October 2009 Archives

After 6 days of dreary, chilly, crazy rain, finally some Sun this morning.  I would take a picture...but new camera isn't here yet.  

The idea,
that there is something approaching redemption
in these old manuvers, these old games of glass
chinese houses, and fugues.
Is either astonishing, or abhorrent.

I don't care for poets
who try to copy e.e.
or racist white girls, who think that they're not
by virtue of sleeping with me.

but going over these old pieces is actually somewhat embarrassing, regardless if I'm not showing them to anyone.  They're out there, people have read them already, I posted all over places for years, and now, to look back and see what I was doing...yuck.

One of my priorities has been to try and "de-ego-ize" them.  I realize I'm going back and forth between thinking it's great fun and then I hit something awful and I think, "Oh, I wrote that? Man, that sucks!" Which of course leads me on an internal replay of every dumb/stupid/retarded thing I've ever done...which just gets me nowhere. 

The English ghazal experiment, for example.  I realize as plain poems some of them aren't bad at all, but as ghazals...I had no business calling them that and I should have known that.  At the time, I thought "poet" was "license to break rules" but a license to break rules is not a license to be an idiot.  It makes it worse though that they aren't bad as plain poems, because they're good and shoved into an improper form.  It's like seeing a great actor in a bad movie, you cringe, this person is obviously not having their talent utilized.  You see the drivel coming out of their mouths and want to shoot the screen.  I guess misuse/waste of talent is still my button of buttons...Surprise, surprise.

I finally dug up my copy Energy of Slaves this morning, it was almost taboo for me to touch the thing for years...mainly because emulating Cohen of that era lead to some really bad things.  It's a book that should have come with a "do not try this at home" label.  It's basically him, running around in a self-pitying depression, pissing people off, having darkly profound thoughts while fucking everything he can. That said, it is hilarious in some ways, but a little scary.  I found a cover of Famous Blue Raincoat on where the guy covering described it as "It's especially creepy to hear Leonard Cohen sing it, because he is nothing if not totally creepy."  Which frankly shocked me.  I guess I can see why, but I'd rather not try.

Confused?  Me too. 

to finish, the piece from this morning became

Your God in the station
with an origami airplane
made from folded up hearts,
he would love to explain....

I am humming a breeze,
the touch, a fait accompli
like a welder who dribbles
his sparks on the floor.

a lightshow of ashes,
some sand on my skin;
with my instinct for fire,
I say, "Let it begin."

it is an old road
where they stutter and stop
their short history's colors
bound into hard knots

for it can never happen,
it can never be real
so it's nothing but images,
thoughts that I steal.

so I'm off reading rivers, off pretending with birds
off quoting cantos, with my book of lost words.

"Thimble"

I unravel the red thread.  It hangs from the clear train
flowing past the sallow chute of escape.
where I've bundled my blankets for months.
erecting them like paper walls hiding from the ink of flux.

I feared they would rewrite my dreams into disunity.
scraping all the blood paints, from the portraits that I made.
smearing snapshots of my blessed trail, in a doubter's dull tirade.

An elemental turn, back up rather than around
the horses were all willing, though dissenting men abound.
My voice had dissipated, against a stranger's wall of sound.

These figures on the easel.  Silhouettes of loneliness
a daydream of disrepute, the crass cry of nothingness.

My neck was bound with metal.
  Loincloth clad, you dragged me to the door.
of some cavern of despair.,
it was a nightmare, nothing more.

I came about, when eyes had opened and light had flowered me.  
gales of deception faded into nothing more than memory.  

My bridge under construction.  No one enter in the brazen night!
I kiss the foundered, feathered winds, in a stroke of wild delight.
Never! Dark remorse of passion, never touch my heart again!
Shocked, emergent from my re-conception; lining up with other reborn men.

This thimble mother gave me, for the voyeurs of regret
the thread was running out, for the times of callous debt.
I've needled through your flatline love and for such even hearts I fear
that some live forever in the winter, when its emptiness is clear.

and was lying in bed when a tiny bit of verse popped into my head, I really wanted to go back to sleep but I knew I would lose it if I did.  Because of last week's laptop spill there was no computer near the bed to grab and quickly jot it on...eyes half open, I felt alongside the windowsill, the bedside table, my Palm or iPod touch...anything to write this down in so I could go back to sleep, but it was not to be.  Faced with either losing the verse or forgoing my window to fall back asleep I did what any dedicated artist would do, I got up and walked into the other room to type it down on the desktop.  It isn't much, but it is

Your God in the station
with an origami airplane
made from folded up hearts,
that he would love to explain....

Was it worth it? We'll see.  I never did get back to bed, I ventured out to get some breakfast, it was raining like it has been for the last day and a half.  Yesterday the parking lot at the grocery store was like a giant puddle, even in my sandals my socks got wet.  It keeps bordering on too chilly to wear sandals and just warm enough.  I had hoped it would stay cold enough so I could stop worrying about insects getting in, but it warmed up and they're back.  Oh, October.
I'm excited to be getting my new guitar this week, after having not played for so long I am remembering that peaceful feeling of just tinkering with my old one, playing with sounds.  My awful singing voice forced me to give up notions of songwriting a long time ago, but listening to all this Cohen that I have recently, I'm reminded one can in fact make songs without a good singing voice.  In fact, if you're not that terribly awful, the imperfect voice can come off as a flavor of it's own. 
The thought of getting the guitar reminded me of this Einstein quote:
"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin."

I'll leave it at that.

that only three Republicans in the Senate voted to extend hate crime protections to gays today, and that someone said, "Guess you didn't see this?"

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Dirac was my laptop.  He died from the spill of a vodka/cranberry/sprite last night.  You might say, "Well, dipshit, don't drink around your laptop, you might spill!" and I'll respond that in all my years of drinking, I have never, ever spilled on a computer...not even in college!

Now I need to figure out how to scrape up about 800 bucks for a new one.  In the meantime, I will be rocking this here desktop.

I love Zizek. I don't always agree with him, I don't always understand him, but he is definitely always original and interesting. Also, in this interview he tells the Niels Bohr horseshoe story I like to tell. When he talks about the possibility of the financial crisis being manufactured I couldn't help but think, "Someone needs to introduce him to Matt Taibbi."

and yet I'm stuck, waiting for a client in California to arrive at their office, find out why I can't contact their network and let me know all's well before I can get on with the rest of the day, which involves, picking up my tax returns from the accountant (yes, I'm late, I had to get an extension), paying the accountant, running all the way across town to another client and hitting "Next" for 2 hours before collecting a big fat check.

In the meantime, I'm rereading The Alexiad for the first time since 2005.  Yes, it's a horribly nerdy/geeky thing. I mean, who in their right mind reads old Byzantine historical texts when not forced to in a class. I mentioned the other day that I had this plan long ago to turn it into some type of drama for stage or film or anything. Perhaps even just a novelization for the modern reader.  It's part of that chunk of history that I feel gets lost in the modern school system.  We all know the legends of King Arthur and Joan of Arc and countless other western European stories, but for some reason, our interest in Greece dies at the end of the Western Empire? Maybe even at the beginning of the Roman empire. I suppose it's nowhere near as bad by contrast as how Asian history is treated, but at least that's beginning to be rectified at the college level.

an old piece, reworked a bit.

Tale of a Monotone Sun

Some summer,
before I leave for the islands
When the water rises
to the cobblestones on the landing.
We'll sit while the river,
tries to touch our feet.
At the café,
pretending to be French.
While you tell me stories of a monotone sun
and I try to pretend nothing's changed.

Three disjointed figures,
stood in the archway
I saw, while gazing into your eyes,
past the shining light,
Into some blue subway tunnel
that told me the true story
of all the years that had passed,
since I last saw you.
Maybe a hallucination, maybe an extrapolation
like some dream, this tangled tale
too fucked up for fiction
but reality nonetheless.

I asked to hear the details, and they laughed
said, "We'll give you the soundtrack instead."
And played "Passions of a Man" backwards
When I wanted a picture they showed me
The Mona Lisa,
drunk on absinthe in the snow
Wearing a fur coat and pleather boots
Dancing for a faceless soldier in the moonlight
"Mingus was just a cowboy." They said.

But when the faded dreams of a voice I seem
To gain and lose,
return with the fury of remorse
I'll stand by the window,
 waiting for the autumn wind
To fill the apartment again. Thinking
that when the moon fades from the sky
and sunlight emerges once again.
When, maybe, you come home,
I'll be ready for another night in the desert.

no matter how nice it might feel.  What is this, a diary?  Narcissistic self-obsessive rambling?  Nah, a vent. 

I can't stop thinking about my father, it's depressing.  Extremely depressing.  He is the most stubborn, thick-headed, arrogant jerk I can imagine...with one exception, myself.  And there it is touched with a needle.  Almost everything that has gone wrong in my life were expressions of one of those qualities.  Even beaten back, pulverized and burned to a crisp as they are in my personality today, I can still see the scars, and wonder if they've made me too ugly for life. It is better to have the scars than what was there before, but not by much.  Both are equal dead-ends.He's basically taken all of the qualities he despised in his father and moved them one level deeper in himself and claimed victory, I wonder some days if I've done the same.

Grist for the mill.  Two weeks until I see the good Doctor next. 

so I'm up at 6 ish on a Sunday, which frankly, just feels downright unnatural.  No lovely rainstorm this morning, but chilly outside and condensation on the windows.  Tempted to open them.  It's a strange feeling to me these days to wake up and see it dark outside.  I know, for years that was how I woke up every morning, but since I went into business for myself I haven't had to get up when I haven't wanted to all that often and I'm frankly spoiled by it.  It's still rather nice, watching the darkness recede. 
I don't want to wear out the Cohen so I'm debating what music to put on when I go back to bed.

 I'm also doing a bit of work.  I was at the Burlington Coat factory yesterday and trying on fedoras. Hadn't planned on going but Jeff and I decided to go to the lunch buffet at Saffron (mediocre curries, if you ask me, but they did have sambar and dosas, so that kind of made up for it) and the coat factory was just next door.  He wanted to try on some things and knew I was in the market for a hat...so it made sense. Anyway, while I was looking at hats I got a call from a client who never ordinarily calls on weekends. It frankly scared me as I answered, I kept thinking, "What on earth is anyone doing there on a Saturday? Did the building blow up? Did the servers all crash out of nowhere?" and it turned out they were just so busy that some people had been asked to come in and do extra work.  Their printers had all come to a halt. I said, "I'm in the middle of a Burlington Coat factory, I won't be able to get to a computer to help you for at least an hour." I was told, "Alright, we'll go home, just fix it tonight." I didn't.  So I'm fixing it now.  Nice that they were so cool about it, if they'd made an issue of it I would have had to drop what I was doing and head downtown.

Yes, I'm rambling, it's nice to ramble on occasion. 

I know this is untrue and ridiculously silly, but part of me wonders if my odd sleeping hours and mood shift have something to do with those rockets that got shot at the moon.  This is the totally irrational, unscientific part of me speaking...but you know me and the moon.  She's my oldest friend after all.  Just an emotional thing, I suppose.  I mean, even in the totally irrational, unscientific way of looking at things, this is a bit ass backwards, why would blowing up a tiny part of the moon be GOOD for me? The moon is my friend. God that sounds silly. More silliness. Whoever's reading this probably thinks I've gone insane.

Poking through music collection now, need something for a chilly, slowly more light morning, to sleep just a bit more before going up to Ginghams for a delicious omelette.

but why?  I can't drink beer and I don't want to eat sausages and watch people in liederhosen dance. 

Instead, I can:
1)take another stab at my collected Ghalib,
2)add books to my amazon queue,
3)try to guess what my taxes are going to be instead of being patient and waiting for the accountant who should be done Monday,
4)work on one of the two pieces I started this week.  One is locked in a rhyme freeze.  I got to a point where the obvious word was wayyyy too obvious, but anything else is clearly an attempt to avoid being obvious.  It's that damn unconscious at it again! You HEAR ME Unconscious, I will scrap the entire piece if you keep this up!
5) Lament that I've gotten nowhere on my 4 year old plan to dramatize the Alexiad.
6) Perhaps work on a dramatization of the Alexiad.
7) Other forms of poetry advertised as boredom?
8) Stop blogging and do one of the above.

I erased some of the barcode info in the unlikely event some jackass would try to print a fake ticket from mine.

You can tell I have absolutely nothing to do today.  Let me start by saying I realize that this song has been analyzed to death over the last 38 years since it was released, so if I'm going to say something about it, it better be pretty goddamn original. 

If you haven't already figured out where I'm going with this by the title and the fact that Famous Blue Raincoat is posted below.  I realized in the car today that he never really makes it clear who won Jane, in fact, there's the possibility that neither truly did, maybe she's still with both of them.  I know, you can say, the recipient of the letter is "building your house/somewhere deep in the desert/living for nothing now" -- but deserts can be powerful metaphors as well. I refer to the town I went to highschool in as "The wasteland" even though it only seems that way if you're an artist trying to live there.

So, to get down to it, if you've never heard of Schrödinger's cat this won't make any sense, but the woman who comes to mind from my life when I hear this song never quite left one relationship before starting another.  She referred to it as  "lots of gray areas" as to who was her lover...which reminds me of the cat, neither alive or dead but in some half alive/half dead state.  Maybe I just like the idea, "Schrödinger's Jane" -- something I could use in a novel or a story.  Or, a new way of looking at an old song.  Either way, there it is, to me that image seemed to give the song a new hue. How the song captures her frozen between two loves, like the cat in the box. Hmm.   Maybe it's just me.

On a funny note, I just told Dave about this theory, and even though he's not a Cohen fan, he laughed, "The Two Lovers Theory of the Song" he called it, making fun of a joke from the night I made him watch Godfather for the first time.  Later on, I asked him what he thought about the One Electron Universe theory and since we were being silly I said, "Personally, I think it's crap, it's quite clear there are TWO electrons in the universe. One is everywhere at once and the other is lazy, doesn't pick up after itself...doesn't even think to call the other electron Godfather!" Ok, enough rambling silliness mixed in.

As the person who coined the term "High Impact Camping" (and still can't help but laugh uncontrollably at the very thought)...I had a funny realization today. I can call my business "Environmentally Friendly" because I do avoid driving to see clients whenever possible ;)  I realized that my issues with anxiety on the highway have probably contributed to the ridiculous loyalty my client businesses have for me.  They're used to being billed for trips and hourly rates and probably interpret my reluctance to come out to fix things as wanting to save them money.  I mean, that's partly true, I hate billing people so much it's the reason I only work for companies and not people...I don't have the heart to bill people.  My brother would use this to point out the superiority of Chicago.  You can actually get from place A to B in a decent amount of time on public transport there.  Completely unthinkable here.

I guess the high impact camping story is worth telling.  Hmm...I might have to think on it.

 I was watching a bunch of the videos on youtube of the Cohen tour, and he recites a version of this poem I'd never read before. You can see the original here, which is amazingly beautiful, but this is what I transcribed from the video of his Dublin performance

You came to me this morning
and you handled me like meat,
you'd have to be a man, to know how good that feels
how sweet

my mirror twin, my next of kin
I'd know you in my sleep
and who but you would take me in
a thousand kisses deep

I loved you, when you opened
like a lily to the heat
you see I'm just another snowman
standing in the rain and sleet
who loved you with his frozen love
his second-hand physique
with all he is and all he was
a thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me
I know you had to cheat
to pose all hot and high
behind the veils of sheer deceit
our perfect, porn aristocrat
so elegant and cheap
I'm old but I'm still into that
a thousand kisses deep

I'm good at love, I'm good at hate
it's in between, I freeze
been working out but it's too late
it's been too late for years

but you look good, you really do
they love you on the street
if I could move, I'd kneel for you
a thousand kisses deep

was looking at the crucifix
got something in my eye
a light that doesn't need to live
and doesn't need to die
a riddle in the book of love
obscure and obsolete
till witnessed here in time and blood
a thousand kisses deep

and I'm still working with the wine
still dancing cheek to cheek
the band is playing "Auld Lang Syne"
but the heart will not retreat
I ran with Dizz, I sang with Ray
I never had their sweep
but once or twice, they let me play
a thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened
like a lily to the heat
you see, I'm just another snowman
standing in the rain and sleet
who loved you with his frozen love
his second hand physique
with all he is, and all he was
a thousand kisses deep

but you don't need to hear me now
and every word I speak
it counts against me, anyhow
a thousand kisses deep

EDIT: turns out that version is in the "Book of Longing" -- which somehow I don't have.  Amazon.com promises to rectify this situation promptly.  I feel stupid.  Oh well, I'm leaving it up anyway because it's cool.

Yes, I am awake super early.  Not sure why, maybe a wicked thunderbolt or something woke me up.  It's still raining. Minus a brief respite yesterday afternoon, it's been raining non-stop since I went to bed the night before last.  In older days I would have worried about the river flooding.

The sound of the rain is lovely.  In bed, it's dark and I've turned on the queue of Cohen songs. Leonard and the autumn rain are flowing through the ears.  I should work on a poem, but honestly, even that feels like it would be a waste of the moment. 

I was telling David yesterday that I revived my blog in part to keep from annoying my friends at my near constant excitement about the upcoming concert.  Peppering my facebook account with random Cohen lyrics is probably more already than my friends want to see...I don't care!  I'm happy and I feel like sharing. 

Dave is in DC, so when I'm up before he leaves for work it's a rare thing, usually it means I'm sick or something.  He asked me jokingly this morning, "Are you not sleeping until you see Leonard Cohen?" I laughed, but it reminded me of a poem I'd written in college,it's frankly not very good, I just spent a few minutes trying to find the bloody thing while writing this and passed far better pieces before I finally located it.  I was going to post it but it's not really worth it.  Let's just say it ends with "He swears he won't sleep 'til November" a reference to mid-terms..but of course, left so vague as to possibly be interpreted as anything. 

It's strange enough, but I hadn't gone through the old archives of poems in a while.  I think that part of me was rather shut off, or, I guess quarantined would be a better word.  I suppose it took the opportunity of seeing a childhood hero in person for me to revive the poet inside.  

ok, enough rambling. I'm closing the laptop, just slowly receding darkness, the falling autumn rain, Leonard Cohen, the pillows and blankets for me....

I looked it up because I wanted to see what I was in for...if the old songs still sounded good with his aging voice and man, I was not expecting it to be this fantastic. I still love the original, but the choral element of this and the smokiness of his voice just peel open another layer I never saw before, his age adds to the flavor.  Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters back him up so perfectly (I have to admit, I'd never heard of the Webb Sisters until this, I looked them up right away!)

Now, you can't (at least I can't, not that I've ever had the opportunity) go to a Cohen concert in jeans.  I figure, at minimum, I need a black jacket and fedora.  Scouring shops...may hit the loop tomorrow even though me and U-City still haven't made up with each other.  I'll get my fedora come hell or high-water though!

EDIT: a certain someone (shall we say a certain Disney employee)  has described what I did to this picture as "douchy Mac using artist douchebag"   described to which I say, "Screw you, Jeff!"

Posting this because it comes to mind as I'm getting ready for the Cohen show. Will put up a few others.  It's more interesting if you happen to know I wrote it in 2005.

Apparition Again

She said to me,
"Remember the winter of two-thousand-eight?
stumbling and fumbling through the streets of Vienna.
Even you, the teutophobe, were in awe
at the simple majesty and vicariously nostalgic
for the days of musical kings.
Referencing, The Spice Box of Earth
you said you wanted to linger in a monastery
conceive and abandon some brilliant plans."

"No." I replied,
not sure when, where or who I was,
"but it sounds about right,"

  What's the news?  I have a 2nd FUCKING ROW seat at the Leonard Cohen concert! FUCK YEAH!!!  I'm so excited I can barely control myself.  I've been fucking bouncing off the walls. 

Poetry posts to come!  I've written a bit!

the last time we saw you/you looked so much older/your famous blue raincoat was torn on the shoulder

man, I think I've listened to that 30 times in the past two days.

There are nevers,
And then there are nevers.
And then, there is you:

Where light and solace meet,
where hearts sink in defeat,
where the Orchid dies, it lives.

Of matters of the neurons,
old friends, alive in pain.
There is water in their bleeding,
There is acid in their veins.

The mother claims to find a peace,
but this peace will never mean,
her war will ever cease.

Her stalemate of cancer,
her armistice of fools,
but it is upon herself, that her heart
applies its ruse.

to the violence of ghosts.
to the madness that we see.
All the Doctors cannot tell us,
If it will ever leave us be.

There are nevers, and there are nevers
And then there are we.

To the end of bellies,
a busted spleen, his insides brined and sweetened.
Watching where things were.

a florid tassel, skims the coals
where light and plastic meet.  where heads sink in defeat.
where there is fire on a filthy road.

a body craving ions, a boy ashamed, a boy in pain
with acid in his heart.  
with caked sleep in his eyes.

a month of nothing, his doctor gone.
wrestling garbage in the Greek house.
bottles and bottles of air.  the air begging for despair.

Though outside it is light and sweet.
his brain instructs they do not meet.
the cycle must complete.  the cycle must repeat.

the spasm fuels the bloating. a liver's retching tears.
a case is made for sleep, a sleep which does not meet
the requisite for dreams.  

he tries.  he stares into the sky that forms
underneath his covered eyes.
he lets the scenery unfold, for the current to take hold:

old lovers come and offer tea.  a President and songstress team
to offer words of great esteem.
he sees a childhood crush give birth, he climbs a wall of cards and falls to earth.

a secret he cannot expose, a uterus turned bellicose,
a farm of rhyme, a stream of rose. flips into another's clothes.
with offers made of steam, which holds no grip, no trust, no seam

a mess of contradictions.  never quite inert.