'fame is a fickle food'

& keats said

'till love & fame to nothingness do sink'

& merwin said

'if you have to be sure don't write'

a career is what you do for money

poetry is not a career

it is in the phrase eileen tabios

'poetry as a way of life'

live as you write 

write as you live

& most important of all

do all these things without being an asshole

#InequalityIs: Hank Willis Thomas on the role of artists in fighting ine...

 

thumbnail moon 

                 spring-like 

                 i make a stand 

in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven

Hawaiki by Bob Orr

short order cook poetics

i would've been an awesome short order cook.  it's a gift.  i recall that moment in the movie ferris bueller's day off [1986] when cameron was asked by sloane what he thinks ferris will be out of high school.  short order cook on venus, said cameron.  i took that to heart.  some poets have copious & various gifts.  some can paint.  others can make music.  others still can take photographs.  me, i can organize a small kitchen.  i can rotate stock.  i can keep the grill cooking.  i can make a mean burger & hot dog.  you want a lemon freeze?  a soft serve ice cream cone?  i can make one for you, take your money & then give you change.  i cook nothing fancy.  burgers, hot dogs, pizza, popcorn.  like the snack bar you'd frequent at the drive-in theater or at your kid's little league game.  you should see me as i go.  like an efficient whirlwind.  a real contender.

the typewriter

i remember my typing class was 1st period in high school.  i'd smoke a joint & then would bang on the keys like they were piano keys

as late as 1992 i'd use a typewriter to write my school papers

when we bought our house in the last year of the the last century i had no typewriter or computer.  i'd write my poems [as shitty as they were] in long hand.  then i'd take them either to the computer lab at school or use the computer at work to print them out

i remember my desk as i wrote my poems in longhand.  they were terrible.  for i have such shitty handwriting.  even i had a difficult time reading what i wrote 

i had to use a typewriter for my job as recently as the first decade of this century

i had a speech professor, early in the 1990s, who insisted on me using the typewriter because word processors was not  'real writing'

i've yet to figure out what 'real writing' is.  so i use what tools i have at hand to write.  that used to be longhand.  then it was typewriters.  now i write using my phone & laptop.  tomorrow?  as the beatles song says, 'tomorrow never knows'

quote unquote

there is nothing to writing.  all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

--red smith 

william faulkner's requirements for writing

 'paper, tobacco, food and a little whisky'

contra vision

1.

there is world within this world, i'll meet you there, said the poet

2.

the world is the world, made of the things of this world, said the stone 

it came from the trailer park!

i love this 16MM print of a very cheesy thriller starring george segal, rollercoaster [1977].  i was looking up the band sparks [really a pop duo compromised of the brothers mael who have been going strong for over 50 years] who, in this movie, perform onstage at the theme park as the psycho tries to blow up, you guessed it, a rollercoaster on a very busy day.  i love rollercoasters, i love disaster flicks, i dig sparks, so sue me.  also, the theatrical release of this flick was in sensurround.  what?  it was a gimmick to add to the viewing experience of the disasters occurring onscreen.  it was the soundtrack with an extra bass track added to the mix.  why do that?  because when the shit hit the fan that extra bass was felt.  the theater shakes. your bones & guts rattled.  a few disaster movies in the 1970s had that added effect; like the disaster movie, earthquake [1974].  i remember the first temblor of that movie.  i was with my family at the matinee. the whole theater rumbled hard.  it was scary as fuck.  i recall a girl sitting in the fourth or fifth row.  when that bass rumble started she leapt...bing...bang...boom...over the three or four rows of seats.  to the exit.  a brief slash of sunlight.  & she was gone.