Last day of the year

The last of the scars are several of these on my legs from vein stripping. Most are of em Dash variety. They make little hyphenated cuts and yank out the veins. I know because I was awake for this last one. I was numbed and I watched the guy yank em out. We ended with a little tray of worms that weren't really worms. It was my choice to watch. This procedure has cured open ulcers on my feet that would not heal. I got to stick my poor dogs in a mountain stream on top of Yosemite's north wall this summer and that was definitely worth a few Verdana dashes.

It's New Year's Eve. We're hanging in tonight. Having a big party tomorrow afternoon. A lot of musicians and a few writers are coming to share in a celebration of a new startover or whatever.

Happy New Year!

I know

I know. Its the fucking muse. His..

What The Hell Does This Mean?

This song has haunted my life since 1974. If you listen to it and think about the words, it drives you slightly crazy because it does not follow any logical sequence. You look at the idiot singing it, with the sweated-out white face and the intensity, you realize that he was crazy then too and could probably never explain it. Baez's book about the time makes him look even more crazy. Somehow, this insane song defines my life. We just have to figure out how.

Talos Hole

For those of you old enough to remember Jason & The Argonauts, I have a little plug (quite naturally made of my own flesh) on my right ankle, which when it's pulled acts a lot like the plug on the back of Talos' heel. Its broken open three or four times and the fluid just comes pouring out. The last time was on a backpacking trip and I had to go tell my buddy just in case, but it didn't act up again for the rest of the trip. Vein stripping has cured it twice now. Hopefully it will stay cured. But it looks a lot like a plug. We treat it with respect.

Magic Feet

I have magic feet. I grow things there that don't belong there. This first one of these I had for a very long time. I had no insurance until I got into my thirties and since I hadn't died, I imagined it to be benign. It was. It got to point however that it was hard to find shoes to fit over a large bump. The doc that removed it was going to write it up in journals cause it was so big. It was just a mass of tissue. The next one was a calcium rock. I'm growing a third one as we speak. Needless to say there were a few stitches.

More and More Scars

When we moved into the new house, I remodeled the garage into a studio space for me. I decided I would use the existing rafter beams as a bare rafter ceiling and put up ceiling tile in between them. I sanded down the beams to stain them and inhaled a lot of sawdust and then began coughing and then coughing up blood. So I went to the doctor.It was this idiot of an English doctor who was test happy. So he did X-rays and cat scans and blood tests and found that I had scar tissue on one lung and I had hystoplasmosis. You can only really get it the part of the country I come from or in Louisiana. Its a disease you get from airborne pores from chicken droppings in humid climates.  There are other sources, from caves and such. I could recall being real sick with a horrible cough at ten. You carry the disease with you like herpes. There are seldom any reoccurrances since it acts as a vaccine and your system is already prepared for it. The doctor was ready to send a camera down my throat and I decided it was time for a second opinion. The second doctor told me I had irritated my throat, coughed too hard, and had popped a blood vessel in my throat which caused the bleeding. I was no longer coughing or bleeding by this time, so I decided the second guy was right.

It was useful to find out I have scar tissue in my lung and the reason for it, so that later I can avoid test happy doctors and realize it might be a liability some day- or if I'm ever ready to go out on disability, it might come in handy.

Suicide Scars

Mine doesn't exactly look like this. And it really isn't an attempted suicide scar. My childhood home on Woodlawn Avenue had originally been a grocery store with living quarters in the back. When my parents closed the store, that area was remodeled into a new living room with large display windows left in front that were covered on the inside by curtains. Kinda looked like this:

Except it had a big wooden front porch on it. At twelve, one afternoon right after a summer storm I ran up on the porch and slipped on the wet wood and went flying through the window to the left of the front door. I did have the sense to put my arms up in front of my face. I got the wrist of my left arm and the back of my right. The tendon and artery in my left wrist were quite sliced up. They told me I yelled and neighbors heard me a block away. The lady across the street came running, bandaged me up as best she could, put a sheet in her car and took me to the hospital. My mother was at work. They stitched me up and I had to keep my left arm in a sling with the wrist wrapped with a metal brace so that the tendon could heal.

Years later, my friend in New Orleans, which I talked about earlier here, thought she had found a soul mate because she thought my scar was like hers, self inflicted. Could have been worse.

In today's world, my mother would have been arrested for child neglect and the lady across the street for kidnapping. My grandmother was at home around the corner all day. Children were just sent out or they would just go and not come back until dinner sometimes. I rode my bike all over my town. There were other adults that would look out for you. I was also a very tall 12 year old.

Christmas Morning

The bears are all hibernating. Santa has come, but my wife and I have been up, had breakfast, showered and read the paper. We're waiting for the beasts to stir. The world is a calm and happy place for us this year. The sun is out. Got Twain (the Twain, Vol 1) last night, Ole Sam is trying to make money for Grant, who's family is broke and Grant is dying of throat cancer, by publishing his memoirs. Also took this young sculptor over to do this bust with the family all around him telling him what to fix. The sculptor, Gerhardt, needed money too. He was young and struggling. There was a review of the Twain book by Garrison Kellor, who thought it was too long and too boring. But for a historian of the period, its great stuff. These were noble people along side some of the worst scoundrels in U.S. history. All the narrow mindedness of the time prevails against the few that were generous and loving and caring. The poor were in a very bad way.

I've started learning this song: It's Stephen Foster

Bitemarks

These are a bit (he-he) out of order. I have a couple of these that are well on their way to getting lost in the funky skin of an aging man. I was working at a motel in Tucson as the night auditor- desk clerk. A few nights before a liquor store clerk in the area had been clubbed to death and the store was robbed. A guy came into my lobby in the middle of the night, and wanted to know where the pay phone was. I pointed him toward it and he acted like he wasn't sure where I was pointing. The normal reaction would have been to bend forward over the counter and point a little better, but I realized this guy had something behind his back. So I pointed vaguely a second time, and he wandered off in that direction. I reached for the little billy club we had behind the front desk and had it ready to grab. He came back and brandished a stick and told me to give him the money. I grabbed my stick and he leap over the counter and started swinging. I acted like I was going to give up and lowered my stick. He stopped for a second and I jumped him, grabbing on to his stick. I was on the floor and he was kicking me, but I still had a grip on his stick so he couldn't swing it. I knew I had to get up and I did and then forced him back to the wall with his own stick. He couldn't get away so he started biting me. I couldn't feel it, but knew it would hurt later, so I began pounding his face with my free fist. I felt his nose break. He stopped biting me. I swung him back and forth after me into the the counter and then into the wall and then into counter again and when I got near the door, I pushed him back and turned and ran like hell.
He didn't follow. I ran out the front and over to an all night restaurant next door and told the waitress to call the cops. There were two cops sitting there having breakfast. They went back with me, but the guy was gone. The register has been locked the entire time with the key in my pocket, so he didn't get anything.
And I didn't get killed.
My glasses were broken, I had big bruises on my thigh from the kicks, and the bite marks on my arm. They sent me to emergency.
I was scared to go back to work the next night, afraid that he would be back to blow me away and did my work as fast I possibly could so that I could go out front and sit there so I could spot him, if he was coming back. At night, all you could in the front windows and doors was the reflection of yourself. He didn't come back.
A bit later, one of my ex-'s friends suggested that I try to write about it. I did:
http://murderer.us/HoldUpMan/index.htm

I genuinely hope his nose looks real good. And every time he looks in the mirror, he thinks of me.  

Smoking at the A & W

The mind wanders down memory lane. Three or four of us fry cooks at the A & W Restaurant smoked. We would go back to a little area near the back door to smoke in little mini-breaks. There was a perpetual dirty ashtray on a second ice machine there. Later, when I quit college and came back and worked there at twenty, there was a little lady that now worked there as a dishwasher. I knew her from my night wanderings in Bloomington during my freshman year at IU. She had worked at an all night greasy spoon diner across the tracks where I would end up at four or five in morning writing poetry. She had been a waitress there, but she had a incredibly bad speech defect and was real hard to understand when she talked. Being a quarry baby (or a "stoner" - for locals who's father worked in the limestone quarries- from "Breaking Away" the movie) I understood the accent and could understand her. No one else in the A & W could understand her when she talked. She started coming back to sit in our little corner for breaks. She didn't smoke. Everyone was looking at her and questioning what she was doing. She explained to me and I translated that the smokers were getting little 5 minute breaks and the rest of the staff weren't getting any breaks. And she was going to take hers!. Me thinks she personally instituted mandatory breaks in the Indiana restaurant industry. Everyone in our restaurant and the other three that these guys owned got their breaks after that, smoking or not.

But sometimes change, comes slowly. Years and years later, I was chastised for going to pee while I was working at a hotel front desk and I was the only one there. This still goes on.

Home For Christmas

We got the last one night. They are now busy eating us out of house and home. They are kinda cute, however and have interesting things to say.

Scars

I have a scar off the top of my nail on my index finger on my right hand as the result of juggling knives in the kitchen of the A & W Drive-in when I was 16. Imagine a white apron and hat and one of these knives is really a large spatula that is sharpened on one edge to assist in scrapping a large grill. It was the spatula that got me. One didn't think of going for stitches those days if it stopped bleeding. I also smoked and did other things to destroy my health. Lived on burgers and fries and root beer. We had this song memorized and the three of us in the kitchen could sing it all the way through without missing a word. Not now I'm afraid.
 

Angels

Friend of mine. Her Blog is over on the left. All women should have wings. If they don't, they should grow them. Wouldn't mind a pair myself.

I remember this song from the restaurant jukebox on the south side of Bloomington in 1965

Been One of Those Weeks

What can I say? Work has not been pleasant. I try. It's raining here, has been for several days and will continue for several more. Two of the bears are home. One more coming on Tuesday. The music really is the saving grace these days. I highly recommend it. The hopes are that I will get good enough to play alone and not sound like a dummy, that the finger exercises every day will keep the arthritis away, and my brain won't get lost as bad circulation takes it all away slowly. Over on campus where I worked before (in another universe far far away) we were having a large Holiday lunch out at a restaurant and joking around and one of my peers said she felt like she had a target on her back. I told her that there was medication for that. The entire table looked at me. I remind myself of it now. You can bust your butt, be ten times better than the whole world, be polite and friendly and helpful, don't argue with a soul and still be thrown out with the trash. They laid off the chief IT guy at the Bonaventure years ago and when he asked why, he was told it was because he made the most money in his department. What will be will be. I'm going to work on my play and practice my banjo and kiss my family. Fuck 'em. 

This one's mine

I've fallen in love with a song. It suits my voice and I got complimented today for singing it.

Why am I Thinking About Hailey's Comet?

It was a different time:

From The Bristol Chronicles 1910:

Burglary at 15, York Place - beaten with a hot water

In January Charles Nicholls appeared before the magistrates charged with burglary at 15, York Place, a lodging house. They heard that the proprietress, Sarah Ann Williams, and her domestic, Florence Mary Fox, had discovered him in the house and beaten him with a hot water can to such an extent that he said ‘Stop it - I’ve had enough’ and he left the house with his boots under his arm but leaving his bowler hat behind him. The dented can was produced in court. The magistrates committed Nicholls for trial at the next assize. 

In the Days of the Comet - H.G. Wells

Its a good book. We pass through the tail of the comet and it changes the chemical nature of earth's atmosphere and it changes the emotional life of all the people in the world. There is peace. I think I read it at 15. It still sticks in the mind as a good story. There are a couple of stupid movie adaptations, but one should ignore those.

There's a song by John Stewart on his album SunStorm, but I can't find a video for it. But there is this by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The Civil War Vets were dying off. The World Series blow by blow scores were being telegraphed and displayed at train stations. Twain and Tolstoy died. And most still took one bath a week.

The Whole Story

So we would leave the back door open for the dog to come and go during the day. She's old, 14, and she sleeps a lot and I hate to leave her out and it gets dark early and so on and so on. A gang of 4 or 5 out of south central the cops said, came to our neighborhood. They ring doorbells, nobody answers. Its in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. There is not a soul around. So they hop a wall. The fucking back door is open. So this house is easy pickings, they leave one guy here, they put a chair in the back corner of the yard, hop into a neighbor's yard and they can take their time breaking into that one because its even more isolated from the street. They have a guy in a getaway car circling outside with a cell phone. They are doing maybe three- four houses all at once. The cops say they are two teen-agers and two adults (probably all guys) - I asked questions at the station when we went and were given back our stolen items- I was afraid it might be kids I knew from my Boy Scout Troop, but they were a traveling band from from south central that they had been trying to catch for months. Anyway, the kid in my house, starts for our bedroom. They have  MO: jewelry and electronic devices quickly carrying out. The old dog in sleeping at the foot of our bed.  He's experience- you don't fuss with the animals- that makes noise- they might bite you; so he closed the door, keeping the dog from him and the rest of the house. He hits my son's room. He understands teen-age sons. He grabs a pillow case and takes the bear's foreign coin collection from his childhood, his Boy Scout Eagle medal set, a high altitude watch the bear's girl friend had given him for his backpacking trips. A watch his grandfather had owned. The robber rifles everything. The bear's yearbook from high school is thrown under his bed. That was the telling item. The robber maybe spent a few minutes looking at my bear's life. I understand this. I had jack shit when I was a boy - the kids I went to high school with were off on skiing trips
and I had to work. One kid went off to Africa for a year with his father on a dig. (we know what a dig is, don't we?) and I went to Drexel MO for a week. Anyway, he's moving on, hits the daughters room, starts on other stuff. Meanwhile, the two on the other house are leaving by the front door. A neighbor lady that's home spots them, calls the police, sees a couple of off duty cops who live nearby out for the morning walk and alerts them. The cop cars are here! The lookout calls the kids in and they drop what they are doing and run out to get picked up. Four get arrested and one gets away. When we went to get our stuff the cops were going to take the four individually to their homes with search warrants to search for other stolen goods. I had to stay home the next day to wait for the police fingerprint duster to come do our house. They got good prints, because the kid was respectful of the surfboard and gently set it aside in my bear's room and in our family room, he set a plant carefully on the carpet from atop a trunk so he could look in the trunk. His Grandmother probably had plants that she cared for.

We need to provide some how for these kids.

Elbows

I caught a little lady in our Square Dancing Lessons in the forehead with my elbow a couple of weeks ago. I am very tall, for those that don't know, and my elbow is even with most peoples' faces. Most people don't think about it, but I do. When I was 16 and working as a fry cook, I caught an old lady in the kitchen full frontal. Her nose bleed a little. I told the lady in the square dance group this when I apologized for the third time and she looked at me and said "You still remember that?" I guess I do. I may be able to recall every piece of physical mayhem I have ever caused in my life. The kid fights. The basketball coach coaching me to elbow the other players in the face by "accident", The fights as a teenager. The little scuffles we encounter on a day to day basis. He is a wise soul, the elbow. When you are big, you know what you are and how to intimidate people. It has little to do with ability, but a lot to do with perception and scariness. We don't want to hurt people, ever. But we can, can't we? I occasionally find myself, wondering, why are are they looking at me. And then I remember, oh, I'm 6'7" Watch out for flying elbows, even on our best days, we can be caught unawares.

What they took

Apparently you can get a hundred bucks on Ebay for this. We drove over to Pacific Division Station to identify our belongings. They hit the twin bears bedrooms before they were scared out. The neighbor spotted them in a house behind ours and stopped a couple of off duty cops that live in the neighborhood. They caught the getaway car and arrested four from the five they think there were. This and some other stuff was still in the pillowcase from my son's bed. Not much taken really. Teenagers, the cops keep saying. It's a gang from south central that have been working the city for a while.
My banjo was untouched.
The fingerprint guys are coming tomorrow to dust. They used one of our patio chairs to climb into the neighbor's back yard. They politely placed the plant from the trunk in the family room on the floor before opening the trunk.
They politely and carefully moved the bear's surfboard to look in his closet.
No cameras or ipods or iphones to take.

So much for writing anything meaningful tonight.

Old People

This me sitting down in the middle. We played and played and sounded pretty good. The lady over to the left is the real banjo player, but she don't play loud like I'm getting. I'm even singing. The audience is all of our parents, our uncles, our aunts, our mothers, ourselves. I will probably be here one of the days- (god forbid) - I told my King Lear daughter that if she stays around she will be cursed with us. Me calling her on the phone, saying, can you come over and remind me what it was I was doing. My chief concern is the feet. Can you get them cut off and they give you artificial ones so you can continue to walk? Probably not huh? Anyway, its Christmas and I'm loving this. Even organized a Christmas lunch at work and some of us are going to play and sing and - god there is joy- even if there ain't a god. Why didn't I start doing this at 20 when I thought I wanted to. May you be as happy as I am right now.
 

The Jug Band all evening

Soo much fun- 7-midnight. And then they left.



Why do these things stick in my head and float to the top 40 years later?

Other Boy Scout Tricks

Every year the Troop goes out to the desert and shoots rifles and shotguns and that part of it is very very controlled. The Scoutmaster is NRA certified and retired LAPD and has been teaching guns to the scouts for 10-15 years now. However, the first year I went with my son, I walked over to where some of the boys were trying their hand at archery. There was no adult there. One boy was up at his target retrieving his arrows as another boy was shooting at his target next door. I yelled for them all to stop! We then set up the standard safe procedures just like they have for the shooting range. I was remembering this yesterday, saying I was there to prevent one boy in particular from getting an arrow through the heart. Just like I yelled at him to stop as he was running to beat leather down a huge hill, with his arm in cast and sling. I did let him be the first one to make it to the top of Mt. Whitney with our party, but he was older then (and none of us could keep up with him).

Things We Keep

The secrets of holiday decoration. I had one of these, I've had it for years. Quite a few years ago, I surprised my wife by getting and putting up Christmas lights on the house. She loved it and I knew what I was doing and knew then I would have to do it again every year until I died. I say I had one, because I took it to a school down in Wilmington and forgot it and suddenly realized I never brought it back with me. I really only use it once a year. We have a large house, and only one outside outlet. I discovered that the front of the house needs a lot of strands of lights and there is a limit on how many you can plug in together and I have found I have to put the lights on two separate strands with two separate plugs if I don't want to go out several times and replace strands. The first couple of years, I ran the second strand, on the side of the house where there is no outlet, on an extension cord through our bathroom window to an outlet in the bathroom. You have to leave the window ajar and it gets cold and you have an orange extension cord running across your mirror. So what I have done for most of the years, is throw this 80' extension cord from our one outside outlet, across the roof, to the other corner of the house. and plug in our second strand that way. Except this year. The Dad of the Scout's Eagle Project at the Wilmington school may have it in his garage. He's looking. I guess I'll just have to buy another. Merry Christmas!

If you have never walked at night in the wilderness, I'd highly recommend trying it. Moon or not, it can be fun if you know your way enough to not get mixed up or lost. Try to avoid things that glow blue- green is ok. I used to go for strolls at Camp Josepho up in the Santa Monica Mountains when we camped with the cub scouts. I have been lost in the woods at night and that isn't fun. I was doing a Wilderness Survival Merit Badge with the Boy Scouts at Camp Whitsett up near the Kern River. You are supposed to go out and build a shelter from natural materials and then go back and sleep overnight in it. You don't get a sleeping bag or flashlight. I had settled for the night and some of the boys were doing pretend coyote calls to try to scare the other boys. Then I heard a real scream. I waited, trying to figure out if it was real or just more hazing. A couple of the boys came to find me. It turns out I was the only adult on the hillside. The Merit Badge Counselors had all left to go sleep in their cabins. I went to help. One of the boys had gotten freaked out and tried to crawl into another boy's shelter and then peed all over himself because he was frightened. I walked him back down to camp and to his Troop campsite and into his tent. Then tried to go back up to where the boys were trying to sleep in their shelters- now without any adult supervision. I got lost, had to back track a couple of times and an hour or so later finally found them. All I had under my bush was a space blanket that proceeded to rip length wise when I resettled. The long strips were not wide enough to cover myself.
It would not last forever, however. As the Merit Badge Counselors returned for us at 4:00 because they had to bring us back so they could lead a hike to Sentinel Peak for the sunrise. I had slept maybe an hour. I went back to my tent and slept through breakfast. Actually I used the experience as the basis of a scene in the book I'm peddling right now where our hero (Joe Strong) is trying to hike overland to get to his mistress.  

The House Under The Bridge

I forgot another place I lived. When I left the girl in the apartment up at river bend and Tulane, I went to live with a couple that had a house over in Algiers. It was under the bridge. They gave me a back room that was sort of a storage room, piled high with old Playboys, and at night you could hear the traffic on the bridge and hear the cops' loud speakers telling someone to pull over. I was only there a short time, until I found a place near where I was working in the Irish Channel. The problem was that I didn't have a car, so I'd get a ride or I'd take the bus. If there was something going in the Quarter or at the Library, I had to make sure to catch the last Canal Street ferry across the river or I'd have no bed. I did that one night and tried to let myself in with my key very quietly, but they were paranoid and had the living room bobby-trapped to make noise and the husband came bounding out with a sword. They did live next to projects there. I seldom came home late again. It was a good excuse to use, if you were out on a date and didn't want to go home alone.

Long Night

Saw this the other night- Its a great little movie:

Two orphans looking for love

Stuff for the book to be written

The girl I described yesterday was pretty seriously anxiety ridden. She had trouble with meeting people and being around people she knew. I had been hanging out with a family whose son worked the same kind of job I had at the printing company. The guy was my age, but he had barely finished high school- we didn't have much in common other than being the same age and working the same place. The type of work made muscles and we were encouraged by the printing guys to arm wrestle at lunch. Sometimes he won, sometimes I won. We boxed a little on the weekends, went sail boating out on Lake Pontchartrain and bowled some. He had a sister that was interested in me, but I didn't like her too much. I had been sort of interested in his divorced aunt who was six or seven years older, but he told me to leave her alone. The family, an extended Italian blue collar group wasn't going to put up with some Irish (me, I guess) kid trying his hand at her. Anyway, I was invited to a bowling birthday party and was going to bring the girl- we were living together by this point. So she spent an entire afternoon getting ready and when she was ready she looked like the girl above. I was kidding around and said the wrong thing. It just blurted out- because it was so obvious. She had a panic attack and wouldn't go. And I had to cancel because now she was in deep ulcer pain and was afraid she would have to go to the hospital.

I'll probably use a variation of this as back story -flashback for the book I'm spinning in my head- about the hooker going to Illinois to run her mother's cometary. I've often wondered what it might have been like if I hadn't opened my mouth and told her the truth. She had come to the printing company one day to meet for lunch, just dressed like college girl hippie and all the guys went ape over her.

I ended up dropping out of socializing with the family. The writers and artists took over in my life.  

The Big Whimper

She was a student at Tulane. I met her in a dining room cafeteria thing on campus where they served beer. I liked to haunt University libraries and got hungry one night. I usually didn't venture in those places because if you did make friends then you had to explain that you really weren't a student. She told me she was a witch. We talked, we went out. She had tried committing suicide a couple times in the last few years. She was obsessively pulling her hair out. She started spending the weekends at my little apartment on Dante Street. I was 22 and working at a printing company downtown and was beginning to really write: at least a thousand words a day, sometimes more. She was 20, I think. She gave me everything I wanted. She was flunking out of school. She did flunk out. She wanted to live with me, so we moved into a funky basement apartment that was too much money that she had shared with a couple of other people. She had never worked at a real job in her life. Her Daddy disowned her because she moved in with me. I had to support both of us. None of my friends liked her and everyone stopped coming around. She drank a lot. She clung to me like a vine. She couldn't find a job. I felt trapped, and I didn't want a child to take care of and I felt guilty about her willingness to do whatever I asked.

So when I talked to a couple I knew about it, they offered to let me stay at their place until I could find somewhere else to live. I guess everyone thought she was trouble. Someone else told me later that she was a Jewish Princess and that was ok if that was what you wanted and could afford.
I waited until she finally found a job so she could pay the rent, and I moved out. I told her I was going and I got my stuff boxed and left the next morning. I only saw her once after that- from a block away as she was going into an artist's studio that we both knew. She was walking like she used to when we had first met- all slouched over like she was the saddest sack in the whole world.

The husband of the couple went to hit on her now that I was out of the picture and didn't get anywhere. He told me later that she moved back to her parents house in New England. I hope she did. I have felt guilty about her my whole life. She would probably laugh at me, if she remembers me at all.

The poem "Stranded" http://www.murderer.us/Stranded/index.htm is really about this girl. I hope she has had a good life.

The Junk Of Our Whimpers

Shadow sculpture by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

It was at night. The lights were off. We were in bed. The ex- asked me for a hug and I told her I couldn't. I didn't think I loved her any more. I was tired. I told her that I was going to look for an apartment near by somewhere, so I could help with our child, but we would try living apart.

It was a whimper. For me, there was no longer anything that I could do that was good enough for her. We were having fights. She trashed the apartment, broke things, there was glass all over the floor and she only stopped because I slapped her. She yanked a bag off my arm, left a scar and she told me I deserved it.



She told me the next day that she couldn't continue to live where we were living. 
She called her step-father and he drove out from Texas and helped her move everything back there. I carried my daughter down to the car and gave her over to be strapped into the car seat.
Then she wrote letters and called once in awhile. She wanted me to come there, which I wasn't going to do. I was tired of moving as well. I sent her money.

Everyone, my shrink, my mother told me to let her have custody of my daughter. I didn't think it was right and still don't think it was right.

I finally called her and told her I wanted a divorce. She started screaming and got into some kind of physical fight with her own mother and the line went dead.

It would be a long time before I worked up the courage to file the papers and have her served. I was notified by her lawyer that I was already divorced. They had pretended they did not know my whereabouts and ran an ad in the Odessa paper and got the decree. They sent me a copy.

I would send cards and presents to her parents for my daughter and asked to see her, but was rebuffed. I finally wrapped a photo and a card inside the wrapping paper on a toy fire engine for my daughter. My daughter used to like to look at the fire engines near our apartment.

I got a message on my answer machine that I was not to send presents any more. My daughter was a girl, not a boy and she did not like fire engines. The ex- was remarrying and her new husband was adopting my daughter and I never to try to see her again. (Something like that- I've kept the tape all these years, for all the good its done me.)
I went for a week once and didn't tell her parents I was coming and parked down the street (a lot like my scary father might have done, now that I think about it, but I had no gun.) I thought perhaps the ex- might show up and I might get a glimpse of my daughter or I could follow her back to where she lived. My divorce papers said I had visitation rights. But I saw no one and had to go home.

The ex- sent my mother a long letter, I think hoping to justify herself. My mother sent it to me. It never came up again. I think I still have it some where too. It was a long letter about how scared she was and how I was the child of a abusive father and how she was afraid of what I might do to her or her daughter.

In the seven years we were together, I slapped her once to stop her from destroying everything we owned and slapped my daughter once on the behind too hard and left a bruise. I still regret both. I've forgiven myself for both, but have never ever hit anyone in my family.

I felt bad that she was so frightened. I understood she became a borne-again Christian or something like that.

Jerry Jeff at his best - with weird photos, but they kinda go

Random Connections

 

Marti used to watch Perry Mason every day. It relaxed her, she said.  The judge in the last episode was Earl Stanley (Gardiner) himself. He died in 1970, so the last episode was run long before she was watching in 1971. He wrote hundreds of books. (A typist, someone said to me.) I did not watch these. I was rereading Isimov's "The Foundation Trilogy" then and wondering how I could have thought these books were so great just a few years before. It wasn't until I got back home and that summer in Bloomington before hitchhiking off I was reading "Sometimes A Great Notion." I recall talking about it to a cab driver who drove me to Charlie's (step-father) deathbed in the Bloomington hospital. 

Well, I finished "Sailor Song" You shouldn't bother unless you have read and like the other early books. I was ready for it to be done. Great writing, stupid story, stupid characters and everyone gets run over by a truck at the end. (As a friend once said of the ending to Hamlet.) Except for Ike and the hot tempered girl. Of course, if you want to learn how to write- go right ahead. The bones show which could be good or bad. I find, at least with the musicians I'm hanging out with, (and the age group- of 60 year olds) that everyone is recalling things from their early teen years and what their parents liked. They are all pulling out these songs that were on the hit parade in 1965. Are we really such sheep? Thank goodness, I had no parents with any awareness of popular culture, or any awareness at all for that matter. And most TV was crap. I managed to find my own crap.

The End (Part 1 of several life changing events)

It should be descending, shouldn't it?  With Marti, (the first one I married- at 18) it was dinner at the restaurant where I was working. She brought up that she was unhappy and I agreed that I was too. The discussion continued that perhaps we should separate, then about divorce and then how about I leave town. We had no physical relations. She had gone with me to a counselor once and refused to go again. I had betrayed her by not being entirely honest about my sexual experience. We spent no time together. We didn't talk. She went out drinking with a guy she had made friends with that was of drinking age (I wasn't). I wasn't particularly jealous of him- I knew he wouldn't get what he thought he was going to get. I had married her and didn't. So over a dinner of maybe an hour we negotiated the end of our two year relationship. If she had any feelings, she didn't show them. I had a melt down as I was packing up the car on the last day, but it was apparent she didn't want to see it, so I stuffed it away and left. Drove an old rebuilt Studebaker back across country to Indiana. 

After I left she filed for divorce with my consent and it was effortlessly over. I was supposed to pay part of the lawyers fee, but I never did.

I would never hide my feelings again. I would not be with anyone that made promises about what could be.
I learned to never mistake a photographic memory for intelligence.  I avoided girls who had the latest physical aliment (hers was hypoglycemia, which basically meant she slept a lot- as opposed to having symptoms of depression). I never ever got talked into anything I didn't want to do again.

Maybe she was having a fling with the guy, but if she was, she certainly wasn't the person I had thought I was marrying. Guilty parties are always the projection of ourselves.

More Singing

Sawtooth played another Convalescent Home (in Whittier) today. Great fun. The song below is one that Rhubarb Meringue Pie is learning to play.

One That I Sang To Every Baby I've Ever Rocked

Holes In My Mind

Mijoa Rho - Artist

http://www.mijoa.org/

I apologize to the gentleman that made a comment about my post about living way on top of the hill in Pacific Grove. The picture I posted was one I just stole off the internet because it reminded me of the view and another place I lived there before we moved to San Francisco. (Which I left out of my several part thing on places I've lived.) I looked on a map for the house on top the hill, but didn't quite find it. My commute to the San Carlos Hotel in downtown Monterey was by bicycle through the Presido, so my notion is warped of where it was. (I used to joke with people visiting Monterey and Pacific Grove, 'that yes, I did know how to get to a particular landmark, but I couldn't tell them how to get there themselves'- this is exactly what happened when my step-father drove me up there for the first time in his RV and we drove around and around looking for our campsite that nobody could quite give us directions to.) I know you left the top  of the Presido, passed a school and took a left and went a little further up hill.

I left out when the ex- and I went to find a place of our own because she hated one of my roommates. The first place was down on the south end of downtown Monterey, right on the truck route. It was cheap, but turned out to be noisy and perpetually dirty with soot from the trucks. We came back to Pacific Grove and lived in an apartment building just a few blocks above the downtown there. It was a nice place and quiet. I was working graveyard and the ex- was working swing shift I think. Pacific Grove was a dreamy place. If we had stayed things might have been different, but I couldn't. San Francisco was on the agenda when I came to California. Maybe the ex- was working graveyard as well by this point. We gave notice and the manager insisted on showing the apartment and we told him that the evening was the best time since we slept during the day. He was old and god knows what he was thinking, but he appears in our living room with a couple at 11:00 am. The ex- and I are in bed asleep. She wakes me up- there's someone in the apartment! I grab my jeans and go out to find the guy showing them our kitchen. The couple left immediately. The old man was upset with me that he had lost potential renters. 

We were married on Jack's Peak. It's too bad that I don't have pictures from that time. 

My Wife Thinks I'm Getting Morbid

I was reading a Wikipedia entry for David Foster Wallace and wondering if its worth it to dip into his novels and found and interesting site: http://www.findagrave.com/  which led me to this. This is in Bordentown where Richard was born. His father and one brother and Jeanette (his sister) are there too. For those that don't know, this is a major hobby horse: helenadekaygilder.org  I received email from a guy back east that had found the Helena site and was offering his info about the De Kay family and where her brother and father was buried as well as her grandfather (Famous Poet - Drake- "The Culprit Fay" early early American poetry)  The journal that Richard & Helena kept in the early years of their marriage (which I've finally found in readable form and have read) describe planting trees for the two of their dead children - one died before he was a year old and the second was stillborn- I guess it wasn't here at Bordentown (there were a few children that lived between these two deaths) .

Having found this, I went looking for Joseph Dwight Strong Jr. but had no luck thetruthabouttreasureisland.com He's got to be in San Francisco or Oakland, then I started looking for others and found my step-father but none of my own family. Then I realized that I'm to blame. The cemetery I owned for a brief time had no digital photos and I didn't take any. The records were all on Lotus Symphony (remember it was state of the art for accounting in the day) because that's what I had to transcribe it to from my father's restaurant napkin records. I just wasn't planning for the future.

Apparently, there are folks out there driving around taking photos of grave markers just like there are folks driving around taking pictures of whole neighborhoods for Goggle Maps drill downs at street level. My house how appears on Google Maps with a basketball hoop out front that hasn't been there for 4 years.

What to do while waiting for turkey.

  

she said losing love Is like a window in your heart, Everybody sees you're blown apart, Everybody sees the wind blow,

 Go not too near a House of Rose —
The depredation of a Breeze —
Or inundation of a Dew
Alarms its walls away —

Nor try to tie the Butterfly,

Nor climb the Bars of Ecstasy,
In insecurity to lie
Is Joy's insuring quality.

-Emily Dickinson 

mailed a letter to the daughter I lost today

Do They Really Remember?

There was a scene toward the end of Tender Mercies where the daughter he barely knows leaves and he watches her go and remembers a lullaby he sang to her when she was probably very little. I've sung to my kids. The song below was one I sang thirty years ago. The last one I sang to, I sang Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan songs while we rocked next to the dryer. My wife and I sang Twinkle Twinkle to the bears until they were in middle school I think (Well, maybe not that long.)  



Can one remember lullabies from their own prechildhood? Maybe the way to warp sensibility to acoustic and unwashed music. Or just the opposite- my son didn't get a predilection to metal from us- its more a reaction to us I suppose. Where do songs go when they die? Do they go up or down?  

It's A Shame

The problem with sports are the coaches. You seldom get to choose who you play for, unless you have multiple offers to play for different teams. Few get up to that level in their playing. And then, if you do get to make a choice, it can turn into a bad one. The high school coaches at our high school were absurdly awful. God forbid if you politely suggest that they are awful. Kids that had talent, don't get to play because "the coach" doesn't like them. Luckily my bears were likable kids. And talent and ability are all very subjective assessments. There was an Asian kid that could leap three feet in the air that really didn't ever get to play varsity. Another that wasn't allowed on the team at all. Because "the coach" didn't like him. We had one coach that allowed one of the Seniors to run and coach the team. He also couldn't seem to make up his mind who was Varsity and who wasn't. There were royalty. A kid my son played ball with in a club team had an older brother scooped up by USC, so the kid was treated as if he too was going to DIV 1, but of course there wasn't anything remarkable about his playing. Another kid who was the second highest three point shooter in all of Los Angeles couldn't find a spot on a college team.

Mine are done now. My son is walking away from his college team like its a bad marriage, thank goodness.
And the little so and so who coaches him can fade into the oblivion of our memories as something mean spirited, useless and just plain stupid. The little men of the world will live on as little men. No matter how hard they try. (this is not just metaphorical).

You may remember this guy. He won a few games once. I met him. My step-father was the Wrestling Coach at IU. Absolutely no one liked him. And of course the players could not "not" like him.

A Little Night Reading

It's still nice to be needed, even though me thinks they do just fine without me. This is the second philosophy paper I've marked up only slightly via email. The first one was for her brother. My comments are in red. 

Platonic Dualism and the Body

The separation between the body and soul, or rather physical functions of the body and its spirit, has long been distinguished in both religion and society. This dualism, perpetrated by the philosophies of Plato and Socrates, not only encourages us to see this separation in our daily encounters and functions of the mind, but also leads us to believe that the spirit succeeds at usurping bodily necessities. (Perhaps the only ones that have their spirits usurping their bodies successfully are priests and monk like aesthetics. Odd word: usurping.)  But which is more vital to existence: spiritual ascension or the satisfaction of the body’s desires? As presented in Plato’s dialogues, the Allegory of the Cave, and the Theory of Forms, the body is not only considered an obstacle to a higher spiritual state, but it is also something whose needs must be suppressed in order to live an appeasing (interesting word- is it from the translation of Plato? Who are we being appeasing to? The soul?) life.

            This separation of the body and soul is particularly illustrated in the dialogue Phaedo, in which Plato asserts that not only has the soul existed before birth, but it will exist after death. Firstly, Plato asserts via Socratic dialogue, a “theory of recollection,” in which he claims that the knowledge of Forms (The study of philosophy is primarily a discussion of ideas with exactly defined terms, so if I remember I think Forms is akin to concepts that spring almost automatically from all of us without apparent coaching or instruction ie. Understanding  simple symbols or having the ability to draw a circle in the sand?) can be found in the soul before birth of the body. On page 110, Socrates states, “According to this, we must at some previous time have learned what we now recollect. This is possible only if our soul existed somewhere before it took on this human shape. So according to this theory too, the soul is likely to be something immortal” (Plato 110). This quote demonstrates that because the soul existed long before the creation of the body, they have become two distinct entities with the ability to survive one without the other. Plato then introduces the “argument from affinity” which distinguishes things that are immaterial and immortal from things that are material and visible. He writes, “…the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself, whereas the body is most like that which is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never consistently the same…that being so, is it not natural for the body to dissolve easily, and for the soul to be altogether indissoluble, or nearly so?” (Plato 118-119). The soul, because of its commonly accepted characteristics, has become eternally dissoluble, while the erroneous body dissolves easily with time. Lastly, he presents a cyclical argument, stating that because living comes from death, the soul must exist in another world, in order to be born again. Plato’s claims regarding the soul: that it exists before birth, in a higher world, and after death, all aim to communicate the view that the spirit must be considered in separate terms than that of the body and physical world.

All three of these arguments effectively illustrate the divorcement (divorce?) between body and soul that Plato attempted to convey via Socrates’ dialogue in Phaedo. However, with this separation between the functioning of the soul, which exists independently from the physical universe of the body, comes a degradation of the body’s basic functions, deemed inferior to the workings of the spirit. In Phaedo in particular, the senses are deemed inaccurate means of understanding the world. Socrates states:

The body keeps us busy in a thousand ways because of its need for nurture. Moreover, if certain diseases befall it, they impede our search for the truth. It fills us with wants, desires, fears, all sorts of illusions and much nonsense, so…in truth and in fact no thought of any kind ever comes to us from the body…everywhere in our investigations the body is present and makes for confusion and fear, so that it prevents us from seeing the truth. (Plato 103). (Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism)

This quote, in itself, concisely explains the manner in which Plato regards the body. The body’s requirements to live, such as nutrition and perhaps even sexual activity, impede the spirit from reaching higher conclusions regarding the state of man, and in some way, seems to prohibit effective philosophical pondering. He believes that the body is the source of all fear and desire, and therefore manages to confuse our minds, rendering them unable to purely understand the higher world presented in the Allegory of the Cave, and in Plato’s Theory of Forms.  (This also leads to the justification of western culture that allows us to destroy whatever we want because we disown our animalness and thus do not respect the world we live in.)

            The Theory of Forms is an ideology that is extremely complimentary to the ideas presented by Plato in the Phaedo dialogue, regarding both the separation of the body and soul, and of the debasement of the role of the body in the composition of man. The Theory of Forms is a rationale proposed by Plato that assumes that there are two levels of reality: one of pure Forms that stands above the physical world, and the visible reality which we encounter, in which we are only able to see shadowy imitations of these pure concepts. This theory is primarily discussed in the Allegory of the Cave, a segment of Plato’s larger work, The Republic. The Allegory of the Cave makes the separation between the body and soul very clear in the discussion of the steps necessary to become wise. Plato states, “…you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs, for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell, which desire of theirs is very natural” (Anthology 128). The soul, therefore, repels the presence of the physical ‘man’ in many respects, but rather attempts to rise, and dwell above normal concerns, into the world of true Forms. Once again, we are presented with a view of bodily necessities that is less than favorable. In discussion of philosophers, who have reached the world above and have been enlightened with truth and knowledge, Plato states that the procession of their lives would be much less burdened if they had been released from physical desires: “…and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the visions of their souls upon the things that are below…” (Anthology 129). In regarding these physical necessities as “impediments,” he encourages his readers, and his immediate society, to release themselves from their bodies, and reach forward with the mind, as the body is presented first and foremost as a fallible, almost harmful entity.

            Though the establishment of the concept that the body and soul act independently from one another is quite easily achieved in regard to the philosophy of Plato, analyzing this theory itself is much more complicated. What are the consequences of this way of thinking about self, and do we still view the body in such a manner in contemporary society? Many modern-day intellectuals may argue that the body works in integration with the soul, because it is necessary to satisfy bodily desires in order for the brain to function properly. Or rather it is argued that the brain is simply a part of the being, and there is no separation between the two at all, as both express need and desire for material and immaterial things. Some may not even distinguish (realize or know?) the philosophy of Plato and Socrates in the formation of this concept, but rather see the cause of this unfavorable view of the body’s desires in the separation itself; as humans we are naturally predisposed to judge and classify objects, therefore we deem the metaphysical superior to the physical. (Tis an anorectic view and we treat people with drugs now because we don’t think starving oneself to become perfect is healthy.)

Despite these arguments, the body and soul are still considered as separate entities in contemporary society and the body is regarded to have little value (don’t know about this- what about those folks out here that spend millions have their bodies reshaped or the workout bodybuilders or the beauty pageant types?), because of the restatement of this dualism in not only philosophy through the ages, but also within the constraints of religious belief. Christianity, for example, has borrowed a certain number of Platonic theories in its construction. In Neoplatonism, Christians replaced the Forms with souls, and put forth the idea that the soul was an eternal substance, and the body was simply a shadow of this substance. Contemporary Christians continue to believe in a soul that will go to heaven or hell at the departure of the (I  like all of this about the religious parallels- Plato wasn’t Christian) physical body, along with fostering a suppression of bodily desires, which such as stated in the Seven Deadly Sins, among other necessities of the body that are considered sinful and repulsive. Christianity is not the only religion that partakes in the concept, but Zen Buddhism as well. In order to attain enlightenment, or Satori, Zen Buddhists meditate. They attempt to reach a higher place, or greater understanding, by releasing the soul to hover above the immediate bodily understanding of the world. These religions that advocate this separation, perhaps stemming from the concepts of Plato,(probably not the Eastern Religions like Zen)  or rather because of a natural procession of human thought, all have a great effect on contemporary society, and the manner in which we view the world around us, our own bodies, and our being.

The divorce of the spirit from the body, and the consequential negative view of the physical body, has become quite intrinsic to the way in which we see ourselves as humans. Therefore, we must perhaps determine individually the amount in which Platonic philosophy affects our relationship with our spirit and body’s development. Which shall be deemed superior, the possibility of spiritual ascension, or rather the satisfaction of bodily desires? Or will we rather find a balance, a weighing of instincts? Perhaps then we are destined to forever question our own beliefs as Socrates himself did, and discover a melding of both necessity and philosophy to guide us in our search for knowledge and understanding.

(You did a good job! Plato and Aristotle became the basis of all philosophy and then a basis for law making and psychology.  I’m not sure I would confess like you do in the words below. You are brilliant and can write in two days what it might take someone else two weeks,  I’ve often wondered, if Sophocles was indeed a Sophist, then perhaps his dialogues- that Plato put in his mouth by the way- were intended not to convince, but rather to invoke the opposite reaction and help create other contrary conclusions than the apparent ones. Or perhaps Plato didn’t really understand his teacher and wanted to make him over into his own image. Like we do with God. I’m sure Plato believed that the sun circled around the earth.

Process Notes

            First of all, I must admit that I wrote this essay in two days, when normally it takes me about a week and a half to write a coherent essay on a specific topic. I wasn’t quite sure to write about concerning Plato, because he writes dialogues that aim to communicate his own philosophies, which I think is interesting, but difficult to form a stance on, as the dialogues were long and incoherent at first glance.

            However, after I read Phaedo, I started to become interested in the Theory of Forms and the relationship between the soul and the body of humankind, and how we view our bodies often as things to be suppressed or ignored. So I decided that it would b appropriate to write an essay on the subject. I made an outline, and it developed rather naturally into a 5 page paper. Whether or not I actually clearly addressed any topic in particular in a coherent way, I am not sure. It’s difficult to write essays on philosophical topics, as I don’t have much experience in the matter, and I tend to write myself into mazes when attempting to do so.

            I think my main downfall in this paper is writing in a way that is long-winded and filled with large vocabulary words. I did not use a thesaurus in the writing of this paper, yet I still think that writing in this manner can consequent in a paper that sounds pretentious. I also can write in a way that is confusing, and not conversational, because though I find my topic interesting, I do not have a great passion for it.

Overall, however, I am pleased with this paper in the short amount of time that I wrote it, and my lack of immediate ideas in coming up with a topic (frankly, the number of assignments I must do before thanksgiving break is stressful and daunting). I think that I may do a revision of this paper in the future, because I doubt it will be received as well as my last paper.

I recall being interrupted myself

This is a monument to Jed Kesey, Ken Kesey's college age son who died in a college team van on the way home from a college wrestling match. Sailor Song, which I'm about halfway through was written over several years with Jed dying someplace in the middle of its writing. There's a long article about Kesey's loss in the Summer 2010 issue of The Missouri Review. The critics hated Sailor Song when it was published. It's a mess of a book, but the ability is present and there are some paragraphs that are unbelievably exquisite. It's akin to reading Hem's unpublished novels (Islands In The Stream, True at First Light, and the other one that I can't think of.) It's not what got him there, but you take the faults of your friends with a light touch, don't you? This sculpture was done by Jed's Wrestling Coach. My wife says I'm getting morbid.

I let the book I published sit for a year, because my father really died just as I was completing the first draft.

The Boy In The Rain

He was the same age as my son, 14. He played Little League, was an alter boy, a Boy Scout. He was tall and bigger than all the kids except my son. He hung out with the younger boys and would play tricks and razz and tease. He went missing from a camping trip and we looked all over for him and finally found him sound asleep in a tent. I wrote a poem about him. http://murderer.us/DeadBoy/index.htm He was working on a couple of Merit Badges with me. We went to the TV Museum up in Hollywood where you could call up videos of old TV Programs on computers and I found him watching "Queen For A Day"

He stole money from the Little League and spent it buying presents for his friends. When he got caught, his parents and a couple of other adults scared the shit out of him and he got his father's gun and shot his brains out.

It wasn't fun. I had to tell my son. We had a shrink come to talk to the Troop. The whole world felt horrible. The funeral in the Catholic Church was the worst part of it. We failed him. We failed his family.