Like a lamb led to laughter

(the author's eye, naturally dilated)

I can almost predict when it will happen. Almost. The despondency, the withdrawal from life, the inability to generate my own moods, to respond to love, or the moods and love of others.  Withdrawal is not nearly as dangerous as fighting it. That is dangerous: the fight.  Struggling through it and doing things that I wrongly believe will overcome it, things that will force a break from its force. Poor decisions are made, decisions that run against the inner being, the body, others.  Struggling to convince that it is not there, the dark horse, ghost-self, that I am not succumbing to again.  Unable to experience pleasure in the routine that routinely brings me simple pleasures, I drift away.

It is hell, but at least it is a very quiet one where there are no christians.

Anhedonia is the word for it.  It is not a pleasant word.  It is a lifeless, sexless horror that sits on the heart and draws blood, slows the pulse, evaporates the nectar of life and living. This it does entirely without pleasure of its own.  It is a flatness from which there is no visible end, the stretched faces on the untouchable ground, coming and going: pleading, praying, begging.  A shifting plane on top of another and another and another of another.  

I must be sorely anemic at times, a sleeping cadaver, drained of all color, but still somehow just as fat when I awake.  As if a massive mosquito goddess rides my mind, her proboscis drawing life-blood from between my eyeballs.  I am left to wonder how she flies away with so much of my blood, resembling me.

Sometimes I feel as Keanu Reeves must feel: drained and then discarded by things that I do not understand and can not control.  What I lack in understanding I make up for in agreements.

One must be careful expressing this state, or trying to.  It can too easily be read as merely tearful, which is just a state of misguided euphoria.  This state is quite its opposite; the mind fights it, the spirit seeks a way to break through it, to crack the spell.  Words fail, ultimately and always.  They are but attempts at casting a new spell, of curving the verbal land.  But they are empty and powerless, so we over-speak, plainly in vain hope, prisoners of our own poison, our own anecdotal venoms.  

Never confuse sentiment with self-slaughter.  They are opposites.  If not opposites, then sentiment could be counted only as meaningless benign insincerity as compared against the anhedonic.  Its opposite is quite simple: pleasure.

We all fight in very awkward ways.  As the fight is internal perhaps even more so do we lack the appropriate skills to decidedly ever win. The best we can hope for is yet another draw.  But in time a draw is never good enough and it demands its rematch.  So rematch we do, rematch we must, rematch the fire slowly burning, rekindle the embers glowing.  Let the flames affix their dreams, I scream.

Like a lamb led to laughter.

(the author's eye, affixed)

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Please No Climbing

We went to breakfast early this morning. We sat outside on the patio. The uber-unhinged were out in full force, in need of "any change or a dollar" with a renewed fervency and vigor.  For many this is the final day of the July 4th weekend. So they have ramped up their addictions to match the general avidity in the land.  Liberty indeed.

I worked all weekend and today is my first day off.  I am going back to bed to watch a movie and hopefully sleep more.  I have withheld all coffee intake in preparation for this. 

On our way home there was a woman crying by a car, with a friend, bemoaning her mistreatment by some other friend.  Exclaiming through the sobs that her dad is in the hospital because that "piece of shit"... and that he, "almost had a heart-attack when he heard what she had done..." I didn't surmise that this was at all plausible. That a man was in the hospital because of a near coronary panic at the hearing of some strange foul news.  I thought that was a cliche only: heart-attacks on demand. 

I remember going to Disney once on July 4th when I was an adolescent.  It was hot and crowded and unpleasant and false. There were many fireworks, many more than usual. People from all over the world cheered.  The cheering seemed strange to me.  I wondered at what they were hurraying. I wondered what their experience and impression of July 4th is.  Or were they just cheering the fireworks, or their lives, or China.  Or brightly colored explosions in the sky.  Or because there was no other appropriate response to have.

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Maudlin?

(a tearfully self-pitying reflective allium bud)

I've got illiterate spiritualists on one side and threatened melancholics on the other.

What is left to write about?  Reflective observations are the sole domain of other domains. 

I'll just leave you with these pictures taken at The Cloisters. 

Benign images, nothing more.

Some people seek to reshape the world to their liking... 

Was that it?

(a bee being drunk on its own emotion..)

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maritime law

No more talk of gods, or worse: god, I promise.  I can't help myself.  I get lost in the frenzy of it all.

I went out to meet some friends for drinks the other night. It was at The Maritime Hotel in Chelsea. There is an outside bar there where we sat under the stars.  It was cool and comfortable outside and we had beers and wine, some of us had an occasional tequila.  

The experience was subtly different than my usual night out. For some time I have been going exclusively to local bars near my apartment, familiar places where I am known, and reasonably well-liked.  I had nearly forgotten about this other New York. The places where I am not known and probably never will be.  The places where people dress up to go out and chat in what is meant to be intelligent, charming voices.

There was a guy there who immediately recognized the make and model of my camera.   We started chatting and discussed the different merits of different models and my reasons for purchasing the one that I did.  He agreed with my reasoning, though we both longed for the superior full-frame models, and better lenses.

As the evening developed I ended up sitting next to an old friend. He was expressing his disappointment at our upcoming move to the west coast.  Not disapproval, but disappointment. He is not the type friend who stays in touch through email, or texting, or Facebook, or even phone calls.  He is a friend whose friendship thrives on face to face interaction.  It is something that has occurred to me in the past but never as much as it did until then.  The sudden realization that we will not have the simple and easy access to one another that we have had for many years. A decade.  Now when we see each other it will be because of a special trip that is made, time set aside to see each other, to catch up.  The dynamic of the friendship will change.

He is a buddy that I'm confident will be one of those as if "not a second had passed" when we do see each other.  But still, there are those seconds, that time, that does pass, that accumulates around us in years, lost days.  I felt my youth slipping from me, one last time, again.  The melancholy moment passed between us but the feeling lingered.  

I would be lying to say that I don't miss it, youth.  It would be even a greater lie to claim that I won't occasionally try to recapture it, fumbling with its awkward shape in my hands for all to see. Attempting to carry it on my shoulders, to make off with it in a fireman's carry, to run to the end zone and spike what's left of my life in triumph, followed by a shameful victory dance. The deafening sounds of crowds jeering...

For many years now I have heard people talk about growing old gracefully.  But it's not as if I had a very graceful youth or middle years to give me any practice.  I will likely grow old the same way that I've done everything else, with misguided fervor and obsessive abandon, but precious little resignation.

Who knows, perhaps some new year will happen upon me unsuspected and save me from myself, save me from the alternating tremors of my life, the erratic swing that binds me to a life torn mad with impulse.

I swear and beg to the gods, each and every one of them.

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pearls befour swine

I have been accused of being cruel many times. 

But this... how can this be my fault?

Oddly, this misguided rant... supports my believe much of which has been... proves the that.

--------

Atheism is a struggle towards mankind, not against god.

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"...the true nature of your existance.. not such and easy task."

By coincidence a "conversation" erupted on Facebook yesterday concerning the likelihood of a god, and one person's insistence on the presence of one, or many, or that each individual is part of a celestial godhood.  Facebook is quite possibly among the worst places for this type of thing but I was not about to allow atheism to be entirely misrepresented by a believer.  This particular Facebooker was a self-proclaimed adherent to many, many disciplines, all of which he melded together in an incongruous blend of cosmic assertions. Proof of god if there ever was...

Here is an example:

(click-on for best results)

I don't know what I was hoping to disprove.  "Conversations" on Facebook often end this way, with abbreviated resignation and hopeless surrender.  I think it perfectly fitting and appropriate that they are referred to as "threads." A thread is used in sewing but on its own it is somewhat incomplete, easily broken and does not function as fabric.  Well, that's the gist of it anyway...

I really don't know why I get involved in this sort of thing.  There is some trigger inside of me that takes me from casual browsing of Facebook to my involvement in all manner of lunacy; truncated and telescoped quasi-debate.  Then somebody will use the fantasy word "unlogical" and I can't help myself.  I feverishly check my phone to see what new words will get created in this outpouring of religious belief, this moment of extraterrestrial creation, this linguistic birthing of universal worlds.

Ok, I went back and read even more and have to post it.  This is among the most bizarre collections of beliefs that I've ever been witness to:

(click-on for best results)

I'll stop.  It is too much for me.  "Your" probably tiring of it also.

I have a sickness, atheism is perhaps but a ghost symptom.  The thing that I find so unexpectedly funny about atheism is that ultimately it is a disbelief in man, not god.  Once you can accept that belief systems are uniquely man-made, that they arise and then flourish at certain points in man's history, out of need, developed over time, then it is simply a denial of that creation.  Atheism is merely a rejection of man's collective fear and accepted ignorance. God has very little at all to do with it, other than being the main talking point from one side of the debate.  

In other modes of thought a premise that is found to be faulty is discarded.  We no longer believe the earth to be flat because we have made other discoveries concerning it.  But the older a religion is, no matter how absurd and twisted, the more credence people will likely give it.  Judaism is a famous example. The Red Sea was never parted, Jonah did not sleep in the belly of a fish for 3 days, there were no giants named Goliath, bears don't maul 42 children to death at god's command for making fun of Elijah being bald, god does not kill people for masturbating, donkeys don't talk, and on and on and on.

Oh wait, there's more.... god tries to kill Moses because his son's not circumcised.  

He has the power to have children magically mauled by surprise attack bears but he's not able to take Moses down for having not sliced off part of his son's penis. Don't worry though, Moses's wife quickly does the job then throws the discarded flesh at Moses's feet, prompting god to quickly walk away.  

Sensible.  It's what I would have done also. 

If anybody can read the entire old testament and still believe any portion of the judeo-christian myth then you will be gladly received in heaven and spend eternity in blissful harmony with your creator.  

But it's not just this biblical blathering, it's from all sides.  Each of the religions has these absurd tales, some worse than others.  But what do I know?  I'm just a "spiritual light being" trying to make some sense of it all.

I fluctuated back and forth for several years, wanting to find some belief system that did not sound hysterically ill informed, but there really isn't much of one out there. I needed a replacement for christianity, or the feelings that christianity gave me as a youth.  I wanted some celestial comfort there in the darkness.  None came.  Not mother nature (pictured above), not pantheism, not even agnosticism sat very easily on me for long.  

Then in the last few years it's finally dawned on me... I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in any spiritual or religious doctrine but I also don't deny the benefit of faith to believers.  I have witnessed the rewarding feelings that arise from yoga and I don't deny the possibility of order in the universe. In fact, I still very much believe there is order in the universe. I just don't assign this recognition to deist sources. I simply don't have patience any longer for spiritual whimpering and gibberish from my fellow mankind.  Too much damage has been done to the heart of man with it. 

Oh christ almighty... I took a break from writing this post and just went and read Selavy's post from this morning... He is right of course.

I will stop here.  It is more than enough wisdom for a lifetime.  

"But I must not allow myself to forget that drifting, bored look in her eye and hearing my voice coming at me from all sides like talking in an empty room or seashell. " - Selavy

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The Cloisters

A friend of this site asked me in private a few days ago what I believe about god.  My response was, "More and more I believe less and less."  I was raised as a christian, a catholic.  My father is Irish.   Though he never exhibited any strong discernible religious bearings when I was growing up I see now that he privately harbored the catholic impulse.

I begrudge nobody their set of religious tendencies and I can see how believing in a god helps some people through difficult times. I believe there have been studies that show that faith is a healthy behavior.  I am glad the church is there for those who wish it to be there. For the most part the church seems to be a harmless social event.

Though we all know that it was not always this way.  

I suppose it depends on what level you look at it.  A grandmother taking joy and pride in participating in her community is a touching thing, it gives her life meaning and purpose where it might otherwise lack. 

The church's rapacious pillaging of 3rd world economies is quite another.

Faith might be healthy, but I avoid many healthy behaviors.  I am an atheist, though I came to this through simply retiring from christianity.  I am perhaps the least devout atheist you will find.  Mostly it is because I don't care. The question of god is and always has been beyond humanity's sphere of knowledge.  Some might say that this makes me an agnostic, but once you admit that then the christians around you will never leave you alone. They figure that you're on the fence and there is still a chance to save your mortal soul. 

It seems self-evident to me that religion is an exclusively man-made construct and as such I have found several other constructs that I prefer.  Art, literature and science highest among them.  But what of religious art? For the most part it only interests me in that it made possible the development of modern artists as we know them.  It created the environment in which artists could practice their trade and later it gave them something substantial to rebel against.

When I was younger and more impressionable I became involved in an enthusiastic church. I believe the term used now is "evangelical."  It was our task to save lost souls and we would do so wherever we could.  It gave my life a sense of meaning and it did yield one lifelong friend, who has also subsequently slid into the greedy hands of the dark lord.  She is a yoga instructor.  I think back to how our little church group would frown on such quasi-demonic impulses. 

I mean, she's not out there hunting unicorns or anything, but she professes adherence to a doctrine outside of the sacred central text of christianity...

I have included many pictures above and below to give you an idea of how bizarre religious art can be. Let them take your imagination back to a time when unicorns were hunted into extinction and art was filled with many symbols and allegories.  I find this stuff fascinating to look at.  

Once when I was in Ghent, Belgium I took a tour of the Gravensteen castle.  There was a torture chamber there.  One can not really grasp the barbarity of such a place until you can get an up close look at the devices and procedures for extracting proclamations of faith from the iniquitous unbelieving. The success of Christianity through the dark and middle ages is an unrestrained triumph of intolerance. 

Here is a unicorn in captivity.  This picture seems quite peaceful, but I assure you if that godless fucker gets out of that pen he will be raping the village children in a matter of seconds. If good christians can not come together to rid the world of dragons and unicorns then imagine the world we would live in... groups of religious believers would be free to wander the world, defiling at will. 

Just look at the little glowing child-like faces of the piously god-filled...

You can't blame them for appearing a little hard-hearted. Notice the directing fatherly hand on their youthful little heads, and the sheer convenience of their kneeling height, their submissive postures, preparing to receive the sword of the lord.

But don't worry, I'm sure they were only using the priest to get to god.... sucking up to him, as they say.

Christ returned to Jerusalem riding a Donkey on Palm Sunday.  A fitting fable.  The proper name for the day is Donkey Palm.  Many believers do not know this, or believe it.  A donkey, when used in this way, is an animal of peace. 

This special donkey function can be witnessed in many border towns along the Mexican-US perimeter.

Ok, I am just kidding around, being sacrilegious.  I took all of these pictures yesterday at The Cloisters and didn't quite know what to do with all of them.  

I hadn't suspected this post would end with old Father Fellatio and Donkey Dong.

Let this last image of maternal love calm thee and refresh thy humbled spirit.  Mother and child, life's receptacle and womb.... the nutritive role of the earth, our redemption from impurity and death, the very symbol of the erotic nature of life, the harmony of opposites.  

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Dial M for Murder

We went and saw the Hitchcock classic yesterday, in its original 3D, at Film Forum.  It is one of the things I'll miss about NYC, Film Forum.  Rachel and I have made a bucket list. We're going to do some of the things we never did while we've lived here, or things we have done that became our favorites along the way. Today it's The Cloisters and then dinner tonight at Il Buco. The first of which we have never done the second we have. 

Dial M had a few scenes that were designed for, and made much more funny by, the 3D process.  It was a minor eye opener for me.  3D at the time this film was made was in its primitive form. There literally are 3 layers of depth. All things exist on the same plane in either the foreground, the mid-ground, or the background. There is no sense of continuous depth the way that there is in animated 3D features now.  

Grace Kelly was good but the movie centers around Ray Milland's character.  His devious and plotting wit, which ultimately fails him, though only by chance.  Grace Kelly does well as the unfaithful victim. As with most of Hitchcock's films her best scene is the attempted murder scene.  It is all true, the things they say about Hitchcock, the blondes, of course.  No other filmmaker exhibits the "reverence to rape" theme greater or with more impact and urgency. 

Ok, out of time already today, shopping for houses in Sonoma online.... pray for us.

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happily ever after...

(Melvin Sokolsky)

A thing occurred to me yesterday.  Consider how many same-sex relationships this new law in New York will destroy. There must be couples out there that have always maintained that they would get married if they only could and that they're not going to go to Connecticut to do so, that they should be able to do so in their own state.  Then the law changes... followed by the uncomfortable conversation of, Well, we don't have to run out and do it right away...  I'm not sure if I ever really want to get married.... Yes, it's nice for those who want that and fought for it, but I don't  need my life to imitate a straight couple.

Oh, the agonizing painful silences that follow, the arguments. The disappointments. The bitter tears.

I don't wish pain on anybody. But the unintended outcome of this law will be some re-negotiating among certain couples. It will force a new understanding upon them whether they wanted it or not. There is so much pain and uncertainty to endure in life as it is. The question of marriage is now forced upon many who might not have wished for it, and perhaps at some late date into the relationship. Imagine those who have lived as a married couple for years but without the legal obligations.  At some point that advantage must have occurred to one of them, if not both, for better or for worse.

Breaking up will become a much more complicated affair now. There will be much more to consider.

I am very pro civil liberties and a believer in the legal need for equality.  I believe that it is a noble endeavor for any society. Marriage is a legal arrangement that should not be denied to these people based on their sexual orientation.  I found that almost all of the arguments against same-sex marriage were faith based. An argument which should immediately be taken out of consideration except as their religious doctrines and causes can be advanced through democracy and the voting process. But it has no place in the creation or interpretation of law, either state or federal.  See: Amendment 1 to The Constitution.

The secular arguments against it avoided the concept of equal rights altogether and tended to focus on the history and definition of marriage as an argument against its change.  Or, that it is merely a tax break for those who are likely to produce children, a sort of governmental form of population growth promotion. One writer even went so far as to argue that the justification for denying individuals in same-sex relationships the benefits of marriage is the same as denying polygamists the right to exercise their enthusiastic brand of population promotion.  But very few of the secular writers I read touched upon equality as a reason for granting them the legals rights they deserve. They simply asserted that they were not being denied equality in any meaningful way.  Which is absurd when one considers things like insurance, inheritance and security of shared property.

So, it will make for some interesting stories, I'm sure. I work in a place where there are many people involved in same-sex relationships, or hope to be.  I hear a fair amount about the difficulties of these situations and the unique struggles to be had there.  As always I am interested in the stories there are to be told, though not as much in the ones that end in happily ever after...

"Marriage: a friendship that is recognized by the police." - Robert Louis Stevenson

(Melvin Sokolsky)

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Ave.C of Forgotten Dreams

This was a wall photo made by a New Yorker 32,000 seconds ago. A tenement building fell and closed off the entrance to the avenue where it remained undisturbed for another 20,000 seconds.  This artist with the crooked finger made several other Ave. C photos.  It was easy to recognize them because they were all done with an iPhone 3GS. 

We sat and looked at these strange dreams, speaking to us from across the millennia, uttering their silent stone incantations...

Holy Crap! I just went to Rotten Tomatoes and saw that Herzog's film got a 96% rating.  The images were good, the dialogue and interviews were mostly abysmal.  The film could have only been half the length and it would have been better. There was far too much weird filler in this documentary just to get it to feature length.

I don't have anything to write about today.  I know this and soon you will too.

Ok, I was going to go on and prove my point, but I concede defeat.

Well, Selavy is sick, very sick.  My church group has been having a prayer vigil for him.

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Happily Married, NY

Last night New York voted to allow same-sex marriage.  

I think back to some of my friends from youth who are probably enraged and also convinced that this signals the end of western culture.  In some ways it does. The open acceptance of homosexuality tends to occur in the late phases of an empire's arc.  Though this became less and less true after the Christian and Islamic empires emerged as they had central texts by which they were morally guided and bound to, texts which denounce homosexuality as a sin.  For better or worse, some might say, the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and the pre-Islamic Persian empire tended towards sexual openness in society mostly during their waning phases. 

That homosexuality has always been under complete societal oppression is an historical falsehood unsupported by fact. Many have fought for it and created it at various times in history. Some societies did not even require this struggle. It simply became openly accepted once the societies had achieved a certain level of self-assurance, wealth and centralized political power, as it did in the Greek and Roman empires. 

It is easy to say that the western empire (if it can even be called that) differs because it was established partially on the very premise of human rights and equality. But that forgets that none of the individuals or groups fought for (or mentioned) this particular aspect of equality during those many years of inception.  It is a late addition to the concept.  In fact, many of the original framers of these concepts argued only for equality among men. Though there were those who included women in the premise also, and still others who used the term "man" to denote all of humanity. A term which still serves that purpose when used in that way.  Though many might disagree.

Yes, it was mostly white men who initially fought for and developed the concepts of equality before the law and human rights.  Though it has been a broad spectrum of ethnic and religious groups, and those of diverse sexual orientation, who have fought the ideas through to continued fruition.  This perhaps partially explains now why it is a passe' concept somewhat, or one that is vaguely ridiculed when discussed.  It seems to either align the speaker with an ideology or an oppressed struggle.  The assumption is that white men embracing either is done so out of a combination of that same ideology or guilt, or both.  Easy targets.

Many of the left-leaning liberals I know seem to feel that it is a battle that has been won and there is no need to continue fighting towards its completion.  As if the juggernaut of liberalism is one that can not be stopped, or has accomplished all that it can and it is pointless to continue in.  But much like modernism it is something that only finds periods and places where it can flourish.  It is not a universal value and one that exists beyond the constraints of politics and power.  It is instead enabled exclusively by those politics and that power.  

So, I have mixed feelings.  I am pleased for those who can now enjoy the same privileges that I can but also recognize the many various indications of a waning culture.  It is an odd position to be in. To recognize the value of the thing that perhaps indicates a collapse, though to see it as a victory rather than a potentially larger failure.  The fluctuation between the triumph of the individual and the sliding of the center, and the whole, towards its historical fortunes.  

I am happy for those that I know who can and will enjoy this new liberty granted to them after years of long struggle and perpetual denial.  To be able to enjoy the rights that have been denied them and to establish the legal grounds by which they can share both the struggle and benefits of life together. It is a victory for all of those who believe in the equality of enjoyments under the law and individual human rights.  The law is but one force that keeps us from barbarity, servility and arrogant oppression.  

-------

Cafe Selavy wrote this morning:  "I have a feeling, though, that I would like to explain things.  A life is never what it seems to be.  The underlying motives for an action is the story, not the action itself.  At bottom, we are all fools and simps stumbling about, bumping our noses in the dark, driven by partial understanding and ignorance. "

All true. 

But in that darkness there is also impulse and pleasure. We construct a partial vision of the world there.  Always in pieces we pursue or deny, always alone.

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What happens in Vegas?

I went out drinking last night. A friend was in town from Las Vegas with his girlfriend.  They were at a local bar.  I thought to myself: harmless

It is all that I remember.  

My wife woke me up on the couch this morning. It was 6am.  

I had neither pissed nor feced myself but have no recollection of how I got there. I felt like I had a mouthful of cat litter.

I was waiting by the the bathroom door at the bar.  I farted.  I swear this has never happened before (not the fart, but the next part)... It smelled of vitamins.  I've had vitamin burps before, but never a vitamin fart.

Sometimes I will pretend that by breaking a slice of cheese in two it reduces the total calories.  

I thought there was some rule about having to stay in Vegas. 

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The dog star is closing in.

The coming of the dog days.  We are all waiting, waiting for a thing that can hardly be escaped.  The warm skies are lowering, bringing with them the layers of sticky water vapor.  Sweat refuses to evaporate. It just sits across the skin, collecting unwanted atmosphere.

Even the dog park seems sullen and oppressed.  Dogs will just watch the ball roll away under the benches, disinterested.  Tongues hung out in surrender and defeat.  It is like a prison yard.  

Barkley scarcely wants to walk.  It brings him very little pleasure.  His greatest joy is returning home, running up the stairs to get back inside.  His hair sticks to my hands every time I touch him.  

I imagine mold developing deep in my camera lenses.  I see it growing there in the darkness of my mind. I wonder if there are other things I should be seeing there in the recessed darkness.

There must be other things to consider.  

Perhaps in the relief of autumn those other things will come to me.

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the race

the race

it is like this
when you slip down,
done like a wound-up victrola
(you remember those?)
and you go downtown
and watch the boys punch
but the big blondes sit with
someone else
and you've aged like a punk in a movie:
cigar in skull, fat gut,
but only no money,
no wiseness of way, no worldliness,
but as usual
most of the fights are bad,
and afterwards
back in the parking lot
you sit and watch them go,
light the last cigar,
and then start the old car,
old car, not so young man
going down the street
stopped by a red light
as if time were no problem,
and they come up to you:
a car full of young,
laughing,
and you watch them go
until
somebody behind you honks
and you are shaken back
into what is left
of your life.
pitiful, self-pity,
and your foot is to the floor
and you catch the young ones,
you pass the young ones
and holding the wheel like all love gone
you race to the beach
with them
brandishing your cigar and your steel,
laughing,
you will take them to the ocean
to the last mermaid,
seaweed and shark, merry whale,
end of flesh and hour and horror,
and finally they stop
and you go on
toward your ocean,
the cigar biting your lips
the way love used to.

-Charles Bukowski

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Just Stars

I finished reading "Just Kids" by Patti Smith.  It was a good and easy read, a time in New York to which I am drawn. The rock, art and writing of that decade (the late 60's and 70's) still has a lasting effect on me.  I used to sometimes get a copy of The Village Voice when I was young and I would scour through the pages to see what was going on in New York, who was playing at CBGBs, thinking it to be the center of all possible universes.  This continued all the way up until the 90's when I developed further interests, in other places, other types of music.

The story that Patti tells is partially a convenient falsehood, but a charming one.  It is as if she never met an ordinary person in her life outside of her family. She goes out of her way to tell us that after a specific incident with Robert Mapplethorpe she goes to get a sandwich and on that day she meets Allen Ginsberg, who gives her a dime thinking that she was a very pretty boy.  Ginsberg plays no further role in the story, it was just a perfect time to tell the audience that she had met him under funny circumstances. Her encounters with Jim Carroll, Sam Shepard, Todd Rundgren, William Burroughs, and every other celebrity are told in the same manner. As if they're the only people that she ever met and it was always a coincidence, and also on the same day that some other memorable thing happened with another celebrity.  She tells an elaborate story about being asked out to dinner by Sam Shepard and not knowing it was him.

For somebody who has their eye so keenly fixed on celebrity it is difficult to believe her. 

Poetic license, I believe it is called. 

Bullshit, also.  I pity anybody in her world that might have had a profound effect on her life that did not subsequently become, or already arrive, famous.  They would have been left out of her reminisces altogether, coincidentally.  But it was still a good read, even if her attempts to convince the world of her reluctance towards rock success start to sound as if she's just trying to convince herself of greater unused talents.  I mean, she has talent, lots of it.  The book is very well written, thoughtful, beautiful, and even heartbreaking at points. 

She acts as if she was never really interested in being a rock star either, and didn't even know that it was going to happen, much less really wanted it to. But was rather an odd by-product of her pursuit of poetry. Perhaps this is a partial truth.  But albums like "Horses" don't just magically appear in front of people that don't want to be rock-n-roll performers.  It is a great rock-poetry performance and one that did not happen by accident, but rather by very specific design. 

But just like a kid she tells tales and takes joy in telling them.  One can't really fault her too much for it.  It was a dynamic life and one worth reading about.  It was a look back into a time and place that I so wanted to participate in, but only got glimpses.  

Well, this is my book review of "Just Kids" by Patti Smith.  It won the National Book Award, which is only given out to the Nobel Prize Winners of Literature, Astronauts, Popes and Saints.  Patti Smith is all of those.  No, wait, maybe that's Laurie Anderson.

Fuck....


I can't even write about something that I liked without being critical of it.  I need to practice civility and benevolence.  They say that you get better at that which you do more.

So: I really, really liked it.  You should like it too.  Liking things is healthy.  If Christ were on Facebook I would absolutely adore him.  I can see it now... "like" not, lest ye be liked.


I still haven't gotten my mind back in full yet.  I don't even know where the christ/herpes/fountain came from earlier this morning.  I tried to tell a sweet story about a place of tender memories. Before I knew it I was screaming bloodshot kamikaze daydreams.

Christ compels me.

.