Tuesday, February 12, 2008

i don't know what to write i don't know what to write i don't know what to write i don't know what to

(no music news at all in this post.)
-> the title's what i've told my students to write when they are stuck. the idea is, it leads to something to write about.
-> ...on the horizon, ideas are galloping up like my texas pup, gonna knock me down in a big blustery !whomp!... here goes! it worked!
-> i have "fear of flying"... there's little i hate more than the acceleration & thrust of jet engines. (insert chicken clucking sound here.) worse than that is how airlines puff you for explosives, prod, poke, separate, strip, search you, filch your goods w/no apology. i know: terrorists. but it's hard to fly nowadays & keep much dignity. arms outstretched, mild-faced grandpas, white-haired grannies, schoolmarms, milquetoasts, depressed-looking teens, middle-aged twerps, golf guy, trophy wife, all are frisked, zapped, grilled by TSA muscle. everyone's made timid --we just wanna fly, for god's sake! --, looking like they just got pantsed & trashcanned by the school bully. there's only kick, no kiss - & once you're on the tin can, no food, no pillow, no movie, seats like cracker boxes, it's all rub. americans are so desperate to fly, time starved, stressed out, pulverized by the need to Own More Stuff, the gotta get to pt B AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, we endure it all.
-> as soon as we get bullet trains, i'm never flying again. NEVER. and once we get time machines, well, bar the doors, katie.
-> denver's criticized as "the LA of the rockies," but i love smellay, & i love denver, too, w/its sprawling brick buildings & ungentrified 50s-60s neon sign boroughs & old motels & bars & great restaurants like lucille's cajun/creole & big record stores w/real vinyl & even the uptown spots look good to me, tho i never spend time there, just drive thru & peep.
-> boulder's "the sta barbara of the rockies," & i'm less comfortable there, tho do love the university's creekside bikepath & wonderful shows (peking acrobats!), stately homes, yuppie mega grocery marts stocked w/plenty, & i love window-shopping the pearl st mall, like i love doing that in sta barbara, never buying one nickel's worth of nothing, happy i breathe the same air, see the same sites as the rich & it doesn't cost squat & no one can stop me because this is america.
-> it's hard to run in these places w/their extreme elevation, but it's worth it. lungs scream but heart glows at snow & sky & brick & sandstone & flagstone & aspen & foliage & deer, squirrels, raccoons, magpies, that awesome mountain view, rockies as far as you can see & every peak & valley has a name. i plod along for miles, freezing, happy, picturing south american ancestors, squat, strong, charging endlessly up alpine paths, powered by sturdy lung & leg.
-> every time i've been, the public johns on the pearl st mall are piping ray charles in some kinda weird coincidence or maybe even miracle... for me, the ghost of texas stacy is in boulder, & memory of blasters, moto trips, brother in law paul, so in the end, i guess i love boulder, too, even tho i feel part-mutant when surrounded by its long-limbed golden youth swathed in north face & casual ski apparel.
:) esquerita wouldn't fit in in boulder, either, tho. :)
-> dr derek sent me a funny "dusk devils" pic he created the other day & put on his metaphysics website (go tw the bottom): http://www.qm21.com/quote.html... met him decades ago when he was selling R&R memorabilia to help fund his (i think) ontology school. he looked like a sort of fey gerard depardieu (i love GD!) & sold the coolest stuff for cheap, like a wooden fab four stamp, rockabilly bootlegs, never-glued on holo-cover frm "her satanic majesty's..." worked under him at buck owens' yrs later & he & jack-mormon loren (r.i.p, dear guy, artist, anarchist, friendly oversized shlub in buddy holly glasses) scanned (a recent techn at the time) my drivers license & did obscene things to my tender visage. in the early oughts, dr derek wrote for my underground paper (r.i.p.) & now has a book coming out called "man is dead."
"man is dead." brilliant! read about it at www.qm21.com.
i read like crazy yesterday, about raymond carver's editor who pared RC's stories into their famously spare style, & about how bad soy really is for a person, as bad as corn syrup because it's in everything we eat, & today i got to take flowers to dear silvia who has endured so much, & to angie, & spend time w/my dear niece. we had a family pizza & told stories & my sore back feels less stoved up... & i guess i figured out what to write. :) buonanotte. :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah Jenny was always my favorite teacher. I was 12 years old and she would sing old Hank Williams tunes and read Hank Bukowski stories to me until I would fall asleep. She was my babysitter too. She used to let me use her lipstick in my Prince coloring book when I filled in "My Little Red Corvette." zoom, zoom, zoom. ~ Derek Lamar

Anonymous said...

My old Boulder apartment is the house at
1619 Pine, the Mork house.