mail art, August 2010 postmark
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Big Dream
Strange dislocations and a breakthrough in the Flaneur's fraught dream life.
Waking in an apartment in San Francisco where I'm now residing with room mates. I have to catch a bus downtown like in my old Berkeley commute days thirty years ago.
I walk up two blocks to the street where the bus-stop for that direction is located. A bus comes and I get on without checking the direction. I don't pay and sit up front. Then I remember I should pay and attempt to do so. The driver waves me off instead. Oddly the pay box is located to his left near the window.
Before long I realize he is not going on the intended route. It is a huge circuitous journey through non-descript industrial sections along the bay. Eventually we are driving along a flatland by the bay. The waves wash up and over the road but we plow through anyway. There are no more buildings and no other traffic out here. We come to the furthest point, the edge of a parking lot, and then turn back.
Then we are climbing and the view outside is of an Escher-like maze of girders and structures abstract in their complexity. I realize that we are under the Golden Gate bridge. At the apogee of this trajectory we turn back to climb down again. What I see outside the window now appears in a rhomboid-shaped portal surrounded by darkness. It is an astonishing vista of the bay waters and land, incredibly beautiful in color, movement and light.
Before long we are again on drab industrial streets heading in toward downtown, toward more familiar territory.
Waking in an apartment in San Francisco where I'm now residing with room mates. I have to catch a bus downtown like in my old Berkeley commute days thirty years ago.
I walk up two blocks to the street where the bus-stop for that direction is located. A bus comes and I get on without checking the direction. I don't pay and sit up front. Then I remember I should pay and attempt to do so. The driver waves me off instead. Oddly the pay box is located to his left near the window.
Before long I realize he is not going on the intended route. It is a huge circuitous journey through non-descript industrial sections along the bay. Eventually we are driving along a flatland by the bay. The waves wash up and over the road but we plow through anyway. There are no more buildings and no other traffic out here. We come to the furthest point, the edge of a parking lot, and then turn back.
Then we are climbing and the view outside is of an Escher-like maze of girders and structures abstract in their complexity. I realize that we are under the Golden Gate bridge. At the apogee of this trajectory we turn back to climb down again. What I see outside the window now appears in a rhomboid-shaped portal surrounded by darkness. It is an astonishing vista of the bay waters and land, incredibly beautiful in color, movement and light.
Before long we are again on drab industrial streets heading in toward downtown, toward more familiar territory.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Cleaning House
In an attempt to avoid burial in it, the Flaneur sheds his collector's morbidity to reach a lighter future.
The burden of the past and my tendency to accumulate photos, books, recordings, artifacts, objects of all kinds in addition to one's wardrobe, furniture, cooking equipment, and the many necessities of life, have all been on my mind of late.
Great when your writing criticism or doing research to have the vastness of an obsessive-compulsive library at yr disposal. And of course there is the aleatory joy of discovering a unread great or an old favorite book among one's shelves.
Then there's the insight and nostalgia available in old photographs and the myriad cultural souvenirs of an avid enthusiast's past. But really, it all ends up as the detritus of one's learning, thinking, and unconscious tides. It forms a weight, a dragon one's forward movement, like the Surrealist hero in Le Chien Andalou dragging his yoke of ropes, pulling an accumulation of bound priests, donkey cadavers and a grand piano through a bourgeois drawing room.
Woefully I concede that I am more of a 20th century man than any longer a man of my times. Yet I have finally seen the wisdom and resolve to roll with the new to the best of my ability. All the yellowing culture clutter I'll shed will still be with me and will resurface in my mind as needed. I can always research on-line now when I need to. Of course everything, including all information, will still decay or be lost or destroyed.
The digitally-stored will go just like even the carefully preserved books and drawing of Michelangelo and Blake, the great paintings in oil on canvas, and most art of all kinds will go. Somethings may be unearthed again intact but even the pyramids must one day come to dust.
The burden of the past and my tendency to accumulate photos, books, recordings, artifacts, objects of all kinds in addition to one's wardrobe, furniture, cooking equipment, and the many necessities of life, have all been on my mind of late.
Great when your writing criticism or doing research to have the vastness of an obsessive-compulsive library at yr disposal. And of course there is the aleatory joy of discovering a unread great or an old favorite book among one's shelves.
Then there's the insight and nostalgia available in old photographs and the myriad cultural souvenirs of an avid enthusiast's past. But really, it all ends up as the detritus of one's learning, thinking, and unconscious tides. It forms a weight, a dragon one's forward movement, like the Surrealist hero in Le Chien Andalou dragging his yoke of ropes, pulling an accumulation of bound priests, donkey cadavers and a grand piano through a bourgeois drawing room.
Woefully I concede that I am more of a 20th century man than any longer a man of my times. Yet I have finally seen the wisdom and resolve to roll with the new to the best of my ability. All the yellowing culture clutter I'll shed will still be with me and will resurface in my mind as needed. I can always research on-line now when I need to. Of course everything, including all information, will still decay or be lost or destroyed.
The digitally-stored will go just like even the carefully preserved books and drawing of Michelangelo and Blake, the great paintings in oil on canvas, and most art of all kinds will go. Somethings may be unearthed again intact but even the pyramids must one day come to dust.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A Year in Mourning
On 8 January 2010, one year after my mother passed on at age 96, I sat outside in the sunshine musing over memories of her. Risking sentimentality, I transcribe here some of what I wrote which is in turn a mere glimpse of the remembrances that I didn't get down.
December nights my Mother and I would venture out in the cold night after supper to see the lights, to see how people had decorated their homes for Christmas. There was an abundance of trees, wreathes, and front porches outlined in the fat-bulb colored lights. Some homes had succumbed to modernist kitsch with silver trees and revolving color-wheel spotlights. We would walk a few residential blocks over to the vicinity of George B. Stone school and back home the same way. My Mother was well-read, intelligent and full of humor and we would carry on conversations as if we were both adults. She would inspire me with her sense of wonder at the adequacy and outright goodness of life, of the profound experience of viewing the starry sky. What ever inklings of wisdom I have today I owe to her nature and her example.
On my first day of pre-primary school at George B. Stone, my Mother stayed along with the other mothers through the morning. The idea was to gradually get the kids used to being apart from their mothers who generally were home with us during our first five years.
When we came in from a recess in the schoolyard, I looked around and quickly saw that she was now gone. I ran straight out of the classroom, out of the front door of the school, up Globe street, and around the corner to Garfield street, yelling "Ma"! I caught up with her mid-block. With her typical good-nature she dutifully walked me back to school. She stayed a while maybe until school was out, but by the next day I had accepted the fact of our separation and was dropped -off while many mothers were still required to stay and placate their jittery kids.
Once we were walking with my brother at an undeveloped area known as the circus grounds. It was a Summer night and dark there--we may have been there for the Fourth of July fireworks. Then without warning my mother stepped in a hole and fell down onto the long grass. It was a new experience for me, a frightening realization that even adults were subject to spills. She was the ship, the rudder and the mast that kept our family afloat. I think I came to a new maturity with the realization that I needed to help her and try to protect her from hazards.
She later told me that when she was a little girl a man had appeared in broad daylight at those circus grounds and attempted to entice her and a friend. She said he eventually exposed himself to them as they ran away.
I remember vignettes from that old disappeared way of life in the 1950s--such as the Christmas parties at the American legion Hall downtown. Refreshments and entertainment of the homiest sort prevailed. They gave us kids those old-fashioned red-mesh Christmas stockings, packages for candy and toys that were made-in-Japan. My Mother occasionally spoke, giving a report or something and she was later elected head officer, but I think we were able to skip going ourselves by then.
She would take us, three boys and herself, downtown in a taxi. We would ride as far as a certain beauty salon on Second street and then walk the rest of the way to save funds. We would shop for clothes at McWhirrs department store with it's great wall-plaques with taxidermy sailfish and swordfish. We always had finery for Sunday Mass and other best wear events, and generally were dressed nice enough to draw comments from others.
The downtown then was thriving, lively and a great deal of fun. Huge Christmas decorations were attached to the facades of buildings. The five-and-dimes were packed with everything from 45 RPM singles to pet shops. We always seemed to have parakeets or a canary or two at home and plenty of records which somehow we never got tired of playing.
On occasional Sunday nights, she and I would take a cab to the beauty shop and walk another block to St Mary's church for Mass. Afterward we would go to Adams' drugstore where I would get a reward of a candy bar and a comic book or a Mad magazine.
Some nights after church, I would escort her to the Eagle Annex restaurant. It was sort of a soigne affair. It was my introduction to "fine dining" and I would always get the fried clam plate. We would leave as the orchestra began to play and my Mother's impeccable sense of decorum dictated that it was the right moment. The eagle was transforming into a nightclub for couples, adults only.
On one night still vivid in my memory, we were walking on Stafford road, a high road that capped our street. Our destination was a firehouse where she was turning in the proceeds from some door-to-door appeal she had volunteered for--the March of Dimes or the heart fund or something similar. Men were gathered in a vacant lot across the street, silhouetted against a large bonfire of branches and leaves. She shared my sense of wonder and enjoyment of the nocturnal, autumnal scene slanting toward Hallowe'en.
At some point in my early childhood she began to cook for the nuns at the convent attached to the school I attended, St Patrick's. A half-day's work brought her a small stipend and some foodstuff from the school larder to take home, helping to sustain her three sons. It was strange on the odd occasions when I would see her there, outside of her familiar context, when we were both on best behavior. She enjoyed the increased circulation and became dear friends with a saintly nun named Sister Matthew who didn't join the other nuns as our teachers but stayed at the convent with Mom. Sister Matthew died while I was still at school there, as I was for eight long years. They marched us kids through the convent to see her in her coffin I believe. I know we had done so for Sister Vincent my first grade teacher who died the year afterward--I was in the second half of the baby boom and my class finished off many an out-moded teacher and teaching as we passed through the system. Sister Vincent had been rather mean to me after the unconditional love from my Mother and after the sweet old-maid Miss Taylor who had been my pre-primary teacher at George B. Stone and who lived in an immaculate house on nearby Garfield street. I cannot say I felt terribly sad when I saw Sister Vincent in her casket.
When my Mother started working there, the nuns eased up on punishments for my brothers and me, saying they would tell my Mother instead-- she who rarely punished at all. That was most agreeable to us.
And my Mother's presence at the convent was a great help in one singular incident from my youth. One day a week, we used to withhold the twenty-five cent payment for a cafeteria meal and, under the banner of going home for lunch, go out to local diners. The food was more fun and we would have freedom on the open streets until the bell rang. This sometimes led to a little trouble as it did one frigid winter noon.
Two daring pals and I had walked out on some recent ice over a pond connected to a factory complex. I was recklessly pounding my foot on the ice testing its strength, when it broke though plunging me into the drink. I pushed myself toward the surface only to find a ceiling of dim daylight through the opaque ice over my head. Somehow I struggled and found the hole I came through. I endeavored to push myself back into this day-lit world only to have the edge break again followed by another shallow plunge. One friend came back on the ice to try to help but the whole ice surface began to break up with my desperate activity. I had not even learned to swim by that age, yet somehow I persevered and made it to bank where the friend pulled me up. The other continued to laugh hysterically, because, in that sociopathic way boys can have, he thought it was unbelievably funny.
Dripping wet in the cold noon, I made it back straight to the convent where I knew Mom and the most certain rescue would be. we rode home in taxi and I was dried, rubbed with rubbing alcohol, and given a little brandy as I was put to bed. The brothers came in hear what happened and to laugh at my wet proto-beatle boots. I gained the name "Swampy" from their snarky friends. I didn't mind... everyone knew they admired me for saving my ass with valor.
December nights my Mother and I would venture out in the cold night after supper to see the lights, to see how people had decorated their homes for Christmas. There was an abundance of trees, wreathes, and front porches outlined in the fat-bulb colored lights. Some homes had succumbed to modernist kitsch with silver trees and revolving color-wheel spotlights. We would walk a few residential blocks over to the vicinity of George B. Stone school and back home the same way. My Mother was well-read, intelligent and full of humor and we would carry on conversations as if we were both adults. She would inspire me with her sense of wonder at the adequacy and outright goodness of life, of the profound experience of viewing the starry sky. What ever inklings of wisdom I have today I owe to her nature and her example.
On my first day of pre-primary school at George B. Stone, my Mother stayed along with the other mothers through the morning. The idea was to gradually get the kids used to being apart from their mothers who generally were home with us during our first five years.
When we came in from a recess in the schoolyard, I looked around and quickly saw that she was now gone. I ran straight out of the classroom, out of the front door of the school, up Globe street, and around the corner to Garfield street, yelling "Ma"! I caught up with her mid-block. With her typical good-nature she dutifully walked me back to school. She stayed a while maybe until school was out, but by the next day I had accepted the fact of our separation and was dropped -off while many mothers were still required to stay and placate their jittery kids.
Once we were walking with my brother at an undeveloped area known as the circus grounds. It was a Summer night and dark there--we may have been there for the Fourth of July fireworks. Then without warning my mother stepped in a hole and fell down onto the long grass. It was a new experience for me, a frightening realization that even adults were subject to spills. She was the ship, the rudder and the mast that kept our family afloat. I think I came to a new maturity with the realization that I needed to help her and try to protect her from hazards.
She later told me that when she was a little girl a man had appeared in broad daylight at those circus grounds and attempted to entice her and a friend. She said he eventually exposed himself to them as they ran away.
I remember vignettes from that old disappeared way of life in the 1950s--such as the Christmas parties at the American legion Hall downtown. Refreshments and entertainment of the homiest sort prevailed. They gave us kids those old-fashioned red-mesh Christmas stockings, packages for candy and toys that were made-in-Japan. My Mother occasionally spoke, giving a report or something and she was later elected head officer, but I think we were able to skip going ourselves by then.
She would take us, three boys and herself, downtown in a taxi. We would ride as far as a certain beauty salon on Second street and then walk the rest of the way to save funds. We would shop for clothes at McWhirrs department store with it's great wall-plaques with taxidermy sailfish and swordfish. We always had finery for Sunday Mass and other best wear events, and generally were dressed nice enough to draw comments from others.
The downtown then was thriving, lively and a great deal of fun. Huge Christmas decorations were attached to the facades of buildings. The five-and-dimes were packed with everything from 45 RPM singles to pet shops. We always seemed to have parakeets or a canary or two at home and plenty of records which somehow we never got tired of playing.
On occasional Sunday nights, she and I would take a cab to the beauty shop and walk another block to St Mary's church for Mass. Afterward we would go to Adams' drugstore where I would get a reward of a candy bar and a comic book or a Mad magazine.
Some nights after church, I would escort her to the Eagle Annex restaurant. It was sort of a soigne affair. It was my introduction to "fine dining" and I would always get the fried clam plate. We would leave as the orchestra began to play and my Mother's impeccable sense of decorum dictated that it was the right moment. The eagle was transforming into a nightclub for couples, adults only.
On one night still vivid in my memory, we were walking on Stafford road, a high road that capped our street. Our destination was a firehouse where she was turning in the proceeds from some door-to-door appeal she had volunteered for--the March of Dimes or the heart fund or something similar. Men were gathered in a vacant lot across the street, silhouetted against a large bonfire of branches and leaves. She shared my sense of wonder and enjoyment of the nocturnal, autumnal scene slanting toward Hallowe'en.
At some point in my early childhood she began to cook for the nuns at the convent attached to the school I attended, St Patrick's. A half-day's work brought her a small stipend and some foodstuff from the school larder to take home, helping to sustain her three sons. It was strange on the odd occasions when I would see her there, outside of her familiar context, when we were both on best behavior. She enjoyed the increased circulation and became dear friends with a saintly nun named Sister Matthew who didn't join the other nuns as our teachers but stayed at the convent with Mom. Sister Matthew died while I was still at school there, as I was for eight long years. They marched us kids through the convent to see her in her coffin I believe. I know we had done so for Sister Vincent my first grade teacher who died the year afterward--I was in the second half of the baby boom and my class finished off many an out-moded teacher and teaching as we passed through the system. Sister Vincent had been rather mean to me after the unconditional love from my Mother and after the sweet old-maid Miss Taylor who had been my pre-primary teacher at George B. Stone and who lived in an immaculate house on nearby Garfield street. I cannot say I felt terribly sad when I saw Sister Vincent in her casket.
When my Mother started working there, the nuns eased up on punishments for my brothers and me, saying they would tell my Mother instead-- she who rarely punished at all. That was most agreeable to us.
And my Mother's presence at the convent was a great help in one singular incident from my youth. One day a week, we used to withhold the twenty-five cent payment for a cafeteria meal and, under the banner of going home for lunch, go out to local diners. The food was more fun and we would have freedom on the open streets until the bell rang. This sometimes led to a little trouble as it did one frigid winter noon.
Two daring pals and I had walked out on some recent ice over a pond connected to a factory complex. I was recklessly pounding my foot on the ice testing its strength, when it broke though plunging me into the drink. I pushed myself toward the surface only to find a ceiling of dim daylight through the opaque ice over my head. Somehow I struggled and found the hole I came through. I endeavored to push myself back into this day-lit world only to have the edge break again followed by another shallow plunge. One friend came back on the ice to try to help but the whole ice surface began to break up with my desperate activity. I had not even learned to swim by that age, yet somehow I persevered and made it to bank where the friend pulled me up. The other continued to laugh hysterically, because, in that sociopathic way boys can have, he thought it was unbelievably funny.
Dripping wet in the cold noon, I made it back straight to the convent where I knew Mom and the most certain rescue would be. we rode home in taxi and I was dried, rubbed with rubbing alcohol, and given a little brandy as I was put to bed. The brothers came in hear what happened and to laugh at my wet proto-beatle boots. I gained the name "Swampy" from their snarky friends. I didn't mind... everyone knew they admired me for saving my ass with valor.
The next day the nuns busted me for not coming to them first to ask permission to leave school. While I was soaked in ice water walking back in the twenty-degree day I had made a line of survival to my Mom and so questioned their authority. This was despite the fact the nuns knew, my Mother certainly called, and the two other rascals were back in class to tell the tale of my absence.
"Look at the sky tonight, Stephen! Look at that sunset!" My Mother would say.
And I still do. With the love she gave me.
In perpetuity.
(more to come)
"Look at the sky tonight, Stephen! Look at that sunset!" My Mother would say.
And I still do. With the love she gave me.
In perpetuity.
(more to come)
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Peace Comes Falling Slow
The familiar strange quietude descended on Berkeley as soon as the students decamp for elsewhere.
Today the poignant skies are calling me--solid violet-gray to the north, the evocative light of broken Southern skies. Trees reveal their skeletal complexity, the beauty of organic design. I sit and savor a particular art nouveau tree, a favorite roost of the now-abundant crows. It's behind a stop-light and it goes largely unnoticed by the heedless traffic.
In Peoples Park people sleep in broad daylight, covers pulled over their eyes. Damp ground perhaps but the absence of rain keeps them from more dire straits.
I move along to Willard Park and rest on a bench where a fellow slightly older than myself plays airs from an old Joni Mitchell song quietly on his acoustic guitar. we talk and soon learn we have Massachusetts roots in common, going back to Canada as well.
The Beat generation comes up and he turns out to be a fellow child of beatitude. He mentions a film on a Beat poet he'd recently seen. How he shared the philosophy of his poem he half recalls. I paraphrase it for him: all that matters is to do the work, to lessen suffering, the rest is drunken dumb-show.
He tells me he is living in his car again. He had been taking care of a disable person in Marin but had to quit due to the person's crazy roommate.
I clue him into the network of free meals available to the needy hereabouts.
Off we go, I'm bound for a hospital visit but somehow don't find my friend Faye who has respiratory difficulties. En route I sent off a flock of cards to my late-arriving Christmas correspondents. Afterward, I join the avid consumers at the natural foods supermarket, I'm one of the more careful, frugal ones as I observe conspicuous purchases of all the delights available by those heading for New Year's celebrations. I'm headed there too in my own discrete way.
But I can't help but notice those souls whiling away the afternoon at bus stops and innocuous perches along the way. One bearded young fellow with soulful eyes lingers in my mind.
May God bless us all. May peace and the other necessities of life remain in reach for us all.
An oddly moving documentary on the band Flaming Lips, "Fearless Freaks," ends with a outtake/deleted scene of a new Year's Eve countdown. It leads to a version of "Seven nation Army" by the Lips combined with the White Stripes. Just as it finishes the bells of the campanile begin to strike new Year's midnight. They never toll ordinary midnight.
So I dress and go outside with a mug of Raven's eye organic imperial stout (an Xmas gift from Joe). I have time to prop open the outside door and step out just as last bells are tolled. They continue on in a carillon concert commencing naturally with "Auld Lang Syne."
Another nearby church begins striking midnight as the carillon chimes on and widespread firecrackers and gunshots volley into the distance for a half an hour. Signs of life erupt all over the otherwise ghostly town.
Earlier I'd eaten half of a cannabis caramel, and as twelve neared I refreshed with a few puffs and more stout. I would describe my state of being as a perfect buzz, far from over-indulgenge, as the year ran out. Overhead the about full moon is evanescent in the racing high clouds of a warmer air mass. In a clear view of San Francisco I can see the fireworks off of the Embarcadero. Red and blue predominate in the pyrotechnical blooms. helicopters can be seen flying above them, filming no doubt.
It is really a joyful moment so often scarce in these days of plentiful woe.
Just then a romp of slightly intoxicated chines student girls comes out into the backyard next door. "The full moon, the full moon..." they enthuse. We are invisible to each other behind the intervening avocado tree. They giggle awhile then go back inside.
I head back into my fleeting house myself. There follows a light midnight meal and yet another film-- undersea and outer space with Werner Herzog. The film unspools, the DVD spins, and the stars revolve into the as yet unknown.
Today the poignant skies are calling me--solid violet-gray to the north, the evocative light of broken Southern skies. Trees reveal their skeletal complexity, the beauty of organic design. I sit and savor a particular art nouveau tree, a favorite roost of the now-abundant crows. It's behind a stop-light and it goes largely unnoticed by the heedless traffic.
In Peoples Park people sleep in broad daylight, covers pulled over their eyes. Damp ground perhaps but the absence of rain keeps them from more dire straits.
I move along to Willard Park and rest on a bench where a fellow slightly older than myself plays airs from an old Joni Mitchell song quietly on his acoustic guitar. we talk and soon learn we have Massachusetts roots in common, going back to Canada as well.
The Beat generation comes up and he turns out to be a fellow child of beatitude. He mentions a film on a Beat poet he'd recently seen. How he shared the philosophy of his poem he half recalls. I paraphrase it for him: all that matters is to do the work, to lessen suffering, the rest is drunken dumb-show.
He tells me he is living in his car again. He had been taking care of a disable person in Marin but had to quit due to the person's crazy roommate.
I clue him into the network of free meals available to the needy hereabouts.
Off we go, I'm bound for a hospital visit but somehow don't find my friend Faye who has respiratory difficulties. En route I sent off a flock of cards to my late-arriving Christmas correspondents. Afterward, I join the avid consumers at the natural foods supermarket, I'm one of the more careful, frugal ones as I observe conspicuous purchases of all the delights available by those heading for New Year's celebrations. I'm headed there too in my own discrete way.
But I can't help but notice those souls whiling away the afternoon at bus stops and innocuous perches along the way. One bearded young fellow with soulful eyes lingers in my mind.
May God bless us all. May peace and the other necessities of life remain in reach for us all.
An oddly moving documentary on the band Flaming Lips, "Fearless Freaks," ends with a outtake/deleted scene of a new Year's Eve countdown. It leads to a version of "Seven nation Army" by the Lips combined with the White Stripes. Just as it finishes the bells of the campanile begin to strike new Year's midnight. They never toll ordinary midnight.
So I dress and go outside with a mug of Raven's eye organic imperial stout (an Xmas gift from Joe). I have time to prop open the outside door and step out just as last bells are tolled. They continue on in a carillon concert commencing naturally with "Auld Lang Syne."
Another nearby church begins striking midnight as the carillon chimes on and widespread firecrackers and gunshots volley into the distance for a half an hour. Signs of life erupt all over the otherwise ghostly town.
Earlier I'd eaten half of a cannabis caramel, and as twelve neared I refreshed with a few puffs and more stout. I would describe my state of being as a perfect buzz, far from over-indulgenge, as the year ran out. Overhead the about full moon is evanescent in the racing high clouds of a warmer air mass. In a clear view of San Francisco I can see the fireworks off of the Embarcadero. Red and blue predominate in the pyrotechnical blooms. helicopters can be seen flying above them, filming no doubt.
It is really a joyful moment so often scarce in these days of plentiful woe.
Just then a romp of slightly intoxicated chines student girls comes out into the backyard next door. "The full moon, the full moon..." they enthuse. We are invisible to each other behind the intervening avocado tree. They giggle awhile then go back inside.
I head back into my fleeting house myself. There follows a light midnight meal and yet another film-- undersea and outer space with Werner Herzog. The film unspools, the DVD spins, and the stars revolve into the as yet unknown.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Feverish Dreams of November
In which the Flaneur opens his unconscious toy-chest for the exploration of the over-soul.
Amid a tide of challenge and loss, there occurred to me this month not the least of them--a bout with the swine flu. I remained active despite a Dante-like tour of successive ailments and one of the side-effects was that I began to experience and remember lucid dreams. Here are a few I wrote down.
Dream #1
A group of ape-men ranging a a hillside with dim sunlight. They become confused, fearful and angry when Jesus of Nazareth walks nearby. One gets agitated enough to attempt to bite the arm of Jesus. But he is either impenetrable like superman or he is incorporeal as the Risen Christ. The ape-man is unable to sink his teeth in our Savior's arm, instantaneously my arm.Commentary: This dream may show an over-active self-association with Jesus. I never see his face and he goes from observed to observer. This dream may be related to a recent nightmarish encounter with some ant-abortion extremists on the University campus. The lesson of this parable is that even if one attempts to conduct oneself in a saintly manner there are bestial individuals who may still attack.
Dream #2
Returning from the Elmwood neighborhood along Benvenue avenue. Families coming home are on the sidewalks. Dusk is descending.Then I am on the far side of Oakland crossing from the east past lake Merritt toward downtown. As i walk I realize that I am wearing women's clothing--even low-healed light brown pumps. It dawns on me that my route will take me past tough guys loitering on International boulevard. dressed as I am in drag. But they don't notice me among the many the crowd walking in the same direction. The sidewalk takes a diversion toward the entrance to a tunnel.
Commentary: I have never worn, nor do I ever wish to wear women's clothes. I had watched Kubrick's film "A Clockwork Orange" the previous night with similar tunnels and similar urban dysphoria and threats of gender-related violence.
Dream #3
Speeding downhill toward the East bay from mountains and foothills. The driver is a wild young man, possibly irresponsible. Trees whip past close to my open window.At a gallery behind Zellerbach auditorium--an art exhibit, objects set up on a hardwood floor. There is a large tableaux of little men and other toys set up on the floor. But most notable is an animatronic pig the grey white color of computer terminals. It is free-standing on pointy hooves and it is giving a talk whether anyone listens or not. It is like a cartoon that has entered actuality but at the same time very palpable and "real."
As I walk past it the pig is saying, "...whether or not the CIA released this information intentionally, we can never know for certain..." is apparently a conspiracy theorist.
Dream #4
I'm giving a lecture on Edgar Poe. It seems to be taking place in the same gallery as the previous art exhibit. A silent attentive class takes notes. Then I conclude and make ready to go. At this point I notice many in the class were wearing headphones and watching a screen to my right, the notes that they were writing were based on that. Of those who did listen to me none respond to me or indicate whether they appreciated what I said or not. When I look toward someone I was thinking was an old friend--I see it was merely someone who looked like him.Commentary: Reflects perhaps my unease as a write and artist about a diffuse and unresponsive on-line audience and on friends one rarely sees.
Dream #5
I arrive early for a stage performance that I am to take part in. Nevertheless I am asked to pay the fifteen-dollar admission. I resist but they insist so I do. The impresario of the event is Joseph Spencer, aloof and authoritarian. Then I am naked and as the show begins i am informed by him that there won't be time to include me in the show. I get very steamed especially in light of having paid admission to get in. As I rant I try to get dressed. As I begin to don my boxer shorts, I notice that I have a worn and torn pair. I try to put them on without anyone noticing. But, as is human nature, everyone sneaks a peak when someone is putting on underclothes.
Commentary: The emotions involved and the circumstances of this dream make it apparent that it relates to an Over the Edge radio program I was part of last August. I lost my temper as it was beginning, due to unrelated reasons. Joseph is clearly a stand-in for Don Joyce whose program it is.
Dream #6
A horizontal commode--the kind of toilet you see in modern buildings. It juts straight out from the wall. Marie the cat slowly lowers herself into the basin, submerging even her head (which cats are extremely loathe to do). She settles down to the bottom of the basin and remains there sphinx-like while I grow increasingly alarmed by this. She is apparently holding her breath, at least she is not drowning. After a few long seconds I know I must reach in and pick her up. This I proceed to do and I notice that the water is quite yellow.
Commentary: While taking care of this my neighbor's cat I would occasionally see her poised on the toilet seat and leaning in to have a drink. This behavior alarmed me and I discouraged it. Marie recently moved away with her owner.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Passing Parade
How I love to sit inconspicuously in a public place and observe people passing by, especially children and young people...
Today I slipped out into the cool sunshine in the late afternoon around 4:30. I looked for a likely perch where the sunshine was still present and decided on one of the new metal benches on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Durant. Telegraph Avenue on Saturdays is as it has long been, a magnet for young folks for miles around who mingle with the University students situated throughout the South side of campus. It's not the Mecca it once was, but a few of the over-size record stores survived the down turn in that business and they still attract the kids as do the clothes stores and the other life-style suppliers.
I see deeply into people even at a glance. I have always had the knack and it has only deepened with the passing years. Given a mild cannabis cookie as I was today, this pass-time can be utterly fascinating for me. It has been said that the charm of young people is that they smile even when there is no particular reason to smile. It's their default mode as it were. Particularly when they are walking around a busy youth scene and styling the current look.
They make me smile and they see me smiling and smile back. It is a heart-sustaining loop for a loner like the Flaneur. Oh, of course some are sad. These I look at with acceptance and, dare I say, love too. Most dazzling are the little kids, their eyes so brilliant and content. And sometime they are too tired and want to go home, and that's adorable as well.
I enjoy noting the outfits people wear--young and wanting to be sexy and au courant. No matter that many of the styles are laughably ungainly--like the ones who try to get the new tight jeans to hang low on the derriere like the fading baggy hip-hop look. Rebellion is no doubt served as their parents try to get them to listen to reason and "dress nice."
The population of genuine street people has diminished these days. These are full-time denizens, usually distinctive as such in some way, not the younger summer run-aways. The reasons are many and of course an civic effort persists to run them off. One guy goes by with gray beard, thermal leggings and a skirt or dress flapping. This clearly a genre and one I don't fully understand. I have heard of radical fairies bearded old hippies who cross dress somewhat theatrically but this guy seems more understated and survival oriented-- not a show-off but someone who wants to set himself off from the squares right away. He looked lonesome. Then the loneliest loony in town bounded past my green metal vantage point. He is quite tall with a wild shock of dark hair, with sun-worn skin. He always wears a sport coat and, under his high-water fitting pants, he has his long feet jammed into too small shoes. Today the shoes achieve his absurd extreme. They are open-back sneakers meant for a small child that cover a small part of his foot. He races all over town and the shoes stay on by his momentum. With his craggy profile he resembles Disney's animated Ichabod Crane gone to advanced seed. His eyes are frantic and haunted but his activity seems to keep him preoccupied, to shield him from the fear that may catch up if he ever stopped to rest. May God have mercy on him.
I note that the new Asian majority has its own idiosyncrasies of attire. Whereas I often spot girls who are somewhat obvious in their intent to bring the sexy, the Asian girls occasionally go way over the top. I don't mean the girl with a sweep of thick hennaed hair, T-shirt torn to hang off her shoulder, hot pants, and fetish-evoking tapered wooded platform high-heels with hobnails so much as some of the really nutty stuff. Two girls bounce past in tiny flouncy skirts, lace leggings, silver high heels and scores of other tarty tat, the kind you see on manikins in store windows in seedy urban ethnic shopping districts.
I wonder if they spotted the stylish turquoise leg-warmers worn by the homeless black lady asleep on the bench I'm sharing as they skirt by her shopping cart. I was chuckling as they went and I noticed that a guy on the next bench was watching them and chuckling too.
A wholly different type of Asian went by in a flock wearing some distinctly codified out-landish gear. Several have big yarn-like wigs of pastel pig-tails. They resembled the die-hard trendies one sees in photographs of the Ginzu district in Tokyo.
A cafe-au-lait rasta with four-foot dreads put up cards for capoeira. People with clipboards asked for signatures. I conceal myself behind my ear-plugs. People came and went from the ATM windows of credit doom. And I very rarely recognized a soul even after thirty years in this town. Where does everyone go? Elsewhere, I suppose.
A chilly fog sent tendrils in this direction. As the sun faded my observation point got a little tiresome and I must push off. I bless all I see the young and old, rich and poor, disabled and able-bodied alike. May they all be given friendship and sustenance, and myself as well. And as the poet Bob Kaufman once wrote, let us give places to the homeless and kindness to the forlorn.
Amen.
Today I slipped out into the cool sunshine in the late afternoon around 4:30. I looked for a likely perch where the sunshine was still present and decided on one of the new metal benches on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Durant. Telegraph Avenue on Saturdays is as it has long been, a magnet for young folks for miles around who mingle with the University students situated throughout the South side of campus. It's not the Mecca it once was, but a few of the over-size record stores survived the down turn in that business and they still attract the kids as do the clothes stores and the other life-style suppliers.
I see deeply into people even at a glance. I have always had the knack and it has only deepened with the passing years. Given a mild cannabis cookie as I was today, this pass-time can be utterly fascinating for me. It has been said that the charm of young people is that they smile even when there is no particular reason to smile. It's their default mode as it were. Particularly when they are walking around a busy youth scene and styling the current look.
They make me smile and they see me smiling and smile back. It is a heart-sustaining loop for a loner like the Flaneur. Oh, of course some are sad. These I look at with acceptance and, dare I say, love too. Most dazzling are the little kids, their eyes so brilliant and content. And sometime they are too tired and want to go home, and that's adorable as well.
I enjoy noting the outfits people wear--young and wanting to be sexy and au courant. No matter that many of the styles are laughably ungainly--like the ones who try to get the new tight jeans to hang low on the derriere like the fading baggy hip-hop look. Rebellion is no doubt served as their parents try to get them to listen to reason and "dress nice."
The population of genuine street people has diminished these days. These are full-time denizens, usually distinctive as such in some way, not the younger summer run-aways. The reasons are many and of course an civic effort persists to run them off. One guy goes by with gray beard, thermal leggings and a skirt or dress flapping. This clearly a genre and one I don't fully understand. I have heard of radical fairies bearded old hippies who cross dress somewhat theatrically but this guy seems more understated and survival oriented-- not a show-off but someone who wants to set himself off from the squares right away. He looked lonesome. Then the loneliest loony in town bounded past my green metal vantage point. He is quite tall with a wild shock of dark hair, with sun-worn skin. He always wears a sport coat and, under his high-water fitting pants, he has his long feet jammed into too small shoes. Today the shoes achieve his absurd extreme. They are open-back sneakers meant for a small child that cover a small part of his foot. He races all over town and the shoes stay on by his momentum. With his craggy profile he resembles Disney's animated Ichabod Crane gone to advanced seed. His eyes are frantic and haunted but his activity seems to keep him preoccupied, to shield him from the fear that may catch up if he ever stopped to rest. May God have mercy on him.
I note that the new Asian majority has its own idiosyncrasies of attire. Whereas I often spot girls who are somewhat obvious in their intent to bring the sexy, the Asian girls occasionally go way over the top. I don't mean the girl with a sweep of thick hennaed hair, T-shirt torn to hang off her shoulder, hot pants, and fetish-evoking tapered wooded platform high-heels with hobnails so much as some of the really nutty stuff. Two girls bounce past in tiny flouncy skirts, lace leggings, silver high heels and scores of other tarty tat, the kind you see on manikins in store windows in seedy urban ethnic shopping districts.
I wonder if they spotted the stylish turquoise leg-warmers worn by the homeless black lady asleep on the bench I'm sharing as they skirt by her shopping cart. I was chuckling as they went and I noticed that a guy on the next bench was watching them and chuckling too.
A wholly different type of Asian went by in a flock wearing some distinctly codified out-landish gear. Several have big yarn-like wigs of pastel pig-tails. They resembled the die-hard trendies one sees in photographs of the Ginzu district in Tokyo.
A cafe-au-lait rasta with four-foot dreads put up cards for capoeira. People with clipboards asked for signatures. I conceal myself behind my ear-plugs. People came and went from the ATM windows of credit doom. And I very rarely recognized a soul even after thirty years in this town. Where does everyone go? Elsewhere, I suppose.
A chilly fog sent tendrils in this direction. As the sun faded my observation point got a little tiresome and I must push off. I bless all I see the young and old, rich and poor, disabled and able-bodied alike. May they all be given friendship and sustenance, and myself as well. And as the poet Bob Kaufman once wrote, let us give places to the homeless and kindness to the forlorn.
Amen.
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