The Last Good Name

IT BREATHES ME

2011-09-11T09:11:00.000-05:00

2:30 a.m. Start route. First tube. No cars.

2:36 One skunk.

2:38 Swerve around discarded paper bag, beer cans. No moon. Replacements. Police.

2:39 A kitten in the ditch. The Turtles. New white gravel reflects on brights.

2:40 Gliding hawk or owl.

2:43 A single rabbit. Remove seat belt for right window deliveries. Happy Together.

2:48 Meet oncoming headlights. “How is the weather?”

2:51 Mist. Slow wipers. Pair of raccoons. Fat raccoon hides in the ditch, looks back.

3:00 a.m. Hit first benchmark, right on time. Thirty-six down. Bagging some, banding some.

3:08 Android alert: New York Times. Scan headlines. Queens of the Stone Age.

3:11 Stop sign. One motorcycle followed by one car. Unusual amount of human activity.

3:13 Branch stuck under car. Drive in reverse to dislodge.

3:14 Motorcycle and car stopped ahead on County Road 2500 E. Window down. “Is everything OK?” “Just didn’t want to slide on the slick pavement.” “OK, be careful.”

3:16 Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun.

3:22 A little Pet Shop Boys.

3:23 Fox!

3:25 Birds playing chicken with headlights, fly up from pavement along 2600 E.

3:28 Slurp of coffee. Marlboro peppermint snus. “Wud’ve I wud’ve I wud’ve I done to deserve this.”

3:40 Corn stalks half dry, brown. Didn’t notice yesterday. Elton John. Teacher I Need You.

3:42 Predictable barking dog runs up to window. Phone battery down, plug in. Elderberry Wine.

3:47 Hippie rarity. David Crosby. If I Could Only Remember My Name.

3:49 A few minutes early. Missed farmer’s truck leaving for work. Catch him tomorrow.

3:58 Alice’s house now empty, dark.

4:00 a.m. Second benchmark. Halfway done. Running a little early. Incomprehensible tweet from insomniac Sponberg. Pass through Broadlands. Run both stop signs. Rain long stopped. Warm.

4:10 Stop to void on CR 100 N. No stars. Lonely tree on landscape dark as shadow.

4:12 Sing along. “I wonder who they are, the men who really run this land. I wonder why they run it with such a thoughtless hand. What are their names and on what street do they live? I'd like to ride right over this afternoon and give them a piece of my mind about peace for mankind. Peace is not an awful lot to ask.” Could have been written yesterday.

4:16 Glide through silent Allerton. Turn off music. No signs of life, not even a rabbit in the gardens. Deliver thirty more.

4:33 Exit Allerton. Cricket chirps.

4:42 Three mile stretch of nothing in Vermilion County. Flip open paper to scan for angry letters. Champaign-Urbana glows 30 miles off. Nobody seen since the motorcycle.

4:55 Erik Satie piano music in the form of a pear.

5:00 a.m. Turn on NPR News. Republicans announce they will “disagree completely” with Obama’s jobs plan, one day before he announces what that will be.

5:02 Turn off NPR News. Return to Satie.

5:03 Semi-truck on highway 49.

5:04 Brake for two young deer.

5:10 Coyote dashes into corn.

5:12 GPS screen as blank as the sky, save for single straight line, CR 2800 E.

5:15 Closed RR crossing, detour through Homer. Three cars. Marathon Station, gas $3.75.

5:25 Turn onto last gravel mile before Homer Lake.

5:32 Woman walking dog. Still very dark.

5:39 Homer Lake Road. Man jogs, wearing reflective tape.

5:40 Slurp tepid coffee. Slight pain in chest. Think about mortality. Contemplate how Satie piano music compares with Ryuchi Sakamoto.

5:43 Conclude South Homer Lake Road run. Lake still. No sunrise until Daylight Saving Time.

5:46 Train whistle three miles off.

5:49 Slow down for deer bounding along corn rows.

5:51 The last mile. Birds start to chirp. A rooster crows. Pre-dawn clouds looming and black.

5:58 a.m. Final paper stuffed into orange tube. 157 papers total. Dawn behind me. Gnossiennes plays on, indifferent.

WARREN

2011-09-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

Around 4 a.m. the other day, three cub coyotes, testing their adolescent oats in the middle of County Road 500N, stared into my approaching headlights. At the last minute, when it was clear that this big thing coming at them wasn’t a burning bush or a wayward tree, they ran off together into the cornfield.

It is my impression that coyotes abandon their companions, their siblings, after a while. I could be mistaken, but by and large the older coyotes I see run alone. Deer, on the other hand, continue to associate much longer and sometimes even the young antlered stags can be seen leaping together in pairs over fences early in the morning.

Fall, winter, spring and summer, I drive the mean back roads of Champaign and Vermilion counties and I see a lot of weird animal behaviors. Whatever god or evolutionary force designed the waddle of the skunk had a perverse sense of humor. Rabbits zigzag, almost as though they were daring you to run them over, but I understand that this is a protection against hawks.

This summer, when I wasn’t delivering newspapers in the dark, I spent a fair amount of time reading philosophy. One theory I have is that most of the world’s philosophy — particularly that of the last 100 years, and most particularly that of the French — was written for entertainment rather than enlightenment.

Probably about a century ago, about the time Wittgenstein said “that of which we cannot know, we must not speak,” the French philosophers thought, what the heck. Let’s just make complicated stuff up. It’s all just language anyway.

So, for me, this was the summer of four things: 1) Jacques Derrida, 2) coyote cubs, 3) obtaining an old Smith-Corona typewriter, and 3) arguing.

(To recklessly summarize Derrida, try this. All language is ambiguous. There may be a central meaning and a marginalized meaning. If you take the marginalized meaning and make it the central meaning, you throw everything out of whack. It’s called deconstruction. * Then, if you’re a smartass, you’ll make up a pun in French. )

I argued with my family. It’s nothing new; I’ve argued with them since the start of the Iraq war, if not before. This summer, when I wasn’t sweating and reading Derrida, I argued with my family about language and God.

I’d like to point out that the word “family” is ambiguous. I’ve decided to retire this imprecise word and split it into two other words. I have chosen the words “kin” and “brood.” Kin will refer to parents, siblings, and all the other relatives that at my age are largely relegated to greeting cards and holiday status. Brood isn’t the best term to use for referring to the mate and the children and any subsequent additions that may be coming down the line (not yet, please), so I’m still working on a better term for that crowd.

The kin are the ones I’ve been having the argument with, mostly about Biblical literalism. Every single last one of them, bless them, seems to believe that every word in the Bible is not only true, but that they themselves are capable of explaining what every single word in the Bible means. Or else.

Despite all the translations, multiple transcriptions, old illiterate monks with bad eyesight, centuries of corruption and changes, misprints, typos, international languages in differing alphabets, and bugs squashed against the scrolls mistaken for commandments, they still think it makes literal sense. Nothing deters them.

For me, that kind of literalist perspective in the attempt to prove God’s existence (apart from being an utter linguistic impossibility) destroys mystery and awe and demonstrates the absence rather than the presence of faith.

My most vigorous opponent in argument has been Warren, the father-in-law of my nephew, a relation for which there is no known English word. Warren is a true believer, educated and articulate. Among the things he insists are true are that Jesus will ride down to earth on a white horse, that Noah was born with white hair and red skin, that the earth is 7000 years old at most, that the human lifespan before the Great Flood could approach 1,000 years, and that if evolution were true we shouldn’t be able to suntan. He says he reads the Bible “the way it says it.”

If his views were in any way devastated by the recent story about the Bible Project [LINK: http://news.yahoo.com/jerusalem-scholars-trace-bibles-evolution-092932128.html], wherein Jewish scholars have been working for 53 years and counting to trace the evolution of the Bible, he didn’t let on. That project has shown the many changes and mistakes in our current books of the Bible, including the “prophecies” that had been added into the texts after the events already had taken place.

Do I have to add that Warren is a Republican and a fan of the Tea Party?

Come to think of it, the Tea Party’s use of language actually resembles the arguments of modern French philosophers, finding new meanings for words and tap-dancing around reason. Sarah Palin’s explanation of Paul Revere’s ride — it was a noisy warning to the British that he wasn’t going to give up his guns — might be related to the deconstruction method of seeing stories in a new way and reducing history to non-existence. It sent Palin’s followers scrambling to Wikipedia to edit the past accordingly.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, testifying to Congress, gave us the extreme expression, “I don’t recall remembering.” Derrida would have been proud of such dizzying wordplay.

Senator Jon Kyle stated that “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does” is abortion, before retracting it with a textual analysis that claimed it was “not intended to be a factual statement.” I actually think some people understand this explanation. They realize that language is manipulable and the literal is impossible, just as the French philosophers have been saying all along.

And then there is the queen of French linguistic philosophy, Michele Bachmann. On the one hand, she insists that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery, and on the other she recommends books that claim Southern slavery was a benevolent time and a good system for establishing stable Christian families. She let her husband Marcus push her into politics because of her belief in the Bible verse, “Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands,” but she explains that the real meaning of the word “submissive” is “respectful.” She must own a different Funk and Wagnalls.

Whether you are reading the Bible or running for President, you can use language to your own advantage. Literalism is impossible. Can we accept that this is the bottom line? May we? Mais oui.

The problem is that human animal behavior often reveals people herding together in tribal and warring packs, following like sheep the so-called authorities who play on their fears or say the things they want to hear.

Better still, they behave like frightened rabbits trapped in a pen, another word for which is a warren.

* FOOTNOTE
* I got into a rather heated argument once with someone who assumed the title of the Susan Sontag essay, "Regarding the Pain of Others," meant "let us consider the pain of others." Given that the book deals with violent imagery and photography, I insisted that the essay meant to explain "how we LOOK at the pain of others," since "regard" (in English and especially in French) also means "to look at". Sontag was, of course, playing on the multiple meanings of the word "regard." The "correct" interpretation is that the meaning of the title is undecidable.

YOU WILL HAVE BEEN WRONG AND WON'T REMEMBER

2011-03-10T20:48:00.000-06:00

Moloch fucking killed poetry, just as Moloch did the air, water, and earth, even the moon for all we know, took Whitman’s liberation and crammed it into a useless degree program, with right ways and wrong ways and bottomless scorn, shaming the expressers, correcting the hopeful, becoming the decider, critiquing those just wishing to smell a gardenia again, a carnation, using old semiotic systems to re-encrypt the banality of goodness, dashing the mere glimmer of a dare-I-say-it dream upon the profaned, plastic oil littered stelae of packaged Machu Picchu tour trams. And the vain protesters nuzzle their way into the web, clueless, providing the new dictionary of sneers, neologisms that deflate all humor, morph joy into Schadenfreude, archiving away generosity in long abandoned dust-buried subway stations, and the Good Gray Poet’s arm over the shoulder of a comrade becomes a television commentary for the news entertainment industry without the slightest sensation. The electricity of touch was the first thing to become extinct. No one remembers that. No record exists. The pliant organ donors die before the billionaires and in the end it doesn’t matter, who is to say the cocktail party with the excruciatingly perfect cocktail dress and purchased smile sculpture is preferable to the shit-covered egg plucked for hunger from the straw in the shack with the tin roof in the vertical housing in the valleys of the impoverished town of Bucaramanga? In the end, I say, I prefer the egg, I prefer to watch the cocktail party on TV, a black and white TV without cable, and if the picture goes out when it rains, I still have the egg, for now, and the rain.

But know ye this, O Congregation of Moloch, you will have been wrong and won’t remember, you don’t remember the name of the street corner where you stood when they threw bottles and hosed down the marching or which side you were on, what colors your cheerleading uniforms bore as the blood flowed down the streets and while you faintly remember thinking, “It’s not time,” at the time, and now, the echo is faint, you think, “Later, later, later does seem a familiar song, one I might sing even now without looking it up in the Hymnal of Despicable Thoughts, although it is quite possible that I only heard others singing, others saying, others preaching, others chanting, perhaps while Walter Cronkite spoke, I don’t remember, and yes I have heard of Laos and Chile and might generally be able to assemble the map pieces, jumbled in a jigsaw, with a hint regarding their shapes, is Guatemala squarish?, but listen, as if it mattered, time passes and what happened then is not what is happening now, this time it is different, this time I will remember, if I have time,” you say, but the truth is, you will have been wrong and won’t remember.

Validation of a life on the verge of exhaustion or extinction comes with the thump of the stamp in the passport, the status travel that the congregation, one by one, stands to announce in sharing time, humbly as a peacock, these necessary mission positions and dining undertakings in Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Peru, Turkey, Colombia, Ukraine, New Zealand, with a quick stop for espresso in a Paris bistro for two weeks, they call it living well, revenge, yet unacknowledged torture, varicose veins standing in lines, uncomfortable sensations in the stomach, sunburn, salt water in the snorkel mask, sad altitudes, forced itineraries no better than the memories of production standards meetings minutes, minutes in the boardroom and the hospital, same deal, far, far away. Not travel that is desired at all, but lust for having traveled, for telling of having traveled, for showing the artifacts of having traveled, just as the poet loathes to write, disdains to compose the undeniable truths, these heartbreaking facts, this awful editing, the blood that flows from the chewed fingernails. But, to have written! That is something else. To have written is to have the refuge and the reward and meaning itself lasting longer than the day on the beach, the rough draft, the sand crabs, the italicization and missing quote marks, the forced relaxation, dietary changes, mundane addictions, and odd toilet papers of the world.

Is that snow I see outside my window again? If I stop writing for a week, force myself to abstain like a Zen monk without wine, fasting so my consciousness hovers above my desk or hammock, out of body, seeing myself in this state of dis-composition, this is not a pretty picture, unbearable in a sense, but the meditation sets in and reveals: some faction of the world must relinquish life first. Better over there than over here, as they say, better they die than we do, for now, although inevitably, every number wins the lottery, every number completes, war or no war, civil rights marches or gay pride parades, the funerals are coming, more rapidly now than ever, more and more, visitations, obituaries, familiar dead, faces that fade and tones of voice that sound funny in the recordings that were preserved for just such an occasion as this. And all the members of the congregation begin to forget what they were supposed to remember to forget and what they were supposed to forget and who, and that disease begins to infect them all, the disease of not remembering, the disease of blank stares and horror at what was forgotten more than what was remembered, most of all for what was deliberately forgotten, of what was ignored, of the deaths that preceded over there by the congregation's will, the deaths that they thought could forestall their own, and for what, which could be formulated into a question if the difference between a question and a statement made any sense to anyone in the congregation any more, even at all, even a little, even an atom's worth if difference. Now I will try to remember. I have to follow the incredible shrinking man as he crawls down between the stitches of the white Fruit of the Loom underwear he once was able to wear, now to live within the threads, slipping with brilliant resolve past eternity

– March 8-10, 2010

THE LAST SAINTHOOD

2009-09-25T17:00:00.003-05:00

An Orison Viagra for the start of the millennium

Clinton's mind, this dawning day, and history
All are clear. Four young deer skitter
Across the gravel road beside the wood,
Above which he can see the shooting star.

One hundred more newspapers yet to go,
One hundred more orange tubes he has to stuff.
The headlines echo "HIV and Democracy:
Extinct, Extinct, Extinct"

To search his recollection was not hard.
He knew the past and, now, could cite it all,
Like walkers in Fahrenheit Four Five One,
He'd memorized Nineteen Nine Nine events,
That late but final freeing of our needs
Of human flesh. It came late, yet it came
And came to stay and came again, in rerun.

Government then prepared us for the end,
Decreeing that the lie would never hold,
The nucleus had loosened, spreading outward
To the rim. Our secrets would be told;
No detail could be spared.

They should have stocked the cellars
To prepare for the millennially rotting chip
With rice and beans and tuna fish.
The water must be purified. We all make do.

Now Clinton brings the news, his new post, door to door.
We have swapped responsibilities, switched roles and class
In a new century, after the fall.
Politicians are the poets; once-professors dig the wells.

He hears the AM talk shows as he drives,
From Pittsburgh, Georgia, Ciudad Mexico.
Dialect and twang and tongues reveal
Their pasts, not now perverse,
Since the lie has gone away for good.

The white crane circles Hiawatha Lake, assessing ice,
In search of landing sites. That trampoline in tatters,
Suspended in a tree, might well suffice.
A pickup truck is hauling pigeons in a cage
Back to the homes they would not home to in their rage.

That orison Viagra rose Niagara-like into the skies,
A prayer of pride and shame and fury, on that day that day.
A mixture iodized, a purifier for the water in our cellars,
For the years we wasted, back before the martyr lay,
Slain the saint of oral sex, the crippled grin, the sad device.

And all knees bent and all heads bobbed that day that day.

Once Barney knew the glories well that Monica had owned,
How she knelt before the offering, its modest point and dull surprise,
Described in court as quarter-thick and penta-length, this stele.
Clinton's arms, outstretched to sides, reached phone and Betty's page device.
The crucifix position, with his back against the desk and Barney sees, envisions,
How the issue came to rise, how the spew of ecstasy and ivory,
A guilt of gilded declaration, fireworks so fixed in time,
History's propulsion, with a splashdown rivaling Apollo's,
Upon the fabric blue, like ocean waves of icon matter,
Pattern worship object for tomorrow's classroom text..

Once Maxine grieved her race, the chains that bound them,
Chains of iron metamorphosed, link by link, to family ties
Unearthed by the founder's love for Sally, how he put his aged hand
Deep in her reproductive roots, his fingers striving, reaching out
For the excuse of ownership and finding naught, an emptiness
So black and rich that Maxine rubs her checkbook to her cheek,
Her chest, in vain, also in search for kin and coal
That might have changed, compressed itself to diamond roses,
Ropes of helix DNA, men twisting in the wind.

And Mr. Hyde thinks of his last transforming, when the draught
No longer served his lust. The child he grunted into life
Now gazes down from far across the continent,
His slavish drool imposing heat on Mr. Hyde's unhampered head.
That child, now grown, had driven spikes between two unions,
Severed vows, imposed a prophylactic curse, a vampire Frankenstein.
The haunting passed and absolution antidotes concocted
In the House of Usher. Webs dangle from the furniture,
All weeping sacrificed.

And Newt, who licked the cantaloupe, comes out of hiding,
Longing openly for Clinton's taste, a sample of her melon sliver,
Fragrant oval crevice where the whitish jet of blissfulness
Splatters nose and teeth and tonsils, such abandonment of haste,
But he can only wish that it were his endeavors
That made monitors ablaze, that hit the books, that flat recorded
Lessons in the way to please and pleasure. His was not the orgy
Taken to the grave yet made eternal, etched in the stone tablets
And the wooden schoolroom desks where children carve
Our nation's new publicity, since privacy was slain that day that day.

Now saints all and the radio explains to Clinton
Wrapping up the paper route
Of fishing spots in Arkansas, of copper flies if weather please,
Or nickel lure those sunny days,
Or fun in hunting squirrel meat.
Another caller tells, confessing, to the station, so routine:

"I have fucked at dusk in flowers on the Croisette by the beach in Cannes.
I have fucked along the railroad tracks of Rome.
I have fucked on grassy mountainsides outside Xalapa, Mexico.
I have fucked in crashing waves and underwater.
I have fucked in doctor's offices in Bogota, Columbia.
I have fucked in a tent in Yellowstone.
I have fucked in a sleeping bag at Big Sur, by the oranges of Hieronymus Bosch.
I have fucked in a carnation greenhouse in Denver.
I have fucked in a mobile home outside Miami.
I have fucked in the doorway of a quaint European hotel.
I have fucked while dining in a Paris restaurant.
I have fucked in an ancient stone windmill on a Greek island.
I have fucked in the back seat of a car on Sunday afternoon on a country road outside Urbana.
I have fucked during a Wim Wender's world premiere movie screening.
I have fucked in the Louvre and in the Chicago Art Institute.
I have fucked on the equator.
I have fucked in Golden Gate Park.
I have fucked while listening to "A Chorus Line."
I have fucked in a moving car, while driving.
I have fucked in the back of the bus.
I have fucked on the nude beaches of the former Yugoslavia.
I have fucked in my parent's house.
I have fucked in a very clean park in Zurich.
I have fucked in cyberspace.
I have fucked in the Denver Public Library.
I have fucked on a train leaving Barcelona at midnight.
I have fucked in London.
I have fucked in France.
I have fucked in somebody's underpants.
I have fucked in ancient Mayan ruins.
I have fucked on hotel balconies overlooking the Caribbean and the Pacific, in Veracruz and Maui.
I have fucked in prison.
I have fucked in graveyards."

Owing to the fact government pierced the lie,
Removed the veil,
Destroyed the split between all thought and deed,
There was no difference,
Just like Jesus always said.

To tell the children? How to not?
Or let them overhear?
Sit them down at the beaming hearth and listen, listen well.

A spring of urine, arc transcendent,
Leather in the kitchen cupboard,
Hot and red the spanking bottom,
Anus, mouth and organs pulsing,
Missionary impositions,
Ancient multiples in India,
Those who touch themselves, no other,
Those who cannot touch forbidden,
Fruit insertions maharaja,
Fingers, feet, and penis proper,
Impotence and faithful sadness,
Pure and pervert anesthetic,
He who knew a thousand others,
She who singly had accepted
Stranger's commands for another pat
Of butter on the plate,
And those with fantasies beyond
The reach of an ability to state.

Children read these books and hear the stories told.
Uncle Remus limps to woodshed archives.
Look at woodcuts of affairs official,
A new national geographic.
The box was opened. Christmas came.

A line of 2000 women, naked, standing tall and short, obese and willowed, black and pale and Asian-eyed, those who disdain and look at broken watches, those who gasp and remember rapture, and Clinton must service all, bowed down, his penance for a time, but not eternity, so we may be forgiven, long forgiven, long forgotten what to our forgiveness would be due. Is there time to pay the penance? Who had guessed such penalty was joy?

Still, there is time. The clocks have stopped, the pre-ordained disaster when the numbers rolled around and hit the marker, the millennium, the dates and figs of flavor while the Senators spent their final hours dissecting spots of semen and measuring the penis, counting pubic hairs that danced atop a soda can.

He yawns and sees the ranch house nearing.
The radio plays on, the national confession.
Hillary is sleeping, waiting, outstretched everything
Beneath the goose down comforter.
He's coming back where Y2K had leveled all,
Us all, and nothing more could be sold by showing skin.
We were sated by the secretless of life,
The end of privacy, our home.

A sonnet must be written for order
To be found. Composing thought in heaven,
He sits beside the wood stove, where even
Owls peer in and quiz him. Fence and border
Crumble dusty, like disgust, and are gone.
He could write a speech or he could wander.
Smoke ascends to roof. He waits for thunder.
There is none. Peace in Saskatchewan,
In Vegas, Bombay, Durban, Monterrey;
The world, an image nation, one at last
And free. Clinton stirs the ashes. Night's passed.
Time to rouse mate, roosters and a new day.
"Ask not where finger ends and synapse starts.
We're dreaming; flesh is what composes hearts."

Rantoul and Die, for old times' sake

2009-05-21T05:47:00.002-05:00

My review of Rantoul and Die, first posted in 2006, is revived here in commemoration of the current new production in Los Angeles. I should note that the publicity for the new production (http://www.rantoulanddie.com/about.html) refers to people here as the "ugliest" people, who live in the "grimy little world" of central Illinois, which pretty much confirms my first impression of this Mark Roberts sitcom.

RANTOUL AND DIE

The first act of “Rantoul and Die” repeats an old fable about a scorpion crossing a road on the back of a turtle. Or maybe a rabbit. There is disagreement on this point.

The animal is inconsequential. More to the point, playwright Mark Roberts does not tell the story in the traditional sense. As usually told, the scorpion rides over a body of water, not a road, on the back of the animal. The scorpion promises not to sting the animal. After all, if the animal drowns, so will the scorpion. Halfway across the lake, the scorpion stings.

"Why would you do that?" the animal asks when the scorpion strikes, and the scorpion, although about to die, claims he has no choice. It is his nature.

“Rantoul and Die” takes the sting out of the story. In Roberts’ version, the scorpion strikes because it is his nature... and then goes on to kill another day.

After the first act of the play, my fear was that Roberts himself was like his specialized scorpion, the stinger shown on the ad for the play. He could make vicious fun of the low-rent service employees of Champaign County and enjoy watching the local audiences laugh, unwittingly, at themselves.

When someone writes a comic play about rural Americans, the operative word is usually "affectionate." You can spoof them, even ridicule them, but in the end there is some feeling for the bizarre and simple foibles of the characters, characters you have come to know and love. Think "Junebug." Think Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart." Think Larry Shue's "The Foreigner."

“Rantoul and Die” is given a smidgen of this sensibility in the second act, with the entry of a new character played by Joi Hoffsommer. As Callie, the manager of the Dairy Queen, she spoonfeeds the afflicted her soft serve ice cream while rattling off the reasons for her quirky behavior, her fondness for her 13 cats, her early memories of Peanut Buster Parfaits. Her unaccountable bursts into one-note laughter, a sound that trails off into the far distance, is a kind of laugh you are likely to recognize.

The first laughs in the first act on the night I attended were drawn at the first mentions of 1) Rantoul High School, 2) Rantoul Dairy Queen, and 3) vomiting while giving a blow job when drunk.

"Rantoul and Die,” act one, contains a similar degrading string of jokes, plus a constant stream of explicit sex talk and foul language. Whether these jokes emerge from a place of superiority and condescension is hard to tell, since Roberts writes in lengthy, personal program notes that the play was written "during one of the most insane, self-destructive periods of my adult life."

But why did he write it? These are not stories from his life. I doubt he would be associated with any of these characters. By the second act, there is a sort of sympathy generated for a character, brain dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The final image of that character falling to one side is inexplicably funny and almost moving.

Mostly, though, I think Roberts deals in the stock in trade of the Los Angeles television and movie industry: contempt. I don’t think he is willfully mean toward his characters; he merely writes in the language which he’s most familiar, and I don’t think it’s all that funny unless you are willing to laugh at the people themselves, the characters in his play.

"Rantoul and Die" is not by a long shot the worst play I've ever seen. I seriously tried to consider if it would have a chance to be performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where they are known for their midwest rural shit-kicking comedies. But I think the answer is clearly "no."

The problem is, at least in the first hour of the play, nothing happens. It is not “plot-driven,” the reviews admit, hard pressed to discover any story or theme at all.

The performers can't be faulted. Nor can the director. These are well honed, professional performances. I laughed at non-joke lines because of the delivery given them by Mike Trippiedi and Anne Kearns, not by the jokes themselves, which often seem incongruous (or randomly ascribed) to the action and characters.

Just hours before the play began, I flipped channels and landed on the redneck comics on Comedy Central: Larry the Cable Guy, Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and a fourth guy. I was impressed at their timing, their wit, and their interaction with the audience, despite the trailer park stance and crude perspectives about life in rural America.

I didn’t feel bad identifying with their rural, redneck jokes. You sort of know they’re kidding, that they identify fondly with the people they are making fun of. I’m not sure I got that impression in “Rantoul and Die,” where the people behave the way they do because "it is their nature" -- in this case, to be venal, unfaithful, violent and stupid. Other than “sweet” (but perhaps also mentally challenged) to describe Callie in the second act, one would be hard pressed to find other adjectives to apply to the characters in “Rantoul and Die.”

I originally posted comments about “Rantoul and Die” on this site, so that my lawyer friend could read them and argue with me. We Tweedledee'd and Tweedledum'd back and forth heatedly. There was never any intention for those notes to be read or published openly. Mark Roberts found those notes with a Google search and was offended, not surprisingly, in what he saw as a personal attack. I guess it is my nature to write criticism. I’ve done it for too long. Far too long. And, in keeping with the correct telling of the parable, both scorpion and target got hit by this particular poison.

STARFISH

2008-10-15T11:24:00.001-05:00

by Eleanor Lerman, from Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds.

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.
Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.
So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

End of Blog

2008-10-14T00:02:00.001-05:00

the bottom line is
no matter how much i do
i cannot be long

being through

2008-09-23T17:50:00.001-05:00

the last of the children
has nearly grown
three more years

the empathy never ends
their pain, mine

nothing I can say

They must endure
I must endure

And then, the writing
Dan writes for free, with glee

Chuck writes for free
"I am nothing but busy," he says

I close my eyes

remember
vainly
in vain

children as children
and the work that mattered
back when

David Foster Wallace

2008-09-14T17:21:00.001-05:00

It is odd that both Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace have lived in Urbana, something about the twin cities, something about the corn, fertilizes a certain way of thinking, perhaps. The obituaries say too little about DFW's mother, Sally. A few years older than me, she acted on the stage at Parkland College where we both taught. Her hair was naturally white, not from age. She was a fine actor, a very keen mind, and kind. She always resisted the fame of her son, rolled her eyes. But I couldn't read DFW and still cannot. He says he wanted to write something sad; most people called his work funny. Not me. He was right the first time. It was sad. All those cultural references and bizarre combinations and complications of culture. I think the event of Sarah Palin killed him, something so absurd he couldn't have invented it even in his wildest dreams, and coming on the heels of eight years of cultural, theocratic chaos and war, following in the footsteps of September 11, by days. I understand his sensibility, even without having read him, much. He had stopped giving readings. I saw him read at Pages for All Ages back when he did. He wore a leather jacket. We share only a nicotine addiction in common, a smokeless tobacco affliction. My basement is still flooded. This old house is crumbling and we will sit in it and watch the world float away for the years to come. We cannot leave. Days like this I am relieved to be an appreciator more than an artist, a critic more than a creator.

2008-09-11T17:26:00.001-05:00

poetry readings

by Charles Bukowski

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
week after week, month after month, year
after year,
getting old together,
reading on to tiny gatherings,
still hoping their genius will be
discovered,
making tapes together, discs together,
sweating for applause
they read basically to and for
each other,
they can't find a New York publisher
or one
within miles,
but they read on and on
in the poetry holes of America,
never daunted,
never considering the possibility that
their talent might be
thin, almost invisible,
they read on and on
before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,
their wives, their friends, the other poets
and the handful of idiots who have wandered
in
from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything
anything
but
these.

2008-08-24T19:16:00.001-05:00

Existential August: Gay Fries

2008-08-24T19:12:00.000-05:00

Existential August: Abs Track

2008-08-21T10:53:00.000-05:00

Existential August: Positively Bleaker

2008-08-19T19:24:00.001-05:00

Existential August: Holla Atcha Boy

2008-08-18T07:53:00.002-05:00

Existential August: Get a Slice

2008-08-18T07:44:00.001-05:00

Script for Video

2008-08-13T10:09:00.000-05:00

This man is a gypsy.

He conned the system for over forty years.

He lives on the fringes, underground.

He survives through loopholes.

Using scholarships, dumpsters, government assistance, health clinics, press privileges, lottery and discount access, libraries and online downloads, he found ways to do everything for free, to go everywhere for free, to fly from Greece to Ecuador, and most points in between, to get everything for free, or almost free, for free, free.

Most people try to make money, to buy the things they don't have time to create, because they are busy making money.

He prefers his system.

He posed as a film critic, an author, a university instructor, a newspaper editor, an artist, a missionary, a husband and a father.

He even posed as a gypsy, a do-nothing bohemian.

He is none of these things.

He has no future.

He's a field lily, a purple surprise lily.

New York is dead, a ghost world.

The corner grocery store on Bank Street is gone.

The sex-drenched piers have been paved over for baby strollers.

St. Marks Place is buried in tourist t-shirt stores.

CBGB has been replaced by designer jeans.

Kiev is a Korean restaurant now.

The pool table at The Bar on 2nd Avenue has disappeared.

The Bar itself has disappeared.

He has no place left to hide.

Bill muses on New York, 12 August 2008

2008-08-12T19:38:00.002-05:00

"Love is dead when you have too much memory."

"Go on."
"That's it."
He laughs.
He snorts.
"I did not snort."
He drinks.
"Budweiser. The best Belgian beer in town."
"How do you spell Belgian?"
"B-E-L-G-I-A-N?"
Silence.
"Talk about Hair."
"I think you should go see Boing-Boing. I think you'd really like it."
"Well, maybe if I don't get into Hair."
"You know how fifty is the new forty. Boing-Boing is the new Hair."
He snorts.
He drinks.
He proceeds in a series of unpronounceable syllables that end in "Chinese junk."
"This is a bad blog entry."
"Erase it. That's the joy of technology. You can erase your entire mistake."

12 agosto 2008: notas del viaje

2008-08-12T13:22:00.003-05:00

washington heights smells
like san juan
pizza carnes bad spanish home

three people ask me for directions
my marker
proof of home

my pink floyd t-shirt
starts conversations
guys in park, admirable
construction worker

no idea what to write
re: sixties
and hair in the park

"too much memory"
another antigone
in fringe festival
fringe all week
might not see broadway
tonight: necrophiliac musical
forget the lion king

no need to do anything
but mortality reminders
and how fast it all goes

reading david carr
night of the gun
addictions

the subway ride
seems like a hundred
latino day campers

like being in the middle
of a popcorn popper

the whole town strikes me again
safer than a padded playpen

10 agosto 2008: and so it begins

2008-08-10T09:12:00.002-05:00

the jaw dropping by the church lady

when in passing
i mention le cirque

shocking the bourgeoisie
as a child
leading to boasts
to inspire a jealousy
i never recognized

finally, the middle age
a lack of anything respectable

a showy depredation
my final weapon

to elicit that look
that expression
that seems
like a climax
real
and unrehearsed

that has been the satisfaction
of a life

but, this is different
this time

i leave for new york again
this morning
frivolously

to revisit nostalgia

and see the musical hair
in central park

and walk the ramble

not in anticipation
of the slightest shock

or anything resembling
getting lucky

at this point
it's my work

Hick City, issue #3

2008-08-08T08:58:00.002-05:00

Hick City, issue #2

2008-08-08T08:54:00.000-05:00

Hair today

2008-08-08T08:20:00.001-05:00

The Content and the Character

2008-08-05T10:58:00.004-05:00

The nature and purpose of this blog continues to change, to mutate, to surprise me. It has veered from the political to the nostalgic, from the egocentric to the abstract.

It is like a scrapbook or a thrift shop. Sometimes it reminds me of performance art. Or a chronicle of a rich and anonymous life.

Apropos of nothing, this came to me while walking in the postdawn drizzle this morning:

If there is an entity known as the Antichrist, it would not be a horned, fire-breathing devil. It would be of a pleasing countenance, clean and lovely, beloved, convincing in and convinced of its righteousness, proclaiming to support and represent the banner of Christ. At the same time, while appearing to be about goodness and light, that same entity in reality, as observable by its actions, would carry out works of corruption and power, of divisiveness and hate, of torture and violence, and of bottomless greed. In other words, if in history there is an entity known as the Antichrist, it would most resemble the Conservative Christian Fundamentalist Republican movement.

Or, might John McCain be the Antichrist? They think so here.

The hybrid goes south

2008-08-05T09:04:00.003-05:00

Lee at Tikal, before the wedding

2008-08-02T19:58:00.001-05:00

Wedding invitation, 1980

2008-08-02T19:57:00.002-05:00

30th birthday party invitation

2008-08-02T19:55:00.001-05:00

Hick City / Alien Nation, punk rock newspaper, 1977

2008-08-02T16:58:00.001-05:00

Donnie

2008-08-01T09:14:00.000-05:00

Letter from Natalie when I was in jail, 1969

2008-07-30T10:27:00.002-05:00

Letter to the editor of the Chicago Seed, 1969

2008-07-30T10:22:00.000-05:00

Make up a story with these images...

2008-07-30T07:26:00.004-05:00

(Bruce Conner with Penelope of the Avengers in San Francisco)
(Rude boy in Rome)

(A Mayan village where Rude Boy lived for two weeks)
(James Broughton, film poet, at Athens Film Festival)

(Theater maverick Beau O'Reilly at a party, with Scott Mutter)

B. Ruby Rich

2008-07-28T10:15:00.001-05:00

Ruby and I shared lunch during the Chicago Film Festival and carried on a correspondence for a while. I found two of her letters in the box in the basement. A wonderful film critic, still.

Joey Ramone

2008-07-28T10:13:00.002-05:00

I have completely lost the photo of me and Joey buying shampoo in an Osco Drug Store. I think someone stole it. But you can see this is from when they performed in the tiny Red Lion in Champaign. They were so loud. Gabba gabba.

Kevin Barry Howe, co-host of Picking Your Seat

2008-07-27T18:39:00.000-05:00

Bad Plaid Shirts Even Then

2008-07-27T12:20:00.000-05:00

Someone stop me before I scan more.

Picking Your Seat At The Movies

2008-07-27T12:01:00.002-05:00

Kevin Barry Howe and I had this long-running cable TV show parodying Siskel and Ebert. We were probably the first to do this. Nobody got it, least of all the distributors who sent us film clips to use. I have Kevin's picture taken from the screen here someplace. I'll post it later.

Michaelangelo Antonioni

2008-07-27T12:00:00.003-05:00

The face in the background. I couldn't get closer. I was awestruck, I suppose. It was at Cannes, I forget which year.

David Johansson

2008-07-27T11:58:00.003-05:00

I interviewed Johannsson and Sylvain Sylvain. Johannsson was extremely clever and affable. Sylvain, not so much.

In Guatemala City

2008-07-27T11:45:00.001-05:00

Editor

2008-07-25T07:11:00.004-05:00

I was the publisher and editor of a punk rock newspaper called Hick City. Jeri Leek and Hellen were editorial assistants, I guess, but no one did much of anything. I must have been going for the Elvis Costello look. I'll see if I can find the picture of our Fourth of July float, with the entire staff playing rock and roll. The people watching the parade had no idea what to make of us.

24 julio 2008: Write a caption for this picture

2008-07-24T17:38:00.002-05:00

This picture was posed. It was supposed to be satirical. Probably about as funny as the Obama New Yorker cover, I guess. I wonder if I still have those Fonzie socks?

Ghostbuster Boys

2008-07-23T18:27:00.003-05:00

Henry and Ernie on the backyard tree swing.

21 julio 2008: Trip Psychology

2008-07-21T07:44:00.002-05:00

After six months
Or so
An ache

Unrecognized for what it is
At first

A month
Of angst
Goes by

Trapped
Insane

I need a day off
Away

Planning begins
Flight prices scanned
Googled

Suddenly (sharp intake of breath)
I click and buy

Suddenly then everything here
Is fine
Angst gone

I never want to leave.
What was I thinking?
This is the most beautiful place on earth.
Is it too late?
Can I back out?
I dread even the thought of going.
I Google the possibility
Of flight cancellation.

But I go
I force myself to pack
Each toiletry item
A heavy heart
I know the routine

Finally, I feel the pull of gravity
As the ground beneath me falls away
On the runway

And, one day later, I will have forgotten
ResponsibilityIdentityHomeEverything

InvisibleUnconsciousRecharging

It worked.

Rinse and repeat
Every six months or so

This is the way
it has been
since 1982

I blame the babies
Who are no longer
Babies

But when
Is the time
I never have to leave?

O demon of the peripatetic
O guru of simplicity
Tell me that

19 julio 2008: The narcissism of memorabilia

2008-07-19T18:04:00.005-05:00

Spending the summer
Sorting the past

Unceremoniously to the dumpster
Two Zeppelin LPs

The letters Natalie wrote
When I was in prison

Musty bylines ask to be preserved
Desperate to seem important

The addiction of the printed name
Worse than heroin

Embrace the lot in armfuls
Pitch without hesitation

Better to review
and bury the past

Before the young imagine
it holds answers

Maybe if I'd worn a tie...

2008-07-18T10:59:00.004-05:00

Not exactly the glamor type, I did turn in many articles from Cannes. (Click on the picture to enlarge it and read the caption.) Anyway, aren't the people in bunny outfits sillier looking?

Roman Polanski, Rudolph Nureyev, the Carradine Brothers

2008-07-18T08:55:00.002-05:00

Nureyev posed for us. I never spoke to any of the Carradines, who were present for the Walter Hill cowboy movie, The Long Riders (which starred three sets of brothers, The Carradines, the Quaids, and the Keachs. But I did speak with Polanski for a few minutes outside his hotel room. He was very open and funny.

Ellen Burstyn

2008-07-18T08:52:00.004-05:00

I'm sorting through old slides and converting them to digital. Here's Ellen Burstyn cutting the Chaplin Memorial Cake at the press luncheon in Cannes. I talked with her briefly.

1991

2008-07-17T10:56:00.000-05:00

Robert Altman, Cannes press conference

2008-07-16T08:50:00.002-05:00

Sam Fuller, Athens Film Festival interview

2008-07-16T08:49:00.002-05:00

Henry, 1982 and 2008

2008-07-13T17:39:00.004-05:00

Bruce Conner, 1933-2008 RIP

2008-07-11T19:50:00.003-05:00

MONGOLOID

AMERICA IS WAITING

confessions of a football hater

2008-07-11T11:08:00.003-05:00

this letter revised almost hourly, it seems

2008-07-10T06:44:00.010-05:00

To the editor:

I am writing to ask why you publish badly-written and bigoted letters opposing evolution and gay equality. These letters contain no information and barely an authentic opinion. Most often, they are tautological circles of received ideas -- "It is what it is because I say that's what it is" -- as if this could convince anyone.

Major metropolitan newspapers publish thoughtful letters with insights and ideas, not petty squabbling riddled with factual errors.

Many local letters reveal their authors to be deeply misinformed. I would think that, for the newspaper, this in itself would be an embarrassment.

Neither is it amusing to read letters that are ungrammatical or ignorant. They reflect badly upon the newspaper and the community.

Not that long ago, someone wrote suggesting we bomb Gaza as a solution to the problems of the Middle East. Some, if not many, of these letters qualify as hate speech -- against Muslims, against immigrants, against same-sex couples, against other letter-writers, even against people who support free speech.

The insane war in Iraq continues (a war the newspaper endorses), while letter writers selfishly wax irate over the cost to fill their cars with gas.

The News-Gazette is not required to publish every letter it receives. Without practicing censorship or partisanship, the newspaper would do well and improve the community by editing the letters column more judiciously.

The day before Dorothy's birthday

2008-07-09T21:47:00.001-05:00

08 julio 2008: The Rich Young Ruler Figures It Out

2008-07-09T20:57:00.004-05:00

Coldplay Chris
Husband of Gwyneth
Father of Moses and Apple
sings,

"I used to rule the world
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Oh who would ever want to be king?"

All the rich people
Figured out how to give it away

They don't want it
Having had it

They just want to play
Same as the rest of us

Score is a wash
Love
Equal
Nothing

Nobody loses

08 julio 2008: Unpublishing

2008-07-09T07:32:00.002-05:00

Text comes and then goes
Here today, gone tomorrow
Finely edited

What lasts forever
As simple perceptions change
Tibet sand painting

06 julio 2008: The nurse asked, "Are you the writer?"

2008-07-06T10:27:00.002-05:00

rejected and despised. his gutter's toll
exacts the cost of freedom he'd imbibed.
deliberate, his choice, with blood inscribed:
the child the bride the house the job the soul:
the suicide engagement, nothing planned,
impulse and opportunity await,
the clock the hour the calendar the date,
humiliation's end the years unmanned
for sale for free no charge no money down
it all was a mistake that lasted long
beyond the overture before the song
the interstitial phantom like a clown
he is red nosed bald pated belly flop
the pointing fingers laughter never stop

03 julio 2008: Dashed Dreams

2008-07-03T10:07:00.002-05:00

The blame does not reside within your heart,
My laxity of pen comes naturally,
A consequence of conscience, plus folly,
Because I chose companionship, in part.
My vow unto myself to render true
Enchained all aspiration, humbled, low.
The offspring that, like vines, arrived, I know,
Did one by one ensure that all we do
Would hence and ever serve a tangled love.
I write the checks like clockwork, pay the fine,
We mark the dates on Christmas calendars,
One day upon the next, time ever blurs.
Sometimes I catch of glimpse of what was mine
Before the fall to earth, before the ring,
Before the potion, back when we could sing.

01 julio 2008: The 88s

2008-07-01T19:59:00.002-05:00

Two 88-year-old women on my route were waiting for me today, one near the beginning of deliveries and the other near the end. I carry their papers up to their doors, not because I'm such a nice guy but because they asked me to, coming up with little evasive hints and excuses and before I knew it, I was getting out of the car, rain or shine, unlocking their gates and doors, and hand-delivering their news.

Today, the one who looks exactly like the old woman who tempted Snow White with a poison apple, was hobbling out to the gate before I arrived.

"I was born here," she said, mentioning that her birthday would be the coming week. It was the first time I realized that she had never married. Her one sister lives about ten miles away. She spoke of her nieces, who help tend the yard.

The farmhouse is a storybook place, perfect for Hansel and Gretel to pop by for a snack, flowers, old sheds, raspberry bushes, old trees, her dog Coco. Lately, would-be thieves have been raiding her gas pump and her berry bushes.

"That tree was planted the year I was born," she pointed out. I was already late with the papers, but it was the day she was spilling the beans on her life. My video camera was in the car, but I didn't have the heart to grab it and document her confessions.

Hers has been a more circumscribed life than I imagined. No husband and no children, just the old homestead and her dog Coco. She spoke of the house and how it came to be built. She spoke of the time her parents took her and her sister to Colorado. She remembered not only the year, 1930, but the day they left, February 14. Another time, they had traveled to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. Once, they went to Brownsville, Texas, for some sort of Mardi Gras celebration and, for two hours, they had slipped across the border to go shopping in Mexico.

"So I have been out of the United States!" she laughed. "For two hours."

The furthest east she ever traveled was to Indianapolis, to visit relatives. She rode the train home, the one and only time she traveled on a train.

"Were you ever in an airplane?" I asked.

"Oh, no," she said, almost disgusted at the question. "I'm too dizzy for anything like that."

Her birthday is July 10. I'll put a card in her newspaper.

Alice, another woman who is 88, greeted me today as well, to ask if I had seen in the paper that her sister had died the previous week. I hadn't. She rambled a little bit, talking about relatives I knew nothing about. She told me about her sister, who was ten years her senior and whose last words were, "Just leave me alone!" They had been attaching her oxygen and she wanted nothing to do with it, apparently.

"It was a blessing," Alice said. "It was time."

01 julio 2008: Nice Reunion

2008-07-01T10:17:00.002-05:00

nice visit
everyone is so beautiful
so many babies and brides

no need to mention the war
or any October surprise
or the families over there
or how everything all along
has been about the oil

so nephew ben works for the military
who ever would have thought that!

subverting from within, right?

at least he's not gay
'cause that would be REALLY bad

30 junio 2008: The Day the Laughter Died

2008-06-30T09:33:00.001-05:00

He stood before the mass, his church kinfolk,
Where he was nurtured since he grew a tooth,
The pews less filled, the church a cob-webbed booth.
"I have to share this now." And so he spoke.
His testimony flowed as it had done
So often at the congregation's ledge.
His words selected sweet with marbled edge,
The point he made, a fancy on the run.
But sober rang, an unexpected peace.
The laughter he had earned before, not there.
A silence, contemplation, eyes aware
Did meet his smile and turn it to a crease.
They wanted wisdom, now that he was old.
They wanted something sure and nothing bold.

30 junio 2008: Matthew 19, Mark 10, Luke 18

2008-06-30T07:07:00.006-05:00

The Comfortable Young Man

16Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

17"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

18"Which ones?" the man inquired.

Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, 19honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"

20"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"

21Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

22When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he was comfortable.

The Comfortable Young Man

17As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

18"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 19You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'"

20"Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."

21Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

22At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he was comfortable.

The Comfortable Ruler

18A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

19"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 20You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'"

21"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

23When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was comfortable.

29 junio 2008: Revenge Against The Bourgeoisie

2008-06-29T09:21:00.006-05:00

There, I think I improved this poem.

Yes, the golf and the empathy references are directed at the sons of Ottos. I watched Michael Haneke's Funny Games yesterday (the English-language remake with Naomi Watts in her scanties). Yes, it is a blistering film of torture of the gated-community folks, who are entirely sympathetic and with whom the audience is supposed to sympathize. No, none of you could sit through this movie. In Europe, they call this art. In America, they probably call it terrorism. The poem is filtered through my viewing of Funny Games. I have all of Michael Haneke's films. No, I am not on the list. I'm like the OTHER characters in Funny Games, those who don't belong but who intrude in violent ways.

Oh, the years I spent
Making other people jealous

Now they travel to Kuwait
Trying to get even

I was naive
Broke

I appreciated, my only talent
They accumulated

Now, they don't know
What to name their stuff

Or what it tastes like
Anymore

Sighs
All around

Brain-dinged
On the golf course

Empathy leaks
Staunched by cash

They say,
"I want to help"

But that's the thing
They can't buy

They can't help
Because

They're
The problem

26 junio 2008: Outside Turkey Run

2008-06-27T08:29:00.001-05:00

The Tattoo

2008-06-25T21:29:00.002-05:00

the thing is

as the boys have all converged

the long promised

group tattoo

of mayan totems

the line of heirs

now-occurs-now

we are identically

inked

and we watch the old videos

of family

in the yucatan

the mayan villages

nothing has ever changed

since the tribe stopped time

The Presentation of Chan-Bahlum as Heir

2008-06-25T21:14:00.000-05:00

Palenque lineage Jaguar Lord
Mah Kina Chan-Bahlum
Divine Palenque Ahua

He Was Born

My old man goes Obama

2008-06-24T07:24:00.001-05:00

Freely, by Devendra Banhart

2008-06-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

20 junio 2008: Menopoker

2008-06-20T09:29:00.003-05:00

jd was disappointed to have lost a game.  in fact, for the first time, he brought a truly decent booby prize (a chamois skin pillow with embroidered wolf) that he had to eat himself!  or he would have if geode didn't beg him for it, to help save his wounded kidney.  pgeode spoke of his new access to health care.

pg was largely the reason jd lost, due to one marathon nail-biter hand of night baseball.  jd turned over four of a kind with his first four cards and the pot rose dramatically as pg tried to beat it, which he did, with four aces, using a wild three as his last-turned card, so he had to match the already formidable pot ($3 or so) to watch with excruciating fear as jd completed turning over his remaining five cards.

'do it quick,' pg said.  'get it over with.'

he need not have worried.

honey aka miss poochie the dog was riled up, due to lee's absence.  he tried to play with the tennis ball and the squeaky football toys at the same time, plopping the football in monkhead's lap more than once.  also, dog drooled repeatedly on robie's cards, arm, and leg.

robespierre brought a year's supply of bag 'o pretzels.  the root beer had frosted glasses.

robespierre was on a tear, winning left and right.  he turned over four or five kings at the last minute to steal a nice pot from pgeo, who continued to start slow in the evening and regain momentum, his regular play pattern.  the final winners were tied, admiral and robespierre.

monkhead challenged a potential tie in pau gong, when both he and pg turned up hands of a full house in the five-card part of the play.  (the admiral had already claimed the two hand win, to split the pot).  since pg had jacks in his full house, and monkhead had only nines, pg took his half of the pot.  after the chips were divided and safely nestled in the players' stashes, the rulebook was consulted.  indeed, the person with the higher card in the three-section of the full house, wins.  half-hearted (and probably unfair) restitution was attempted as pg disdainfully tossed three blue chips toward monkhead.

the admiral did a magic trick and reasonably well.

for one hand, pg insisted on playing with his own deck of cards, robespierre protested but played anyway, everybody knew the game was rigged and yet they bet anyway!, believing something must have gone awry with the deal since they were sure they would win, because they are suckers, because as anyone might have known, pg won.  but he gave them back their chips.

nobody said i'm sorry.

the anarchy round was played without betting, but if bets had been placed, it's likely that the monkhead would have won, with a natural apocalyptic something or other, with the admiral coming in a close second, by singing a song by donovan and getting others to sing along with him.

because scooter missed this game in order to go to a farm bureau meeting (so he says), he will be required to sing a song by donovan at the next game, which will be held NOT on june 26 because pg has too much on his plate, and the following week after that is the 3rd of july, but even so, a game will be held.  bring your flags.  and matches.

20 junio 2008: Cognitive Dissonances

2008-06-20T05:49:00.007-05:00

(Patti LuPone singing)
Everything's Comin' Up Roses
: the Definition of
Cognitive Dissonance

Gay Pride Started
As Cognitive Dissonance
And Ended
In California
In Triumph

Parenting is a Process
Of Cognitive Dissonance
As is Marriage in General

Wealth
I Keep Forgetting
Biggest
CD Event Horizon
Of All

The Pomegranate Billionaire Said
It's Not Home But It's Much

The Talking Head Said
This is Not My Beautiful House
Oh, my God
What Have I Done?

18 junio 2008: Copyright vs. Dying

2008-06-18T17:29:00.004-05:00

coldplay album came out today
ironically named viva la vida or death and all his friends

up at 5
put it up for sale online at 9
sold it at 10
bought it at best buy at 11
mailed it media mail by noon

made 20 cents on the deal

you gotta scrape by
that's how it works
any means necessary
cause in the end
like krugman said
we're all the dead

see below

18 junio 2008: What Dying is Like

2008-06-18T11:15:00.002-05:00

The doctor was matter of fact.
Cancer, he said. Adding quickly,
Worst case scenario, of course.

I didn't flinch. Didn't feel anything.
Relief, maybe.
There would be no
Money for treatment
And no insurance
So

I was hoping
Not to get sick
Until I hit 65
When the government decides
It is OK

That was not to be
Suddenly, things are easier

i don't have that article to write
i don't have to go to the meeting
i can stay in the hammock
no way i'm sharing this during church

the kids are coming this weekend
what to tell them
nothing, i guess

the flowers she keeps telling me to
pay attention to
look good today
better than i noticed before

should i really take all these vitamin pills
should i really drink so much water

all i know is
this better be terminal
i'm not lounging around
accruing hospital bills

i outlived tim russert
no matter when it happens

memento mori interrobang

hard to forget
at the moment

as long as they don't send me bills
don't let them send any bills

this is mine
already

Photos for Father's Day

2008-06-14T08:40:00.003-05:00

1962, Puerto Rico, Gerald Nauman

2008-06-13T08:20:00.002-05:00

Gerald, if you are out there, write me.

On the beach at Cannes with Fred Marx

2008-06-13T01:49:00.003-05:00

I am the one wearing clothes.

This is the year Fred Marx, before he made "Hoop Dreams," accompanied me to the festival. He swore he'd never come back. That was the most common reaction people have.

Here's Fred, obviously not interested in the goings on at the Palais.

11 junio 2008: miles

2008-06-11T07:05:00.002-05:00

11 junio 2008: miles and morgan

2008-06-11T07:01:00.002-05:00

11 junio 2008: morgan and miles

2008-06-11T06:59:00.000-05:00

10 junio 2008: the flooding

2008-06-10T06:16:00.004-05:00

adolescent deer flees zig-zag
isolated in unfamiliar corn fields
landscape warped by the rushing
box turtle halved by crushing
his intricate shell yin to red meat yang
gravel road with toad
garden snake climbs daylily stalks
suspends himself in the air
a hanging bridge
staring, detached, reactive, fearless
high off
the unreliable surface of the earth

9 junio 2008: identity, part two

2008-06-09T10:01:00.002-05:00

there is no comfort
outside the freak

there is no rest
apart from the anonymous

there is no contact
except in foreign soil

this is who i am
always

(

upon reflection
maybe even a breakthrough
i see
i could not accept
belonging

all those years
forbidden to dance

dancing with the forbidden
all those years

no fit

out of all
loops of the norm

no home
not to be able

to return to

i need a land
where my tongue
is strange

daily to be recognized
as the alien

)

9 junio 2008: identity

2008-06-09T07:31:00.001-05:00

folks someone stole my name
and used it today in the times op-ed page
greg melville

in the end
we are all the grateful dead
krugman wrote last week

in the letters:
in the future
only the rich can write

as usual
whoever i am
was ahead of the game

it is all
for free

i can't even assume
a name

8 junio 2008: Songs

2008-06-08T08:26:00.003-05:00

Sent with my voice via Jott:

The Mothers of Invention: Absolutely Free
The Rolling Stones: I'm Free to Do What I Want Any Old Time
The Young Rascals: People Got to Be Free
The Who: I'm Free
Patti Smith: Free Money
Marlo Thomas: Free to Be You and Me

7 junio 2008: Flashbacks

2008-06-07T20:35:00.002-05:00

i went mad
after vietnam
war casualty
never left home

at the fillmore
i was wearing
my purple robe

the acidheads
stared and genuflected
called me jesus

everything is the same

going mad
from iraq
swimming in the lies

at the grocery store tonight
buying ramen to support
my unemployed son

a black woman
said i was jesus

she was young
churchgoer obviously

a subtle evangelism

good news

but look what happened to him

7 junio 2008: Jealous

2008-06-07T12:20:00.008-05:00

my cousin is visiting
madagascar
this year

last year it was italy

i've been to italy
a lot
so that's ok

but now i'm jealous
a lot

no use pretending
any different

i never go anywhere

did you think this was a poem
well it's not
i'm just angry or maybe numb, whatever

because the garage is collapsing
because i'm old
because i have no satisfying work
because i never get a vacation
because i feel like a slave
because i am disrespected
because there is no work in this town for me
because i am taken for granted
because i have no sex life
because i can't afford the needs of my grown children
because i feel responsible for my children and am unable to nurture them to independence
because the house is in disrepair
because the water heater flooded
because i have too many possessions, mostly worthless
because i can't write
because nothing satisfies me, except poker
because i am out of shape
because i can't afford a colonoscopy
because i can't afford therapy
because i don't believe in therapy
because i lost my work
way back when
and never got back on my feet
because there is no way I can register a complaint
because if i express satisfaction, people think it is vanity
because too many people believe in superstitions
because i have no escape
because religion has failed for me
because i am tired of being enlightened, seeking enlightenment, or imagining that there is enlightenment

and there's nothing i can do about it

without leaving

and my stupid religious upbringing
won't let me leave
my wife
(who wouldn't care)

and she knows it

and uses me

like a mop

like everybody

and no

i'm not happy about it

no use pretending

i'm free

i can't even be bothered to exaggerate things
or turn them into art
like i'm sure gregory corso (beat poet children)
or christopher durang (playwright bobos)
could

i just blurt

see, don't you feel better
justin and jan and jotto

just schadenfreude your hearts out
while i go read
some beckett

i do have a lot of free time though

i should volunteer at the migrant workers office
that's the ticket

i told you this was therapy
not art

6 junio 2008: people got to be free

2008-06-06T05:35:00.006-05:00

June 6, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Bits, Bands and Books (excerpt)

By PAUL KRUGMAN

...The predictions of ’90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected — but the future they envisioned is still on the march.

In 1994, Esther Dyson made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”

For example, she described how some software companies gave their product away but earned fees for installation and servicing. But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because “enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market.”

Indeed, it turns out that the Dead were business pioneers. Rolling Stone recently published an article titled “Rock’s New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don’t Sell.” Downloads are steadily undermining record sales — but today’s rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through “publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing.”

What other creative activities will become mainly ways to promote side businesses? How about writing books?

According to a report in The Times, the buzz at this year’s BookExpo America was all about electronic books. Now, e-books have been the coming, but somehow not yet arrived, thing for a very long time. (There’s an old Brazilian joke: “Brazil is the country of the future — and always will be.” E-books have been like that.) But we may finally have reached the point at which e-books are about to become a widely used alternative to paper and ink.

That’s certainly my impression after a couple of months’ experience with the device feeding the buzz, the Amazon Kindle. Basically, the Kindle’s lightness and reflective display mean that it offers a reading experience almost comparable to that of reading a traditional book. This leaves the user free to appreciate the convenience factor: the Kindle can store the text of many books, and when you order a new book, it’s literally in your hands within a couple of minutes.

It’s a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books.

How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won’t last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me...

Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.

It won’t all happen immediately. But in the long run, we are all the Grateful Dead.

5 junio 2008: prelude to the hippy summer

2008-06-05T07:54:00.008-05:00

after a month
i named the dog
miss poochie mizoguchi
i decided to walk to the post office

the flood extinguished the pilot
of the hot water heater

on the walk
i met people i did not know
i did not see anyone i knew
as though this were san francisco

the cook at the thai restaurant
complimented me on my
buddhist beads
and he laughed
and i laughed, too

this summer
i will let my gray hair grow long
and take many walks

every morning is free

this summer
is not telegraph avenue in 1966
i know that
no need to remind me

we are spending the summer
without hot water
in preparation for
our eventual relocation
to mexico
when social security kicks in

this summer
every day i will swim

someone spent a year
not buying anything
and wrote a book about it
that i won't buy

no hot water
long hair
a spanish-speaking dog
named miss poochie mizoguchi
the pool

this is the life
i always expected to live

every day
i throw something away

4 junio 2008: (nothing)

2008-06-04T08:54:00.002-05:00

basement is flooded
on scheduled vacation days
what would jesus do

3 junio 2008: The Ritual of the Tracking Shot

2008-06-03T07:20:00.000-05:00

3 junio 2008: Raising Sons

2008-06-03T06:56:00.003-05:00

i have many
sons when i
never expected
to have
any
all of them three
like the tv show
the theme song
runs through my head

now they're old enough
kicking them out
is the hardest part of the job
it's my part of the job

sometimes they don't want to leave
sometimes they want to leave and they can't
sometimes they leave and come back
always they leave and come back

and back again

the whole thing
is the craziest system

who came up with it

after the earthquake
chinese couples worried
they would have no children
to care for them
when they were
old

are my sons
going to care for me
when i'm old

and do they know that yet
has anyone told them

how can i break it to them
in the same way
as the day
they left home
imagining they would be
on their own

2 junio 2008: I Love the Smell of Ozu in the Morning

2008-06-02T07:15:00.000-05:00

2 junio 2008: Vacation

2008-06-02T07:11:00.002-05:00

this is the week i'm not writing
see how well that works
not at all

this is the week i'm not planning
not at all
i may go to the post office
or not

experimenting with giving up writing
entirely
see how well that works

take every plan
edit outcomes in my head
retain detachment

i bought a ticket to mexico
before i noticed
my passport had expired
during allergy season

the daze of loss
a strange liberation
i only had the sunrise

i built a bonfire in the backyard
at 5:30

exquisite loss
a transcendental daze lingering
in the sunrise

for days

like an ozu movie
where the landscape matters
but the story does not
where the bucket in the hallway
is the purpose
and the drama
has none

this liberation
may it last may it prosper
strange pain to be free

i can no more change
thoughts that turn into writing
than my eye for love

2 junio 2008: In the Mood for Love

2008-06-02T07:09:00.000-05:00

27 mayo 2008: The Truth Shall Make You

2008-05-27T09:49:00.003-05:00

dazy and i were on the steps of the art institute
it was august 1968
there were protesters in the park
we would join them
after our march to the democratic convention
and climbing the statue of the horse

i always look at the pictures of the statue of the horse
in the books and magazines of that time
and believe i see myself and dazy, with his curly long hair
standing there, 18

a dealer with long, long hair approached us on the
steps of the art institute
he had sunshine
orange sunshine barrels
five bucks

“is it any good?”
“yeah, it is pretty good”

later dazy said the dealer had set up lowered expectations for us
as a gift
because in fact
it was pure and perfect
when it hit it was perfect it was perfect
someone mentioned czechoslovakia
prague was in the air
we were in awe of the word
czechoslovakia czechoslovakia
we couldn’t stop saying czechoslovakia

“look,” i said “it’s teddy kennedy”
walking on the steps of the art institute
dazy laughed a long time
i was sure it was teddy kennedy
i still am
forty years later

we went to the park until the vapor trails of tear gas canisters
no longer amused us
there seemed to be a war going on
in czechoslovakia in chicago in vietnam
we were in it

we found a car
it was my car
i think
i drove
i watched the stoplights
red means i must stop
green means i must go now

we found a house
i don’t know whose house it was
we had never been there before
they let us stay
we went to the bathroom and watched the black lights
we listened to anthem of the sun
and last time around
both sides, both albums
alligator
he had to die
i am a child
over and over all night long

the following month
i was arrested
i worked at the a&p
produce
lettuce
to pay for my lawyer
who did nothing

six months later
i was in jail

six months later
i was free

the world had turned
half a year
without me

i never caught back up with it

a few years later
i had lunch with my community college
english teacher

i understood everything everyone was saying in the entire restaurant
it was the chuck wagon
everyone was talking about me
and to me
because i was in a
paranoid schizophrenia state
that wasn’t frightening
it made it difficult to speak
to order food
but i did

“what do you call this?” i asked the teacher
she replied, “love”

it has become hard to recover that state
or perhaps
some ego, maybe mine,
has become proficient
in steering through
the red and green lights

that it never left
whatever it is
that is me

dazy lives in iowa now
i saw him in the liquor store last year
when he came back to visit

this town

he is balding now
and has a new wife

the words are still the same
we didn’t mention czechoslovakia
or the word we were after at the time
free

Chienne Verite

2008-05-23T06:40:00.000-05:00

YOU HAVE WITH YOU ALWAYS

2008-05-18T18:03:00.002-05:00

A series of 14 poems follows, posted in reverse chronological order.

The title of the series is YOU HAVE WITH YOU ALWAYS

17 mayo 2008: Gone

2008-05-17T08:45:00.004-05:00

the ramshackle barn
favoring to a side, like a limping dog
scant memories of the once red
traces of straw bales, rotted twists of twine
dust spitting glints through unintended slats
striped parallel suncasts

"once here
where
leaping from the mow
the wind
knocked out,
a fall,
that or laughing"

here i'd abide rather
not the shining remodeled kitchen
stainless country oven
upkept
after hired carpenters
spent months honing a sheen

she and i agree
it is the fallen
spirits

we would sustain
and preserve

nothing new
nothing

ourselves inherited a like vision
gardeners, celebrants of decay
always the intoxicating smell of the gone
filling our lungs
in that quick, and deep, intake
regaining breath

to fall again
and again

outside the clean, the new, the never

16 mayo 2008: Sweet Nothing

2008-05-17T08:44:00.003-05:00

Fugs: Nothing nothing nothing
Velvets: Sweet nothing
Janis: Nothing ain't worth nothing
Beatles: Nothing's gonna change my world
Dylan: Nothing is revealed