My muse leaned against the brick wall, struck a match on his heal + had a smoke. 

He was in no hurry.

He said, You are not a writer unless you write very day.

i replied, since he is very well educated + thoughtful in his criticism, in the only way he would understand;

i said, fuc you.

He loves that talk.

 

Is silence ever?

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction. -Douglas MacArthur

Again w/ the ready fire aim - jumping in at any point to initiate a beginning.

Why bother to go play when already thoughts run wild around guests that politely fume on smoke rings quelling any interest + stealling meaningful time by adhering to the soft clutch of conversation skimming as an oil slick across water straying just out of reach.

Cultivating diversity -

Hone natural abilities that lie on tables tops sliding onto the travertine floor waiting for a chance to escape with a livelihood all their own — only to wait wait wait patiently so very quiet calm collected unnoticed even turning into gelatinous dusty messes unable to perform unable to redeem yea unable to think. -note a/part of me wrote in my croquis two decades ago.

What i learned today:

• It is still useless to use dirty water while using white paint.

• Walking after dusk is relaxing as i do not see what needs to be tended to - while enjoying the white flowers pop.

• It seems the more personal the work the more it becomes a universal agreement. 

• Again, it is harder to make beautiful painting interesting, then a to make an interesting painting beautiful.

While re-watching Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, i recognized the importance of a secondary scene. Noodles walks into Fat Moe’s bar + hands him a clock key. Fats walks to the stopped grandfather clock + switches time back on* after 30+ years of Noodles absence. This is a clue of Noodles is death + this is his alternative future in his delusion of reprieve state of opium. Just sayin'.

*As in the Victorian practice of stopping a clock at the time of death.

When the opportunity expresses itself stand up + spin around, stepping up to a higher plane recognizing that none of this matters - that is the exhilaration part. Then sit back down + when your eyes close you will remember repulsively to pay the electric bill. 

above: Degrees of Spontaneity in Times of Resistance

                                                                  -30-

Random thoughts and spills. 

But first, a quote from Joey:

The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. Before Abraham was, I AM. He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment, as destroying the permanent with its change. Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form. Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass.  

Observations:

#399 My self imposed to-do list is once again, at the moment, manageable. Sending projects on their way w/ little lives of their own. On the other hand; if it’s not going to be finished, this is the week it won’t get done.

What i learned today:

• Security is confidence in leaving an environment + knowing you can come back to it. Constance is comfort. At home it is easy to assume + feel on top of things. When traveling we plunge into uncertainty. We are reminded of this everywhere we turn, everywhere we go. This venture of uncertainty is exciting. Also, de-habilitating. Knowledge gives out, lights go dim. There is a need to be more attentive, do more interpreting, be more intuitive about emirate surroundings.

IDEA: 

Having an emergency at the Emergency 1/4 Mile sign. 

  

Queue to remember memories. 

Memory chained to physical forms.

Rules vs. Expectations

trinket + trick = tricket 

Going upstairs helping an elderly person get to a landing i can't back down. i turn to egress as the escape hatch gets smaller when i move toward the opening. The same landing the next night in the same dream the room turned elevator turned cage turned trapped into a barred coffin.

A warm evening breeze carries the heady aroma of honeysuckle though the open window. Wild honey suckle. Uncontrollable, growing + covering anything still. + the warm glow of fireflies up the trees. 

You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.  -Arlo

At a small town community center there were tears on the floor from decades of past Saturday morning posts illustrated by Norman Rockwell. i’ve heard he did not consider himself a fine artist, + he admired greatly those who claimed that title. He was content to beautifully, sentimentally, illustrate - exposing the american human condition at a time when there was much to question. Not much changes.

i will give another nod to J. C. Leyendecker. 

Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. -Norman Rockwell

Now the years are rolling by me

They are rockin’ evenly

I am older than I once was

And younger than I’ll be; that’s not unusual

Nor is it strange

After changes upon changes

We are more or less the same

After changes we are more or less the same

- P. Simon

We are back where we start. 
Always struggling to find ourselves right here, right now – missing it.

Random thoughts, or, chewing the re-entry scenery. 

i want to read something real weird + real loud w/out words.

modify that —

Well, maybe something not too weird + not too loud

but defiantly w/out words.

What i learned today:

• It takes up a lot of time to quantify my ignorance. 

• Mixing red + blue paint, still won't make green, every time.

• Waiting for the music to make an S curve sometimes takes a real long time.

• Making the sublime look spontaneous takes more time than one might think.

• Devouring space that is expanding beyond concept devours time.

Tricky connotations, endless denotations. 

Using words to justify something far greater than.

Communication that is more complicated than this + takes more time than i have.

9 out of 9 

the very end of the beginning 

Racket sounds off from both ends of the house the heat pump + the refrigerator are rehearsing for their rap group audition for little carnegie playhouse but I'm terrified to let them both in on that lcp has been defunct + dejunked for years my mistake + so whorling out of any control i go into van eyck mode except not by painting detailed pupils into the eyes of pinhead sized figure sitting in boats + floating on calm water but spiraling into the details of guilt shame + other dark human condition type thingies remembering every wrong i have ever done to anyone any thing every mistake + insult to the artistic aesthetic i have ever made every one every single one this goes on for a way too long till this dreaded interior psychotic evil will’s fading + i recover in the early hours from the pain + remember again like all the previous springtimes a portable table will be placed over the heat pump clamped down gingham draped creating an outdoor nook to welcome afternoon tea time + so there in a few weeks the baton will be completely handed over to the fridge + the heat pump will take a long rest from its tireless heating as the fridge takes on labored cooling w/ it’s own brand of ennui whining pitch for attention who knows what these souls think? 

-30-

8 out of 9

next day in January

The dawning weather turned unseasonably cold so the pump hummed along diligently never stoping this night the rumble transforms into a biplane engine as i circle ellis island looking down on a gray landscape there is a predawn shadow shaping suspiciously into the likeness of a refrigerator the liberty woman is perched on w/ her incriminating left eye sealed shut + in her right hand she twirls an hour glass saying we can talk as long as what is left of sand as she flips the glass like a coin + only a moment of sand remains + it’s gone as it crashes to the rocks below oh well she says we can talk anyway what is it you came for but you must salute me three times + do six jumping jacks before she’ll answer counseling that i am motionless strapped into the cockpit she then waves a very rehearsed + overused annoyed never mind + turns to watch the sunrise.

7 out of 9

next week in January

Nothing to report except that something in the far room is trying to get all the attention ah the refrigerator is competing w/ the heat pump making a horrible noise chewing the scenery w/ random buzzing on off on off on on off off like a morris code signaling random metamorphose imagery wanting to alarm someone w/out triggering the part of the brain that will decode seizures + dressed up like a veteran vizier w/ a black belt + black collar + just the best black costume ever for a refrigerator begins making her way toward the grand outdoors toward the heat pump + he w/ fists up imaging himself in my imagination to be a stumpy scrappy boxer ready for the fight lifts himself from his foundation + begins the arduous journey forward navigating into lucidity i lift my head + see a mental chalk line in the center of the room the central spot where the two would meet + showdown but no upon meeting they will bow + waltz + i will glance away like interrupting a private moment … i awake cursing to a widening gyre of brightness dawning on my closed eyelids it was quiet too quiet like missing santa i had sleep through the dance + now all is settled back in for now til tonight + communication is often more complicated than this.

6 out of 9  - if you are barring with me 

early January

the pump began a basso profondo splat ticking as in my transfigured dream of actors marched on deadline along side them picasso is dressed like the riddler circa 1955 penning his mark w/ a spray can onto corrugated cardboard + handing them out to the lineup for a french theater piece entitled the entitled pygmalion each person brandishing a graffiti sign enigma stating that time had stopped + asking which ocean will rise i spring awake seized w/ the impression of the heat pump backing up + flooding the muddy hill my little room a cork in the drift turning three times jumping twice overturning into a bluegrass riff in my head from an alternative universe i lived through as this trilogy of tunes go together kicking + screaming i become aware of nightmares that make much more sense than this dosing back off the exaggerated ticking now a thunderous menacing clock creeps in through the window terry + i are working a triage tent using patches taken from our jeans as tourniquets that miraculously grow back as fast as they are torn off we work fast to bandage people together sending them on their way sometimes into waiting rooms sometimes onto operating tables sometimes back out through the in-door the infuriating rhythmical ticking continued as my mind animates the sound reciting prose or channeling percussioneque words OR literary devices written down in the fog lost forever OR a bullet list of projects listing themselves OR a non-sequitur flip book the size of an encyclopedia OR switching the tv from channel to channel OR a long toenailed dog scampering across a wood floor OR rodin’s thinker tapping his fingers on his marble knee over + over + then it is dawn. As dawn will.

5 out of 9

late December

The tune of the heat pump screeched a friendly chickadee’s song as she happily easily leapt from person to person onto heads + shoulder + hands + head + on + on coming towards me - she landed on the top of my head  + immediately got tangled in my hair i was in need of assistance because i could not see to help free her she screamed calling in a cloud of locust swarming like a pit crew insisting on rotating the crop of ideas determined to dissolve + take back a concept that was never that great to begin w/.

4 out of 9

middy December 

Frozen rain fell at midnight + melted off of the heat thingy at warming dawn below the window making tink-tinkling of a table top mini waterfall hitting the surface of patterned bricks inside my minds dream eye reinterpreted as water leaking through a ceiling from upstairs the tap tap tap   source hunted down to the origin a cracked belly of a toilet easily patched i continued information gathering by following the meander of the leak back down down through the house + w/ watercourse converting + growing larger the farther i descended the path eventually believing it had it’s own destination + determination seeing a shut-off spigot i turned the handle strangling the water supply but it had been too late i turn to see behind the room afloat fucktangent wicking water over + over melting low walls again + again opening the line of site my stream of consciousness turned into an ocean current of the atlantic w/ a cruise ship zooming away into a ginormous which is actually 40’s military slang void i hang my head as i had been so very sill lily worried about curtains on the titanic.

3 out of 9

start of December

The heat pump’s extended off-cycle allowed dreaming slumber + revealed a night drive in a  truck w/ improved windshield framed w/ proscenium + sculpted curtains + animated every street sign every billboard every car zooming past hit me w/ surreal sharpness lit by high-beam headlights blinding blurred eyes + head swims to stage right as I hear a pop + wheeze i struggle to hang on to the steering wheel concentrating on the tires grounding w/ the road pull off safely back stage now huddled at a flat rear wheel for a time-out gaining composure til a mild trace of the mind twisting + acclimated to this new way of deciphering through my energy i hear nothing but variations of motown sounding off through a half dead walkman the flat beat boomed inside me + lost my will + obeying the air-splitting rhythm awaking a ghost inside my chest an ancestral phantom who had danced this dance a thousand years ago this morning it pulled me away from the dead tire + into the illusive  backdropped dark forest to join wantons gathered about a fire lost in a swaying trance dance i hope for nothing i fear nothing i am free epitaph written on foreheads leaping sultry sfumato + fire bits + oh then sitting dejectedly in the smoke filled air a few little sisters inside their minds of luxury glass + beamy hi-rise condos w/ running hot water + safety locks + a tv screen as large as manhattan + they saw me + oh so cooly politely rolled their eyes turned their heads to each other + pecked + clucked to keep warm re-evaluating the future every three minutes in the best of neighborhoods a heavy mist coincided w/ the fire dissolving into lucid dreaming as unexpectedly how else from up high up a tree the on-cycle fan kicked in + their flickering small hateful embarrassed eyes look up up + away along w/ the steam of water snuffed flames i think how much more interesting the dilapidated heat pump would be 100 years from this as it is easier to make an interesting picture beautiful than to make beautiful picture interesting.