I drove down one Thursday and Jay and Token were up there playing Freedom and Viola Lee Blues. Boris played some songs and there was another decent guitarist. The songs were good and there was a young woman up front dancing insistently all night, and a few other people dancing around. There was a backup singer.
Abigail Disney is a billionaire that feels guilty about it. The New Yorker has an article on her. I drove down to Bodhi bakery today, and the weather was warmer than usual. They had several croissants left. I had an espresso.
I managed to play Althea and Fourth Street and several other songs yesterday.
1. My front door.
I look out on a lawn that I barely mow. It's all single story houses on my block, and there's a grade school across the way. I was standing out there and smoking, now I vape.
2.London, Pickadilly circus
Downstairs at the hotel we were at several years ago. I bought packs of cigarettes at the kiosks that had gruesome pictures on them, and were quite expensive. I was tearing off the filters at that time. People would set up tents at night on the cobblestones. There was a church across the way, and a Pizza Express on the ground floor.
3.Quebec City, Quebec.
The hotel was very nice, made of stone, in the old town. It was mostly below freezing. Everybody spoke French. I was vaping nicotine. There was a McDonalds up the way, and many fine espresso joints.
4.Florida. Port Charlotte
I'd stand next to the street, look at the canal and the colorful birds. I'd walk down to a bridge and back.
You know I'm only in it for the gold.
All that I am asking for is ten good dollars, and I could pay you back with one good hand.
I have no respect for the kind of life I am living. On the other hand physically I'm doing better, enough to do some cooking and jogging.
Don't you taste hard liquor, just a cup of cold coffee. Going to get up in the morning and go.
Like a field of sunflowers, a good poem should require no explanation.
Where is my money coming from? The Mechanical Turk isn't going to do it.
I feel like Kafka's Hunger Artist, only with considerably less morals. But the jogging is waking me up, and the stretching is worth doing.
Time passes on as NPR announces the changes in the world, and the world outside remains too hot. I am spending time typing out words, wondering if they will ever have a meaning. I write on, and the soul remains at a low energy level.
Still dealing with Gordon in the garage. He thinks it's his space and that is that with him. Donna is freaked out. I feel like shit, no appetite or energy. This is the lowest I've ever been. I have to keep reminding myself that there's got to be a peaceful way out of this solution. I don't want any more arguing.
Tried and True has young women, so here I am all alone, but still perhaps could be in a worse position. The ability to live free in a free society is only accorded to people who's actions are okay over the long term.
I see a lot of desperation everywhere and don't want to make it worse, but just fade out peacefully.
Boy, I sure know how to pick the roommates. Gordon was a friend I had played some music with, and I had hung out at his house in Blodgett in the coast range. He seemed to me to have some cool qualities. Some musical talent, somewhat of an amateur botanist, and an owner of a tiny house on a beautiful peace of land. I knew he was hermetic but also thought that was not necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, I had stopped calling him for quite a while because it seemed like he was criticizing me too much, but I called him again, it had been a year, and I brought him out some groceries to his place, and we smoked rollies and joints and talked about Summit people and music, and frankly I listened to him talk. He was selling his house, so I offered him a room in my house, and he seemed to think that was a good idea. I was like, great, I'll have a musical friend and he will distract me from the pit of depression I'm usually stuck in. I was also thinking he'd get along with the roommate I already had, Donna, a ex-massage therapist, 71, who was renting a room already. She had been there for four months or so, and she had a tendency to really get on my nerves, but for reasons that were harmless, like doing a lot of dishwashing, etc. So Gordon has a ton of shit moved into my garage, and I get back one day and he's moved his nearly dead cat in. The next day he goes in the garage and starts rearranging things, setting them up the way he likes them, like he owns the room. We find out that my mom doesn't want to smoke in the garage, and I tell him that, and he gets enraged. The next day I confirm with my mom that there's no smoking allowed, and get her on the phone, and he, instead of taking the phone, pretends like he's going to throw it. He insists on his way. He's not acknowledging who makes the rules. The next day I'm hoping that maybe I can give him his way on the smoking and there won't be anything more irrational about him. He wants a desk in a certain place and I decided to say that I don't want it that way, and he gets enraged and starts yelling and get up and shoves me off my chair, attacking me. I keep him off me and he sits down. I get up and say, "you just assaulted me, thirty days notice" I go into the living room, sit for about an hour, and he comes into the kitchen, and I come in and say, "Hey, Gordon, neither one of us wants to go to jail, etc" and he simply becoming enraged and slams the kitchen dhoor on me. So then I called the cops and told them what happened. They don't arrest him because it's his word against mine. Since then he's been escalating, he's remained enraged, shoved Donna, threw water at me, spit at me, informed me that he's dangerous. He's decided he owns the garage and is going to be there two months even though he hasn't paid any rent. He's just trying to screw me over any way he can, I guess. It didn't have to be this way. We're trying to get him out on a 7 day eviction notice. But if he becomes more dangerous or assaults me again, we'll look at a 24 hour notice.
Days pass and I don't know what I do. I have gotten down to Tried and True for a beverage, feeling horrible. My fate may be for a short life. I can't see this ending in a good way.
Maybe I should start reading a George Eliot novel. I am going to need some new habits for this London trip.
But wherefore to the mountain-top
can this unhappy woman go,
whatever stars is in the skies,
whatever wind may blow?
full twenty years are past and gone
since she (her name is Martha Ray)
gave with a maiden's true goodwill
her company to Stephen Hill;
and she was blithe and gay,
while friends and kindred all approved
of him whom tenderly she loved
The Solitary Reaper
behold her, single in the field,
yon solitary highland lass!
reaping and singing by herself
stop here or gently pass!
alone she cuts and binds the grain
and sings a melancholy strain
listen, for the vales profound
is overflowing with the sound
no nightingale did ever chaunt
more welcome notes to weary bands
of travellers in some shady haunt,
among arabian sands
a voice so thrilling never was heard
in springtime from the way
breaking the silence
among the farthest hebrides
will no one tell me what she sings?
perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
for old, unhappy, far-off things,
and battles long ago?
or is it some more humble lay,
familiar matter of today?
some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
that has been, and may be again?
Whatever the theme, the maiden sang
as if her song could have no ending
I saw her singing at her work,
and listened o'er the sickle bending
I listened motionless and still
and, as I mounted up the hill,
the music in my heart I bore,
long after it was heard no more
Oh do not die, for I shall hate
All women so, when thou art gone,
That thee I shall not celebrate,
When I remember, thou wast one.
But yet though canst die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when though from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapors with thy breath.
Or if, when though, the world's soul, goest,
It stay, 'tis but thy carcass then,
The fairest woman, but thy ghost,
But corrupt worms, the worthiest of men.
O wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire,
That this her fever might be it?
And yet she cannot waste by this,
Nor long bear this torturing wrong,
For much corruption needful is
To fuel such a fever long
These burning fits but meteors be,
Whose matter in thee is soon spent.
Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,
Are unchangeable firmament.
Yet 'twas of my mind, seizing thee,
Though it in thee cannot persevere.
For I had rather owner be
Of thee one hour, than all else ever.
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
but call any thing back again when I desire it.
In vain the speeding or shyness
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
in vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones,
in vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
in vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
in vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
in vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
in vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
in vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff
a song of joys
o to make the most jubilant song
full of music, full of manhood, womanhood, infancy
full of common employments, full of grain and trees.
o for the voices of animals, o for the swiftness and balance of fishes
o for the dropping of raindrops in a song
o for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song
o the joy of my spirit, it is uncaged, it darts like lightning
it is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.
etc.
Here I am, back again to the blog that has kept me away for so long. There's some joy to typing your thoughts out on paper, as banal as they might be. My writing certainly needs a lot of work, and one way to test it is through this blog, and writing phrases such as "the quick fox jumped over the lazy dog".
So anyway, I am spending too much on vaporizers, and I'm not sure what all that is doing to my lungs in any case, so that is something else to worry about.
The weather is cold and not good for walking around, but that is what I'm doing anyway. The idea being, to get out in the cold air between rounds of playing songs. There's hope in the day, and the flowers are coming up out of the ground, so spring is not far off.
I'm back from a while off of writing, and I'm still getting over getting my electric stolen from me and other shaking to be taking place and getting that to where it is tolerable is a way to get things done, it seems to me, and the maker of coal and the maker of pearls. So then what I was saying is that some of my writing is all backwards and forwards, but undeniably about the So strange that I have to come up with these documents every day and figure out more memos to ad it to. then I can be a media franchise.
how sweet the wood shades the hot summer hours
and stretches oer my head its sheltering green
as I recline mid grass and cooling flowers
and seeded stalks of blossoms that have been
sure tis a pleasure in such secret nooks
to muse on distant friends in memorys eye
or glance on passages in favourite books
whose thoughts like echoes to our own reply
or shades recall which substance long forsook
from the black nothingness of days gone bye
blessings of infant hope and loves young bliss
ah thus to think the thoughts of death is sweet
in shaping heaven to a scene like this
with loves and friends and feelings all to meet
...as I lazily sit and jam and smoke on the Summit grass....
