Taking pictures, being a photographer, whichever comes first? Peddling a ten-speed through the limbering trees.
Experimenting with light—always light—can’t do much in the dark. Besides: wink, hide, have nightmares, make mistakes, reproduce, and tend my ghost.
For me, the artistic eye sees what it sees. Assuming I have one, right? A brown eye that combs through the trash for artifacts. Hoping to see Van Gogh’s spirit glimmering schizophrenically off the jags of a beer bottle.
I’m ready… I’m harmless now. My ten-speed and me. Camera aimed. I got something good—a spiderweb.
I hike my bike by the cemetery’s gate. “Look at this Grandma.” I say over a tombstone, but say it anyway and show her—been a minute. SEE. She always had a dark-side.
I wander around and get interested in wind vanes and lightning rods.
Funny, it took the prospect of God’s unleashing the Flood to instill a spirit of co-operation among the animals of this earth. Noah was quite persuasive, really. In all, there was only one creature immune to his warnings of the catastrophe to come and that was the dear old ichthyosaurus. He greeted Noah’s weather forecast with a breezy “Nope, don’t believe a word of it.” The other animals exchanged a knowing look amongst themselves. “That ichthyosaurus,” they said, “deaf to reason, stubborn as they come, always was.” The ichthyosaurus nodded in agreement, but added that, seeing as he was the oldest creature of the lot, he knew a thing or two about probabilities. And to his credit, he conceded that such a deluge as predicted by batty old Noah was indeed possible – in fact, even quite likely, given the almighty mess made of things down here. “The point is,” said the ichthyosaurus, “I wouldn’t book passage aboard that Ark if Flood were guaranteed!”
And I must say, all considered, such a sentiment strikes in me a sympathetic note – to the extent that, were a similar predicament to loom, and the first drops fall, and there still be room on the Ark, my response would be to sit down and contemplate the fact that very shortly, where earthly matters are concerned, I shall be well fucking shut of it!
“Now Lord God let my poor voice be heard.” – Bob Dylan
You get burned, or nailed down, when you’re being good.
Jesus on the cross has many messages for the human race and that is one of them.
There are many people among us who once had the ability to see things differently (more truly) but now, through repetition and conditioning, that ability they once had has been destroyed.
And they are unhappy, very unhappy, because of their false belief in a false dream. (The American Dream.) (I speak here of America only and I think I don’t know if this has yet become a globally universal condition. I critique the American Dream and offer my opinions upon it because I love America. America made me (for good and ill, sometimes very ill) and to hate it would be to hate myself (which sometimes happens). The American Dream is either dead or dying depending upon who you ask these days but probably not to the majority. Whether it can be resuscitated in a more realistic and positive fashion in the future by new generations remains to be seen. S/he who abandons all hope becomes dead inside, and often a selfish raving dark-hearted half-lunatic as well.)
It was a dream they swallowed, so to speak (to revitalize the fishing metaphor in a new context), hook, line, and sinker.
There are many here among us who have forgotten their youth.
And having forgotten their own youth/s, they see nothing but horribleness when they look at the youth of those around them – everyone here who is now young.
The generation gap is a human problem which AI, instant communication, the selfie, and listing your pronouns has done nothing to solve.
Too many people among us think there will still come a day when everything will be perfectly perfect, and that makes them wonder (very much) why the present moment isn’t already perfect.
(Because according to “The Dream,” it’s supposed to be perfect. Reference: all the melodrama in television, movies, books, articles, advertising, and other mediums which reinforce this notion daily, hourly, and sometimes minutely or every-single-second-ly.)
This tension, between the expectation and the reality, creates the so-called bitter taste in the mouth (another reinvented metaphor because of the context and the awareness that I’m using what you’ve heard before; Shakespeare and Dylan do this stuff all the time so who can blame me? I can’t think of anything else that says it better and I’m not gonna spend all day trying).
Sarcasm and passive aggression often become the norm when someone feels that their (false) dreams have been dumped on (defecated upon, in other words).
(And sometimes the passive aggression lurches into just plain aggression without warning.)
No amount of mowing the lawn, scrubbing the floors, cleaning the windows, dusting the doodads, having a date night, ordering from Amazon, or going on vacation can fix this. (“Fulfillment Centers,” indeed.)
There are too many expectations but there should be no expectations, kind of like in the Stones’ great song “No Expectations:” because there is nothing to expect.
If something good happens something else bad will happen to weigh it in the balance and when the bad comes, brighter days are ahead, almost for sure, IF you can hang on that long. Hang on, hang on!
Rumi was born in what was once the Persian Empire (present-day Afghanistan) 818 years ago.
He said, “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with their heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.”
And that’s how you can love someone you’ve never met.
And once you can believe that, everything else becomes golden.
(Separately, there is the problem of physical pain, for which the “grin-and-bear-it” method is the best medicine. Marcus Aurelius said that even if you’re being torn to pieces by a wild animal you should keep your composure, because it will inevitably be over soon, among other reasons; don’t sweat it! (or try not to). Prayer also helps; and cursing God or asking why is talking to God which makes it prayer (see the Book of Job including THE WHIRLWIND) and He has a sense of humor (I’m sure of it) and understands; just remember to say you’re sorry afterward; when we finally see his face we ain’t gonna be able to believe it!)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WALT WHITMAN!
Walt Whitman is a brother, and even a twin, to Rumi if anyone ever was.
Old Walt was born 207 years ago today in a little village on Long Island, USA.
This essay into the unknown is in honor of him, since much of what it says was taught to me (The Drifter) by him (and the other American Transcendentalists).
“Old father, old artificer, hold me now and ever in good stead,” as Stephen Dedalus said.
“If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.”
– Walt Whitman
“I am the man. I suffered. I was there.” – Walt Whitman
“A splendid old soul.” – Mark Twain on Walt Whitman
“Whitman is my daddy…Opulence is the end.” – Lana Del Rey
These are the words of Walt’s that first chilled my bones (when I was seventeen years old) (from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”):
“Closer yet I approach you, / What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you – I laid in my stores in advance, / I considered long and seriously of you before you were born. / Who was to know what should come home to me? / Who knows but I am enjoying this? / Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?”
And these are some of the words I read aloud from the pulpit at my mother’s funeral twenty-seven years later (from “Song of Myself”):
“This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, / Darker than the colorless beards of old men, / Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. /
“O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, / And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. /
“I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, / And the hints about old men and mothers, / And the offspring taken soon out of their laps. / What do you think has become of the young and old men? / And what do you think has become of the women and children? /
“They are alive and well somewhere, / The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, / And ceased the moment life appeared. /
“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.”
….
PERSONAL DECLARATION:
Today on this day that is the day that is one day before the 207th birthday of Walt Whitman, I hereby formally declare myself to be a BLOOMIAN critic, which means I follow Harold Bloom, although not in all things, which would have made perfect sense to Harold, who, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, never wanted anyone to follow him in all things. Bloom has done more to boost Walt Whitman’s reputation than any other critic in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, by far.
The title of Walt Whitman’s book was/is so great that it matches Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE: LEAVES OF GRASS. His book itself is so great that it too matches Tolstoy, although in a different mode, the mode of poetry. (There is also a reason why they both had long white hair and long white beards.)
The other day I was observing my Siberian Husky mix, Boo, and I realized that he was individually sniffing every single blade of grass in the area in which he was standing in a field in northern Illinois outside Chicago. Let me repeat that: individually sniffing every single blade of grass. It was like Horton discovering a WHO! inside a clover, it was that mind-blowing.
Walt Whitman used to watch Abraham Lincoln walking around Washington during the Civil War. Lincoln knew who Walt was, and would nod to him, although they never spoke. But Whitman was studying Lincoln. Whitman was working, for free, as a volunteer nurse for both Northern and Southern soldiers in the hospitals of D.C. He saw the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst of the horrors of war (many, many times), and did things like write letters home for the incapacitated soldiers, hold them while they died, and write to their families (beautifully) after they expired. During this time, he was also working as a humble and lowly government clerk. He had numerous nervous breakdowns during this time, small and then large, and eventually a stroke at the age of 54.
Walt Whitman was very concerned with the way his beloved America would turn out. He lost much of his faith in the USA during the Gilded Age (named by Mark Twain). But he never lost all of his faith.
So let me say this:
There are many, and I mean many millions, of physically living human beings walking around among us now who have zero, and I mean zero (no), human emotion/s at all. They feel nothing but nothing (unless it’s a smoldering rage), and the occasional sneer (or a chuckle at someone else’s pain) is all they can muster. (See the President of the United States as well for this, as well as all of his henchmen and henchwomen.) (No wonder zombie and vampire movies are so popular.)
WATCH OUT!
There are also people walking around among us now who act like (or are) angels.
How to convey the Professor to the station? That was the question. Tell him a train was waiting for him – and for him alone? Remind him of his duty to the hopeless of Europe?
The landlady could not have been more obliging; she practically tiptoed around him. She blushed to remember his dancing naked in his room. But she knew an educated man when she saw one.
So: how convey the Professor to the train station? ‘Collude lightly’ is generally the advice in these situations. But more was called for in this instance, it seemed to me. The Professor was excitable, his gestures expansive. The landlady did her best, but her voice tended to rise several modulations whenever she addressed the Professor, each word enunciated for maximum comprehension. “The – Professor – likes – to –take – long –walks. Don’t you Professor? Long walks?” On this occasion, however, the Professor replied with a kiss, and blood drained from the poor woman’s face.
It was the promise of flowers did the trick, the prospect of welcome down the line. And so, come dusk, the Professor was conveyed to the station. He laughed at the faces the houses made along the way. When he saw the train, he wept for the way it waited with such distinction.
(Note-it is our serene pleasure to bring Adam Kluger on the site. He is a first rate writer and a fine fine artist despite the somewhat effacing name of the artist–The Eds.)
Paul had been heartbroken…
There was nothing better for a broken heart… than new pussy.
Paul started painting houses in Nantucket.
That’s where he met Kathy.
She had a big smile, blonde hair and a confident, easy way about herself. She was also really nice and pretty and intelligent too. She saw Paul on the roof of a house without a shirt on listening to the radio and painting a window frame. She worked down the street at a muffins shop. She would be attending Harvard in the fall. On Nantucket all the kids worked part-time summer jobs. At night they would go to the beach for bonfire parties or to summer houses for keg parties.
Paul and Kathy hit it off nicely. She would come back to his basement room and they would get busy. If Paul hadn’t still been pining over the girl who broke his heart he probably would have been able to give Kathy more. But there wasn’t anything to give. So it was just sex. And the sex was really good. For a straight-laced kind of chick she had a killer body and she was always so neat and clean and there was something about being on an island in the sun that makes fucking so much better.
Paul was already accepted to Bard.
This would be his summer for fun and Kathy helped him heal with terrific blowjobs and guilt-free sex. She seemed happy to have a good looking guy to bone and it was pretty uncomplicated.
The following summer, Paul would get a job scooping ice cream in town at the Old Corner Shoppe. He wore a fruity looking pink shirt and didn’t pay much attention when a pretty young blonde girl with short spiky hair started flirting with him. Her name was Stephany and she worked at a gas station pumping gas. Her uncle was a famous movie star and she had grown up on the Island. She was a smoking hot chick and Paul offered to give her a ride back to her house after his shift on the back of his moped. Granted, a moped is not nearly as cool as a motorcycle…but it’s also not nearly as lethal…when they got back to her house they quickly got undressed and jumped in a shower together. Paul couldn’t believe how sexy this chick was. Tanned and beautiful. He brought his “A” game with him into her bed because he wanted to be invited back again and again. Luckily, his enthusiasm was rewarded and he would end up fucking her throughout that summer.
One time on the beach he joined her and her girlfriend on their blankets.
He was asked to spread orange suntan lotion from France on both of them… Paul couldn’t help but notice how friendly and familiar the girls were with each other as they took off their tops to let Paul spread the lotion on their hot tan bodies. He suggested that If they were hungry that he would be glad to make a “sandwich” with them. The girls just laughed and nothing ever came of the idea…a little bit later Paul did take Stephany behind a dune and started fingering her. She could have fucked anyone she wanted on that Island. Before she met Paul she probably did…none of that mattered. She loved riding on the back of his moped and he loved rubbing baby oil on her body when they showered together after a torrid boning session. The sun, the surf. Hot blonde chicks, doobie and tooling around on a moped on a beautiful island.
It couldn’t get any better.
One serious bummer though was the day Paul almost drowned.
He had been with a work friend at Nobadeer beach. They tossed around a football and scoped out chicks. They listened to some of Paul’s cassettes on a portable boom box w/ cassette holder. UB40…reggae…the Specials..ska…anyway, Paul dove in to cool off…swam out and did a little body surfing…it was pretty mellow so he went out further and further
He could hear the caw of the seagulls and he felt great.
That is, until he saw a huge wave building to an enormous swale about 15 feet high almost 50 yards away. Quickly he looked around and realized he had made a huge mistake.
He wasn’t a great swimmer and panic shot through him like an icicle.
Quickly he started to do a mad crawl toward the shore…He didn’t look behind him.
Before he knew it, he felt the pull of the Atlantic Ocean and then the huge wave crashed over him. The power of the wave was shocking. It spun Paul like laundry until he felt the ocean floor. Immediately he pushed off. Disoriented, but sure that he needed to get back above the water’s surface…
He did that finally and gasped violently for breath.
Fuck! Oh my God. I’m in BIG trouble he thought as he turned his head.
He was still very far away from the shore. But he knew he had to recover quickly and keep paddling desperately toward the beach all the while sensing a new, even bigger wave approaching.
At this point he felt he might end up drowning.
But he was way too scared to scream for help.
It would have terrified him even more.
No one could help him now. He was too far out.
He was a small pink dot fighting against a roaring dark green swirling ocean with no concern for his life or his survival.
Paul decided he would try a risky maneuver. Instead of trying to body surf the wave forward and then be sent somersaulting under the water again…he would dive right into the wave at its middle and then swim underwater for a few seconds until he reached the surface.
As the large wave came up upon him, Paul took a quick gulp of breath and hoped that his gambit would work as he felt the awesome power of the water pull him toward the wave…he extended his hands in front of his head and dove for the middle of the wave. If it worked he might just survive this awful ordeal…if he had miscalculated that would be it.
He was done for
As it turned out he had made the right choice. The strategy worked. He avoided getting tossed head over heels underwater again and after using the same technique two more times on slightly smaller waves he felt the sand and pebbles of the shore line. Never had he ever felt such relief before. He made a mad sprint for the beach and was knocked down one more time by a wave. Paul laughed at the Ocean’s final message…don’t EVER fuck with me kid.
He collapsed on the beach in the sand with seaweed wrapped around his body and salt, sand and mucous pasted on his face as he blew bubbles of snot and gasped for breath. His friend Bram ran toward him and asked
“Dude, are you ok?”
“Yeah man… (Cough, cough)
Paul could taste the salt and sand in his mouth…his body was sore all over and he started to shiver…
“What the fuck happened to you?”
Paul leaned over and puked out some salt water
“Are you ok? Should I get a lifeguard?”
“No man, I’m cool… (Cough, cough) …just need a beer.”
Paul was neither cool or thirsty…what he was and what he would never forget, was that he was VERY lucky…he was a survivor. Sure…but more than all that he was a lucky son of a bitch.
Sure he felt invulnerable that summer. He was in his physical prime and he was getting laid and life was good.
On this day, however, he discovered first-hand just how unpredictable and tenuous life could be. He’d think twice from now on before he would wade out too far on anything. Leave the lunar fringe for those with a suicide wish. He’d get his kicks before the whole shithouse went up in flames but he’d exercise a bit more caution too.
Some rebel.
Red eyed and shivering Paul made his way up the beach on unsteady legs until he got to his beach blanket. Then he crumpled onto it and starting to puke out more salt water. A reggae song was playing on the tape deck and Paul could feel the warm sun caress his aching, shocked body…he lay there recovering, until he felt something cold and wet tap his shoulder. He slowly turned over and squinted into the rays of the sun as his pal Bram handed him a cold can of blue ribbon.
He felt like a new man. Like his past sins had been washed away. Like he had looked death in the face and survived. He had been given a second chance. He had guessed right in the face of disaster.
The summer was almost gone …and that beer tasted pretty damn good.
Later that Summer Paul would be living in a beach house with some other friends. One housemate named Werth was a deadhead and introduced Paul to shrooms. They had a keg party and Kathy was there…somehow Stephany heard about the party too and she came by to say hi…before you knew it…Paul hopped into her car without his shoes on and was off with Stephany. She kidnapped him and brought him back to her house on the edge of town for a hellacious boning session.
When he got back Kathy was gone…He made it up to her by fucking her the next night and then taking her to dinner at an Italian restaurant near the movie theatre. The film they watched later starred some English actor who would die years later at a bar in Malta.
There were other chicks that summer as well…there was a hostess at a restaurant where Paul worked part-time as a dishwasher…she was petite with black hair and she wore a lot of make-up. But she had a fine little body and she was always eager to tease Paul. Paul was lucky the night he drove her back to her place from the dance club. They were both pretty lit and when a cop asked Paul if they had been drinking. Paul admitted that he had had “one beer” but that he wasn’t drunk. Luckily, the cop was cool and let him off with a warning.
Paul almost backed up over a cliff shortly thereafter, but again luck was on his side that night…when he finally got the hostess back to her house for the bone, she got him so worked up with foreplay, that he shot almost on contact. Three strokes and that was it. Pretty embarrassing. He did his best to take care of her after with his hand. But the magic flirtation was over and that was the end of that.
Tom, a friend from the restaurant, always looked up to Paul because Paul was older and once rolled him a joint. Paul had a nice supply with him from Belsam’s, enough to last a few weeks. Anyway, out of the blue, while they’re smoking a joint after work behind the restaurant… the kid says,
” my younger sister wants to fuck you…”
Paul was surprised but interested and asked,
“Are you cool with that?”
.”Yeah, totally”
“I don’t know man. That could be kind of weird…you know”
…”dude, she won’t stop bugging me about it…will you just fuck her already?” or at least say hi to her?”
“Sure dude, bring her by…I’ll say hi.”
Paul felt like a rock star.
When she came by later that week, Paul was hanging out in his room with some work friends…a couple of guys and girls passing around wine and a joint.
“Hi, I’m Tom’s younger sister…Penny.”
“Hey Penny…nice to meet you.”
She had red hair and a nice little figure. Paul guessed she was almost sixteen.
Paul introduced her around and looked her in the eye from across the room…he recognized that look in her eyes.
Before long, she had worked her way over to where Paul was standing.
While obstructing everyone else’s view she casually reached behind her and grabbed the bulge that was starting to form in his shorts. Penny kept talking to the guy in front of her while at the same time she held firm to Paul’s now rock hard cock.
For a young girl, she was pretty bold.
Paul liked that about her.
When everyone else cleared out… she stayed.
Paul closed the door and turned around. Penny was already on her knees. She pulled down Paul’s shorts to his sneakers and then proceeded to give him a world class blowjob.
He didn’t fuck her though. That way, things never got weird with Tom for the rest of the summer.
Saragun Springs 