glitch

This afternoon, I listen to the Beatles. It's good, easy. Keeps my mind at ease, it's thoroughly familiar music. Comfort music to nurse hangovers and to fend off silence's accusations. Seargent Pepper's is one of my favorite albums, that and Pink Floyd's The Wall. They remind me of long essays.

I made a little list for myself. On my list is act of updating my blogs and journals. Then there is reading, and my shoulder Theraband exercises, which I am doing now. Later I might want to stretch my back in particular, which feels rather rigid and sore today.

Bit of a rough start this morning. I didn't climb out of bed until 10:30 late morning. Woke actually at about 5:30am but with a heavy hangover that drove me back to bed. Yesterday afternoon found me at the Ferry Building partaking of various wines & spirits at the Organic Beer & Wine Tasting, sponsored the California Organic Federation. Fun times. There was food, alcohol, music, and crowds of people. The Ferry Bldg is a prime place for this sort of event. The artisanal vendors and restaurants will also serve tapas style snack foods like grilled sausage on a stick, cheese melted on bread, mushroom crostini, and pizza slices. I enjoyed the sausage, mushroom crostini, which I got for free, and oysters & clams. Delicious. I enjoyed myself, talked to strangers, watched faces swarm by, got tipsy, listened to music. It was live and momentary. People were in high spirits of course, thanks to the drink as well as to it being Friday. A woman handed me a small shot of organic tequila. It was strong and clear. I also drank organic vodka that tasted like aqvavit in Scandinavia, organic sparkling wine, organic beer, and several organic red and white wines. Certainly the perfect storm for hangover creation it was, but who am I to turn away festive vibes. These occasions are beyond my capacity to resist, so instead of trying to turn my back on it I step forward and embrace the thing with open arms.

movie quote

"Today, my life feels like a string of near misses.
Women I was unable to love,
opportunities I failed to seize,
moments of happiness I let drift away.
A race whose result I knew beforehand
but failed to pick the winner.
Had I been blind and deaf,
or did the harsh light of disaster
make me find my true nature?"
- movie: The Diving Bell & the Butterfly

untitled

Here are my untitled thoughts:

Now: listening to the Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed on iTunes. "Don't u think u need a woman's touch to make u come alive?" I can relate. @Work at the moment down in the financial district. Eating peanut M&M's from a large blue plastic peanut m&m cartoon dispenser. You lift his arm up, then down, and one or two candies roll out of a hole in his side. Blue Jesus dispensing chocolate covered peanuts instead of diluted blood. Whichever you prefer, by the plumbing of your faith. Then I performed my Theraband shoulder exercises, to strengthen the ligaments supporting my rotator cuffs. It just isn't built to last, this body of mine. I thought about stretching. Don't know if I want to listen to this entire album. I should be reading. Currently reading "Alice Waters & Chez Panisse," a bio by Thomas McNamee,a journalist. Been trying to set aside myself so I can put in some solid reading. Trying to read at work, so I can claim to get well paid for reading biographies about gourmet restaurants and the gauche dramas and lush sociopolitical intrigues that swirled above its roof and chimneystack over the decades. What else have I to do here? Munch m&m's whilst I sip lemon rooibus tea, too cold now. Think about that orange. Twist and laugh with Jagger. Stretch my limbs, lie on orange rubber, spongy to the toes. That, and that.

"U can't always get what u want,

But if u try sometime,

U get what u need."

Jagger and I, sometimes, we're on the same page. Now this song, "Under my Thumb" (listening to Aftermath now) rocks in a way that only the Stones can. Take it eeeeeasy, baby.

some excerpts from my notebook, written in an old church in Southwark, London:

- If I ever have a house, one room will be reserved for quiet (aesthetic) contemplation, with the only adornment either 1) a blank canvas, or 2) a candle

- the only churches I enter these days are those in foreign countries

- saw a 700 year old wooden sculpture of a dead knight

from a painting tag at the Francis Bacon retrospective:

"Birth, & copulation, & death.

That's all the facts when you

come to brass tacks.

Birth, & copulation, & death."

-T.S. Eliot

tgif

It is a ghost town in the financial district today. The sidewalks seem thinly populated, the anxiety that's descended on us palpable and viral. People leer at each other in fear and loathing, as if they see manifestations of disease on the skin and faces of those they pass. Their stares linger for a fraction of a second too long before they avert their gaze downward, always downward. So I cross the street, then cross back to the opposite side. I avoid squares, corners, heavy traffic. I imagine a string still attached to the top of my head, and myself pulling this string upward to maintain the illusion of great height. My horse, though top heavy, digs its hoofs down into the shifting sand. But what is that foul stench I smell? This gas, if ignited, could set the entire world in flames. Is that fool again attempting to create a spark with the heel of his shoe? If I close my eyes, all ceases to exist. I do remember this working the last time a feeling of terror found its way into my bloodstream. Why shouldn't it work again?

gobbeldygook

Watchword for the day. Concerning this word:

"Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats." (excerpted from J. Schwartz's NYTimes article "Who you callin' a Maverick?" 10.14.08)

The word accurately abstracts my sentiments concerning yesterday evening's presidential debates. I've decided I may just have to bully my way through the festering political rhetoric/inspirational message language and shovel straight down to the cocaine of pure motives. The spelunk that illuminates my way: the System, Capitalism.

I shall sneeze out exactly five deep thoughts now, not two. The pointy corners and razor sharp edges of their more colored consonant's letters vex the tender walls of my sinuses. Reactions are not cerebral cortex oriented arise, resembling hair raisingly swift brain stem electrical impulses than rationality, to put a head on that shoulder.

Be that, I say.

On my bus ride to work, I was already composing essays and juxtaposing them directly over failed love sonnets. It seems the early morning breeze whipping in from the bus roof hatch didn't quite do the trick. My hat still rested wanly on my head, preventing my identifiable features from flying off and out into oncoming traffic, which at such a small hour can be fatal - you man find yourself dropped off in a foreign land populated by either heavily customed desert people or mordantly animated snowball tossing bed bugs. Fortunately for me, however, the deeply rutted trench that I've zealously carved into the concrete by virtue of years and years of repetitive ritual has pre-empted all balancing on a tether between the scales. Simply follow that peculiarly low gliding hat to find my naked lunch.

Sprightly soonly

My thoughts have chosen normality. I tried to read the thoughts of those I've lately seen and heard, but found I required the English Swedish Swedish English touch of index fingers. Buttons of crystalline understanding undyed and preschool become so much more difficult to hide these days. It just may be that music and apple juice is all the language I require.
I wonder how long it will last. The obvious advantages of beginning again elude me, so I'll just have to resort to default actions. If a smoothly flowing river could be found nearby, I would now go there and thoughtlessly jump in. Things take care of themselves once the sky can be seen filling up and around one's field from flowing places. I am tempted to sincerely believe this. Suffice it to say that I've spent the better part of the last few days since returning from Europe sucking up myriad errant fruit flies with my blue hepa filtered vacuum cleaner. They have become legion in my absence, and some of these gnatty pests have even grown to at least three times their size. These alaming mutations forced me to resort to an electronic home appliance for the purpose of fruit fly genocide. They won't mind, it's dark and airless in that bag, a perfect place for peace and quiet, which all multiplying things need every now and then.