ah... Pynchon

Lo these past five months I have been on a quest albeit a personal one but no doubt as noble as any I have attended. Sobriety brings a certain clarity to the room as I have discovered. Back in November I gave myself a birthday present. I felt like I deserved to be rewarded for my keen sense of humor and sense of the absurd. Besides I was bored with military techno-thrillers, spy games and sea stories. I had not read serious literary work since college and that was some time ago, tried to read "Gravity's Rainbow" in the 70's but dozed off somewhere over London and never finished it.

So the years went by and I forgot about the guy, this Thomas Pynchon weird writer guy. An alert friend noted in an email to me that his new novel "Against the Day" was just released in case I was, you know, interested. BOING!

The next morning I called the local retail outlet and reserved a copy. "Yes, I'll pick it up today during lunch break" I promised breathlessly feeling like a kid at Christmas. It was November 30th. I finished that delicious novel by New Year's and found myself wanting more. From there I read every one of his books ("Slow Learner" is still waiting) and haunted websites and wiki's trying to read all I could find like I was dying of thirst here. I finished "Crying of Lot 49" just a week ago.

In between deliveries from Amazon I also perused some of the others (Delillo, McCarthy, Amis, Wallace, Barth etc.) while waiting. I still gravitate back to Pynchon. I can't explain it or his writing or my utter marvel at his chops.

When I get through with these others on my pile, it's getting shorter, I intend to reread "Against the Day" with more otium cum dignitate. It will be a scholarly appeasement of the muse and I'll be in a slow soak mode. I smell a Nobel Prize lingering somewhere.

D. F. Wallace almost turned me against post-modern fiction but I prevailed and deep-sixed his smart-ass. He will never be as much fun I don't care what they say.

When I read I don't like to multi-task and work several books at a time. So first things first. One more Delillo and half an Amis to go. Then I will single up all lines and get the hell outa here...

white hot wire

Today was one of those days. Ya know, one of those days. One of those days when you wake up in the morning ears ringing, numb at the prospects of sharing pale watery sunrise with the traffic crawling like seekers to the mountain and it's wizened old guy at the top that tells you every time "go back and start over, you don't know yet" and sadly we trudge and trudge into the din doing what we have to do so we can eat and drink and play and laugh and cry and yell at the sky and pretend we have some semblance of a life away from the wizened old man on the mountain telling us every time what we don't want to hear again like a voice in our heads.

The day was a relief however as is the night and every night and every day and every solution proffered is a relief because like pain it reminds you that you're still alive with nerve endings spreading like tendrils gathering the bombardments of relentless provocation, shaping into projectiles to launch back and splash like protoplasmic calculations to make the muses cry and curse and agree it's all an endless parade stretching in time from one mist to the next.

...static discharge running up and down pegging meters fluxing singing the currents and always crisping the contrasts sharper in cold bare light...

hot iron and dust

Here we go again. Sunday on the Shores of Anticipation. Time away from the grinding stone is slipping by like the proverbial hourglass. A week off is never long enough to re-acclimate. At least the rain stopped long enough to mow and talk with the creatures that inhabit the grounds. Just the usual tip o' the hat in a jovial sort of way. The copperheads stayed hidden as well they should. Colonel Colt was riding shotgun with me on patrol today and was positively vibrating at the possibility of shredding reptiles. No such luck today Colonel, maybe next time.

The clouds are diving in again like Stutkas dropping pellets of rain and banking away to refuel. Another day in the bunker... The Evil One is lurking in Kansas far to the north.

some bread and a circus

May Day.

All good oppressed workers unite! That time of year again for the teeming millions to march demanding better pay, health care, etc. WE WANT MORE STUFF! (hint: Stop having so many babies.)

Do they think that the leaders really give a shit? Do they really think the Power Elite is going to share? Ah but everybody loves a parade right? Make their voices heard! Let's roll people. Yo!

Sadly the working class is always going to be in the hapless position of neediness. Law of the jungle my dear. Of course if free education was a reality then we'd all be rich and no menial tasks would get done because there wouldn't be any undereducated around to do the work. Ever mowed the grass in Gucci's? I didn't think so. Of course a pair of Gucci's does not an education indicate. More of a status totem that says "I got more than you." More what? Money? Hope you choke on it.

Human culture has always been a pecking order. Just like (gasp) the animal kingdom except we're just a bunch of stink-footed bi-pedals in the minority that fuck for fun while other people pay money to watch.

Why are these immigrants coming into this country? Don't they know there aint no money in America? Nasty rumor I heard. Oh sure there's minimum wages for those of you who are called to a life of servitude to the Junior League with a swarm of brats at lunch time. A lot of roofs in that new subdivision you can't afford to live in to build. Whose going to dig all those sewer lines anyway? More power to you people. Lemme get outa your way.

Mandatory community service at age 18 for all citizens. Combat arms? No problem. The Marines are always looking for a Few Good Men. Be an Army of One. Accelerate Your Life. Aim High. GI Bill for continuing education. No? No military service because of moral issues? Well then, step right up. Darfur needs you. The starving refugees need you. New Orleans needs you. Get off your fat collective asses you selfish bastards and help somebody instead of whining for more tit.

stress in the rear view mirror

Things are looking up... man, vacation week is looming and it's time to take a well needed rest doing whatever comes to mind and off schedule. Starting in 24 hours we will be 80 miles away immersed in fun and frolic with old friends who are crazy enough now to farm the kids out to Grandma for a few days and let the dogs loose. Adults only acting out suppressed energy in the sun, sharing food and games just being ourselves for once without any serious responsibility oh the highway humming on the road back home in no hurry for a change.

born out of grief

The kids are alright. Yep. I can see it. Feel it. Life goes on and smiles are returning to the cell phones and a generally springyer step across the way captivates. Lo the wariness tempered with determined fire is penetrating and sharing a communion of like spirits and there is hope breaking out all over after all. The concept of random death at inappropriate intervals just got hammered home. That future looks pretty important now that now is here.

Good morning children. And how was our little nap? Oooh, cover mouths when we yawn. There, there that's good. Okay, now today our lesson is "The Art of Living" by a well-known author that you are all familiar with; B. T. Love a.k.a. yourself. Please open to Chapter One.
Remember my little darlings that there are no problems, only opportunities. No need to nod curtly back to a passing nod but rather return it with a clear steady gaze, one of knowledge and wisdom forged from despair, horror and the keeping in mind precious lambs it can be far, far worse.

Now then, let's begin anew shall we?

faith in a can

And I was sitting here taking in this not so glorious day thanking my lucky charms it was Saturday watching a deer in the yard when I stumbled upon a Test of Faith in the on-line edition of the local right-wing rag. Having come from a church going family whose head of the household was also the head of over a dozen parishes in my hometown, Bible studies were sort of expected of me whether I liked it or not. Mostly not. I was force-fed the New Testament, Western Civilization, cathedrals built to the glory of God on High out the WingWang, how to swear like a sailor before I was 18 and other hubris that somebody thought I couldn't live without. My dad was a multi-talented old sop with a yen for gin and communion wine on Sundays. Mom was a chirpster in the choir who wielded a leather belt with the best of them on Saturdays. The old man on the other hand cleared the air with a glance. The following link is to a vanilla extract quiz that asks nothing outside the bounds of daily headlines.

http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/interactive_sm/04/042107_faithquiz.html

If you think Joan of Arc married Noah Ark and they had a son Bois D'Arc who later moved to the south of France and became the Architect for the Arc de Triomphe, you need to call me for some clarification... hark.

I might add here that after I took this so-called test of faith (missed 4 out of 10 because they were trick questions) I was informed by the author that there is more to it than praying for the Longhorns to win. Whaa, wait a minute, this is bullshit what's college sports got to do with it anyway?

lost at sea...

Yeah, the world is still a mean-ass bitch, brimming with resentment, still looming without remorse to beat you down at the top of your game. The light and passion extinguished under a hoard of senseless and random acts of violent nature, the warnings ignored, never saw it coming. Look up one morning bright and cheery into the path of a bullet before your coffee gets cold just days away from a new life all full of promise. There is no reason, the motive now dead.

Another shred of innocence died within me as did those bright and vibrant minds in Virginia. The children caught in the vortex of insanity, lives cut short...
The warnings were all there.
Are we to become tattle-tales to maintain civility? Are the terrorists coming out of the backyard home grown and bitter? Should we watch each other for danger signs?

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/National/University_Bomb_Threat.html
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/18/18stedwards.html

The outpouring of support for one another in the student body of that campus reminds me of another generation before them, mine. Seemingly self-centered this generation, they truly love one another and maybe a new foundation of trust can come from this tragedy. I hope there is a lesson here somewhere, the days are short and there's much to see.

I looked at the students at UT Austin today and remembered a shooting on that campus when I was younger. My heart went out to them. I remembered the hopelessness and waste. Today, 24 hours after their world changed forever, I look upon these bright young minds now with compassion and wish them well. I'm confident they will emerge even stronger from this horror and more determined to make their world a little better than the mean-ass bitch that was handed them and hopefully, God help 'em, they will start looking both ways before crossing the street while they still can.

The young people that died this week are gone. They are lost but they will live on in the reactions of their colleagues and their families so that their deaths will not be in vain.

whose life is it anyway?

There is a local woman in the news lately. She has a terminally ill 17 month old child. He has Leigh's Disease, a neurometabolic disorder that causes the central nervous system to collapse. The boy is blind, deaf and on a respirator. Has been for weeks. An MRI indicates his brain is as close to dead as dead can be. The medical staff wants to let him die with dignity. His unmarried mother wants to prolong his suffering because to do otherwise would be akin to murder. She can no longer conceive because of complications during child birth. May be a good thing to keep her out of the gene pool anyway. Where is the father of this child in all of this? Prison? On the run?

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/15/15emilio.html

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/15/15bioethics.html

In my opinion, this woman is not only selfish but stupid. This is not a baby doll like the one she had when she was a little girl. There are hundreds if not thousands of children alive and well who need adopting in order to have a normal, loving upbringing. But no, she wants this child. A child that will never know life in the sunshine of childhood. Never grow up to love and enjoy his time amongst the living. He is broken and cannot be fixed and his mother is killing him softly.

Let this infant have peace and while your at it you stupid woman, get a life of your own and stop abusing the staff and this infant with your immaturity. It is not murder to let Emilio go.

It's shit like this that jacks up medical costs for everybody and causes undue stress on those who are trying to do the right thing. Not to mention my blood pressure. I have zero tolerance for the stupid.

highway love

Love. Ya gotta love it. My faithful truck went into surgery today for suspension work. We made love all the way home. We were One with the road. Every delicious curve rose up to greet us with a caress and a sigh. We were an item without an audience.

and your point is...

Okay so what's this anyway me wonders. I mean who really cares about some guy posting personal observations and ruminations, canting along about foibles found in and around about. Politics? Romance? Technology? Naahh. Who cares? I think the Blog has become a cultural icon. More like the cordless landline of yore and maybe not. I hesitate to compare it to the CB radio craze in the pre-cell phone age. But money and endorsements have generated a niche market for less than profound writing in some blog realms. I know I'm wrong somewhat about that but who wants to read the minutia of some other bloke's life anyway? What else is new? Maybe I'll find out. I don't want to look like one of those people who have to see themselves in print. Unless I do. If I wanted that I would write to newspaper editors everyday and include the latest pic. I'm the other somebody living along at a slow gallop sending back dispatches from the frontier. My observations from the daily breath. My postcards from the edge. I can't talk to myself and expect a return unless I'm just crazy after all and that takes practice. So hither I go.

In writing this blog I set out to find an interesting seat in the bleachers and focus on the inter-relationships my brain chemistry has with the oxygen 2 rich world just outside the calcium barrier. Within a hydrogen 2 + oxygen 1 rich environment the relationship is even more primordial but that's another story.

With that in mind, my musings bear no more resemblance to full contact journalistic bombast than I do but dishing them out to a soup line keeps them going like pilgrims.

One way to bring these minglings along is to inject a convulsive reactionary stimulus into the core transmission thus causing a polar conduction and discharge of excited molecules. By doing so, the influx of oxygen 2 into the organism heightens universal arousal of the senses and improves overall performance at rest, provides clarity where there was none and reduces arguments with the wallpaper. (sorry Oscar)

So here it is, 6 weeks into the back country of post-literary obfuscation without a pot to piss in. I could do a lot worse.

I got yer fundamentalism...

The following link goes to an essay in the Guardian from Martin Amis. He pretty much sums up what I've been thinking all along about all Fundamental Religionism wherever it hides. What a bunch a sore heads.
I will confess here however that some of my best friends are Vegetarians.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868732,00.html

Obsessed with dying to meet God and live in splendor forever is a concept that's been around since dirt but is a not an all together healthy point of view in my estimation. Are they so bored and lonely they have to take everybody else with them for company? I think it's pathological, an organic disorder teetering into homicidal psychosis. Salvation through intimidation and murder is abhorrent behavior and blaming the West for the world's ills is a congenital defect of mind and symptomatic of developmental immaturity of culture and remission of civilization. One does not kill for God. Suicide is killing God you eediot.

a bunny day

Easter. A good day to hang. It's cold and wet and pretty much miserable enough outside to match my mood inside. Poised here on the brink, time to gird my loins again so to speak for combat in the early morning mist of Monday. Back to the mill house of pointless endeavour we call working for a living. It aint fun this constant push-pull making money to pay the government so they can waste it blowing up deserts somewhere killing things that never met me coming or going. The fucking bastards. Quit complaining already.

They let those British sailors go home. Ha ha just kidding we weren't going to hurt you just you know teach your boss a lesson about diplomacy yeah that's all. No big deal. Go home, kiss the baby hug your mother. All is forgiven. Meanwhile, dark steel hulls of instant death gather in the shallows locking in co-ordinates for their little birdies to fly to just in you know, case they try that shit again, we'll just blow 'em the hell up. Yep. And so it goes. The thuggery continues unabated while God snoozes somewhere and the lost Easter eggs rot in the rain. The priests and rabbis are working overtime expressing their brand of calmness. What do we need to do? Forgive ourselves and move on? Why yes indeed. If you love yourself then everything else sort of falls into place. Right? I guess. Whatever. Quit complaining already.

I went to see my father the other day. He's still reclining there on his back looking up past the sky dreaming. Says he's doing alright considering. I picked up the litter around him deposited by the other less than considerate breezes among us. The grass is of course in it's seasonal brown cloak but the riding mower's tracks indicate that somebody is at least getting paid to watch over it. I couldn't stay long and told him so. Thought about my mother. How she had become quite the pill now forgetting everything. How she longed to join him but I think he preferred to remain alone. No nagging that way. No more screaming suicidal threats or promises to move in under the Congress Ave. bridge just out of spite. She's mostly passive now I thought mostly over burdened.

Plenty of basking time with forever without interruption now boy. I think my father is bored though. He repeats himself. We had this conversation before and he understood my haste to leave. There was living to be done elsewhere and now see where it gets you. Besides I have to piss. Bye daddy...so long member of The Greatest Generation. Until the next time old man. ta...

So the day drags on. CNN spewing it's informational bile in a crawl across the room. Laundry appearing in piles to be folded and put away. Dinner defrosting on the counter. Shades of gray with a hint of green staring back at me through the windows hybrid Afro-Celtic music drifting in-between. Typical Sunday options however limited. Quit complaining already.

I look forward to a sunny day.

who ya gonna call?

I hear tell the Iranian Disposable High Command bestowed upon some maritime coasties the (gasp) Medal of Honor for capturing those cowardly Royal Navy and Marine personnel found loitering in rubber boats. Man, what a heroic struggle that must have been. What a diplomatic waltz of brinkmanship.
Had my man Hornblower been there, those smirking Persians would have been shark shit.

drenched in photons

What effulgence doth hover and I thought last Sunday was the day. Today I'm the windshield and light is the bug. The air is locked, refracting it's wares on my tools and beckoning like a Siren on a sparkling waterfront, winking and smiling re-arranging my past.

I'm ready to withdraw my synapses from the over-charged influences of metropolia and immerse myself in the bounty of muted organisms and dappled shadows. The weather extremes serve as a reminder of the timeless quality of life or Otherwise and the futility of over-involvement in the world's funereal mass for solitude is the source of all wisdom, that for which I strive as concentric ripples on a pond in my midnight might strive; a constant coming and going, the past and the future co-mingling and enabling companionably in measured rhythms and silent communion.

To breathe the Present, to know the Future, to predict the Past and Divine the structure, essence, the fiber of Being. To put language to the muse, to see the machinations as a world in it's own globe of swirling wonderment and know as a distant star cluster knows, that which we are we can become and we have a choice between gods and cannibals and the quick and the dead are one and the same.

a conversation

I visited with the Future last night actually this morning very early as the sky was convulsing and disgorging water and light and maxed-out bass line like a low rider at a stop light on the wrong side of town looking for souls to steal.

The Future offered up advice amidst the artillery and trotted out thoughtful cognoscenti from behind the veil of random illuminations, fleeting though they were but nevertheless compelling. Time that great equalizer, is easing on and there is no turning back.

I awoke in a reflected bath having said nothing in return.

only lumins

Ever have that feeling of seeing yourself coming around the corner at you walking away at the same time? I had one pass me by with a wave twice in as many seconds a minute ago pulling a Category 5 behind it for an hour the other day.
Saw my new photo ID swipe card for work this afternoon. Compared it to the current one, one that is about 15 years old. New one is about 3 months old. Just got it.
I recognized the shirt I was wearing and remembered when I bought it 15 years ago. I also saw what was in my eyes then and remembered why I bought that shirt. It was a long time ago when my house burned.
I recognized the shirt I was wearing 3 months ago. I also saw what is in my eyes now.
I seemed older in the older picture.

grinding the fires

Today is one of those days that lives right here between the books, between rain, between the loads of laundry, between cigarettes, between the getting my game on for Monday morning in the traffic infested thunderstorm, between arriving soaking wet to a cluttered desk full of ghosts from last week still unresolved, with issues that bore me and still just waiting and between me and my immersion in rural mindset that balances like a fine time piece, embraces with it's solitude and shields from a world cold and violent and between meals I languish here undisturbed between the days.

The air is squeaking sweetrinsed clean, it's rowdier zephyrs corralled bedded down for the night still stirring a leaf there and daylight's rheostat angling down, gravitationally challenged. TV off I resting. This the best of times of all if at all is being one of these days to relish because a little relish goes a long ways in these the best of times of all.

The depth of my resolve to finish an otherwise unremarkable career is increasing quickly. It's become a jumping from way high; no turning back. I can see the end and wonder what beginning I face as the future looms at high speed causing me Doppler effected shift excitations but the question still remaining though, is it doable can I both retire and remain too happy too at the same time in a redundant sorta way too (?)

The rhumb line

So I steer a loxodromic cut away from this setting phase of Now, pursued not by hellish hounds but by the very doubts that drive me into nocturnal lucubration, stretching within my grasp the evolutionary Expressionism lurking vestigial. The snide calculus has failed to predict this untrodden mud uprisen to beckon unto me the cerebral precision and gleeful stance with exactitude of rage for which I have full incubus. This is so. The anterior movement of mind is preponderant as time vacuums me closer to my lugubrious kismet. As such, a rising star will reign and I will allow the syntax of my days to cure.

bayonets

Somewhere a man, probably Uncle Babboo, promised Yasmeen and her brother Ahmed a sweet American fried pie in apple or cherry, their choice if they would ride with him on an errand in the old Toyota. Along the way they stopped and picked up Mo, a friend of Babboo's so he could help Babboo with a large package. It was a nice day, not too hot and promising a superb drive. The children were excited at the prospects of escaping their abusive unemployed father or at least he seemed unemployed but the explosions across town after which he would come home flush with pockets of gold coins seemed to indicate otherwise and their pathetic excuse for a mother who cowed under her veil in a dark corner her entire life unless of course their father wanted some and then she would produce another child to wander the streets several years later.
It was a glorious Praise God to be out in the fresh light of day kind of a day. The kids were happy. Uncle Babboo and Mo talked of grown up things the way grown ups do; in Code.
After much driving and jostling, promises of fried pies soon, Uncle Babboo finally stopped the car and he and his friend Mo got out and ran away. Yasmeen and Ahmed looked at each other the way curious siblings do and wondered. Someone was approaching and asking something. Yasmeen being the eldest, sat up in the backseat and tried to hear what this nice person was saying while whispering to Ahmed to be quiet.

The old Toyota started to expand, very slowly at first with a tearing sound the way sheet metal sounds when it tears very slowly before you can actually hear the tearing sound and a flash of light that was so slow that blinking several times fast would still not see it come and go and the drenching warmth that popped and snapped gave way to numbing cold and darkness and silence, compressing the puzzled yelps in a nanosecond. Then it stopped.

A slight breeze carries away the smoke, the plastique's primordial bark had reverberated back up the long narrow alleys to sleep at doorsteps of the living leaving the old Toyota behind now split open exposing it's charred contents in the middle of the street, the nice person sprawled nearby without a face.

"Everything's a matter of taste," said the Devil as he helped himself to another forkful of roast infant.