RainingHorse

Dusty locks shoulder

2008-05-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

that trail of intention leads into leaning into contact at the shoulder

at the hip, and intertwined breath leaving, entering along some parallel path

drips forming in the pockets of our bodies, turn inward on themselves

intensify and last all night, growing dreams on their shining surfaces

an orchid 2 years ago whose placement was unimaginable has burst through

time and space, its swollen stem opening my imaginative funnel

all wings curve to spiral flight, some elevations normally seperated collapse together

wax is melting, sun is hot, feathers are falling

ocean swells rise and touch my ankles

"The enlisted man stood with his head and shoulders protruding through the opening in the white canopy. His unruly red hair and freckled face gave the corporal a youthful look of an innocent schoolboy, but looks are often deceiving. Buck watched the corporal grow from a boy of seventeen into a battle-hardened veteran that, when the occasion called for it, was as tough as they come and had proved himself time and again. Some men were hard and tough, while others were dangerous; Chester Colson fell into the latter category. Like Buck, the corporal was from Texas." (from LONGHORN Book I "The Beginning" by Dusty Rhodes)

Gallivanting blouse

2008-05-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

"In the 70s, there were three Mexican restaurants I frequented. El Coyote, La Fonda and Lucy’s El Adobe. I’d heard about Lucy’s from my friend at the time, Linda Ronstadt. I know, I’m name-dropping. Sting tells me I do that a lot.

Van Dyke Parks took me to La Fonda. He knew I’d love the music there. I did. Instruments I’d never seen before, specifically for Mariachi. The guitaron, a huge guitar, I guess you’d call it a base guitar, a tijuela, a miniature guitar with an angelic harp-like sound. And the incomparable joy of the trumpets and violins blended together for an experience of living history. Sadly, La Fonda closed just recently. El Coyote features ‘chicas’ that look more like ‘duenas’ gallivanting in peasant, off the shoulder blouses and huge skirts. The food there, although produced on a massive scale, is still quite good. And Lucy’s still makes the best Tostada in town." (from "Lean Like a Cholo" by Laraine Newman; posted on One for the Table)

last night working on the composition for dancers at the wedding in september, than diving into more cataloging of my recorded music, 300 or so songs from 30 years - a combination of home and studio work, arranged in about 20 albums, also realized that i am approaching a completed new collection of what will be called "excerpts", ranging from early 2003 up until present day, experiments, scratch versions of songs, work done in garageband. i'm also gearing up for finding the most effective placement and process to release my entire catalog online so it will be available on itunes, amazon and other music sites, making actual cd's available only on request directly from the artist, nothing else seems to make sense in this day and age, its a dream i had years ago that has come true, who knows i may even start creating videos and posting to youtube, as filmmaking has always been a passion. anyone who has ideas on this is most welcome to comment here or contact me directly.

Affluence dervish vacancy

2008-05-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

in step by step fashion waggle consternation perish version of combat welcoming fishtank pistol dropping billions of windowsill mixups down into have or have not personhood gibble sullen groupings now that high means low and loss means win now that all numbers change games challenge reality and grind on growl in low gear thoroughly wrecking transmission burning rubber leaking oil vanishing valuable days as selfishly vision pleading for mercy come now command your troops withdraw pawns regroup unite help bring to closure each passing hour no lies for a change breathe and bloom bursting seed out into capitol steps and allowing each small voice a place in this choir these dreamings going wide amongst those of us in towns and rivers burdened with newsworthy fits of insane garbage dump it call it out onto the carpet red rolling salmon lubrication drawn thin in days of campaign waging war together now move on

"Rossetti himself seemed to conflate these two possibilities in a letter to his friend Dr Hake concerning the painting:
You ask me about Lilith — I suppose referring to the Picture-sonnet. The picture is called "Lady Lilith" by rights (only I thought this would present a difficulty in print without paint to explain it) and represents a "Modern Lilith" combing out her abundant golden hair and gazing on herself in the glass with that complete self-absorption by whose fascination such natures draw others within their circle. The idea which you indicate (viz: of the perilous principle in the world being female from the first) is about the most essential meaning of the sonnet. "

Sharpening dillweed fermentation

2008-05-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

"My favorite pickle is not processed in a water bath. It is fermented much like sauerkraut. I make them in gallon jars. I prefer 2-3-inch size cucumbers for this pickle. First I scrub them with a vegetable brush, making sure they are free of dirt. Next I place them in a non-metal container and cover them with a brine made of 1-1/2 cups of salt and 4 quarts of water. Let them sit over night in the brine. In the meantime make a brine of 10-quarts water, 1-quart vinegar and 2-cups salt. Boil for 10-minutes. Let this brine stand over night.
The next morning I drain the cucumbers and rinse with clear water. I sterilize my jars. Then I add a few peeled cloves of garlic to the bottom of the jar. Next I add a whole head of dill weed, stalk and all. I start packing the cucumbers tightly, adding more dill between layers of cucumbers. When the gallon jar is filled to about 2-inches from the top I pour the cold brine over the cucumbers, making sure they are completely covered with brine. I put the sterile cover on and tighten well.
These will ferment in the jar for a week or more, depending on the temperature of the room. I let them sit on my counter. When they start fermenting they will get cloudy and look like something to be discarded. Just be patient, do not panic. When the fermentation process is done the pickles will clear up. At that time I move them to a cool place and leave them alone for at least 5-6 weeks. If you open them up too soon they will not be translucent, meaning they have not ripened long enough." (from "The Special Pickle Jar" by Bonita Anderson)

we have traded cards up and down the length of coast, burning candles, forwarding mail, grappling with chords, melodies, blended wines - and its asking a little too much today for me to simply wash my hands of you, especially after listening to those melancholy aires of 1997, you with fingers on the drum, your newly mounted sticks and brushes trembling and tapping through improvised sessions stealing the bloodline at times, rationalizing thick whatnots of experiment through cracking a clean whip along the spine of meter, those non-verbal nights of yesteryear, lone rangers digging into pineforest mushroom compost intriguing, effervescent, gobbling little pills of ecstasy at the working intersections in musical tribe, called over by the teacher to discuss a little problem we were having with getting assignments in on time, breaking bread with merry muffins in hipwader confidence, all harvested from dad and mom when theory calms its runty head on rooty, bloodsoaked forests of dill, oh boyish wonder, oh carnival of venus taken into account, murky leftover wishes, but never a harsh word, only that absence that continues to plaster its posters across the wailing wall of creative partnership, let it be known that all is not lost, there is more fermentation to be reckoned with, life is long, green frogs swim freely into larger ponds when moose-trodden grassybanks give in to slide, wash and disappear.

Lost key, Mayday!

2008-05-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

"Mayday!'s self-titled debut is one of this year's pleasant surprises. The act (not to be confused with the Saddle Creek outfit of the same name) is the brainchild of producer/keyboardist Plex Luthor and MC Bernbiz. Luthor's early production work for Miami groups such as Algorithm and Spirit Agent offered simple blues beats that sounded like bedroom soliloquies. In contrast, Mayday! is vivid and colorful, with sounds that move from the hard organ crush of "Watchin' Me" to the tinkling and echoing piano keys on "The Customer Is Always Right." Meanwhile, Bernbiz's rhymes are tight and concise, especially in "Micro/Macro," where he addresses the so-called war on terrorism, and in "Angles," where he lays out his philosophy: "Cats have gotten far but not that far, dog/I see it every day -- ass, money and stardom/But everybody's gotta beg, borrow and rob/So I don't owe nobody shit, and I ain't paying for beats." In spite of the publicity that Cee-Lo's chorus on "Groundhog Day" lent them, Mayday!'s success is owed to Luthor and Bernbiz alone." (Mosi Reeves, Denver Westword, November 16, 2006)

there is a short journey from the return home last night until the return home from work for lunch to enjoy some delicious chicken curry that virginia made last night, a simple few steps up the stairs from the car, a sleep, a shower, shave and change of clothes, finding a bagel, groping for ham to take with it to work for breakfast, then onto the motorcycle, wearing that jacket, that darn jacket with the tricky pockets, and who knows, somewhere between here and there or there and here it fell, but really now is that what happened or is it simply sitting in some little shelf space, or under a scrap of paper, or in the crack between two pillows, or inside a shoe, or under the lip of a cabinet, or in the bed, hmmm that is the one place i did not look and i did lean down to kiss her goodbye, so who knows, tonight when we get back home from the may day festivities that will be the first place i look, amidst the blankets, give it all a good shake, somewhere there is a key for squashy hiding, and hooray for the first of may!

Quest for sustenance

2008-04-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

this is a phrase i used once in a song; "the quest for sustenance, a sea bird's cry", it escapes me at this moment which song, does not matter, the stain of potato chips are on my fingertips already, i just brushed a little salt off of my t-shirt, bright sun shining as they fall through air to ground, halfway across the street, into the alley alongside dumpsters smelling ripe as late afternoon temperature climbs, a car behind me speeds up when i veer off toward the building entrance, back to my desk, this moment is waiting, discussion of spam, earlier a twix bar, what does $1.19 buy these days, one twix bar, one small bag of potato chips, and that little corner store survives another day in this economy, a little reading today about the $250 million it will cost to build detention centers for prisoners of this war that we started in iraq, how they have rioted in volumes of 1,000 to 10,000 at a time, this anger they feel, the small rocks that blind the guards when thrown at more than 100 mph with a makeshift slingshot, reading also glenn beck's column that today scorns our oil addiction while recommending drilling in the anwr, who very recently wrote on the benefits of corporate welfare, probably for oil companies right glenn?, the same companies that are racking up record-breaking profits over and over again, who is it that owns mr beck, not too hard to figure that out, and today the sun shines and the first 800,000 of our economic stimulus checks go out, so all will be wonderful now.

" The quest for sustenance is regarded as “seeking the bounty of Allah”, and is thus hued with a profoundly religious character. The Prophet (Pbuh) has said: “The quest for halal earning is a duty after a duty” which implies that seeking halal sustenance is a religious obligation second in importance to religious observance like prayer, fasting etc. Economic activity in the life of a Muslim is therefore regulated by divine principles, principles that are premised on commercial morality. Commercial morality is intrinsically bound to religion and is as important to faith, as wudhu is to salat. The Qur’an describes upright merchants in the following words: “Men whom neither business nor sale can divert from the remembrance of Allah, nor from regularity in salat or from giving zakat”. True believers are not recluses or mystics, they are men of action distinguished by their moral fibre. They steer clear from unbecoming business ethics or ill-gotten gain. " (Islamic Voice: Rabi-ul-Akhir 1422HJuly 2001Volume 15-07 No:175)

Voices framing argenta

2008-04-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

"In 1983 Nancy Argenta attracted critical attention as La Chasseuresse in Rameau’ Hyppolyte at Aricie at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Since making her professional debut in 1983 she has established a reputation as one of the foremost sopranos of her generation. She is generally regarded as "the supreme Händel soprano of our age". However, this probably fails to show her wide range of repertoire, as she is also a renowned interpreter of Bach, Purcell, Mozart, Schubert and even Schoenberg. Her repertoire stretches from the 17th century to the present and comprises songs as well as oratorio and opera." (Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Classical Musicians (1997)

i remember going up to vancouver bc with elisabeth cutler in 1978 to see joni mitchell, performing on that tour with jaco pastorius and pat metheny, an amazing band, a truly lovely performance, much of which came from "hejira". we drove up in elisabeth's vw fox, she and i had a sweet friendship that allowed for gentle touchdowns of affection without crossing the line into romance. our passion was the love of music. later i know she studied guitar with ralph towner, then went on to have a career based out of nashville and traveling mostly in italy.

then next time i saw joni was in 2000 when she toured with van morrison and bob dylan - they had a show at the gorge. it was windy and she stood facing into the wind, moving like a willow trunk, supple, dedicated, and again, song after song from "hejira" - all dressed in black and with a bass player only. that was amazing, as were bob and van... who had just released "the healing game", one of my favorite albums for cleaning the house, driving to lebam, fixing the car and other spiritual pursuits.

Tureen vagabond

2008-04-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

it was in the day of soup, in the month of ladle, on the 17th serving of bread when we came to the table, and a swallow flew through dining car seven, our bags were packed in anguish heaven, carving the birdsong whistle blowing, pelting rain and winter snowing hard along the tracks of steel, our hands enveloped, turning wheel of fortune freeing up these names forsaken, lost along three strips of bacon, who was served from this tureen, that vagabond from county green, telling stories as he wanders toward some distant land of fathers coming home, and sitting with the children as is fitting.

HINDLEY: Keep away from the larder! Nelly, send him into the garret 'till dinner is over. He'll be cramming his fingers in the tarts and steeling the fruit, if left alone with them for a minute.
NELLY: (Placting.) Nay sir, he'll touch nothing, not he. And he must have his share of food as well as we. (She goes to the stove, removes a hot tureen and carries it to the table).
HINDLEY: He shall have his share of my hand if I catch him downstairs again 'till dark. Begone you vagabond! Wait 'till I get hold of those elegant locks - see if I won't pull them a bit longer!
(Wuthering Heights, Act I, Scene 3).

When the red red robin

2008-04-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

WHEN THE RED ROBIN COMES BOBBIN' ALONG
(written by Harry Woods )

Al Jolson
Mandy Patinkin
The Osmond Brothers

"When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob Bobbin' Along
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along, along
There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts throbbin' his old sweet song
Wake up, wake up you sleepy head
Get up, get out of your bed
Cheer up, cheer up the sun is red
Live, love, laugh and be happy
What if I were blue, now I'm walking through, walking through the fields of flowers
Rain may glisten but still I listen for hours and hours
I'm just a kid again doing what I did again, singing a song
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin'
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along
There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts throbbin'
There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts a throbbin' his old sweet song
Wake up, wake up you sleepy head
Why don't you get up, get up, get out of bed, cheer up
Live, love, laugh and be happy
What if I were blue, now I'm walking through fields of flowers
Rain may glisten but still I listen for hours and hours
I'm just a kid again, doing what I did again, singing a song
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin'
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along
Along, along, along, along, along."

red willow, red wine, red rings, red sleeping, red corners, red plot, red falling, red flicker, red moon, red ornament, red star, red hope, red rust, red development, red turning, red returning, red new, red old, red funny, red encryption, red sails, red nurse, red flag, red pilot, red duration, red crust, red cherry, red envelope, red flipside, red tummy, red eclipse, red revision, red sniper, red octopus, red night, red whale, red testimonial, red gratitude, red vegetable, red garcon, red carriage, red interest, red go.

Elliptical creosote vanilla

2008-04-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

where o where has my little rabbit gone, my minou living long leg wrapping formal evidentiary volume of wringing hands, my lambs, my causes for recitation, my ignoble burden heaved upon the back of slaves, your elliptical creosote history coming round to haunt you mr senator, voicing your ignorance just in time for the anniversary of his death, his murder, you're slow in making the connection, you can't quite remember why and what you said, this is becoming so familiar, your vanilla shampoo blazing away like varnished applewood alongside the bus, stepping down in your navy baseball cap for the reporters to chum up with you, your daughter's graceful steps keeping up appearances that the record will not support, you did say it and you did vote that way, you are not a fan of dr king and no matter how timely your sympathy and respect have come to pass, no one in their right mind is going to let you get away with this one... or will they?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

Fried legs and yam

2008-03-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

"The lunchtime canteen for students is the "garbat," simple tables surrounded by four posts with straw overhead to create a roof and with calabashes for cooking. Oil isn't changed very often for frying. There is no refrigeration, and everything is cooked on the ground amid the flies and dust. You're most likely to find fried fish, yam "French fries," foutou and of course "kedjenou" with attieke or braised chicken. There are no plates or cutlery in the canteen: everyone eats with their hands from the same dishes. But the food is delicious!
The flavor of Kedjenou chicken, braised with vegetables, is due in particular to its main ingredient: "bicycle" chicken, so named because the birds are allowed to run freely, eating whatever they find in their yards or on the streets. The chickens are very lean and flavorful, with no fat. Preparing Kedjenou chicken anywhere else won't yield the same results, since using a plumper chicken with more fat will change the flavor and texture. But anyone who tries Ivory Coast chicken loves it.
Sea fishing is carried out mostly around the Gulf of Guinea. Fishermen bring back tuna, sardines, bonito and shrimp. On the menu you'll find…
pan-fried frog's legs with garlic and parsley
Baoule shrimp fried in butter, sprinkled with cayenne and flambéed with whisky, with a little cream added just before serving to make a rich and delicious sauce
a fish called "capitaine" that is cooked "en papillote" in the oven with lemons, onions, tomato, salt and pepper…
For dessert, you need only pick some mangos, mandarins, mangostans, pomegranates, soursops, passion fruit, coconuts… These are found everywhere, and so delicious that they can be eaten just as they are." (Michele Serre, 2007 "The Worldwide Gourmet")

high maintenance walking, turning down this alley and out onto the unwetted sand, digging in my heels with every step, now the sun is burning my calves and rings of white salt gather round my ankles, personal best one hour coupled within three hammock regions, netted fish and pelican wounds perched in augmentation for ropes that divide the spurn from wreckage and warble. if the sun refuse to shine, where o where is that love o mine, gone to drinking, gone to hoe, fat boy winking get ya joe, messin' up the anty, throwin' down the bets, come a seven come eleven double clavinets, music in the back room, music in the hall, tell me who your mamma is so i can read the wall, if you stop, if you stay, much is given, taken way, who you, say do, volume up and cash it too, little bitty frog legs frying in the pan, make it for your daddy with a sweet meat yam, make it for your baby when the ocean start to rise, come a little closer to me, dark red skies.

Piaf exposition

2008-02-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

"Life stories do not make neat dramatic packages. They tend to meander, digress and accelerate in fits and starts while making little sense - at least the kind of sense that can be gracefully compressed into two hours of screen time." (Sandra Hall, Reviewer; The Sydney Morning Herald, July 7, 2007)

shoot me shoot me again shoot me my pain is facile, gregarious, musical

kill my pain kill my someone lost my open wounded voice

please destroy this tambourine that shakes my soul

first listen to this combination of pleading and exuberant rally

fill your empty heart with vibrations eminating from my broken life

like thunder, like green mountain gales and rainy streets

like barstool orgasms and filet mignon blood running on a white plate

like craziness and wholeness and blessed ruin tamping the powder into the canon

explosions you can't understand that blow your lonely waif of sin to hell and back again

pills and liquor and virtue lost inside this broken vessel

put to song like noble soaring perfect brave soldiers gone to die

Oranges film wrangle

2008-02-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

"‘That was the day I stopped believing in the wild ardour of things. Perhaps in love … the love in books and films … that tells us to abandon our lives and plans all for one brief touch of Venus… The world just seems too fragile a place for it … Perhaps it’s just we who are too fragile.’

This is the wife talking in Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven (2002), (a reworking of Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows, 1955), to her black gardener with whom a tender forbidden love is developing, as her husband descends into a hell of homosexual guilt. Haynes stays with Sirk’s post-war New England suburbia, and it seems a delicious perversity that at a time of almost unlimited technical and narrative possibility he’s chosen to work within this tight 1950s’ frame. The film is artificial and exultant, but so cruelly truthful it made me feel sick and afraid for three days. It’s completely airless. The décor in the family home is so dominating that the place starts to look like a prison in which the husband and son’s lives are shaped by the furniture. Watching the confused prejudices, aspirations and ludicrous taboos and hypocrisies is equivalent to listening to a long, bad joke. The auburns and oranges, the wife’s flame hair and the autumn leaves, produce an over-heated nostalgia, which becomes sickeningly suffocating. No amount of gorgeous hue can dispel the sadness of observing recurrent, wilful human error." (Rebecca Warren; frieze magazine, Issue 103 November-December 2006)

shattered glass, phone calls burning out over wireless connections, blood flowing from my arm into the vile for examination, my first ekg, an hour huddled in the closet after hearing gunshots at 2am in lebam, mortal sin vs mortality sincerity, an eclipse orphaned off to write its hangnail memoirs on the drip of moonlight fallen down her stairs, puffy perch fried deep in gras englais, villian cooper tire burns in the finer details of the photograph, pluralism in rural america, evey's hot turkey sandwich with stuffing and gravy, millstones throw me into the swollen river of time, graduates fill their pencil shavings with floating mantles of recognition.

Hunter says it all

2008-02-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

from dailykos:

The Wonderful World of Cheney
by Hunter
Fri Feb 08, 2008 at 01:55:03 PM PST
Cheney spoke yesterday at CPAC, the conference for people for whom reality is just an illusion foisted upon them by a cold and liberal universe. (The universe, you see, is full of dark matter called Librons, which in addition to keeping the universe from flying apart like Ann Coulter in front of a television camera, have the unfortunate side effect of inverting perceptions of reality for all but the most trained Randian observers. Oh, and Scientologists.) I'm supposed to say, at this point, something like "you can't make this up", but of course you can make this stuff up. It's easy to make it up. That's the whole point.
Some highlights...

"As conservatives, we believe in a government that takes up a smaller share of the national income, that treats tax dollars with respect and restraint. And we believe in a government that keeps to its limits under the Constitution, never expanding beyond the consent of the governed. "
And then, he farted candy and rainbows. And all the little woodland creatures came out from under the floorboards to help sew him a magnificent new dress for the ball.

"The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture -- it's against our laws and against our values. We're proud of our country and what it stands for. [...]
America is a fair and a decent country. (Applause.) President Bush has made it clear, both publicly and privately, that our duty to uphold the laws and standards of this nation admit no exceptions in wartime. As he put it, "We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is, live by them."

And at that point, the Constitution Fairy sprinkled her magic Constitution dust over the land, and all the tapes of the CIA torturing prisoners magically erased themselves, and the waterboarded detainees became un-waterboarded, and the vast program of illegal domestic espionage -- so critical to our national security that President George Constitution Bush has threatened to veto all FISA legislation, for all time, unless everyone involved gets retroactive amnesty for their illegal acts -- suddenly became Constitutional.

"To prevail in the long run, we have to remove the conditions that inspire such blind, prideful hatred that drove 19 men to get into airplanes and come kill us. And so the President made the decision: We wouldn't just remove the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and let other dictators rise in their place."

Because one of the lesser known Articles of the Constitution is that no mention of 9/11 by an administration official may take place without a possibly hallucinatory-drug-induced conflation of it and Saddam Hussein. And Shrek. Shrek was also there.

I like it. Reality as practiced by a man who can't tell the difference between a grown man standing next to him and a tiny, barely-flight-capable bird. It's not so much a CPAC speech as it is "NAMBLA for the mind." It's a comic book speech, delivered by a comic book man to a comic book audience. Cheney doesn't believe in merely denying reality, he believes in pinning it down, attaching electrodes to it, then just clubbing it to death for fun.

The thing is, it'd be easy to ascribe behavior like this to mental illness, presuming he really believes any of the things he says. But it's not clear he does. In all likelihood, he knows fully well how ridiculous it all sounds, but in an audience hand-picked for their willingness to accept any premise, no matter how ridiculous, in order to feel good about their own bigotries, nobody will ever call him out on it.

It's interesting, because once again one would think it would be a key component of rational public discourse for people to, indeed, call him out on his happy, camouflage-colored delusions. But it's somehow off-limits, in the press, to point out when a public official is an unmitigated, reality-sodomizing liar. Haircuts and pantsuits: fair game. Pointing out that "a smaller share of the national income" means "a larger share", that "restrained" spending means "more" spending, that "keeping to the limits of the Constitution" means breaking those limits, that "no torture" means "torture", and that "9/11" means anything else he wants it to mean at any moment in time: pointing those things out are uncouth activities to be delegated to people like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, and a handful of crazy, uncivilized blogs.

And we're reduced to just making fun of it, because really -- what else are you going to do? How do you refute something that's self-refuting?

Go figure.

Nurturance in technicolor

2008-02-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

you scratched a line into those burning sands
in your hands the line is echoed, as you well know
their suffering, invisible to you
is suffering no less and in time will show
your version of reality we all witness in silence
to stoke your ego trip down rusty rails
apologies for feeding that fire are given now
this song in color wheel is churning compassion
how left behind my windows carve the scene
eliptical in nature, coming around, ali is dancing
telling all is future, now and past
letting light contain this essential movement
i knew you then i know you now and yet
the distance will be vast and wild, and that is an improvement

"Differentiation is the process of becoming distinct or unique. It’s about finding a niche in which you can thrive different from the competition’s niche.

It’s the same process businesspeople know so well: If three restaurants open in the same small town, each has to specialize in order to survive. One advertises Mexican cuisine. Another becomes known for preparing seafood. A third features omelets.

Your kids have to learn to differentiate in just the same way. Some combination of built-in strengths and praise and support leads each to discover a way to shine uneclipsed by a sister’s or a brother’s success." (Dr. Benjamin Garber)

Nickels and trowels

2008-01-30T16:48:00.000-08:00

"Nickels, however, dumps the extra money from all his cuts into the transportation budget to fund his dubious pet projects: $2.7 million in new funds for Sound Transit, $650,000 for his sidewalk upgrade plan, and over $5 million on a brand-new scheme to replace Seattle's parking meters with "pay station kiosks that control multiple spaces." Unfortunately, the new kiosks won't save money in staff time, as you might expect: the $5 million includes 1 new full-time Parking Meter Repair Crew Chief and 1 new full-time Civil Engineering Assistant." (by Maria Tomchik from "Eat the State", Oct 8, 2003)

how i dig thee let me count thee, for the fountain days do haunt thee, all out along the winding walk, a parabola of conditions, frost and fair fires burning away the wooden crossties, all rails helped to ruin, all ashes scattered to four fine winds, my love is "perishable, protected, all alone" like a swan whose downy feathers fill with air in each turn around the pond.

Traces, melon

2008-01-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

hors d'oeuvre flip, mirros slip
caught your resignation on my right hip
walk off the job, go whole hog
mercy mr percy its a rolling log

oh water, big water, river sit me down
help is coming if i stick around
more mysterious than ever

flier calling, wristwatch falling
monitored illusion in a storm that's squalling
pills in her hand, traveling man
tell them what its like to have to shovel sand

oh water, big water, river sit me down
help is coming if i stick around
more mysterious than ever

"The extraordinary ability of dolphins to echolocate has fascinated scientists and the public since its discovery in the late 1950's. The Sonar of Dolphins is the first book to summarize modern research on this subject, and presents a broad synthesis of this very interdisciplinary subject. The author is an internationally-recognized expert on dolphin sonar and is in a unique position to bring together research on the physiological, mathematical and engineering aspects of dolphin sonar. The Sonar of Dolphins will be of interest to auditory researchers, electrical engineers, acoustical physicists, and mammalian physiologists." (Google books description of "The Sonar of Dolphins" by Whitlow W. L. Au)

Treason plains belladonna

2008-01-18T16:22:00.000-08:00

"The Waste Land" begins with an excerpt from Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon, in Latin and Greek, which translates as: “For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered, ‘I want to die.’” The quotation is followed by a dedication to Ezra Pound, Eliot’s colleague and friend, who played a major role in shaping the final version of the poem. (GradeSaver Study Guides)

orange moonies all around my hat, dancing forward pass upon my soul, their boots have sharp heels and i have been sent home to grieve my ancestors, this unholy grail that follows each meal, my present company not accepted, hinterlands scored on the front steps with someone's cousin, who came to visit, my forbidden thoughts have lingered once again, taking down notes for a sparrow's visor, drinking belladonna tea out on the wide plains of dakota, i left, my treason was perfect.

Furniture venom

2008-01-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

what tesla knew about magnetic fiction, what carson knew about timing chains, what venus knew about ocean water, what altman knew about frankenstein's pubgrub, what nancy knew about the brady furniture, what crandle knew about fences brought home on time, what mom knew about cooking the kitchen sink to a tender turn, what apple knew about walking across the lime peel, what milicent knew about forking over crableg salad, what vinny knew about beawolf's oldest cousin twice removed, what carter knew about living large without pills, what tanlines knew about silica regions of mexico, what air bubble knew about the bloodstream of a cornfield, what plaster knew about harvard degrees in the 4th quarter.

"The rivalry between Venom and Spider-Man has gone down in Marvel Universe History as one of the worst. Every time it comes down to it they have some of the most brutal Superhero smack-downs of all time. Now this two piece statue set immortalizes one of their worst battles in the style of Simon Bisley's art. This set is limited to 675 pieces worldwide, and includes both Spider-Man and Venom with interlocking bases." Bowen Designs

Tell me whose baritone fell over

2008-01-14T19:02:00.000-08:00

intermission gavel, vroom gallop vindicate obvious traces gone, delving into a kale and cauliflower existence, murching viliums of whole egg personell coarse salt vanities, an umbilious virtue, pack-tickling distance credits along a burbank toilet bowl afternoon, pugnacious little furrballs kipping their sanguine laddersnouts acrime a bigwheel track whose loop de loop plunked our little car into the drink, sinking sailing, glubbing out its last breath of air, wheels go round and round, up and down, all through the town, inhale that musty garsconza telebrium, its all that is known of your entity.

"A dolorous line that has the same flavor as Ornette Coleman's more moody work . . . . a frenzy of overblowing that evolves into a weird mix of Ayleresque cries and space-yodelling in the Leon Thomas tradition . . . . . Wilkinson is a saxophonist whose work is on a par with Charles Gayle, David Ware, Peter Brötzmann or any of the other heavyweight reedmen who are still playing hard and free. I can think of many young American conservatives who would do well to have their heads shoved deep into the bell of his baritone for a season or two." Byron Coley FORCED EXPOSURE

Crescent vacuum

2008-01-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

"The Islamic calendar is principally a lunar calendar. The determination of the first day of any Islamic month is not a simple matter, but rather a complex one. The question is how soon after the new Moon can we spot the lunar crescent in the evening twilight? Several civilizations before us faced the same question, and several criteria were introduced for a possible sighting. The most common one is that the thin lunar crescent should be at least one day old at the time of sunset. Each succeeding day the Moon sets later, increasing the chance that it will be seen. Sightings of the Moon within 20 hours of its new phase are extremely rare. However, some records have been set such as the naked-eye visibility of a 15.4 hours crescent in 1871, a 14.9 hours visibility in 1972, and a 13.5 hours visibility in 1988." (Ilias Fernini)

your wedding dress waits somewhere, bleeding off the edges of the page in history where intellect and emotion find their hands in the same pond, reaching for the same piece of fruit which floats at some level beneath the surface, yet not resting against the sandy bottom, suspended by its own weight in relationship to the density of the water, in communion with the lily whose stalk disappears at a depth where the sun will not penetrate, all of your limbs have stretched to their ecstatic length, they whirl and wave in your dance, your wedding future dance, contemplated on the side of a forest path, noted on a piece of silk with a simple word written in needlepoint, "beauty".

Moro dance

2008-01-11T21:40:00.000-08:00

"Culture and the arts are potent forces in national development. With its colors and contrasts, our cultural heritage unifies our race, and gives it a national identity that lends pride and dignity to every Filipino." - Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino, 1991 Introduction Inspired largely by the excitement of Edward Said's work, much of the focus of post-colonial discourse has been on the role and effect of colonialism in the metropole. But as the agency of post-colonial subjects increasingly comes under scrutiny, Benedict Anderson's insights about the complex "mimicry" of colonialism in post-colonial states seems to me to be increasingly relevant. For example, in his penetrating analysis of colonialism and nationalism in the Philippines, Michael Salman comments that "when Benedict Anderson's work on the generalization of nationalism is put alongside Edward Said's writings on the pervasiveness of colonial culture, it does suggest the outlines of a parallel transformation of consciousness, and its containment in conservative ideology, neo-colonialism, and the repressive authoritarianism of so many..." (Barbara S. Gaerlan)

in witness there of capillary vanishing bogs treading forward, a plank across to the island, reckoning held at arms length by tiny birds feeding on the evening gnat population, during which fundamental change i forced myself to believe that your arms were enfolding the upper regions of my torso with impossible length, turning then into forceps i never knew, and tender, twisting the solid core of my body into itself in sweetness, tender gasp and long breathing song entering the space between us, this dance you call your work and i call my resignation.

Unblocking savant

2008-01-10T15:41:00.000-08:00

there are so many ways i hesitate to stay open to support; emotional, spiritual, financial, practical advise - and it all came to a head the night before last. one of the symptoms is the gap in my writing here. once a day, bruce, not once a week. there is a quiet celebration in my soul every time i allow myself the luxury of taking these moments to act on a creative urge, let my fingers do the talking, embodiment of that flight i dream of, one step, then a second step into a space about a foot above the floor where somehow the law of gravity suspends itself and i begin an easy slide through the room, adjusting for balance, releasing into a suspended state (that is as in skinner releasing) and carve easy curves out and along the boulevard of living.

"As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general." (futurepundit.com)

Patterns and forgiveness

2008-01-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

"Forgiveness is the cancellation of all the conditions in your mind that are preventing the flow of love, joy and vitality through you, independently of the behaviour of others or of any circumstances."
Dearbhaile Bradley

"The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong in the broken places."
Ernest Hemmingway

Today, my first day back at work in the New Year, I started to begin to think about the possibility of maybe some day getting around to perhaps changing the patterns that are in place during my work day that deplete my effectiveness.

Tomorrow is a fresh start!

Antwerp follicle

2008-01-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

"Nasty stereotypes have helped move the merchandise for more than a century, and the history of their use and abuse offers a weird and telling glimpse of race relations in this country. Not surprisingly, the earliest instances were the most egregious. This circa-1900 ad for a rodent-control product called Rough on Rats doesn't just exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats. It also underscores the intensity of American xenophobia of the day. There were anti-Chinese riots at the time, as well as legislation like the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal ban on immigration passed in 1882. (It was on the books until 1943.) In the ad, "They must go" refers both to the rodents and the Chinese." (from "Wired" April 30, 2007)

rats or cats or bats or scats, these rumors spread like waves of sheets on laundry lines, in graphic arsenal repeating twisted dripping knotted full-in-sun police begin to walk that waterfront, their shining boots, a club in hand, the games relationship framed by automatic weaponry, making blades obsolete, varnished planks squeaking under their weight, virtue dashing up against the pilings, growing barnacles whose stripping action takes away the most stubborn stains, lick and eat, grease trap furnishings out along the bay, rocking, rolling, riding, "all bound for morning town, many miles away".