the history of envy

when does it begin? in the cradle, no doubt.

for example, my younger sister born just a little over a year after myself. my father doted on her. kicked off center stage i became a terror. i can't imagine how much i must have tormented her. my first memory at three (just down the street) of cutting off her golden locks. everybody made such a fuss over them. certainly, that may be jealousy. sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

envy, to me, means wanting the success and material goods other people have (the comfort and attention). why did she get a bigger slice of the pie? how come he's got that gorgeous girlfriend when he's ugly as sin? i suspect all of us go through life with this monkey on our back.

my friend dennis palumbo has just written a blog on the subject, envy in hollywood. good reading.

http://dennispalumbo.blogspot.com/

he consoles screenwriters having a tough time.

author envy, that's definitely a subject i know something about. 'he's nothing but a pimp selling bestsellers. throw him to the dogs.' like many other scribes i used to practice my nobel prize acceptance speech. that's how high the ambition goes. no wonder we've little tolerance for our own measly efforts. i do love a piece while i'm writing it, getting a short high when it's finished. next day, i can't stand it, have to write something else.

too many masterpieces, that's what one teacher said. when you've got tolstoy and shakespeare to go up against, you've got a problem. and the worst thing is: you'll never really know how good you are (and does it matter?) so much effort, so little love. if you weren't heard as a child, you'll keep interrupting your father's sermons, which i did religiously. i'd have the urge at a play or talk to stand up and shout, 'look at me. i can do it better.' this seems to have worn off a bit, thank god.

and in the good old days, say 18th century france, you could write one significant novel and relax. you'd done it. you had your words on everyone's lips. you relax and bathe in the glory for the rest of your life. alas, we live in the land of opportunity. you can always surpass yourself. you must. otherwise, people say, 'he's finished. lost his grasp, poor fellow.' there's more to get, more to be.

and that's the real trouble with envy. it may fuel your desires. at the same time it deflates you. that's right, in your envious state you wish to be other than you are, someone else. gurus and therapists make a fortune out of this, as do all religions. they teach (or try to) self-acceptance. 'but, then, how will i win?' everytime i get unhappy i realize ambition the root cause. as my mother more or less beat into me, 'you were born for glory. save the world!' it's one thing to be loved, it's another to be deified.

if you haven't seen 'tick, tick, boom' at the blue room, i recommend it. an early work of the writer who wrote the big hit 'rent' and died close to opening night. that fact certainly lessens my envy.

you can see pictures of the show here. www.pbase.com/wwp/tic

and buy tickets here http://www.blueroomtheatre.com/

a doctor's visit can be debilitating

not because he/she finds anything wrong. simply the whole process - weight, blood-pressure, temperature. my god we're so dependant on this body we know so little about. whenever i ponder it deeply, i can hardly walk down the street.

maybe it's the memories. in junior high i contracted rheumatic fever. my left knee turned into a baseball and my big toe into a malformed root. i stayed in the hospital a week, blood drawn twice a day. at home i lay around a lot. suddenly, i'd been thrown into a singular orbit, class a fourteen mile bus-ride away in the sagebrush desert of utah. school felt distant and strange.

i think it was king lear who said, 'my hand smells of mortality.' that's the bigger issue, of course. the other day i wished i were made of plastic. that might have it's drawbacks, but the robots are becoming more human.

maybe waiting did it. i asked several other students if they were in line for this particular doctor. yes, as i expected. he takes time with us. one girl seeing him for a chronic illness, cheerful and talkative. another to ask him about a problem with her dog. after being a drug-addict and trying to kill herself on anti-depressants, she'd been advised to get a pet, which she did. now she has something to live for, something that pulls her out of the room. unfortunately, a new apartment complex needs a medical reason for harboring a canine.

we discussed caring, the need for. otherwise we withdraw and contemplate dark clouds. my sister at fifty-four adopted two children to fight back the shadows. it worked, but at a price, children an extension of your nervous system you can't control. she'd morphed into three complicated bodies.

and for most of the rest of the day, i couldn't get interested in anything. the women in the african art history class lacked mana. nothing aroused me. i realized i'd just have to tough it out. at barnes and noble i found photo books nauseating. i looked through a book on f. scott fitzgerald. may be literature would help. i wandered the fiction section.

eventually, i stumbled across the stories of italo calvino - and finally something lit sparks. his

http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Cities-Italo-Calvino/dp/0156453800/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267764598&sr=8-1

got my imagination functioning. everything around me in store became vibrant. and it's true, that's the key. at the doctor's office i couldn't use my normal fantasy. that's the trouble with too much reality. we're way too complex to live as simply physical beings.

spring, season of the witch

when i was very young, i used to dream about being captive of beautiful witch. everytime she kissed me, i grew weaker. i'm beginning to think that way about spring.

where i live the allergy/asthma capitol of the world. for twenty years, i'd no problem. then it happened. a couple bouts of bronchitis combined with april, and i came home one day after eating a couple pieces of cheese and suddenly i couldn't breathe. terrified me, to say the least.

exrays, inhalers, visits to half a dozen pharmacies. masks, humidifiers, for three weeks i really thought i could drop dead at any moment. lost twenty pounds.

then, past the walnut blossoms, the mucus stopped. i learned to breathe the right way. (for a month, everytime i'd eat or drink, i'd breathe in, choking myself. i realized we let a breath out after swallowing.)

of course, the throat a family achilles' heel, to mix metaphors. my father often coughed, especially before and after giving sermons. so much for the theory vocal tightness comes from not expressing yourself. hey, come to think of it, maybe he had to force himself to be religious! that's an interesting thought.

supposedly the adam's apple the source of will. when the energy blocked, it falls back into the lungs and inflames them. this too seems possible. all kinds of bad things happen when we don't tell the truth or let our emotions be expressed. guess it doesn't take freud to figure this out.

the asthma attack certainly exacerbated by my mother's death several months before. she'd used sarcasm to control us kids and i think i never could forgive her for it - who was it said all depression comes from not mourning the loss of the mother? julia kristeva in 'black sun', maybe?

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Sun-Julia-Kristeva/dp/0231067070/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267381342&sr=8-1

for the analytically inclined, a good read.

so i'm trying to get back to normal: no soy, dairy, wheat, and god knows what else. lots of research on the net under phlegm aroused quite a few questions and answers. and robert burton in an 'anatomy of melancholy' (from shakespeare's time) discussed character types - self-help books nothing new - and one the phlegmatic personality. hmm, might be worth reading even today.

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Anatomy-Melancholy-Dover-Literature/dp/0486421163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267382661&sr=1-1

did you know soybean oil in almost every supplement? i found out this morning. i've a whole box of them, take them everyday. ugh, reading labels enlightening and disturbing. wow, i'm going to have be more discriminating.

but i don't want to stop everything. damned if you do, damned if you don't. if you look at these photos, you'll see the beauty that poisons us.

www.pbase.com/wwp/pw

when did the u.s.a. become a 3rd world country?

now i must make a disclaimer. as a poet and artist i'm hardly qualified to talk about politics. in fact, these roles demand a kind of perfection of life that isn't possible. and the political art remains what can be done under the circumstances.

that said, i'd like to ask a few questions (and give my answers, of course).

when ronald reagan elected, i shared an apartment in new york city with my friend susie. upon reagan's ascension, susie cut out article after article from the newspapers, delineating the programs the new president eliminated. from the beginning it was a revolution, one curiously unremarked by history. basically, he dismantled equality. as the leader of the house said, 'he has a heart of ice.'

why should we be surprised? as governor of california he closed the mental hospitals. you wonder where those indigent people you step over on the way to work came from? look no further. mr. reagan put the insane back on the street. so much for a caring government.

i read his early diaries and autobiography, where's the rest of me? well, that's one question i never could answer.

you wonder where the recent financial crisis came from? look no further. as he signed the bill deregulating the savings and loan, he did a little dance and declared delightedly, 'we did it. we did it!' yes, he certainly opened up the door to everything we've experienced in the past few years.

i haven't been able to find it, but posted in the university library at the end of his reign, i remember an article from the san francisco chronicle. it declared at the beginning of his tenure americans had never been so equal in income, at the end so unequal. our lack of historical memory might once have been justified. however, anything you wish can be found on the internet. after all, it originally established to exchange information between university libraries. thus, it remains a liberalizing force.

when the democrats left office in 2001, a three trillion dollar surplus existed. at the end of the next administration millions lost their jobs. so much for the myth of conservative money handling. how we fall for it again and again beats me. maybe i'm too much of an outsider, feeding on the bottom. crumbs from the table, i'm delighted to scoop them up and have time for my own thoughts.

i do know a couple of things. one is: running a big country is a lot different than running a small. and the other is: you can't found a society on a theory, that way the path to a totalitarianism. a big country a free-for-all, a free-fall. the best we can have is the freedom to succeed or fail by our own lights. and i recommend appreciating what you already have. when big sums of money are involved, trust nobody.

the craving for grit

where does it come from? and do we like it only in fantasy?

i've been looking at the photos of brassai, a hungarian photographer who wandered pre-war paris, mostly at night, surprising people in brothels, sneaking up on public urinals, fascinated by street fairs. this is a wonderful book.

http://www.amazon.com/Brassai-Monograph-Brassa%C3%AF/dp/0821226681/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267032284&sr=8-6

a friend of henry miller, there's the same kind of savior faire in his pictures, the love of grit.

now grit, like all great words, has two meanings. one is: you get riled up, focused, determined, and you do it (whatever it is). alas, the other association is with grime! sand in the axles, greasy spoons, dark alleys. and in some sense, both are true.

these old photos in black and white deliver us, temporarily, from the virtual world of image and color in which we live. they take us back to something basic. the tragedy is: we want to live in this reality only in imagination. we love big (huge, overblown) houses, fancy electric lights and bathroom fixtures, the creation of a desire to be royalty - an anthropology teacher in college said, 'we live better than any kings did before 1900.' yet our well-fed faces do crave those covered with lines, the feeling someone has lived through something, toughened up, survived. that's the charm of wwII in europe.

my first time in paris as a teenager in 1956 i reveled in the old cafes, the back streets. unfortunately or fortunately, paris at that very moment being spiffied up, the buildings being sand-blasted to tan and white, turning it into a backdrop for hollywood movies. (30's paris certainly a shadowy, grey place.) you can't take photos now as you could then. like my trip to russia in 1992, when the falling of the wall hadn't changed the set much, moscow reeked of stalin. i can't say i liked it, except as an artist everything so interesting. and grim, gritty. i don't say real, as this covers a multitude of sins. however, it taught me how basic and nasty life can be.

no, color doesn't cut it when it comes to grit. and believe me, russia at that moment a washed-out memory of imperial glory.

"i had a good time dying"

or as timothy leary said as he was knocking at the pearly gates, 'senility is underrated.'

these thoughts popped into my mind as i sat in front of a wwII table of memorabilia being sold at a gun show by my former boss. i tried to convince him to ingest medical marijuana as he goes through ten months of chemo. yes, a severe case of cancer gradually eating him alive.

i could have told him about the writer aldous huxley who died high on lsd as the news of jfk being shot came over the radio, the nurses' ears glued to the speakers. but, no, a writer not a good example. now, if it had been General Patton. (my own connection with the Good War and childhood didn't even occur to me. however i did leave the fairgrounds disquieted by guns, guys in beards, women encouraging them in this macho pasttime.)

maybe later, when he feels like hell, he'll take my advice.

then, taking a shower this morning, i thought of a stand-up comic who loves being booed off the stage, who loves to annoy the audience. (laughing, he tells his cronies at the green stallion, 'i really died up there.') can you find delight in failure? i think so. it's probably the ultimate nirvana. finally, you've given up pleasing anybody but yourself.

here's a poem i wrote sometime ago to console myself.

Failure has gotten a bad name,

hanging out in all the wrong places,

joining gangs of hoodlums, wearing

leather. Failure doesn't know how

to improve his image, even when

we'd all love to love him. I met

Failure last night playing jazz

in a seedy bar. I said to him,

"Failure, you've got a problem." Failure

said, "I don't have a problem, I am

a problem, my own worse enemy.

Everybody tells me. 'Get a coat and tie,

clean up your act. Even if you can't

be a success, act like one.' Do you know

how much I hate all those successes

driving their fancy cars, going home

to wives and dogs, loving their children

because it makes everything go so

easily? NO, I'm not about to get braces

on my teeth. I have no intention

of getting a shampoo and shave,

let alone shining my shoes. Failure is its own

reward, it gets you out of the game.

Now I can play my trumpet like nothing

else in the world mattered. I can search

for the perfect note in the void, having

eliminated all superfluous sounds." Yes,

I left Failure leaning up against the bar

with a smile on his face, and I felt

ashamed of myself. I still wanted success,

to be like everybody else, though I knew now

the true price that must be paid.

actually, allergies have had me on the ropes for the past couple nights and days. ('it must be spring') can i truly take my own medicine?

here are a few pictures reaching out into nature for support, even if the trees and flowers toss poison in my path.

www.pbase.com/wwp/pw

in the interest of public safety

forget terrorism. the most dangerous thing you can do: climb in your car and drive to the grocery store. especially at night, on a two lane road. (85% percent of highway fatalities.)

i just did it, going downtown to check my mail. a mile of that happens on highway 32, a stream of headlights coming my way. any one of them could take me to my maker. a boeing 747 remains a haven of comfort by comparison.

safety, what is it really? i lived 42 years without health insurance, travelled all over the world. lucky? undoubtedly. but i figured to impoverish my experience for the sake of living forever! hey, that's the chance you take. if you live for the next life, this one's going to be pretty dull.

after the fall of communism, conservatives in disarray didn't know what to do. they'd used the fear of russia to maintain power for many years. fortunately for them, 9/11 came along and saved them. suddenly, a muslim could be planted behind every bush, a bomb in his/her shoe. instead of eastern europe, we inherited the whole islamic world as an enemy. if would be a joke, if it hasn't proved so tragic.

you know, last nite it hit me: afghanistan's a lost cause. the russians destroyed the civilized infrastructure. the taliban guerillas come from every direction. cut off the head of one leader, and a dozen new ones spring up. the warlords go with the winner. the heroin farmers undermine the rest of the world. (why don't the americans simply pay them not to grow poppies? they pay people in their own country not to grow crops in order to keep the prices up.) all this said, i personally don't want the taliban back in power. they've nothing to offer women but their chains.

finding safety has its limits. common-sense goes a long way. and so many eras in history desolate as eastern new jersey. even if our bodies were plastic, they wouldn't last forever. poor robots, running down. power supply! power supply! it's the voice of a child crying wolf.