FURTHER ON UP THE ROAD ~

JAIME DE ANGULO ~

Counterpoint, 2017

———————————————

This is about as good as it gets for us awaiting more word from

someone, anyone, on the life, pathways, and Old Coyote

wisdom of Jaime De Angulo — his mysterious and sure

linguistic and ethnographic work — and be assured that

eastern native but gone to the west coast for very good reason

Andrew Schelling would be the one to draw up buckets and buckets 

of well-stitched history and folklore for a marvelous telling

of De Angulo biography 

(Andrew insists it isn't, but it is, or the best we have at the moment)

Big Sur rugged characters, San Francisco poets who visited

(and learned something)

Native American lore, and just what happens when one

is this independent in the churning American machine age

[ BA ]

OUR LOSS ~

Mr. Liu was imprisoned and unable to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in person in Oslo in 2010. The actress Liv Ullmann read from Mr. Liu’s “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”

CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 

LIU  XIAOBO

M O R E

ARBORETUM ~

Arboretum

                                

                                           for Ronald Baatz

No rain today, thankfully (too much to do) but maybe tomorrow. Whereas the daylilies are now in full abundance, but it took a fight. A fight? With flowers? No, with deer! Three in particular that we have been at war with for years now, as the mother deer teaches her young the succulents. Why wouldn’t she?! We don’t mind the now and then flowers they pluck for breakfast on the outer edges but we won’t tolerate them in the full backyard where the best grow. Honestly, in the thousands. I worked for decades for people, wealthy, who often shunned the common orange man daylily, so I’d load up my pickup truck with everything they wanted “gone.” Gone was to our house. They even grew tired of the expensive daylilies bought as bulbs and multiplying beyond their imaginations so they were often also “gone” ones. More for our house. It’s how you gain and gain flowers and watch a garden grow, and gain and gain books, thus make a library inside the house. So last night, near midnight I was again out in the yard, barefoot, wet cool grass, the moon of Saturday night still with me, chasing the three deer; gallopers! with my strong beam flashlight and a stone or two. They never get hit, the strong beam flashlight seems to scare them like a flying saucer. I give chase. In the early evening if they dare to show, I will go out with my pellet rifle and sting one or two. That seems to send a quick message down the clothesline that, “This guy means business.” “Yeah but the other places have mean dogs.” "Yeah but he has a rifle.” So the message is getting across and we’ve saved the daylily splendor for this year. Last year the deer about wiped us out. We also spray peppermint oil on all the flowers. That takes a good half hour with a spray jar and determination.

Look at me, I haven’t even mentioned the woodchucks! A family have set into the new barn I built last summer. Don’t blame them, nice barn, filled with firewood, plenty of access and like a virtual hotel. Usually the snakes get the firewood locations but now the woodchucks are in. We discovered them when they ate every one of Susan’s potted flowers. That was money down the drain. We sent out a stern warning in real words when we saw the woodchucks and we knew they could hear us. “Do more of that and I bring out the .22 rifle next time.” No pellet gun. And I’m a pacifist (ask my draft board) but I’ve spoken with Gandhi over the years and he reminds me that we do share, but we don’t become overcome. So far no woodchuck on a daylily = friends. I showed Sweetheart where to put her new choice of potted flowers, along with the cherry tomatoes: upstairs on the bedroom porch. Fill it up to the brim, I said to Sweetheart, make it an outdoor greenhouse. Arboretum.

  [ BA ]

HENRY DAVID THOREAU ~

Someone Is 200 Years Old Today

R E A D      M E

NATHANIEL MACKEY ~

M O R E !

LITERATURE CLASS ~

M O R E !

FROM THE HEAVENS ~

Dyed Brunette With A Blonde Streak

used to know her

bought fine clothes from her

always b’day or holiday gifts

shared stories of our children

laughed easily together

liked all the same music

knew her name and she knew ours

then the filthy rich took over our country

she was lost in the maelstrom

became shriveled and old

doesn’t know us now shopping the same day

in the dollar store

It Happens

After he grew

a huge beard

he barely talked

From The Heavens

I love the weather —

it controls the lot

of us

United

There is something

all together rich about

all of us a little poorer

walking around while it

rains in these small towns

—————————————

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

TIM BUCKLEY ~

WALKS WITH WALSER ~

M O R E !

JOAN JETT ~

ERNST MEISTER ~

Still to

tell, still to

tell . . . my

memory

asks me, and I

stare at it.

Am I alive?

I ask my room, —

I ask

the space in the expanse

and lastly:

Are you, space,

what I know?

-

When we're

stripped right

down to

clay, then

the talk of

what's singable

is right.

The man who is born,

thought through to the end —

it echoes back.

-

Many

have no language.

Were I not myself

replete with misery, I

would not

move my tongue.

-

If we would once again

be given eyes

after some time

in the corpse, in death . . .

As we made love,

you examined

my cranium

very closely.

-

Look into the opened hand.

Departure

keeps showing up there.

A sound is present

and doesn't end

against the edges of the hills.

-

At the end of days,

what kind

of stammering will come

from mankind's mouth,

when difficulty

becomes a cripple,

if anything at all,

and the heavens' coldness

freezes the acts over.

Language formally,

this romance,

when the song already

lost its head.

-

Someday,

when the last ones

are doing well for themselves

above the ashes,

when love

is the most blind

since the times, when those

who themselves forgot,

children of untimed,

are completely forgotten . . .

we — you all

in the unstoppable

starry

misfortune.

-

Think, in the

quintillionth year

you won't

be allowed to be homesick

for person and Earth.

THIS, that you

were a child

of the universe,

is gone,

and where

is the unholy one,

the mother with her

wits about her,

and where

the star that shone for us?

I'm reeling.

I also wished,

before it ended, I'd see

a dream.

-

Wisdom, the idle wise,

might even a cut go

sharply across the eyes.

Unable —

all that love and guilt, all

that honor.

Also never to be ashamed,

as on days that

taste good.

———————————————

Ernst Meister

Of Entirety Say the Sentence

Wave Books

translated from the German by

Graham Foust, Samuel Frederick

CONSCIENCE IS OUR GUIDE ~

NOAM  CHOMSKY

R E A D      M E

BEI DAO ~

R E V I E W

New Directions 2017

translated from the Chinese by Jeffrey Yang

BERTIE KOLLER ~

ELFRIEDE JELINEK ~

R E V I E W

Seagull Books

2017

THEATER

POETRY

EARNED HERMITAGE ~

Letter To The Next Landowner

You won’t keep it up like we did

Not to worry — we did it for a half century

The stone hut, the sturdiest looking, will go first

I built it for our son — earth to earth

The house we re-built from ground to ridge

All the time it made the most perfect sense

A minister and his wife owned the house before we did

He not only sold us the house, he married us

The land was cut & mowed & planted & moved & loved

Every day of our lives, but don’t believe it

The land will tell you —

We are buried here

Our bones are the stones to be found

Wait for the wind

She & Me

She even stands with

me when I pump

the gas

Whippoorwill

About two minutes of a steady rowing mating call

Out of a blossoming apple tree —

Then the deadliest silence imaginable

Earned Hermitage

Shunned by

nearly everyone

on the road

————————————— 

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse