Here we go again...

 

Go Sawks!

 

 

Oh no! They're losing! Now all the Yankee bandwagon fans are going to be in my face! Connection between them and Giambi's intestinal parasites merely a coincidence? Hmmmm.

Vitamin D

Dawn. Long Branch, NJ. 6/19/04.

 

What do I look like when I talk to anyone?

Revalation

This is the song and these are the lyrics that whipped me into shape yesterday. I know that I post favorite lyrics periodically, perhaps to a fault. But this made me sit in my car (idling in the driveway) and think and totally recontemplate. Result? I win.

Ben Folds Five : Mess

 

there was a time when i had nothing to explain
oh, this mess i have made
but then things got complicated
my innocence has all but faded
oh, this mess i have made

and i don't believe in god
so i can't be saved
all alone as i've learned to be
in this mess i have made

all the untested virtue
the things i said i'd never do
least of all to you
i know he's kind and true
i know that he is good to you
he'll never care for you more than i do

but i don't believe in love
and i can't be changed
all alone as i've learned to be
in this mess
i have made the same mistakes
over and over again

there are rooms in this house that i don't open anymore
dusty books of pictures on the floor
that she will never see
she'll never see that part of me
i want to be for her
what i could never be for you

but i don't believe in god
so i can't be saved
all alone as i've learned to be
in this mess i have made

Mets vs. Yankees

Let's go Mets!

Let's go Mets!

Let's go Mets!

Let's go Mets!

 

Dumb rhyme redux

I smoke and drink and ply and think

and work and play every day

this life is a messed up interstate ride

over and over I’ve died and died

I run and read and trip and bleed

I surf and slave and try to behave

But I can’t I won’t I hate to be told

What to be like to fit the  set  mold

I’m my own judge, I’m my own jury

I snap at the leash in a fit of fury

Rivalry: Mets vs. Yankees

(late entry....)

Mets and Yankees in an eternal rain delay. I intuitively infer that people all over the tri-state area (NJ, NY, CT) are drinking beer in desperation. This could get ugly.

 

I’ve used the “ugly” term a few times before. Only once has it been drama-queen discombobulated. To me, ugly means unedited and sloppy. To those with a mission, it means something else entirely. As in “mixed message”.

Naked next to one another while under a pristine white sheet

It’s all in the timing.

 

I’ve scanned the waters and scanned the skies.

I’ve forgiven those present who told white lies.

I’ve scanned my mind, I’ve scanned the land.

Still, there is no reason at hand.

 

Excellent sex is timing and desire divided by history.

 

3

If you can smell a kind soul from an atmosphere away,  listen to Ben Folds Five, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. Song number 3, specifically.

Mr. Folds

 

Here’s my timeline— you decide:

 

Decided Wednesday to work a Dr. appointment into the weekly schedule.

 

Reconcile Thursday to couple it with hair cut*. (1/2 block and a cross street away, might as well make it an efficient trip.) Then I hear a pristine song on the radio. Turns out it’s a Ben Folds song.

 

Between afore mentioned appointments I hang out at the record store, specifically to search for that beautiful song. Then, as I’m buying that song and other CD’s, I flat out bump into Bruce. We have a short convo. I’m all jazzed because he remembers me. He’s all jazzed because he just found a Tony Bennet Greatest hits CD. From the  bargain bin.

 

I ask if he’s touring this fall. He says, with a wry smile and a wink, that he’s working on it.

 

This is the height of the attention he gets in this store in my cool Red Bank Blue town. And that is that.

 

I pay for my Ben Folds Five and my Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.

 

I earned a chat with the Boss. Not bad for 15 spare minutes on Broad Street on a Friday night.

 

*Came out geeky.

Mr. Springsteen

 

Saw Mr. Springsteen, yes, THE Bruce Springsteen, at Jack’s tonight. (To those not from Red Bank, Jack's is a record store in Red Bank, NJ)

 

The world is messed up. I realized tonight that I, literally, could have anyone committed-- merely from a verbal complaint at this very second. All it takes is a one-sided interpretation of an undocumented opinion. It’s that easy. The hospital won’t read the floppy that never arrived for at least 4 months.

 

Then they apologize.

 

They pretend to care about your concerns. Their only interest is logging an AP3er. They want the checkmark even more fervently than the disc-promiser, horrid as it may seem.

 

Timing has a propensity for playing into fortitude.

 

I'll get into the Bruce thing in the next entry. Hell, I live in Monmouth County. It's not like it'll never happen again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kiss

Allegiances born of affection, not animosity.

What a concept.

Nothing says childhood like a favorite cereal

Quisp might be the very most bizzarre event in human history. A cereal based on a marketing agenda that capitalized on the space program of the 60's to make kids want to eat mini brown-sugar frisbees. It vanished suddenly enough and long enough to become iconic. Now it's back and they sell it by the boatload. Iconic and ironic. All in a little blue box.

Those surgical-looking implements next to Quisp are nothing but  a coffee-measurer-outer and a bottle opener. Sorry. Bad photo shoot. It was impulsive.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I sent away for this thing two years ago. It's finally here.

Wow. A silk-screened wash cloth. BFD.

Sling

I need a whisper in the ear. I need a sling shot tissue to swat the tear.

NADA

The bum factor of after is nearing zero sans laughter.

 

Rhythm speeds to the point

Land speed record, 

escaping away by miles

at the speed of voice.

Escaping, enloving,

enliving, enjoying by miles

at my speed of choice.

Fins

You trod the land and so some of us occasionally wander into the 2/3 of the earth of which where our domain is nameless. They patrol the 2/3 of the planet with purposeful purpousness, dancing—it seems always—in our wake.

 

Here's to the species more apt, if not more perfect for, the planet.

 

Maybe photoshopped, maybe not. But imagine being, for once, on the other side of a glassy wave.

 

Word Rut

Since I’m in a word rut, I’ll go into my computer’s basement to see what’s there…

 

OK, here’s a golden oldie from way back when in the summer of

2003:

 

Blackout

 

 

Part 1:

 

We will take such events as an excuse to get physically close to our brethren, other New Yorkers; to mingle and migrate with them, us, I, by the million. To be centered on our two great common denominating thoughts: one of being a New Yorker in a New York moment of transience, and one of being a spark in a city of 4 million plugs. We focus forward and accelerate; we actively celebrate those with whom we are joining, rather than passively blink at who might be joining us.

 

We traverse great bridges on foot. We split apples with strangers. We proffer ponderance on the journey from Washington Heights to Red Bank using human contacts and a thumb. (Get to Hoboken, ask for Dave, he’ll take you to Slabby’s, $40 for a cab to New Brunswick, catch a bus there.) We casually glean the intricate meaning of the details in strangers’ lives.

 

We drink beer and wine and are ever more careful when playing darts in a dark bar. We smile at the policeman, who smiles back while suggesting that we keep to the left of his imaginary traffic boundary.  We keep left, and conspire to swing right somewhere in the unfurling distance.

 

We walk from upper east to upper west.

 

We sweat in metro-humidity. We curb crawl the neighborhoods for fresh bodega boxers and cold water.

 

Darkness brings an adrenalin rush. The stranded search for sleep on 42nd and Broadway, in Battery Park, in Central Park.

 

We sleep on marble steps, park benches and green lawns.

 

For the first time on this tiny island we have no light but the stars. The constellations confuse us, so we invent our own.

 

Inventing Constellations

 

Part 2:

 

Never did get to “Part 2.” Probably would have been something about personal transformation after drunken “blackout”, followed by a transition into a mundane conclusion about changing a light bulb. No. Storm wind blowing out candles. Light, rebirth and all that jazz. Yuk. Thank God “Part 2” didn’t happen.

 

Free Speech, Leopold and Molly

Today is the 100th anniversary of the publication of this novel. Here's a tasty quote:

As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.

- Ulysses, Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis

And one more:

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see.   - Ulysses, Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis

Ulysses

Happy Bloomsday to all. The man day wrote of the day 100 years ago today, wrote:

Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear? Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver king.

- Ulysses, Episode 17, Ithaca

Significant distraction

I’m quite distracted from my central core. I can’t seem to find the traditional route back. Painting and drawing suit me now, but words don’t seem to be, for the time being anyway, forthcoming.

Bad guy, retread

 

I am the bad guy. I groove temptation

 

Advice to those of you in my boots:

Are you experienced?

If so, be like fire, a progressive, devouring, emotive force.

 

Demand damned pleasure.

Prey on the day.  

Memorized moments of frozen bliss

hold keys to the future.

 

The past made you what you are now.

Time to cultivate feelings long plowed under.

Bring your dreams to life.

 

Do not judge harshly; do not judge at all.

Seduce, not over minutes or hours,

but over weeks, months if necessary.

 

My blood is the color of a strong improvisational glance.

Match it, I assure you, we’ll soon someday dance.

 

Yours should be of similar hue.

Pray to the god of mega.

Be the god of you.

 

Periodically, I make a coordinated effort to resurface.

I do not break the ice.

I melt the ice.

I breathe tonal fogs anddream of feathercats.

 

Our generation, despite rumors to the contrary,

is not lost.

We segue into newer kisses.

We touch, figure, adapt, initiate, explore and relax.

We can be slippery and be seen while being the scene.

 

We can go underground and dance with dozens,

then alone.

Then walk away.

I have hazy, hazy motives and project cool, convincing glances. A hip nature comes to mind.

Sometimes it’s time to be the savior,

sometimes it’s time to recklessly accelerate with determination.

Sometimes it’s time to listen to you whisper and breathe and imagine you

four seasons into the future.

 

I refer to old chart pages of Rolling Stone for nostalgia. I burn memories like others burn dinner.

I establish myself today, I live for tomorrow.

I get serious about not getting serious.

 

Are you experienced?

 

Mindless

I don't know why the words aren't coming. Maybe, hopefully, I'm in a period of living and feeling as opposed to one of contemplating and describing. What I need is for all four to kick in at once.

Skull needle

I am searching for more than song-- I need to feel things. I'm so numb and apathetic and focused and bored. I need fire. I need truth. I need stimulus.

Lover at high noon

My lover at high noon in bright white and high heat. Church and horses and red barn and woods and cross post fences and cars driving in the distance. A muddy summer awaits her and that one magic word swings us into passion. Can't wait for air conditinioning in July...

Mr. Charles

His songs might begin deceptively simple. Or, they might slide into slippery melody guided by the slither of his piano hands and the grace of his raspy voice. But whatever, it's life and from intro to verse to chorous to orchestral glory to deceptively dramatic finish and grand finale coda, his was a all a flow chart about living.

Flash burn radio gaze

 

I need the will to take a chance, the confidence to accelerate. I need the ability to perceive speed. The blinding speed of gods, the binding seeds of atoms. The speed of me is the very essence of this ghost. I live life as the pivotal trip switch of my own chaos. Tripping the electric fuse box of chaos. Is there a god in the manual of chaos? Read the manual. It’s manual labor. It’s all bloody hands and smiling eyes and a whiff of salt.

 

How did I get from will to salt? I need sleep.

The Eagle has landed

 

Nothing like being awake for 42 hours in a row to simmer the mind down to the bare elements of clarity. Or whatever this feeling is called...

Mugged

Who stole the sun from my heart?

I'll pack it back with firecrackers and gasoline and politely ask someone for a match made in heaven.

 

Power Steering

Those who are sardonic in vicissitude

are probably way too late to be benevolent in guidance.

-PK

(Can you believe that came out of me in one burst of thought?)

Shakespeare - Julius Caesar

Mark Antony:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interréd with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar…. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it….
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all; all honorable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral….
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,

whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see thaton the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Goal for today:

Have 2 entries from others I wish to comment upon, but may need to use my cell to do so.

Here comes the technology.

 

February Flashback

Just found this in the X drive archive.

Last entry before I left for the fateful trip to Monmouth Medical Center at the urging of Kara in Feb.

 

Crestfallen,

mercy light.

I have the will,

but not to fight.

 

Discouraged, down

Without a clue

I screwed up

In spite of you

 

Time will tell

Which wounds will heal

All I felt

Is truly real

 

My rhyme and meter

are off tonight

I tried but just

Don’t feel quite right

Them's hunting words

Amused

Abused

Confused

Refused

Who of you might be Geraldo Rivera and who of you might be Hunter S. Thompson?

 

(Hint: Was I locked up because I emulated the Hunter above?)

 

Tired, Wired, Wiser

Boy, am I wired. Tonight might be one of those nights. One of those nights when it’s wiser to stay up than to go to sleep. One of those nights when I’m better off slogging through tomorrow rather than fighting myself to wake-up today. The difference in noun tense is the difference in reality. Here comes the dreaded all-nighter.

 

It’s only 3:30, but if I go to sleep now, gauging my wiredness, I won’t fall asleep until 4:30. Then, I’ll have to wake up at 6:30. If you’re one of the many who has questioned my sleeping habits, you know how unlikely that likelyhood is. If you’re one of the few who know my pharmaceutical regimen, you know that if I nod off, I’ll be useless for 12 hours. I already have a pot of coffee ready to go at the flick of a switch.

 

But my brain and body feel good. All but for the 5-mile jog yesterday, which is still yielding unspeakable emissions from my lungs and a wobbliness in the still gimpy knee. I feel better doing it tonight than I have in six months. I did a lot of unpostable thinking tonight, which translated to a bit of unpostable writing. Which may, in turn, translate to a pivotal next week. Ugh.

Non-guilty consciousness

I never voted for Ronald Regan.

 

But he was by far the most enduring and evident presence, public and political, during the as thus far very best years of my life. In the shadow of his conservatism, I lived and grew up and got busted like never before and feared war and went to high school and college. I learned about the political process not from professors, but from the gallantly talented actor on TV. To this day I am complicity learned - if not always effective - in the vital importance of effective communication. This is nostalgia in action. This is the reintroduction of a past we will again willingly endure this week. This month. This year.

 

 Me? For the sake of the 80's, I will again listen to The Cure. And The Smiths who hated Thatcher, and The Minutemen who redundantly hated you if you had matching shoes on at the same time, and X, who were in L.A. when we were in Asbury Park. And Nebraska, the series of songs that tells it all.

 

I worked in a nursing home throughout my college years. I was a maintenance man. I tarred roofs, changed light bulbs, planted flowers, delivered laundry, conveyed  mass meals on a station wagon tail gait over speed bumps, dumped garbage, jump started dead batteries, shoveled snow, landscaped, wheeled paraplegics, drank beer, weeded gardens, made friends, sweated, froze, broke my nose, and walked into inexplicably invisible spider webs in wide open land. I did homework, got A’s and B’s and D’s, drove a truck and wore flannel like Cobain before Cobain was Cobain. I painted buildings pale with southern exposure a fresher shade of white. I ran generators and destroyed wasp nests. I mowed 45 degree inclines of weed and gravel. Got bit by a poisonous spider.

 

I saw the ravage of age. I saw the indescribable sadness of Alzheimer’s first hand. The blank stare, the loss of capacity for deliberate movement, the drooling, the incontinence.

 

My plea to God tonight is that all who die from that desolate of a disease have their happiest memories returned 10-fold upon the blink of entrance to the gates of whatever comes next. I never voted for Ronald Regan. I do vote for him in this way, and for all who fade with him, today and everyday.

 

Crock of wit

#3 of the series

 

I used to have a giant plastic alligator, smaller than real but still the size of 2 sneakers end-to-end. Natalie made me throw it away when there was still more junk than hope. Ha ha. This little menace does it no justice.

 

But imagine the lightening strike fear after getting an innocent cup of coffee, then seeing a pit bull prehistoric predator. (but not set on a giant contrast-enhancing napkin on a cobblestone coffee table.)

 

Still scared? Me neither. But the alligator is.

 

You wonder where Animal Control is. He wonders if he’s going to be boots, a belt, or, unlikely, find a way back to his beloved swampland.

Man of a shell

This shell is on my front doorstep, right underneath my mailbox. I marvel at it daily. Nature weathers much better than the lame pain of man to throw on a fresh coat of paint. But both efforts have their own beauty in age, if not grace.

Caramelancholy

#2 of the Series

Danger, Danger!

My WD-40 latte is swollen with c a r a m   e    l. Can't hail cab.....Sticky inside. Ummmmmmm. Caramel.

Brake

My goal is to pause, , ,  and,

Then to reenter life with the soul-bolstering choreography of purpose. In my profession, this consists of soul-blistering thought, soul-bleaching wonder and soul-blackening regret.

 

Desk

A disorganized desk is a sign of what?

Even superheros go to Starbucks

I'm working on a series of dioramas featuring famous bizzaro people in front of a Starbuck's tin my sister once sent me cookies in when I was sick and too tired to write run on sentences such as the one you are about to finish reading.

Novice that I am, I am still trying to make the pics larger and more enthralling to all. This is a work in progress.

Be that as it may, this is #1 in a series. Batman and Robin show customers the way out of Starbucks. Doesn't my coffee table make for a cool cobblestone street?