reducing life to manageable bites

this sounds terrible, i know, as if we had to be fed like babies. ah, but that's the point. like most adults, i suspect we feel responsible for the state of the world. we're constantly making decisions about afghanistan, the economy, who's the guilty party for yesterday's shootings. (and there are always shots being fired and people crumpling.)

in the old days, i'm assuming without newspapers, radio, tv, people lived much quieter lives. true, the barbarians might come over the hills. those in the next village could be scandalous, dangerous, even unpredictable. and peace a temporary truce between invasions. still, it's not like worrying about so many things we can't do damn thing about.

today, the governor declared a war on education and social programs. alas, i've always benefited from the first, and at an increasingly doddering age i am in need of the second. so, reading the headlines - the only news i allow myself - i became terrified for my survival. foolish? yes, it's foolish. unfortunately, i know i'm not alone.

living on the big stage, we're subject to stage-fright, especially when we decide what's the ideal world and can do nothing to create it. to have answers when nobody asked us, what could be more debilitating? what do i do in these situations? i turn to haiku. and why, cause every little poem chops up existence into just what i can handle.

the pot of beans

stinking up the house -

turn off the stove

there's a fine example of my own composing. since it's not from the japanese, i know it's inferior. i turn to my betters.

"it's much too long a day"

opening it's mouth

a crow

says issa, echoing my thoughts! and i like these free-form translations by stephen berg of ikkyu:

raging for the now hungry for it

crows rattle the air no dust

the crow's caw was ok but one night with a lovely whore

opened a wisdom deeper than what that crow said

alas, ikkyu not politically correct. too bad he didn't live in our enlightened age! he paid for it, certainly:

if i'm a demon here on earth

there's no need

to fear the hereafter

when you feel yourself getting overwhelmed solving the problems of life and death, turn to these tiny fragments of reality. like cockroaches they'll be the last species alive:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/alchemist

good gravy, i really am a white people

imagine my dismay when i picked up a book called "what white people like" and found it nailed me 80%. what happened to my individuality? how did other people come to brag about their trips to japan? or photography, the fact we'll keep clicking pictures til we die, a little blur making it 'art'?

of course, it's like my college teacher friends. the students insist they're each unique. the professor looks up and sees everyone dressed the same way. as my friend dennis palumbo said, 'americans torn cause they're in a double-bind. the culture says, "go your own way. make your mark" while raising all kinds of obstacles like 'be a good boy. the perfect girls does...' '

yes, looking out on the street from starbucks in san francisco, i see hunched people pass, all ages, ethnic backgrounds, the obviously well-heeled and those picking up cigarette butts, and i wonder 'how the hell do they cope?' and along with this i'm amazed the u.s. works at all. what a grumble, a mix-up. while we pursue a war, we cut the budget. to keep up with china we close schools, all the while knowing the best-educated populace will win.

yes, we like sushi, microbrews (our town has one of the most famous: sierra nevada), and foreign films. as for the last i'm in seventh-heaven, having just signed up for netflix. last nite i watched 'andalusian dog' and 'paris', salivating all the way. boy, did i go to bed happy. yes, i always shop at the co-op and eat organic foods. YOU SHOULD SEE MY SUPPLEMENTS. i pull down a whole shelf-full every morning, rattling the house as i open the bottles with caplets and pills.

and to top it all off, i brag about it. alas, as my friend marilyn said yesterday, 'we always brag about ourselves, our taste, or something, in every conversation. i keep catching myself at it.' ah, what is a blog but a boast-fest. we definitely follow the ancient celts and brits who beat their chests before and after battle (if they survived).

now, i must make a caveat. i strongly suspect these american traits, ethnic identity having nothing to do with it. you'll have to tell me whether i'm right or wrong.

on that note, our co-housing settlement getting a facelift. see the pictures here:

www.pbase.com/wwp/site

my life as a failed messiah

helping other people is not as easy as it seems. every time i try, i give the devil more momentum! for example, before thanksgiving my sister called me with her woes, certainly genuine. so i send her a computer, screen, mouse, etc., etc., not realizing i'd overwhelm this 57 year old neophyte with a whole new vocabulary and way of being. add to this the ineffeciency of a particular phone company (can you guess which?), she's still not online. and my sister not the most patient person in the world.

or yesterday, i posted my blog on a photo site to advertise my friend's photos and got slapped on the hand for advertising myself in the process. boy, i still turn red with embarrassment thinking about it. and what else was there? oh, yes, two friends, a couple, came to town. we discussed our inhibitions and ambitions over coffee. ach, my big mouth, i said too much, being well-meaning and set them on edge with each other. i haven't heard back yet. did it lead to a fight between them, harsh words, a deadly break? of course not, yet i regret giving advice.

yes, i'm not exactly sure when it began, maybe when i turned forty and thought i knew everything. suddenly, i acted like a sage (as in sagebrush). that's the trouble with knowing younger people. my attempts at solving a problem she didn't ask me to solve, a friend in vancouver b.c. eventually walked off the end of a pier. this happened much later after the last time we talked, as did my friend renate's suicide in berlin, but i can't help wondering, did my helping hurt?

anyway, to make a long story short, i learned an important lesson this last week. you can't make someone over into you. your only recourse is to tweak them on their own terms. i'd hoped my sister would begin to write, blog, put songs on youtube. now i understand she'll pretty much go on living the same way, no matter what i offer. (a vacuum cleaner, electric brushes, knives, and scissors - a shopping cart, paying the electric bill, pushing her to apply for disability, which she has.)

put a person in new circumstances and perhaps they'll blossom. do so at your peril. HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

let me contradict myself. just posted my notes on zen theater: www.pbase.com/wwp/laugh take them with more than a grain of thought!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

the pleasures of living in the past

sure, there's pain, nostalgia, fear, hope, all comes to the surface when your mind slips into the memory gear. that said, it's as exciting, maybe more, than anything you will do today by bravely facing the future which does not exist!

gosh, i listened to matt damon reading kerouac's on the road to berkeley. i've never been able to read it, only the lookout stuff in lonesome traveler, darma bums, and desolation angels (the last has the best account of being on a fire tower anywhere). yet given voice on the way to xmas and back, his most famous book brought up from the bog of my mind past joys.

no, not the rocking alcoholic binges, but drives across country, the wanderings around north beach in the beat heyday (1957-9), me a literary teenager and my father stationed on the presidio. commuting to berkeley, i discovered allen ginsberg when he came to class and read us part of kaddish for his mother. long sunday walks took me in and out of mike's place and the co-existent bagel shop, a big reading at columbia house, all the poets around on the balcony as we looked up from the gloom below and watched them hug each other and declaim.

true, i never spoke to any of them, very much a loner in those days, yet i absorbed what applied to my own experience and i've been writing and wandering ever since. yes, i really should have entitled this THE LAST BEATNIK, however i have bigger fish to fry.

my brother and many others counsel, 'forget the past, create a new life.' alas, a writer's life is his past. plus, how can you travel so fast and so far as in memory? hey, somewhere squirreled away in quarantine is everything you've ever done, dreamed, and far more. consciousness is only a small part of it. a novelist friend, david helton, used to relive complete passages of his past on lsd, down to the minutiae. and as we had a conversation in a cafe, we unknowingly recorded all the conversations around us.

the pundits exclaim: the past is present. on a quiet day at home i'm trying to make the most of it, pretending another year isn't almost gone.

i'd like to put a plug in for a friend's website. i find his photos of Philadelphia very moving:

http://www.streetshooter.us/22910.html

footprints on the moon

as we come to the end of another year, time to wonder what will remain. those imprints of the first walkers on our nighttime companion could conceivably last forever - that is until the exploding sun shatters us. with no wind, rain, or oxygen those imprints may be the last sign of humanity.

and ourselves? what have we created or achieved in the past 365 revolutions of the moon?

perhaps it's foolish to talk of such things at all. readers chide me for my emphasis on the transitory. the best we can do is haiku and zen, an absorption in the moment so intense grains of sand shine like diamonds. a word on the page, a gesture in the air, each momentary sign without time, would be more than a slide into second base.

last nite, i looked through artistic adventures of the past few years. things appeared i'd totally forgotten. for example, my salute to a certain period of japanese art:

www.pbase.com/wwp/shin

and in the moment i'm looking at a book of japanese postcards of the same era, the early twentieth century. for some reason the graphic creations of these islands calm me down. (while traveling there, my friend marilyn pointed out the colors around us meant to be soothing, and the buildings lay low on the earth rather unlike our rising, screaming skyscrapers pushing us toward the stars.

i wonder what else i can find in these files? where in the distant past did i do these imitations of lunar pathways?

www.pbase.com/wwp/sumi

i really like francis bacon's description of painting: snail slime slid across the canvas. if bees can make honeycombs and hummingbirds nests, why can't we make a home for our psyches in the cosmic dust? patterns in water might last longer than we think.

how are you feeling?

this question throws me into turmoil. yes, in my imagination and longing, i yearn for someone close to ask it. alas, when it happens, i go totally blank. i rummage around in my heart for an answer. but the question itself changed whatever was going on inside me. besides, i never really know what i'm feeling, anyway.

now, if you asked me, 'a penny for your thoughts', i might come up with something coherent, unless i'm out on a date and thinking, 'this is a disaster', or in bed with a loved one and i haven't thought about her since we climbed in, rather the question should be, 'i'll tell you who i was thinking about, if you'll tell me who you were thinking about.'

a further problem: our brains supposedly have fifty thousand thoughts a day, and every one of these charges up a feeling (and not vice-verso). good gravy, i couldn't keep track even if i wanted to.

this goes back to einstein, of course. the observer alters what is observed. the very presence of, let alone a spoken word. and what about heisenberg's uncertainty principal: if i know what i'm thinking, i can't know what i'm feeling. and if i know what i'm feeling, thinking impossible. you see how the very proposal changes the world, ie. a butterfly waves its wings in china and a politician in washington drops dead. maybe not right away, but you catch my drift.

the next time you want to know someone's state of being, inject a truth serum first, or try a bit of hypnosis. 'i'm learning this new technique for self-improvement. may i try it on you.' you can fool all of the people, all of the time. don't despair.'

still putting analogue recordings to digital. some of what's been read you can find here:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/the_written_word_galleries

i'll figure out where to put them on the net eventually. stay tuned.

let's drink to the end of purity!

i suppose we could drink pure alcohol and die, which would prove my point but leave no one left to get it. or we could take this ball of plutonium the size of my fist, plant one molecule in each person on earth, and celebrate the end of human kind. what if god gave a party, and nobody came?

yes, this quest for the supposedly clean and perfect, what a curse to the world it's been, at least when applied to human beings. the aryan race - what the hell is that? the person without sin, what a prig. could we really wear a shirt starched so white it could stand up on its own?

now i know i've carried this evil wish in my heart for many years: that people would get all mixed up with each other, every shade of color, belief, desire. for example, almost all the species of dogs today invented in victorian times (sex in animals obviously not verboten) and what we call a pure species of great dane and chihuahua laughable. they've been bred into phantasmagorical creatures, no more pure than a roman toilet.

a couple years, after not going to the bay area for quite awhile, i was amazed by all the 'inter-marrying' going on. any concept of race - considering we all came from the same dna primordial mother - disappearing quickly (hopefully) from the planet. and what beautiful children!

as any agronomist knows, hybrids resist diseases. as any cat owner knows, you're wiser to have a mongrel. good gravy, those calico cats spiteful as hell. what's the use of a horse with weak legs? everything, let's face it, a mix up and better for it. a diet of pure lead may have made a van gogh. alas, it undid him too.

so here's to humanity on it's way to the stars. we need a crazy species to make those colonies on mars.

i've been re-recording talks and readings done over the years. you can read the notes for one of them here:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/grid