2012

 

My uncle just sent me this picture of my one-of-a-kind Grandma, Donna.

She was a gem. RIP GD. Miss you on this first day of 2012.

Rationalists, like Spinoza.

Sunday mornings: hot coffee and a muffin from the Eastside bakery. The table is decoupaged with cut-out images by some famous fifteenth century painter. I’m in yellow, with my brown leather satchel, holding onto a ceramic mug about the size of a Coke bottle. Sammy’s hand is in my free one—although it isn’t free anymore.
There’s a dog in the ally, facing the window we look out of. He looks like a swimer, but I suspect he’s really no good at what he’s made for. He sits and waits for the girl with dyed red hair to order her Chai, or whatever.
I watch him pant and wag his tail with calm adore.
She pays no attention.
He isn’t even hers.

Sammy and I sit here, as usual, in silence. The stool he’s chosen is closer to the floor then mine.
And when he looks up from the illustrations and takes a small corner of the blueberry muffin, I always expect our eye contact to be more intimate.
But I guess his kind of intimacy is more or less in the silence.

We’ve known each other for a little over two year now and still it kills me when he begs with out using words. Those marbley eyes-- patient yet indifferent-- ask only for acquiescence, but I'm not into giving in anymore.
I'm done.
He can have the muffin.

Why you should never

try to write down anything important when you've been drinking:

(Hyphen)

"Careless we are with ourselves. Giving away the best parts to whoever asks it of us, it's a shame really." The tall girl let her legs swing loose with ambivalence, "If you think about it," she said, "Human beings are very fragile creatures."

"Yes, I know." He replied.

She let out a low giggle and pushed off from the embankment landing easily on the gravel below. He watched her from the corner of his eye, "Where are you going?"

She turned: expressionless, "Going to run-a-muck. And you?"

He bent his head forward, the black hood obscuring his face completely, "I dunno." he replied: piqued, "I thought..." he let it trail off, the words were pointless anyway.

"You thought what?" She took a step toward him.

"Nothing."

She frowned, "Well obviously you thought something."

"No," he scratched the back of his hooded neck, "it was nothing."

She wrinkled her nose, shifted her weight and stared back (attempting to will him further along), but he didn't lift his head, and he didn't speak. She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, but he continued in his silence, keeping his eyes to himself.

I listened, but I didn’t hear anything the priest was saying. I’m not religious. I’m not interested in death or dying. What I am interested to know is why my sister felt the need to take her own life. How could it have possibly come down to this?

After the church yard emptied, a tide of black bodies spilling out to the cars beyond, I stood by an ancient maple tree and closed my eyes. An aggrandized sense of understanding took over as I placed my hand on the course bark. I imagined the arms of my parted sister. Deep crevasses and rough scars, open wounds and the rotting decay of the old ones. Long strokes, up and down. All vertical and with purpose, just like on the night they found her.

****

Can’t we merge?

(We were perfectly married at the beginning of this problem. It’s the time that’s relative; and after all, who’s to say there’s no meaning in distance when it’s space that belongs to us.)

Leave no trace of grace, just trust in your honor....

The condition is now strong; on a vague edge between balance and genius sits a pair of soles, poised between the heal and the toe, they rest as the shoes you may walk in.
One day making fantastic attempts to lose them,
in hallways,
in dumpsters
just a way to free them from your own swollen model.

But if you choose their steps,
if you choose their grace
good riddance to predictability
goodnight to expense.
Shoes are made for borrowing, trading, handing down.

Not losing.

one. two. three.

Why you’re pushing me off: Metaphysically.

...Within the limits imposed upon me, I followed his advice and went in. Still wearing the corduroy skirt, black stockings and a yellow blazer from the night before, I nestled up to the bar unnoticed. My face was made up but my nails were dirty and by habit I made an attempt to hid them under the bar, but ultimately decided that it probably didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t possibly assume that anyone here actually saw me, let alone formulated thoughts about me-- if anything, I had blended into the scene nicely; appearing a half day old and wrecked from whatever bed I had come.
The bar tender spoke kindly. His face was flushed red and held the semitransparent vices of anxiety; futility; rancor and despair; and perhaps a hint of genius, but certainly not devotion or sympathy to any of his clients.
My attention was pushed over and spilling out onto the idea of finding a way back to disillusionment. I was pondering which alcohol to take when, “Miss?” He directed
I removed the gloss from the corners of my eyes, “A whiskey ginger, please.” not being, I thought. Not being what? The advice had been simple. Go to the bar he had said, you need a drink, just one. I remembered I had needed a drink, and possibly a cigarette, but definitely more than just one. But not being? What did he mean by not being?
And then the latin phrase tattooed above his right collar bone: Vita reditus essentia. Something about life-something-essential, or was it essence? I’d wished I’d paid more mind to my latin.
The drink was served up, “$3.50, miss.”
I handed over plastic, “Keep it open.” Vita reditus essentia.

Today's advice:

"I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write."

-- Nelson Algren

secrets.

Log at 35,000 feet

To look beyond the title zoning of America's finest establishments-- the car wash, the pool hall-- and to focus their selves in a wavering textile of imaginative forms, where blues become reds and reals, wrongs. While passengers imagine, for a moment, that everything on earth is this boring.
But it is this boring?
He knows (whether or not you know) below... there is something we should all live by. This American life. This fashioned delusion of wealth and beauty and corruption: this is boring. (As it should be.) But above it, well... such predictable dribble has always been the means for a quiet end.
The very flow of endless ranting, the very product of life on an easel, leads many to the state of chattered luck, boring features and receding depth. So, is that enough?
Boredom or Insanity?
Certainty or Absurdity?
Furor or Apathy?

Please be sure when you answer.

USSR, postal history

http://www.stamprussia.com/postal.htm

Bacon:

"The assertion that the human senses are the measure of things is false; to the contrary, all perceptions, both of sense and mind, are relative to man, not to the universe. The human understanding is like an uneven mirror receiving rays from things and merging its own nature with the nature of things, which thus distorts and corrupts it."

Free time is just better.

I was supposed to write a five page paper on the complementary points between Platonic and Aristotelian approaches to "Heraclitean Flux" in consideration of the question 'can we know anything about what there is', read 150 pages from Bacon's The New Organon and finish 3 chapters of math.
Did I do any of this?
No, Of course not. It was Halloween weekend...

A Note From The Cosmos:

El Gato in SF.

My fellow Street Dove: political mastermind of arts & crafts.

Photo: shot in Rochester, NY, by my friend Brian Adams; of his long time partner in crime, M.F.