the little boy who got to cry fire

to be a movie-star is not enough, you have to head up a rock band and tour the country. Kevin Bacon passed through town with his brother last weekend and played the el rey theater. the forty dollar admission too much. still, i thought about waylaying him in the alley and saying, "hey, kevin, i'm the fire lookout you visited 23 years ago."

yes, that my most intense experience of hollywood. the crew repainted my lookout, covered the buildings next door so they'd looked older. everybody ate a hot lunch a la fellini, gazing down upon crystal lake, while they bitched about the cheap producer only spending 80,000 dollars a day! i remember how kevin during a conversation got the call for his one minute of work. suddenly, his focus shifted, narrowed, totally on the scene to come.

of course, i had to write him a play. unfortunately, it about a gay social worker with his own band. this obviously not the flavor he wanted to project at that stage in his career (before fame and going to the moon). i can understand his boredom with movie-making. the director the sole person on the set working all the time. otherwise it's like war, wait, wait, wait, BANG!

and as a rock star you don't have to share the limelight with anyone. this for performers who didn't get listened to as kids. and i too wrote songs for awhile, took voice lessons, sang once in a coffee-house. in the end it's nerve-wracking. yesterday, passing roadies unloading tons of equipment at the senator theater, i thought, 'all this road time. what a bore.'

instead, i meditate on a mountain, and every once in awhile i leap to my feet and call on the radio with false calmness, 'SMOKE REPORT.' 500 people go into motion, trucks, airplanes, helicopters. all hell breaks loose. the adrenalin flows. ah, my fix for the day is over. i go back to daydreaming.

rose, roses, and more roses: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/ordeal

on having a birthday when i shouldn't

slumped over in a chair, reading and writing for fifty years, i figured i'd be finished at 60, my spine like a noodle, my eyes growing dim, my hearing nonexistent. SURPRISE. i'm still here, walking and talking.

true, i took extreme chances, which i do not recommend. no health insurance for 42 years. i kept telling myself, life is fatal, you're headed to only one place, you only know one thing for certain. a hundred years ago no one had health insurance. okay, it was all self-hypnosis and i should be pushing up daisies.

my father died of a heart-attack at 53 and my grandfather lived to be 100. with that kind of spread, i understood: IT'S ALL A CRAP-SHOOT. besides, i've been very lucky with money, in debt once for a month, otherwise completely solvent. not buying a house or having kids helped in that department. parenting the most exhausting job in the world.

now, i did make a few bets with the angels. i said, i'll devote myself to creativity, if you'll do your part. and standing on my mountain i whispered to the forest, i'll take care of you, you take care of me. so far so good. i know i can age overnight and turn to dust. never a pleasant thought, and yet sometimes i tire of the tension and think, i've used it all up, time to rest.

i will share a couple of open secrets. i try to walk at least an hour a day. alas, i'm too lazy to lift anything and point to the butler when that's necessary. (no, there is no butler, but you know what i mean. as oscar wilde said, our servants will do our living for us. that's why we have movie-stars and politicians.)

tip number two: i take a fistful of supplements every day. when it came out, i read a book called STOP AGING NOW by jean carper, and i've pretty much taken her advice and a lot of pills: l-tyrosine, mega minerals, vitamins, extra vitamin b & d. coenzyme q10, folic acid, odourless garlic, glucosamine/chondroitin/msm, a big dose of calcium/magnesium at night (really does stave off many aches and pains), add to these my child's aspirin, welbutrin, prozac and prisolec. and more.

that scratches the surface. my doctor says, you have very expensive urine! but my thought is if my cells need even one thing for sure, i'll hand them a shotgun to get it.

so, my friends, as my therapist buddy says, if you want to have a good death, don't wait til you're incapacitated. whew, if i only had the necessary foresight. love to you all.

ps. and then there's always theater. i've a show rose photos in the lobby: http://blueroomtheatre.com/ this performance will make a dead-man walk.

"Fear is the best antidote for ennui."

ah, so that's why halloween 3 and chainsaw massacre do so well at the box office. and many moons ago daniel boorstin in the image said americans literally bored to death.

so, do our wars seem like accidents? forget it. a volunteer armed forces working cause so many young adults can't stand the suburbs and projects. of course, being a drug dealer more thrilling and enterprising. alas, a criminal must pretty much go it alone. in combat buddies watch each other's backs and bond. the u.s.a. has been at war since the beginning. and the civil war relieved the populous of a threatening peace.

you see, in all music keys change places, not to create a new mood (unless major to minor or vice verso), rather our short attention-span sidetracked and revived by it, temporarily. change tricky, of course. almost all violent revolutions ultimately bore the citizens so badly they opt for an even more repressive government. and in our own lives change doesn't suggest itself often. no wonder personalities never improve unless there's brain-damage.

when i walked out of a therapist's office for the first time, i had a weird sensation. i realized it was fear. good gravy, i'd been afraid my whole life and that's what's kept me safe. i simply can't stay in the same place for long - the gods might find me, death might strike - either intellectually or physically. after all, the gods invented humans out of boredom.

what about foreign travel? i always thought i needed to gain experience to be a writer. and think of all the down times, the dirt, grit, bedbugs, almost fatal romances. did i live in a berlin basement to disguise my terror with wartime memories? fear is not only the cure for ennui, it's the medicine for trembling.

you can listen to an account of my time in berlin here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYrmhLzWeGs

who killed the circus chimera?

let's see, chimera, what's the definition? something totally unrealistic or impractical: a wildly unrealistic idea or hope or a completely impractical plan. or organism with genetically different tissues. in other words, like these letters a deer combined with a goat makes a dote!

actually, i'm in mourning still for a certain big top that came to town several years ago. i got a few pictures, yet wanted to go back for more. when it didn't show up again, i did a bit of research.

BROWNSVILLE — In Jim Judkins’ Rio Hondo backyard, trailers of circus equipment sit locked and immobile, monkeys curl their fingers around the bars of a metal cage, a massive tent — the big top itself — is furled and stored behind a row of unused generators.

�Circus Chimera — Coming soon,� reads a spray painted sign on a trailer’s broadside.

Judkins laughs. No circus, he says, is coming to Brownsville in the near future.

Because of recent changes in the United States’ temporary-work visa program, Judkins had to cancel Circus Chimera’s itinerary for the first time in its 10-year history

turns out a quirk of fate put them out of business. they couldn't get visas for the 51 mexican workers who did all the grunt work. and evidently they didn't want to go with lowlife carnies. during the intermission, a manager had told me the circus family-run and cleaned up. what a difference from the county fair with its garish, rusty rides.

a world without circuses, do i want to live in it? after all, running away to join was always a way out. the physical life, balancing on a bar high above the crowd, daring fate to do its worst. instead, now it's the tame, boring existence. the one that leads to crime and war. no wonder we demand the news be dramatic and deadly. ordinary days leave us cold.

NO WAY OUT, what could be worse. pretty soon we'll have nero fiddling while the gladiators tear the lions apart. not quite what i had in mind. this circus one of the few not to use animals. and you know, i hadn't even missed them at the time: the sad elephants, lions pacing behind bars, the seals balancing on balls.

without that dream, where am i to run? even at night i wander in strange cities, looking for sensual satisfaction and metaphysical meaning. no wonder my sheets twisted and torn.

pics of this wonderful bunch: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/elegy

Prosopagnosia, or how i learned to forget a face

in the literature this inability to recognize a face seen as a terrible defect. on the other hand it's an art i achieved the hard way: by growing older in the presence of many young people.

you see, i've spent most of my life hanging around colleges, soaking up what i can without doing it for grades, while enjoying the looks of young women in their prime. and this is where i acquired my skill.

youth looks pretty much the same. no wrinkles, bright eyes, puffy cheeks. and the lingo sounds pretty much the same, you know, sort of, man, that's cool. and after thirty years in this town i'm constantly misplacing faces.

i get used to a pretty one, and see it till it's about 23, then it disappears into outer space. and couple years later i see it on an 18 year-old. for a moment i'm startled. are we all recycled? it's entirely possible. and maybe we really are two thousand years old without knowing it.

so, the thing to do is don't keep anyone in sight until they radically change at 25. yes, it's the portrait of dorian grey all over again. the cheeks grow sallow, the bones jut out. furrows appear between the brows, the hair loses its luster. suddenly, a real person stands where once only an american idol did.

i have suffered this shock, alas. and it is quite disquieting. i have to hide my eyes. the mirror in the bathroom has become a museum. i try not to take it personally and shift my allegiance to the fledglings surrounding me in the history of photography. a photograph, now there's a holy object. paper your walls with them. and let them fade, just as the originals did.

as they say, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. here's the easter hunt for the golden one laid by a goose:

www.pbase.com/wwp/egg

ordeal by roses: memories of a callow youth

gosh, i really haven't talked much about sex. what i mean to say is here. of course i stood in the junior high halls hearing various tales recounted. even then i could stand only so much concerning the reproductive organs. after an hour my stomach revolted.

the same thing happened on a plane to new york. a black pimp from san francisco sat next to me, eager to share his brothel stories. and again, for sixty minutes i delighted in the underbelly of human endeavors. alas, my interest gave out and i did not look at the briefcase of pictures he volunteered to share. turns out, he loved parading them before his family in ohio.

oh well, my ignorance is boundless and my own experiences back in the stone age. true, we almost made it to the hooker's ball at the cow palace in san francisco, 1978. http://jerryseltzer.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/hookers-had-balls/ i think we were all too fuzzy from the magic mushrooms. in north beach all the doors seemed built for midgets and the people in bars acted out bizarre scenes from batman. i suspect it must have all been too much for us.

and the two american prostitutes who sat down at my table in bali had just arrived from china. this in 1985. one had been frightened by the experience, the other brash. "we were probably the first ladies of the night to practice in that ancient land since the revolution." i felt a bit nervous with these pros, as the fish nibbled on the lotus blossoms in the pool by our feet.

a few times in my writing i have slipped over the edge into unholy fantasy. hopefully, those indecent missives buried deep in my storage locker. i do recall tall, dark women waving little red flashlights and laughing under a grey night-time overpass in san francisco. they certainly seemed to be feeling no pain. ah, but i remember the burnt-out young woman sitting on a windowsill outside city lights books, a moving and sad sight.

even though i'm too old for sex, i'm looking forward the erotica project at the blue room theatre strictly as an anthropologist. possibly, i'll learn what i should have at twenty-two. my pictures of roses will be on the lobby wall. http://www.pbase.com/wwp/ordeal

and you can find info on the entertainment here: http://blueroomtheatre.com/2011/04/21/the-erotica-project/

theater thrives in a theatrical age

i'm sitting by this lake in nepal, the himalayas rising behind me, indian newlyweds staring at each other: who is this stranger i've married by arrangement? (the high wedding season.) and suddenly i feel full of a definite desire: yes, i want to direct plays.

good gravy, where did that come from? i'd been directing pieces sporadically for forty years, gradually figuring out how to do it. so what's new? i'd wandered halfway around the world to discover i wanted to go back home.

trouble is, i'd experienced this rush of determination before, sitting in children's park watching a family of musicians, right across the street from the blue room theatre. i did end up doing work in this theater. and now it's all come to nothing. the audiences grow smaller and smaller as people retreat into their houses.

lured by the street scenes of the sixties, the vibrant stage effects everywhere, the trenches and dead of vietnam bleeding on the television all night, i felt inspired to write plays. unfortunately, that age of energy petered out with the repression of the media. even when i came to this town thirty years ago, people dressed up lavishly for halloween. clerks in stores played alice and rabbits. the evening filled up with zombies and angels.

alas, the students began getting too drunk, overturning cars and burning them. that led to a crackdown. last time i wandered downtown on halloween, the streets were empty except for undercover cops. one at a time they stood on street corners, faces painted, pretending to play harmonicas. jesus, i had to laugh. they stood out like sore thumbs.

you can get a theater crowd for musicals and cabaret, none of it very substantial. put on a revenger's tragedy or king lear and you're dead in the water. i've studied my whole life to create scenes out of pewter. and that occupation no longer exists.

here's a one-woman piece i did direct several years ago:

www.pbase.com/wwp/gert