I wad it up, unawed by it. It’s amazing how useless every thing becomes. I suppose most things were al ways useless. There is a glint of giddy calm in my heart. Yes, mine belongs to me (this has to be the new me, app arently). HOURS LATER... Feeling ever so moody. No more internet. The phone is gasping its last breath as if it realizes this is likely worse than losing a liv ing member of the family if not a long term pet. The drama. Oh. I am to get an eviction notice to day if not tomorrow.
This laundry facility in my apartment building will now close daily at 10:00 pm and reopen daily at 9:00 am. (Find your honesty. Be a good person.) I wrote a poem in 4th grade. It was called “Math,” and my 5th grade teacher, un- beknownst to me, entered it into some sort of scholastic state- wide contest. I don’t know if I have a copy of the poem presently, but I remember many of its lines (the first two of which were “Math is hard, very hard/ Addition, subtraction, division.”) which, for me, is pretty unusual (to remember a line from anything, that is, and it rhymed: ABAB, ABAB; the word hard was paired with guard, division with supervision, etc.). When I was in 7th grade I learned that the poem had won, that it had been published in the winning anthology. I thought it was cool, but I had pretty much moved on from poetry by then. All of my science and math teachers were also coaches (football, basketball, gymnastics, etc.) when I was in 7th grade. Mainly coaches or Primarily coaches are two phrases which immediately come to mind. We students even addressed them as “Coach [so and so]”. When I was in 7th grade, my science teacher, the high school football coach, turned beet red with anger (at something I cannot remember) and threw an entire desk (complete with the chair, like the desks in pretty much any classroom of that particular era) out the window and onto the grass that grew next to the building that housed the high
vague notes sent away to an even more vague and perhaps mythological or fantastical “public circle” (i.e., the people who read any of what i write (here -- or anywhere) as it relates to a ‘reality’ - or as a timestamp or a milepost pinned into this ‘reality’ and use it for some ‘perspective’ both in present & for and from future (and hence perspectives past as they pertained and pertain in retrospect to a present and possible future)....to locate:
perception vs. perception perception vs. ‘reality’ ‘reality’ vs. ‘reality’ etc.
these matches can run individually, on a 2-3 person acquaintances or close friendship or more profound (to whom among the core?) relationship of some kind. does smaller scale (for me) loom so much larger in lifetimes of relative peace? i’ve known no hardship. so i make mountains out of molehills. molehills are my mountains. there is a certain control.
compare and contrast to larger scale.
and to reactions to various of these fights (versuses).
fight vs. flight
to run away (escaping reality and ‘reality’) or to confront (in hopes).
and especially as this pertains to “survival of the fittest” (darwinian, real), vs. psychological, per se (start, for example, with freud’s continued prevalence, the sexism etcetism inherent; the seeming ridiculousness and yet assimilation into modern culture which makes up ‘reality’?),
‘reality’ and ‘perceptions’ about both small and large group occurrences (a few friends, a country, the world, how we make it all palatable somehow, etc.)...
then: reality. then, why poetry? duh. would be a relieving way to end this journey of thought before starting again. and again. until you never get it right.
isn’t clear anymore, not like the furniture that always reaches out to grab that pain and tuck it neatly away. She had lots of leeway, that Bette Davis. Her eyes (and it’s no wonder Kim Carnes not only sang the song about them [enormously more successful, in fact, than Jackie DeShannon’s original version which came out in 1974]; that song, Carnes’ version, was, per Kasey Kasem, the biggest hit of 1981, spending a whopping 9 weeks at #1) could fluctuate instantaneously between whip- poorwills floating in and (mostly) out of them and spinning nails of ice being shot at deviant, even lethal, speeds emerging from her tiny black pupils. Did you know, by the way, that Nathan Lane (for whom I’m often mistaken, as you well know) stringently studied under the original Nail of Ice, who, sadly, died yesterday after suffering (but briefly) from a horrible squirrel- bite that had left a rather large hole in the middle of the top- less bar tattooed under his left forearm. Nail was a fairly unknown guy. Nutty, though, just like Lynch, who’d just cast him in the new season of Twin Peaks, which was nevertheless released as originally scheduled (just as the poor, dead Ms. Palmer had assured those of us who were alive enough to stick through to the end of the beginning, which also transpired...and, sadly, quickly exp ired...in the early 1980s) in 2017 on Showtime. But, boy, what a show the original was, much to the chagrin of all of us when we gleaned that Nail of Ice’s death was but a red herring lain to keep the gaunt actors who played the aging agents from discovering the truth (any truth at all, in fact). A glance at one of those very herring’s ear rings literally twisted Alfred Hitchcock’s gait. He was filming a glass of wine and, immediately, like a corkscrew turned from the camera and walked hastily away —— in precisely the opposite direction of his camera’s gaze.
Most everything goes down better with humor (done with proper flair, of course; no need to insult my intelligence, un- less occasionally, perhaps when it deserves it; a spoonful of sugar and all), a hint or two of non- chalance (the subtler the better) and as much cheekiness as can be mustered. And, most importantly, these in- gredients are not just important for the delivery, one absolutely has to live them. It’s like method acting only British; but a performance that never witnesses even a half- yawn. And of course it’s got to have snark; and a spectrum of ticklebone that ranges the spectrum
It was like getting a cat thinking it would act like a dog —Ruth Lepson
It’s the British invasion here. And that's cool. Even though I was supposed to bring left overs from home for my lunch, which certainly would have been better than the turkey
sandwich from Quizno’s. Plus I have popcorn hulls stuck between my teeth and this is happening in two different dimensions. I mean time zones.
Coco wants out. She hates me, now more than ever. Coco the Loco. Sepia the Cat, on the other hand, was a dog in a cat’s body if ever there was one.
She loved every breathing thing, wasn’t the least bit bi- polar, and if a dog, per chance, dropped by to visit, and, no lie, the larger the better (and we seemed to know a LOT of
very large dogs) she’d just jump up and down nipping at its neck and playing with it like it were her sibling. Those poor dogs. It seemed they never knew whether to run or gobble her up like a very small
appetizer (the real expensive ones that are often served on very tight budgets so the sit-down dinner price is considerably less pricy, often with out the guests feeling anything but slighted. Tricks of the trade....).
Back to meanwhile, or to that thing I escape these days that’d be called “The Present” (I like to think of my escape a matter of life and death. How fun, right?), Coco claims territory and more than a bit of terror. She
growls now, quite often, when I approach. Me! The one who’s always kept her food bowl at slightly less than empty! Sepia would by now be here in bed with me, her dogless catbody completely under the
HOLD ON! Incorrect! How might I make the best of a bad situation? Remember that the ones that seem worst aren’t always so. Any way, a lot has happened.
Everyone went to bed, for example, and forgot all about me. And that nightmare (this one very much a reality) of the jealous cellphone ringing incessantly that I can’t help but listen to; voice messages I obviously shouldn’t be hearing. But I’m the crazy one. I’m the bad boy. Always have been
(well, ever since a senior in high school when I did a complete about-face from goody-goody).
What did I do about it then? Headed straight in the
opposite direction. Drive for miles like I’m heading
to California to realize my dreams. Years later,
when I am convinced they’ve been realized--my dreams--
I head straight away to the stress (back home). Well, I am
home. Or at least I always believed myself have one--
a home. Somehow, I slept a little bit. This part never
had a hint of danger before. But now? Now, I’m a
“chickenshit?” Maybe so, but not in the way in which
that accusation is pelted at me. The irony keeps ring
ing in my head and I spin around for years wondering
when the vertigo will ever go away; if I’ll ever know
the firmness of reality or the moist breath of honesty. Such things have never existed for me. Perhaps I was
born into the wrong era. Or I skipped the day they
covered chickenshit in high school (which would,
of course, have to’ve been during my senior year,
after my one-eighty). Was I something
different before? Was I really better?
I feel as if I’ve been split from my toes
all the way up to my head in an extra large cheese grater. Silly, silly, heart that acts like rubber; takes forever to damage, even just a little bit. But a little bit is all it takes. Now that’s complete erasure, I think. But really, which me do you think was better?
silly rendition of human behavior... —Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett show, shortly after he
