Sodom at the healing waters

This place has special significance for my wife and I.  Though I'm confident that it also holds special significance for many both here in New York and elsewhere.

We were watching a documentary series on New York recently and it chronicled the creation of Central Park.  There were shots documenting the building of the fountain and the surrounding area.  There were details about the cost of labor and the tough economic times. The park is one of the great achievements in urban planning foresight.  Very few other major cities have anything that even compares to Central Park. Or if they do then the surrounding city holds very little comparison.  It is like nothing else, it is a triumph of urban restraint.

There is a place called The Boathouse not far from here.  When Rachel and I returned from our first real trip together we went there and sat and drank wine. It was there that we decided that she would come to New York to live with me.  We had just gotten back from a week in Costa Rica.  It was the week that we fell in love.

The sculpture on top of the fountain was the first major public commission ever  granted to a woman in NYC.  It is an angel, I guess.  I always imagined angels to be more flight-ready, but what do I know of such things... the wings have a very feathered-pterodactyl form to them. As if an angel, through celestial inter-species mating, took on the partial form of a bronze bat and a steel dove.  After many years it is still perhaps rabid and to be avoided.

The surrounding area is called Bethesda Terrace, named after the healing pool of Bethesda from the Christian myth, according to Garp.  Ok, no more of that talk.  People have been praying for me lately... It is not nice to be ungrateful to the cosmic well-wishers, mumbling their folksy incantations to the stars.  To be sacrilegious to the great Jesus in the sky is a bad idea, rapture or not.  That is how people get herpes, and why that particular affliction is permanent.  It is God's reminder.  He doesn't want to have to work as hard on judgement day.  He never really predicted the population explosion. He got in a little bit over his head and he's been doing a little pre-judgement in the last few centuries or so.  I bet he wishes he had two sons now...  Looking back at Christianity I do see that Jesus acts just like an only child.  He just lays it on so thick with the whole "christ" thing.  I am the chosen one.

You don't want herpes do you?  Speak up Lazarus...!

Though... the pool at Bethesda is said to have healing powers, once it was blessed by the angel.  Could anything reek of witchcraft more than these silly bible stories?  But if there is any truth to this then all of those inflicted with herpes, syphilis, or worse should meet at this fountain and bathe their genitals in it together, to heal their iniquitous and rotten organs.  I'm sure the bronze angel of Bethesda will restore their aching mucous membranes, cleanse their Sodoms and Gomorras

Weren't those well-named biblical locales?  They sound just like ancient venereal diseases. Sodom became so famous for its particular brand of impenitent deviance that we named some crucial hate laws after it.  Why is a hate-crime punishable with mandatory sentencing guidelines but a hate-law practically irrevocable?

Lot famously would not hand over two male guests to the men of Sodom so that they could know them. Instead he offers two female virgins that they can do with as they like.  Weren't those just charming times.... Just a paragraph or two away from chucking the virgins into a volcano to appease the father of Abraham.

Before somebody issues a fatwa against me I had better stop.


Well, anyway... I had nothing to write about this morning and I found the picture above. I was doing pretty well up until The Old Testament jumped onto this post from out of nowhere and sodomized it.

In truth I have mostly come to peace with the concept of Christianity, though not as much with Christians.  There was a time when they made some good buildings.  I'll leave it at that.

For those of you also seeking to come to terms with Christ an interesting piece to read is Oscar Wilde's De Profundis. It is worth doing research about this piece before you read it.  An article that I found helpful was Jacques Barzun's introduction to the reprinting of Wilde's letter.

If you have no impulse to make peace with the concept of Christ then the alternate pieces to read are anything by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or the Marquis de Sade.



"Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes." - Marquis de Sade

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." - Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

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John Locke triumphs in self-publishing

My wife pointed out to me this morning that John Locke has sold a million copies of his self-published book for the Kindle.  At first I thought she meant the father of liberalism. But then I realized that this other guy just happens to have the same name.  He is a writer from Kentucky and one of only 8 authors who have breached the million mark. I didn't read any further.  Self-publishing seems to be the authentic new thing. I wonder if it will have the effect on traditional publishing that the digital revolution had on the music industry.  If so, then now would be the time to publish a book, not in two months, not in three months, not in ten....  but NOW...!!!!

I went to the doctor and he told me I have a stray piece of bone coming from my heel. This is why it is so painful to jog, and the reason that I have stopped. He told me that I'd be jogging again in "no time."  I have gained much weight and it is time to reverse the trend, to fight it off.

Here is a picture of the heel.  For those of you used to looking at foot x-rays you'll see the problem. For those of you not used to looking at them you'll notice a "hook" of bone near the underside of the heel (the dark region that juts out towards the center of the image). It is irritating the surrounding flesh (seen as a grey-ish halo around the bone). The image is of the right foot as if I myself was looking down towards the heel, with the foot held slightly to the outer side. The toes would be off the screen to the left, towards the bottom, etc.

Now that is self-reflexivity.  He gave me a shot of cortisone in the foot and it has done wonders to reduce the pain I've felt.  But the pain started coming back this morning, just barely. It has been almost a week since I saw him. 

I will be posting my entire medical file later for those interested. It includes all operations, hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and private counseling.  It is really something. 

Yesterday's post was incomplete, as all those type attempts inevitably are.  I went back and read it just now and saw the glaring flaw of omission. It is impossible to adequately convey your changing impressions of your father in such a way, over the course of a lifetime.  It was just a small attempt at documenting our changing relationship and my pleasure with those changes. 

One thing that I left out was that for most of my life I felt justified committing any manner of atrocity towards him, because I felt that he deserved it and I was the victim. But as I grew up I started morally re-evaluating myself and it turned out that whatever he had done to me was long ago.  I had many more recent transgressions... unexplainable emotional outbursts that were usually, if not uniformly, inappropriate.  

A victim never needs to morally evaluate themselves. They cloak themselves in the shield of victimhood and then act as they wish, with total self-justification. As I get older I see it everywhere around me. What shocks me the most is how unwilling people are to examine the behavior. To even suggest that a "victim" has responsibilities to also examine their behavior is a shock beyond comprehension.  Very little will generate as much anger as the suggestion that nobody gets to act with total impunity. 

I had written more yesterday but it had lost the vaguely humorous air that the first few paragraphs had, so I trashed them.  My father is not Scandinavian. He is Irish.  I confused a few people with that comparison; people who have long known me to be Irish, those who secretly suspect there is Polish blood in there too, partially explaining the shape of my head.

That is yet another subject that is addressed in my full medical records. 

I must stop deleting paragraphs from this site.  I'll never get my memoirs published on Kindle at this rate....

Heritage: Scandinavian

I have perhaps wrongfully found humor in my father's aging. As he hit his mid 70's I chuckled to myself at his sometimes bewildered line of conversation, his loss of hearing, his withered stature.  I was wrong, of course.  He's 79 now.  He is still together but no longer the father-threat that he was in my teens.  Now he is just an old guy whose friendship I seek, though under the diminished and irreversible terms of age.

I'll probably never get it right, age.  When I look back at my life and the various ways that I've lived it I see lots of error, decades of missteps.  I didn't spend much time growing up because I thought that I'd never need to, that it was possibly a bad bet.  This almost earned me an addiction to any number of things. Some would probably say that my use of the word "almost" in that last sentence would be funny if they were only reading this without actual reminiscence. I have an obsession-based personality.

But as for my father... I only began to really like him in the last few years. I built up a pseudo-hatred for him that was perhaps based on my literary idea of what a father is, and why it is important to resist and deny such a beast, as much as it was built on the actual man who seemed distant and cold for much of my youth.

My father's ideas of love (I'm making assumptions here) was to provide for his family. To make sure we had: "a roof over our heads, clothes on our back and food on the table..."  In this way he was much like a Scandinavian country. His reformed socialist agenda was admirable and functional if not examined too carefully.... If it seems to have failings then just compare it to America to improve results, etc.  

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Ok, I wrote more but deleted it.  Time to move on with the day. This post would have worked better yesterday perhaps...

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Sunday Morning

Sunday morning
praise the dawning
It's just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It's just the wasted years so close behind
Watch out the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all


Sunday morning
And I'm falling
I've got a feeling I don't want to know
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It's all the streets you crossed, not so long ago
Watch out the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all


Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning

-Lou Reed/John Cale

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Luke's Lobster Sandwich

I fear that I might miss the food of New York. It is like nowhere else on earth. Pictured above is a lobster sandwich from Luke's here in the East Village.  This is as close as I get to food porn. I took this picture before mating with it. Becoming one, as they say.  Making the beast with one mouth. But it is delicious. Even looking at it makes me feel funny. It's triggering some primal pleasure center in my "old brain." I might just hump the dog, then make a tuna sandwich.

We went to dinner at a friend's house last night. He's a very good cook. We had chicken based on a Mario Batalia recipe.  Delicious.  It was just a casual little house dinner but it was far better than most things you get in any restaurant in most cities in America.  Trust me, I've been.

I'm sure Sonoma has its culinary charms. But we're spoiled New Yorkers. I wonder how long it will be before we stop talking about how good the food is in New York. Hopefully before we hear people imitating us under their breath...  Oh god, please, not us....

I have been listening to Phish for a few days to prepare myself for the transition. A friend recently gave me an enormous collection of shows.  I made a playlist of all of the shows I have and called it "The Aquarium."  I trust that I am not the first person to think of this.  I don't even really like Phish all that much. Well, I should say that I like them reasonably when they're covering other people's music and even then I like them most of all when Trey is not singing. That is also true for their original material.  

Luckily we have a cook friend in Sonoma also, a Phish fan in fact.  We will accumulate more, out of need and fear.  Cooks, I mean. I will be able to have a garden and a bbq grille. Who knows, one day I might not crave kale. Once my body returns to a normal level of vegetable ingestion. 

Speaking of food.... when I went canoeing with my friends Tim and Meg we stopped to get some BBQ at the end of the day and we chatted amiably with this fellow. He was a very pleasant sort and he was quite proud of his smoker. He told us (adopt a southern/Floridian accent for this)... We had some international bbq guy come down here and tell us that we had the best brisket between here and there...

And there you have it...!

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The Tempest, Cain

In the darkness the rain came. The rolling thunder preceded by its flashes far. The order of rumble not usually heard here.  Sometimes coming from a great distance and then to another distance going, always, the sound it seems.  Other times mysteriously lighting up the apartment as if it was for us alone, soundlessly and only for an instant.  And yet again the occasional immense burst of boom...

The rain filled the air around us, falling for us, at the windows, and just inside. The winds moist with the noise. We both awoke and stayed at first very silent in the darkness, touching only hand to waist, or arm.  Murmuring gentle awarenesses.

It was the type thunder that we are familiar hearing mostly in open places, the beaches, the mountains, elsewhere.  It delivered its forceful message of authority in bolting demands.  It was a thunder of unbroken space, impossible to run from, or to.  Difficult to tell when each clap had stopped, impossible to miss its start, whether near or far, the reverberations hit amidst the buildings. 

The returning fade of god's voices, questions... 

New York, "Where is your brother?"

It was comforting; reducing the size of the city. The immensity of the concrete giving way to the voice of nature, as if for us.

Neither knew what it was doing here, rumbling through the night uninvited, unannounced. Perhaps it wandered in from the Atlantic, distracted by the lights, unable to get out, to get away.  Looking for trouble, dashing from avenue to avenue, trying to find the Hudson, the bay, anything it could cane.  Crazed with confusion, fear, desires, on a lost god bender.  Impossible to get a cab in this condition. 

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

Not when he's like this....

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When we finally got out of bed this morning, my wife already in the kitchen. It was as if there had been a massive underwater love affair just outside, but soon to be forgotten.  

The type thing that really finds its center in Miami...  

The tempest had possibly moved south in darkness, towards an after party in a land of liquid sunshine.

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... the quality of his despair

"It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair." - Cyril Connolly, 1949

I have been exercising different sensibilities for the last week.  For too long I have been reading editorial journalists, polemicists.  It has had the expected effect on me.  I have been reading novels again and have been wanting to write fictively.  I started to write a short story. It was difficult, perhaps too much so. The writing was stiff and forced.  I have lost my sense of the poetic, the essences escape me. Description alone is not good enough.

After all that has been written I have foregone the idea of writing anything truly original. I merely want to write something well.  That is beyond me also.  For too long I have been writing journalistically or with a faux-polemics.

As an antidote I began reading poetry again.  But that doesn't help.  It is something. But reading poetry does not a poet make. 

One of my mistakes, there are many, is that I have been reading some great writers.  They make it seem easy.  They make it appear as if the words occur naturally on the page in the way that they are meant to arrive.  That is, of course, not how it happens at all.  It is an activity done best when done often.

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That's not what I wanted to write about this morning, at all.    I have an appointment with a foot doctor so I am out of time now.  Later I have to take a test from home. It is a two hour behemoth that will require sustained concentration and most of all... a passing score.  It will be a difficult test and one that I am eager to put behind me.  

I have squandered my time here this morning, again. The other life calls to me, demands my attention. It creeps upon me in seconds ever gaining ground, the minutes march, the enemy of the hour advances. 

I have neither solitude nor despair.  I am in love.  How can I expect to write... and of what, for whom?

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Mist

Manhattan by day, for evenings.  The ashen ambit narrowly above, from building to building.  Lower than usual, descending.  The closing of a great used curtain.

The grey comforts. There is the coming darkness, the silencing.  The gentle diffusion reduces all attentions, all directions, to earthly ones.  There is a moistness in the air.  It is an island only in fact.

It was a day lived from memory alone.  The city hushes.  He had forgotten to tell her that.  It was all a soft partial sky, the soft music of lights dancing.  The mist.

Nothing in the city was too far away now, nothing too close. 

There was a taxi. A trafficless burst. A smooth yellow dash. We chatted lightly in the back, kissed once and then again. We were there to meet a friend. The sister or some friend of another. It was a commitment that could only be vaguely resisted, not argued.  Softly opposed but never fought.

The streets had emptied. The cries and screeches of the city faded, heading on towards the pacific. 

They were all drifting into hushed entranceways, into lobbies and upwards into buildings known and unknown.  Bars and restaurants glowing with diversion.

We sit at the hotel lounge and listen, chat.  Islands of laughter growing around us, replacing the routine. 

We decide against dinner.  Drinks. drinks.

Later we walk home. We pass the cathedral on 10th St. and look upwards again.

The city in supplemental silence.  The city succumbs.

There must have been keys used. There must have been stairs. The door closes. We undress standing together, facing.  We kiss in the dark, we kiss again. We hold one another's arms. We each place a knee on the bed as we fall.  The parachute opens. We drift.

The sun comes through sheets at daybreak, the breeze. I open my eyes to the diffused unbroken light.  The sheets are glowing, luminous with the new light.  The morning of day already fast around us, growing.

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Well, I do declare....

I went back to work yesterday after a month off.  It was nice to see familiar faces and to feel the genuine warmth of being welcomed back.  Truly it was nice.  My boss hugged me.  But then there was the rest: the job itself. It was the same as it has ever been. Which means it has only gotten worse.  New rules and procedures have been implemented.  When I was working there before I saw that changes in policy and procedure were usually just some manager trying to show initiative, in competition with other managers that were also trying to show initiative. So there is a constant sea of shifting initiatives. The net result is that there is a perpetual amending of expectations . It is a combination universe, part Kafka part Orwellian, it's Kafkellian... Orwfkaesque.  It is absurd, but at least it is a regimented and instituted absurdity.

Luckily I only work again today and then I have another 6 days off.  It is by chance and circumstance that this has happened. I'm not exactly off from work for 6 days. I have some work related responsibilities while I am off. 

I need to find my friend an agent to represent him.  I don't know how one goes about this sort of thing but it is the next step.  He is a very talented photographer, but like others he similarly lacks the component of self-promotion.  

I proclaim this.  But stick around... I will proclaim other things also.

As soon as I talk to people about photography they want to refer me to somebody who does "glamour shots" or some other equally useless thing.  He is not a photographer that has worked hard and is finally no longer doing wedding photography or children's birthdays and is now ready to take the next step in his career. He is an artist and has little interest (that I know of) in "working" as a photographer.  He simply needs an agent. 

Perhaps I should represent him.  I should get him to sign a contract, and soon.... I believe the standard rate is 20%, or is it 25% now?  Perhaps agent fees are like tipping, even though it is already on a sliding scale (a percentage) they just keep bumping the percent up, as if it needs to be increased because of inflation, cost of living, etc.

One must always think of these poor surly waitresses and bartenders when tipping. Soon it will simply be that when you are paying the check at a restaurant there will be included with the check the waiter's car payment, or mortgage, or insurance stub. You can just send it in when you get home, a courtesy envelope (stamped) has been included. It's not due for almost a week, so no worries... just make sure you don't incur a late payment. If you do, the waiter has also provided a courtesy printout about how you would go about paying the late payment as well.  But that would be quite rude to do to the poor guy, wouldn't it?  And it's really a sign that you should be eating in nicer restaurants.

Ok, I proclaim this in the name of all that is holy.  It is written in the tears of buddha's belly.  Eat up.

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Martin D-16GT

I took my guitar out of its case for the first time in months yesterday.  After a quick tuning it sounded pretty good.  The playing didn't but the guitar did. I have the guitar pictured above: Martin D-16GT. I bought it for myself as a treat after playing a gig in Mexico about 4 years ago.  I assumed that buying something I wanted was better than watching my money quickly disappear at various restaurants, bars and taxis across New York.  Which is what would normally happen with it, when I'm lucky.

The playing was difficult. I've lost all of the callouses at the ends of my fingertips that keep playing from quickly becoming a painful experience. I've lost the strength in my left hand that allows me to play barre chords. But the sound of the guitar was nice; an antidote to the normal chaos of the East Village. I didn't bother trying to sing along with anything.  The playing was filled with enough horror and error that there was no need to augment it further. 

There is an old Puerto-Rican guy that sits on the steps of my building most days. For 12 years I have watched him with his radio and bag of cassette tapes playing latin music of all sorts and repairing guitars. They are never nice guitars. They always seem as if they are guitars for children. They are either very small or not in very good condition. Always acoustic. I have never once seen him playing the guitar there.  I have never heard him speak a word other than, "Hello."

I also have this guitar:

It is much easier to play but doesn't sound nearly as nice when unplugged. I have no amplifier for it. So it sounds very thin in comparison to the acoustic.  It is a Mexican Strat, but one of the nicer examples that I've seen. I've played a few examples of the exact same model of mine that were not built the same way, or nearly as well, so I feel lucky.  The neck being somehow of "less" quality.  Without an amp the electric guitar is simply not as much fun to play. 

With the Fender chorus effect on I would have been playing sophisticated jazz chords in no time. 

I have always wanted an American Telecaster.  This one:

I can hardly justify buying it ($1400) as I don't even really play the guitar all that much any more, and I don't own an amplifier.  But it is the rock-n-roll dream, this guitar.  From Joe Strummer to Bruce Springsteen to Keith Richards to Prince.  Elvis even!  It is one of my childhood dreams. I could one day possibly afford to buy it but I fear that I would feel silly after doing so.  Either that or I would really take playing seriously again for a short while then it would eventually fade into the background.  

That is what happened with the Martin acoustic pictured at the very top.  I really got back into playing for a while but then the guitar started spending more and more time in its case between each playing session.  I'm afraid to leave it out as they are greatly affected by drastic changes in humidity and a NYC apartment building can be a very arid place, that or alternately very humid.  The guitar sits by the window. Everything sits by the window actually, the apartment is that small.  When you open the door there are just two windows, not even any walls, walls cost too much.  The all-window apartment is situated on top of a construction site that houses a mostly completed alarm factory and garbage truck dispatch center.

As I write this I am listening to Jandek. If you know who this artist is then you have my deepest sympathies. It is difficult music to listen to, very challenging. I would never get away with playing this around the house when the wife is around.  I don't listen to this stuff often.  

I promise.

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The finger

(Dwayne, my neighbor)

I have lost my mind.  I had seen it coming but then it just slowly exploded on me.  Or was it suddenly.  There is nothing to say about it.  It happens every now and then.

I read this morning about how the United States government has developed a plan to provide dissidents in foreign countries with internet access.  It was the lead story in the New York Times. I have calculated the best time for me to become a patriot-zealot and it is soon, very soon.  So I am preparing some backstory.  Soon I will be marching in Pro-Palin rallies. I read about her emails in The Times yesterday. They reported about what a judiciously minded governor she was, about how everybody's perceptions of her are skewed by her media personality.  I couldn't believe what I was reading. They gave example after example of how she used good judgement as a governor. This was The New York Times reporting on Sarah Palin.

At least I'm not the only one going crazy. It is a small comfort but a comfort nonetheless.  Is "nonetheless" one of those words we're not supposed to use, like "irregardless"...?

Is it called informal usage?

Irrespective of these considerations, I expect answers.  I tried to find an online-grammar-checker but gave up after following a few links that led to software downloads, purchases, etc.  Grammar is mostly mythical.  It is only useful up to a point; as is evidenced by this site.  No, I kid.  It is part of my loss of mind. But grammar is a good example of failed science, not far off from phrenology. Do they still teach sentence structure in school? I wonder.

I spent time in school designing sentences. There were these things called "sentence trees" and they were designed to help us develop better sentence structure. Then rap came along and we were all left alone again to wonder.

Ok, nothing at all to say today. It is a Sunday and I have no strength left to take on any subject with my usual brand of argumentative discourse, my polemics tempura. 

The finger is an appendage and is used in grammar when you attach something to a larger or more important subject.  

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13 ways of looking at a redneck

Drinkers wish that they could freeze time and reverse it more often than most people, I imagine.  About once every couple of months, sometimes less, there are moments that I wish I could just freeze and then eliminate, or reverse; or at least have the option to look away from.

But who doesn't?  Maybe the amateur river acrobat pictured above and below.  He told us stories about how he studied the Japanese language for 18 years just so he could tell somebody off.  Though I don't remember him speaking any Japanese. 

He expressed other, more native talents, however.

Actions can seem absurd when frozen in time. Though in fairness they often seem much more so when completed.  Actions are one thing, memories another.  When the objective becomes the subjective. The distance and difference between the past and the ever-colliding present. 

The present constantly modifies the past; it re-tells the ever returning lie, rounding the terrible truths as it goes, inflating the scant victories, stretching them into myth.

I recently read that remorse is for wrongs committed and regret is for missed opportunities. But then I looked them both up in the dictionary and found that's only about a half of a truth. 

What an immense rift exists between being sorry and being sorrowful, a whole river of differences.  

I've yet to find the forward-dock-flip that will get me across.

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"Who can say what heartbreaks...."

I shouldn't write posts while drinking beer.  

Selavy suggested in the comments section yesterday that loss of love is an experience that can be defined and understood simply as one's changing image of self. This is the failure of analysis. Because love can be viewed in this way science teaches us that it is the way that it is, and to the exclusion of other appreciations.  Breaking things down into its simplest components does not give us a full understanding of the thing itself. Otherwise the delusions of the mad would not be delusions but the truth, and those poor people would be healthy instead of sick, and this would be reflected in their overall well-being.  

There is far too much evidence to show that the interaction with one's beloved is a healthy behavior that cannot be imitated with hypnosis or delusion, and also exists outside of self-image. You can convince yourself of many things, self-image most of all, but love (or the loss of it) can not be explained away or dismissed in this fashion.  Love is also where subject and object form a shared and indivisible whole. At this point analysis fails as an adequate means of understanding the complexities of it. Certain forms of literature and music can not be viewed or understood wholly when looking only at the individual components, they are understood through the appreciation of its entirety.  The individual components fail to grant the needed insight.

That is what I had hoped to express about love. Not the rather reductionary aspects of how the effect of it can be understood by assessing the effect on an individual.  Reducing the concept of love down to the effects it has on an individual can no more help us to understand the thing than describing the effects of a medicine to a patient that might benefit from it, or explaining that the medicine exists would be the cure itself. 

I am both a Romantic, a romantic, and a believer in the Enlightenment.  So, I am often trapped between reactions and find myself oftentimes at odds with myself. There have been times in my life where I benefited from looking at the world through the eyes of the Enlightenment and there have been other times where it was equally useful for me to resist those impulses, and even fight them, with more Romantic (and romantic) notions of the self.

The experience and effect of love is often only an assumption to which we have very little access.  

But try telling that to the one who is in the grips of it.  

"Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?" - Nabokov, Lolita

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... but can do nothing

Throughout my life I have been often accused of taking issues too seriously, or not seriously enough.  I have had much persistence in being excessively serious when there was very little need to be, often to the point of boorishness or mawkishness.  It can sometimes be a fault of character; or maybe it is only a fault of behavior.  Is there a difference?

Alternately, I also wrongly believed that all things could be laughed about, that nothing was above humor, that laughter is a perfectly valid reaction to the range of human experience.  I was quite wrong, of course.  The ravages of AIDS and various other developments during my lifetime revealed to me that there were some things that humor could not approach.  Or perhaps I should say that my humor could not approach, my humor could not help.  It was a place where my sense of humor had no rights.  If I had contracted AIDS then I might have another story to tell, or have told, and it might have harbored some humor.  Hopefully I will never need to put my sense of humor to that test.

I am much more careful with what I subject to my humor now. Though many among my friends might not notice this.  My sense of the absurd remains strongly intact, but I am much more selective with its uses.


A friend once suggested that the source of my humor is only an internal misery that one day must be let go.

I hope not. But uncritical derision is something that is leaving me.

Love is a seemingly simple accomplishment, a small task. But one that is difficult to live without for long, if not impossible, for me.  I have given much recent thought to both the mere adequacy of love and then to the fullness of it, to the chasmic disparity between these two shapes, and then beyond that: the further disparate condition of loss. The empty echoes of what was hoped for. The time that stretches out ahead of us, often without mercy, without end.  Without the one for which we would do anything but can do nothing.

When love is fulfilled it finds its natural course and it seems as if it was meant-to-be, that it was ordained by the stars, god's plan, etc.  But that is all hollow barbaric nonsense.  For what are we to think when it fails?  Is that also god's plan for us ? Is it? The vindictive stars have tricked us once more?  The evil galaxy conspired towards our unhappinesses once again.  But fear not... Jupiter is again rising just beyond the horizon.

Or even more faint: god's work is a mystery to us, as he works in way's mysterious almost exclusively, except for the dictate that we must kill his son to fully enjoy his eternal love.  It is written.  Yes, of course, it's clear now.... He revealed the triumphant redemptive truth of Christ, his son that must sacrificially die for us, by us, for our sins... but every other unanswered pain that we experience is explained away as part of his majestic mysterious loving plan.  Well, he must have prescience because it at least sounds like he knew The Beatles were coming.

Accept this one implausible truth: eternal guilty happiness... but it must arrive at the cost of denying all other truths and understanding.  God's love arrives only on the outstretched wings of a sacrificed phoenix from Jerusalem.

I used to be a Scorpio, but now the solar system's relationship to the galaxy has sufficiently shifted to make room for yet another sign.... So now I suffer deep-seated astrological uncertainties. Is there no end to the galaxy's attempts to communicate human truths to me by the relationship between the earth and its celestial counterparts?  If only there were untutored human portals through which god's obscure plan could be slowly eked out to me... people who were able to make some sense of the stars, and their unique message to me, to my life, just within affordability.

The human heart is so easily talked to.  Sometimes it is all ears, other times all mouth, yet again all teeth, and lips.


Astrologies.

The stars are quite beyond me in that regard, as are the planets, save this one as being much less so.  It is hopeless for me to try to understand by what justification people think and talk, in that way.  I have tried. The results of my inquiries are dismal at best.  I lapse into raw unflinching criticism and condemnation when I am at my finest, and placating ironic complicity at my most amoral: devilish, leading the witness, praising the unknown wonders of the gentle and mostly agreeable universe, etc.

The more of it I hear the more confused and enraged by it I become.  The pretext for most of it is staunchly defended, personally shared, ignorance alone. An unapproachable ignorance that we are expected to quietly and reverently respect as a point-of-view, or a belief system.  One would think that people would be ashamed to talk in that way, to reveal their deeply held inner belief that the world we live in, the pains we endure, the joys we create, are all part of their lovable god's eternal plan for us, or much worse.... it is written in the stars.... but don't worry... truth's are just as quickly re-written... they've just re-published the Love Signs book, with birth-chart updates, don't you know... have you heard?  What next for feeble minds...

Have you ever noticed how very little room for error there is in a cardboard carton of beer? How is it that man can do something so dully precise and yet god is still meandering around the vague meanings of what it is to be a libra this week, and whether it's advisable to take risk at work, home, or in love?  Man's triumphs are not a reflection of god's plan, they are evil and iniquitous, and are on their way to being stopped.  It is written. It will be re-written.

That theocracy still exists in this post-enlightened world of ours should bring any thinking human pure un-satiated rage, not pause and reflection. As a deeply astrological people we made the mistake of affording and allowing organized ignorance a position of political privilege and power.

Are there any astrological signs that account for ignorance?

Sagittarius: you resist breakthroughs in knowledge, this is explained partially because you are reading these words. You should lead a nation of people toward despotism and misogyny.


But hey, I'm just a Scorpio. These sentiments are to be expected of one like me...

I lost my point.  I was speaking of love.

Love is a concentrated and sustained effort, and yet it is still very temporary; oftentimes only fleeting, flashing before us for a mere sincere instant.

Only once in our eyes, lingering amongst the eternities in our hearts, though rarely sustaining.

Love becomes the most painful echo, nearly drowning out all other reminisces, rendering memory useless to other causes, save awful fact.

If any human capacity can travel through space and time, both backwards and forwards and back again, across enormous distances, it is our capacity to love, and remember love, even to re-love, with diminished or increased consequences.

To imagine love is to experience it.  To share your imagination first with another is to create, then it is to reach and break away from the very act of creation.

To remind one of love is to religion it.


To truly love is to do away with god.

This is ever unwritten.


Love must always be the genesis, the impending exodus.

But love we must, and love we must lose.



Somebody should write it down
they likely will, lose it, though
repeat it, love is often oral
love is often oral

It is awfully ridden horrible.

Beyond that I trust myself to say no more,
to risk further angering the zodiacal stars above me.

...and also the sign of me yet in the stars beyond me.

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Small coffee, to go

What a mess. This time it's much worse than just ending sentences in prepositions. But perhaps I will save that story for another time. It is late and the shambles that is my life would take too long to sort out here.

So, a shorter story....

I was sitting in a diner yesterday. It is a local place that always has great vegetables on the menu.  So I was having a cheeseburger.  I was by myself sitting at what would pass as a bar if they served alcohol, but it was really nothing more than a raised counter.  I was at the far end of the counter, against the wall.  A guy walks in and orders a small coffee. The guy behind the counter says that they only have one size.

  

Fine, he says. He'll take it, to go..  

A few minutes later the barkeep comes out with the coffee and the other guy hands him some cash. It was then that I noticed the guy didn't seem like he quite knew how to drink coffee.  It must have come out black, and hot.  He goes to take a sip of it and he is startled by how hot it is, and I'm assuming by the strength of the flavor as well.  

A minute or two pass and the guy working behind the counter comes back and asks him if he has any other bills because he can't accept this one. As he passes him the bill back I notice that it's a bright, crisp $100. I also notice that the guy is wearing rather dark glasses. He says it's all he's got and the guy behind the counter says he can come in and pay for the coffee later. 

He says, No thanks, and walks out without the coffee.

It was then that I pondered how many coffee shops there are within just a block or two of where we were, places that are known for how good their coffee is.  Aha, I think.  Small purchase, to-go, paying with a brand new bill, large denomination.... clearly this guy is a tourist. 

I can't believe I didn't try to rob him.

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a budding recluse

Life is changing for me, suddenly. Some of it is for good reason. Other changes are a complete mystery.  I am becoming more misanthropic.  I am avoiding groups.  I used to seek them out, albeit specific ones: late at night... in crowded, dark clubs... with loud music playing.  

Perhaps I was not so different then.

The things that used to bring me pleasure no longer do. They cause me anxiety mostly.

I am wondering if the changes I am going through are happening too late in life.  It has always taken me much longer than it should to grow up. I am 42 this year and still struggling, as my father put it, with issues that most men deal with in their early 20's.  Perhaps he is right.  He has said some other things that were very sensible recently.

I might guess that I need some more time alone but that has not seemed to help me along the way.  

Still, that is what I want.  Just time to lie in bed and read, mostly undisturbed.

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Footprints in the Sand....

One night a man had a dream.

He dreamed he was walking along the beach with a beer.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.

For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him, and the other to beer.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand.

He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he questioned his beer about it.

“Beer, You said that once I decided to follow you, You’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.”

The Beer replied, “My son, My precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

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Cranial rebellion

Today is a big party. The return of one of our friends from overseas. France.  He went there as a missionary to convert the village pagans to Christ's love. No, that is not what he did at all.  I don't know what he does. He's told me but I wasn't listening. Oh wait, he's in advertising. So I was right, sort of. He converts people. At one time they would purchase one thing, now they purchase another. 

I've decided how taxis of the future should work. Some of them anyway.  They would be driverless.  You would get into the taxi and put your credit card in. It would immediately look you up and see if you were capable of driving. If you were then it would start up and then you could go where you needed to go. When you got out you would park the car wherever you could or pass it off to another driver needing a cab.  If you had left it in a spot and returned back and used it later then you would be charged a convenience fee for the cab waiting for you. This would do away with cab drivers, mostly.  They are miserable people who complain about how much money they make. So why not relieve them of the yoke of their burden?

No, that's not what I want either.  What would New York be without taxi drivers?  It would be like a flattened out version of Dallas. I once read that the Dallas airport is larger than Manhattan.  Since hearing that "statistic" I've often wondered which place is easier to live at.  Is it "at" or "in"... 

Life is a mystery.

Last night I woke up screaming. I was in so much pain that I thought I would have to have my wife call an ambulance.  My neck was really sore yesterday but I didn't think too much about it.  I went to bed and my neck muscles attempted a full mutiny on me.  They decided that they no longer wanted to hold my head up any longer. I don't blame them.  I have a massive head. It makes no sense.  It is much larger than most people's heads that I know. Except my brother. I was walking behind him last week and his hair is greying.  It occurred to me that he looked just like a silverback guerilla.  It was just a massive silver-haired head that lead directly down to his back.  Wait, I'll show you a picture.  

No, I found one but my wife said that I should not use it. She said that he might not think that it's funny.  She is good with stuff like that. Keeping me just on this side of my "other" self, etc.  I don't know. My brother might have thought that it was funny.

So, here is a picture revealing the size of my head.  It's a big one.  It is no small wonder that my neck finally had a full insurrection against it.  

(polaroid by cafeselavy)