Tuesday, October 9, 2012

EARTH ~









STEPS


 

Life


is


 



but

an

 



ad

just


ment






[ BA ] 







photo © bob arnold



Monday, October 8, 2012

Sunday, October 7, 2012

IT ~






It's mentioned everywhere in Neil Young's new memoir, even if it isn't mentioned, as it is in every song he has composed and sung around the world for almost 50 years now. This "IT". Or "it", however you have yourself, if fortunate enough, been able to live "it". Some have successfully put it into their lives, marriages, made families, and maybe not and never all three of those together. But maybe one came about for you. I hope so. And you nurtured it. Read the good books, built personal libraries, learned a trade, taught yourself how to get out of simply being yourself and into the life and world of an animal, bird, a loved one, neighbor, stranger, a river, a grocery line bag of fruit in your hand, and by some degree of talent and insight even an enemy – as Clausewitz and Buddha taught us.

 

Neil Young broke a toe and instead of moping around the house, he sat down and wrote his memoirs. His "it" is the mountain top he believes we (of the sixties) almost reached. Maybe the same mountain top as spiritual and gospel songs climb to. Both have this vision, sometimes whimsical, sometimes unbelievable, reaching this "it" place. What 50,000 may collectively reach at almost the same moment watching and absorbing Young on stage with his shovel-like guitar in hand —scooping, thrashing, alive — with a few other members playing toward his "it" crescendo. You can't even believe a mere concert ticket, no matter the cost, got you to this place of crushing and dizzying heights, spangled with colors, with thousands and thousands of others! a literal sweep of humanity, that have in history been likewise wiped out by one massacre, genocide, the evil of a few others, or but one. Laughing, joyous, unified, deliriously human and inspired on one day; destroyed, washed away, gone the next.

 

This "it" made from books you bought, underlined, traveled with, lent, lost, re-bought, quoted from, made a life discovery from, lost again, re-bought again, saw someone else read and got a thrill, and from one book you bought hundreds of other books. Made a shelf. Developed a bookcase. Stacked more bookcases, and maybe you built those bookcases and the tools you used are like books themselves, and now you have a library. A craft. Something to believe in. Moving toward the quieter and quieter "it".

 

Something you may never achieve. Because it is selfless.

 

Some haven't even bothered to get this far reading because some are so brilliant and skilled and sometimes jaded that they have taught themselves not to bother too long with dust, with dirt, with rambling. Kick the rolling stone only so far. . .

 

Yesterday I worked with a fellow worker and we talked awhile hunched down together on the side of a dirt road, by a river, in the woods, with large machinery shutdown all around us for lunch (machinery eats a lunch too), and he told me about a time recently where he was shutdown for 4 or 5 days in a hunter's cabin with four other guys and outdoors was days on end of steady rain and no bow hunting was getting done. Some miles from a service road, stuck and caught. And so in this abode they all found rubber bands and with those rubber bands these bow hunters killed every housefly that moved. Kept to their skill. Simplified. Talked and laughed and grown man boyish got to know one another. Didn't kill one another. I was listening to this tale from a voice and accent made from homemade pies, alcoholism, rumbled poverty, kick the can, rolling hills, loss and regain. I could listen to the words undulate and smooth out, much like watching the nearby river. I could lift my arm and with my hand held flat quiver it slightly as I moved my arm peacefully for you standing close by and listening to me tell you about this, and that movement of the hand were this guy's words and voice. It was the "it" we're maybe after, it was the "it" we always have, if you want it.

 

Neil Young wrote a whole book about it. So did Lao Tzu. So did Lee Iacocca, supposedly.

 

The other day, and the same day as listening to this hunter, I watched and listened to Barack Obama after his debate with Mitt Romney, open up, joyously, his many thoughts and good will, in speech after speech, to thousands, instead of millions, as a television debate would have provided. He had a bounce to his step. All the words and playful venom one wished for at the debate were now here, but not there! Curious. Mitt Romney's debate appearance was declared the sure winner. Mitt Romney's appearance was built on many lies and manufactured from the increasingly popular: style-over-substance. The very ingredient that has killed the "it", or tried to. Momentarily, Romney punk'd Obama, right before our eyes in the zenith of live television. Obama was well aware what was happening: Romney inch by daily inch moving his ponderous empty vessel closer and closer to the moderate center, the seesaw graceful tipping balance, the place Obama's worked for all his life, the "it" spot, only to be taken over, eclipsed, by a cheap shot medicine man show. Who the next day apologized for his "off the cuff 47 percent comment". Well, that was easy! Shake off a little dust, adjust the tie, adjust the face. Feel better? I don't.



Willard Mitt Romney during the Presidential debate with President Barack Obama, and it may go down in simple tone history as one of the more telling comments ever uttered on television, said to moderator Jim Lehrer, who works for PBS: “I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”



We were watching a bully CEO have the gall to even think he could fire a debate moderator, a public television station, millions of children, hope, knowledge, dreams and joy, right before our eyes. With a satanic chuckle and a smile on his face.  It was chilling.


PBS programming is 0.00014 percent of the budget.



If anyone lost during this debate, if you think Mitt Romney won this debate, it is us.



This time it's not about apology. It's about knowing what you see and feel and know and you don't like how it all smells. It's about knowing the "it" and protecting the "it" and believing in the "it". In believing in books, hunching down, rubber bands, kick the can, houseflies, homemade pies, rivers, neighbors, things that aren't just about you.

 

Patience.

 

The unknown "it".




 





photos © susan & bob arnold




imes
The radical activist Tom Hayden with his 22,000-page F.B.I. file, circa 1979.


"subversives"

photo Los Angeles Times






Saturday, October 6, 2012

EARTH ~









I WONDER







 
have

you

yet



this season



caught

a

leaf



falling

from

a



tree



(you must!)




[BA]





photo © bob arnold






Friday, October 5, 2012

LESSON ~









QUIT SCHOOL

 



The workers

each one
 

smiling
 

talking
 

joking
 

faces
 

in the
 

sun


 



the boss
 

listens
 

grimaces
 

worries
 

can’t wait
 

to get
 

back to
 

work




[BA]





 photo © bob arnold
  



Thursday, October 4, 2012

PUNK'd ~







For some years now, I've watched how well or not well President Barack Obama has done — whether at a speech, the State of the Union, or like last night's debate — by looking at the expression on Michelle Obama's face, and last night even before the debate, and certainly after the debate, the look on Michelle Obama's face didn't look good. She either had a woman's intuition or a mother's intuition and even a lover of twenty years intuition on her face, with a wedding anniversary in her hands, that something bad was about to happen.


And it did.


She, we, the President, the nation, got Punk'd by Willard "Mitt" Romney.


It's partly our fault. It was slowly incredible to watch on live television. The talking heads on MSNBC for the most part, after the debate, looked like their heads were collectively about to explode. By now Chris Matthews' probably has.


We, as a country, were collectively Punk'd by a Republican nominee who has been playing for years now difficult to read — on the one hand a player as a once fairly moderate governor from Massachusetts, a Olympic committee figurehead, always a sharpie businessman, and during the Republican sewage of nominations and debates and clowns to tolerate, here came a hardcore leaning to the far Right new disciple combining Ken doll appeal-business savvy-zero transparency-hiring on for riding shotgun on this bewitched stagecoach arch conservative Paul Ryan to keep the Tea Party licking their chops, and putting to sleep the media thinking here were two similar whackos going up against cool as a cucumber and very likable Barack Obama. Who last night showed his terrific smile is all but the same whether he is confident, or very nervous, and last night he was looking nervous, as we were, watching a very brittle but Stepford wife-like Mitt Romney, come out biting at the bit and wanting to show his supposedly true self. As well-trained and coached bantam rooster.


With a debate moderator easy to roll over.


With chilling confidence Mr. Romney even told the moderator Jim Lehrer, of PBS, his job and station is toast if he is elected President. Watch that confidence, it's a killer.


Then there's a modest and well-mannered President to Punk and humiliate. The perfect storm to create a theater of true lies, and true lies is what we got from Mitt Romney, right before our eyes.


No one this morning has any idea, or even a clue, who Mitt Romney is and what to expect. Has he truly Punk'd the nation by playing the wild card businessman lost to the big mouths of Right Wing Nation for months on end? Or do we have the game changer, who reveals nothing if he doesn't want to, except he can be the former governor moderate-self at the flick of a switch if it means he gets the upper hand in a debate and throws everyone willy-nilly?


Remember, it isn't the "47 percent" like everyone has been extolling since the hidden video was revealed and there was Willard Romney making one more captain of the ship speech about the dregs and freeloaders of the nation living on the borrowed dime of the rich. Mr. Romney was born with the silver and lying-through-his-teeth spoon of the "1 percent" in his mouth, and always 1 percent. Don't be fooled this "1 percent" doesn't work hard and live 24-7 by the virtues they believe in: using people, their incomes, their land, their lives, neighborhoods and towns to get what they want: more and more power.


Mitt Romney Punk'd the "99" last night. He will now manipulate and power broker a good many of them to maybe vote him into the Presidency.







   plus:


 

Wednesday, October 3, 2012


EARTH ~






Alan Davie

(1920 ~)





Alan Davie HRSA 'Alter Mann' Printed by Edinburgh Printmakers © the artist






FOUR SCORE AND TEN





Day of the Little Dog



Alan Davie
   




    

Tuesday, October 2, 2012





  Pier Paolo Pasolini



THE WORKER'S COUGH



I hear the worker coughing down below;
his cough comes up through the ground-floor grating
giving onto my garden, so that it avoids resonating among the plants
touched by the sun on this last morning of good weather. He,
the worker, down below, intent at his job, coughs now and then
pretty sure no one's hearing it. It's a seasonal sickness
but his cough's not a good one; it's worse than a flu.
He endures the illness, takes care of it, I imagine, like we
did when we were kids. Life for him remains decidedly uncomfortable;
no rest awaits him at home after work,
exactly like it is with us poor or almost poor guys.
See, life seemed to us to consist entirely of that poverty
in which one doesn't even have the right —naturally —
to the quiet use of a john or the solitude of a bed;
and when illness comes it's received heroically:
a worker's always 18, even if he has kids
bigger than him, ones new to those heroism's.
In short, in those wracking coughs
the tragic meaning of this beautiful October sun is revealed.


1969. Translated by Jack Hirschman 


 _____________________________ 


from In Danger
A Pasolini Anthology\edited, with an introduction
by Jack Hirschman
(City Lights Books 2110)





Monday, October 1, 2012

PASSING ~




Eric Hobsbawm
(1917~2012)



EARTH ~








ORDINARY EARTH


Today I sat on the step stoop at the cabin I built in the woods twelve years ago. A lot has not happened and a lot has happened since then. The helper that worked with me moved away. The twin towers in New York City went down. We lived through a hurricane. A flood. The cabin didn't care, its back to the world. At the dutch door I built and the only door in and where I sit and look to the woods all the woods did was grow, much brush. Right to the door. You sat there and couldn't see much, only the brush. So you thought, often deeply, breathing and feeling the brush at your feet. Years of this. One day I got tired of the brush and no view and took my tools and chain saw for a few days and cleared all the brush. Not only at the cabin site but away from the cabin and up through an old sugar bush. Trees too. Made firewood. The more I cut, the more I cut some more, until I was to the top of the hill, looking back at the cabin through a glade of massive sugar maple trees. The sunlight coated the trees now, so did shadows. It was a splendid work effort. The brush all piled. I went back to sit on the step stoop. The cabin hadn't moved.

[ BA ]





photo © bob arnold




Sunday, September 30, 2012

AD (POEM) ~









We know poets — Lew Welch and James Dickey, among others, have had jobs in advertising.
Here's a half-minute ad (poem) from Direct-TV.








LUCILLE CLIFTON ~








my poem



a love person
from love people
out of the afrikan sun
under the sign of cancer.
whoever see my
midnight smile
seeing star apple and
mango from home.
whoever take me for
a negative thing,
his death be on him
like a skin
and his skin
be his heart's revenge.



.



lucy one-eye
she got her mama's ways.
big round roller
can't cook
can't clean
if that's what you want
you got it world.


lucy one-eye
she sees the world sideways.
word foolish
she say what she don't want
to say, she don't say
what she want to.


lucy one-eye
she won't walk away
from it.
she'll keep on trying
with her crooked look
and her wrinkled ways,
the darling girl.



.



if mama
could see
she would see
lucy sprawling
limbs of lucy
decorating the
backs of chairs
lucy hair
holding the mirrors up
that reflect odd
aspects of lucy.


if mama
could hear
she would hear
lucysong rolled in the
corners like lint
exotic webs of lucysighs
long lucy spiders explaining
to obscure gods.


if mama
could talk
she would talk
good girl
good girl
good girl
clean up your room. 


 .



i was born in a hotel,
a maskmaker,
my bones were knit by
a perilous knife.
my skin turned around
at midnight and
i entered the earth in
a woman jar.
i learned the world all
wormside up
and this is my yes
my strong fingers;
i was born in a bed of
good lessons
and it has made me
wise.


 .



light
on my mother's tongue
break through her soft
extravagant hip
into life.
lucille
she calls the light,
which was the name
of the grandmother
who wanted by the crossroads
in virginia
and shot the whiteman off his horse,
killing the killer of sons.
light breaks from her life
to her lives . . .


mine already is
an afrikan name.



 



The Collected Poems of
Lucille Clifton
1965-2010
Boa Editions
2012
edited by
Kevin Young
and Michael S. Glaser 



Saturday, September 29, 2012

LOW FIDELITY AMERICANA ~





tom russell & friend






bacon rind
photo





harry partch
Partch, who died in 1974, is shown playing an instrument he built partly out of wine bottles and hubcaps.






lenny bruce
w/ his wife honey harlowe & their daughter kitty bruce







jack kerouac






charles bukowski






ira hayes






edward abbey






chief seattle

the only known photograph








Friday, September 28, 2012

EARTH ~





(click on image to enlarge)




NEW FROM LONGHOUSE! ~







Ishihara Yoshiro
 Hiroaki Sato, translator  


 "In Illness" ( Tanka )
Three color unfolding concertina format with photographs and poems
 New and limited


  Longhouse, 2012
 A signed edition is available upon request
$8, unsigned


Buy now (U.S. addresses with $2 s/h) with Paypal:





 



Thursday, September 27, 2012

VOICE ~





Kurt Schwitters




ursonate_merz 24 by kurt schwitters on Grooveshark




Superman artist/performer Kurt Schwitters (Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters), was dead at age 60 on January 8, 1948. He was born and was later buried in Hanover, Germany.

He composed in an exhilarating galaxy of media and genre — Surrealism, Dada, Constructivism, poetry, painting, sculpture, sound, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installation art. His collages, called "Merz Pictures", made his name.






Merz ABCD
(1928)








Schwitters composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, Ursonate (1922–32; a translation of the title is Original Sonata or Primeval Sonata). The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters' heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. Schwitters performed the piece regularly, developing and extending it, until finally publishing his notations for the recital in his last Merz periodical, 1932.


The musician and painter Billy Childish has a Kurt Schwitters poem tattooed on his left buttock. He made a short film on Schwitters's life, titled The Man with Wheels, (1980, directed by Eugean Doyan).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Childish







I Don't Like The Man I Am by Billy Childish on Grooveshark




wikipedia & bob



Wednesday, September 26, 2012