our investment in cultural icons

                                          their first murder (weegee)

using celebrities to stabilize our view of the world certainly a risky business. hence, our attention to scandal, especially sexual. i'm not surprised when a financier robs the bank. that's what he's born to do. however, if a president makes it with his secretary, big news! this, despite the affairs of jfk, the mistresses of eisenhower and roosevelt, and i find my interest (and more) aroused.

everybody likes to gawk at the mess of a car crash, the scene of crime, me included. i guess none of us can avoid three important questions: is it a danger, can i eat it, will it have sex with me? the survival of the species depends upon this awareness and taking immediate action. unfortunately, all kinds of sex illegal and threatening. no wonder fewer and fewer people marrying, both in the united states and in europe. why be prosecuted for having three husbands when you can simply live with three men? definitely, this is progress. if you can do without the wedding dress, maybe you can live modestly.

oscar wilde wrote: our servants will do our living for us. that's exactly the role of the public on pedestals we idolize. i sit in a bookstore cafe and watch men and women, young and old, studying US, people magazine, fan games day after day. the thrill only goes when one of them fails to behave - if it's a politician, he/she a dead duck. movie stars, on the other hand, cash in as long as they can. mea culpa gives them more covers.

and once a generation passes, new idols are born. each has its own. frank sinatra lives, as does elvis. we didn't depend on them at the bank. they get free passes. elect a poker-faced president on whom we can project all our hopes and desires and we're doomed to disillusionment, a huge disparity between promises made and promises kept. i, for sure, like to deny the complexities of the economy. print more money, that's my solution. why didn't anybody think of it?

you see how limited my resources and knowledge are. and i don't feel i'm alone. aren't you a one-issue voter? what matters most? mortgages, abortion, taxation? whatever we focus on becomes our god and we can do no wrong.

things can always be made to look different. here's a watercolor version of the revolving door: www.pbase.com/wwp/door2

who are those living in the tents?

confessedly, as i walked the streets of berkeley, the tent cities seemed created by the folks who sleep in the parks usually. that's a callous attitude, but i've always been reluctant to be rowdy. despite me being a slacker, it looks like this consciousness-raising technique working on everybody, in some way.

rep. deutch from florida introduced an amendment to the constitution banning corporation political funding and removing them from 'personhood' which gives them the same rights and assurances as individuals. the ruling by the supreme court to allow unlimited spending by the conglomerates could be considered the death-nell of democracy. more power to rep. deutch.

something else that had to be done: outing the people most responsible. a new poll on http://www.bravenewfoundation.org/ allows you to vote for the villains. this at least allows names, faces, and companies to be put together. these elders won't like it. everybody in america wants to be seen as democratic and middle-class, especially the most wealthy. to stand out too much makes you a target. i voted for my supreme evil-doer. see if you can guess who it is.

as more leaders come forward, the issues ramping up. you have to have charismatic figures speaking for you, centers of vocal and social energy, otherwise these grassroots movements peter out. going to be very interesting to see what develops.

the revolving door has more than one meaning: www.pbase.com/wwp/door

how did i find the other me in me?

discomfort. (unpleasant to say it, but somebody had to.) by changing places and circumstances, cat-sitting for a week in berkeley and roaming the streets and museums of san francisco. we're not talking extreme deprivation, just a change in routine, the house cold, the bathroom upstairs, walking to the subway past the homeless posing as demonstrators and kids flooding out of the high school for lunch.

what happened? people started talking to me out of the blue. a couple before a flamenco concert, a pretty grad student from san francisco studying in paris and complaining about the bus service. another time a woman from philadelphia asked me where to get off for golden gate park. she praised the transportation system! and said, 'how wonderful to live in a clean city.' yes, i remember years ago a pop bottle exploding on the top of our family car passing through her town.

i found myself joking with strangers, complimenting them on their work, in other words i came out of my shell in some way that encouraged people to speak with me. what a pleasure. that hasn't happened in a long time. and it's all because of discomfort. back home in my little room, i don't have to go anywhere. i'm not pulled out into the world of Titian and Pissaro, not stunned by a beautiful painting by Manet and a couple by Watteau.

in fact, i had a small epiphany. after gazing at photos in the realistic manner, not to mention aisles of art in the same style, i stumbled on a little cezanne. i'd never understood his appeal to picasso and the moderns. this time he felt absolutely refreshing, me seeing his piece as an abstraction. what a relief from all these wonderful, ordinary, expected versions of reality. abstraction lies behind every work of art, yet it took cezanne to bring it forward.

yes, here in my little nine by twelve foot monk's cell, lovely trees out the window, the bathroom and hot water a step away, the Internet service like lightning, heat in winter, coolness in summer, a soft bed, food a quick fix, i tend to rot away in my thoughts, my very pleasant daydreams. this time, coming back, i asked myself, 'where have the last thirty years gone?'

a few photos and watercolors from this expedition, the revolving door, and that is definitely meant metaphorically:

www.pbase.com/wwp/door

www.pbase.com/wwp/door2

once you owe money, you don't own your soul

'now wait a darn minute,' i can hear you saying. 'that may be true for some people but not for me.' debt is like death, or the ten commandmants, everyone insists on an exception. 'we need money for college, to buy a house, to invest in stocks. money makes money.' hmm, that's not what i'm hearing from the newspapers and my friends. 

take an education, for example. students leaving school after five years twenty to forty thousand dollars in the hole. how long will it take to crawl out of it? what options have you surrendered, like back-packing around the the world or meditating in an ashram? ultimately, you become a conservative by virtue of your pact with the bank. you may demonstrate against the government out of frustration: 'i was too young. i didn't know. you evil folks wrote checks for me.' tell it to the judge.

or buying a house. yes, property changed humankind forever, and i think for the better, ie. it created individuality. no longer were you merely a tribal entitiy. and now i'll reveal the truth, my family in bondage the whole time i was growing up. yes, i remember my mother writing she couldn't even buy a candy bar, adding insult to injury since her family lost  their wealth in the great depression. we closed off rooms in winter, slept with hot bricks, bundled up in warm clothes. when my father exited the bus from the east where he'd applied for the army, he almost fainted, not having eaten in three days.

and when food in short supply, the kids fight over it, identifying it with love. we survived borrowing money from my uncle walter, the batchelor. in the end i paid a terribly price for it, my personality undergoing a complete change when i lived with him and alcoholic uncle luzerne. driven inward by the feeling i must conform to their wishes, all of us indebted to him, i couldn't fight back and psychologically knuckled under and succumbed. read the letters exchanged with my family at the time: www.pbase.com/wwp/son

yes, a faustian bargain feels good at the time, saying to yourself, 'i will never have to pay it back.'  alas, the truth quite otherwise. the sword of damocles may very well hang over your head for the rest of your life.

can there be jobs without a steve jobs?

many moons ago, peter smith, head of university arts & lectures, said, 'what's needed is a center of energy.' in terms of the real world, this person provides the drive making things happen, whether it's a product, service, or religion. and, alas, i'm not one of these people. i'm the idea guy. when it comes to mustering community forces, i'm an utter dud.

i've been browsing through the coming jobs war by the ceo of the gallup polling group, jim clifton. usually i shy away from war books, however i figured i'd give this a shot. as usual, the book contains one premise: entrepreneurs needed. the innovative may announce, even begin, a revolution. the audience-builder has to create desire in the hearts of consumers. the author sites many examples of inventions turning into also-rans. i think of the lcd, invented by americans and ridden across the finish line by the japanese.

anybody advising steve j. about phones, music services, and pads, said, 'hey, stevee, these dead territories, why re-invent the wheel.' the rest history. building a better mouse-trap not time wasted. the rats continue to climb aboard a sinking ship, for that is what the gallup guy gallops toward. 'we need thirty percent of the world's smartest to survive. health care killing us. school dropouts, how they going to help pick us up?'

you know, the trouble with starting a business is you have to work all the time. it's so much nicer to collect a paycheck and have another life. mercifully, i've been able to do it. psychics tell me i've had so much responsibility and seen so much destruction, i get a vacation. i'm not sure inventing the device blowing up atlantis qualifies me for an easy time. well, life is not fair. i'll take what i can get.

usually, i've lost my jobs through boredom: bagging groceries, pulling chain for a surveyor, sweeping a dime-store. as long as i can dream while working i'm free. god-forbid i should be supervised! how i got through this lifetime i'm not sure. true, i'm a workaholic when it comes to writing, theater, art, photography. let me drive myself insane, even if i lack the skills and desire to make fame pay.

if you find the entrepreneurs at fault, you'll have to build your own factory for cannonballs. those will always be needed, even if it's  been done before. take choreographers  for example: www.pbase.com/wwp/dancepics

the struggle to resist belief

like most mortals, at seven and eight i started creating categories, putting cats into this one, socks into another, girls into several. i couldn't help myself. the world overwhelmed me with too much information. for example, ten billion stimuli hit our eyes every second. of those we can actively recognize forty and deal with four at most. we create a life day by day, editing out what we fear or doesn't seem useful.

lately i've spent time with two friends devoured by conspiracy theories. these occupy their minds to organize the world. as usual, nefarious political and financial people conspire to get everything, to steal from us, to make us suffer. unfortunately, it's true, though the upper one percent would never agree. 'we're creating job opportunities.'

yet, what's really happening in the minds of my friends? the making sense of the world by adopting a system which keeps their busy minds occupied. and when i watch people pouring over the bible in cafes, i think the same, 'they've reduced life to this particular, very comprehensive and confusing book from which you can justify anything.' luckily, it evades science, economics, anything which might prove even more difficult to assimilate. again, frantic intelligences being absorbed in a complete universe.

any paradigm can be proven true. that's the beauty of it. all you have to do is accept a few basic premises without proof and the rest follows! this, you have to admit, completely ingenious. what it eliminates is doubt, ambiguity, and the hell of independent thought. and, of course, i would like to suggest an alternate route.

CANDLE

Surely you weren't meant
to be born here in this
kitchen, waiting for
the ants. Old Greek poets
sang of dresses falling
from lovely limbs, the moon
bouncing off the water.
Sanskrit sages denied
anyone could resist the
flute of Krishna, tunes
fluttering through the perfumed
leaves. Married women
dropped wedding rings,
shyness, customs, the
husband's heavy sighs,
to slide out the door
into the forest. And if
you find yourself doing
the same, open the poems
of Bhartrihari and drink
the deep silence of the stars,
burn like the candle
you left far behind
watching in the window.

taking in all the evidence: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems 

make everyday count 'cause it's all you've got

it's painful giving people advice on how to live. they never do what i say. yet i can't stop it. for example, two fellows yesterday, both basically out of jobs, early thirties, upset about what to do next. one burdened by student loans, he can't even imagine what he might want. the other, just fired as the head of a theater in a state of shock. and i couldn't hold myself back, poor guys.

'go to saudi arabia for a year and pay off your debt.' 'figure out how to get to england and establish a career.' my god, these are big chunks to swallow. everything seems incredibly beyond reach when you're depressed. and you may be down in the dumps unexpectedly, me for example. this week a 200 dollar brake job on my truck turned into a 1000 dollar one. i offered to give the cashier at the car dealer my blood instead of cash. she didn't go for it.

okay, let's break this down into bites. at five years old you liked to dress up, 'who shall i be today?' you're on the edge, slaving as a cook, but you can do it. salvation army's just a block away. acquire an outlandish wardrobe and be a drag queen at breakfast,  join the local people doing mad fashion shows. and as for you, having had england as your playpen at five, you can start stealing english silver from antique stores and eat off it every evening. be a thief of time.

He did not dare touch the coffin
a passion in glass
a lesson in perfection
He
did not dare hope
for anything so living
as love
in the flesh
He satisfied himself with eyes
Imagine
the shock of the dropping
the cracking of the coffin
Snow White
jarred awake from the land
of her dreams
into his

We think of ourselves as victims
yes
that's a good beginning
victims
Everything done to us
birth was done to us
nobody asked
death was done to us
we resisted
personally
Eyes were done to us
and noses
socks and shoes
we didn't ask to live
in houses and pants
streets were done to us
circuses and cotton candy
beer and brothels came to us without our asking
We took them
we took it all
what else were we supposed to do


the androids have been asking for you: www.pbase.com/wwp/android2