Americana: little life-lessons to ignore

He had a really nice funeral but he didn't enjoy it. 

Happiness can only lead to tragedy.

The interesting thing about sex is it's not interesting.

Someday you'll be free from thinking you matter.

Husbands can only be raised in captivity.

The idealist doesn't look when crossing the street.

Embrace delusion, it's your only hope.

Ecstasy: enjoying yourself when you know better.

Sometimes you have to deny yourself the pleasures of scratching.

Calling your mother on your deathbed - can she save you from oblivion again?

Every time I felt sorry for myself, I knew  I merely wanted my mother.

She never suspected the secret: hamburgers.

He became so enlightened he blinded people. 

Why should you believe in yourself? You don't exist.

The only cycle I ever found was bi.

I rose to low expectations.

In making mistakes children learn everything.

Therapists can't dance.

She was sure he loved her until he tried to. 

I'm someone who's passed from innocence to ignorance.

Hippos are not nice guys.

We need to learn to forgive the victims.

Every step you take changes your future. 

Sure, you can make a choice, if you want to be wrong.

He finally felt safe enough to be somebody else.

                                          Americana: glenn county fair: 

                                           www.pbase.com/wwp/glenn  

i'm chagrined. it's not the first time. i talked about myself way too much, telling many things i'd never told anyone. now, of course, i'm embarrassed. being old, you should be wise, exclaimed one of king lear's nasty daughters. alas, it really doesn't seem to work that way. i know better than to reveal the soul and overwhelm a listener with personal details. who wants to hear them, really?as they say, i forgot myself, even while elucidating an autobiography. of course, i know the truth can never be told. any honesty about ourselves a distortion. 

i guess that's a good example of overdoing it. the source, to impress, the explosion of latent ambition. along with most people, i believe i can become somebody. fat chance. the most i can do is amplify what i've been given, broadcast it as though something totally new in the world. can i really be a creative person without feeling i'm a god? after all, poetry the short-hand of heaven, love and death on the same plane, a cryptic translation of a canonical text, a successful reduction of our dualistic language to the one-celled creature we once were, swimming in the brine. 

actually, i need to celebrate my tutor from college who recently died, jack gilbert. here are a couple of articles:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/12/entertainment/la-et-jc-jack-gilbert-20121112

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/20/jack-gilbert

he certainly was stubborn, in a good and inspiring way, i think. 

and that brings me back to being. i discovered the other day, feeling like i could just sit still and soak up nature for the rest of my life, basically doing nothing,  i felt like a fully-grown man, a most unusual state-of-being! unfortunately, it didn't last. my nervous energy asserted itself, the searcher, the explorer, the person who's always believed he'd find the truth of existence somewhere, in a movie, a book, a guru, the bad cat of ambition bristling. 

okay, i have had a realization.  a life without romance a dead, meaningless one. going thru old love letters, i understood those encounters enlivened me, brought out the spontaneous and foolish child, who enjoyed being totally ridiculous and off the wall, emotionally over the top, blinded by the glitter and sweep of goddesses. settling down cost me my vision, my willingness to be uncomfortable. no wonder i could throw out a truck-load of diaries kept in this town. 

as everyone knows, circulation, of all kinds, the key to a vibrant existence, and nothing sends the blood pumping like the wonderful illusion of love. not true love, certainly, where you encourage the best in a mate, rather an attempt at ecstasy, doomed to fail and be revived with someone else who seems descended from olympus, until i see the human being (disappointed) inside. since the soul-mate may never arrive, at least i've suffered the touch of magic,  to feel i've lived and have the will to go on, to try again, even though the odds of the house are all on its side. 

Searching For Pittsburgh

The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night,
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it.
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world.
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically
along three rivers. The authority of them.
The gritty alleys where we played every evening were
stained pink by the inferno always surging in the sky,
as though Christ and the Father were still fashioning the Earth.
Locomotives driving through the cold rain,
lordly and bestial in their strength. Massive water
flowing morning and night throughout a city
girded with ninety bridges. Sumptuous-shouldered,
sleek-thighed, obstinate and majestic, unquenchable.
All grip and flood, mighty sucking and deep-rooted grace.
A city of brick and tired wood. Ox and sovereign spirit.
Primitive Pittsburgh. Winter month after month telling
of death. The beauty forcing us as much as harshness.
Our spirits forged in that wilderness, our minds forged
by the heart. Making together a consequence of America.
The fox watched me build my Pittsburgh again and again.
In Paris afternoons on Buttes-Chaumont. On Greek islands
with their fields of stone. In beds with women, sometimes,
amid their gentleness. Now the fox will live in our ruined
house. My tomatoes grow ripe among weeds and the sound
of water. In this happy place my serious heart has made.

Jack Gilbert

flowers: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/vovflower

and more flowers: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/iris

can you really live one day at a time?

i'm ashamed to admit i never have, always suspicious of these popular NOW 
philosophies. they seem to leave me in limbo, no power over the future, nothing to get excited about, very passive. okay, for whatever reason, perhaps desperation, i decided to give it a try. so far i've lasted a week and this is what i've learned.

it definitely means accepting my demise and no worry. this is disgustingly difficult for me, as i've always, always, always lived in anticipation of something way out there, especially death. this gives me a lot of nervous energy: do it now, while you have the chance. maybe i lied about the aversion to NOW which i declared above. no, this focuses on a grand gesture, creating a masterpiece, laughing at my picture on the front of the new york times: "He Did It, Finally, After All" whichever it was supposed to be. 

throwing out 125 diaries, unloading 3000 books, casting into the trash six boxes of picture disks, this must have done something to my consciousness. i admitted to myself i wouldn't be around to collect the accolades. no university would treasure my papers, and i'm doomed to a pauper's end, my ashes scattered on a mountain. 

okay, that was the first step. i took what's left over to where i'll be house-sitting for the summer. rather frightening i'm finding it to be down to eight boxes. what was i thinking? where did that grandiose identity go? obviously, a good bit of it into the trash. who am i now? NOW AGAIN! that evil presence. what am i to do to re-establish a me on earth? 

you can see into what depths i had to cast before even considering living one day at a time. how the hell t0 do it? what i'm discovering after a decisive week: i need one activity to accomplish each day. that's it, so simple. for example, it might be doing the laundry, or meeting a friend for lunch, or visiting a class on the history of roman art, all of which i'd done in the past seven days. hallelujah! no great project like 'paradise lost' hanging over my head. and in fact, i've picked a goal for today which i already accomplished last sunday: to see the movie ren0ir about the painter and his son jean, who became a famous film-director. 

admittedly, i did set my sights on this particular film due to a personal memory, the aged film-maker walking up the aisle at the university of california, berkeley, his son pierre teaching in the english department, of all places. ah hah, a celebrity sighting from over fifty years ago stayed registered somewhere in my soggy brain. as for this second viewing, it's driven by the gorgeous actress naked among the flowers! 

day by day, it passes. i even took pictures at a local ranch museum and antique show, satisfying my creative drive in a miniature way. they did their duty, NOW i can set them aside and offer them to you, all in a day's work:

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

do everything you really want to do before age 30

this morning it's come over me again, how lucky i've been. not liking being restrained by anything, period, i hope this doesn't happen too often. it makes me feel like i have to share my good luck. i have absolutely no idea how to do that! infuriating, isn't it? not that many things in the world don't need doing. children need books, inspiration, medical care, and hugs. in fact people who liberated the german concentration camps found the surviving little ones wanted hugs more than food. 

trouble is, i'm an extreme individualist, all my good thoughts go to encouraging one person at a time. for some reason i don't have the urge (since being a teenager) to solve all the problems of the world. for one thing, i don't dare decide what they are. secondly, as a poet, photographer, what have you, i'm a dictator, i somehow believe in perfection. if only everybody would do as i do! you see what i mean. every theory applied whole scale leads to tyranny. the leaders who emerge - fascist, Communist, and so on - end up using the system for their own aggrandizement.

okay, being a theoretical person, or theoretically a human-being and not a robot, i do keep evolving ideas to apply across the board. trouble is, nothing is right for every single person on earth. what a conundrum! in every day language that means 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'. maybe it's lucky you broke your leg and couldn't serve in the war (the russian poet, boris pasternak, for example). or maybe you were adopted out to caring parents you resented, only to find out your birth-mother a schizophrenic and your bothers jailbirds (happened to a friend of mine). where do we draw the line?

we can't, alas, that's the ultimate answer. that said, the main advice i give to the advantaged youth i know rests in the title above. you may never have another chance. life ultimately throws you into the tar-pit of responsibilities, and the rest is history: raising kids, serving a jail-sentence, struggling to regain the sense of yourself you had when young. this list is endless, all-too-human, and, i hope, obvious. 

so, do everything you really want to do before age 30. you will never again be able to be so careless! and saving that trip to nepal for retirement, you'll very likely make it in a wheelchair. my dictum makes you 1. figure out what you want after all that necessary and detouring education. time to go for broke. and 2. really feeling your basic desire, you'll be motivated, come hell or high water. 

granted, this mostly for kids who've had it all. what if you grew up on the street, having to make your way as best you could? i would maintain this doesn't kill our dream - until we feel too old to make a change. anybody can make the leap, provided they have one thing: a mentor. it's weird to think my whole life decided by a couple of teacher comments. one happened in high school when the peroxided blond, gay english teacher said after i wrote  a piece on bowling for the school newspaper. 'my god, this kid has imagination!' it had never occurred to me imagination a good thing. here's something worthwhile i had by accident. 

the other not so much a single comment, as a teacher's attitude. miss clark, the algebra teacher, let me stare out the window as much as i wanted. somehow she knew i was destined to make my living this way, and she didn't put it down. i do think she told my parents i was an okay kid. i've had many teachers since then and i wish at least you discover one of them who says, as i would, i've know six kids who died before 25. they never lived to 30. if that happens to you, you want to know you've been fulfilling your deepest desires when the ax falls.

on the beauty of ruins

I've learned you have to live a long time to forgive everybody. 

Inside of every artist is a nervous person trying to calm down.

I don't have to do anything, and I'm  doing it. 

An artist keeps trying to finish herself. 

Once you've created a masterpiece, relax. 

We've all been exiled from childhood. 

The greatest artists have the museum of their own mind. 

How nice not to have anybody waiting for me!

We turn to art when we want freedom from our own story.

Art teaches you what you've been seeing isn't true. 

Too much truth goes a little way.

There's nothing more comforting than an old person with bright eyes. 

Yesterday used to be the future. 

Poetry can escape depression only through sexual satisfaction.

The object of art is stillness.

Art is what's left after you've drained the pain from nature. 

How would we know happiness without the birds?

Education violates our own sense of time.

How can I be wrong? i'm still here.

If you realize other people exist, you've taken a great step. 

How debilitating feeling sorry for yourself is. 

If you don't want to make the journey, forget the destination.

Only a blind man really knows what he looks like. 

Just give them something to think about. It will rectify most states of mind.

Don't get anyone under 50 interested in spirituality.

I could have died at 41 and not missed myself. 

This is the last time it will be the first time.

When will you learn to say, "I've done far too much"?


     Roses for Suzanne (july 9, 1986-may 6, 2012): http://www.pbase.com/wwp/suzanne2

"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so, he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."
                                               Henri Matisse

"Don't try to be great, just be solid."

for the life of me, i can't remember where i read that. it hit me on the head like a falling brick. my mother ingrained the first part, and i've spent a lifetime trying to achieve the second. no, you don't have to be a genius, rather knowledgeable. having acquired the habit from my grandfather, i'll file this with my collection of sayings. i don't look at them very often, in order not to humiliate myself. still, maybe i'll discover a bit of wisdom to change me for the better. let's see, in the last couple weeks: 

The worst thing: to be trapped inside of one of your own creations. 

We die every night when we go to sleep. 

Be quotable.

Hire the best writer.

Since I could do nothing but perfection, I did little.

The way to happiness: enjoy the pain.

The best thing you can do for yourself: find a mentor.

If you can't tell your truth in one short sentence, forget it.

Life is a gamble you lose. 

Everybody has the ability to build a better mousetrap.

We're complicated enough to be unique.

I wish winning lasted as long as losing.

Even a child prodigy has a knack for something that already exists.

As long as enough crumbs fall under the table, I'm fine.

The person you love is 72.8% water.

Theoretically, we wouldn't miss someone we never knew. 

In the end I have a lot of hunches, but few certainties. 

When a person dies, a library is lost.

We start out knowing everything and end up knowing nothing.

We act as if our personal likes and dislikes were really important.

If you turn the other cheek, guard it with a sword.

Don't try to do everything, try to do nothing, it's harder.

They talk about the 'mind' as though it exists. 

Only give up a vice if it's not what you live for.

If I'm a demon here on earth, there is no need to fear the hereafter.

Never trust a naked man with your overcoat. 

The weakness of individualism: we can only love our own children.

To change the world, I would have everyone love children, ALL children,



i am addicted to reading and writing these:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/zen 

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

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

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

we honor luck far to little

yes, i'm shocked to realize i and my friends feel we deserve what we've got, that in some way we've earned it, either through hard work or perfect virtue. i don't know where this delusion comes from. perhaps from a lack of experience in the world, certainly from a lack of the ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes, especially people so strange as those living on the streets of calcutta, or wearing loincloths in the jungles of borneo. 

of course, i may have this disease simply because where i've been born: california, usa. here all of us assume if we haven't lost our jobs, we've defeated the fear every american has of losing it. that prospect we live with, the downside of individualism and personal freedom. inhabiting a free-fall society, i don't usually admit how far i can fall. what if i'd hit those kids in the berkeley crosswalk, as it began snowing and my brakes didn't work? yes, i can take credit for quick thinking, stopping myself with a  turn to the right into a light-pole. otherwise, i'd be rotting in prison for manslaughter and full of regret and sadness for all these years.

hah, did i earn my quick thinking? no. for whatever reason, i've been given it. jees, when i consider so many other fates, i wonder how i've survived, and there's only one reason: luck, luck, luck. how many times i've fallen asleep at the wheel, fallen down steps, not looking both ways when i should have! of course, i could say, 'i have a guardian angel. i'm doing good work in the world, and the divine saving the best for last.' hah, again. this merely means i see myself as 'a chosen one.' and i can't help but realize this in nonsense.

what's the consequence of believing we deserve affluence, education, new cars, 52 inch tv screens? i mean, all the terrors of the world come through the latter. we see people die everyday, we witness floods and poverty, hurricanes and loss.  alas, it seems to do us no damn good, not as long as we're comfortable. tragedy, can open our eyes, but not necessarily. we lose, say, a loved one to drugs. do we have sympathy for the addicted, or do we blame them for corrupting our child? i dare say the second takes precedence. or again, we can say, 'god moves in mysterious ways.' it may help our pain, without helping anyone else's.

what's the cure for my mortifying, saintly state? to realize luck rules the world. does this mean i'll help the unlucky, maybe a little bit? i suppose it could. at the same time it could simply make me more afraid, grasping, self-centered, selfish, i don't know. is it possible to change an inner conviction? only experience, i suspect, can do it for the lucky few. 

this prefaces a play i adapted and acted in, many years ago: 

 'the metamorphosis of franz kafka.'

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