prepare yr sunglasses

I'm taking the mysterious reappearance of my photo as a sign to continue. as Jim Cory told me it's important as a record.

however I'm heading to the airport. returning to Ohio for my final visit of the year with my folks.

so there'll be a break. let's hope that when I come back a new brilliance will be brought here   a dazzle which will prompt commentary from far & wide.

time to fold?

no comments for a week.

& this morning I find my new photo has been replacd by a red x.

30 years pass in a puff

spent the morning working on 1975 in Alex in Movieland. mostly a painful year. so not the most pleasant work. but it was good to revisit old friends.

& in the process so many names of people who seem to have disappeard: Ken Nevadomi   Tom Oldendick   Kate Downing   Todd Rafferty   Robert Swick.

what is not there

imagine waiting for a bus in Tempe
& being able to read Tom Meyer

if you can't
here are pictures

delving the depths of waiting

cold wakes me. thermostat reveals furnace shd be on but isn't. barefoot in dark I stumble toward the mechanical closet. pilot off. I'm unable to light it. all my tries produce is a tower of burnt matches. must wait for light to call my electrical man. he doesn't know when he can come but he'll call.

I've done this before. there is an uneasiness abt waiting. the mind fails to concentrate. I do a bit of cleaning. I attack my coin jar. I read how beautiful the young Hawthorne was. I don't got to the gym. I don't turn on the computer because the electrical man mite call. I don't go to the store (so I eat eggs for lunch).

the day soon disappears & my stomach tightens. I've done nothing but wait. I hate to wait. I picture myself on my deathbed demanding this day back. the more I think abt it the greater my agitation. I hear my chest scream but the cat doesn't move so I know that the scream isn't real. dinner can't be far away. but can I eat with my stomach in wait mode? will the spinach in my salad slide down my throat? & if the salad doesn't satisfy will I be able to sleep as the house cools down again? will my mind be defining string theory as I attempt to force my eyelids to close?

then he appears. it's 5:30 & I haven't startd to slice the garlic for my salad. he gets the pilot to go on but it won't stay on. he thinks it's a thermocouple. he isn't sure if he'll come back tonite or tomorrow morning.

the wait continues. but I feel all right now. I see the possibility of a conclusion. I can go into the kitchen & prepare the salad.

hearing Rushdie

I must confess. I haven't read Salman Rushdie. but he was appearing in town last nite. & I feel an obligation to support any artist who is the target of religious loonies.

because I haven't read Rushdie I wasn't prepard for the reservoirs of humor that inhabit the man. I was expecting gravitas. he read selections from Shalimar the Clown which he calls "a tragedy disguised as a comedy." so there were equal parts of light & dark.

he is a superb reader. & so comfortable that he interrupts himself to add background or a comic aside that seems to have just poppd into his head. I was enthralld to hear him quote lines from movies ("Roger Rabbit" & "The Wizard of Oz"). & to call his grandmother "a ballsy woman." & to mention the name of Tennessee Williams.

after such a satisfying introduction I must pick up one of his novels.

the undead

with the Dean anniversary behind us & the O'Hara ahead   someone remind'd me that yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the death of Janis Joplin.

I correspond with poets who hadn't been born when she died. yet she seems as alive to me now as ever. same with Dean & O'Hara. of course it's because they were all great artists who left us their art. & that keeps them alive.

drivers

last weekend's 50th anniversary of James Dean's death turnd Donald Turnupseed into a search engine fave. he drove his car into Dean's Porsche   becoming a footnote in history.

in some ways Frank O'Hara was a literary parallel to James Dean. so these past few days I've been wondering what happend to Kenneth Ruzicka who ran his jeep into O'Hara.

Turnupseed & Ruzicka were both 23 when the accidents happend. Turnupseed was a successful businessman & grandfather when he died 40 years after that crash. next summer will be 40 years since O'Hara's death. Brad Gooch interviewd Ruzicka in 1989 but I don't know any particulars of his life in the in-between.

the dark days persist

the only thing I know abt Harriet Miers is that she thinks Shrub is "the most brilliant man I've ever met." that alone makes her suspicious.

morning reverie

it's that in-between time. cool morning but the house isn't quite cold enough for the furnace to kick in. I'm in a turtleneck & shorts   wondering if I shd expend the energy to put on long pants.

don't know where the sun is. it's usually brilliant by now. yesterday the sky was an alomost unreal blue. today it's patchy with clouds.

didn't brew coffee today 'cause I'm going out to brunch in a while. it wd've been the perfect java morning.

viewing aspens

, 

James Dean (1931-1955)

postcard from Ira Joel Haber / rock brought back from Marfa 

progress?

one of the many miseries of getting old is that each time I visit a favorite city some landmark is gone. sometimes I know in advance but other times I head to a favorite place & finding it vanishd is a sit-on-the-curb-&-weep shock. like the time I was walking down Hollywood Blvd with the intention of savoring a hot fudge sundae at C.C. Brown's & it was no longer there.

this is on my mind because of recent news of some changes on the horizon. in Chicago the flagship Marshall Field store that has been on State St for 130 years will become another Macy's. the only good news here is that the building already has landmark status. so one presumes the Tiffany mosaic ceiling is safe.

however in NYC there are plans underfoot for half a block of West 45th to be wreckd to make way for a Disney hotel. among the spots on this block which will disappear are a pair of Broadway hangouts full of personal memories.

the last time I was in Manhattan (2 years ago) I had lunches at both restaurants. I met David McDaniel at Sam's. I first knew the place back in my drinking days. it was calld Charlie's then. I met James Robert Parish at the bar there 29 years ago. I shared meals there with friends now dead including Peter Burnell & Dennis Hrlic.

next door is Barrymore's. on that last visit I had cheeseburgers there with Ira Joel Haber. one Thxgiving I had turkey dinner there. I shared meals there with friends now dead including Gerald Mast & Richard Martin.

other theater haunts of my past -- Backstage & Jimmy Ray's -- are long gone. when the Disney folk dismantle the restaurants of West 45th the only spot left in that district with history will be Joe Allen. I hope I'm dead when Joe Allen closes.

"you're doing a great job Brownie"

my initial reaction to Michael Brown's arrogant self-defense was disgust. but the more I saw the clips of his tumescent ego the more I realizd he is the perfect spokesman for this greedy & morally-bankrupt administration. like the president   he came to office without qualifications & has performd ineptly. unfortunately under his watch people died who shd not have died. but he seems to share with his boss a pertinacious inability to view his performance with a critical eye.

Bush   Cheney   Rumsfeld   Rice   Chertoff   Brown: has there ever been such a concentration of arrogance in government? each is a servant of the people. but listen to the condescension with which they treat us in speech & press conference. & as they pillage our trust they spread their gloat across the globe. surely our nation has never been so friendless. I bet in secret that even Tony Blair rues his association with Shrub.

it's too late for the dead of New Orleans & Baghdad but some day history will wipe the sneer from this regime.

watching the tube

when I was a kid there were 3 channels on tv. so watching was more a communal activity then than now. for instance   I rememeber EVERYBODY tallking abt "I Love Lucy" the next morning.

today we have the option of 300 or more channels. so the commununity of watchers is less. that happens only with certain shows like the Oscars or with news coverage of events such as 9/11 or Katrina.

perhaps it's only with folks in my age group but I'm feeling some of that community this morning following the first half of Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan doc. in fact I startd getting e's from eastcoasters last nite.

for my generation Dylan was a major voice & Scorsese a leading director. bringing them together is historic in itself.

Dylan is 2 years older than I am so the archival footage was resonating all over the place. the parades in his hometown were like the parades in my hometown. & what memories of the Greenwich Village of my youth. I cd taste the rum & coke at the Dugout.

it'll be interesting to see where the doc goes tonite as it covers the period in which so many found disappointment in Dylan's seeming conversion to the kind of religion that embraces a narrow world view.

aloud again

for most of my 30-plus years in Kent there was a lively poetry scene. which means poets of every shade came & went. today is the birthday of one of those poets -- Jacob Leed -- who went. it's also a day in which I read the blog of another of those poets -- Tom Beckett -- who continues to reside in Tree City.

one of the poets to pass thru was Ralph LaCharity. a swaggering presence   LaCharity is probably best rememberd in town for organizing the "Aloud Allowed" events. for a couple of springs in the late '80s he gatherd up local poets as well as compatriots from other states to read at venues around town for a weekend. headquarters was Captain Brady's   a venerable coffeeshop where writers & rockers gatherd over the decades. (it's now a Starbuck's.)

memories of those april events returnd as I found LaCharity's current rant online.Notes Toward a Poetics of the Local is vintage Ralph. if you've ever heard him   his voice is unmistakable in a line like "These sizzling oaken tambourine transmissions."

Tobias Schneebaum (1921-2005)

"This was a wonderful period for meeting people who were invited to Norman [Mailer]’s parties. James Jones, or Jonesy, as his friends called him, was at one of those parties. He had been told by Adele that I was a good painter. "Can I see some of your work now?" he asked. I opened the window and we climbed out onto the fire escape, then into my apartment. He seemed to be enamored of a small painting of three figures in a landscape. "The price is too high," he said, "at $200." Then, he put his hand to his mouth, took out hs false teeth and placed them on the table. "There! Will you take that as a down payment?" "

Baraka on the Ellipse

flashback to when we all had hair:

a poet reciting a lowku against the president.

seemings

so morning comes. & it seems I'm better. just as it seems that Rita was less destructive than the last bitch.

however I felt sad sipping java from my Cafe Du Monde mug & watching New Orleans flood again.

I hope major news coverage of the hurricane doesn't obliterate attention to the anti-war march. it's time for this country to wake up & piss on the entire administration that sells our blood to make profits for its cronies.

a review

Larry Dolman of Chicago's Blastitude reviews some Slow Toe titles including February 03. click here.