A 10 florette Mind

A few days ago in the evening with Sue sitting next to me, the two of us watching "Weeds," I had the most intense angina experience I have ever had. I told Sue what was happening; she said it could be something other than my heart, like a digestive problem, so try to ride it out. 20 minutes later the pressure had let up. As it happened I had a appointment scheduled for early Monday morning with my primary doctor, Irene Duarte.
She did a EKG but did not have a recent chart so it was hard to read, so she sent me to see my Cardiologist, Paul B. who always treats me with a lot of love because I remind him of his father. Their EKG was positive: the rhythm of the heart was fine. He also said angina could have as many as 30 causes, so we could not say for certain it was my heart, but I think it is likely it was. To be caution P.B. put me on a drug to prevent a stroke and for heart attack protection he gave me nitroglycerin and told me how to use it. And he scheduled me for a nuclear test where tech people administer a radio active injection which speeds your heart up. I had the test yesterday (Sept. 21) and the shot was powerful and they also took pictures twice. I fell asleep almost as soon as I got home--the fact I did not sleep well the night before was a factor--and I went to bed early too.

The experience has sobered me up and feeling rather helpless: what will be will be. The results of the test will be available in a few days. I have been floating in recent weeks, writing poetry with some good results but also a lot of masturbatory consequences, nothing of any worth. Part of the problem is my diminished memory for spelling and vocabulary. The right words seems to elude me often. I think back to my emergence as a thinking person which happened around 25. My mind grew from a small florette to a large broccoli composed of 10 florette. I was quick on the up-take and sharp as a tack. I read widely in various fields which helped me meet all kinds of people. I was the renascence man, someone respected and at the top of his game. These traits, more or less,  held up though my years at UNLV; but marital problems and psychological and emotional pressure brought on the experience I named THE INFERNO which left me a handful of dust; it was a catastrophic attack in relation to pass virtues and capacities leaving me reborn on a spiritual level but still confused and rather lost with a persona in shreds. It was a decisive experience as I quit a promising career in academe and spent 5 years away from the work-a-day world and when I returned to it I was janitor not a professor.

Islam and the West at War

"Across a wide swath of territory, in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, the West has been or is at war, or near war, with the Muslim world in a failed attempt to eradicate a metastasizing Islamic movement of murderous hatred toward Western civilization."

So writes Roger Cohen in today's NY Times (2/16/2015)...The chickens have come home to roost. We are not only in a pattern of Orwell's permanent war in prime areas around the globe, but we are heading for that "clash of civilizations" that some scholar predicted some time ago. First it was the killing of free lance American journalists, then the video of the Jordian pilot being burned alive, and now yesterday 21 Coptic Christian from Egypt were beheaded on a beach. That got both Egyptian and Jordanian fighters into the air,
which wides the war which is exactly what ISIS wants--as a recruiting tool and moving them closer to the ultimate confrontation they want, and the final victory of Islam, which if it was to happen, not only would much blood flow, the inventory of Western Civilization would be destroyed as the trash of infidels. This is what is yearn for by ISIS and associated brethren, but they are a long way from success. The West has sophisticated weaponry and nuclear bombs, which, if push come to shove, would be used, even if it would obliterated the Middle East. Isis has only 20,000 to 30,000 troops ans some heavy armor, most of it American made, and no or little air power. It all started with Bush's war of choice, our "rescue" of Iraq and elimination of its dangerous dictator. What a mistake that was! One would hope that the Arab states would join together and eliminate ISIS while they can--but know, the want us to do the dirty work. Not while Obama's in the White House.

There is a shaky cease fire going on in Ukraine where Putin's army is leading the separatists successfully in the Eastern portion of the Country. It appears he will get a chuck of Ukraine, as well as Crimea as part of Russia. If that happens the Baltic states will be next. They are worried all ready. Putin's army numbers 1.5 million men. Hell have to worry too bout the Muslims, but not for a while.

Quest for meaning

Quest for Meaning is the name Jan Olandese, an oxford scholar Jim knows in Las Vegas, who he persuaded to write the opening essay for Quest, and wow, did she do a great job, the best thing ever written about me and my work. Knocked me over when I read it. She had my other books and some images Jim had and she managed to get me clearly in her sights. Three old friends have volunteered to write personal pieces, something about my development over time. Mary Harvey was the first to ask to write something for me. She sent me an email last night to tell me she was cleaning the attic and found a parcel of letters I wrote to her 40 years ago. She wanted to send them to me, but I said no thanks I have enough clutter in my studio the way it is. I suggested she read a few letters; they may give her an angle to work on that she hadn't thought of to date. Stan Derelian  also wanted to write a piece but, alas I haven't heard form him since and it has been about a month. Both he and Mary are procrastinators, so I keep reminding them to start writing. Finally there is Dick Wist, who I hadn't talk to or seen for 35 years. Liz, his ex-wife, said I should call him as he is interested to help me out. Dick had a stroke about two months ago but he sounded pretty good over the phone, although at 88 he talks in a stuttery, hesitate manner. His sense of humor is still intact and he said he'd put something together about our time at UNLV.

Now that the holidays are over Jim and I can refocus on the book. There has been a lot of back and forth between us and the first thing I have to do today is call Sarnoff's and Reproductions Unlimited, to see what the cost will be to have 50 or 60 pen and inks scanned. I have them all picked out, all but 6 old drawings reclaimed after being digitized. Jim will  have to determine if we can use them or not. I thought about using some of the new work, the so-called "Bone-yard Fancies," but I decided not too, because they indicate a drastic style change.

Boneyard Fancies

Bone-yard Fancies are the term I have decide to employ for the new series of B&W drawings I have been doing the past month. Bone-yard seems appropriate because bone like shapes occur in almost every drawing, almost like a mordant theme announcing itself,
although there is as much humor in the images as dark messages. What kicked off this new series are two drawings from the sixties that were on slides that I recently had digitized to put on my computer. Right away I thought they were something I could develop and enlarge upon. I have done 14 in the past month, with 7 or 8 really top-notch. All of them are done with a felt-tipped pen and in the last few I introduced pencil to create a soft gray to go with the the stark B&W. I haven't shown them to Jim yet, but I'd like to included a few of them in the book. We will need to discuss how many drawings we want to include in the book because I would like to add a few old drawings and the same with these new ones; or save them for another book which is a possibility I suppose, at least in my own mind.

Chuck Hegel resigned over the weekend. In truth he was pushed out by the President and his advisers. I haven't read much about why this has happened, and it comes at a bad time, when approval from Congress is going to hard to obtain, if at all. The same will be true with Obama's choice to replace Holder, Loretta Lynch. It will be real fight in both instances I would imagine, because both are critical cabinet posts.

As I expected the Grand Jury let Darren Wilson off the hook, which caused considerable anger and destruction Monday night. The destruction was inevitable after all the hope and anxiety over waiting for the news. In fact, it was more like token reminder that black people are fed up with this parade of black youth being killed by cops, who get away with socially sanction murder. Four days ago a 12 yr-old boy with a fake gun was gunned down by two NY cops. It goes on and on. Wilson acted like rookie cop with a vendetta toward blacks. He had no business using deadly force. A more mature officer would have used pepper spray of a tazer to control Brown. He used Brown as target practice. He released a fusillade of shots at the kid.

Trip to Vegas

Tomorrow Sue and I take off for Las Vegas, our first trip there since 1982, which means it'll be much different then we lived thered, For the last two days we have been gathering our shit together, meds, art work, clothes, etc. Today we tried out the new concentrator in the Subaru and it worked fine. I am also going to take three tanks and the shoulder pack for going places. Sue took the car for a check up, spending $350 in the process. It is going to be hot all the way as it has been over 100 in both places for 10 days. We will spend tomorrow night in Kingman and get to Vegas mid-morning on Thursday, if all goes well. We are staying in Jim's guest house on his property, which is fully equipped he says. He also said Tom Holland wants to meet me, the fellow who took my place in 1971. I am not sure he is teaching or not. There are some other people he wants me to meet. I an not too anxious to be on a social whirl, as I am anxious enough about being back in town and on campus. There are a lot of old ghosts there and god knows how we will feel once we are in that milieu again.

Yesterday morning Sue and I had one of our serious talks about her sexual past and how I keep punishing her for it. It all started about a note I wrote to Skip about Bridge in the Fog that she happened to come across by accident. We went round and around and around for 45 minutes and she felt better afterwards. I told her I realized that Bridge as it stands is Paranoid fiction. But I would like to try again. She said she had no problem with personal art, unless it was unfair and vindictive.

Happened again

I could not sleep last night s at 3:30 I got up and slept an hour in the recliner in the studio. I had another one of those day-time nightmares involving difficulty with Sue. I the dream I got to the library which to my surprise is crowded at 4 AM. I have trouble fining a place to sit. When I returned to my spot my books on gone. Sue is in the library too, meeting with two men. She is much younger and her hair is in a French roll I think you call it, a hair style I haven't seen on her in decades. Finally, she sees me and says let's go home. But she is walking ahead of me with four people who show her a lot of love, hugging her and such like gestures of affection. I lose them as I get all tangled up in some bushes off the side walk. By the time I get clear Sue has disappeared. I walk around several blocks hoping to locate her or her to find me. Eventually I find her near the library, although she is concerned with some guy named Red she had been with. I ask whose read . She says someone named Jim Pryor (I notice his initials are the same as mine.) Right about then I woke up saying to myself, god damn it another one of those punishing dreams that occur in naps. After I cleared my head a bit I thought of those remarks she made in her journal in 1973 when we went through that double inferno about how she had told me she had never been turned on to me physically, a terrible blow coming from her lips, even though I knew it by her attitude.. She wrote: "Poor Jer, he has suffered so much at my hands." And the suffering goes on, especially in my dream life.

While writing about the play in which she played Ruth the slut, I remembered she got the part because the director of the play--I can't remember his name--chose her for the part because she was a "ball-cutting type of woman," like that came out of somebody she had class with that first year in Eugene when she, so to speak, ran free with her ass up in the air. I asked myself how did he know that? By being in class together or was there more too it. The dude was a blooming star in the Drama Dept. who went on to great things at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, a situation somewhat similar to her bedding Wolfgang because he was the guy all the dancers in the workshop in New Haven set their sights on. Then it hit me: she went to bed with director dude for the same reason, and in that way he discovered she was the one to play Ruth woman , a "ready-made" Black Mother Succubus. I'm sure I am right. My intuition rarely fails me. She probably wanted the part, too. She was collecting stars all over the place in Eugene. Harry Gross would fit that description as well.

July 4,2014I

I took another look at the drawing I called "Clown Down,"a title of one of Suzie's dances when she was teaching at the university, and it stuck me what a knowing look into myself is  on display in the image. It is almost as if the C. diff I am suffering from this week has altered my perception, as I have been hallucinating all day today. The clown is a pompous performer hiding behind his mask and costume. But the more private and pathological me is the guy peeking out from shoe in the saguaro. He sees the woman in the water, desires her, but he's trapped with the cactus, even though his phallic prison is on fire. Another of broken off spook ID is in the fellow in the water to the clowns left who has his eye (his voyeur mode) on the 'Dark Madonna'  at the bottom right of the picture. The women in the water seems to yearn for the clown, almost pleading with him for erotic attention. But he is too busy posing. His Ego is still his master, his shell like the tall cactus is his prison. Towering over events below is a masked female face beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, like the image of the dark Anima, as it were, the unconscious prototype of the female that has disturbed my life for a very long time. I also looked at the ladder in the scene in a new light. Instead of a vehicle to reach the moon or some other height of achievement, I saw it as more a sign for help. like something to help get out of this hole I am in. It's a mode of rescue not a stairway to heaven.