Cspeak

2010-10-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

About My Mother's Business

I have never been about my mothers’ business.
She sat starving while my father fed me.
It was he who painted on my lips one Halloween
and told me I looked like Bette Davis,
and I went around the house screaming “WHAT A DUMP!”
What a dump.

I learned to curse like my father and bit the hand that fed me.
I flipped my silver Zippo for anyone who needed fire
and changed the spelling of my name
because she said I was just like him.
No one called me hers.
Sometimes, I see my father's belly, swollen, with me inside.

And now I reach for my mother's part in me.
I ask her to hold me but her arms are indifferent.
The defection was completed long ago, hers
and mine.

I have never been about my mothers’ business,
and now I am the hungry one.

Adamo Incindia

2010-09-08T18:21:00.000-07:00

"So tell us what happened last night."
"Last night?"
"Yes."
"Last night I hiked up to the top of the ridge and climbed out to Eagle Rock and sat there and smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and watched the sun go down."
"Watched the sun go down?"
"Yes."
"You watched the sunset."
"Yes. It was like watching a movie of a sunset. The clouds, the colors, all of it looked computer generated,…you know, not real."
"So you watched the sunset. Then what?"
"Then, when it was completely dark, I crawled back up to the main path on my hands and knees with Harry's lighter stuck out in front of me. It was so dark and the air was so thin that I was afraid to stand up."
"So you watched the sunset, then you went back to the campsite."
"Yes."
"What then?"
"When I got back to the camp site, the fire had gone out. I stumbled over Harry's body and landed in the embers. They were warm but not warm enough to burn. I had to scrounge around for more firewood and restart it. I used pages of the Atlas Harry had in his pack. It made me feel good to light the pages with the silver Zippo and watch part of the world burn.
When the fire was going good, I took off my T-Shirt and jeans and underwear and threw them in. They almost put it out but I stirred it with the barrel of Harry's gun and they caught and burned almost as good as the pages of the Atlas.
It was a warm night but there was a breeze so I went to get one of the blankets from the tent. That's when I noticed that sparks were landing on Harry. They smoldered for a minute and then went out leaving little black spots on his bare back and his bald head. I think I stood there for a long time watching him. I couldn't move. I kept thinking any second he would feel one of those little sparks and jump up, yelling and flapping his arms.
He had a carton of cigarettes and two fifths of Wild Turkey stashed under his side of the foam pad under the sleeping bag. I couldn't figure out why he bothered to hide these particular things. Anyway, I grabbed another pack of Camels and one of the bottles and a blanket and went back out to the fire. It was dead quiet. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and an occasional owl or mockingbird far off.
The breeze had died down but I was shaking really hard so I opened the bottle and took a big gulp. It burned going down but I held my nose and took another one. That stopped the shaking. For the rest of the night, I sat by the fire, stirring it occasionally and getting up sometimes to add more wood. I didn't think about much of anything and I didn't drink any more of the bourbon. I kept the bottle in my lap though, just in case I started shaking again.
When the sky started to get light, I got up and went down the trail to the water pump and washed. The cold water felt good and I stuck my head under the pump and let it run over my head and neck. I knew that I shouldn't have burned the clothes, shouldn't wash myself but I couldn't help it. I could face having to tell what happened, you know, how stupid I was, but I couldn't stand the feel of his handprints on my skin for one more day."
"Go on."
"Let's see,…then I went back up to the camp. I thought about putting on some of the clothes Harry bought for me at the truck stop on I-80, but I couldn't. My backpack was still in his truck parked about a mile from the fire road and I figured I could find it. I wore the blanket and grabbed the last apple and the half-eaten bag of Doritos and took a last look around the camp.
Harry was still laying exactly where he fell when I shot him. I knew better than to move anything. The Wild Turkey bottle was still sitting by the dead fire. The gun was propped against the log I'd been sitting on all night. The tent opening was unzipped and flapping in the breeze. I started walking down the trail toward the fire road where the truck was parked. Then I remember thinking, Whatever happens from here, I'll probably never stop at another Seven Eleven as long as I live."
"So after you shot him, Ms. Harman, you went to Eagle Rock and watched the sunset, is that correct?"
"Yes."
"And then you went back to the scene, made a fire, drank some whiskey, and waited for the sun to come up."
"Bourbon."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Bourbon, it was bourbon."
"Right, bourbon. You drank some bourbon and waited for sunrise."
"Yes."
"Then you found the truck and drove back to the Seven Eleven."
"Yes."
"To get your car."
"Yes."
"Ms. Harman, where is your car now?"
"I burned it."
"You burned your car?"
"Yes. I burned the car and the house."
"Your car and your house."
"Yes."
"That's the house at 451 Aduro Road and the 1968 Pontiac Firebird owned jointly by yourself and your husband."
"Yes. That's the last year they made that model."
"Uh-huh. The Firebird, you mean."
"Yes."
"And, Ms. Harman, how did you start the fire at 451 Aduro Road?"
"With pages from the Atlas and the Zippo."
"The same Atlas?"
"Yes, Harry's Atlas. I brought it with me."
"From the campsite."
"Yes."
"And Ms. Harman, why did you do that?"
"I told you, I liked watching the world burn."

2009-02-25T03:24:00.000-08:00

i'm thinking what to say next.

for the time being, ponder wendell berry.

VII

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue. Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.

from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997

The Barbie Thing - Rickie Lee Jones

2008-02-09T22:07:00.000-08:00

Cool Bananas

2008-02-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

and herewith begins the chronicles of the coolest of cool bananas.
and none cooler than the original banana yellowitz.
made in LA and seasoned in San Francisco,
twin issue of G-Daddy Agron and Paulette Carmelita,
this half lights up the room like a kliege light on Oscar Night.
give it up for Diaaaanah!!!

stay tuned for future Cool Banana features :D

set list #39

2007-08-31T23:40:00.000-07:00

was thinking about some of the songs i've played in bands. thought i'd start a series.

the set list

bonnie - runaway - no nukes version

did it with campbell's gang and at the gypsy jam i think, too.

Ramsey and MC. i had a blast doing this one with Campbell.
i have a slide now. i'll practice up. *wink*

Withnail

2007-08-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

Green Day - Working Class Hero

2007-06-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

Some Pics from Elohimfest 2007 - Albuquerque, NM

2007-06-07T03:17:00.000-07:00

Danlo the Manlo!!

Dukkha R O C K S !!!!!

Creator on a trek. (where's the dang Staff of Law!!) :D

Drew WAS in Albuquerque

There is also Love in the World.

The problem with JoJo. (she was jealous of Waddley!!)

The Bob, holding forth. (iQuestor)

The Little Sisters of Aluria - tag teaming on Scrabble!!! (amy and kat, daughters of Aliantha)

just what exactly did you have in mind, creAtOR????

Daniella and Cyn at Bandolier

Sightings 01

2007-02-19T21:46:00.000-08:00

out of the corner of my eye, I spot jesus,
in a leather jacket and jeans,
standing very close to me at the counter
of the Brainwash Cafe.
he pivots on black, pointed-toe boots
and checks his look in my window.
he sees himself and smiles, and I think,
look at that! jesus! smilin' at me!

he sees me lookin' and shakes his long, jesus hair
and I shiver and accept him as my personal savior,
he drops coins into the hand of the man behind the counter.
jesus has ordered a longneck Bud!
Lord, I think, it must get thirsty workin' all those miracles!
and he pulls out a Marlboro and searches his pockets
for a match.

I lean across the counter with my silver Zippo
and sing softly as I spin the wheel on the flint,
this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
he looks at me with those heaven blue eyes
and smiles again and says,
"Uh thankya, thankyaverymuch."
with a soft memphis twang, and I think,
Holy Alpha and Omega! jesus talks just like Elvis!

remember fortran? heh.

2007-02-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

i love my new digital camera!!

2007-01-08T14:31:00.000-08:00

Holiday Greetings

2006-12-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

Chris Cornell - new Bond theme! Awesome! Shirley Bassey could sing this song!!

2006-12-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

baloney again - mark knopfler

2006-11-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

Eyes of a Blue Dog - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2006-10-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

Then she looked at me. I thought that she was looking at me for the first time. But then, when she turned around behind the lamp and I kept feeling her slippery and oily look in back of me, over my shoulder, I understood that it was I who was looking at her for the first time. I lit a cigarette. I took a drag on the harsh, strong smoke, before spinning in the chair, balancing on one of the rear legs. After that I saw her there, as if she'd been standing beside the lamp looking at me every night. For a few brief minutes that's all we did: look at each other. I looked from the chair, balancing on one of the rear legs. She stood, with a long and quiet hand on the lamp, looking at me. I saw her eyelids lighted up as on every night. It was then that I remembered the usual thing, when I said to her: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' Without taking her hand off the lamp she said to me: 'That. We'll never forget that.' She left the orbit, sighing: 'Eyes of a blue dog. I've written it everywhere.'

I saw her walk over to the dressing table. I watched her appear in the circular glass of the mirror looking at me now at the end of a back and forth of mathematical light. I watched her keep on looking at me with her great hot-coal eyes: looking at me while she opened the little box covered with pink mother of pearl. I saw her powder her nose. When she finished, she closed the box, stood up again, and walked over to the lamp once more, saying: 'I'm afraid that someone is dreaming about this room and revealing my secrets.' And over the flame she held the same long and tremulous hand that she had been warming before sitting down at the mirror. And she said: 'You don't feel the cold.' And I said to her: 'Sometimes.' And she said to me: 'You must feel it now.' And then I understood why I couldn't have been alone in the seat. It was the cold that had been giving me the certainty of my solitude. 'Now I feel it,' I said. 'And it's strange because the night is quiet. Maybe the sheet fell off.' She didn't answer. Again she began to move toward the mirror and I turned again in the chair, keeping my back to her. Without seeing her, I knew what she was doing. I knew that she was sitting in front of the mirror again, seeing my back, which had had time to reach the depths of the mirror and be caught by her look, which had also had just enough time to reach the depths and return--before the hand had time to start the second turn--until her lips were anointed now with crimson, from the first turn of her hand in front of the mirror. I saw, opposite me, the smooth wall, which was like another blind mirror in which I couldn't see her-- sitting behind me--but could imagine her where she probably was as if a mirror had been hung in place of the wall. 'I see you,' I told her. And on the wall I saw what was as if she had raised her eyes and had seen me with my back turned toward her from the chair, in the depths of the mirror, my face turned toward the wall. Then I saw her lower he eyes again and remain with her eyes always on her brassiere, not talking. And I said to her again: 'I see you.' And she raised her eyes from her brassiere again. 'That's impossible,' she said. I asked her why. And she, with her eyes quiet and on her brassiere again: 'Because your face is turned toward the wall.' Then I spun the chair around. I had the cigarette clenched in my mouth. When I stayed facing the mirror she was back by the lamp. Now she had her hands open over the flame, like the two wings of a hen, toasting herself, and with her face shaded by her own fingers. 'I think I'm going to catch cold,' she said. 'This must be a city of ice.' She turned her face to profile and her skin, from copper to red, suddenly became sad. 'Do something about it,' she said. And she began to get undressed, item by item, starting at the top with the brassiere. I told her: 'I'm going to turn back to the wall.' She said: 'No. In any case, you'll see me the way you did when your back was turned.' And no sooner had she said it than she was almost completely undressed, with the flame licking her long copper skin. 'I've always wanted to see you like that, with the skin of your belly full of deep pits, as if you'd been beaten.' And before I realized that my words had become clumsy at the sight of her nakedness she became motionless, warming herself on the globe of the lamp, and she said: 'Sometimes I think I'm made of metal.' She was silent for an instant. The position of her hands over the flame varied slightly. I said: 'Sometimes in other dreams, I've thought you were only a little bronze statue in the corner of some museum. Maybe that's why you're cold.' And she said: 'Sometimes, when I sleep on my heart, I can feel my body growing hollow and my skin is like plate. Then, when the blood beats inside me, it's as if someone were calling by knocking on my stomach and I can feel my own copper sound in the bed. It's like- -what do you call it--laminated metal.' She drew closer to the lamp. 'I would have liked to hear you,' I said. And she said: 'If we find each other sometime, put your ear to my ribs when I sleep on the left side and you'll hear me echoing. I've always wanted you to do it sometime.' I heard her breathe heavily as she talked. And she said that for years she'd done nothing different. Her life had been dedicated to finding me in reality, through that identifying phrase: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' And she went along the street saying it aloud, as a way of telling the only person who could have understood her:

'I'm the one who comes into your dreams every night and tells you: 'Eyes of a blue dog.'' And she said that she went into restaurants and before ordering said to the waiters: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' But the waiters bowed reverently, without remembering ever having said that in their dreams. Then she would write on the napkins and scratch on the varnish of the tables with a knife: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' And on the steamed-up windows of hotels, stations, all public buildings, she would write with her forefinger: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' She said that once she went into a drugstore and noticed the same smell that she had smelled in her room one night after having dreamed about me. 'He must be near,' she thought, seeing the clean, new tiles of the drugstore. Then she went over to the clerk and said to him: 'I always dream about a man who says to me: 'Eyes of a blue dog.'' And she said the clerk had looked at her eyes and told her: 'As a matter of fact, miss, you do have eyes like that.' And she said to him: 'I have to find the man who told me those very words in my dreams.' And the clerk started to laugh and moved to the other end of the counter. She kept on seeing the clean tile and smelling the odor. And she opened her purse and on the tiles with her crimson lipstick, she wrote in red letters: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' The clerk came back from where he had been. He told her: Madam, you have dirtied the tiles.' He gave her a damp cloth, saying: 'Clean it up.' And she said, still by the lamp, that she had spent the whole afternoon on all fours, washing the tiles and saying: 'Eyes of a blue dog,' until people gathered at the door and said she was crazy.

Now, when she finished speaking, I remained in the corner, sitting, rocking in the chair. 'Every day I try to remember the phrase with which I am to find you,' I said. 'Now I don't think I'll forget it tomorrow. Still, I've always said the same thing and when I wake up I've always forgotten what the words I can find you with are.' And she said: 'You invented them yourself on the first day.' And I said to her: 'I invented them because I saw your eyes of ash. But I never remember the next morning.' And she, with clenched fists, beside the lamp, breathed deeply: 'If you could at least remember now what city I've been writing it in.'

Her tightened teeth gleamed over the flame. 'I'd like to touch you now,' I said. She raised the face that had been looking at the light; she raised her look, burning, roasting, too, just like her, like her hands, and I felt that she saw me, in the corner where I was sitting, rocking in the chair. 'You'd never told me that,' she said. 'I tell you now and it's the truth,' I said. >From the other side of the lamp she asked for a cigarette. The butt had disappeared between my fingers. I'd forgotten I was smoking. She said: 'I don't know why I can't remember where I wrote it.' And I said to her: 'For the same reason that tomorrow I won't be able to remember the words.' And she said sadly: 'No. It's just that sometimes I think that I've dreamed that too.' I stood up and walked toward the lamp. She was a little beyond, and I kept on walking with the cigarettes and matches in my hand, which would not go beyond the lamp. I held the cigarette out to her. She squeezed it between her lips and leaned over to reach the flame before I had time to light the match. 'In some city in the world, on all the walls, those words have to appear in writing: 'Eyes of a blue dog,' I said. 'If I remembered them tomorrow I could find you.' She raised her head again and now the lighted coal was between her lips. 'Eyes of a blue dog,' she sighed, remembered, with the cigarette drooping over her chin and one eye half closed. The she sucked in the smoke with the cigarette between her fingers and exclaimed: 'This is something else now. I'm warming up.' And she said it with her voice a little lukewarm and fleeting, as if she hadn't really said it, but as if she had written it on a piece of paper and had brought the paper close to the flame while I read: 'I'm warming,' and she had continued with the paper between her thumb and forefinger, turning it around as it was being consumed and I had just read '. . . up,' before the paper was completely consumed and dropped all wrinkled to the floor, diminished, converted into light ash dust. 'That's better,' I said. 'Sometimes it frightens me to see you that way. Trembling beside a lamp.'

We had been seeing each other for several years. Sometimes, when we were already together, somebody would drop a spoon outside and we would wake up. Little by little we'd been coming to understand that our friendship was subordinated to things, to the simplest of happenings. Our meetings always ended that way, with the fall of a spoon early in the morning.

Now, next to the lamp, she was looking at me. I remembered that she had also looked at me in that way in the past, from that remote dream where I made the chair spin on its back legs and remained facing a strange woman with ashen eyes. It was in that dream that I asked her for the first time: 'Who are you?' And she said to me: 'I don't remember.' I said to her: 'But I think we've seen each other before.' And she said, indifferently: 'I think I dreamed about you once, about this same room.' And I told her: 'That's it. I'm beginning to remember now.' And she said: 'How strange. It's certain that we've met in other dreams.'

She took two drags on the cigarette. I was still standing, facing the lamp, when suddenly I kept looking at her. I looked her up and down and she was still copper; no longer hard and cold metal, but yellow, soft, malleable copper. 'I'd like to touch you,' I said again. And she said: 'You'll ruin everything.' I said: 'It doesn't matter now. All we have to do is turn the pillow in order to meet again.' And I held my hand out over the lamp. She didn't move. 'You'll ruin everything,' she said again before I could touch her. 'Maybe, if you come around behind the lamp, we'd wake up frightened in who knows what part of the world.' But I insisted: 'It doesn't matter.' And she said: 'If we turned over the pillow, we'd meet again. But when you wake up you'll have forgotten.' I began to move toward the corner. She stayed behind, warming her hands over the flame. And I still wasn't beside the chair when I heard her say behind me: 'When I wake up at midnight, I keep turning in bed, with the fringe of the pillow burning my knee, and repeating until dawn: 'Eyes of a blue dog.''

Then I remained with my face toward the wall. 'It's already dawning,' I said without looking at her. 'When it struck two I was awake and that was a long time back.' I went to the door. When I had the knob in my hand, I heard her voice again, the same, invariable. 'Don't open that door,' she said. 'The hallway is full of difficult dreams.' And I asked her: 'How do you know?' And she told me: 'Because I was there a moment ago and I had to come back when I discovered I was sleeping on my heart.' I had the door half opened. I moved it a little and a cold, thin breeze brought me the fresh smell of vegetable earth, damp fields. She spoke again. I gave the turn, still moving the door, mounted on silent hinges, and I told her: 'I don't think there's any hallway outside here. I'm getting the smell of country.' And she, a little distant, told me: 'I know that better than you. What's happening is that there's a woman outside dreaming about the country.' She crossed her arms over the flame. She continued speaking: 'It's that woman who always wanted to have a house in the country and was never able to leave the city.' I remembered having seen the woman in some previous dream, but I knew, with the door ajar now, that within half an hour I would have to go down for breakfast. And I said: 'In any case, I have to leave here in order to wake up.'

Outside the wind fluttered for an instant, then remained quiet, and the breathing of someone sleeping who had just turned over in bed could be heard. The wind from the fields had ceased. There were no more smells. 'Tomorrow I'll recognize you from that,' I said. 'I'll recognize you when on the street I see a woman writing 'Eyes of a blue dog' on the walls.' And she, with a sad smile--which was already a smile of surrender to the impossible, the unreachable--said: 'Yet you won't remember anything during the day.' And she put her hands back over the lamp, her features darkened by a bitter cloud. 'You're the only man who doesn't remember anything of what he's dreamed after he wakes up.'

Richard Thompson - Beeswing

2006-10-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

Documenting Truth

2006-09-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly 40 years since Frederick Wiseman, a one-time law professor turned filmmaker, exhibited his first documentary film, Titicut Follies in 1967. The film was banned (outside of educational uses) by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, from 1967-1992, who ruled that since it was filmed at Bridgewater State Hospital it violated the patients’ rights to privacy. Now available from Wiseman’s distributor, Zipporah Films, on VHS or 16mm film, Titicut Follies is considered the quintessential example of direct cinema documentary filmmaking. It has been said that Wiseman is the penultimate examiner of American culture through the filming of its institutions, (Law and Order, 1969; High School, 1968; Juvenile Court, 1973; Missile, 1987; Domestic Violence, 2002, just to name a few of the 36 films) but the question remains; is Frederick Wiseman telling the truth?

Dictionary.com finds five entries for the word truth:
truth (tr th)
n. pl. truths (tr thz, tr ths)
1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
3. Sincerity; integrity.
4. Fidelity to an original or standard.
5.
a. Reality; actuality.
b. That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

Throughout the history of documentary filmmaking, the question of the “truth” in documentary filmmaking comes up over and over again. Did Robert Flaherty tell “the truth” about his subject in Nanook of the North (1922)? What was “the truth” that Leni Riefenstahl was telling in Triumph of the Will (1934)? Whose “truth” was Barbara Kopple documenting in American Dream (1991) or Connie Field in The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980)? Can we believe that we are viewing the objective truth about a subject when we are viewing a documentary film and if we, as viewers, do expect “the truth” from documentary, why? Do we imagine that the makers of such films have no opinions regarding their subjects, no agendas? If that were the case what would be the point of making the films in the first place? Still, we tend, in general, to separate fictional feature filmmaking from documentary as if one holds more veracity than the other. American audiences expect that the documentarian has an obligation to “the truth” in the same way we expect to get the news from television, the unadulterated truth. (We will NOT be discussing media bias in this essay!)

I suspect part of the reason we expect “the truth” from documentary film can be accounted for by movements in documentary filmmaking that first became prominent in the 1950’s and 60’s, cinéma vérité and direct cinema. Although it might be said that cinéma vérité and direct cinema find their origins in Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda (Russian for “cinema of truth”) it is more the technique of both cinéma vérité and direct cinema that give them their true meanings. With the advent of more mobile technology in the ‘50’s and 60’s such as smaller, lighter cameras, better lenses, synchronous recording capabilities, and faster film stock, the documentary filmmaker was granted access to their subjects as never before. The technology allowed the filmmaker to become somewhat “invisible” and minimize the effect they, as intrusive filmmakers in a situation, would have on the events filmed.

In 1958, Robert Drew at Time, Inc., in New York, assembled a group of filmmakers and technicians to experiment in documentary filmmaking with the burgeoning technology. The group included such now renowned filmmakers as D.A Pennebaker, Richard Leacock, and David and Albert Maysles, all influenced by the cinéma vérité of France (such as Blood of the Beasts and Hôtel des Invalides from French filmmaker Georges Franju) and the Free Cinema filmmakers of Britain (such as Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson). With films like Primary (1960), Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963), The Chair (1963) and, ironically, The Fischer Quintuplets, which was originally entitled Happy Mother’s Day but had been heavily re-edited and renamed for public consumption by ABC in 1963, the Drew group gave, with their “observer” techniques, the American public reason to believe that what it was viewing was, in fact, the truth and influenced many other documentary filmmakers in the process.

These films looked, for all the world, like reportage. The filmmakers had unbelievable access to their subjects and with minimal voice over narration to explain to the audience what they were seeing, and with the synchronous sound recording, “the truth” appeared evident. Without access to the film editing process (we only think about it once a year at the Oscars, and even then wish the presenters would hurry up and get to the REAL awards), nor any idea of how much film stock is used in documentary filmmaking, nor any indication of what scenes might have been minimally “staged” expressly for the camera, American documentary film audiences expect veracity. And so, it’s not surprising that a film like Wiseman’s Titicut Follies was banned from public viewing for 25 years. The “truth” about the Massachusetts asylum wasn’t very pretty in Wiseman’s camera’s eye and the Massachusetts Supreme Court didn’t want the public to see it. SOMEbody believed it was the truth!

Although possibly influenced in some ways by the Drew group and it’s films, Wiseman’s films exhibit the more stringent guidelines of direct cinema including no voice-over narration, no staging of anything for the camera, and no interviews. Eric Barnouw, in Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film says of Wiseman, “He foreswore narrative explanations and comments. He selected institutions through which society propagates itself, or which cushion—and therefore reflect—its strains and tensions. All his films became studies of the exercise of power in American society—not at high levels, but at the community level.”

In Titicut Follies, Wiseman’s unflinching camera eye takes us into the inner workings of a mental institution for the criminally insane. The first scene is a performance of “Strike Up the Band” by guards and inmates during an annual show called The Titicut Follies, from which the film takes its title. Just when the viewer is getting comfortable with the performance Wiseman cuts to an uncomfortable scene of the inmates, many of them naked, lining up to receive clean clothing from the guards. The camera pans a large room where the inmates are herded through like cattle (and basically treated as such by the guards) to be given their clothing and we recognize several of the guards and inmates as having been in the previous jocular scene of the performance. It is a stark contrastt to the previous scene and typical to Wiseman films.
The next scene is of an inmate, another we recognize from the follies lineup, being questioned by a doctor (obviously a psychiatrist) about his crime. The camera is focused in close-up on the young man’s face as he talks. Apparently the innocent looking fellow is, in fact, a convicted pedophile. The doctor’s questioning seems to have less to do with finding out what the inmate thinks of his own crimes and more to do with shaming the young man. We feel an instant empathy and discomfort for him. Abrupt cut again to the scene of the inmates disrobing to get their clean clothes. Another abrupt cut back to the doctor questioning the young man again, this time with the camera focused on the doctor, who comes off as arrogant and intent on cornering the young man verbally. Our empathy for the young man increases. Another abrupt cut, without explanation or context, to a few seconds of another tight close-up of an inmate attempting to talk through a profound stutter, which of course makes the observer even MORE uncomfortable, then abruptly back to the doctor and the young man, this time the camera is back to the young man’s face. The doctor says “You know you’re a sick man don’t you?” Whereupon he relates a litany of the young man’s crimes back to him and concludes with “Do you think you’re a normal man?” The poor young man replies “Yeah, I need help but I don’t know where I can get it.” To which the doctor answers laconically, “Well, you get it here, I guess.” There is no narrative voice-over telling us what to think of the young man and his crimes, no explanatory information about his treatment or the qualifications of the doctor. Nothing evident to inform the audience how to feel or what to think. Wiseman’s not telling us what to feel or what to think is he? What we think we’re seeing is an unbiased document of a filmed conversation but Wiseman has, through editing, told us what he thinks is going on in the scene. A Wikipedia article on Wiseman quotes him as saying:

All aspects of documentary filmmaking involve choice and are therefore manipulative. But the ethical ... aspect of it is that you have to ... try to make [a film that] is true to the spirit of your sense of what was going on. ... My view is that these films are biased, prejudiced, condensed, compressed but fair. I think what I do is make movies that are not accurate in any objective sense, but accurate in the sense that I think they're a fair account of the experience I've had in making the movie. (Spotnitz)

In Titicut Follies, this pattern of abrupt cuts, and fragmentary views of life in the state mental hospital build to a crescendo. There is an excruciating jumble of scenes of guards hosing out dirty cells while speaking to a naked patient named Jim. The guards keep asking Jim why he has dirtied his cell. Jim has no comprehensible answers for the guards so he just keeps babbling at them, trying to answer but unable to, and the guards, who must be aware that the man can’t give them an answer, just keep badgering Jim until he starts to scream at them. In the last of this sequence of scenes, we hear an off-camera guard asking Jim about his life before coming to Bridgewater and we find out that Jim was once a school teacher, a sane man with a sane job. In another sequence of scenes we see an inmate who sounds sane attempting to explain to the doctor (who is mostly out of the frame) how being in Bridgewater is harming his mental health and arguing he should be transferred back to prison where he might have the chance of release. Later we hear the doctors discussing treatment for this same inmate. More drugs, they decide, are in order to make him less “confrontational” and more “manageable”.
In yet another excruciating sequence, we are shown another doctor putting a feeding tube through the nose and down the throat of an emaciated inmate who is all but catatonic. As the tube feeding begins the doctor’s cigarette dangles precariously from his mouth over the funnel containing the liquid nourishment. Interspersed throughout this scene are silent scenes of this same man, dead now, being prepared for burial by a technician. The implication is that the tube feeding has been in vain. But we’re not told that there is any direct correlation between the tube feeding and the man’s death. It’s just what Wiseman is implying by his editing choices.
There are very few scenes in Titicut Follies where the staff appears sympathetic or caring toward the inmates. For the most part, they seem condescending or indifferent, as if they are dealing with animals in a zoo rather than human beings. The film ends the way it began, with a different take, perhaps a rehearsal, of the same song in the Titicut Follies show, but we now see that jolly scene differently. How did Wiseman do that without voice-over narration, explanation, or any evidence of chronology of events? With careful editing, Wiseman constructed a narrative that gives the viewer the “truth” of his “experience [he] had making the movie.”

Wiseman does very little research on the subjects he chooses for his films and has often been quoted as saying they are his own explorations into the given subject matter. He became interested in making a film at Bridgewater State Hospital after taking his law students on field trips there. In an online interview with Neal Poppy of Salon.com Wiseman says, “I have no idea what the themes or the point of view are going to be until I get well into the editing. I don't have a story in mind in advance and I don't set out in these movies to prove a thesis. I discover what the themes are as I put the film together, as I edit the sequences and study the material.”

So the “truth” Frederick Wiseman is telling us is his truth, the truth of his experience making a film in a mental institution for the criminally insane, or a high school, or a basic training camp of the US Army, or Central Park, or juvenile court, or Belfast, Maine. Wiseman’s films are examinations of institutions alright, but through the process of editing, Wiseman is relating his own subjective opinion of those institutions. Titicut Follies is like a poem about a madhouse and I am reminded, in thinking about the film’s effect on me, of an Anne Sexton poem, from her book To Bedlam and Part Way Back, called Ringing the Bells :

And this is the way they ring
the bells in Bedlam
and this is the bell-lady
who comes each Tuesday morning
to give us a music lesson
and because the attendants make you go
and because we mind by instinct,
like bees caught in the wrong hive,
we are the circle of crazy ladies
who sit in the lounge of the mental house
and smile at the smiling woman
who passes us each a bell,
who points at my hand
that holds my bell, E flat,
and this is the gray dress next to me
who grumbles as if it were special
to be old, to be old,
and this is the small hunched squirrel girl
on the other side of me
who picks at the hairs over her lip,
who picks at the hairs over her lip all day,
and this is how the bells really sound,
as untroubled and clean
as a workable kitchen,
and this is always my bell responding
to my hand that responds to the lady
who points at me, E flat;
and although we are not better for it,
they tell you to go. And you do.

Both the poem and the film ask us, the audience and reader, to see through an artist’s eyes, what they are seeing. In assessing Frederick Wiseman’s film, Titicut Follies, for “truth”, I’ll go with number 3, from Dictionary.com, “sincerity, integrity”.

Sources

Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film
Oxford University Press, New York, 1993

Salon.com Frederick Wiseman
http://dir.salon.com/story/people/conv/2002/01/30/wiseman/index.html accessed 5/1/06

Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1981

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Frederick Wiseman.
(Spotnitz, Frank: "Dialogue on film" American Film v.16 n.5 (May 1991): 16-21)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Wiseman, accessed 5/1/06

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Titicut Follies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titicut_Follies accessed 5/1/06

Meeting in Monterey

2006-09-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

....for karen

This looks so familiar, I said to you that day,
on a bench, on Cannery Row,
and you nodded,
your long fingers pulling at the coppery sun in your hair.

Steinbeck's garden of priests and whores
were lost to us as we ate our sandwiches.
We could not see his footprints imbedded in the new pavement,
though we knew he had walked there.

Neither could we see our own,
nor how we got to that bench
from that inland place where we grew up,
where we spent our days
like change from our pockets.

But it was here we came,
out of the wild howling of our expectant hearts,
out of the hills where we had danced,
turning, through mazes,
across our sepatate high wires;
and if we knew each other as girls,
who can say?

There were no fishwives or winos
whistling spit on that street anymore,
and the blue water rose against us,
moored there in that spot;
and though we spoke in reminescent tones,
what bonds did we have before that day?
None,
that I can see,
but us two,
in Monterey.

on Music

2006-07-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

Music, he said, implies
motion that doesn't exist.

punctuation -
percussion -

a moment in time -

boom!

and suddenly someone is dancing?
what is that?

G.E.S / L.E.S.

Implement

2006-06-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

I lean across the field’s best places,
rock-strewn, weedy,
ready for the plow.

I hoe down the rows with my fingers,
turning loam over,
wishing for shade.

My watering can is empty and I need a gentle rain,
something to irrigate me,
make me worthy.

I know, in the soles
of my mud-crusted boots
that God loves a farmer.

(The Tenderloin, part 10)

2006-06-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

The Bonsai Juniper

I watch the sheffilera push out,
unfolding it’s tiny umbrellas of new growth,
so young they are still tinged ochre and aching for light.
There was a bonsai Juniper tree on the sill last year,
but I left it to you, and it died.

And you, I see, are sleeping,
some mild, soma dream creating creases in your forehead,
sleeping, as if you could escape me there.
The dotted landscape of the other side of day and night
will not protect you.
I have my hand in this soil.

You belong in my house like all the other living things here,
the cockroaches, the dust, the fungus on the bathroom tiles,
all things beloved for their sheer audacity to continue upward,
toward warmer regions.
They have made themselves at home in this atmosphere,
cat and lint alike,
but you sleep on while the parasites devour your spindly branches.

I am the woman who loves you.
Haven’t I cried enough to make you grow?
Push out,
collect over me,
run rampant through my kitchen like the pests.
Wake up now. Wake up.

2006-06-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

Mercer County

I came up out of the tobacco fields covered
in small red welts like chiggers under my skin,
tiny bugs of fear and paranoia that itched
for the calamine lotion of Ebenezer Baptist Church,

and I shouted out the hymns
(would you be free from the burden of sin)
while the ladies of the congregation
gave each other permanent waves
and stitched together patchwork pieces
of Vacation Bible School and come-to-Jesus fabric,
biscuit-making, jam-canning women who won prizes
at fairs for their ability to produce perfect pie crusts.
while their men traded feed secrets
and hunted with howling coon dogs.

In the pitchblack country night
I lay under those redemption quilts
chanting the Twenty-Third Psalm
while all around me the evangelical
crickets jumped and sang

and even they, it seemed, knew God.

The Tattoo

2006-06-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

I rise again from one more little death.
This city is not my enemy
nor any test of my good judgement.
It cannot bury me.
I have spoken to, dreamed of, and made love to
as many men as any of us have cried wasted tears
and I am a full-grown woman for it.
I was born to the South and force-fed
grits and Jesus until I could not breathe.
My lungs are full of riverwater
where I sank and drowned
and was saved over and over.
Sometimes I am martyred
Sometimes I am murdered
Sometimes I kill myself.
Saint, victim, sinner.
I have risen so many times that
every morning is another Easter.
There are lillies tatooed on my back
for all these recurrent ressurections.

Deadfall

2006-06-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

up here
the fireroad follows the ridge
spine on spine
God’s finger
furrowing out deadfall
flicking at cedar or redwood
to indicate this one or that one
food for all things small
and six or eight-legged
deadfall
charred and blackened
and laid to rest beside the fireroad
or hacked away and discarded
or uprooted by the seawind
found sometimes
carving through the niche between the hills,
this one or that one
covered with deadfall cedar or pine
to indicate the spine of the ridge

up here
we are lovers
following the ridge
following the fireroad
to the niche between the hills,
poems for one another,
beguiled by sunlight in the hair
and sillouettes against the eternal blue,
and below us, cows,
statued against
a shelf of land that
used to belong to the sea,
and below them the sea itself, glistening,
bluer than the air we stand in
up here.

and all of this for us,
all of this moment,
every piece of grass in place,
every branch stirred,
and even Spanish moss,
found sometimes miles beyond where it started,
miles beyond where it should be,
hanging on pine or cedar or redwood
deadfall.

Sather Gate Lindy Hop

2006-03-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

'Night Oklahoma

2006-02-25T17:31:00.000-08:00

for Jack Mongomery

He must have banged down out of the Big Sky,
and he must have hit hard
and rattled out all his teeth.
The black hole in his face said
"I'm from Oklahoma."
and I understood him.
"I'm from Kentucky, " I drawled
and the hole said "For real?" and chuckled
as if he knew the Dark and Bloody Ground.
The hole rambled on about
an old woman and a frog and
I realized I should be laughing.
The hole smelled like cheap,
Tennessee sour mash and
I shied away as he spoke Okie at me.
He sounded like Appalachia and lonely,
he looked like a dry river bed
and he had lightning bugs in his eyes.
He got up from the table and
went back to the doorstoop.
Some pork rinds disappeared
into the hole.
I must have looked like home to him,
must have seemed like a fishpond
or a sparrow nest, or maybe
an ear of corn off the stalk.
I should have laughed at
the old woman and the frog.
I should have said "For real?"
Later, when he vacated the stoop
he called out as he passed by my shoulder
"Good Luck, Kentucky!"
and I hollered back,
"'Night Oklahoma!"

one time i said to jack...

"i just like to picture you sleepin up there in that park

on Russian Hill, Jack, with the stars for a blanket and

wakin up with the birds singin."

and he says back to me...

"Try picturin me sleepin over there in that doorway

why don'tcha, cause that's where I'M sleepin and that's

what I'M talkin 'bout!" heh heh.

The Last Time I Wore A Dress

2006-02-25T17:20:00.000-08:00

About My Mother's Business

I have never been about my mother's business.

She sat starving while my father fed me.

It was he who painted on my lips, one Halloween,

and told me I looked like Bette Davis,

and I went around the house screaming "WHAT A DUMP!"

What a dump.

I learned to curse like my father

and bit the hand that fed me.

I flipped my silver Zippo

for anyone who needed fire

and changed the spelling of my name

because she said I was just like him.

No one called me hers.

Sometimes, I see my father's belly

swollen, with me inside.

And now I reach for my mother's part in me.

I ask her to hold me but her arms are indifferent.

The defection was completed long ago, hers and mine.

I have never been about my mother's business,

and now I am the hungry one.

a dream

2005-11-26T21:28:00.000-08:00

I walked the streets in a city of my own construction, wandering the nameless avenues, looking for landmarks. I spoke to people with no decernable expressions, asking directions. Their answers were nonsensical and nearly impossible to hear. Unsure of my own destination, I found myself in a district of warehouses and grids of criss-crossing railway tracks imbedded in worn blacktop. Every road decends here, in a vast plain of empty buildings and unused electrical circuits.

I went toward the nearest door, thinking, as one does in dreams, that it would lead me somewhere. As I stepped down into the deserted street off the curb, the door opened slowly outward toward me and a figure began to appear. I stopped, aware of the pounding in my chest. As the figure became more solid, my breathing became shallow and irregular. There was something familiar about the shape of the body, something distinctly, unpleasantly, familiar, and I backed away, and tripped and fell over the curb. I was so afraid that once I had connected with the solidity of the cold pavement I couldn't get up. I lay there on my stomach with my face pressed against the street. I felt someone kneel beside me and a warm palm touched my back and stayed there, exerting a gentle pressure, making it impossible for me to get up or even turn over. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt a single tear of terror slide down my face and across the bridge of my nose. While I was trying to find a scream, a face came close to my ear and began to whisper. It was the voice of a woman, soft and melifluous, chanting in my ear,"You know what I am and you know what I can do. "

I struggled to free myself like a cockroach pinned to a countertop by a toothpick. I threw my fist backward toward her face several times in an attempt to make her stop repeating those words, over an over, into my ear, "you know what I am and you know what I can do!" Finally my fist connected with the hated mouth and slipped, as if intended to choke those words down her throat, directly into it. I could feel the warm saliva covering my hand.

Suddenly, I was awake. Sitting upright in my bed, I found the scream!

Pocket change hit the hardwood floor in the room beneath me. I struggled to catch my breath as feet pounded up the stairs and down the hall toward my room. I was holding my fist in front of my face. It was wet with saliva.

1995-untitled

2005-11-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

I write now like I used to drink,
turn words up like a bottle,
slam the shotglass down on the bar
like a curse word, shit or fuck,
whiskey or tequila, and all
in anger.

It's the same disease, brother,
the same function or dysfunction,
the same kind of disassociation,
like some sweet grenadine thing
that makes you puke that night
and have a headache the next day,

and I cannot scream,
though that is how I feel,
and I cannot cry, though the tears
wait on the rims of my lids,
I cannot eat because what I am
hungry for is not on the shelf at Safeway,

so I write like I used to drink,
throw back syntax like it was Wild Turkey,
mix metaphors and tenses like
vodka and vermouth,
tap whatever keg I can
to get it out of my body and
into the toilet,

I write like I used to drink,
like a madwoman who can't get a buzz,
like a sailor who's been out at sea too long,
like my heart is breaking,
because if I don't,

I might need a cocktail.

inuendo

2005-11-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

now i understand the coyote,
rockets on his roller skates,
tenacious and appealing.
you toss explosives onto my desert floor
and i am easily done in.
there is a wide place in the road
and you are there
and i am on the verge
like some kind of hitchiker.
i turn the signs around
and send you in my direction,
i stand dancing as you
race toward me, your arms
reaching out in front of you,
my skin tingling
and itching to be caught up.
i am talking and laughing in circles,
ear to the ground,
listening for the sound
of your acme truck.

Periodic Visitations

2005-11-05T22:15:00.000-08:00

Dispatch from JD
30 October 2005

Dawn comes, and we part ways once again.

My dreams becoming distant apparitions.
I turn to the warm wind for help, the wind I felt every time you held me...
As I was bathed in the light that followed on your heels

Spring is announced when the wild plants break out in a dance.
Summer comes to Uji, and in the fields are patterns of grass set out to dry
The autumn moon rises, let's celebrate its fullness.
Winter passes by, and I count off all the days and months again.

I can still see the too-distant blue sky when I close my eyes. (it was so warm.)
As I reminisce, I take your hand as I pluck the flowers and sing (there is no clue.)
Within the memories that are now coming back to me.
I'm setting out to find my way back to you.

Spring is announced when the mountain leaves break out in a dance.
Summer comes to Uji, and in the fields are patterns of grass set out to dry
The autumn moon rises, let's celebrate its fullness.
Winter passes by, and I count off all the days and months again.

Dawn comes, and we part ways once again.

My dreams becoming distant apparitions.
I turn to the warm wind for help, the wind I felt every time you held me...
As I was bathed in the light that followed on your heels

author unknown

Blues For Jeff

2005-10-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

Last time I saw Jeff was back in '58. Or it it could have been '59. I can't remember anymore. He was sitting in his dusty, gray '51 Chevy two-door Streamline, parked in the red zone across the street from the Jazz Workshop, with his gig bag and a roughed up copy of Finnegan's Wake on the dash, his alto sax in his lap, and a bottle of wine between his feet. Dago Red, he called it. And then he smiled, like he was smiling to himself, and passed the bottle.

"Just 'cause it's cheap," he said, "don't mean it ain't no good."

Jeff was sucking on a new reed and fingering some kind of figure around the circle of fifths on his alto, without blowing in it. So he could play it in any key, he said. So his fingers would know what to do, and he wouldn't have to think about it. And the pads would open and close against the key holes in a rythm, with a soft, percussive sound, making their own kind of music.

"Sometimes they call up a tune in some weird key," he said. "Just to see if you can cut it. And you gotta be ready to blow, or else just go right on back to the woodshed." And then he said he was just hanging around, killing time, resting up for a jam session at Bop City.

"I might be blowing all night," he said. "Maybe I can line up a nice gig. Or maybe something else. You dig? I don't know if I'll get to sit in though. Too many names in town."

"I just caught Rollins at the Workshop," he said. "Sure sounds rough, man. Like he's playin' half an idea, an' then just leaves it hangin', like takin' fours with himself. Rollins oughta quit playin' in public," he said, "til he gets it together." That was before he found himself On the Bridge.

Jeff asked if I ever read Finnegan's Wake. I told him I started reading it once, but then put it down. "Because I have a hard time reading stuff I don't understand," I said. Jeff said I should just read it, and don't try to understand it.

"Just read it, man," he said, "and absorb the words. Like the way you listen to music." And then he passed the bottle, and then reached back into the back seat and started digging through the pile of clothes and books, and old newspapers, and Downbeat magazines and fakebooks, and manuscript paper, and old, broken reeds, and Tick-Tock hamburger wrappers, and empty wine bottles, and empty beer bottles, and pulled out a brand new Brew Moore record. You know, the one with the weird, purple, snaky, elephant trunk-looking thing on the cover. And then he said I could keep it. Because Brew was an old partner of his, he said, and he had a whole box of them.

"Man, I gotta get my tenor back," said Jeff. "I shoulda hocked the alto instead. I guess I shoulda known better. You get more Jobs with a tenor. You dig?"

"An' I just blew a job across the Bay," he said. "Like I'm tryin' to show the piano man the right changes to some tune, you know, an' he gets all pissed off, "cause he's the leader, an' he don't like to look stupid. So I tell him, man, like some tunes got more than three chords in 'em, an' he says if I'm such a great fuckin' genius, what am I playin' in his band for, and I should take my axe and hit the road."

"So I might be takin' off down the coast," said Jeff. "Get my tenor back and go to L.A. There's more jobs down there. I gotta get a good gig, man. Like maybe a nice studio job. Like I'm gettin' tired of just playin' rock 'n' roll blues. You dig? don't knock it though, if that's all you can get. If you don't mind gettin' paid for takin' your solos all on one note."

We laughed and sang a few one-note chourses, and finished off the wine, and then Jeff said he had to get some sleep.

"I gotta rest up for the session," he said. "I might be blowin' all night."

And that was the last time I saw Jeff. Like I say, I think it was back in '58. Or it could have been '59. I can't remember anymore. But then about a year later, I heard they found him down the Coast, sittin' in his Chevy, and there was bloody glass all over the place, and his horns were missing, and there was an empty gig bag and a book on the dash, and an empty wine bottle next to his feet.

I don't know if that's what really happened. That's all I heard, and that's all I know. But sometimes, even now, I like to get a jug of red wine and listen to that Brew Moore record he gave me. I still have it. You know, the one with the weird, purple, snaky, elephant trunk-looking thing on the cover.

And some day I'm going to try and read Finnegan's Wake once again, the way he said: "Just read it man, and absorb the words. Like the way you listen to music."

And sometimes, when I'm not thinking about anything, I find myself singing a few one-note chouruses, like a blues for Jeff.

Kenneth Leroy Hill (KL)

16 March 1939 - 20 Sept 2001

Photo Cee

2005-10-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face. Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human, silly human race. On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place, if the summers change to winters, yours is no, yours is no disgrace.

-jon anderson

Terry and Cyn (The Projects), circa 1964

Trailer Park Cyn, Christmas 1969

Cyn and Steve, Winter 1977

and sometime later...Cyn & Ger, June 1, 2001

Musee D'Orsay, June 2001

Paris, Pere Lachaise, Morrison's Stone

Father Jerry and the Pilgram, at Morrison's Stone

Morrison's Stone

Sightings II

2005-10-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Douglas Ray Tucker stands before me
in ballcap and grin, hair nappy,
clothes lurched all to one side,
holding a cup, and says
jus' cause you have a CUP
don't mean nuthin',
I'm a man!
I'm tryin' to make some PROgress here.
I'm from Florida.
People different here.
People don't see nuthin' but the CUP.
Butchoo a different kinda woman, he says.
I got a sister who wears glasses, he says.
You might wear glasses, butchoo see better than most!
There is a God, he says.
We might meet each other
another time down the road!
Faith before reason, he says,
and keeps on grinnin',
faith
before
reason.

dixie's war

2005-10-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

oh the battleground's littered
and the cold light is coming
and i can't help wond'ring
and you can't say why
oh i am the only
soldier worth fighting
and you keep on wand'ring
away from the sky

here now, we are not wise enough
and we go on wanting
but the battle is killing us
and the kitchen is haunted

and the hill where i found you
burying your dead
has followed us here
and lives in your head
oh i'm not a prophet
and i can't read your signs
and you keep on wand'ring
away from the sky

oh the day is not long enough
and the night will be falling
and there's no use resisting
when the allies are calling

oh the battleground's littered
and the cold light is coming
and i can't help wond'ring
and you won't say why
oh i am the only
soldier worth fighting
and you keep on wand'ring
away from the sky

hAve U hEarD tHe oNe aBOut tHe bRowN pApeR bAg?

2005-10-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

I am not a part of your dying,

pace yourself and BREATHE.

There is a blue place in the night

like a brown paper bag over my head.

Your kiss is like multiplication tables

and eight parts of speech.

Don't crowd me into your spine,

that heated pool is YOUR place of worship.

I am sleepwalking on your thin ice.

Keep your eye on the ball and BREATHE,

and don't COMBUST if you can keep from it.

The blue place is lit by candles, but they don't flicker,

they absolutely DO NOT go dancing, so why would I?

If i talked like GOD, who would know me?

Who would believe tha I am not SANE,

that I have squandered EONS on the likes of you,

paid DEARLY to be here watching you writhe,

just to put my nuts in THAT bag, that STUPID brown paper bag,

BREATHE,

BREATHE!

The blue place in the night in NOT my heart,

is not an echo or a reverberation.

You MADE it with your MOANING and your INDIFFERENCE

and your EAGER grimace.

Open the window an take it in,

and take the brown paper bag, too,

and see if you can feel me then,

and remember what if felt like

to touch air.

A Rattler Hollingsworth Sighting

2005-10-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

He nodded and blew smoke rings, picking his way throught the crowd with his talons hidden beneath a worn piece of leather jacket. Head down, eyes narrowed, he tried not to provoke greetings and positioned himself, unobtrusively, in a corner, and began to hum. It was a glacial thaw of a song that hit the ear burning and caused scars on accidental listeners. Like the jacket, it belonged solely to him. In a different kind of light, he would have been easily noticed, but here he was camoflaged in oddity and unrecognizable.

"You're gonna give us all some kind of conSUMPtion if you keep on whistling like that." she glittered at him. "Anyway, that song's been dead for 50 years,...it's startin' to STINK."

He took a breath and continued as if she hadn't spoken but she could tell he knew who she was. She'd seen the camping equipment in his room. She knew how to put up a tent. She couldn't remember how to make a fire with two sticks but she knew his song as well as she knew ones and zeros.

"How many lives have you got left?" she asked him sagely, narrowing her eyes to match his.

"Snakes don't have lives." he mumbled and continued hum-whistling.

"Neither do dogs." she said and put her hand out to touch the top of his small head.

"Oh no! Don't do that, don't DO that, that's how it starts, that's always how it starts." he whimpered in mock disgust as he stood still as a rock and allowed her fingers to fumble through his hair.

"You don't even know what you're whistling." she said, shivering, and turned to walk away. "It's Colder Than A Well-Digger's Ass," she said. "I oughta know, I WROTE it." and disappeared into the undertow of the dim river dream rain.

He stood on the street watching her fade.

"Was that Levitt Tate?" somebody asked him.

"I don't remember." he answered into the fog. "Now I gotta drink alone." he thought to himself and glided off down the wet night sidewalk, not touching the ground. "Colder than a well-digger's ass and I gotta drink alone."

Coat in a Boat

2005-10-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

For years I went wearing
a coat that I borrowed
and would not return it
for fear of exposing
that no one could see me,
made out like a bandit,
disguised and intriguing,
I lay where I landed,

but, now and again
I would listen for something,
a fin in the wake of a boat
I remembered,
and sank like a shadow
whenever it neared me,
clear and distinctive,
like a name I was given,

sewn into the collar,
hemmed into the lining,
and time was deceiving,
the coat growing thinner,
I entered the mainstream
without ever knowing
there were rats in the galley
and no one was rowing,
there were rats in the galley
and no one was rowing.

For years I belonged
to that moth-eaten stranger,
my hair full of tangles
and no comb to pull
through the fury that gnawed
at the crumbs I let fall
from the cake I was eating
and kept on repeating
there’s a vessel afloat underneath all that coat!
there’s a vessel afloat underneath all that coat!

Choosing Sushi

2005-09-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

the question here is

a piece at a time

or a whole ROLL-A-RAMA?

and how do you pick

when you don't know the language?

you may order MILKTOAST

if you don't know the name.

and how do you learn

to avoid the sea urchin,

the slimey, bad-textured, inedible kind?

MEN are like sushi,

they all look so pretty,

but how do you tell

if they're fresh or GONE BAD?

some are quite raw

and some cooked to excess,

and some are leftovers

that someone else had!

do you sit at a bar

or get served at a table?

can you eat with your fingers,

or is it SAFER with sticks?

futomaki or yellowtail,

tuna or mackerel,

it all smells the same,

and it all HOOKS like fish!

Playing Pool with a Stranger

2005-09-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

I wait for him to pick up the cue.
I cannot hit hard enough to make the break.
I am a girl.
I watch as he bends his body over the table to line up the shot.
His hand goes down to that vast plane of green felt in slow motion,
and he rests the stick in the curve of his long forefinger.
He loosens his grip and swings it back and forth to make sure
it will strike the white ball in just the right spot,
swings his hair to one side, and then,

the music begins; the smack of the break
and the clackclackclack of the balls spreading
out in ripples, two, four, six all dropping with
quiet thunks into the side, corner, and middle pockets.
He runs the table.
I am not even allowed a poor attempt at competition.
This is a man's game and he plays it with grace.
He makes every shot with a mathematical certainty
that I do not possess.
I have seen this before, this quiet, electric superiority.
I have passed in and out of his field of vision a thousand times,
joking about my incompetence,
making sly comments on his prowess,
trying, half-heartedly, to pull his attention
from this game to mine
and always without success.

I might as well be ten years old, sitting at the bar,
drinking seven ounce returnables, watching my father,
instead of thirty-six watching Frank.
They are both strangers to me.
They are both immersed in a culture and camaraderie
that I do not understand,
indifferent to any female who is not
one of the guys.

For years I played pool with strangers like Frank and my father,
trying to gain access to the arithmetic of cool,
genderless and depressed because
I could never improve my game.
But tonight, I will not put my name on the board again,
tonight I will not stain my fingers with blue chalk,
and tonight I will not let Frank beat me.
I will play out the table until only the eight remains
and then, I will scratch
and take away his smug sense of self-importance.
I no longer care to be admitted into this silent, pre-arranged loss.

I will not go into this bar with you again, Daddy.

More Adventures with Rich (Japan, 2005)

2005-08-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

I found a job in Sendai. It is about two hundred miles north of Tokyo. It has one million people so its a proper city unlike Kawagoe, which feels like Daly City. I travelled there this weekend to take care of some business and to satisfy my curiosity about what the city's vibe was. It is great. And the job I have is exactly what I am looking for. The school is very organized, it has a set curriculum and it is very laid back compared with the school I am working at now. For instance I am not allowed to fraternize with my students now. This new job has monthly BBQ with student. And the little things that are hard to convey through writing aren't present. For instance I am not allowed to drink while walking around campus. I cannot smoke on campus. I cannot sit on a desk nor lean on a desk or against the wall. This new job seems more Americanized. Also this new job is following the governments new energy saving policy of no ties for men during summer. Japan has a very strong code of conduct and no one wants to rock the boat and change a policy or habit for fear of looking different and stepping out of line in a strict hierarchical society. conformity and consensus rule. So it took PM Koizumi to allow a no tie policy. Also the last 48 hours has produced many many strange and exciting stories. Most of which only resonate within me so I will only share a few of the more bizarre moments that I am still trying to catogize.

1. Satoshi an 18 year old rambuctious student of mine wept in front of 45 fellow students becasue I am leaving. He bawled for at least ten to fifteen minutes. It may have been alcohol induced. The students invited me for a dinner party and I oblidged since technically they are not my students after the last teaching day so I would not be breaking the no socializing clause of the contract

2. Karaoke is fun and exciting even when you have not idea what is being sung because it is in Japanese

3. Japanese people put a lot of machismo pressure on each other when it comes to drinking. I was forced to chug chug chug from the pitcher of beer until I was literally on the brink of puking. After that I refused the continued offers through out the night--losing a little face with my students but retaining my own dignity.

4. Money does not equal happiness. I am here in Japan for many reasons. One of which is to save some cash. Most teaching jobs offer a furnished apartment--essentials like refridgerator, washing machine and bed. This new job I am forced to aquire these items myself and find my own apartment. AND I have to pay the key money to the landlord. Key money is like a deposit but sometimes you don't get the money back. Suffice it to say I am shelling out a lot of money, which is going against my money saving plan but for some strange reason it is not bothering me because I feel Sendai, the school and my collegues will provide me with a lot of happiness. sorry for the sappy ending

5. I first learned that the japanese love to take pictures when I was in Machu Pichu. I saw some Japs snapping shots of every damn rock there. With the advent of cameras in cell phones pictures are everywhere. And I noted this when after my first few beers at the dinner party with my students. I decided to take off my tie. My studetnts said I am like a japanese business man and should tie the tie around my head. Because I was a few beers in it took zero amount of time for me to tie that tie around my head. The next thing I know 45 cell phones being wipped out and shoved in my face. Snap. Snap. Snap. If a student emails me the picture I will send it to you

6. Bullet trains are cool and should be developed in the united states

rich

I dont exactly remember which student this is but it is similar to the almost dozen messages I have recieved from my students at TDU Hatoyama.

hi, Richard.

do you remember me??I'm sorry that mail becames late.I was very busy. because my graduation research is verybusy.I'll send you 2 picture.Richard'photo and "Omatsuri picture".....today is"Omatsuri" in Kawagoe.In English..."Festival".The festival of Japan is traditional and very happy.and, fireworks of Japan are very beautiful!!have you ever seen??It is necessary to see it.

good bye

your student and friend,

yasuko

2005-08-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

My extraordinarily beautiful neice, Emma

August 20th, 1958 / Mercer County

2005-07-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

On a long, still, heavy day
when a kiss tasted of salt
and sweat and the low sun
pressed the cotton to their backs and breasts
and ran in rivulets down their necks,
I filled my lungs with dog days
and sang my first breath,
raised by the smack of
a well-intentioned Baptist hand.

I came up out of the tobacco fields covered
in small red welts like chiggers under my skin,
tiny bugs of fear and paranoia that itched
for the calamine lotion of Ebenezer Baptist Church,
and I shouted out the hymns
(would you be free from the burden of sin)
while the ladies of the congregation
gave each other permanent waves
and stitched together patchwork pieces
of Vacation Bible School and come-to-jesus fabric,
biscuit-making, jam-canning women who won prizes
at fairs for their ability to produce perfect pie crusts,
while their men traded feed secrets
and hunted with howling coon dogs.

In the pitch-black country night
I lay under those redemption quilts chanting
the Twenty-third Psalm while all around me
the evangelical crickets jumped and sang,

and even they, it seemed, knew God.

The Second Coming

2005-07-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats

More Dispatches from Kawagoe: Fuji Achieved

2005-07-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

Due to exhaustion, lack of trail signs and the momentum (both physical and mental) of descending mount fuji, I climbed mount fuji more than once... My collegue and I decided to start at the first station instead of the fifth station. We are two men who wanted to massage our egos by saying we took the long route. However, the long route takes you through the forest whereas the short route starts at about 5000 feet, which is at the tree line for fuji. So we got to see some beautifuly forested areas before the barren mountain scenery took over. At first we were really dusting the guide books suggested amount of time it takes to ascend the mountain. Sometimes we walked the numerous legs in about half the time, others shaving off about a third of the time suggested. But we realized we were taking the long route and by the time the altitude and exhaustion set in we would need the extra time. Indeed we did. So before we left the forested part of the climb night had set in. But we were confident and kept our pace. Then the rugged mountainous part slowly began to appear. By the time we hit 9000 feet both of us were tired but we still had enough energy. Then at about 10,000 feet I hit a wall. It took me two hours to go a distance I was covering in one hour. The altitude and exhaustion was huge. I had been climbing for seven hours and I know the sunrise would not wait for me so I kept going, taking many many breaks. Finally I reached the top at about 4:00am sunday morning after nine hours of climbing. It was thrilling to be able to sit down and watch dawn turn into daylight at just under 12,000 feet. The top is not all that exciting. It has a crater and that is about it. So with out much to do we decided to leave, knowing that a long descend and a three hour train ride back to kawagoe where in our future. So we were walking and walking and walking when we noticed that the seventh station did not look the same as the seventh station that we had seen when we climbed up the mountain. So we asked some people and sure enough we took a wrong trail. We looked up the mountain and saw the station that we needed to be at to transfer to the correct trail and gasped. We needed to backtrack about 90 minutes and 2000 feet (from about 7500-9500feet). Neither of us was in any shape to re-climb a portion of the mountain but if we didn't we would seriously jeopardise our ability to get back to kawagoe. So begrudgingly we backtracked, found the right trail and quickly left the mountian. So I climbed mount fuji and I will probably never, ever ever do it again because it is two days later and I still feel tired, sore, exhausted, dehydrated, bruised, blistered, and sunburned. rich

Flight to New Orleans

2005-07-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

Imagine seeing the heart clearly,
(when it used to be a ghost town)
like light,
moving through two panes
of unmarred airplane glass.

Before I knew of air travel
I could sense a flight plan forming,
could smell it, like a weather pattern
building up against the banks of my southern river;
cold fronts in my father's house, runways inlaid
with pieces of my mother's broken heart,
tornado warnings in my brother's eyes,
and when the storm hit
I flew up,
without license,
without instruction,
into the crowded night streets,
looking for lovers and strangers
to reflect me in the wet pavement,
to postition me in the blackness,
tethered, as I was, by invisible threads
of nothing,
to nothing.

I saw life beyond me, the shape of it,
the perfect cinematography of steam
whistling from a boiling kettle,
the heavy pulse of taxicab traffic,
the mottled flesh of a blood orange,
and I craved what I could not touch in myself
like a ghost who does not know she has died,
and the geography beneath me never changed,
never moved me,
and I was twisted into thin lines like neon,
colored only by the fragile glass around me.

I filled the log book with names
and kept track as best I could but
whole pages turned brittle and yellow,
and I tired of the plot, thickening,
like a forgotten stew on a cold stove,
and more's the pity, I found I was hungry
and could not,
as my ectoplasmic self,
consume enough vice to forget
how to breathe.

I dropped altitude and banked
over New Orleans, a parish that was used
to inclement weather, living below sea level,
and beautiful decay.
I re-entered my body at thirty-three thousand feet,
over the Atchafaylaya Basin, when I saw
the golden risingsun ribbon of the Mississippi,
winding its way toward the delta,
and as my heart settled back in between my ribs
I was aware
that I was no longer
afraid of landing.

Kentucky Is Not The South

2005-06-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Kentucky is not The South,
is not the red-clay drawl of the sweet magnolia
blossom-watered down home.
It is the dogwood and mountain laurel
copper-tubing neutral recluse up home,
who had slaves but treated them well
and let them go,
who coined the phrase brother against brother,
split right down the middle,
and we don't take sides,
and we don't refuse the fight, but
Kentucky is not The South.

Our consonants are hard and our vowels
are not quite lawng eenuff.
We are in a borderland with our own resolutions,
lungs heavy with coal, at the head of the holler,
hemp-growing, bible-loving Baptists and Christians,
and we did not vote for The Catholic President,
and we did not cripple George Wallace,
we make no noise and hold no malice
and, Kentucky is nowhere near the Mason-Dixon line, folks.

We do not stomach that sweet Tennesee sour mash
gonna-do-it-again, gonna-rise-again whiskey.
We sent our sons both ways, tobacco-grown
mine-blackened bootleggers' sons, no cultural guilt here.
Our bourbon-candied aristocracy is not old money, not English loyal,
but dirty money, got by hard work and smart gambling,
got by gun-running to the Cherokee,
and we never agreed to secession,
and we never committed to the union,
and Kentucky is not The South.

for Jay Davis

Excavations

2005-06-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hard pressed to conjure artifacts,
evidence to validate existence,
I pushed my fingers into the dirt,
down through the layers of the lost,
and brought up fistfulls,
ceremonial masks which have
hidden too many faces,
pieces of broken pottery,
domestic rubble,
arrowheads and buckshot,
most of which missed their marks.

And where were you when I was digging?
On some far point, gauging the wind velocity
between the things I said to you then
and who I might be now?
Were you expecting ruins?

I am bound to these old things
but no longer of them.
They are the remains of a
dead civilization, pictures
drawn on the walls of caves,
you on a repelling rope,
me in a ravine,
and time has settled it's dust on us,
evolved and unrecognizable.

We are fossil hunters,
studying our own lives,
trying to make sense
of the bits and pieces,
trying to find patterns
and putting forth theories
which we cannot prove
or disprove.
There are no quiet rooms
to hold this history,
no one walks the halls
of this museum but us.
We are alone in our re-search,
our desperate compulsion
to unearth things better left buried.

Put down your tools,
your brushes and trowels,
and I will abandon mine.
The evidence of existence
cannot be found
in what we were then,
but in who we are now.

for Stokes

Dispatches from Rich K. in Kawagoe, Japan

2005-06-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, our friend Rich went off to Japan a couple of months ago to teach English, (he's nice like that!). The following is an email transaction between he and I.

dear richie-san,

i have relayed all messages.
meanwhile, some of us were wondering;

how's the movie rental thing done in japan? do you have a blockbuster nearby? do all the movies have dubbed japanese dialog? what do you have for breakfast? do you wear your shoes in your apartment? what is the weather like in kawagoe? are you taller than everyone in the country? have you been to any temples? do they have baptist churches? catholic churches? does it in any way resemble Bladerunner? what are the names of the days of the week in japan? do they have seven days in a week? do they give you forks and runcible spoons or do you always have to eat with chop sticks? is the sushi better? do they have pidgeons? what season is it there now? have you watched any japanese game shows? do you have cable? do you get the BBC? what kind of uniforms do the policmen wear? do they have hats? do they have a chinatown in kawagoe? do they have coffee? cappucino? how many days of the week do you work? what time do you go to work? have you seen any geishas? samurais? do the grocery stores have american foodstuffs? can you get captain crunch? what do the vaccum cleaners look like? do they have a lot of robots running around? do the billboards really talk? are all the cars japanese-make or do they have a plethora? have you been to the countryside? seen any peasants? do all the women really wear Lillaz? do people give you gifts everywhere you go? are there homeless people on the street? what do the graveyards look like? do they have round door knobs?
well, that is a sampling of some of the things we were all wondering.answer what you can! (or not!)
big hugs from all of us.
cyndi

Cyndi and other questioners

Your questions made me laugh. I hope some of my answers make you laugh It seems you all would like to know my day to day life. It is not so different from yours. I spend the majority of my time here in Kawagoe. I surf the internet and I read. I tackled the first half of Clintons autobiography. I just purchased an interesting book edited by two University TEFL engish instructors. They had there most advanced students write essays about the many unique cultural things that go on in Japanese life. I also go out for a beer or two on occation with the other american I am here with. On sunday I go get a coffee and cake at my favorite place and I study Japanese. I bought a really nice wind chime a few weeks ago. I cook. I clean. I teach english and I commute to work. I also started to jog.

how's the movie rental thing done in japan?
I have not seen a blockbuster but I have seen a tower records in Tokyo. Furthermore, I have not rented a movie. To due so requires my alien registration card. I filed for one at the municipal office as required by law but I have not actually picked it up. I should have picked it up a month ago but I didn’t. So there does exist video and dvd rental places her in Kawagoe but I have not rented anything.

do you have a blockbuster nearby? do all the movies have dubbed japanese dialog?
Read above for answer. When Star Wars comes out here in Japan (July 9 I think) I will go to it. And I am sure just like Slovakia and in Romania (where I saw a movie to kill time before catching a night train) the movie will be heard in English and subtitled in Japanese. I hope.

what do you have for breakfast?
Well, Star Wars cereal boxes have been popping up at my local super market. But what I have been eating for years is either oatmeal or granola. Here I eat granola. It’s a bit expensive but I gotta be me.

do you wear your shoes in your apartment?
I don’t’ where my shoes in my apartment. I am not really sure why I don’t wear my shoes

what is the weather like in kawagoe?
It is about 75 degrees and usually over casty. Since the monsoon season kicked in it has rained about three or four times a week. And it is very very very very very very humid. I take a train about ten or so miles to where I teach and once it was so clear that Mt Fuji was visible.

are you taller than everyone in the country?
Yes

have you been to any temples?
Yes

do they have baptist churches? catholic churches?
There is a Christian church near my house but I don’t know what denomination.

does it in any way resemble Bladerunner?
Only when you are really drunk

what are the names of the days of the week in japan?
Sunday= Nichiyoobi
Monday= Getsuyoobi
Tuesday= kayoobi
Wednesday= suiyoobi
Thursday= mokuyoobi
Friday= kinyoobi
Saturday=doyoobi

do they have seven days in a week?
The earth spins slightly slower over here. The japanese decided not to add an extra day but to simply give each day more time. So we have 27 hour days here in japan

do they give you forks and runcible spoons or do you always have to eat with chop sticks?
I always eat lunch in the university cafeteria. And to my amazement about half the students use a fork/spoon/knife. I always use chopsticks. I think I impressed the old women who serve the food but that is all who took notice

is the sushi better?
Yes. It is so fresh. I sometimes go to a cheap sushi boat place in the train station to have me some sushi. And god damn it is the freshest sushi I have ever eaten. Last Friday I went to a traditional Japanese bar/restaurant with my boss. He ordered us some octopus. It came with the suction cups and all still on the arms. Delicious

do they have pidgeons?
Flying rats I am afraid these creatures somehow populate the entire world.

what season is it there now?
It is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

have you watched any japanese game shows? do you have cable? do you get the BBC?
I have TV and I have some form of cable but I unplugged my TV and put it in the closet.

what kind of uniforms do the policmen wear? do thaey have hats?
A lighter blue than SFPD. I don’t think they were hats. there are also police women and they wear the same thing.

do they have a chinatown in kawagoe?
No but in one of the malls there is a store called San Francisco Chinatown Dough Nuts.

do they have coffee? cappucino?
There are three starbucks in Kawagoe, and a bunch of other coffee places not to mention the countless vending machines that have coffee of all sorts.

how many days of the week do you work? what time do you go to work?

Monday through Friday 10:20 – 6:20. I have seven forty minute lessons throughout the day. I usually get to work at about 9:00. I prefer to prepare for my lessons in the morning.

have you seen any geishas? samurais?
Yes a few women in Kimonos; no samurai. But I saw some really cool samurai costumes on display in a temple. I was thinking that a five foot tall warrior is not so scary even when decked out in swords. However, he could still kick my ass. I am still hoping to catch a glimpse of a ninja

do the grocery stores have american foodstuffs?
No twinkies or any other american brand. but plenty of other sweet and salty Japanese treats. Yes Coke and Pepsi and grape Fanta. Budweiser beer. And of course meats, fruits and vegetables. But fruits and vegetable are super expensive. like 50 US cents for one onion. Or about a dollar for one apple.

can you get captain crunch?
Haven’t seen the captain

what do the vaccum cleaners look like?
Well women look very much the same as they do in San Francisco

do they have a lot of robots running around?
Havent seen a robot.

do the billboards really talk?
A few trains have announcements in Japanese and English. Some billboard talk but it all Japanese to me. I bank at the postal bank and the ATM near my house speaks english if you press the "english" button. Its a very sexy voice

are all the cars japanese-make or do they have a plethora?
Plethora

have you been to the countryside?
Not really but I see a lot of farms on my way to work.

seen any peasants?
I guess but this is Japan. Even peasants live in nice houses.

do all the women really wear Lillaz?
Of course. And they bought them from ABS

do people give you gifts everywhere you go?
No. I have received exactly 0 gifts. Except for a box of cookies from Ohio. One of my students went to Ohio with his professor to give a lecture on some bio electrical technical stuff

are there homeless people on the street?
Not as much as san Francisco. In fact not in the street. I have only seen the homeless in the train station.I haven't been to enough places in Tokyo to answer. But the few times I have been there I have not seen any homeless.

what do the graveyards look like?
Every temple and shrine has one. Lots of buddhas.

do they have round door knobs?
Back in 1983 Japan made the switch to door bars. Apparently its more effecient to pull a door bar down than to twist and door knob. Something about the wrist and its muscles and tedons explain the reasoning. that is all the guidebook said.

end of dispatch.

Nympheas

2005-06-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

In the gallery I was not alone.
I was touched deep, deep,
had water lilies laid upon my new eyes,
had portions of my soul set aside
in brilliant corners.
Dark, darkwhiskey neat,
that burns in the belly,
that makes light in a cold train,
that goes on for miles,
talking to a waitress,
fingering the mouthpiece,
straight, no chaser,
like Mingus Bird, smooth,
smooth, those green dolphin shades
of shorter saxaphones
and fountains of clarinets.
Easy does it, easy,
like a Divine One
on a scat dive in the Five Spot.

I was not alone,
I was out there, elsewhere
with a monk who danced in brilliant corners,
with melting clocks and golden tramps
in Parrish blue, mathematical ribbons of faces,
a jungle flower behind my ear,
playing with tigers, playing with matches,
playing in 6/8 time until
the sunlight left a certain leaf,
so I could believe in the Lost One,
Perdido, I could believe in Spain,
in lettered subways
and poplars in a row
on the banks of the Epte.

In the gallery I was not alone.
I was lost in a garden in Giverny,
had water lilies laid upon my new eyes,
had portions of my soul set aside
in brilliant corners,
brilliant.

for K.L. Hill

2005-06-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Dim River

The long awaited rain arrived

spun me down

into some river dream,

some water wheel spoke of a girl,

some slipstream velvet calm

where I muddied up and floated,

muddied up,

no thunderstruck, no lightening fire,

just a mindful mist, eddying out,

dew mist, unbreathable and slick

under my bare feet,

felt like wet clover,

felt like some lost summer,

some goneby where the leaves turn over

backside up to the tears, to the gray blanket

and I put my toes in

and tried to walk the dams the kids built on the curbs,

tried to make branches and tributaries,

tried to get in up to my chin

so I could hear the leaves change color,

but the downpour downpulled at my wet dress

and I slid forward into a public pool,

smelling like Coppertone and hard cold Hershey Bars,

and smelling like the way my Mother laughed

when I launched myself off the deepend,

and I sputtered and coughed and spit chlorine,

into the breakwater,

into the dim undertow

of the dim river dream rain.

2005-06-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

Diplomystus

I come, everyday, to this garden
where the stones sing ancient biographies
and clinging vines grapple
with desirous flower trees.
I always find, in the pond,
one pale fish, turning endlessly
in the murky water of words.
I always hear the wind of your vowels
poured over straight bourbon
and blown through too many Salems.
The sound of your swimming
back and forth calms me.
You have come before me
and hacked a path throught the tangle
and purchased the map
by which I am to travel.
I cannot shut windows against the sirens,
cannot recusitate and hold you,
cannot ask you to be more alive
than the recorded message you have left me,

so I count the syllables
and meter the lines of my own demons
and dip my fingers in the water
to touch you.

for Anne Sexton, circa 1993

excerpt from Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts: The Woman Warrior

2005-05-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

My aunt haunts me--her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, thought not origamied into houses and clothes. I do not think she always means me well. I am telling on her, and she was a spite suicide, drowning herself in the drinking water. The Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute.

Maxine Hong Kingston

San Francisco Nightsong, circa 1998

2005-05-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

Night, fog sings
erasing rooftops and distance
like a mute on a whole tone.
Night,
Night, it whispers
contrapuntal to the choiring
of internal combustion and
the clicktap, clicktap of high heels on asphalt.

Niiiiight, hums neon and halogen,
fluorescent and filament,
illuminating hooker, commuter, consumer,
consumed.
Night, beg the hungry cockroach
and the dizzy moth,
nightnight, coo the gulls and pigeons.

Oh...night, sigh shops and warehouses,
closing yawning doors and
dropping shades like eyelids.
Night now,
Night.

Beauty and the Shoe Sluts

2005-05-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Mother kneels at her closet of dancing shoes
to see which ones I fit--sherbet green
taffeta and crimson crocodile, pumps

in Easter pink, plus a dozen black heels
with bows or aglisten with rhinestones,
all wicked run down. Likewise,

she's gnarled as a tree root, her spine's
warped her shorter than me, over whom
she once towered with red hair

brushed back into flame points.
Seeing her handle those scarred leather hides, I quote
the maenads' sad lament from The Bacchae.

After they've chased down
the fleeing god, fucked him dead, sucked
all flesh from his bones, dawn spills light

on their blood-sticky mouths,
and it's like every party you ever stayed
too late at. In chorus they sing and grieve:

"Will they come to me ever again,
the long, long dances?"
And Mother holding a black patent ankle strap

like a shackle on a spike heel
(it must have been teetering hell to wear) glances
sidewise from her cloudy hazel eyes and says "No,

praise God and menopause, they won't."

Mary Karr
from Viper Rum, 1998

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

2005-05-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas

Notes to Sexton, 2005

2005-05-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

I'm older than you now, Anne.
odd to think that I might have something to tell you.
The ciggarettes in the plant were a good gesture;
as a mostly life-long smoker,
I can appreciate the finality of it.
Just so you know,
we all talk to our dead,
KL, Dead Rick, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman.
But my dark girls have all shucked their habits, Anne,
They're all busy trying to change something,
the speed of light, the Ph of the native soil,
the nature of the work, the heart of a child,
their lives.
That's why i like 'em.
That's why i'm hear to tell
whoever will listen, and you, Anne,
that there's more after 45.
There is more.
In fact, it seems to get better, and listen,
just between you and me,
I'm really glad you didn't take
any body with you,
wild woman.
Oh yeah, and thanks for the map.

Zeleya, Velez, Monet, and me, circa 1995

2005-04-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

In the soft glow of blue neon, in an alley
lined with garbage bags and dumpsters,
Velez dangles a cigarette between his lips
and mumbles smooth at the camera.
when i take the photograph
you and Velez stand apart
so the Keroac sign can be seen.
Nobody smiles. All that cool.

I see you through the lens
hanging against the wall
like a painting through 13 doors.
Monet whispers in my ear
that I am a sly and nasty fox.
See how the light plays across the water
and the lillies float in and out
of it's embrace like children, you say.
Dip, I answer. Light bulb.

It is more than all that.
It is the genius that makes me cry.
Velez is as beautiful as waterlillies
and you are the light, impressionistic and brilliant.
Monet strolls off down Colombus,
a book of poetry under his arm
and a burrito dangling from the end of his finger.