.
European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) in the Japanese tea house of Compans Caffarelli in Toulouse: photo by PierreSelim, 18 February 2012
Don: We have a deal with the man.
Teach: With Fletcher.
Don: Yes.
Teach: We had a deal with Bobby.
Don: What does that mean?
Teach: Nothing.
Don: It don't?
Teach: No.
Don: What did you mean by that?
Teach: I didn't mean a thing.
Don: You didn't.
Teach: No?
David Mamet: from American Buffalo, 1975
Teach: With Fletcher.
Don: Yes.
Teach: We had a deal with Bobby.
Don: What does that mean?
Teach: Nothing.
Don: It don't?
Teach: No.
Don: What did you mean by that?
Teach: I didn't mean a thing.
Don: You didn't.
Teach: No?
David Mamet: from American Buffalo, 1975
Black-veined White (Aporia crataegi), North-eastern Lower Saxony: photo by Christian Fischer, 9 June 2011
Black-veined White (Aporia crataegi), Lucignano d'Asso (Bagnacci), Tuscany: photo by Werner Seiler, 27 May 2005
17 comments:
Tom,
I'll take the Black-veined White in Tuscany, thanks.
9.1
grey white of fog against invisible top
of ridge, towhee calling in lower right
foreground, no sound of wave in channel
space conditioned by matter,
itself not against it
last but one, so that these,
from right side after
grey white of fog reflected in channel,
line of pelicans flapping toward point
To me this has all the positive attributes you perceive in a work of "abstract art" at the time you first realize that abstract art is possible and is capable of having great value. Curtis
Serfin’ USA
Believe
Obey
Send money
"distant blurred light
a world of imperfection
makes the grey coincide"
To the democratically voracious Erithacus rubecula, all insects look equally tasty.
For the shy and retiring Black-winged White (Aporia crataegi to the cognoscenti),
However, when that pretty bird's about
There's no safe passage through from day to night.
The Old Masters, they always had their categories right.
That last question mark
casts a long shadow;
the hook of Doubt;
I am I think, therefore I hedge.
the qualified no is
a most useful dodge.
Entonces, some options:
yes no maybe maybe not.
Life’s a bewildering array of moments.
You got to flow with the go.
¿No cierto?
sí...es cierto...!
What I Read Last Night
Moon what do you say
this time
what is
your butterfly warning?
Do we climb aboard this dangerous ship
again attracted by so many shiny nails
we steal later with our teeth
all the while something else
happens on the shore
misnamed again. Mistaken.
It is a short life
a butterfly life
if you are a spy
in the Bohemian Grove.
It is maybe more dangerous
than being a teacher
and posing as a detective
or being a detective
and posing as a teacher
the students all thrashing about
with their worksheets
almost mating with each other
during the film about saving the reef, please!
background music not chaotic
or was it? Did it influence
the decision making process?
Will the worksheets save the planet?
Too Big
Is that a crow beside that flowerpot?
Is an elephant pushing a tiger
inside a shopping cart
at Bi-Mart, at Stop-N-Shop?
No, it is my fingernail becoming a piano,
a peanut to feed a frog
a bullet, a song watching it.
Tina Had the 80’s
It wasn’t going to be any other way.
In combat, the 80’s had me.
Everything piled on, overlapping.
Tina made it her game, her thing.
The 80’s swam beneath her, she the lifeguard
of her own destiny. She got real steady jobs.
Saved her money.
Now, Tina’s ready to retire.
It took me 20 years to do that (the job part).
I want to quit every day.
Tina left me at the hospital—Evergreen—
when I had an enormous tumor
in my uterus, ready to die—bleeding.
At least she brought you there!
Mom said.
She saved your life!
Last night I slept with a bunch of conditioner
in my hair.
This morning it looks like the 80’s.
All wild and spiky, all modern and styled.
Snake Pit, Johnson Unit, Carrion Commandos?
Crazy Eights. Oswald Five-O. Where are you now?
Hot Star By Day
The color of a cry in yellow. It is Vincent Van Gogh sitting alone in a wheat field in S. France with his pipe and his wine and his paint and his canvas and his brushes and his cry. It is a yellow cry with lots of waves—the trees the cypress and lilac humpy hills in the distance, everything, everything alive, everything moving, everything crying that yellow cry to him. He sits, he stands, he moves there, too. All around are hints of reds and pinks—small flowers in the foreground but they are barely noticeable, barely started because there wasn’t all that much time, not so much time in his race to paint to put those sounds, especially the yellow cry on the canvas, with the tubes of oil paint, with the oil. With himself, with the grasses blowing around with the dust busting around with the sun burning and then the final looking the other touch-ups in the room by candlelight, by lamplight to make it all as it was, all that it is outside. The yellow cry of the star nearest to us—the roundness of it. How the other ones can be seen at night.
“Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.”
Jon Ronson (b.1967) Cardiff-born journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and author
Bohemian Breakfast Club
It is another day in Paradise.
The usual moon, hint of the sun,
tangled trees. I remembered
my brain. Just as tangled, broken,
bobbing.
Homeostasis—maintenance of a stable
internal environment in an organism.
This is a balance. A balance beam.
A noun. Greek origin. Sane. Balance. Same.
To maintain-> support->
The Bohemian becomes close up.
More than a photograph. Hanging
around together, the nice ways.
What do I want here? Where are the resources?
Many of their fashions have returned.
The best situation substituted for my own.
Before They Had Kids
We have to go through the list of the presidents
over dinner every time they invite us to their apartment.
We begin with Washington. There are never enough ice cubes.
Our host is the only one who knows them all in order
and he corrects us. There is quiche.
The record plays on the turntable
and is never changed when it ends so we only hear one record
per visit even though a huge stack is all ready to go.
Their thousand dollar oriental rug
has holes in it because they forgot to store it
with moth balls.
Adams, Jefferson, Madison, no…where’s Lincoln?
That’s o.k. he says, you’ve almost got it, while he slugs his Corona—
barely swallowing before he opens his mouth again
to gulp and continue
with the names
of the vice presidents.
His eyes bulge and water.
His neck cranes forward, over his folded hands.
Again, he corrects us.
The pressure of my fork with the butter lettuce on it
sticks to the roof of my mouth. He says not to end sentences
with prepositions. He tells of the hairdo
his college roommate had—
a thin fuzz of dark pubic hair on the top of his head
and then a thick strip of blonde came up from the side.
It crossed over the pubic stuff. There are huge plants
standing guard over the furniture. I want to go over
to touch them and find shade
from my plate.
It shines like a spotlight.
Now, he’s onto national monuments—
which ones have basements?
Can we name them?
The furniture, out of the corner of my eye, has moved.
I see a pillow darting towards the door like a cat.
The wicker chair
begins to rock. The leaves of the plants look very curly.
Then he is saying, you say tomato, I say tomahto,
you say envelope, I say anvelope.
I now see I am a melon cut in half.
Our host is the knife.
His wife is a fig
he has dried all by himself
in their new oven.
She will last a long time this way.
My friend is a small, hard cherry.
Like a bloody tooth
turned inside out.
We are all together in a huge bowl
which suddenly feels small. The bowl is red and very shiny.
We still have leaves stuck
to our stems. The sides of the bowl shine with confusion.
The deals are made in a field where meaning has been all weeded away.
Ah, the Eighties. Decade in which, for the last time, smooth sailing through the aporia seemed a fair bet.
Now though, not so much.
The Eighties, last time I heard a mover to a shaker say, in hasty public passing on the Avenue of Five Stars (time was still money then): Let's do a deal!
And yes, the everlasting potter's field. The thirty pieces of silver, over and over.
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