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Ardent Squeegeeing
The laptop freezes infrequently but enough to make me save a document before I start it, which is good, sound practice in any case and I save it with a temporary name, whatever my fingers dictate, and today that is brugl.
And brugl reminds me of the 16th century Flemish painter, or family of painters, although "the Elder" is whom I would normally think of.
Which reminds me of the poster of a Brueghel print formerly over the desk of my childhood room in Dallas which reminds me of the balcony off that room which reminds me of sneaking out which reminds me of underage driving which reminds me of caution as a secondary aspect which reminds me of at least three 360s which reminds me of near death which reminds me of life which reminds me of the exact time and space when I heard one pedant correct another for saying broogul instead of broygal.
I just now got up to put the cereal bowl in the sink and when I came back I was nearly attacked by a piece of lint approximately the size of a tree frog, which turned out to be--a lint covered tree frog. I let out a yelp and did a jig on one foot. Then I scooped it up and put it outside which reminds me of the slug crawling across the kitchen floor this morning which I also scooped up, only with a spatula instead of the more common frog transporting drinking glass. I think you are getting an idea of the richness of my life. How full of interesting events does fill up even the more mundane moments of my day.
There is a potato-washing-runoff lake on the smooth finished concrete floor of the garage and I can see no way around the rearranging of all the crap I have let pile up in there followed by some ardent squeegeeing.
What do you have lined up for today? is apparently not a question to be asked of me this morning but if it were I could easily pair two unlikely words as answer.
Dropping Acid With Alligators
I have deleted this the first sentence, now five times, each time bringing up the possibility for new subject matter. You can't really let the lack of focus get in your way.
I have found a couple of thrift stores in the area from which I furnish my home, in the fashion of Americana crapola, which is not to say there is a lacking of inimitability hearabouts.
Mediocrity, and how I love it, that was my original theme, even though my sincerity towards the premise might vacillate.
Like with old cars being classified as antiques, there is probably a minimum of years for the idea of a book being first edition to mean anything. But I got this first edition hardback of James Clavell's, King Rat, yesterday, for a buck, and though yellowed somewhat over the 43 years of its life, it is still like pristine, maybe never read, or only once perhaps, and I am happy about it in a way that defies logic.
I'll go stare at the same old tired thrift store book shelves over time, even if they don't appear to restock them but once a year, just in case something has slipped in. When I was a kid I started out to be a bibliomaniac and then when I started vagabonding I off-loaded and became bookless, a frequenter of libraries in whichever town I landed. In New Orleans, the last year or so of my stay, I spent some money on fifty cent paperbacks but when I left I gave them to that nice lady running the crackhouse around the corner.
And so my default for the last many years has been to go bookless, even though lately I've noticed my shelves getting kind of heavy with books ( I did bring a handful of books from New Orleans, the Hemingway and Fitzgerald hardbacks, and the Algren, a Bellow, a Brautigan or two, and a box set of philosophic thought sampling the entirety of man's recording of such) and now it almost seems as if I am heading towards that former addiction I enjoyed which required not just the reading of books but the possessing of them.
In my last two hauls I've done well, from two different thrift stores in the same town, and I'm not blurting out which town, because growth is coming, and with it, the savvy entrepreneurship which causes inexorable sadness and the end of 5 for a dollar paperbacks, and dollar hard backs. I've gotten over twenty books for less than 20 dollars, half of them hardbacks, and off the top my head, authors such as Bellow, Cheever, Barth, Plath, Marquez, Clavell, Oates, Heinlein, Auchincloss, Percy, Doctorow, Stevenson, Parker, Coupland, and that's all there is to happiness--simple tricks, and your willingness to give in to them. I also added to my thrift wardrobe, a two buck shirt, Izod's contribution to the paisley theme, and you know how I love my paisley. Somehow, while my attentions were directed elsewhere, the alligator dropped acid.
When Carl Fell Down
There was this kid named Carl in my junior high school in Dallas and this other kid named Keith. Carl was extremely fat and people made fun of him. Keith was an outsider, from a single parent home (said he had sex with a friend of his mother's), but was popular, as an athlete, and also had popular hair, thin and blond and straight, it hung down in his face when he dribbled the basketball downcourt. After he would cross the mid-court line he would slow down, turn his whole body sideways, raise a finger or two in signal to his teammates, and then he would crack-snap that head on his shoulders like a whip and the hair would fly in centrifugal fashion until it stuck momentarily to his sweaty skull, before coming loose again, one sweat-clumped strand at a time.
Carl went out of his way to be neither nice nor mean and was just there, tall, and slightly dull, with bad skin, and dirty hair, and fatter than you could ignore.
One day out of sheer mean-spiritedness Keith decided to beat up Carl. He said, I'm going to beat up that fat fuck today. I remember being among a group of people to whom he was bragging this and not a one of us asked, why are you going to beat up Carl? It was junior high school in the early seventies and integration had finally made its way to North Dallas and a fight between two white kids was perhaps for us a pleasant break from the occasional small scale race riots occurring in the hallways, outside the viewing range of the security cameras the school system had installed as preparation for racial tension.
It was after lunch and we were all milling around outside the lunchroom on that little patch of grass surrounded by chain link. Keith was amazing us with his ability to jump over the four foot fence without touching it, but when he got tired of amazing us he decided to beat up Carl.
Those were tense moments of unrealized potential those moments between Keith saying he was going to do it, and the doing of it. I liked Keith but I think I was looking forward to him getting his ass whooped by Carl, who was four inches taller, and 170 pounds heavier.
What happened though was that Keith, apparently having thought out the disadvantage of his size, and knowing that he would need to stay away from a potential bear hug, or being sat on, kept his distance and after one very typical school yard shove, just began punching Carl in his face, with all he had, while his thin, straight, blond hair flapped wildly.
What I was thinking of this morning, 32 years and 1,200 miles away, was the look of shock and hurt on Carl's face when he took the first fist to his chubby jowls, and the plaintiveness of his questioning between the blows, when he would ask Keith to explain the reasoning behind the brutality. But Keith was talking with his fists and kept on punching until Carl fell down.
Quality Lost
Some of the posts I haven't been making have been letters to the alzheimer flavored curvature of my mother's spine and the other posts have been deposited into the bottomless wastebasket of my intentional disregard for achievement.
I can't go to Kansas for my nephew's wedding happening only a few months before his National Guard commitment sends him for the second time to the land of pissed off, shell-shocked Muslims. Last time was Iraq for a year. This time Afghanistan. Used to be, back in the days of the draft, the National Guard was where you went to escape the draft and crazy military deployments, but not anymore.
I told my brother I can't make it but what did he know about family gatherings in Dallas, back at the old homestead? He said no definite plans were being worked out but that it seemed like there would be a gathering sometime, especially since it was being observed by another Dallas area brother that our mother's "quality was diminishing."
I can't get a handle on that so I'm going to call my mother now and ask her what the hell is diminishing. Perhaps I will be able to hear quality lost.
My brother also said we were waiting for a critical mass. I'm going to have to study up on that, too. There is too much I'm not getting.
Simple Nacho Recipe
I was having a temper tantrum so I ran away for a day to where was the first battle of the Civil War and had Pho for lunch with a Vietnamese beer for dessert. I say that like the Vietnamese beer for dessert was my date and why shouldn't it be?
Like the last time I ran away from home, 35 years ago, the day ran long, in the sense how do you fill up what is pretending to be the first day of the rest of your life? I thought about entering a bookstore (question: when is jimlouis not jimlouis? answer: when he turns into a bookstore) but I got that love/hate thing going on with bookstores and as I could feel my sneer muscles contracting, I ruled out the house of books.
I did not know what to do so I went to a theatre and watched the new Batman movie. Then I exited into the brilliantly sunny outdoors and became momentarily blinded and disillusioned with the reality that tends to exist in suburban movie theatre parking lots. It is for me the sensation of potential realized, and gone awry. The meaning of our lives is at least partly the result of someone else's marketing scheme. You cannot escape that. That uneasiness you feel from time to time is you not escaping that. You can only ignore it with the same success you ignore the pile of poop in a public place.
Sometimes what you see is based on what you sow and sometimes what you see is a blue strap-on dildo in the empty parking slot next to yours.
How long do you stare at a blue strap-on dildo in a public parking lot? How do you turn off the microfiche reels running in your mind? Where did you get all that info stored on those reels? The Internet, probably. Did you even know about strap-ons before the Internet? You did not. I'm not making any judgments about blue strap-ons, I mean, I think pleasure should be enjoyed. That last phrase is dedicated to the president of the United States. You have my permission to use it in your next speech. But whatever pleasure may have been experienced with the strap-on, and by whom, well, this was not a thing evident by its current positioning. The person who imagines happy times after viewing tangled black nylon straps, with frayed ends, attached to a slick penis-shaped cylinder of blue petroleum by-product, laid forlornly against a suburban asphalt background, is indeed an optimistic person.
I unlocked my hotbox of transport and tried to deal maturely with the apparent malfunctioning of its air-conditioner.
I wasn't really hungry but I thought a margarita and nachos would be ok so in the next town (whose name means "overcrowded living space," or, a place where rabbits burrow) I stopped at one of the several mex places I frequent but which don't inspire me yet do make me feel like I could be inspired if I just tried harder. That the mexican place should try harder to inspire is evidently out of the question. The nachos were only average and the margarita was large and I might have been better off sprawled on cardboard behind a dumpster with a pint of rotgut and sweaty, not quite puttrefied, dumpster fare. I'm a little uppity about my mexican food.
Just talking about sub-standard nachos made me crazy so I have paused to make a whole cookie sheet portion. I grew up in Texas making nachos on chalupa shells but its hard to find chalupa shells on the east coast (I could not find them in New Orleans, either) so I buy taco shells and snap them in two. With a fork and only a fork spread on a quantity of refried beans, lay on top the amount of jalapeno pepper you can handle, then a slice of cheese (NY Sharp) approximately one quarter inch thick, seven/eighths inches wide by two and five/eighths inches long. Cook on middle rack at 400 until cheese bubbles but before shells darken. Bon Appetit.
Like on this day I've got to come up with good things about eating alone I say the good thing about eating alone is that you can get around insulting your date by not hanging on her every word and instead stare at people while they eat. The only people who stare back are children because children aren't taught inscrutability until well into the game and even then in most cases it is just a result of curiosity being beat out of them by strict parents or the even stricter punishments of life experience. Let me here add that staring at people while they eat is disheartening and makes you wish for the company of someone to ignore. I blame this obvious lack of compassion for fellow human beings on my part, dates and otherwise, on sub-standard mexican food.
This boy about 11 was being told by his mother that he was playing football this year even if he sat the bench. There was a long pause while the boy--I had made enough casual eye contact with him for him to know that I was hanging on every word (I wished I had brought my Vietnamese beer date)--contemplated this dictate and finally he said, maybe I won't ride the bench. His father stared into the bowl of chips and grunted and his mother no-commented and his newborn baby sister sat simply in her bassinet exemplifying her exceptional coloring. The boy repeatedly called out--Dad, hey dad, dad? throughout the meal, and each time the father would stare into the chips because he was really tired. The boy was happy for this dad and would glance at me after each time he called to his dad in that way that people do when they are a bit of an exhibitionist, or just temporarily very self-conscious, because he wanted me know that this was his dad and he was happy about it. In this case apparently fatherhood carried no more responsibility of quality than did the chef of the mexican restaurant. But the restaurant is always crowded.
Bird
The bird came in through the chimney and despite many opportunities to experience freedom he stood around paralyzed by fear or a damaged spine and would not leave for two days. He frightened me a little because of the manic wildness of his demeanor followed by a catatonic stupor resembling resignation. I wished he would make up his mind. I thought he was gone a couple of times but then there he would be, hiding in the corner by the two hard drives on the floor under the sewing table, or hanging onto the bottom of a curtain right below an open window, and hours would pass. The bird, I should mention, looked a bit like one cast from hell.
The third day J came over wanting to be paid for work done and taking advantage of the eagerness he was feeling due to his proximity to easy money I said take care of this little bird for me while I write the check. I made it sound like a task equal in simplicity to getting a glass of water. And it would be if you weren't afraid. He said I'll shoot it and then put it out? That seemed a little severe but I was curious. How would you shoot it I asked. With a bb gun he said but I didn't want him to do that and told him just do it man, put the bird out, its only two feet from the open window. I asked him if he was scared because it was interesting to me that we were both scared of the bird. He thought I was calling him a pussy but I wasn't. I just wanted to understand why the both of us were scared. He said he didn't want to get pecked. I guess that pretty well summed it up for me, too. But I didn't relent. I wanted that bird out and I wanted J to do if for me. Being a caretaker is not all glamour. Sometimes you have to boss people around.
I got a small bucket for him and he went to it like a man doing something he didn't want to do, like a man afraid, like a man run completely out of metaphors in search of easy money but instead coming face to face with a task which made him feel like the very essence of his manhood was no longer a certain thing. He asked me for something to put over the top when he got the bird scooped up and I got him a blue, wide-ruled notebook. The notebook was not big enough to completely cover the top of the bucket. A very eager bird would probably figure a way to squeeze out. But I told J, J, this bird is not so very eager. If he were eager he would finish climbing up that curtain he has been hanging onto for eight hours and fly out that window right above him. The bird is disoriented, J. He needs the helping hand of a man who may or may not be getting paid today. J thought the bird looked evil. I did not respond to that except to raise an eyebrow.
J had a brainstorm and in one aggressive burst he captured the bird by covering it with the bucket and then scooted the bucket up the wall and out the window and the bird flew away.
J was some shook up but I slid the check across the table to him and he seemed to get some of his color back. I think by the time he backed out of the driveway he was a whole man again. I was standing where the brick pavers meet the gravel driveway. J leaned his head out the car window and pointed to a black speck of tornado-propelled lint or a mini tumbleweed from the charred plains of Armageddon, which was moving unrecognizable across the quaint canvass of my perspective, and said, there go your bird.
I've been reading books lately and they all ok but I'll be damned if I can figure out why people write them. They certainly can't be doing it for my lukewarm appreciation of them and when I say lukewarm you know I'm not talking about Slyvia Plath's, Bell Jar, which I just re-read whenever I lose my faith in whatever could be the reason for people to write books. Some people just have so much to say, I guess, or let's face it, they don't really have but one or two things to say, they just so talented they have no alternative but to keep saying it over and over with the most amazing phrase turning in one tome after another. I read a book about NYC rats and a few E.B. White stories which are very clean and I'm still working on the Samuel Johnson biography, and Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not his most readable work but whenever you want to consider polygamy and revolution in a lunar setting in a way that doesn't make you feel dirty but may put you to sleep, repeatedly, I would say Heinlein's TM is a HM is your book. I read that bestseller, Blueblood, about a Harvard educated NY cop and it was a good read but approximately 187 pages too long. The Saul Bellow I am reading, Mr. Sammler's Planet, I don't fully understand, but Bellow, what are you gonna say, he's one of the god's, so your criticism can only amount to sour grapes.
Though, that doesn't keep me from wondering why the hell he wrote the book.