I'll probably remain in stealth mode from here on.  Further, I will begin my night job of construction: building walls between people.  It's a sad fact when fear and whatever else  drives people to make communication a liability instead of an asset.  Silly me, I thought the Web, with its inate ability to use almost all of our senses at the same time, would enhance communication.  Instead, in a venue like this, that is suppose to 
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such a thing, it gets worse instead of better.  I can get half-friends anywhere.  Here, they are fully useless.  Sorry if I am not more compassionate, but like those I refer to, I think this is the damndest time for selfishness.  Good luck in figuring out how to get over yourselves.  I am through with my icepick and my patience has melted before the withering assault had an effect.

 

Voyeurism from The Edge of A Black and Yellow
Coleman Folding Chair While Drinking Coffee at 10 a.m.

A broken pool table sits in the nearby
recreation room shattered by sledgehammers 
a foot long and heart-heavy. 
Tiki torches burn on like Johnny 
Cash's desire to meet Jesus.

Country and boat-borne trash in bags
sit in front lakeside next to
a detached and prone screen door
unhinged and half wide open.

Birds sing sweetly along as the karaoke 
CD player talks about rambling, gambling,
being right and ragged.

The camp counselors might awake 
any minute to eat, smoke, blow
fireworks and their days and
nights for another span of hours
and merest moments.

A speedboat goes trawling by, outboard
and fish-bound (if His selection of lures
and skies are a fit). Chances are
the leader-bearded fish, five-strung
strummed and Bishop-ordained, may
appear in his mitre and Southern
drawl. Maybe he'll be quiet;
perhaps he'll raise up his hook
and line: quilt-building a
geography and biography together,
aligned and divergent enough to 
let 'em in close enough to see
if that light stays on whenever
the door gets closed.

Citronella isn't needed at the amphitheatre
for most, but the popcorn butter
is too much to take right out of the tub.
Yet nothing sticks and it doesn't have to.

Music: The Glorious,Glorious Exile on Main Street.
Cleaned out the mold-infested summer school basement classroom.  It's actually the coolest (tempwise) joint at the camp.  Over the off-season, it's filled with all of the boats from our waterfront.  The mess takes a whilst to sweep up, but today's previously half-spent day on useless training was the best day for the job, rather than anytime between now and Tuesday, all free days before class actually kicks off.  

I 've had a broken driver's side window motor for a bit.  Maneuvering it to open and close with my neckclenchers came to an end on Monday when, slightly jammed, so I thought, the window unstuck by spiderwebbing and shattering a couple of inches from my face.  I only got a few cuts on my hands and knees and none on my silhouette.  Black and red are only good for clothes and the Chicago Bulls.  It will be about two weeks until I can afford to fix it, but that's fine, since I am in rural Corncesttucky.

Can't seem to find that bump I need to put pen to paper for poetry.  Been reading an assload of stuff, including poetry.  Gathered my woodburning stuff, which I know will do the trick, but I'm not quite ready for that, either.  Perhaps I am scared of the revelatory process, along with the draining spiritual investment that comes with navigating the territory of both endeavors.  I've been fairly industrious in other tasks hereabouts.  Hmm.

1.  Got CPR re-certified in about 1 1/2 hours.  This is the fastest in three years.
2.  Climbed Laundry Mountain
3.  Read some essays on New Orleans by Codrescu.
4.  Bought co-caine-chopping razor blades I'll be using to scrape adhesive off of my car's trim.
5.  Emptied the dead cat's room (also the place I iron my clothes daily) and scrubbed the carpet.
6.  Deskinned 5 chicken leg/thigh pieces and put them on the barby, along with some corn-on-the-cob.
7.  Ate some of that.
8.  Put the room back in order.
9. Went to the store and bought stuff.
10,  Popped some corn and am watching the Rockford Files.

when summer school training has become a snore, I am tired from doing nothing, and shish-ke-bobs are under the seduction of teriyaki and lemon glaze on the grill.

Steve, Don't Eat It! Vol. 5

I recall a time at this site not too long ago when a select group of people did their very best to make this site hum with their sincere and self-righteous political posturing on both sides of the Americanized conservative/liberal spectrum.  (Yes, I know there are definitions of these terms much more broad and inclusive that are utilized beyond our borders.)

We had an open forum in which certain people could express/vent/make asses out of themselves.  Many, if not most of those self-appointed leaders of the public opinion, are gone now, claiming that the site is boring and all of their friends left etc etc etc.  The bottom line is that once the last big election happened, these nitwits had nothing left to contribute and damn well knew it.

Seems now that a few journal entries from various people are showing a return to form.  Debating with most of these folks when they are in their mobilizing mindset is useless, as they are not here to learn, only to seek ratification and push their ideas of correctness.  In a matter of time, hopefully they will again dry up and go away.  I, for one, am glady awaiting a break up of a few of the newer cliques.  Sadly, a few of the older members who did stick it out are at the ready to stir shit with their narrow views and bring along a few strident and well-meaning, but ultimately easy-to-manipulate fish who will take the fall.

I helped put the hammer of honesty on a few of these folks that are no longer here.  That may very well happen again, especially if those who are blathering continue to clog up public space with their bulljive.  I don't really care if you are using your "private journal" to do it either, as it is publically displayed. See you on the flips.  Oh yeah, and older members who are trying to exploit the newer ones, get ready.

 

As I was trying to say last night before a technophage interrupted me, I did a little investigation within the periphery that is my eventual poetry compilation.  Why on earth I am sharing its nuts and bolts on this public forum is unknown, but here goes:

 

Back in 1998, I got sober.  Big deal. For me, it was just that, a mere life and death issue, one that required me to focus every bit of meager physical, mental, and spiritual wherewithal I was barely clinging to at the time.  As a result of immersion within the AA fellowship, I predictably began getting heavy into confessional music, namely 70's singer/songwriters.  My favorite of them (perhaps still) was Joni Mitchell. Her 1976 release Hejira was written while Joni was traveling by car from Maine to L.A.  The title is somewhere of a twist on the Islamic hijira, or pilgrimage.  I take it she was kind of on a surveying sort of escape, or at least, I knew I was at the time I first heard this glorious record.

 

One of the most popular songs of this unheraled (at the time) record is “Amelia”, which was a tribute to the quasimythical aviator Amelia Earhart. Truly, Earhart's legend has grown so prolific that her deeds she did accomplish, within both the atmospheres of the air and society, are subsumed inside of the details of her final expedition.  As you can see in the following lyrics to “Amelia”, Mitchell handily captures Earhart's spirit and subsequently intertwines the resonance of the same and makes it flow alongside Mitchell's own emotional undertow. This song, along with every other spectacular song on this album, also helped me, acting as a sort of rinse cycle for the foul and prickly things that were pouring out of me as I tried to learn what it was like to become a clear thinking adult for the first time at age 26.  My drinking started at age 13 and carried on straight through until this time.  Of course, it's hard to know how to act like a realized human being if you were too comatose, blind or oblivious to find out or even care about how it is all supposed to work.

 

Fast forwarding to 2004, I had finished graduating college with an English degree. I suppose this was fitting, as manipulating my native language was something I was found to be pretty good at since I was little. While in college, I ended up taking a poetry course having not written verses before and being pretty much  intimidated by the whole formulaic set up of stanzas, rhyme scheme etc.  foisted upon me as a sophomore in high school slogging through Julius Caesar.  I did ok in the college course, with the semi-help of a now fairly well-published poet who is making a name for himself in certain small presses. More than anything, I was now gifted with a much wider set of tools to use toward self-expression. Despite the sometimes brutal criticisms I obtained (usually rightfully) in that class, I at least halfheartedly kept up the practice of writing verse, reading the same, and perhaps most importantly, trying to be both observant and manipulative enough to please myself in the manner with which I saw and recorded my visions, thoughts, and feelings.

 

Sometimes, the process of writing and healing interpolated themselves within each other so much that I pleasantly found myself locked into groove after groove in both my school work and my improving condition of spiritual health.  In retrospect, not all of this “serenity” was of the peaceful or happy kind.  Much of my emotional health was contained within the inverse, with lots of anger and disappointment to be reckoned with.  This was a good thing because it helped me form a much thicker skin that I had during my drinking times, thus providing a sort of “insurance policy” against future upsets of the most grave.  After a time, much of the active efforts I put in toward keeping sober were not needed as much as before. My “broken coper” was somehow functional at the subconscious level, much as my desire to get drunk had been for so long.

 

Graduation was not an instant path to “the next stage” in life, as many people think it is or find it to be.  I was not hired for the immediate school year as a teacher, so I found working as a security guard, airplane refueler, fieldhand, and substitute teacher to be enough to pay most of my rent and hold off eviction for a time.  While working all of these jobs and genuinely struggling financially after moving on from a seven-year job, I ran into numerous people who were trying as I was to “make it” to some kind of destination in life, of comfort, security, of belonging, or contributing to the greater good.  I also saw many people who had no chance in hell over ever doing those things. There were some folks nestled somewhere in between and, much like I was before I stopped drinking, just looking for their “in” to get them along that golden road.  Some of the people made it, but were, to me, going to be unhappy due to unresolved personality issues that either obliviously or intentionally alienated their fellow human traveler.  Many of these souls were misled by old, dysfunctional, and untrue conventions such as, “I am killing myself little by little and not bothering anyone else,so why do you care?”, or “This is business, so it's ok.”  I found myself constantly questioning my goals, my identify and my general worth and wealth.  All the while, I was reading more and more poetry and committed to wanting to make my book of poetry. The concept came to me that I should highlight the lives of the various people I have talked to, dined with, loved, disliked, admired, or ignored. T here was always a since of failure involved, theirs or mine, and not often was there a “center that could hold”, as Yeats writes in his masterpiece “The Second Coming”.  I figured a good working title for the larger collection would be called Yonderlings: those people who are within sight or reach, or hearing of what they sought or where they were supposed to be, but somehow never arrived at their destination or went right past it, or lost it etc.  Each poem was/ is to chronicle some tale of someone, or several people who fit the mold, so to speak.

 

A good opening of sorts seemed to be a tribute to Amelia Earhart.  The poem, as most of the ones I am most happy with, came to me rather quickly and took only for me to put it to paper.  Verses I have labored over in the past have come out quite terribly, and thus, I don't spend a lot of time hashing over what comes out.  Yet, I used to take copious amount of notes on scrap paper and such, always thinking this line or that idea or this term would fit in somewhere down the line.

 

Last night I was surprised to find out I had subconsciously mimiced Mitchell's “Amelia" with my “Invocation”. Granted, I took a different twist than she did, but many of the phrases and words were too close. See for yourself:

 

 

 

Yonderlings: Invocation After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the esthetic appeal of flying." "Not much more than a month ago I was on the other shore of the Pacific, looking westward. This evening, I looked eastward over the Pacific. In those fast-moving days which have intervened, the whole width of the world has passed behind us -except this broad ocean. I shall be glad when we have the hazards of its navigation behind us." ... Amelia Earhart, several days before she left for Howland Island and disappeared. ****************************************** Striving to come full circle… you did this with the trying, expended fuel and effort in getting your kind and the planes of the be- and we all in flight. You lifted up without running from the turbulence of the towers in charge, strong buildings making sounds standing still with speakers loud and binding upon the semaphores of what’s now “clear” for take-off. Traffic from radar, too, is projected, but the signs you had remain primitive and descending from the clouds of the curious while you pointed past Icarus and touched your hand to Sol’s cheek. The mark left was not so much triangular as it was tunnelingly deep, and parallel to hope. The shining things picked up by we crows are seen in your smile, the deeds, directions provided without speech, those seen as divine reflections of you interpolated within the us and them of we. Many have no compass in pocket, nor eyes to pull to and from maps. The contours still go on for our very own ages and past that some more to collect years and promises apart from the inside of us but adhering withouch to he and she sitting across from and certainly with and beyond the self.

 

 

 

Today, there was an intake of both Tilex and  spray paint fumes.  The Tilex was from doing  the bathroom up as it should be.  The spray paint had to do with me painting this 100 lbs. stone cherub on a fish that I keep in my classroom.  One of my kid's parents brought it to me from Chicago.  I decided to give it some coats of purple and black.  Tomorrow, I think I will use both the purple and the black at the same time and give it a murky, ominous look.  Also worked on my classroom a tad, filing stacks of ignored handouts etc.  Pretty ho-hum day.  Tomorrow, the kitchen.  Perhaps a swing to Elkhart to see my sponsor but who knows for sure.  Gas is a shit-ton and driving for the eighty minuets it takes for round trip migh cost me $20.00. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKSUXXOORZ