dog ignores jaws of death

facebook

My daughters (actually, one in particular) convinced me that I should join. open, start.....(I don't know the lingo yet) Facebook. I knew about Facebook but hadn't ventured in, believing that I was probably well beyond the age limit to participate. But not wanting to seem a Luddite or,  as we labeled it in the 60's, a "square" I started an account(hopefully this will lead to lucrative withdrawals but more likely to painful, prolonged withdrawal accompanied by hallucinations and cold sweats - not the kind James Brown referred to in his song).  Immediately, I was barraged by e-mails from people who wanted to be my "friend." The average age of these would-be friends was about 30; some of them I knew when they were my daughters' friends in grade school; some of them I had no idea who they were or how they knew me. I'm guessing the latter group are friends of my daughters who saw my recognizable last name & just perfunctorily(the length and pronunciation difficulty of that word definitely contrasts with its meaning)  decided to ask me to add them to my friends list. This made me think about comments from my daughters about their friends' parents wanting to be added to my daughters' lists. They were always telling me how weird that was.  I took their word for it. Then, an old high school friend suddenly "wrote on my wall." (See, I'm already being colonized by the technology. My native language is being replaced by Facespeak.) Hearing from him was copasetic (like cool maaan), but I also realized that all the the messages people sent or that I sent them would be out there on that wall. This didn't seem particularly liberating. I could imagine every time I "talked" (Is that what communication is called, or is it every time I "facebooked" or "walled"?), I would have to weigh the consequences of one of my daughters' (and now my son's) friends reading it. You might ask what I have to hide. Actually, enough. If I start talking to old high school or college buddies on my wall, the sordid episodes of my life between 12 & 21 will become fodder for the Facebook nation. My carefully constructed past might crumble, and my children might have to start issuing denials on their wall of any familial relationship with that crazy old guy who happens to have the same name as and look somewhat like their father. So, if you happen to be one of my children's friends, don't be offended if I don't honor your request to be befriended. As a writer, I cherish elements of my sordid past as source material, but I reserve the right to put those actions in the hands and minds of skillfully veiled personas.  When I write a poem or a blog, I'm a writer with all the writer's rights to screw with the reader. That's what makes writing fun for both sides! So you can read my wall, but be forewarned; it will be dull as my reported life can be. 

CODA: I declare that I will not enter my children's Facebook pages, so you don't have to give second thoughts to what you put up on your walls.

3 photos/click to enlarge

Obama's speech

Obama's speeech last night at Grant Park, Chicago made me look back in a journal I keep of writing that moved me. This is from Living with Music by the great American writer, Ralph Ellison. "Without the presence of Negro American style, our (U.S.) jokes, tall tales, even our sports would be lacking in the sudden turns, shocks, and swift changes of pace (all jazz-shaped) that serve to remind us that the world is ever unexplored, & that while a complete mastery of life is mere illusion, the real secret of the game is to make life swing."  When I listened to what Obama did with his "Yes We Can" phrase last night- how he moved it from the urgent call of his campaign speeches to a quiet acknowledgment of deep belief - I was grateful that this country will have a president who will talk to us as intelligent and emotionally charged beings and at the same time make the language swing.  

(The photo was taken at an evening rally in Eugene, OR before he had won the nomination. The university gym was full, so he stopped to speak to about 2,000 people outside waiting to catch a glimpse. Even then we had the feeling as Dylan put it, "something's happening & you don't know what it is/do you Mr. Jones?"

wine

The 4th century Chinese poet, T'ao Ch'ien writes a lot about wine as an entry to The Way. I'm sitting here after a few glasses of Sicilian red, my dog snoring on the couch beside me, having watched Bill Moyers' Friday night show with the economist Galbraith discussing the current economic collapse. Over the past month, I've learned more about economics than I have learned in the past 62 years (for better or worse). More importantly, the last segment of the show was about a film, Playing for Change: Music for Peace (one problem with wine is that it can sometimes fog the short term memory. i think that is the title.)  The excerpts Moyers showed from the film brought me to tears.  It was one of those best of times, worst of times moments, similar to watching clips of Palin rallies with Hank Williams Jr. using music to appeal to the lowest political denominator and then thinking about his father's music as it breaks the human heart and simultaneously lifts its spirit. It's sad that these times of political activity always seem to move away from the spirit. The Republicans never were there, and the Democrats pushed Obama farther and farther away from those transcendent moments that marked the beginning of the campaign. When he wins, I hope those moments return because the human spirit craves them. I hope he fills the White House with art, music, poetry, and dance. I hope, as he spoke early in his campaign, he pushes a platform that restores the arts to the schools and does not relegate them to lesser priorities to be dealt with after the economic situation is "resolved".   In looking at the excerpts from the film on the Moyers program, I was reminded how powerfully the arts illustrate, explain, and reconcile,  how what is most important in life manifests itself through them, how the spirit rises through their presence. I'll spill my last sip on the Earth, an offering to the moon as it wanes, to the winds as they blow a wild sound, to the firs swaying in gentle ecstasy.  

Reading T'ao Chien on the ferry in the San Juan Islands

Orcas to San Juan &

back wind

steady sun

bleached water stretching

to Canada & even

to Russia where Putin's bald

head rises flies

into Alaskan sky this sea

wipes out nation re-

minds the spirit new

thought no

thought everything changing

nothing

but light

the decisive moment

I just read some of Henri Cartier-Bresson's biography and a small section of an article in Harper's by Wendy S. Walters about slavery (I'm about six months behind on Harper's - I read them when I have short snatches of time).  While I was reading, I was listening to Ornette Coleman's first album with his electric group Prime Time and Charlie Parker's Best on Verve. Before that, I ate what one of my daughter's refers to as "a monk's lunch" - peanut butter on a few slices of fig anise bread and two glasses of water. I ate this after I took a walk outside to check the apples and grapes for ripeness (both were ready to eat - I ate some of both). I had already cleaned the sink & toilet in one of the bathrooms after I had fixed a stubborn(m0nths) leaking faucet in that bathroom. (At this point, you can probably figure that I'm moving backward -actually I'm sitting in one place, but I'm moving the time sequence in this blog deeper into the recent past, but don't worry I will not include a graphic description of my conception. I'm pointing this out to relieve myself of trying to figure out words/phrases/etc. to make this time orientation obvious.) I made a list of stuff to take on our trip next week: dog bowls, olive oil, the wire that connects the digital camera to the computer, earl grayer tea, garlic, yoga mats - all the stuff the out of touch elite take on a trip. I read the paper - the big stories (Iraq, financial collapse, Palin accepting #25,000 in gifts in her first two gubernatorial years), the local (the university's quarterback was in a car with two other players that crashed while they were racing on a street by Gateway shopping mall - the quarterback bruised his elbow but will be able to play, one of the others got 75 stitches and won't make the trip to Pullman with the team. He was driving and was arrested. I'm not sure if that was before or after he went to the hospital), the business (layoffs at a local tech firm, a big bank taken over by the Feds/part of it sold to another bank), the comics (the nerdy husband in Sally Forth may be getting involved with a woman at work/Rex Morgan breaking up a drunken quarrel between two elderly yacht clubbers), the sports (the Beavers beat the Trojans, Lance Armstrong is going to ride for a team from Kazakhistan(sp) and hire a drug tester who can test him at any time - maybe even while he's trying to seduce a female celebrity; that wasn't in the article). I walked two miles listening to a playlist I titled "music for hipsters" including Pharoah Sanders The Creator Has a Master Plan & John Coltrane's Every Time I Say Goodbye. I walked our dog to the end of the drive way & back (n0, that should be "back & to the end of the driveway"), stopping every three or four steps so she could perform intense olfactory inspections of spots where she might urinate - two were deemed worthy. I did 65 half push-ups, the ones you do with your knees on the ground (I'm fuckin 63), a 17 breath plank, a yoga bridge,fifty crunches, a yoga bridge, 20 bicycles, some sort of lower abdominal leg exercises - I don't know the technical name for them - & some back stretches. I did twenty minutes of Tai Chi. I peed, put on the kitchen light, put on my sweat pants, rolled out of bed, turned off the alarm, stretched my left arm out, squinted,  & heard the alarm. Cartier-Bresson believed the truth was in the detail, the decisive moment. He once went on a ten day assignment and took 10,000 negatives (pre digital - it's no wonder he didn't develop or print his own work). One hundred years before my greatgrandfather  immigrated through a port in the Northeast from Italy to avoid military service (that's the family rumor - a draft dodger), Newport, Rhode Island was an important port in the slave trade. Many of the oldest houses were built by slaves (see Wendy S. Waters in Harper's March 2008).  

postscript: I can't figure out how to delete the photo of the two chefs from this post, so ignore them or turn your head sideways to the right to see. Let me know how to delete it.

decision

Due to the overwhelming response, both written and monetary, the author of this blog will continue to post his musings on the minutiae of his experience. A more developed statement will appear after he resolves the looming threat of financial meltdown at his credit union. He will not appear in any televised debates nor on the Miley Cyrus show. He will also continue to collect donations at public phone & photo booths. He asks that you all pray for his daughters who have been captured by the illiterati. May the big dog find a good home, and may the cats rest in peace.

day two act now

There are rumors that this blogger is asking for financial incentives from readers to continue his brilliant ruminations. The exact price tag has not been released,  but it is said to be in the neighborhood of $700,000,000,000. There is also some talk about a lucrative book and movie deal. In return, he will continue his incisive and thought provoking commentary in prose and poetry on the state of the 63 year old male psyche. Of course, there will be no oversight required. The fact that he regularly experiences long dry spells should not be a reason to doubt his will to fulfill any agreement, the terms of which will be kept secret in Al Gore's locked box and can not be opened till the world becomes completely energy independent. He also promises to inundate your blog with sophomoric musings like this if his readership does not increase significantly. Incidentally, he has been a POW (prisoner of writing) for over 40 years, so he is qualified to be the poet laureate of the world or President . Leave your contributions in plain brown bags(no plastic) at your nearest public phone booth. If there isn't an accessible public phone booth, a photo booth will do. Questions can be directed to The Committee for Concerned Writer Concerned About HIS Lack of Readers. 

a long time gone

almost 4 months since my last missive. Why? A sense of being overwhelmed, of feeling the creative pulse but for some unarticulated reason relentlessly drawing back. Working the garden, time in the darkroom, reading, wavering over the internet, posting brief replies on others' blogs, watching TV politics, playing my bamboo flute, but little writing. I looked at my journal today - the beginnings of a few new poems, the last one about a month ago. even now, thinking about the laundry on the table that needs to be folded, the wood that needs to be stacked. When I took up writing seriously in my twenties, I'd write hours at night after work, after kids were in bed, after all the lights blinked off. I was chasing the same feeling that's lurking, no, lingering on the edge of my consciousness now here at noon as summer moves in & out of autumn clouds. Then, I'd drink, smoke, play music, dance myself into the writing trance. I'd walk a few miles back & forth to work through the old cemetery, chanting new poems, working on line breaks, rhythms, the final phrase that turned the words to music. The writing life is weird, sometimes the daemon takes possession, sometimes an almost manic avoidance. My mentor taught writing till he was in his sixties.  Up to that point, he had published one book. Since he "retired" 15 or so years ago, he's published about ten more. Every day he writes. Maybe today is day one, maybe not.

Vat ees dis blog ting

For the last month or so my wife and I have been eating dinner outside in what we think of as our yard and what our youngest daughter's former boyfriend referred to as a park.We live on two acres on the edge of town, still within the city limits but with a very rural feel. We watch the sun set, the hawks sail in twilight, the crows "row "(thank you Ted Hughes) across the sky roost in the fir, a few swallows flicker in twilight. The last week, we sit side by side in the hammock watching for first stars. When the air chills or the mosquitos bite, we go inside maybe watch TV, read, or I look at my oldest and youngest daughters' blogs and then my own to see if anyone has commented. Usually not. When I read my daughters' blogs, I find out a little of what is going on in their lives. Sometimes, it's the day to day, sometimes more than that - a deepening of their lives, a change in their ways of being in this world. I think back to myself at their particular ages and realize our lives have been very different and their lives have been very different, one from the other. Two of my children, another daughter and a son, don't write blogs. Their lives are more distant. We talk occasionally by phone, now and then see one another (we live in different parts of the country/of the world).  & in these blogs, we don't talk directly to one another although we know the others will read them and sometimes respond. The three of us that write blogs love writing. I think it is our resting place, where we change time into music,  sing to others of what we understand about our lives and what befuddles us. My parents never understood this part of me. It hasn't brought me fame or fortune.  At times, it took me to the edge of despair or away from it.  When I write this blog, I reread, rewrite, work to make the writing work, to rub the words together, send out a spark as Pound suggested. Sometimes, the words struggle to find their way; sometimes they breathe deep, make a big wind. 

this for that

                                  this for that

we empty the house to make room

for more

a continual exchange of goods

give away a bag of baby clothes

a teenager goes shopping

clean the refrigerator

relatives arrive

clear the table 

fill the sink

an empty room needs

a chair to enjoy its emptiness

a haircut needs a new hat

i turned over the stillness of a dead possum

a galaxy of maggots glittered in its place

i blew up

a balloon for my daughter

this poem filled my mouth

the face in the corn

nostalgia

          

                                                    nostalgia

                                                                  

              for as you know what we call nostalgia 

              is for the life we did not live

                                           - Gerald Stern

                                                   

the girl with the cat-

eye makeup asks

me what i want        to be

15 & saunter

into Vinny's Pizza on the corner of 86th 

& Lex    lean against the counter curling

smoke rings from my mouth one

inside another    to watch

Big Tony's stubby

fingers spin the pie high till it rises

to the tin

ceiling then slams

down a swirl 

of sauce a toss

of cheese    to hear 

the jukebox chant

Gene Chandler's Duke Duke

of Earl The Drifters making love

under the boardwalk    to gaze in

to her feline

eyes & murmur

                            gimme

a slice

& a Coke

yardwork

Last week, crows & hawks. This week, turkey vultures. The rewards of yardwork. Every fall, I resolve to clean up the garden, compost the vegetable beds, maybe get some garlic in the ground before the winter rains. Every fall, my ambition outstrips my effort.  I'm sure I deserve some kind of government subsidy for fallow fields. I don't dislike the work; in fact, once I get going, I'll work morning to evening. So the work usually begins in February or March when the rain subsides for a week or two. Something primal or maybe just ancestral stirs. I dig out my mud clothes, my gloves, boots &  favorite weeding tool. I start slowly. My winter of weights, yoga, and Tai Chi helps me unwind, but the garden muscles, tendons , and joints have been sleeping deep in the body. At first, I bend for the weeds, then squat, then sit, my right leg straight, my left foot pressed against my right thigh. Garden yoga maybe. As morning warms, the tool in my right hand reaches deeper into the earth, finds the roots. My left hand pulls the weed, tosses it into the pile building behind me. Sometimes, I'll work on a poem, turn a line this way that. Sometimes,  I'll think of wise words to send my children then forget them as the rhythm of the work brings me to silence. Over the years on this piece of land , I've learned the nooks and crannies, the subtle slopes beneath the grasses. I know the time for the first mowing before the mower will be overwhelmed. I recognize the different grasses and how they will respond to the blades. I've learned how low to duck beneath certain trees to save my scalp, how to balance my weight as I cut sidehill, how to slow as I descend the steepest slope. And every year something new appears. Maybe a new grass or a volunteer oak emerging from a tangle of blackberries. Or what is new is how I see a microclimate that has evolved over the years. Usually my dog is the first to find these places. As she grows older, she values the cool places in summer, the warm in early spring. I try these places out to understand what she has learned. And as I watch the hawks, crows, the jays, the flicker who comes the last two days  to feast on the ants in the rotting wood bounding the garden beds, my body slows to the earth, becomes one more changing constant in this place I call home.  

crows & hawks

tis the season   redtails just wanta have fun & crows just wanta be sure they don't or maybe it's an old old ceremony   the hawks ride the drafts  the crows shout & dive  never making contact    sometimes a jay joins the dance screaming complaints in the hawk's ear       

                                      crow

       crow                                                                                        cloud

                                                           crow

                                jay         hawk     

                            crow                                                firtops

crow

                                                                                                                                 me

a prayer for my grandfather

Sometimes you can live inside a story without realizing there are large holes in the narrative. Even though my father's last name was Rossini and my grandfather's name was Leichtman, I never thought about that discrepancy until I was in my 20's. I guess i was so indoctrinated by the Catholic dogma of marriage that I never thought that my father's parents could have been divorced and that the man I knew as Granpa Leichtman was not my father's biological father. Here's a poem about him.

                                             a prayer for my grandfather

my mother buttons my white shirt

my grandfather has died tonight

is his wake i walk

quietly into the funeral parlor where everything

whispers    the undertaker the family the taffeta

of my cousins' dresses we sit

in a silence that swallows

the light & one

by one rise

to kneel in front of his open coffin

i look for the cigar in his hands or the deck

of cards instead there is a rosary tied

around the fingers    this Jew (they whisper he always wanted

to be a Catholic) left

his wife their five 

children for my grandmother & her three sons

& in this moment of sorrow i stare 

at his dark forehead it reminds me

of the table where Friday nights the family

gathered    its wood rubbed deep

with whiskey & smoke & his long

journey from Hungary to this grim

room of flowers & i see

my eye reflected there & lean back

taking my life

from his face i pray

may he have Dutch Masters & nights

of pinochle & Four Roses 

may his hands forever 

be free 

of prayers

midnight the blues in an irish bar

                         midnight the blues in an irish bar

midnight the blues in an irish bar

songs dark

as eyes of five Sikhs on the prow of this morning's

Staten island ferry dark

arms folded across dark chests sheltered

their hearts from freedom

long-haired bluesman shouts " i shoulda left her

long time ago" i throw

my hands in the air dance

is the god shakes

years off my bones

cast stories with their shadows

i should have left here a long time ago as the barmaid plunks

another pint down one

more step   the floor

disappears

the grain spirit opens

her arms whispers

i remember

her promises slipped from me like dreams from old

men who sleep with brown bottles wake

to the light of a yellow cab ticking

at the curb its glow illumining the cobblestones

long-haired bluesman moans

"one more heartache" before the light

closes      my skin

opens

breathes

this all

in

holy manhattan

                                   holy manhattan

St.Patrick's pricks sky red with oils fumes & setting sun dead

cardinals' redhats/blackribbons float

                                                                               from eaves

                                                                                                        banks

of votive candles shadow

walls  prayers  going up    in smoke

down-

town old italian in sleeveless undershirt leans

on wroughtiron railing        wine

                                                            easing tongue swaying

                         spirit like old

country night

he cups

a match

               face

               flickers     eyes

close

                                          full

                                                              moon

slips through window

street chimes

with glass

this for that

                                      this for that

we empty the house to make room

for more

a continual exchange of goods

give away a bag of baby clothes

a teenager goes shopping

clean the refrigerator

relatives arrive

clear the table

fill the sink

an empty room needs

a chair to enjoy its emptiness

a haircut needs a new hat

i turn over the stillness of a dead possum

a galaxy of maggots glitters in its place

i blow up

a balloon for my daughter

this poem fills

my mouth

Tom's cars

Tom Intondi and I were friends since first year of high school. Last Sunday was the 14th anniversary of his death. We went to the same high school and college. After college, we wound up in different parts of the country, but we stayed in close contact due to a songwriting partnership we started about a year after graduation. Tom was a singer/songwriter, who was very active in the Greenwich Village music scene, starting in the 70's and continuing till his death in the 90's. We collaborated on a fair number of songs. I wrote the lyrics, and he composed the music and performed. In fact, if you go to itunes and search his name, you'll find two of our songs (only 99 cents per).  A few weeks ago, I was looking through the first b/w negatives I shot in 1968. I found them in a file in the back of a closet while I was looking for some letters from my father.  I took them to the darkroom and wound up printing a few. One was a photo of Tom from one of our various roadtrips. I've been working on a related poem. Here's an early version. This may be it, or it may cook for a while and turn into something else.

                                              roadtrip    a found photo

                                                                           for Tom

you never had much luck

with cars the little Alfa

you owned for a week till your father woke you early

Sunday to move it he had to drive 

your mother and sisters to Mass    it wouldn't start

you rolled it to the street to park 

it kept rolling you running

arms stretched through the driver's window

to hold the wheel    it left you

jumped the curb smacked

into a tree

or the Valiant you flipped on the New York 

State Thruway    five teenage boys 

a roadtrip    a week  

camping drinking swimming

naked parsing the star-

lit harmonies of heaven

& Earth     a sudden

shout a swerve heels 

over heads we crawled

out unhurt the Valiant not

so lucky

& here you are

hood up

arms stretched finger-

tips printed with grease wide

smile  

across your boyish face     your Falcon's

grille                                                            grinning 

dog

                                   dog

eyes black

stars

pulled

shut

from within

ear now

& then turning to the horn

of some

great

ship sinking

into its own

reflection

she lies

in the grease

spot

of a garage whose doors

fade

green & open

onto a drive-

way of weeds

& broken brick

all her life she sleeps

in a perfect

circle

wang wei

Wang Wei was a 8th century CE poet/painter. He's right up there with Li Bai and Tu Fu in terms of rep. This is a poem dedicated to his mastery of the brush.

                                                                  Wang Wei

i wish i was Wang Wei the painter swift

hand heart

rooted where breath

slows    mind

blows itself

out

i wish i was Wang Wei the poet each

character the thing itself bristling

black

branch in fresh snow

i wish i was Wang Wei

then i

would know

another poem

this one is from a solo performance by Sonny Rollins at MOMA

                                       a saxophonist in the garden of art

                                                                 for Sonny Rollins

you perch

                        three

notes on a polished

belly the air

around her pregnant

with unheard 

vibrations your horn breathes

mind's still water

colors spread

under your tongue young

woman in yellow dress opens

her eyes explode black

blues in art's garden

outside the gate police

                                                          hold

the crowd

                      in their arms

 

some poetry

after all that prose, it's time to slow the breath a little with some poetry, what Pound calls "language charged with meaning" and I'll add "& with music." The next few blogs will be some older poems, some published/some not. Enjoy.

                                                in the tradition

                                                                for Arthur Blythe

there's always been a place

in my house for holy

books as a child my missal

black leather gold

print thin red ribbon bound

into the spine to mark

the day's liturgy & my Lives

of the Saints at night i'd read 

martyrs suffering the rack

the wheel the up-

side down crucifixion St.Sebastian

chin against naked 

chest arrows

piercing his pure

heart

later  Camus & Sartre 

floating among empty

beer cans & overflowed ash-

trays    clear signs

of tomorrow's nausea

then the Black writers & the Beats

Baraka Ginsberg Ellison Kerouac Wright Bird-

like phrases chopped

the page into field

calls rent parties cool concrete breezes off city rivers a woman

crying like a saxophone beneath her lover's weight

or absence

                                                                                    each book a long

                                                                                              solo in an Ellingtonian suite

then Li Bai Tu Fu Basho each

word a tear exploding

from the sunflower's eye

& Ortiz Silko Neruda Paz cries 

& visions of People bound

to Earth

& each time i move

they move

& as Coltrane sings his love

supreme & sage blesses

my rooms with smoky sweetness

i shelve the last book & call

this place 

home

                                                      may peace prevail

John Coltrane John Coltrane the finale

This is the end, my friend. Even if my fingertips cover the keyboard with blood, I will hunt and peck my way to the finish. I left you listening to Charles Lloyd's Forest Flower. I realize that I didn't tell you about a short mood-setting event just prior. After we listened to some West Coast folk/country rock(now termed alt.country), Jeff suggested that we go swimming.  I figured that we'd head to the manor(this being a gentleman farmer's digs) to swim in the pool. Instead we went through the French doors (which reminds me - in the last entry I mentioned my geographical weakness. After, I realized it wasn't a lack of cosmopolitan cool that lured me into thinking Monterey was in France. I had confused it with Montreaux since they both had jazz festivals. Besides, New York City natives are so provincial that they really don't care where any other place is. After all, they are from THE CITY) down a dirt path through another grove(of trees) to a slow rolling river.  "Jump in" "I don't have a bathing suit" He peels off his clothes and dives in. So this was what they meant when they said drugs could make you do strange things(none of the escapades I had participated in THE CITY under the influence like hauling 30 concrete blocks one by one from a nearby construction site at three in the morning with my roommate , both of us wearing our philosophy robes(see earlier entry), to build a room divider in our apartment or watching television test patterns for hours on end while discussing their existential nuances had been strange). I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity. I won't digress into my immediate entry into the world of Buddhist nothingness. Let it suffice to say, "It was cool, man." When we got back, it was Charles Lloyd time. I got caught up right away, transported to France, in touch with my Sartrian soul, and listening to a sax played like I had never heard.  As I listen to it now as I write this, the listening carries a lot of that moment. As we drove back to the city(note lower case), I asked Jeff if he could recommend any other albums. "John Coltrane  A Love Supreme." Ah, I figured, something from the summer of love - laid back and groovin. Just before going home for Christmas, I went to the Harvard Coop(looking back I wonder if I was the only one who pronounced it as coop as in chickens instead of co op as in an attempt at pseudo socialism but fuck it I was from THE CITY). I didn't bother to take it home since my playing anything on the home stereo would only result in sarcastic comments which would then devolve into arguments about the merits of "the true faith." New Year's Eve 1967, I put the needle down, click, the whooshing crackle of a few empty grooves, a chord from space from a place I'd never been accompanied by a pool of cymbals then a voice no a horn calling me to listen to come in to the sound the prayer then a four note thrum on the bass a cell of four sounds which the sax played updowninsideoutoutsideoutin till it melted into God chanting "A Love Supreme  A Love Supreme A Love Supreme....." To try for further description is futile, one of the great pieces of music! For me, the greatest! I found an old notebook and started writing and haven't stopped since. That music opened the world to me. It led me to ideas, books, music, people, emotions, relationships, experiences, art, nature, death, sex, love, sound, touch, smell, taste, sight,spirit. In San Francisco, there is a Church of St. John Coltrane where every Sunday the congregation gathers to listen to A Love Supreme played live. That is the service. If I believed in institutional religion, that would be the one. About two years later I wrote a poem(this poem writing quest began that night and continues forty-one years later). When I read it now, it seems a little over the top and definitely a bit of a shameless attempt to to copy the work of the great poet Amiri Baraka. But it was the first time I felt I was able to come close to communicating in words,  no, in sounds the experience of that night. For your listening pleasure.....(.as is my habit I'll probably revise as I go, which fits the spirit of improvisation)

                                                   because of john coltrane

his fingers roam the beards

of three fine figured saviours

a warning that man

may inherit the task of

living out lives on a round planet

alone    listen

salvation rings

incessantly in a few asylums

howling between Black hands clapped

on gold saxophone back

on his heels        shaking

sounds around

the heads of priests  junk dealers  christ

passes in a yellow cab won't

stop for us uptown

the drummer plays us home

on our own feet

until you've played religion

stays with you    like all

things after again you're

on your own

between spots unable

to go in & listen to what

once

had to be true

breath breathe

listen        it's painting half

feelings  the

unfinished business of your

heart breaking in 

between notes

Coltrane knew about religion knew

its sound

there among the reeds are prophets talking

salvation or

doom            there

among the reeds are players 

of star music showing a way

that will take

you deeper into Earth farther

into heaven there

among the reeds is a "sky trane"

through the void

shango in the galaxy

three kings star

stuck in the universe

look when they should hear

eyes no good when no

sight to see

saw the star missed the sound

before  saw the flame-bush missed the sound

later  saw the man missed the sound

now downtown streets blow 

mother music

                                                                                      free

blue tunes leap                                                             

into life

into no

end 

streaming

from a scarred throat 

 

John Coltrane John Coltrane the penultimate installment (maybe)

So off we drove enveloped in smoke and the classic Volkswagon puttputt.  I'm not sure which direction we headed, not east since that would have put us in the harbor). Eventually, we were out in the country, which for me was anyplace where trees outnumbered people. I was somewhat experienced in rural survival. My mother had grown up in a small town, Fort Edward, in upstate New York. As a kid we would often spend a few weeks there visiting relatives in the summer. The highlight was going to Lake George to swim. My experience of beaches in THE CITY was the three hour drive in stop and go traffic to Jones Beach where a million people would hike through acres of steaming asphalt parking lots and across miles of burning sand to float in the Atlantic along with what to me at the time looked like deflated balloons (not a reference to the jellyfish). Of course, just when we started having fun, we had to pack up to beat the million person march back to the parking lot and home. The ride home was always pleasant. My bathing suit was full of sand, and I'd be wedged between my two older sisters who were sweating and complaining about the 90% humidity. When the complaining got loud enough, my father would silence it with a sweeping backhand from the driver's seat with his right hand on which he wore his big Fordham College ring that always managed to get one of us on the side of the head and immediately set off a torrent of tears and an undercurrent of smirks and snorts from the two he missed. When we got home, before we could go in the house, we had to stand under a freezing outdoor shower my father had rigged up in the backyard.  But Lake George was different. It had a grass beach, and you could see the bottom, so you didn't have to worry about slicing your foot  on broken beer bottles or slipping on unidentified slimy objects. That was truly "the country."  Jeff and I puttered down a bucolic two-lane road then turned right through a gate onto a dirt lane. Over a hill, through a grove of old trees (at that time all trees were just trees to me. I lacked the vocabulary to differentiate evergreen from deciduous, fir from maple), past a small flock of sheep and down to his cabin. Of course, this being just outside of Boston, it wasn't a cabin but a cottage. I took my suitcase out, the same one my parents had given me for my graduation, probably made of Samsonite and stumbled inside. The first sense that alerted me to a unfamiliar environment was smell. I knew the smell from somewhere in my childhood. It wasn't something from my house. Then, I realized it was a church smell - incense! I wondered what the fuck was Jeff doing with incense. I hadn't figured out what religion he belonged to, but I was pretty sure he wasn't Catholic. Then I started looking around. The walls were covered with an array of West Coast psychedelic music posters - The Byrds, The Jefferson Airplane, some group called the Buffalo Springfield. The cottage was pretty much one big room. In the back was his sleeping space. His bed was on the floor, and on the wall above was a tie-dyed wall hanging. Jeff lit a stick of incense and then another joint. I asked him what the incense was for, and he said to cover the smell of the grass in case the owner came by. I thought in THE CITY if you did that, it would be an invitation for the neighbor to sneak in while you were out and take your stash. Maybe these West Coast guys weren't as hip as I imagined. They did like the Beach Boys.  He put some music on (he also had a component stereo, but his speakers were about two feet taller than mine with supersized woofers).  Most of the sounds I was familiar with, but one was new - the Buffalo Springfield. That one stuck with me. Then he asked me if I liked jazz. I shrugged. He wanted to play an album by a saxophone player named Charles Lloyd. It was recorded at The Monterey Jazz Festival. I will admit to not being very cosmopolitan at that time. I thought Monterey was in France. I mean this cottage we were sitting in had fuckin French doors. The album was Forest Flower. I dug(liked) it right away. I hadn't heard anything like it before, and I definitely hadn't heard a sax played like that.            OK, so this may not be the penultimate installment, but I'm getting close. Maybe oui, maybe non. 

John Coltrane John Coltrane addendum to last part

or is it Grobin?

John Coltrane John ColtranePt4

This po' boy huddled down for a long night.  Just before midnight, I decided to put a record (a round, grooved, vinyl object used to store sound) called A Love Supreme by a saxophonist, John Coltrane on my brand new component stereo (you have to understand that this is what the audiophiles used to hear Jimi move his sounds back and forth between speakers and you could adjust the bass so it shook the floor of the apartment above you till the fat tenant would slam his foot on the floor and jump your needle and you'd mumble, "What a bummer, man") At that point in my life, my exposure to jazz, particularly progressive jazz, was limited. I had heard Dave Brubeck's Take Five in college and thought it was, in the vernacular of the time, "far out, man." But I was a soul man who thought My Girl was one of the great American songs(it was).  I had also broadened my religion to include The Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix. So how did I come to possess this album(a synonym for record)? Time for another digression that will eventually bring me back to the life changing moment I think I promised somewhere in this series of blogs. One of the students I met in Cambridge was a golden boy from California. If my memory wasn't destroyed by my youthful dissipation, I'm pretty sure he even knew how to surf (& if my memory isn't accurate, it makes a better story & as we've recently witnessed when we're talking memoir, it's the story, stupid). You have to understand that I grew up in New York City (well, Queens, but that's an official borough of THE CITY). When the Beach Boys were harmonizing about blonde, tanned beauties and woodies, I was wondering if a woody was some kind of sexual act these beauties might bestow on a surfer boy.).  Jeff's origins were a mystery to me. To add to his mystique, he had gone to Stanford, one of those private, non-Catholic colleges somewhere in California. I had gone to Fordham on Fordham Road in the Bronx. It was/is a Jesuit school where you had to take four years of theology and philosophy and in your senior year had to wear a robe to philosophy class like you saw Oxford or Cambridge students wearing in the movies. It wasn't till sometime after I graduated that I had the AHA moment and realized they wanted us to to feel like the limeys had nothing on these Catholic kids from immigrant ancestry.  In fact I had spent sixteen years in the parallel universe of New York Catholic schools. In our minds they weren't private schools but an educational refuge for the Catholic  middle class(originally, the poor catholic kids of Irish, Italian and other European nationalities from the paganism of the public school system). Stanford was a completely different world, similar to the one I was in in Cambridge but filled with sun, sun, sun and fun, fun, fun. Harvard (I have tried to hide it, but that's where I was going to school. However, I won't accuse others of being bitter and clinging to their Uzis and Bud Lite that according to their recent commercials has won brewing awards in foreign countries when times get tough)(I'm getting lost in these parentheses) was weird but Jeff was even weirder. We were both intern teachers in the Boston Public Schools (which were Catholic schools disguised as public schools. I knew that most of the teachers were nuns out of habits. My sixteen years on the inside made that obvious to me.) The internship was part of our graduate program. He spoke with this accent that I couldn't identify. It was only years later when watching some surf flick on TV that I was able to pin it down. In the middle of a Northeast winter, he dressed like he was at the fuckin beach in Santa Monica ( even now, I'm not sure if there is a beach in Santa Monica. California stops at San Francisco, the southern tip of Ecotopia). He even wore sandals. What really blew me away was that he was living in a caretaker's cottage on a sheep farm just outside of Boston. Since I live in Oregon, the weirdness factor over his living situation is negligible now, but then it was "far out, man"! He invited me to come visit his "pad" one weekend. I didn't have a car; in fact, I didn't even know how to drive, so he told me he'd give me a ride. That Friday, he pulled up to my door, driving, of course, a Volkswagon bus (you probably thought it was going to be a woody, and maybe when I publish this as part of my memoir it will be). I hopped in, and he handed me a joint. I thought this would be weird but hell, why not.    I gotta stop now - time for Idol. I think the kid who turned the Mariah Cary song into an edgy emopunk dirge is gonna win unless all the subteens vote for the guileless or crafty as a fox David Archuleta (watch out Josh Grubin!)

John Coltrane John Coltrane Pt3

Before I return to the drug addled, angst ridden hero of my story, here's the results of my etymological study of "debauch." The word comes from French. The prefix, de, means away from and the root,bauch, means beam as in roofbeam. In French it referred to a rough handhewn beam, the wood being roughly hewed away from the original log to form the beam. From there it arrived at "a period of dissipation." So there I was wallowing in self pity and hopelessness, occasionally walking down to the neighborhood bar to eat a hamburger, drink beer, and watch football or basketball games with the locals, who would now and then harass me due to the full Italian 'fro I was now sporting. I avoided any escalation by telling them my mother was Irish and singing along with the Clancy Brothers songs on the jukebox.  New Year's Eve was approaching, and all of my roommates had decided to celebrate in their hometowns, apparently forgetting our sworn pledge to blow the top off this Ivy League burg together. There were two girls who lived on the ground floor apartment of our house, neither of whom had ever talked to any of us and seemed to go out of their way (probably wisely) to avoid us. On the way back from the tavern(hardly a tavern), I would look for signs of life. I  decided I would fall in love with one of them and that New Year's Eve would be a propitious time to make my amorous declaration. No signs of life. They were probably skiing in Switzerland with the rich boys. So as Steve Earle sings, "What's a poor boy to do?"     Gotta go to work. Ciao.

John Coltrane John Coltrane cont.

A few months before, I had started graduate school in Cambridge, Mass.  I was living in an old row house with three roommates who had all arrived at this destination from a housing notice posted on a bulletin board at school. A postgrad biology student was looking for three roommates. He was a strange(maybe unique is a better word) guy from Alabama who had just gotten back from a year living with Costa Rican lizards. My other roommates were an African American guy from Oklahoma and a Greek guy from Pennsylvania. Together, we were a formidably insane force, but that is a different story. We had all gone home for winter break (in the urban Northeast filled with Irish and Italian immigrants then referred to as Christmas break as spring break was Easter break). After I had fulfilled familial Christmas obligations (with an underlying tension due to my refusal to attend Mass), I explained that I needed to return to Cambridge to get prepared for the next term. Of course, there was little truth to that, but I didn't want to spend a week in argument over the validity of the Catholic religion, which I had abandoned four years prior(another story). So I packed the suitcase that my parents had given me for graduating from college and headed back to what I was sure would be a week filled with debauchery(or at least what little I knew about debauching - I need to look up that root, bauch, and see what I was de-ing). I came back to a cold, empty house made colder by the absence of any human warmth and the stench of empty beer cans and unemptied garbage from our bon voyage party - a perfect environment for breeding existential angst(two words I had explored in my senior philosophy class taught by a Catholic layman who was knocked off the tenure track for teaching this taint of humanism). I commenced to drink and smoke myself into a darkly meditative coma accompanied by Jimi Hendrix wailing on my new AR turntable,speakers, and tube amp that I bought from two MIT dropouts that were starting this stereo company out of a storefront "ARE YOU EXPERIENCED." and all I could answer was "hardly."   blogging time is up  bye

John Coltrane John Coltrane

I've discovered one of the drawbacks to blogging - people get itchy when you don't blog. They send you comments about how you're letting them down by creating false expectations that on a regular basis the Muse is going to shake a few leaves from the the word tree. So here goes. I've been reading a book by the Times (New York, of course, those other newspapers that call themselves ..........Times are only pretenders) music critic , Ben Ratliff. When I began to read it, I decided to listen to the music that he references in his discussion. Being that I've obsessively collected Coltrane recordings since 1967 (more about my beginning with Trane later), I have most of the music he refers to, some of which I've listened to regularly over the past 41(yikes) years and some of which I've played very occasionally. I started out in the early 50's and am now listening to music from 1965, a year during which Coltrane came close to lifting the Earth off the Turtle's back musically(in fact, he may have accomplished that feat, but in 1965 my college boy beer party spirit would not have recognized the phenomenon because I was busy growing my Beatle bush and shaking my head in a Liverpoolian manner as I uncorked my dancing  Dionysian soul. New Year's Eve 1967, I was sitting with my lonesome self, a pint of scotch and some herb rolled in Marlboro cigarettes that I had emptied of tobacco (that's what Catholic college boys from New York City did since they were still in the early stages of losing their herbal virginity).   To be continued....maybe 

the bucolic life

I've finished reading the paper, emptying the dishwasher, washing the pots in the sink, folding the laundry, and sweeping the kitchen floor while listening to Joe Lovano and Stefon Harris. Occasionally, I looked at my daughters' blogs or the NY Times website to see if a financial armaggedon  had commenced yet. My dog is snoring softly (as opposed to her thunderous nighttime snore) by my feet as I write this. The sky is grey,grey,grey, and gray - one trademark of the Great Northwest at the end of winter (also at the beginning and in the middle). This is the season of change in the Northwest. The day may open with streaks of  intense light fragmenting the fog and patches of bluest sky occupying the space over the butte on the other side of the small valley our house faces. As the body begins to ease into thoughts of work outdoors, hail rattles the stovepipe. This is followed by a downpour  the house gutters can't handle, flooding the view.  Then another blue opening in the sky and flashes of intense sunlight. This might go on all day, or the grey/gray/grey might descend again. Aside from the summer when Nature is a beneficent goddess beyond the imaginations of downtrodden East Coast urbanites (which was my former existence decades ago), this time of year is my favorite - the epitome of being in the moment! This is real drama, not the bullshit we tend to fill our lives with and chatter endlessly about on our updated cell phones (mea culpa). My dog just woke up and gave me the I-want-to-go-out look. She'll go out, lie in the rain till she's thoroughly soaked, slop through the new strawberry bed, and then bark insistently at the door to tell me she's ready to come in so she can take another four hour nap, resting up for tonight when she'll decide at two in the morning that she wants to go out to check the poop the deer may have left as they passed through on their evening rounds. At every door of our house there are wet, muddy towels. It's raining. The sky is grey/gray/grey. My dog is sleeping by the heater. Ah, the bucolic life! 

seeking some practical aesthetic advice

I'm working on a series of photographs accompanied by poems I have written or on a series of poems accompanied by photographs. The poems are not intended to be explications of the photos, and the photos are not intended to be maps of the poems. There are elements of commonality, and these elements are used to provide a ground for each to extend the emotional/intellectual/spiritual/physical/aesthetic content of the other.  As I work on this series, I've been thinking about their presentation. The photos are either 8 x 10 or 11 x 14 matted on 16 x 20 board.  I'll probably frame them with black metal. I like that presentation of b/w work. Right now, it's the presentation of the poems that is up in the air. I write in unlined journals with Staedtler pigment liners. I like the aesthetic and physical feel of printing on white space with dark black ink. I'm leaning toward  printing the poems in my own  hand (developed over forty years of writing).  My style is raw but legible (although my student might debate the legible part of it).  I'm seeking ideas on paper selection and presentation.  If I frame the poems, I think the literal line between the photo and poem may be too defined. Maybe not.  I'd like the paper to have some texture but be accepting of the physical act of printing by hand. If you have any suggestions or can recommend sources of info, I would appreciate hearing from you. Here's one of the poems.

our lady of the blue notes

in the church of our lady

of the blue notes

a madonna holds a small

bird in her prayer-

clasped hands

her mother rests beside her    light

with evening's grace      on the wall

icons of African

fathers    poets

of sky song

     Earth chant

     the A train's sway & chatter

     the watermelon man's green call

in the church

of our lady of the blue 

notes    bassman thrums

a fourstringed cross

drumer crashes

metal into fire

saxman conjures

breath to flesh

sleeping spirits to holler

to shout

in the church of our lady

of the blue notes

a madonna opens

her prayer

filled hands        a blues

flies                                           out

adoption

My daughter is coming home tomorrow with her husband, son, and new daughter from China. Bell Ji Fang is about to become come part of a vast and strange American family whose ancestors also came from other countries over the last 100-plus years. Many of these ancestors came here knowing little about the world they were entering, hoping that life would be good or exciting or just  different in some unimaginable way. She leaves a world of unarticulated memories behind her but probably memories that seeped into her senses and will on some nights in her life suddenly awaken her with sweetness, sorrow, or maybe fear and confusion. Maybe this is already happening; maybe it will happen when she is 16 or 33 or 80. Maybe one of these memories will give flesh to the young spirit she carries with her today. Maybe that spirit will yearn to go home, or maybe it will embrace her journey as her home.  Maybe she'll read this one day and think her grandfather was strange. Where could he have come from and where has he gone?

in the darkroom on the most beautiful day of winter

The idea of going into the dark to create art that is so tied to light sometimes seems strange to me although no more strange than recording images by exposing elements on film to light then bathing that film in chemicals then shooting light through that film onto chemically coated paper then bathing that paper in chemicals to recreate an experience/image/idea that occurred for  a fraction of a second & became something independent of the first experience, something the viewer might hang on a wall in a dining room, bedroom or bathroom or might wrap  shells in after a crab dinner. It's also odd that the chemical makeup of the film might produce an image in color or in black and white and that some of us have a strong preference for the black and white image. Last week, I was walking, looking for interesting light . I went into my usual start/stop mode of perambulation that I realize sometimes makes passersby nervous, particularly when I stop to look at something that looks like nothing. I was on a well-used jogging loop that had a winter marsh in the middle. I drifted into the marsh to check out the light and reflections on the water. A pair of mallards slid by, a female followed by her mate. There was little vegetation of color. The trees were on the verge of budding, and a few ground plants were just poking through the mud.  I wouldn't have seen the ducks except for the male's iridescent green head feathers. I imagine before he was chosen as a mate he probably flaunted those feathers  slicked back in what we used to refer to as a D.A. Now, they drew attention to both of them in the stickgrey marsh. The female looked like she would have been happier if he had maintained an unattached distance from her to avoid attracting a jogger's unleashed dog that might be lolling around in the mud while his owner was running in circles trying to set a new personal best for barkdust trail jogging.  I took a few black and white photos of them and went on my way. When I printed the photos, I had to look intently to find the ducks; the female and male were both near invisible due to the bare twiglike design and colors of their feathers. I wanted to go back and show the male the photo, so he might consider dying his green feathers or wearing branches and dead leaves on his head, the way some deer hunters around here do. I'd also tell him he could probably spend more quality time wading with his mate if he were less colorful. If she wasn't convinced that these strategies would make him less obvious, he could show her my black and white photos and tell her that people say the camera never lies.

I'm working on a series of poems that are companion pieces for photographs I've done. 

                                                   shooting the Tango Palace

in the window of the twilight Tango Palace

neon dancers

plug in            in the back a figure

bends    turns

the music up  an accordion

squeezes

the heart a shadow

in white Panama hat oils

knees hips slides

one leather sole across the wooden

glow of the dance floor

along the wall two

wary men watch 

me watch

them and below

the neon dancers a gray

striped couch where those

who know how

to tango

will drape

their ghost

bodies & those

outside will gaze

at the backs of beautiful

heads & imagine

transformed

faces & I

will lift

an eye

to catch

their light

first post

waiting for the chicken to roast al green on the box wine in the glass dog sleeping at my feet fog drifting across the hills northwest at its best in winter bless those who fear the sky the water the earth hiding its beauty bless the poor the hungry those without a place to rest their heads tonight i am the lucky dog the fortunate son the one chosen to be 

happy