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.

How Many Dead?

Relatives are easy, three Great-Grandmothers, two Great-Uncles and one Great Aunt, both Grandmothers and Grandfathers, one Father, one Uncle, one Sister, two Step-Fathers. Friends: Fred in New Orleans, Bill Little and probably Jody Miller in junior high & high school before we graduated. Wally Ervin a year after, under a city dump truck that backed over him. Chris Palmer and Judy Liggott's musician boyfriend here in Los Angeles. A Niece. Probably some of the older people that I knew in the Chamber Pot Society here in LA. The girl that shot her brains out in New Orleans. A Boy Scout in our Troop that shot himself. I cried at my Grandmother's funeral when I was 12. I can't remember ever crying again, except when I visited my older brother's grave after my father died. I forgot him, a brother. I've had impressions of my sister from time to time late at night. Particularly when I was up in Portland trying to make her last wishes happen. I'd like to see Fred and my sister again. The niece was gone too early too. Wally and I played pool, he didn't deserve what he got. The Boy Scout should have been saved somehow. I was there when one Step-Father died, went to his and Al's (the other Step-dad) funerals. Made it to my sister's memorial service. Went to the Boy Scout's Funeral. Oh, there was Colleen Hauser, but I didn't go to the funeral. I didn't visit her in the hospital either. (She was the first girl I ever kissed.) She deserved better. John and his boyfriend next door in Venice. My father and mother-in-laws. Aunt Rita, my wife's aunt.

That's probably enough for a while, I want graduations and weddings and other things to happen. There's gonna be one more that I know is approaching. I gotta call her more.

Found It

Helena as a young mother. (de Kay Gilder)  I've been looking for this for a few years now. I knew it existed, but didn't know where. Eaton was one of the founding members of the Society of American Artists that she and some others organized when they got fed up with the Academy in NYC. Recently, I've been trading emails with a guy that's digging up graves back there. (Not literally.) He's found her father's and her brother's. And knows about the Oyster Bay house where she and her mother and siblings lived with Helena's uncle before they went off to Dresden. Another guy found my Helena site and said he grew up near Great Barrington (where one of the bears is hanging out these days) and thought her descendants were fascinating people.

 

Helena's mother from about the same time. Neither picture is up on the Helena site, maybe its time for an update. 

Chapman University Choir

We went down for their autumn all choir thing. Good stuff, rousing and lively. I can hear the little bear's voice through it all. From the back of the program, that's Efrain Solis, whose singing will be famous some day.

He calls my wife Mama. I met him at the same time Allie did, at lunch, at Freshman orientation. They've become good friends.

Places to Walk at Night

Bourbon Street - 1973 - The black kids with their shoeshine kits "Mister, betcha a dollar I can tell you where you got those shoes." ("On the pavement right here.") The hotdog vendors and the guys in the blue suits soliciting money for their cult religion. Finding a kid that dropped out of our circle because my friends made fun of him working as a hawker for a drag show. Friztel's was where I hung out or Molly Malone's. There were 3:00 am jams at Molly's. Found a guy I had worked with in Bloomington down on the street here on vacation. He said he wondered what had become of me. Being propositioned by in the closet guys here on a business trip. Holding myself upright by the buildings trying to get back to my little place on Dalphine street before I passed out. Being surrounded by crowds and not talking to a soul for hours.

Polk Street - San Francisco 1978 - Some nights it was quiet and empty, other nights there were rallies and street festivals. This was before AIDS became a nightmare and there were a lot of guys out here and over on Castro. There was an all night Tibetan Buddhist Temple down off the end of the street in North Beach near City Lights Books. The priest was four feet tall and slightly round like Buddha. There was a guy as tall as me out in a wonderful ball gown with a beard down to his waist walking all by himself at 4:00 in the morning. The was an all used bookstore over by City Lights too. I never got propositioned here. But I didn't hang out in bars very much.

Bloomington Court House Square- 1970 - On my nights of from work, I'd start at the Gables Restaurant across the street from the IU Law School. (Where I worked.) I'd sit in there and write poetry and drink coffee until they would close and then I'd walk over to the Waffle House up north of here and sit there for a couple more hours and drink more coffee and then there was a all night truck stop over in the sleezy part of town that I'd retreat to for the few hours before the sun would come up. It was a real greasy spoon and the help all talked and acted like inbred hill people. Seems they were all missing a tooth here and there. The sun would come up and I would slosh (after about a gallon of coffee) back over to campus to sit outside under the trees and try to finish whatever it was that I was trying to write. Then I'd go home to my room in the boarding house and go to sleep.

Sometimes Its Great

About half way through "Sailor Song" by Mr. Kesey. Not really sure what it's about but it sprawls out like the author himself. The characters are all real, the prose is wonderful and it rolls on. Can't seem to leave him alone. Read "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and "Sometimes A Great Notion" as a kid. Still think "Sometimes A Great Notion" is a masterpiece. One should read Tom Wolfe's book about Kesey & the Pranksters & the bus. While you are at it, you might as well read "The First Third" by Neil Cassady- who drove the bus and made love to Jack and Allen.

 

Caretakers Deluxe

We had one that came right after the twins were born. We realized that the money we would spend for day care for two equaled what we would pay for a nanny that could come to the house. Much better deal. There was a lady that lived by that called about the ad. My wife recognized her voice. We were aware of her because she screamed at the top of her lungs at her own daughter when she walked by out house. She lived nearby in a house that the kids came to know as "the yelling family"- this wasn't good. Blanca showed up and I knew she was the right one. That didn't stop me from appearing at the house at odd times to say I forgot some papers that I needed for work (just to check up on her). She was with us for 8- 9 years. My wife and I were afraid to take the twins out for a walk by ourselves because we figured they would wander in separate directions. We came home early one day to find her strolling calmly about the block with both in tow. If Blanca could do it, we could. Eventually, we trusted her to take them all over the city on buses and we'd pick them up in odd places. We helped her get her papers. She came to the new house with us. And it was painful to let her go when I decided to stay home with the kids I was barely seeing. The littlest bear cried at me one day saying she didn't want me, she wanted Blanca back. Blanca let her cheat at cards.
She has two of her own now and we see her occasionally. She says she doesn't know how we did it as parents. She's worn out. We thought she was better at it than us, but then she got to go home at the end of the day.

Sunday Afternoon

Ole Wayne and I went to a party jam in a guy's garage down in Long Beach yesterday. Played for 5 or 6 hours and most of 'em were great musicians who could just hear something and start playing. I need chords written down. Anyway, it was great fun. Ended the night singing one of my original songs to them and they didn't laugh too loudly. (They didn't laugh at all.) Woke up this morning wondering why I couldn't do this for a living. The average age, we figured out on the drive home, was about sixty. The two single women that played were hits of the party. We were also wondering why we have to drive to Long Beach? But I've not been able to find anything in West LA of a similar bent.
They didn't know this one:

The Dragon

In my living room. We had to sedate it. One of the bears was trying to move a Fabergé Egg out of harm's way and the dragon thought it was hers. It was heavy and difficult to squeeze out the front door. It was my anger. I knew I couldn't manifest my dragon at work, so I had to dispose of it in my dream. This is really what my anger feels like to me. One has to understand oneself. I painted a sleeping dragon with a smile on its face in the mural on my children's bedroom wall when they were first born. Later, we had to tape a piece of paper over it because one of the twins was scared of it. Interesting context now huh?
If you haven't, at some point you need to read psychology- not that textbook stuff they teach you in college, the real stuff: Freud, Jung, Otto Rank, Adler, Fritz Perls, Havelock Ellis, then Confucius & Plato & Socrates and Watts on Zen, throw in Nietzsche and Aristotle, a few poets maybe -Gary Snyder & Ezra Pound AND then hang out for a few years with the idiots that want to analysis every minute particle of being in a framework of one of those guys I just mentioned. Then you're ready to delve into Barthes and Langer and Empson. Avoid economic theory- that has nothing to do with anything. Words in particular are fun house mirrors. The symbolism of "The" is endless. If you then have the guts, you can begin to write. And maybe someday, you might understand yourself.  

Artwork Discount (Blatant Plug)

BLATANT PLUG & DISCOUNT

Hit the link above. I'll sign anyone's prints. You too can own a McNay piece. This is the one everyone likes.

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Me And A Lot of Tall Guys

Dreams are really just an echo of the day. A couple days ago after a run in at work, I dreamt of a dragon in our living room and the difficulty of getting it outside without it destroying anything. Last night it was going to some Boy Scout thing where there was supposed to be a pick-up basketball game of the adults (parents) and I figured what the hoot (I'm 6'7"). Well, in my dream, I was the shortest guy. There were these 6'10" guys, all pro ball players that had showed up to show off for the Scout Troop- a lot like the rich parents do at school fund raisers- they show up, but then don't show up any other time. I walked away. (And woke up) It had a lot to do with feeling intimated (which I don't feel much) and worries about the bear getting his just due his last year playing for the college team and then the whole thing about the bears being young and now, perhaps, being faced with the reality of getting jobs after college and maybe having to put up with a life they haven't planned for or wanted. My expectations were lower (and much higher). The working world was just something you had to do, whether it was as a clerk or a fry cook or a truck driver. I thought my books would be published.

I hope it all works out. Me, I just walk away. I've always just walked away.

Just Bought Her Today

This is the actual car. A discard rental car - had good luck with them. Kia (my nephew works at a dealership up in Portland and swears by them) Spectra 2009. Will give it to the bear that needs it and will get my wife's PT Cruiser back. Three car family again, probably be four by next summer, what do you do with five drivers in the family? We're lucky to be upper middle class and have money and credit. How did I get here? The fry cook from Bloomington that dropped out of school.

Anybody want Iris Dement's "My Life" - Bought at a thrift store for two bucks and and found I already had it. I'll send it to you for free. Email me at mcnay@usc.edu

It's Large

Well, it looks like its on. The backpacking buddies say they're interested. The prodigal son says if he gets a job, he will postpone it until we return. The other bear may be in Pakistan, but what are you to do? Big spring, with graduations and interviews and internships and looking for work and the change of life again.

We're everywhere.

Famous Banjos

Images of Survival

This is Matisse, if you don't know. Outside the children's ward at Cedars Sinai Hospital there was a very large bowl of goldfish. I relieved the ex- to take Heather out in a wheelchair with the IV dangling to visit them every evening. We gave them names. Then I got sick myself and couldn't go any more. We had hepatitis- I was the last one to come down with it. They made me leave work because I had come in with yellow skin and eyes. Everyone in the large accounting office had to get gamma globulin shots. When I recovered and returned the boss told me I was a pain in the ass, literally. The Sikh ladies in the house tried to feed me Beet Casserole and got mad because I lit up in the middle of the day in my room, because I was too weak to get up and go outside.

Caregivers Too

We were living in the women's ashram in west Los Angeles and I was working down town at the Bonaventure Hotel every day. I was riding the bus and was the sole breadwinner for our little family. We had nothing. All of our belongings were in Arizona in storage and we had no car.The Westin Corporation had no slack for its employees. You could not come in late, you could not deviate from the dress code or the behavior set forth for you. We were also not paid very much, but I did get insurance for the first time.

A lady appeared at the house from Northern California. She was a Sikh and the other ladies in the house knew her. She had left her husband of 10 years, because all he did was smoke dope all day long. She had a van that looked something like the one above. Nice lady, she didn't have the commune attitude or the strict notion of lifestyle because she hadn't ever lived in the communal setting. She was trying to figure out what to do with her life. She stayed at the house and helped out here and there. 

Heather had a bad ear infection and so I took off so that I could take her and my ex- to the doctor and back on the bus and I had promised I would be in at noon. We went and came back and Heather, as we returned to the house started acting sleepy. I left and ran for the bus to get to my forever important job. When I got to work, the ex- called me from the hospital. Heather had gone into convulsions and Sava Kaur (her real given Sikh name) had rushed her and the ex- to Cedars to the emergency. I ran back to the bus to get there. (This was before the day of the cell phone) Went I finally got there, Heather was in stable condition and was expected to recover. The doctor said another half hour and she probably wouldn't have survived. The little flowered bus will always have a place in my heart. Along with its owner. I think she ended up going back to her old hippie husband up north.