Sunday, April 29, 2007

sketch


The sun is shining today, a big round ball of yellowness, and a cactus is sitting on a table. A coffee cup is sitting on the table and steaming.
"I'm moving into a house where I'm the sixth roommmate." The devices get smaller and the smell of cooking potatoes eminates from the other room. Some sort of hard rock is on the stereo, and I am sitting in the red and square-padded chair. There is a slight breeze from the ceiling fans, and the atmosphere is slow and just as the atmosphere of most Sundays in this little town.
The elements of nature cohere and split apart as they tend toward chaos, and I convince myself that I simply enjoy the physical process of writing more than what I am actually writing. I could be scribbling and get the same effect.
The guy that reminds me of Rasputin pedals by on his bike, making a glare in this direction, but what to make that? Increasingly, I lay out my words in lengthening sentences as the clocks wind around the face and the mania of owning things comes and goes, and the quintillions ripen, and the quintillions green.

Friday, April 27, 2007

lonesome me

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Candyman

This song is from American Beauty, an album by the Grateful Dead, released in 1972. There was a haunting video of this song on youtube for a while, so I really got to like it. Unfortunately, it got taken down.
My version of it cuts off at the three minute mark because that's the longest video my camera will shoot.
The lyrics are by Robert Hunter, who in my mind is one of the few really great poets of recent history.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

thoreau

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble ourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell you clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

I delight to come to my bearings-not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may-not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody.
-from Conclusion, Walden.

So Thoreau was that kind of guy: detached, removed, able to write nice sentences. He wrote Walden in his twenties and got more cynical over time, dying young from tuberculosis. Then again, I would like to think there are people that can enjoy life for what it is, getting the essential elements out of life.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

springtime

It was a lover and his lass
with a hey and a ho, and a hey-nonino!
That o'er the green cornfield did pass
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding:
Sweet lovers love the Spring.

Between the acres of the rye
With a hey and a ho, and a hey-nonino!
These pretty country folks would lie:
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding:
Sweet lovers love the Spring.

This carol they began that hour,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey-nonino!
How that a life is but a flower:
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding:
Sweet lovers love the Spring.

And therefore take the present time
With a hey and a ho, and a hey-nonino!
For love is crowned with the prime
In spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding:
Sweet lovers love the Spring.
-w. shakespeare

This is a great little poem, probably part of some play. I never got that much out of his plays. I guess I'm not much for plays in general, but I always liked his poetry.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007