June 23, 2014.
Sue is gone and as soon as she left I experienced a flare up thrush and it has made my gums very sore, to sore to eat normally. The real problem is a bad fit with my dentures. I have a dental appointment next Monday. Not having a car is a serious handicap. Even if I make an emergency appointment, I have no way to get there. Everyone I know is working during the day. I will call Duarte today and hopefully once she sends a script to Walgreen's, Cathy will be able to take me to pick it up. I ate at Kai's house last night and it wasn't much fun tiring to eat with out teeth.
During a discussion around the table I noticed a reaction in Aaron about the poetry book I hope to to publish through Jim Standford. He asked does he have money? When I said yes, he dismissed the project as just another self-publishing venture headed nowhere, that I was exploiting the good graces of an ex-student of mine. I am seizing on an opportunity,
no doubt about that, but I am not the first artist/writer to lean on someone with money to accomplish something.
I am working on another poem, in between a lot of drawing. It's called "Obession."
I once knew a man obsessed with
his wife's affairs, even though he
knew what she intended to do even
if married, so he knew, sort of, in a
vague iffy way what he was in for.
When they did happen he wanted
to be the proverbial fly on the wall.
The details, he said, the details,
tell me what you, he, did and where,
knowing softens the blow
knowing would be like being there.
being there is like sex by proxy,
as if, he could dial back to their
coitus, the aroma and taste of sex,
her moans, groans, sounds of climax,
seeing her take the penis of another man
and clearly enjoying it more than he
thought she could or should.
There was always the trail of clues
the spot on the new blue dress, the
black bikini panties stuffed into the side
pocket of the pool table, the misplaced
phone call, calling him by the wrong
name while they were making love--
the many slip-ups of simple treachery
that trip up the cheater. True, he never
traced her movements, always leaving her
be the free agent she wanted to be. She
was free to fuck whoever she liked in her
Secret Palace of outside pleasure, but
never threaten the pledge of marriage--
that would not stand.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Deja Vue all over again
Incredibly, in a flash of unexpected drama and a changing face to events and trends, the world is different than it was a few days ago. First it was the defeat of Eric Cantor in the 7th District of Virgina, whose star-struck role in the House got torpedoed by bad polling that had him way ahead and therefore complacent about winning. A economics professor at a small college in the district, David Brat, roiled the locals in opposition to immigration
talk, which enabled him to win by 11 points. Some say he is further out on the right than Cantor was, to the point of craziness. It goes without saying he was the candidate pushed by the Tea Party.The anger at the Party base is still intense, still wants a hardcore Republican president, but still want to aim for it with goofy tactics that ignore reality. In any case, the upcoming election will be closely watched to see what direction the GOP is going and what leader will stand out as a major Presidential candidate. I see a lot of intro-party scobbling ahead and no change in gridlock pattern. The base wants all-out war with Obama, no compromise any where down the line. Add to the mix the odd couple that
killed the cops in LV saw themselves as revolutionaries, comical jesters and plain dumb-ass wingnuts.
The other crucial event is ISIS, the Sunni, hardcore jihadhist who took over Mosul yesterday and now on their way toward Baghdad with the Iraqi army in disarray and with ISIS intent on turning Syria and Iraq into one Islamic state under Sherie law. The regime in Iraq has already asked for American air support, which won't be granted because it is clear our occupation for 9 years did nothing to stave off what is happening again. We would be nuts to repeat the same mistake in the region, plus there is no way to pay for another war in the region and the American people would not vote for another bad adventure that will never turn the Middle East into a democracy.
talk, which enabled him to win by 11 points. Some say he is further out on the right than Cantor was, to the point of craziness. It goes without saying he was the candidate pushed by the Tea Party.The anger at the Party base is still intense, still wants a hardcore Republican president, but still want to aim for it with goofy tactics that ignore reality. In any case, the upcoming election will be closely watched to see what direction the GOP is going and what leader will stand out as a major Presidential candidate. I see a lot of intro-party scobbling ahead and no change in gridlock pattern. The base wants all-out war with Obama, no compromise any where down the line. Add to the mix the odd couple that
killed the cops in LV saw themselves as revolutionaries, comical jesters and plain dumb-ass wingnuts.
The other crucial event is ISIS, the Sunni, hardcore jihadhist who took over Mosul yesterday and now on their way toward Baghdad with the Iraqi army in disarray and with ISIS intent on turning Syria and Iraq into one Islamic state under Sherie law. The regime in Iraq has already asked for American air support, which won't be granted because it is clear our occupation for 9 years did nothing to stave off what is happening again. We would be nuts to repeat the same mistake in the region, plus there is no way to pay for another war in the region and the American people would not vote for another bad adventure that will never turn the Middle East into a democracy.
Lobster on Tiptoe
Amusing image found
as leftover in a poem
by D. H. Lawrence, the
mentor of my youth
about sex & love
how to deal with the
opposite sex under
life's daily slog, irony
frustrations, bitter pills
as well as those few
triumphs a person is
allowed by fate & luck
stuck as we are betwixt
thunder & mud, itching
sores, kissing bug bites,
tables turned, cups
drunk, wine spilled
dishes broke but
glued back like new
to once again dust off
my duds and stop the
reign of terror, to go
up the stairs to a warm
bed to dream about a
lobster on tiptoe.
as leftover in a poem
by D. H. Lawrence, the
mentor of my youth
about sex & love
how to deal with the
opposite sex under
life's daily slog, irony
frustrations, bitter pills
as well as those few
triumphs a person is
allowed by fate & luck
stuck as we are betwixt
thunder & mud, itching
sores, kissing bug bites,
tables turned, cups
drunk, wine spilled
dishes broke but
glued back like new
to once again dust off
my duds and stop the
reign of terror, to go
up the stairs to a warm
bed to dream about a
lobster on tiptoe.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
June 10, 2014
Eric Cantor, thinking his power position in the House would guarantee a primary victory, got soundly trounced by a total unknown, David Brat, a professor of Economics in a small college in Virginia who was backed by the Tea Party folks. It was a real stunner last night and there was much speculation on MSNBC afterwards. They all called it a "stunner" and all wondered what the repercussions of Cantor's defeat would be.
I put the final version of "Happy Birthday Darling"on the blog yesterday. It's a playful overview of our romance and troubles over the years of our relationship.I think I will include it with the body of work I plan to give Jim Standford.
I took pictures of 5 of the new colored drawings and I did two more yesterday, one is not quite finished. Taking pixs of the new things with my new Camera was an experiment and the result look like it, as I shot them on my desk, using the flash only once and that's the one that came our the best.
I put the final version of "Happy Birthday Darling"on the blog yesterday. It's a playful overview of our romance and troubles over the years of our relationship.I think I will include it with the body of work I plan to give Jim Standford.
I took pictures of 5 of the new colored drawings and I did two more yesterday, one is not quite finished. Taking pixs of the new things with my new Camera was an experiment and the result look like it, as I shot them on my desk, using the flash only once and that's the one that came our the best.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Happy Birthday Darling
It's been quite a ride with you
for 50 plus years my dear,
sometime dizzy, never boring
other times on the wild side
especially during the years
before we had children---
but let's start with those Circus
Lions roaring while we made love
in that apartment I shared with
Frank Kearful. Do you remember that?
Yea, and we ate melons too, in bed.
It was a day of young loony love
a season as bright as the moon
when I called you "blazing eyes"
they were so lit up with sex and
love. But alas it came down to earth
when other men sought to dance
with you and you did not hide your
sex appeal and bright light under a
basket. Recall Dennis the Menace
in San Jose, and the elderly Leftist
William Winter who slobbered all
over you in my presence (a preview
of things to come) during that first
tough year at NSU, my inprobable
initial academic way station in the
desert where I came into my own as
teacher, artist, big man on campus
with you attached to me in ways you
loathed, "Professor Pfaffl's decorative
adjunct." That would not stand for long.
So after six years in the salt mines
of LV we took off for Oregon so you
get your Masters in Dance and Film
to learn and shine as I knew you
would, in truth becoming the star
of Department. To support us I got
that post in Corvallis to help us
survive our first "rainy season"
away from the desert. But again
the scent she gave off attracted the
opposite sex to start a new orbit
around her even brighter moon
30, lovely, eager, available, a star
you spread your owlish wings to
plat Pinter's whore dancing naked
on moonbeam beach in Florence
while a chorus of eyeballs slitherd
in the sand, kissing your feet, wanting
to be "in tandem" with you when I
hit a bad patch: impotence, my horse
quit running for several weeks, my
rainbow faded till one day I "raped"
you on the floor, a redemptive fuck
that broke me loose from self-pity
and remorse and you too did a
turnabout, telling me you wanted me
to father your babies, a tipping point
for both of us as other parties began to
fade away. Those choices and decisions
put us back on track, the dynamic duo
bent but not a fracture, wounded but the
blood has stopped flowing...
To be continued
for 50 plus years my dear,
sometime dizzy, never boring
other times on the wild side
especially during the years
before we had children---
but let's start with those Circus
Lions roaring while we made love
in that apartment I shared with
Frank Kearful. Do you remember that?
Yea, and we ate melons too, in bed.
It was a day of young loony love
a season as bright as the moon
when I called you "blazing eyes"
they were so lit up with sex and
love. But alas it came down to earth
when other men sought to dance
with you and you did not hide your
sex appeal and bright light under a
basket. Recall Dennis the Menace
in San Jose, and the elderly Leftist
William Winter who slobbered all
over you in my presence (a preview
of things to come) during that first
tough year at NSU, my inprobable
initial academic way station in the
desert where I came into my own as
teacher, artist, big man on campus
with you attached to me in ways you
loathed, "Professor Pfaffl's decorative
adjunct." That would not stand for long.
So after six years in the salt mines
of LV we took off for Oregon so you
get your Masters in Dance and Film
to learn and shine as I knew you
would, in truth becoming the star
of Department. To support us I got
that post in Corvallis to help us
survive our first "rainy season"
away from the desert. But again
the scent she gave off attracted the
opposite sex to start a new orbit
around her even brighter moon
30, lovely, eager, available, a star
you spread your owlish wings to
plat Pinter's whore dancing naked
on moonbeam beach in Florence
while a chorus of eyeballs slitherd
in the sand, kissing your feet, wanting
to be "in tandem" with you when I
hit a bad patch: impotence, my horse
quit running for several weeks, my
rainbow faded till one day I "raped"
you on the floor, a redemptive fuck
that broke me loose from self-pity
and remorse and you too did a
turnabout, telling me you wanted me
to father your babies, a tipping point
for both of us as other parties began to
fade away. Those choices and decisions
put us back on track, the dynamic duo
bent but not a fracture, wounded but the
blood has stopped flowing...
To be continued
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Anne Sexton's Poetry
Rewite 8/25/1991I I had never read Sexton's poetry, after reading Diane Middlebrook I went out and bought her selected poems edited by Middlebrook. I've read 20 plus poems and I am impressed, both with her flare for words and her courage to be so personal. She also believed that her personal pain was redeemed only by sharing it, that her life was valuable only if she could help others by writing about it. For years I have been advocating for collaborative reparations, or, following the ideas of James Hillmam , creativity as pathologizing or "falling apart."In any case, it is a healing of the self and the community. Sexton often claimed poetry kept her alive; writing gave her a way to work out an understanding of herself and the culture that her underlay her multiple pathologies. Many people in her large audiences at her readings seized on her words as revealing as a condition they shared. Critics classed her the "confessional school" of poetry which they said broke with tradition. She had a considerable reputation at one time because she was striking looking woman who was a very good reader of her own poems. Like Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus she was a suicide, burned out and dead at 45.
About Sexton:
----she used female sexuality as a theme in the late sixties it was controversial and unfashionable. Her friend Louis Simpson found it trivial and embarrassing.
----Her analylst has released tapes of her sessions.
----Suburban lady out of her element, hampered by mental illness, managed to become a poet of distinction and rare gifts. Sold half a million books in 10 years.
----Inescapable feminist drama, with unusual candor of self-presentation
----Confrontation changes to self-display. Work went downhill.
----one shrink slept with her she
while being treated and she committed incest with her daughter
....Had no regard for her privacy
About Sexton:
----she used female sexuality as a theme in the late sixties it was controversial and unfashionable. Her friend Louis Simpson found it trivial and embarrassing.
----Her analylst has released tapes of her sessions.
----Suburban lady out of her element, hampered by mental illness, managed to become a poet of distinction and rare gifts. Sold half a million books in 10 years.
----Inescapable feminist drama, with unusual candor of self-presentation
----Confrontation changes to self-display. Work went downhill.
----one shrink slept with her she
while being treated and she committed incest with her daughter
....Had no regard for her privacy
Monday, June 2, 2014
Dreams
James Hillman, a third generation Jungian, takes the dream as the paradigm on the psyche
having close association with death. Dream-work builds an imaginal vessel, or, as DH Lawrence wrote in a poem, "Build yourself a Ship of Death." What matters is soul not life.
Homer thought dreams issued from the underworld of Hades. The general attitude about dreams in the West is negative: they are unreal. Hillman thinks dreams are poems about themselves. They emanate from a faraway pneumatic world that is a dimension not available in itself. Unlike Freud and Jung, Hillman refuses to bring dreams into the day-world. We shouldn't interfere. Underworld is cosmos in its own right. Hades is the brother of Zeus--his shadow brother. The underworld is a purely psychic world whose mythological figures are metaphorical statements about the soul's comportment beyond life. Dreams are like dark spots, a shadow world in the depths where this world is experience as a metaphor. ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS. During sleep we are aware and alive; in life asleep. The Imaginal ego at home in the dark, moving among images as one of them. We have a foot in each world, the shadowy "between" of the underworld. The home of the soul is a twilight zone. Matter is turned to soul: soul-making. To encounter the realm of the soul, one must die first
This was certainly the lesson of THE INFERNO. I was aware I was in a shadow world, I was behind the painted scenery of ordinary life, being a ghost among ghosts. Literalness melted into thin air. I was an airy something that could walk through walls. Our substance comes from death. Hades becomes the archetypal background of life. The underworld is is "devoid of life," that is, liberated from our entanglements in the literalistic perspectives of the so-called real life. Reality is down there.
having close association with death. Dream-work builds an imaginal vessel, or, as DH Lawrence wrote in a poem, "Build yourself a Ship of Death." What matters is soul not life.
Homer thought dreams issued from the underworld of Hades. The general attitude about dreams in the West is negative: they are unreal. Hillman thinks dreams are poems about themselves. They emanate from a faraway pneumatic world that is a dimension not available in itself. Unlike Freud and Jung, Hillman refuses to bring dreams into the day-world. We shouldn't interfere. Underworld is cosmos in its own right. Hades is the brother of Zeus--his shadow brother. The underworld is a purely psychic world whose mythological figures are metaphorical statements about the soul's comportment beyond life. Dreams are like dark spots, a shadow world in the depths where this world is experience as a metaphor. ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS. During sleep we are aware and alive; in life asleep. The Imaginal ego at home in the dark, moving among images as one of them. We have a foot in each world, the shadowy "between" of the underworld. The home of the soul is a twilight zone. Matter is turned to soul: soul-making. To encounter the realm of the soul, one must die first
This was certainly the lesson of THE INFERNO. I was aware I was in a shadow world, I was behind the painted scenery of ordinary life, being a ghost among ghosts. Literalness melted into thin air. I was an airy something that could walk through walls. Our substance comes from death. Hades becomes the archetypal background of life. The underworld is is "devoid of life," that is, liberated from our entanglements in the literalistic perspectives of the so-called real life. Reality is down there.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Inappropriate
JoAnne had an odd response to my story about the kerfuffle with the Racine Pfaffls. She thinks I was the person who should have aplogized because, "If she thought it was 'inappropriate' then it was as far as her FB wall was concerned." Now she is talking about Terie not Hananh, as if Hananh's opinion is less than her mother's, when in truth I have no idea how Hannah felt about my drawing. I aimed the work at Hannah not her mother. At twenty surely she doesn't need her mother's imprimatur on everything she wishes to experience. If she does she is in trouble.
JoAnne seemed iritated that I even bothered her so now I know it is time to back away.
JoAnne seemed iritated that I even bothered her so now I know it is time to back away.
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