Call him Carl.
Many, many years ago I founded and ran my second magazine in San Francisco. In time, I sold my share out to my partner and, flush with cash for the first time in my life, decided to move to New England with my then live-in love whom I shall always think of as "The Socialite." The Socialite's family was one of the 500 and, although fallen on hard times, they retained their position within high Eastern society because of their illustrious name. Their family seat was in Newport, Rhode Island, and The Socialite would, years later, live there with her husband and their daughters. I think about her from time to time and saw her once five years ago. She'd turned into her mother -- slim, patrician, and slightly nuts.
But this is not about her, or those white nights, or even the oh-so-social summers at Bailey's Beach. This is about Carl, the most unwise lover I ever met. I'm telling you
Continued...
Snow still sheaths the streets in her mountains,
and the spring trees shudder in the wind off her lake,
until night fades them finally and forever they're gone
into the smoke of the world.
Smell of her long hair hot in the sun through the windshield,
rattle of dried corn sheaves shaken by dusk's breeze,
soft heft of breasts sweet as winter oranges,
the breath rising in the dry heat parching her body.
And the fire rose up in me and I stretched her out, O lovely,
across the pale cloth and reached out and held and held....
Gone. Gone forty years.
The day, the lips, the hair -- gone
into the smoke of the world.
1.
Off the beach and beyond the reef where the breakers slash,
two ships scud in silhouette, struggling towards safe harbors
over sheets of burnished pewter as the rogue wave rises.
The small town's ordered lawns, spattered
with deserted wives and businessmen,
make calm ponds of green, of vacant thoughts of green,
bordered by a planked path that curves
between the grass and the clean and sifted sand.
Once off the path our steps were quick
among the shells of ancient crabs,
the finer grind of granite,
the grey grains of bone and pearl;
among the buried beach glass, the shards
of broken promises and lives,
that, concealed beneath the wave smoothed surface,
would slash a foot set wrong an inch.
And so along the long sands we stepped,
hunched against our wind-tossed histories,
and hurried homeward in the afternoon.
2.
Our pace, pressured as a drunken tambourine,
beat to the sound's small tide that,
cupping emerald seagrass in soft hands,
swelled within the water
as your breasts might when,
caressed by languid fingers
in a careless night, rise
in a rage of heat, up over rocks, and rip salt-flamed
all walls to ruined rubble, and remove
all drowned and rusted monuments to navigation,
that once out of chains the soul chimes
to free the fettered mind from memory that it sing,
and louder sing, until light is taken out of dark,
drowning all of was to raise in dawn what is,
that trumpets scorch the stones and scatter then,
like ancient bones tossed into ash, all the past
lashed onto the slow sea swell withdrawing ,
drowning them down in the eel's dank lair,
into that damp oblivion the stars create
by shining on the waters of the moon.
To drown in one great wave the shore,
the grass, and all the waste of was.
To leave the past annihilate,
as waves once spent, forget their water,
erasing footprints, ash and embers,
single feathers curved for flight,
become glass shadows on the tide moist grass,
or fading fog on silver plashed,
or the listless lift of empty hands,
or the dream sealed in the stone.
(Her skin glowing with a scatter of stars,
the untraced map of forsaken constellations.
Her taste, the tang of seafoam and copper fading
into blue behind the high cirrus.
Her kisses like the pale glimmer of cave fish
born to blindness in the caverns of the sea.
Her thoughts, pale flickers of farewell.)
On the horizon, two trim ships,
their sails set full in silhouette,
merged, and then passed,
and then sailed into the distances
and drowned.
--Crystal Cove, Laguna Beach 2005
She was cruising down the Big Sur coast,
Looking for a little romance.
I was walking the edge of Highway One,
Hoping for a second chance.
She pulled that Ford to the side of the road.
I opened the door, got in.
Said, "My name's Adam, baby. What's yours?"
She said, "They call me Original Sin."
I WILL BE ON RETREAT for eight to ten days, so there won't be any new entries during that time. If you'd like, here's a selection of essays from my archives that seem, at least to me, to have some value beyond the moment they were written. Almost all of what I write here and publish here is a first draft so they will have all the flaws commonly found in such essays. This is not, I hasten to add, a digest of the Digest. Only things selected on the run from the archives -- which are, to say the least, chaotic:
Continued...
I.
Her sinewed arms bend oars downstream,
Her belly taut against the eddied swirls
And shifting shoals of sand and silt.
Soft plash of water against the hull,
As, on the lift of wind and loft of wave,
Her legs push and her breasts swell
To the slow rotating stroke on stroke
That guides her craft past rocks and reeds
Where bighorns graze and beavers slap the pool.
Her hair, rayed out, enfolds the sun.
Her downed thighs surge and shift
To the tempo of the current's heart,
And her shoulders roll, her shoulders roll
The long blue oars through shafts of sun,
Through canyons carved from time.
While I Was Sleeping
BEING NO LONGER COMPELLED to follow every trend of pop music, I missed the moment when the ability to actually sing was removed as a basic requirement for performance, adulation and success. This is not to say I was deaf to the merger of street-corner doo-wop with "doing the dozens" that occurred somewhere during the time when break-dancing on stained cardboard was the money-raising rage on New York streets. Neither was I deaf to the Punk Rock triumph when the ability to play the electric guitar well was deemed to exist once one had learned three, and only three, chords. Nor did I neglect to notice the rise of Rap from it's origin in failed grammar classes in our more deeply disturbed schools of the inner cities.
But everyone has to sleep sometime and while I was sleeping it seems that the ability to sing was tossed out right behind the three chords. The result, if various television and radio spots and commercials are to be credited, is that pop music has become the apotheosis of affirmative entertainment action. No talent other than an obsessive loggorhea of doggerel seems to be required. Song itself has been effectively banished.
Continued...
When I write blog
I am moved by strange whistles and wear a hat
When I write blog
I am the hunter. My prey leaps out from where it
hid, beguiling me with gestures
When I write blog
all may command me, yet I am in command of all who do
When I write blog
I am guided by voices descending from the naked air
When I write blog
A revelation of movement comes to me. They wake now.
Now they want to work or look around. Now they want
drunkenness and heavy food. Now they contrive to love.
When I write blog
I bring the sailor home from the sea. In the back of
my car he fingers the pelt of his maiden
When I write blog
I watch for stragglers in the urban order of things.
When I write blog
I end the only lit and waitful things in miles of
darkened houses
-- Apologies to Lew Welch who disappeared. (Wherever he may be, God rest and keep his Beat soul.)
OF THE MANY MILLIONS OF SONGS AVAILABLE ON ITUNES, it is more than just an accident that this one is being given away free at present in the "Alternative" category** : When The President Talks To God
When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?
At the link above are the complete lyrics to this jejune and uninspired rant that catalogs the ever-revolving whines of the "oppressed" lunatics that pass themselves off as a genuine opposition party. We expect this from them. They literally have nothing else to offer other than unceasing blather in the same well-worn ruts. It's one thing to sell this song, but it is quite another to pander to these sentiments by giving them away in the midst of millions of others that you sell for 99 cents. That's not marketing, that's a statement of corporate policy.
Continued...
Avalon, Catalina Island, 01/02/03
".... THIS MUCH I'VE LEARNED
In these five years in what I've spent and earned:
Time does not finish a poem.
Upon the old amusement pier I watch
The creeping darkness gather in the west.
Above the giant funhouse and the ghosts
I hear the seagulls call. They're going west
Toward some great Catalina of a dream
Out where the poem ends.
But does it end?
The birds are still in flight. Believe the birds."
-- Jack Spicer, Imaginary Elegies, 1950-55
GLENN REYNOLDS points to the now common tale of newspaper circulation woes published today in the Wall Street Journal: "Newspaper Circulation Continues Decline, Forcing Tough Decisions." The article cites the new numbers coming out on the decline in newspapers circulations across the board that are dire enough to be called hemorrhagic. And while it is obvious that something has to be done to stop the bleeding, everything that is being done seems to open the vein wider.
You know this if you still take and are paying at least passing attention to your local newspaper. It has, you've probably noticed, become more colorful and jazzy in the last few years. It has gone from "Just give the news please" to "Here's a lot of nifty color pictures, graphs, and charts and other PIX along with a fresh selection from our bottomless FONTS collection." I call this the PIX & FONTS DAILY -- a way of presenting something that is supposed to be a "paper on which is printed the news" as a dog's dinner of "Graphics Gone Wild." Pulling the news out of this fornication festival of visual white noise is becoming, really, far too much of a chore. And yet the papers, scared out of being themselves by television news, persist in trying to reinvent themselves as TV news that doesn't move and has no sound.
The sections on pop culture have become popsier. The sections on the home have become homier. Large headlines have become larger, pull-quotes more numerous until they march across the page like some many infolet islands. If it has a comics sections more panels have come in and it has probably expanded to two pages jammed with gag strips but fewer continuing story strips. The front page, especially above the fold, has become not a quick scan of the important and interesting news of the day before, but a kind of carny display of fascinating featurettes you will find inside if you will only ("Please!") take the time to read them.
Continued...[Republished without revision from March 7, 2005]
MORE FEARFUL NOW THAN DEATH, to those fortunate enough to live in the First World, is a long decay before death. We fear mortality but we fear a long morbidity before mortality more.
Living wills. Increases in approved euthanasia in many nations. Personal hordes of pills, "just in case." "Senior care" warehouses to sustain us; to fill us with tubes and place us in a bed that monitors our internals that the least little slide towards death triggers alarms and the staff scuttles in to haul our shattered bodies back again. Rinse and repeat until our 'living' will or tired family frees us. All these are our shared horror show of which we know but seldom speak.
We live more and more, but more and more we do not know how to die.
To teach us this thing the Pope will now enact the lesson, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. His is the ancient church that, teaching First Things in ways many now no longer care to hear, teaches us now about Last Things in ways that many fear to learn. And it is the leader of that Church who, as he
Continued...PUBLISHES AP REPORT:
Click to enlarge.
Covering the web-wide kerfuffle and building blogger-led boycott of Borders since our publication of the Borders CEO's personal letter to leading bloggers yesterday (See item directly below this one.) the opening text reads:
Borders Blasts Back On Controversial Cartoons
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 31, 2006
Filed at 11:59 p.m. ETNew York, Mar. 31 - Gregory Josefowicz, the combative chairman of Borders Books, blasted back at his on-line critics today in a scathing on-line letter singling out right-wing blogger Charles Johnson of "Little Green Footballs".
FULL STORE AT: Borders Blasts Back On Controversial Cartoons
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"Propaganda, only propaganda is necessary. There is no end of stupid people." - Adolf Hitler
If the Arctic should doff its polar cap
in deference to excessive heat,
Mother Earth will be up to her crack
in more H2o than tantalised
the Ancient Mariner. Yet some forecast
drought, Saharas, parched disaster.
Which fate awaits this spinning Ark:
death by drowning or dehydration?
There can only be one apocalypse.
For those who live by final warnings,
beware of hot air -
the true cause of global warming.
Only fools and fanatics claim
to know the Creator's mind;
without the cloudiest doubt
occluding theirs, they proclaim
the end of the world is nigh. Doom
even makes athiests believers of a kind.
"It is deceit that makes hypocrisy what it is. The true hypocrite wants others to think better of him/her than is actually justified. Absent this deceit, there is no hypocrisy, just error or human frailty. That's what the hypocrisy-excuse people don't understand - or pretend not to understand - about church people. What may appear to be church people's hypocrisy is almost always just simple failure to meet the standards of our faith rather than deceit. Why? Because the standard is so high...."
Mocking Obama - that's the last taboo.
"The price of abandoning myth in order to travel where No Man Has Gone Before, via our home entertainment centers or Internet terminals , is that we have lost our place in our own story." - Belmont Club - Who wants to know?
"Our democratic institutions today, though far more distributed and open than the systems of Goebbels or Vyshinsky, are basically designed to run on an information system that funnels truth down from the top of the mountain. This is a brittle design. If it breaks - if it starts distributing sewage along with the rosewater - it loses its credibility. If it loses its credibility, the government loses its legitimacy. When a government loses its legitimacy, you don't want to be standing under it." - Unqualified Reservations: OLXIV: rules for reactionaries
"To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life,- and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many non-believing hearts… an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live fully, richly, exuberantly - no matter how their days may be numbered." - A Meditation on Life, from a Dying Man | The Doctor Is In
where the obvious is not an option. I heard more interviews with learned politicians informing me that "drilling for oil" will not affect anything, least of all the quantity of oil. We must apparently wait until 2015, when a magic engine that runs on unicorn flatulence is invented. I have to ask: why is anyone investing in unicorn flatulence today, when it won't make any difference for several years? The answer's simple: the engine will Appear at the chosen moment, borne from the clouds by starlings, but only if we have repented of our foul ways, and the last of the sinners has left the cul-de-sac to reside in a home located a sustainable distance from his or her place of employment. When the last suburban outlying development is empty, when the homes of whose size we disapprove has been abandoned, when the last citizen has been gathered unto the bosom of the urban center, where his profligate ways are sneered upon and the measure of his yard shall be no greater than the standard lot size decreed in 1902, then shall the magic engine appear. Until then, the wind and the sun will bear us onward." -LILEKS (James) the Bleat
NYT Co. stock took another nosedive today, dropping 2.73 percent to $12.85. That means in the last week, Times Company stock has fallen $2.21, or 15 percent. - The New York Observer
Every Obama's nut is unique with various properties and characteristics and has the ability to induce hope, as well as store, receive, and transmit energy. Other legendary properties include the ability to attract compassion and understanding of the media, reveal the location of other people's money, ward off unwanted inquiries, and prevent drug overdose.
"When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture." -Pauline Kael & trash cinema
"There are no turbines on my ranch, because I think they are ugly." - T. Boone Pickens to Newsweek
"Bush Says Drill, Drill, Drill -- and Oil Drops $9! -Kudlow
A nonscientific survey by the dating site Match.com found that 77 percent of respondents believe Obama would be a better kisser than the Arizona Republican. - Obama beats McCain in kissing contest
"Environmentalism is instinctively and relentlessly illiberal, and it is doing more to inculcate people with fear, self-loathing and a religious-style sense of meekness than any piece of anti-terror legislation ever could. If you believe in freedom, you must reject it." -Brendan O'Neill: Greens are the enemies of liberty
In order for "alternate energy" to become feasible, it has to satisfy all of the following criteria:1. It has to be huge (in terms of both energy and power)
2. It has to be reliable (not intermittent or unschedulable)
3. It has to be concentrated (not diffuse)
4. It has to be possible to utilize it efficiently
5. The capital investment and operating cost to utilize it has to be comparable to existing energy sources (per gigawatt, and per terajoule).
- Stephen Den Beste
"Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it'll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset." -- Obama: Man of the World - New York Times
Global warming may raise kidney stone riskGlobal warming could do more than hurt polar bears: It could force a rise in kidney stones, scientists warned Monday. "We see a relationship between kidney stones and temperatures everywhere," says study co-author Margaret Pearle of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. "Even in places with air conditioning, warmer temperatures mean more stones."
"But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won. I wish I could say the same for Afghanistan." -Michael Yon: Dispatches
"The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed. Therefore the 'rational' American response to the initiation of terrorist WMD attack would be all out retaliation from the outset.... It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us." - The 3 Conjectures @ Belmont Club
At the beginning of his remarks, Obama said, "I'm still looking for my mimosa," as many of the several hundred people in this ballroom were holding drinks. -Lynn Sweet: Obama, at fund-raiser in Newport Beach, Calif. takes one sip of a Mimosa.
"Our Unbreakable Umbrella has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere where any weapons are prohibited, unlike a walking stick it does not cause strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person, and it does protect from rain. Anyone who can use a stick for defense can use this umbrella." -The Unbreakable Walking-Stick Umbrella
"As well as the roads, Beijing has promised to repair 2,000 miles of largely defunct railways, build 32 hospitals and 145 health centres, install two electricity distribution networks, construct two hydropower dams and two new airports. In return, China has won the rights to five copper and cobalt mines in Congo's southern minerals belt which boasts some of the world's richest ore deposits. Victor Kasongo, Congo's deputy minister of mines, said: "To be honest, China was Plan B. We first approached the Europeans but they said they did not have the muscle to do what we needed. China has stepped into that opening, very quickly."" -China's 8 Billion drive to buy Africa's mineral wealth - Telegraph
"Climate change is a big scam, probably the biggest one ever successfully perpetrated. But California’s 'salary' is about to depend on the folks in charge never, ever figuring that out. Even though, in the hearts-of-hearts, they know it already." - House of Eratosthenes
Doing the Job American Journalism Won't Do By Counting the Jobs They Will:
Obama Media BJs To Date - "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans." - Big Shot Bob in Texas
China Takes Dog off the Menu for Olympics
"Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Israel and the Palestinians have never been as close to a peace deal than now." - CBS News
"I looked down at the loaf of bread and realized it is about two thirds the size it was last month. Then it clicked: All kinds of edible goods are shrinking in China these days. The rice crackers I like to nibble on at the office are in the same sized package as always, but the crackers themselves have shrunk dramatically." - McClatchy blog: China Rises
"The signature performance of the modern revolution is the irregular military parade. Ie: cars or pickup trucks full of well-armed youths in their colorful native attire, driving up and down your street while (a) honking, (b) waving hand-lettered banners, (c) chanting catchy slogans, and (d) discharging their firearms in a vaguely vertical direction. Occasionally one of the vehicles will pull up in front of a house and discharge its occupants, who enter the building and emerge with an infidel, racist, Jew, spy, polluter, Nazi or other criminal. The offender is either restrained for transportation to an educational facility, or enlightened on the spot as an act of radical social justice. Yes, we can!" - Unqualified Reservations: OLXIII: tactics and structures of any prospective restoration
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
-- Auden
"... our most successful politicians--human beings who can recognize or create popular appetites, recreating themselves as necessary."
YouTube - I'm Not Here to Make Friends! HT: Morgan (He whom nobody reads).
Today's warriors have a tremendous advantage over their antique brethren in the struggle for survival, however: the West's pathetic, if endearing, concern for human life, even when that life belongs to a murderer of epic achievement." - PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly - Summer 1994
"In an age haunted by cataclysms real and imagined, in this era of disappointment and wracking international failure, men and women will prove increasingly vulnerable to anti-modern, anti-rational explanations for their misfortunes and their inextinguishable impulse to vanity. Even in the United States, many of those least able to keep material, intellectual, and spiritual pace with the demands of modernity turn to primitive or exotic religious forms, from revivalism to New Age God-candy. -- Vanity and the Bonfires of the "isms" by Ralph Peters PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly - Autumn 1993
"A conservative estimate provided by Robertson Economic Information Services, a Southern African consultancy, says that prices are now three billion fold greater than seven years ago. That's right, billion. The exchange rate is currently an astronomical 90 billion Zimbabwe dollars to one U.S. dollar." -How Inflation May Topple Mugabe - WSJ.com
"After discussing famine in Africa, the peckish politicians and five spouses took on four bite-sized amuse-bouche to tickle their palates. The price of staple foods may be soaring, but thankfully caviar and sea urchin are within the purchasing power of leaders and their taxpayers - the amuse-bouche featured corn stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin, hot onion tart and winter lily bulb." - Just two of the 19 dishes on the dinner menu at the G8 food shortages summit (The Guardian)
"Children seem to be 'diagnosed' with lots of things lately. It has become customary for at least one of their parents to be somehow 'enthusiastic' about said diagnosis, sometimes even confessing to having requested or demanded the diagnosis. Said parent is invariably female. Said child is invariably male. The lopsided gender trend is curious, and so is the spectacle of parents ordering diagnoses for their children, like pizzas or textbooks." - House of Eratosthenes
Please study this evidence carefully. The saints of San Diego and surrounding areas in California NEED TO BE WARNED of the MAJOR JUDGMENT coming upon them that will be MUCH WORSE THAN 911. This evidence shows JULY 8, 2008 is hard coded in the Word of God as the next Major Judgment Date that will fulfill scripture just like the attack on the Twin Towers Sept 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina fulfilled scripture . It cannot be prayed away and It will not be delayed. -- !!! 2,492 DAYS !!!
"I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago or when I was a United States senator," said Obama, who is still a senator from Illinois. -- Obama puzzled by Iraq comment frenzy
A woman fell into a tank of slurry as she tried to make "manure bombs" using her stockings, German police today said. The unfortunate woman stripped off her foul smelling clothes and fled the scene naked, along with a female accomplice wearing just her bra and pants, a police spokesman told Reuters. - Cow dung fate for 'manure bomber' | World news | guardian.co.uk
"As Marie-Antoinette is said to have remarked about her starving subjects who were demanding bread, "Let then eat cake," our elected Democratic members of Congress are in effect saying of Americans, "Let them ride bikes." -- It's Time for Rage - HUMAN EVENTS
"500 years ago, oil was not a resource. Neither was uranium. People around at the time didn't know how to use them. Things that weren't resources became resources. Our ability to use new resources made old resources obsolete. Now, no home in the UK needs to burn wood for heat, for example. Or, as Bjorn Lomborg has put it, the Stone Age didn't come to an end because we ran out of stones." - Climate Resistance: Infinite Regress
"Seattle Police opened fire on a suspect in Downtown Seattle this morning who they say robbed a West Seattle bank wearing black shoe polish on his face and a wig." - Police shoot bank robbery suspect Seattle, Washington
So there I was, in the lion's den, calling Joe Lieberman an asshole. And people applauded and cheered. - Kos: Into the tiger's den
- The Man Who Loved Not Wisely But At Least Twice
- The Smoke
- The Silhouettes
- Closing Time
- Consulting the Oracle
- Pause
- The River Guide
- Thoughts While Waking, Showering and Shaving
- Blog Suite
- Itunes and Apple Come Out as Anti-American and Anti-God
- Avalon
- Pix and Fonts Newspapers Won't Make It
- The Passion of the Pope
- New York Times Picks Up Borders CEO Letter