Francis Hart Burget-Foster

Born today at St. Lukes Roosevelt - 5:17am - 4 lbs 12 oz.
Seems in fine fettle for just barely 34 weeks gestation. We feel lucky and hope fortune continues to smile on us.

Death, with an ear to the tumbler
Learning you, sleepless, learning

Detainees

Bound round with white twine
The branches supplicate,
A litter of needles scuffed
Hither and yon by passing boots.
Thirty dollars,
Christmas tree, withstand.

to the hospital...

So Rebecca had a bit of bleeding last night and notified her doctor, who
said she should not be bleeding at 28 weeks and should definitely be seen.
Rather than wait til the morning, after putting Sevi to bed and getting the
downstairs neighbor to come up and watch over her (which incidentally had
her too excited to fall asleep til 10:30) we headed to St. Lukes Roosevelt.
We were fairly expeditiously admitted, and Rebecca had a fetal monitor
attached, which, after several minutes seemed to show normal fetal heartbeat
and contractions of a sort measuring in about every 9 minutes--although
Rebecca wondered whether it wasn't just his characteristic kicking and
rolling around that read as contractions. To inhibit contractions they
attached Rebecca to an IV drip and we waited. Eventually a resident came in
with an ultrasound machine, and the sonogram she conducted had her a little
befuddled--it seemed to her to be possibly placenta previa, a condition in
which the placenta has attached wholly or partially over the cervix, which
raises concerns about bleeding and preterm delivery. But being a resident,
and confiding in us that she hadn't eaten all day, she wasn't confident of
her finding. As luck would have it, the expert ultrasound doctor was on
hand, and he guided her through a more complete reading, which showed no
abnormalities, although no explanation for the bleeding either. He then
also guided her through the more invasive vaginal ultrasound to inspect the
cervix--again no apparent problems, though no answers. After he left, the
resident rolled in her tray to conduct her manual exam. She proceeded
carefully, and was probing around with her fingers when she froze. She
called very forcefully to another attending resident to come immediately.
She repeated twice with ever greater urgency. When asked what the problem
was she said "I HAVE CORD". I can't imagine three words that would have had
a more drastic effect on the ward. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE attending
dropped what they were doing. It was as if the walls had collapsed open
around us. The residents fingers were still frozen where they had been and
the attending doctor told her not to move an inch. They brought Rebecca's
head down on level with her pelvis. The resident rattled through the stats
she had gathered while the senior resident asked her a barrage of questions.
They undraped Rebecca's belly and the nurse came in in an instant with a
razor and began to shave. Another resident brought paper and pen over to
Rebecca's head and informed her her signature was needed on a consent form.
For what? C-section. What the resident had discovered was a prolapsed cord
protruding through the cervix, basically a crimped cord which could at any
moment cut off blood supply to the fetus. A critical condition. The OR was
being readied, the anesthesiologists were waiting outside the doors to take
over. This all happened in the space of about a minute. The resident was
ordered by the doctor to ever so slowly remove her fingers. He watched the
heart-rate monitor, and it showed no slackening of the heartbeat. He urged
calm, and to contact Rebecca's doctor, whom they managed to reach in her car
just as she was heading out of the city, and who thereupon turned around and
sped back to the hospital. He wanted everyone to remain calm until she
could come and have a look. They left us alone beyond the curtain, Rebecca
shivering and requiring more blankets as we conferred about the
ramifications of perhaps having to give unconventional birth to a 28-week
old preemie. When Rebecca's doctor, Dr. Paka, arrived, she did her own
manual exam to confirm the prolapsed cord. She got down on her side and the
residents tried to maneuver the light around her head while she probed.
What she found, thankfully, was not a presenting cord, but rather a half
finger-long length of polyp outside the cervix that had been almost
certainly been the cause of the bleeding. All the dire scenarios that had
sprung up just as precipitously melted away. This was a relatively minor
problem, and one that may have little or no implications for the pregnancy.
She counselled that Rebecca take it easy--she HAD had contractions after
all, but these may have been due to dehydration and may have been largely
incidental. So, 4 hours later we got back home and relieved our sainted
downstairs neighbor of her Sevi duty. An eventful night. I hope Rebecca
carries this baby to term because, speaking only for myself, I believe I
could use at least 12 weeks to get the adrenaline stores back up to where
they used to be.

post-election exchange w/bro

Dear Kevin,
I thought that this morning's New York Times had several good pieces. The below sums it up best, however. I think we are facing in America a real rejection of the principles of the Enlightenment - precisely because so many Americans fear the more complicated "God" that Reason requires. Until that issue is addressed in some comforting way, I think we can expect more of the same -- wanton war, environmental destruction, hatred of the "other," and an easily manipulated audience. I fear that the arguments of reason fall quietly to the ground in the silent forest of ignorance.
Love, Mark



Subject: Re: NY Times

Thanks. Yes, my angle on it is that we are now caught in the worst kind of negative feedback loop—this spasm of militarism and religion that’s laying waste to the conception of the worth of human beings. The unreason begets more unreason. Things get worse and this religion has the answer: a parallel reality that mirrors the grimness of the actual inversely. It also seems to me that corporate capitalism and fundamentalism dovetail very well in this disregard for externalities—the former because the costs of rapacity are still kept from affecting the bottom line (just the lives of people, whose role is still serviceable enough not to be a concern—even to the extent of taxing them to pay for a war in which they are being killed), and the latter because the afterlife in the ideal world to come provides both the excuse and the gloss over what perishes before our eyes—environment, lives in warfare, liberties.

So I guess I see religion as the “front man” in this much more sinister attack on the worth of human life that is the result of unfettered corporate capitalism. That’s my take on it. Its potential for making irrelevant the actual machinations of corporate rule have been seized. A face has been put on it, George W. Bush--himself a hapless dupe whose vanity just needs to be stroked enough to enact the agenda. The Nixon problem has been understood and answered. Placate and distract the people continually and relentlessly from being able to conceptualize what is of real long-term benefit to them, let alone an idea of the “Good.”

If there’s any hope, in my opinion, it’s in perceiving that this isn’t just a lapse from the Enlightenment—it is what engendered the Enlightenment itself after 1500 years of “Darkness” during which feudal societies used religion in the very same way. Democracy itself is the aberration. Let’s just hope we can accelerate the reawakening this time.

So to me it means taking the measure of human nature all over again. What is the real appeal to our livelihoods and our happiness? Is it really very complicated? Is there not something persuasive in our ideals to be seized on that properly calls shame down on this warring, this mis-measure of the good of other people (whom we kill to liberate). I don’t know how to formulate it and am hardly empowered to send such shockwaves through the populace, but along with countless others I’ll be thinking about these things and what I can do.

Love Kev



Cc: Sugi
Subject: RE: NY Times

well said. how do you feel about "fettered" capitalism?
m




To: Mark Burget
Cc: Sugi
Subject: Re: NY Times

I’m all for it. Long live the marketplace, but I believe corporations shouldn’t enjoy the same rights and “freedoms” as human beings if they aren’t made to observe the concomitant duties. Leveraging their status as de facto “persons” corporations have subverted the market and ultimately plowed people under. I know the lures of greed and influence have surely made the task of policing corporations difficult, but impossible? Inimical to capitalism itself? To “growth”? That this argument now has traction is a dire indicator, in my opinion. On the one hand regulation is seen to hamper progress, and on the other, rights stand in the way. “All these people and their ‘entitlements’” I heard one scornful radio caller rage recently. He went on to extol the virtues of the “ownership society”. Presumably in an “ownership society” the nuisance of entitlements is superseded. First, liberal was made a dirty word. Entitlements on deck, rights in the hole.


From: Mark Burget
Reply-To:
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 11:11:16 -0700

Cc: Sugi
Subject: RE: NY Times

yes - agreed. so what are we going to do, you and me. do we start something anew? why aren't our stories resonating? with whom can we pull together to make something of our frustration, our anger, our sadness?
m


K:

Don’t know. Stay tuned! Did you already go and come back from Indonesia?

ltr not sent re: Seamus Tansey

Re: The recent tiff in Irish Traditional Music Circles over Seamus Tansey, the flutist, pulling a King Lear on a young woman melodeon player he was scheduled to play with, who 1) didn't provide a mic for him 2) told him to tune up, twice declaring he was "flat" 3) had never heard of him. So he sent her family a letter in which he ratcheted up the bile to the extreme, calling her a conniving little "bitch", ambitiously massacring Irish Traditional Music. The letter was private, but the response was not. Her family brought the letter to the airwaves, and on popular radio show both the young woman (Jenny Langston, or something like that) and Tansey had it out. She had righteous indignation on her side and scores of callers coming to her defense. Tansey was came off like a sputtering pompous id-jit. Nevertheless, the mob nature of the thing prompted me to write to ITRAD saying that in such a situation an individual was right to defend himself, whatever his flaws, against the levelling tribunal nature of such an arrangement, egged on by a venal radio host. To which I got a response from a guy named Jim Carroll saying basically, that Tansey represented the tradition and behaved like an asshole, therefore deserved his dressing down. To which I penned this response, but never it sent it, since frankly it's not great and just further inflamed things. Nevertheless I'll keep a record of it here:

"We have a man who's done a shameful thing. And we have the aggrieved woman demanding justice. So far, so good. Then we have a third party, the radio personality, who eggs the man on, who prods the shameful thing be read in its entirety (listen to the prodding he does after the first paragraph is read). The man is then pilloried before the nation. Does the punishment fit the crime--a private feud of his own concocting, something stewed over, worked up to in an addled, self-amplified misdirected rage against impiety incarnate in this unwitting young female melodeon player? Call after call dresses the man down, a storm of righteousness and indignation. You can hear the crowd rising to its feed applauding the one who can brandish the word "asshole" with jus the right nuance. Oprah meets Irish Traditional Music. Thanks be to God the tradition is too wily to be "represented" by any one soul."

don't fear jumping into the water

that is way more than half the battle in most things

the nader factor

I voted for Ralph last time and probably will this time, hopefully persuading a Ralph-leaning person in a swing state, which is what I did last time. I think there’s a better than 50% chance Ralph will be an even bigger spoiler for the Dems than he was last time, particularly tragic since he HAS proven them to be big fat hypocrites with respect to ballot access. They have put huge resources into trying to stop him. I know it’s a pragmatic move—it certainly is for the Republicans to help him—but it’s not only corrupt, it actually has turned more people to Nader—the kind of people who are indignant at the Democrats’ hypocrisy. If Kerry and McAuliffe had been smart they would have simply tolerated him on the ballot of all 50 states; this would have made it much harder for him not to stand by his quasi-endorsement of Kerry months ago when he called him “presidential”. But now Nader’s just pissed off—he’s lost not only Chomsky and the celebs but Kerry hasn’t returned his calls for months. I do support Nader’s ultimate goal, corrosion of the 2-party system; but like many I think this country will be unrecognizable after another 4 years of Bush. Nader may be the ultimate hero in the end. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water he’ll jump out, but if you just gradually turn up the heat he’ll acquiesce to boiling to death. By so enraging half the country, another 4 years of Bush may ironically lead to enough people leaping out the pot sooner. But it’ll be Nader’s Calvary for the moment. Do you know that the current requirements for a 3rd party candidate in the debates—as determined by the privately owned and funded Commission on Presidential Debates—is a shown 15% polling in 3 mainstream polls. Unless you have the money to buy the kind of coverage from the networks that can even interest pollsters in polling to find out your support—as Ross Perot did—it’s really a Catch-22. If Nader had been in on the debates last time, he would have been more than just a nuisance “spoiler”, he would have had the kind of legitimacy that would have rallied the lily-livered celebs and intellectuals to his side this time and would have built on it here for next time, when he might have really reached the tipping point. As things have played out, if Bush wins this election he’ll be crucified instead, maybe even literally. It’s hard to say where the rage falls harder for many liberals, on Nader or on Bush. I suspect Nader, because it’s fundamentally self-hate—always more virulent.

The "Entitlements" of Man

The corporate (and predominantly now Republican) agenda is to work to disenfranchise people from their rights as human beings. Yes, something that nefarious. Perhaps not realized in so many words, at least by most, but the move to define certain rights as "entitlements' and to disparage that term, effectively disparages rights. Language co-opted in this way ends by convincing people that rights are products of the welfare state. Hence the "owernship society" currently being touted. If this rhetorical feat can be pulled off, it'll make the criminalization of the term "liberal" look like child's play. In an "ownership society" the idea of rights, of debts to our fellow human beings, debts of compasssion and recognition of their full and equal humanity--these collapse before the idea that the amount you own is the sole criterion of worth and right. It's might makes right, pure and simple. The American experiment unravelled at last. Untied States of America.

bloody grin

I won't be caught grinning for not having tried.

manipulation

the refusal to manipulate, whether in convesation or acquaintance, has slowed you, made you ponderous, appear confused and to equivocate. The admixture of uncertainty, guilt, shame and the thought that you really ought to be politicking just makes you a grinner. get back to what was honest and worthy in all of this and strip out the half-hearted political nature of interacting

our president

the kind of man egged on and emboldened by the laughs of the crowd
a suggestible man, but who feels good about himself and conveys that to others
and this his handlers know well

profligacy and simony

these words cropped up in my head just as I was waking this morning. wherefore?

Keyrie Eleison

or however it's spelled, and what does it mean? The phrase cropped up in a dream I had a few nights ago, in connection with light revealing a swath on a blue and white painting.

diner revery

melted butter
pads on the center
of each illustration
on the diner menu.
Something irresistible
something happening
Something becoming something else
What you wanted to happen
Inside you.
It was the
act of satiating Spun as
a decisive move
out of inertia
A U-turn of course.
Diners weren't very
profligate with released
energy.
They dealt in warm
squibs of possibility
ending in acquiescence.
The butter squares
softening and running
said it all.

dust to dust

from an inrush of heady harmony
to a poem about felt emotion
to a poem about poems
to a piece about poets
to a word for that
to a number for short
to 10101

a feast of touch-me-pops

or touch-a-me-pops, as Sevi calls them, all along the fence on either both sides of the Nethermeade arch bridge along the stream side. We reached in and popped scores of them--Papa pulled out fatties for Sevi's special delight. We placed some in her palm and she gently pressed them in touch-a-me-popcorn. After getting what I could I shook the bushes and fireworks of zingers flew every which way.

dragonflies in the botanic gardens

thousands of them buzzing around in the middle air above the cherry esplanade. Under the trees where we were, Sevi and I, they didn't much go. They must have been feasting on all the little bugs, as we didn't see any of those. Wonderful!

eggs o' Jesus

exegesis

fairies at the flume

When we walked to the Flume a few weeks ago Sevi insisted that it was to get magic from the fairies that would turn trolls into shadows. So we went right up on the rock above the black deep water and retrieved the magic and used some on the way home, throwing under the raised rootholes of trees, troll homes.

I can't for the wife of me...

my hasty rant to the Kerry campaign

PLEASE PLEASE READ THIS!!!!

The latest revelations about Bush's thinking himself above the law with regard to National Guard Service should be linked FORCEFULLY and RHETORICALLY with his stance in every area. PLEASE SEE Robert Byrd's quotation of him in his recent book in which he said "I'm the President, I don't have to say why, or answer to anyone" not exact words, but exactly to that effect. This point should be made, and made NOW. The poor man has no clear idea of the presidency as a public service--he is public servant no.1, and not emperor. If you jerk the chain of the American people with this lifelong display of arrogance on his part, and DEMONSTRATE his consistent arrogance in this regard, it WILL RESONATE with voters. This cuts to the core of what this country is about. We never wanted a king, and now we've got a poor idiot who was raised thinking that's what a president is. PLEASE make these points. AND make the point that he is really the man who WOULD BE KING---really just a puppet manipulated by the actual ideologues behind his government who are smarter, but so loathsome to the American mind they need a duped front man for their operations. For 4 years it has worked. We are relying on Kerry and Edwards to close the book on this dark chapter in American history.

"Whatever you do..."

Sevi's current favorite game. Where Papa says, "whatever you do, don't do X" and Sevi then goes and does X with relish. Even if it means brushing her teeth, putting on pajamas etc, as long as it is in defiance of Papa. Who said reverse psychology wasn't good for something. It did work like a dream while up in the Adks, but now the power of the game is fading. Still, we got a good week out of it.

a belief in words

David Foster Wallace is a brilliant Rabelaisian fount, but lacks that belief in words, a strong emotional instinct akin to superstition that many perhaps lesser intellectual lights tend toward. Makes him undiscriminating in the way of the "mot juste", the shrine of Hemingway, and why perhaps perceiving the lack he deifies someone like Paula Fox, a believer in beauty and precision, a real lover of the word who for that reason has probably written fewer in the last 50 years than he has in 10. It's the immovable thing in her versus the restless questing. Bellow is more of Wallace's camp, but brilliantly also turns words with such feeling and fluency and deep personal "history" that it's like getting swept up in a personal current. And then again Bellow fell over himself in admiration of the spare and precise Cormac McCarthy, whom he he said wrote "death dealing sentences."

blue m&ms

A mendicant curbside picking out the blue M&Ms from his palm and shaking them back into the bag. Superstition? Distrust of blue food?

god stopping time

"You ask, 'How can he attend to me and everyone else?' That's easy. God can stop Time. Time is has nothin' on God. It was just an idea he threw in here to make life interesting. Time. So, take that out of the equation and anything's possible. There isn't any friggin' cause and effect unlessen he wants there to be."

Sevi invented a food called "Cracky Go-nuts" which are "cracky on the outside, like a shell, and gooey on the inside like chocolate"

a little more bleeding last night. Seems that by evening, whenever she's not resting, the blood comes.

a little more bleeding before her nap at 1:30pm today

a little bleeding again last night before bedtime ~10:30

Driving down to NYC from VT yesterday for her doctor's appointment, Rebecca had bleeding in the car at Bennington. Came back. The bleeding continued, but stopped as of this morning. We still do not know if it was a miscarriage.

the sex couple

Striding through the Champlain Festival Grounds in bikini thong bathing suits, a man and woman in their early 60s, bulging in all the right places but over-ample and jiggly to the point where, proud feet pounding the grass and parading in unison, they relied on sag as a bold strategy of contrast to the bounce they could still command. Still they broadcast this: what we're good at is SEX, and have been since before you were born.

317-LIE

I came upon a mailbox 317, but for some reason I reversed it upside down and read it first as LIE.

at the swimming hole

The old man, white and topheavy, moving at a measured stagger into green water. His clamshell white legs still told of ridged socks removed within the hour, his terry-cloth robe, his sad dugs, his grimace and gritting refusal to take a hand. His final launch into the pool, like a glacier calving, irrevocable, and the second or two of his downturned body on the water, grey hairs fanned on the surface--did he stop moving? Then rolling like a log up he came with a rueful triumphant smile, free of gravity, but too chilled to remain submerged, and groped for the arm of his lady friend. She, big with frosted hair and pepperoni tan, and still just enough in command of her own movements to exhibit grace, to be infinitely patient and giving to one who wanted to be helped without betraying the need to be.

act her way out of a paper bag

A twist on that, where an actress is forced contractually to take on a role that she really objects to playing. So she goes through it resolving to do a kamikase protest--does the most outrageous performing she can imagine--doing emotive nonsense readings of the words, monotone, atonal, screechy, sheer buffoonery. And of course she steals the movie and becomes an international sensation.

Irish Tunes at Champlain Valley Festival

only two of note I remember:

McFadden's Handsome Daughter (Reel)
Dwyer's (or O'Dwyers?) Hornpipe

protean beauty

Beauty in art is an evolving value for each of us, despite its being reified by us as a people and anointed absolute. Our individual conciousnesses are forever charting new ground with our lives, during which the vantage on beauty is ever-changing, tied to the flow of time and our experience. This is the basis of sophistication in art, for better AND worse. And where the gulph widens between novitiates and tyros. Which causes many to lapse back into mawkishness--strident feelings for a beauty they USED to sense and advertise to the young vibrant world that they still do. By contrast some retreat deliberately into the esoteric as a refuge from that threat of youth. Better to stand by one's experience and continually coax out the vitality there. If anything is unchanging it is this ongoing debt to art.

Dempsey's Session

The Ash Plant
Banish Misfortune
Geese in the Bog
Christmas Eve
Kitty's Wedding
Jackie Coleman
Lark in the Morning
Drowsy Maggie

sedimental

I've had to deal with such humorless people. I feel like saying to them, why not just lie down on the ground now and become sediment? Why wait? In 50 or so years you'll be blending back in the earth in some fashion. Your lack of humor displays your unblinking sobriety before that fact. If you can't bring a little music to our lives then you'd do better to return to the earth the goods you've sequestered; something good might be made of the elements of which you're composed, and the sooner the better. So go on now, lie down and submit to this process, we'd be much obliged.

concert in Rutland, VT--main street park

Spread our blanket and ate wraps and sesame noodles, Sevi visited a tanned alcoholic in a lawn chair with a large blue parrot named Savannah, aged 10. "Just a baby," said the man with sharp blue eyes, slack and tan. "They live to be 125, longest of any animal." What does she eat? "Just about anything that we eat. She loves pizza, doesn't matter what topping. Whatever, it's all good for her, you know wheat and whatnot. I guess maybe not the cheese. All she drinks is water. You know Man is the only animal that drinks anything else?" While I nodded, entertaining exceptions in my mind, it struck me that this question of humanly predilection for beverages was something this nervy man wrestled with. Back on the picnic blanket, Sevi running across the lawn for a hug. Lots of kids running about; some girls with their legs crossed like arms toddled around as if on their legs' elbows--strange and painful looking to one who was never that flexible. The band in the cement gazebo wasn't objectionable, just nondescript background quasi-rock folk fare, original I guess. Everybody had lawnchairs, but a woman on the built in park bench who went out of her way to claim her friends were coming so we wouldn't take up their spaces beside her. Warm evening, cloudless, lay down with Sevi looking up through the skimpy tree to the blue sky the sun was leaving. Tired, content. Sugi went looking for ice cream, was sent on a mission to find a Ben and Jerry's that didn't pan out. We all shared a raspberry torte. Drove home in the dusk, moist grassy air, passed some bikers with no lights on, some cows.

Crave

explore every shade of meaning of that word in a film. The genesis: the buddhist citing as release from craving as the only true freedom. One at odds with the notion of freedom as predominantly understood in this country

the glitter odyssey

follow the life of a speck of glitter, a LA RONDE structured movie. Start with a girl applying it before heading to a nightclub-via about 12 others--end up on the forearm of a southeast asian farmer 3 days later

some tunes from East Durham

Brian Conway on fiddle with others, honoring Jack McGann: The Coolan, Lord Gordon's, ~Lad Aleash, First Month of Summer

He referred to these as "New York" tunes, very popular here: The Luck Penny, ~The Quiet My Love

The fiddlers did an encore: Lord McDonalds', Ballinsloe Fair

Deirdre Connolly with Mary Rafferty, Mary Reilly, Donna Long and a humorous bodhran player: ~Pipe on the Hub, ~Cones'

A very nice flute air, don't know the name of the player: Paddy's Ramble Through the Park

some others:
Jack the Britches (Polka)
Jack Reardon's Reel
~Bonnie O'Kate
Jennifer's Chickens

Saw a lot of Mary Bergin. Ran into Suzanne Grossman, former next door neighbor, who was up there for the week taking fiddle classes with Brian Conway. She says she's come a long way.

Paul Klebnikov

was murdered in Moscow on July 9.

traffic confiture

a montage of people yelling bloody murderous threats at eachother in a traffic jam, but substituting the words they say only (not the hateful tones) with the most gushy endearments. "I want to make you happy." "I want to snuggle with you." "I want to have your child." "I want to grow old with you." "I want to feel your pain."

the preponderance of trinkety ideas clustering your brain, a good sell, a clever turn, like Judy Filere's book of weaselly little observations made before she knew love or felt another soul. I caught her in some surreptitious cribbing or other and just felt here was a craven ghoul who knew no better.

At the sound of a shot
they all flew together
and huddled as one.
Thus
the self is plural,
illusory,
born of flight,
cast solid in fear.

Dempsey's Session

My first participation in a session. Very relaxed and enjoyable, wasn't particularly keyed up over it actually, as I might have expected to be. And here of all places the pressure isn't particularly on--they frown on no one. 3 fiddles, 1 mandolin/bouzouki?, 3 bodhrans (one also played bones--I think Ginny Brooks' husband), 1 guitar, a banjo, a very good whistler, an excellent concertina player came late, and an old welcoming accordian player and his wife. I played my turn in several rounds.

1) Killavil Jig - most knew it and joined in.
2) Banish Misfortune - ditto
3) The Joy of My Life - played on flute (my new Dave Copley!) - the good fiddler knew it
4) Paddy Carty's Favourite/O'Sullivan's March - from John Creavan's "The Story So Far" - most didn't know the first, several joined in on the second.

Of the tunes played by others I knew maybe 10%. I grabbed a napkin and wrote down some of the names:

Father Kelly's
Golden Keyboard
Jerry's Beaver Hat
Mountain Road
The Banshee
Apples in Winter
Barrel Burn Reel
Staten Island

Stopped by Swift's on 4th Street off the Bowery on the way home. A tight clutch of mainly guitar players, one singer, and a fine flute player (looked like a keyed boxwood)--beautiful playing. Stayed for 5 minutes.

email to GH on alcoholism

Quitting drinking is a fine idea. It’s destroyed many good people. My sister never knew what hit her, from party drinking in college til the end at age 43, her entire adult life. To encounter people who knew her only as a drunk—by and large a convivial and goodhearted drunk (drinking amplified on her gregarious and animated personality) but a drunk nonetheless...was hard to take. They never knew the thoughtful and engaging and capable person she intrinisically had been before the alcohol made inroads, the memory of which she knew I still was in possession of and clung to. The last words she spoke to me in person were “You know me, I can beat this.” And I answered her, as often before: ”Of course I know you can, I know you have it in you.” And I did know this. Unfortunately time ran out.

I’m just thankful that her kids knew some of that good, something to remember and put in the balance against all the countless memories of binges, hospital trips and DTs etc. She was very susceptible to alcohol from the first; unfairly so, I’d say. And worst, she had a husband who, criminally, kept alcohol always within her reach til the end. Anyway, people call it failure of the will, but for some it’s a whole other order of magnitude. I wish our family had gotten it together to intervene sooner than we did, by which time much of our support was lost on her.

Anyway, you get me on this subject you get digressions like this... I know you don’t have a chronic problem, but best all the same to take a break and step back from it. You do feel better and get more done after all...

the forgetful mom

"You push out half your brains giving birth and then they suck out the other half"

iChat with Sugi

AIM IM with hudjumama
9:59 PM
hi
howdy
i think i talk to you more when we're not togther
i'm living a nightmare
she's insane
what's up
after her nap everything seemed to be fine
we made a smoothie
then packed for an adventure to take toby for a walk in a place we had to drive to
and we got back and i wanted to bone the chicken
but ed was in the back working so we stopped to talk for him as short as possible
which was a long time
meanwhile, all day she had been playing this cinderella game
where she was cind. and sevi was another person
on our walk, for instance, she said sevi was still sleeping in the car,
and we talked about how she might get out when she woke up and catch up to us
then suddenly she said, here she is, and she took "sevi's" hand
but at various points she would lash out at me if i got the game wrong, i.e., by mistake called her sevi instead of cinderella
so as i was boning the chicken she decided to watch instead of go play
and she wanted to play cinderella and it was all about how she was going to take sevi away from me to cinderella land and not bring her back, etc.
so kind of provocative in itself, but ok
so it happened again that i made some mistake and she shouted at me.
so i said, ok, this is not a good game for me, i can't play it, b/c i don't know the rules, and you change the rules, and i don't like you shouting at me and then crying, etc.
but then she got fixated on the fact that she wanted ME and me alone to play this game w/ her
so i got her to agree that or understand that it was hard on me and that while she protested that she "promised" she wouldn't yell at me i had her understand that if she did that i would have to quit
in other words i gave her one more shot
well of course it didn't pan out
eventually she took my advice and left the room and got some distance until we could be nice to each other
and after that she was
but in a weird way, too, in that kind of guilty way, overly affectionate, as if she were worried that she were going to make me angry
you there?
yep
she's getting complicated
the game thing
yes, and it's too much
is something we have to work on
i'm at my wit's end, as they say
most games I play with her
"WE"????
she likes to initiate the game
it's just me here, flying from a flagpole
twisting in the wind
but whenever there's any element that doesn't go her way
she throws a tantrum
it stands to reason
games are frustrating
it's that, and that's a good observation, but it's not just that
she has to learn the ups and downs of them
we had a problem going to bed, too. i was concerned that she would have trouble falling asleep
so i made the choices clear
go upstairs and ablutions and to bed
or stay down here some more while i do dishes and then do all that
she said emphatically, even after i questioned it, that she wanted to go up
well, of course, came time to say g'night and she flipped
wasn't tired.
you could say that i should have just gone w/ my own instincts and not let her have the choice
but i think she's old enough to have choices
sure
choices make her feel empowered
but i have to say i was upset when she pulled that on me, and further started CRYING rather than talking
she's almost worrying me that she's bipolar or something
may sound extreme
but i don't know
i don't know what's "normal"
I don't think that kind of thing manifests itself at 3-4
no, but could have incipient signs
don't worry about it
or even if not, it was a taste of what terror it could be if it were to happen later
i'm just becoming consumed w/ the thought that this was a bad, bad, BAD idea and i'm stuck, stuck STUCK
10:15 PM
I think you're being overly dramatic
your in a beautiful little town in Vt
in a nice little house with a garden
i think you don't have enough hormones zinging around your body
that's true too
yes, and i haven't had a chance to READ ONE WORD
my fantasy was to spend time reading teh parenting books
and get better at it
ha
just at the moment i most need it i can't
i've given up on the idea of the guitar altogether
don't you EVER piss and moan to me again about how little whistle time you get
how could i do any of that if i'm still so behind on my work?
couldn't
can't
won't
10:20 PM
well goodbye then
you have 1 problem
no free time
no
i have two problems
not "enough" owrk time (none until tomorrow)
and no free time
it's the same problem
no it's not
i would not be so flipped if all i lacked was free time
and it could've or might still be solved by finding the resources that you imagined would be there fore that
that would feel like a luxury
I don't know what happened to them
or why this didn't pan out as anticipated
part of it was fantasy
the playdate switching -- ppl have lives
already established and it's hard for an outsideer to work into them
Aren't there teenagers looking for this kind of work
can't the gardener recommend any
the other part was fantasy b/c i thought "oh well, at worst i'll stay up for 3 hrs each night after she goes to sleep and get done what i need to even if i can't find babysitting"
or anyone else recommend any
well, no go on that
is there no one in Rutland or any outlying community
yes, i'm sure i'll get some babysitting, even maybe as much as 2 hrs/ morning
and that will help
that's not enough
but that's nothing close to what i need
5 hours/ day
would be a start
it just doesn't seem right that nothing can be found
but I guess we may be spoiled
living in the city
i didn't say nothign can be found
where everything's available for a price
but i think this is what i'm going to find
teenagers who can do up to 2-max 3 hrs
alright, i'm tired
i'm wigged
im yuck
going to go
good night
besos
just feel so fucking compromised. i'm doing absolutely NOTHING well. NOTHING. and that pains a perfectionist
i'm not even doing anything mediocre
i feel like i'm in one of those helpless traps
kind of like the end of the semester
when you have all these finals and crap to wrap up
and if you had more time you know you could do it well
but everything comes out like shit b/c you are shit b/c you didn't plan and you're not smart enough
i've had this feeling a few times before in my life -- real paralysis -- and i hate it
hate it
stop beating yourself up
you created a stunning essay
yeah, that was then
you're going to do tremendous work on the show
before i was pregnant, before i was here
you're a great mom
i'm not
present doubts notwithstanding
Of course you will
Don't know what those things have to do with it
10:30 PM
what you need to do is sleep
because clearly you're not getting enough
and nothing will work unless you get more
fuck everything else
and particularly fuck the newsletter
i have fucked the newsletter
good
and myself in the process
probably
no
you're pregnant
you feel awful
too bad for them
they can wait for it
you've waited countless times for others
who have missed their deadlines REPEATEDLY
and now YOU feel bad?
i feel bad about sevi
she deserves better than me
oh horseshit!
stuck here w/ this nightmare
parenting is hard
poor kid has turned herself into cinderella who escapes to cinderella land and takes sevi there away from me
and without all the problems encountered the kid learns nothing, makes no progress
Yes, well we all want to go to Cinderella-land
at times
and this is her first way of figuring out its possible
it's actually very empowering
to control your reality that way
Eventually you come to grips with what the imagination offers and where it falls short
I'd be more worried if she were just a stolid little drone
doing all we said
QUESTION AUTHORITY
--Thoreau
yes i know and it worries me sometimes when she IS too obedient
but i wish she would figure out a nicer way to be disobedient
if you knwo what i mean
What I'm trying to figure out is some zen kind of way
to use her opposition
to arrive at a solution
without bringing my opposition into the equation
a pipe dream admittedly
but maybe something in that direction
also, grappling with the attempt to embody
the things we want to teach her
rather than simply telling her
she also needs to understand certain bottom line behaviors that are acceptable and not acceptable
which always rings horribly false
Well that's harder
She can be told
i.e. she needs to talk, not yell or cry, to get across her opinion
but bottom line is she really needs to experience why they're unacceptable
for it to sink in
10:40 PM
lessons like driving people away
one thing i said to her today was "have you ever seen an adult cry?" meaning when something minor didn't go her/his way
or losing friends
etc
I'm not sure that's the best thing to say
well, that was tonight's lesson -- she drove me away form playing that game w/ her that she so wanted me to play w/ her
SHe's already hung up enough on the kid/adult dichotomy
the point is, we TALK to her
I think it troubles her
and she can talk back
not yell or cry
those are not viable means of communication
that's all that meant
"troubles her"?
I think it makes her feel deficient to be a kid
I'm going to start to de-emphasize that
I think it should be more
x makes me so much happier than y because...
where x is good behavior
concrete things
like the book says
and not placing some criterion of value on it
which
because she can't understand it
just alienates her
and makes her feel deficient
and possibly want to be at some remove from herself
as in Cinderella-land
now look who's getting dramatic
the point is
she adores herself
if the criticism makes sense to her
I think it's less scary
thinks she's the cat's meaow
in fact we had a discussion about "humble"
than if she perceives it as wrong in our eyes but doesn't get why
And you of all people are 90% of the time sensitive to this
yes, that's all good and you've read well
i'm more like 30% these days
well
I don't know of anyone so sensitive to it
Like you
she's hard on herself maybe
she has a real touchiness
about her dignity
wow, i'll say
and her control of situations
jon played a game yesterday of pushing her off-balance when she was squatting
and she looked at him in mistrust, but not doing anything
so he thought he should keep trying w/ this joke
and you can imagine, she ended in hysterics
the only breakdown she had yesterday
I guess I can't tell from the description
but it does sound a bit malicious
yeah, it wasn't artfully crafted
but she really didn't need to take it so badly
she's not into that kind of thing
SO badly
that too
unless she really knows the person
and even then it's dicey
she's not physical -- doesn't like to be rough-housed
of which this was a mild form
I suppose if I'd run around the apt with her like a torpedo
as Matthew and Leo do every day
she'd be inured
10:50 PM
speaking of them, maybe you can catch a movie w/ one or the other while you're there.
i feel a rift
perhaps
only there's really nothing playing
that might be bridged by that
or not a movie -- something
I saw The Corporation, which I highly recommend
but not w/ the kids
I don't know about a rift
we had a great picnic
and haven't seen em since
i saw beth on t he street after -- i told you
you should get to bed
what'd she do
and showed her the sono
and i felt some coolth
kind of trying to get out of there
kind of fidgety eyes
well it's the exact same situation
as when she came up to tell you she was pregnant
now reversed
i'm guessing it really did hurt that comment i made, "you guys really have the life"
sure she didn't want to be
NO not at all
she didn't want to be
she has 2 kids
she's not trying
it doesn't matter
you're fixating on that comment
i never would have told her if i knew she was trying and ESPECIALLY if i knew they were having difficulty
I doubt either of them remember it
just go see one or the other of them
and that will plant a nice seed
I'll try calling
how did the adk invite end up
did they say no
or did you have to say it's no longer extended
she said i messed up the dates, and instead of correcting them i just said that it wasn't really going to work out anyway
kind of got lost in static, which is fine
on both sides
they wouldn't have come
i think that's correct
anyway get to bed
yet
yep
10:55 PM
nice talkin'
soignedoroetcolorati
even tho i made myself cry
i so much prefer writing
besos
who ever said writing wasn't as intimate as talking
especially since you can save a copy of the conversation
for posterity
just go to file save copy
oh, pls do -- i havne't any idea how
you do it
we don't need two
fine
night
oh ok. smooch
come back soon
wildew
miss you
misew
you lots
miss
do I
hug me to sleep...
hudge!
hudge!
'night love dove
you get the last word (that last one -- this doesn't count, just protocol)
hudjumama has gone offline.

a machine of unreason

Cell phone falls in the sandbox

Missionary at playground gave Sevi the blue balloon--a fish with a little fish inside the tube. Said put it in the freezer and it won't lose air. He was right, 3 months later.

Getting older can be like getting behind at accounting. The crux of the matter, the impression so vital you must never forget it is buried somewhere under a detritus of receipts--uncollected thoughts. You settle for a memory of a memory of a thing. And the removes multiply, getting more grotesque, less pertinent to the real intent vitality in others. You must with all your might fight against this. It will win in the end, but you can certainly fend it off for a time.

When I Saw Thunder

as related by Sugi.

Sevi and I went to a storytelling evening on Tuesday in the renovated barn that some VT neighbors have turned into a magnet for earthy cultural events such as reviving the tradition of storytelling. Sevi was riveted by all three storytellers, and I think it went on for about two hours. At the end, Jan, one of the hosts and storytellers, said that they would like to do it again, and they would like others to tell stories, too, if they wanted. Sevi belted out "I do!"

Last night at dinner we were talking about how you can see the lightning but only hear the thunder. She figured out a way that she could see the thunder by putting on her "fairy eyes." I asked her if she would like to turn this into a story, and she said yes, and that it would be called "When I Saw Thunder." She dictated it (not all at once) this morning. We'll see how she feels about it come the next storytelling, but I think it's too much for her to remember to tell. Perhaps I could read it and she could act it out.

When I Saw Thunder

Everyone said I can't see the thunder. But I wanted to. I put some magic in my throat. I used my fairy wings to fly up to the clouds. I put my fairy eyes on top of my turtle eyes so that I could see inside the clouds. I flied to south and north and then I saw the thunder. The thunder looks like a big cloud. It had the rainbow on it. I see all the rainbow colors. I jumped over the rainbow and into the house. And I walked upstairs and I fell asleep. I didn't take off my fairy eyes and my fairy wings because I wanted to wear them in the morning. So I could do some magic. I wanted to turn Papa's toilet kit into a rat.

The End

Sevi Burget-Foster, July 8, 2004

Sevi's letter to Aunt Sabele and the Kids

(w/ whom she spent an afternoon a
couple of weeks ago)-annotated by Sugi:

Dear Sabele and the kids, (I wrote that and she insisted I scratch it out and instead write:) I love you Sabele and the kids. The gardens here are nicely freshed with flowers in the garden. The house is clean (she tried to get away w/ saying it was dirty, but we talked about it and then she decided it was clean). My room is beautiful. Thank you for me to be with you in Connecticut. I loved seeing you half in Vermont. Toby stands on one foot. Toby eats dog food. I love Toby very much. He's my dog. He likes to have his belly scratched. Today I goed down to the river and Toby swimmed in the water. Mama and Sevi swimmed inside the water.
I love you all the time.
Goodbye Sabele and the kids,
Sevi

he said

But proximity, physical proximity to others with me is a problem. Most moments I am in severe disequilibrium. A ravening soul. What the Buddhists call a Hell Being. To be at one or two removes from people shields me from envy, spite, enmity and brings out the best. Dreams and ideals, the inseparability of souls in the oversoul, warm and fuzzy musings. My magnetic filings are in felicitous disarray, not all lined up for the kill and fidgetting sick with schadenfreude.

proof

It won't be proven that God does not exist
Nor that x caused y cancer
Because there are so many variables aren't there.
The first consideration enlarges our lives with wonder
The second is a space not unlike the first, but in which
The parasites among us gorge and thrive
On the demise of the prolific among us
With a conscience boundless and clear.

If hormones could talk, what would they say?
I'm a world of my own reason
A meteor shower of products wants a piece of me
Preys on me
But my tongue is graffiti
Unconquerable

A few days ago I asked Sevi if she wanted peanut butter and jelly on her sandwich. "No," she said. "I want peanut butter and jelly IN my sandwich."

in VT on July 4

up the orchard road, scummy pond with a its green floating dock that Sevi called a sponge, a gang of older kids clearing the scum skirt from the banks with their in-plunge and eventual exodus, Sevi fascinated with green translucent frog eggs, playing croquet beside the porch, the whole cow rotissimat (cooked for 11 hours) the whole beast stuffed within this triangular cage matted with dripping grease, the kids group "The Outer Lemmings" with spirited marmish banged leader with hoarse tuning whistle, their singing South African numbers, spirituals, earnest and clear with reserve that slowly sluffed off to reveal earnest striving for notes and style, horseshoes with Ed Marcy the slim older gent in blue and the agreeable young father lassoed into it ever telling me he was half-in the game and half-understanding, after two wins and my compliments as his teammate in the second game, the slim gent told me his secret learned from his father was to flip it with forefinger and pinky out and thumb to flip the spur with so it somersaults in the air--a trick I'd noticed used to great effect by the champ at the Upper Lake last summer--the old gent inadvertently farting a little butt hiccup as he told me this, which I forcefully ignored with a follow-up question, the Neil Young cover band by the paunchy 30 something from across the road really quite moved and moving with muffin cap, the jokey absurdist act by young couple "This is a recording," etc, Sevi running around with other 3 yr olds mimicking their every move, jumping up saying "I got one" after each firework fired from up the hill toward the orchard, the yellow poison parsnip everywhere that the hostess said left cigarette-burn like marks on your skin, her giving Sevi strips of meat, gobbled up eagerly, forgetting my overshirt and shivering when the sun went down til the bonfire was struck up and I stood near, the glowing ember whorls into the crowd swatted out of hair and blankets with unconcern.

If you find yourself in a situation that makes you want the time to pass faster, get out of it. The most insidious kind of harm is visiting upon you.

Reconciled with Roberta.

He was the human equivalent of a scrap of paper burnt along all its edges.

The old lady sat with her caretaker on the bench. Her underlids drooped from the sockets blood pink, and where were the eyes--black pimentos darting around up top. Could she see with those?

End of the Roberta Era?

So Roberta cut me off over our fight about Fahrenheit 9/11. Finally, after 18 years I'm on the outside. Sad and bruised by it, but I suppose if it had to happen (did it?) this was the most worthy matter to split over. Was I addling an old lady? I suppose. Although I also thought to so engage was not to allow that distance, where piety is a falling off. The element of grinning pliant hypocrisy finally here made way for my real opinions, which, if they could not be tolerated by her, at least were acknowledged for their truth.

I'm sad for selfish reasons, largely. Now there is really no one out there with some at least tangential connection to the vital tradition I long to take up and further, who continues to root for me. Her support was always genuine, always curious to me, and I always had a heady feeling of luck, or of my luck about to run out I suppose. Now it has. Now luck, or the blessing, or being "one of the elect" will play no part.

Brando died. Roberta has probably gone into deep mourning, if not shock. I instinctively knew this, but made light of it, would not give it the gravitas I did when Kazan died. My anger. Bad timing for all this, but too late. There is no place for apologies in this world of things.

In a culture of human beings, ours, where the struggle for recognition lodges in every soul, Brando was above recognition, seemingly struggling with whatever lies beyond, or results from it. Seen this way, he was the cultural tent pole that made sense of it for everyone else, but for himself only senselessness.

If this with Roberta has been the last of the surely inadvertent zen lessons, this last is about the break with the urge to recognition. - July 4, 2004. Middletown Springs VT

mouth story

Once upon a time there was a little teeny little cute little girl named Cantwait. When her mama sat her and her sisters down to breakfast of hot steamy oatmeal and asked for them all to hold hands, lo and behold, Cantwait already had her head inside her bowl licking it clean. At school, when her teachers told the kids to line up before going outside to play, lo and behold, little cute little Cantwait was already in the yard swinging on a tire. When her class went to the zoo and the teacher was lining them up to tell them to stick together as a group outside the tiger's area, little cute little Cantwait was already over the fence, and lo and behold, the tigers woke and roared and charged after her, and she just was just halfway up the fence when the tiger's snapping jaws tore at her clothes, and her teacher just barely got her out. She was shaking and crying and very upset. The next morning at breakfast when her mama sat her and her sisters down for some hot steamy cream of wheat, and they all held hands, little Cantwait asked them to wait just a moment longer, and she announced to them she had changed her name and now wanted to be called Patience. They all clapped, and from that day on, even though sometimes she still got into a little mischief, like any boy or girl, she did have a lot more patience and listened to people...the end.

Abra cadavra – horror movie about a mortician moonlighting as a magician

Pushing Sevi along in the stroller all over the park this afternoon, trying to get her to sleep. She kept repeating "I'll never, never sleep, Papa." Then, "Papa, this is your daughter speaking to you, who's telling you she won't ever sleep."

she was mean as a kite

Specialty restaurants:
The Monstaurant
The Minotaurant

“O Suzannah, O don’t you cry for me.
I came from Alibornia with a banjo on my knee” - Sevi, with gusto

He’d hack his own hand off it could be somebody else’s fault.

She was so buoyant, such an unalloyed spirit, that she provoked resentment in some, who fell by default into a relationship with her akin to that with their parents, for whom they were endlessly demanding.  Such was the power she exuded, of simple rightness in the world and protectiveness, that it produced in them a sadnessfor how far they had fallen.

for the sake of blood stew

Sevi said she took blood from someone, not in our family, and that he was angry at her and chased her to her home, but she rang the buzzer and mama and papa ran down the stairs and brought her in and she was safe. She used the blood for a stew with vegetables. To which Sugi replied, "did you ask him for the blood, or did you just take it?"
Sevi said she just took it.
"Well that's probably why he was angry."
"Well I was taking his blood," said Sevi. "I needed it for the stew." The implication being of course she didn't ask or she certainly then wouldn't have been able to get it!

some mild spotting yesterday, sugi said, pink and brown. Is it nothing less than an absorbing selfishness, a greed for progeny I'm guilty of. Can't it be seen in a less accusing light, something okay to want.

possibly true:
nothing is cliche that is not copied
if so, it is wrong to attach judgment
to the primitive where you find it.
Reserve your disdain for the aping of it.
For "enemies of the first idea" as WS would put it.

the eyes of a drunk
never wide
never shut
the lids dipping to kiss
moth wings on water

Rebecca pregnant again. Stroked my whiskers in bed this AM to wake me up to show me the indicator. She's technically at 5 weeks. Fingers crossed.

"I very love my dinner." -Sevi

Is it that you are appalled at the baseness of mercenaries because you have been looking to find nobility there (in your enemy), or appalled, stung in some way by the baseness of your motives in looking.

21 Grams

Despite the engaging tug of the fragmented storytelling that with some artfulness keeps your interest, making a puzzlemaster of you the viewer, the film was a surprisingly bald preposterous melodrama.  Certain scenes, such as the one you find yourself expectant to see, when Sean Penn reveals he has the heart of Naomi Watt’s dead husband, just ring the gong of drama gone wrong.   And Naomi Watts' frantic downturn to drugs and vengeance comes out of nowhere just when the plot requires. It could be said of her performance that it's a torture de force. She is repeatedly thrown such unplayable scenes while the camera gawks in venal expectation. It's a shame that the changes she is made to chart have so little basis in the real. Benecio del Torro's story is so powerful and touching too--it just loses out in an uneven competition with misguided schmaltz.   Much like Mystic River, the power of the performances draws you in, only to leave you ultimately alienated by the contrivance of the plot.  Belongs with Mystic River and a lamentable lot of others—films that make a dramatic ruckus around a phony commercial core.  They talk big, but dish corn in the end.

When in doubt, think boddhisatva.

mouth story

About a mud wasp’s nest near the beach that a girl mistook for the sandcastle she had just built to show her mama.  They inspected it and saw the wasps milling about and her mama asked of the wasp’s some of their special mud wasp honey, which they gladly gave.  Then they noticed waves coming, and the girl offered her sandcastle as a residence for the evacuee wasps.  ...pretty “penible”

And this after mama had gone to lavish descriptions of the salad over the phone, and Sevi had responded “what a beatiful thing, olive oil and lemon!’

Sevi wanted nothing to do with the lentils in the lentil salad Sugi made.  Wouldn’t eat one lentil.  Assiduously rubbed each piece of salvaged cheese and every olive on her bib (to my voiced displeasure) to remove any trace of lentil.  In the hollow of one olive a lentil hid, which she poked at with her finger, tried to eat around, then inadvertently squirted between to fingers onto the floor.

mouth story

Once upon a time there a crow made entirely of glass that occupied a place on the shelf in the bedroom of a girl named Pamela.  The glass crow had been given her by a wifty old lady when she was very small.  Everyone said that the woman had something odd about her and may have dabbled in magic.  On some nights when Pamela lay awake and looked at the glass crow catching the moonlight through her window, she could swear she saw its crystalline feathers rustling.  One night Pamela awoke unexpectedly very late, and noticed that the glass crow was missing.  She left her bed for the window, and far in the distance under the moon she could see the sparkly thing wheeling in the sky.  But it was approaching the window again, so she quick scurried back under her covers and watched as it lit on the windowsill sniffing around, then glided gently to its place on her shelf and took up its habitual pose.  The next morning Pamela went to the shelf and took the glass crow down.  “I saw you flying last night, won’t you talk to me?” she said.  But the glass crow was immobile in her hands.  Just then her mama came to the door, startling her, and the glass crow slipped from her hands to the floor, shattering into thousands of tiny pieces.  Pamela began to cry.  Her mother had no patience for that, telling her to clean up the pieces right away and get over it, they could always get her another crow.  “But it’s a magic crow,” she wailed.  To which her mother said “Now that’s enough nonsense, you know there’s no such thing.  Now clean up that mess and be careful about it and put it out in the garbage.”  With a broom and dustpan Pamela did clean up the broken glass, but poured all the pieces into a little bag and tied its top with a string.  She then placed the bag back in its place on her shelf.  That night she woke up in the blue of the moonlight to the sound of rustling.  The bag on the shelf was shifting shape and tussling about from within.  Pamela went to the bag and untied the string.  Out of the bag came the crow, but this was no glass crow, but a real live crow with glossy black feathers.  The crow looked up in her eyes and spoke to her: “A witch placed a spell on me long ago for eating from her special grove of pears.  She turned me into glass and told me that I would forever be frozen in place except for furtive flights under the grace of powerful moonlight, and that I would never be real again unless a little girl took pity on me and tried to care for me if I broke.  And you have!  The crow spread her big wings and hugged Pamela.  “My name is Zara,” she said, and I will always remember you.  And with that she flew to the windowsill, nodded farewell and flew off to rejoin her life in the woods with other real crows.  Pamela never forgot her magical friend and had a fondness for all crows and other birds from that day forward.

Mouth Story

Taras Bulba, a donkey who worked at a junkyard carrying garbage to various piles was startled out of his monotony one day when the cart he was pulling began to weep and he noticed a little boy named Quigley piled in amongst the garbage. It seems Quigley had been playing hide and seek with friends and hid in a garbage can at an inopportune time, was collected in a trunk by the sanitation dept, and now was far from home. Tara Bulba offered to take him back, told him to climb up on his back and they began their odyssey through the streets and parks of the city. But the boy only knew that he lived in Bklyn, not which neighborhood. Luckily they spied a passing car being driven by a friend of Quigley's mom and they chased it. Before long they realized they themselves were giving chase to the police, who were alarmed by the spectacle of a donkey galloping down 4th avenue. Quigley finally recognized his neighborhood in Park Slope and was able to navigate home. Quigley's mom was cross at him for being late for supper, but grateful to Taras Bulba when she learned his role in his return. She gave Taras Bulba 10 apples, and he said goodbye and went clipclopping home to the junkyard at dusk.

=>Sex in people over 40 - decadent, as in, to what purpose? As if the purpose of sex in one's reproductive years were reproduction!
=>The bean in the nose myth - growing roots into the baby's brain...
=>The magazines shout from every street corner "Look how well I survive!"
=>What little technical thing that irks common folk could I recognize and lampoon in delicious irony?
=>Gods
We want them to be something total.
Celebrated for their modesty
Rewarded for it with $$$
And Adulation
For their humility
And their knowing how
Frivolous all this is,
To be lauded for that and
Revered and
Remunerated,
To be quite circumspect
About their scorched earth,
To be wise about it,
And maybe even tearful.
=> What the word "garish" does to the word "love" is either irreparable or delicious
=> Young nubile Turkish woman at the Coop said Sevi meant "lover" in Turkish. With legs astride a chair she received massage from an angular fair curly-headed adulator.
=> Sevi: "Do you want to know how to whistle Bunnies? You blow from the end of their tails!"
=> A few weeks ago Sevi bounded up the three flights of stairs ahead of me, by herself for the first time, thrilled to get to the top ahead of me.
=> A few weeks ago, after a day of computer hell, out to the park with Sevi to fly a kite. String tangled horribly due to the interlopings of the little French boys last (and first) time we flew it. Sevi made up many games during the hour or so I worked to untangle the string. Mostly one in which she was trying to hide her kitties from the Gruffalo. Finally I cut the Gordian knot and tied the string together, by which time we had to head back for dinner.
=> The more you undertake things at half measures, the further you will be from art and fulfillment.
=> Ben Kingsley's remarks about taking away the prerogative of the audience by, for instance, a character crying when he is sad. Always being ahead. Also, two actors admiring and respecting eachother so as to divest of ego and tell the story as storytellers. Otherwise, if for instance you cast two actors as enemies simply because the are enemies, then you're just filming a neurosis, again depriving an audience of its prerogative. Of the death of his son in "House of Sand and Fog", it was all the child actor giving it to him. Kingsley told him always to keep his eyes on him--nothing of Kingsley's personal life came into the role, he insisted. It was all a response to the other actor.
=> Sevi, of taking down her pants in public "I like it, it's my way."
=> Highlight of day: dispatching of all the mail as junk.
=> Sevi, while we were in the bathroom doing ablutions: "Papa, don't close the door. I said it two times. I should only have to say it once."
=> Directing: The profession most conducive to self-love--having your decisions confirmed, your intuitions amplified by the fawning attentions of those who rely on you for their livelihood.
=> Dream-- SARS test, long ride to other locations...dripping into auditorium--cutting up lungs, awaiting answer.
=> never liked to face up to inabilities.
=> A. B. Gill - like character out of Henry James - bright ambitious attractive canny American girl destined to be prey or be preyed on, to turn malevolent or attract malevolence. Not a chance of any middle ground being found--an ineluctably dramatic destiny.
=> the noet or gnoet -- gnoetall
=> Sometimes some people just feel the need to flex their "asshole" muscles as a means to assert themselves and win respect.
=> When we look at water
We can't get over the fact
We don't know what we're looking at.
=>"Metamorphosis are called when they're going through a big change." Sevi, 5/9/04
=> bald as an old dandelion
=> widowsmilk.com
=> blowing dandelions with Sevi, finding whole patches of them and hunkering down grabbing fistfuls - sending of drift streams of fuzz.
=> Nabokov, for all of his vigor and polish and impishness: fine constructions, but not, for me, perceptions.

mouth story

Once upon a time there was a bean named Renata who lived in a bowl of rice and other beans and was cooked up fat and soft for a boy, Horito, who, playing with his food, picked her out and flicked her with his finger out the window.  She fell through the air landing on the stomach of a baby in a stroller, who also failed to eat her but perched her on his nose.  His mama knelt down to remove Renata, but the bean remonstrated loudly that no one was eating her, just playing with her, and that she wanted to be eaten to make someone’s tummy feel really good.  The mama was astounded that this bean was talking to her, let alone mounting a complaint, so she sold Renata to the circus, where Renata spent much time to great acclaim doing tricks for audiences, walking tightropes, riding bikes etc, but was ultimately very unhappy, because all she really wanted was to be eaten.  So she ran away from the circus, found her way to the subway, rode beside an old man’s sleeping shoe all the way back home to Horito’s house.  In the kitchen she made her way back up to the shelf and was re-cooked with some other beans and rice and ended up once again on Horito’s plate.  This time when he raised her up on his fork she sternly told shouted to him, insisting that he eat her to make his tummy feel really good.  He smiled a wide smile and did.  Down in his stomach Renata was so happy she started to dance, and that made Horito dance too. And when he went to school his dancing got all the other kids dancing, and they all lived happily ever after.

Occasionally
Age barks at youth
Snarls out corrections
Hoards its bone
Of piety by scolds
Losing face
Ignominiously

The greatest insult that can be levelled at an artist: you have taken more than you have given.

Note - March '04

Jasper Johns’ laugh, loud and fugitive like the warning call of a forest creature before retreating to its hole

Aaron Sorkin’s comment about it being pathetic of writers to think and treat their characters as if they actually live (meaning I suppose that they ever achieve something like a motive autonomy).  For him characters are the means to push buttons.  As a result, his characters don’t live.  They evanesce, and you’d be confused to equate this irrelevancy with the higher wisdom of the fleeting nature of things.  That, a cover for mediocrity.

SyrupTissues
If you can surmount
The wretched surmise
Of your surroundings
You may do surprisingly
Good work some day sir.

Don’t even pose rhetorical questions out loud.  It’s salesmanshtick, patronizing, manipulolings...

Martian Landscape
The rustblown rocks
Who could believe no eyes had ever seen them
Or seen the frost crawl upon the day and melt from the day
Or believe such modern things were going on
Even while baboons groomed
And Jesus spoke
And suffragettes marched.
The most forward-thinking ancient
Dropped onto this unconversant plain
Would paralyze with incongruity
Would be an ant on this tablecloth.
Ruins so like our own
Yet never peopled.

mouth story

Tonight:

Recycled the actual story about the man who wanted to find water by enlisting the aid of a baboon. Placed a trail of salt leading to a hole in a tree, in which he placed a chunk. But the hole was too small for the baboon to retrieve the chunk in its fist. He knew this was an insoluble problem for the baboon and would keep it busy trying unsuccessfully to yank its hand from the tree for some time. He seized the occasion to net and capture the baboon, which thrashed about in wild anger, then fed it lots of rock salt. Of course it was soon dying of thirst. He left it tethered there for a day in the African heat, then let it go, and when it made a bee-line for the hidden location of the water hole he had accomplished his aim.

mouth story

Last night:

Horace the Hoarse Horse. The eponymous horse (female) took to singing in the meadow during naptime, infuriating all the other animals. One Koala bear named Giddly climbed down from his eucalyptus tree and put pepper in the water of her watering hole, which upon drinking caused Horace to lose her voice. She was so sad about not being able to sing any more she began to cry. Giddly took pity and told her the antidote was to go to the magic melon patch, find the most golden melon during the day, wait til nightfall and under the moon eat that melon while lying on her back and let the golden juice run down her throat along with the moonlight. Which she did and was cured. But Giddly had made her promise to never sing in the afternoon again, during the animal's naptime. The next day she was about to belt it out but remembered her promise, and from that day on sang at all other times but that one, and often sang with the other animals too.

mouth story

Two nights ago:

About a young mink that took to midnight swims in the lake, while all her brothers and sisters had to sleep, not being old enough yet to be nocturnal. They tricked her, had her dive into a bag, which she thought was a bubble under the water. They hung her from a tree, then let her go back in the water...she learned her lesson. The lamest story to date, and that's saying alot!

novelist, poets

The problem with novelists: that they ask for so much of your time; with poets: that they ask so much of your attention, and perhaps belief.

notes

- Get evening. a greeting for those getting even.
- If we must inevitably tailor our thinking to justify the choices we have chosen, is it not possible to step outside the process and make the life we have chosen worth justifying at the outset...
- If you are not prepared to see all people as pearls, you will miss the pearls that do come.

The rub

"I have a stomach ache that says 'feed me avocado and yoghurt" Sevi, 5/21/04

early 04

2004

Wednesday, January 7, 2004
⇒ Narrative ecstasy: leaving the self to identify with others. The magnetism of wanting to assume another life, lose oneself in that compelling illusion, or at least warm oneself with it. But the challenge is that this self to abandon oneself to must be both familiar and brand new. The latter is the challenge of vitality without which art is nothing.
⇒ The most affecting disdain is self-reflective. We hate that greedy person only because the greed interacts with our own, augments it. This is the attraction of most judgment of others, and its corrosiveness to ourselves.
⇒ “I think you were once, and for a prolonged period, in danger of perceiving yourself as wretched. Am I wrong?”
⇒ If you are alive it doesn’t matter what I write. So aren’t I working against that with the abstruse, weakening you, making you only capable of breathing rarefied air?

Friday, January 16, 2004
⇒ I wanna be loved bayou.

Saturday, January 24, 2004
⇒ Today Sevi reported to me a dream for the first time. She was in the stroller heading for Grand Army Plaza in 17F weather and windy and she said she dreamt last night she went to the aquarium. When I asked what she did there she said she went to the ocean, saw a lot of fish and rode dolphins on their backs.
⇒ Man in the subway yesterday whining, smacking himself on the forehead hard, readjusting his baseball cap and hair, whining “Are you happy now?!” over and over again “Are you happy to be homeless? Are you happy now? Look at you, look at what you’ve done.” It really didn’t seem to be for anyone’s benefit, but was real, unmitigated pain. One of the only times in 18 years living in NYC that I was really unnerved and counted the seconds til my stop came (34th street) and I could get out of the train. In such a state I felt he could easily pull out a gun and start killing people. He was really someone at the end of their rope looking for any outlet, anything to relieve the pain.

Thursday, March 25, 2004
⇒ Tonight’s Mouth Story: Wink-em Didi, who did an art project with her sisters and started flinging glue, fell asleep, woke up with her eyelids glued shut. Fumbled her way outside on the sidewalk, met a cat named Simon who liked to lick glue, licked one eyelid open, she had to go to a restaurant to get the other open, they said hold your eye over the steam from the soup in the kitchen. That got it open but the glue dripped into the soup, so when it was served made all the diners’ mouths glue shut. She called in Simon to lick all their lips back open. One woman, upon having her mouth liberated screamed that she’d been kissed by a cat! That was the end of the story, but Sevi said “I want you to add more”. So I told her about Trolley Pete, Wink-em Didi’s little brother, who loved nothing better than to pretend to be a yellow trolley like the kind that goes to the Children’s museum. But he wasn’t prepared for the weight of passengers—he was tiny, only 3 years old—so when Galoshes Sue, a friend of Wink-em Didi’s tried to ride on him she was way too heavy, so he had to tie blue and orange balloons to her to make her weigh light as a feather. They went to the Bronx Zoo (trying to get her introduced to the idea of going to this super huge zoo, as we have coupon) and saw koala bears and real gorillas and lions and tigers. The end. Sevi said tomorrow she wants to hear more about Wink-em Didi. I was amazed that she remembered anything about the previous night’s story, which I had completely forgotten, about a butterfly who takes the nectar from many-colored flowers in a field to use to make the rainbow. I suppose it’s the very short memory I have of these stories that has given me the resolve to write some down. By and large they are hugely unremarkable and forgettable. But I think my memory is isdiscriminate, and I’ll forget the rare good one with the bad, so I’ll endeavor to write more down. Maybe I’ll get better at this, who knows. Maybe in my dotage, if I make it that far, reading these will be a comfort when I have nothing else to do…
⇒ Albert Ross—Albatross. An internet search revealed that this had occurred to quite a few people before me…
⇒ Although the internet has nothing to say about KING RAW HORSE – ROCKINGHORSE, my story in gestation that I have only a title for so far and some notion about a rockinghorse sore to be abandoned by his boy who turns into a ruthless tyrant over a magical kingdom, only to confront the boy again one day, now grown that he is older.
⇒ I started late so beg pardon
For all the air I must
Wade through
Half-prosecuted, this business
Is a criminal infliction on
Innocents I know.
Bear with me and I’ll try to be a genius
On my own good time.
⇒ If you’re going to inhabit a myth, it had better be water-tight.
⇒ You’re young I know you’re perceiving things that are no longer on my frequency. But I remember airports, the longing, the bursting with loving longing, the walking proud and cherished into some unknown
⇒ Counting the seconds til he offends me. Aggressively wanting that—to be offended.
⇒ Famous people should be nice to you, because they can so easily hurt your feelings.
⇒ If you’re too greedy, death too gets greedy for you.
⇒ She was always like a moth to a cautionary tale.
⇒ The more I think about feedback loops the worse it gets
⇒ There is plenty that people who are bitter are not permitted to say; call it censorship. People will nod knowingly and say it’s bitterness talking. But the bitter are uncannily insightful, generally speaking of course.
⇒ The kind of indignity that goes “wow wow wow” in your ears, that can’t be ignored it’s such an affront
⇒ The pedantic garden – botanic garden
⇒ Humility. Never taught it by my parents.
⇒ You’re just dumb enough never to get a handle on just how dumb you are. Take an IQ test for crying out loud—do you good, bring you down to earth, jaw some dirt and then come talk to me., self-appointless prick.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
⇒ Mouth Story: Was about a grasshopper named Googli who couldn’t see very well at night, so when she overslept in a late afternoon nap she missed the dinner-time hop through the meadow with her friends to the little puddle with the mosquitos and fleas where they supped their supper. Night had fallen, it was too dark for her to see and she was hungry, so she resolved to befriend a firefly who, if she could capture one, would light her way to supper. Fireflies are traditionally scared of grasshoppers, even though everyone knows that grasshoppers have no interest in eating them because their yucky (to which Sevi nodded). Nonetheless Googli had to coax one close with a special lullaby she sang to the fireflies (which sounded much like Brahm’s lullaby). A very silly firefly named Bimbo was just curious and incautious enough to come close, and Googli caught her by the wing. She was of course terrified, until Googli explained she was not prey, but simply needed to light Googli’s way across the meadow to her supper. So off they went. They were halfway there when Googli slipped on something slimy—turns out it was a worm named Stuart, who had just poked his head out of the ground asking if it was spring yet. They informed him that it was already mid-summer and he had some catching up to do! Googli invited him to sup with her at the mosquito and flea soup puddle, and he happily went along. They got there, she introduced him to all her grasshopper friends and they ate heartily. Bimbo’s job done, she flew off flashing ever smaller in the dark. After the fine repast the grasshoppers all went home and Stuart returned to his cozy wormhole.
⇒
⇒

Notes - March 04

Ossification of the good – Mary Robinson

Child’s development some susceptible to contingency get one thought in their head rather than another, a whole different trajectory in life.  Others will docilely graze, intransigent against the vagaries of ideas or incident

2003 - pre-blog

2003

Wednesday, January 1, 2003
⇒ I make figures in Play-Doh with Sevi and when I crumple them back into the can, Sevi asks “where’s the snake, papa,” or “where’s the person, papa?” I say that they’re now inside the ball of play-doh. “I want to see them again,” she says, it being a matter of their simply re-materializing, crawling back to life out of the material.
⇒ Sevi’s “Ls” very Russian sounding, very “lully” linger in her mouth, as in “Mabel Mabel strong and able, Get your elbows off the table!”

Thursday, January 2, 2003
⇒ The icy cold of the bags eating into my fingers as I rushed home from a Coop shift.
⇒ A woman eating a bag of nuts came rushing back into the Coop, agitatedly announcing a car must be moved! as she spat white flecks of nut onto her lips and out onto the Exit worker—me.
⇒ A feisty loquacious woman commenting on my reading some “lurid novel” which turned out to be “Guns, Germs and Steel”. “Oh I know that book,” she said. Said she didn’t agree that environment made all the difference, it had to be genetic. It was her understanding that people living in the Fertile Crescent, argued the book, had gotten certain mental attributes…but she hadn’t read the book, so. I suggested maybe she should because she was getting it wrong.

Monday, January 6, 2003
⇒ Feeling that our country is like a bad habit the world ought to be cured of—alluring but destructive. Our gearing up for this oil war is evil. How can our intentions possibly be good, when we flaunt our dominance and drive the destruction of the natural world? Our leadership is a sham. How does one come up with something worthwhile to say to the world artistically, if not to decry this evil? Film art, we are repeatedly told, ought not to preach any agenda. Ought it then to toe this awful line? There’s a decadence being enforced on our population—pressure to live within a bubble and disregard the ruin we cause. The reply is that we are naïve. Pragmatism dictates this course, always has. The argument goes, if some aren’t willing to be thought evil in this necessary aggression, then real evil will be brought to bear on our defenseless people. As if there is no alternative. I believe this war is being mounted by greed and the concomitant drive for glory. The real glory that’s possible is discounted a radical pipe dream.

Friday, January 24, 2003
⇒ Camille Foe – comme il faut
⇒ It annoyed me that he very consciously trotted out these darling little French expressions- bete noire, eminence grise, roman a clef, enfant terrible, comme il faut. He knew to stay away from je ne sais quoi, but early on in his franglicizing career he wouldn’t have hesitated. Oh, also found of latin – infra dig…
⇒ Yesterday, Sevi threw up, multiple times at the Coop with Rebecca, then on the way home all over herself in the stroller in 10 degree weather, then several times after that and in the crib on her pajamas twice. Some kind of stomach bug we think, which had parted by this morning. Sevi woke up saying she felt much better. This was her first bout with something like that—never vomited once before, ever. Made me realize how blessed we’ve been that she’s been in such good health. I don’t think she got sick once her first year. Last winter she was sick periodically, but only once did we go to the emergency room and got antibiotics for an ear infection. She’s only had antibiotics that once. Physical accidents have been virtually none that have been consequential. The worst was the “nursemaid’s elbow” incident that happened early this fall, did I ever write about that? Popped this tendon out when we were swinging her by her two arms walking down the street playing our counting game, 7-8-9. That’s the last time we play that one for a while. She howled and held her arm down at her side like it was the arm of a marionette that had lost a string. “Paralysis” occurred to me immediately, then, “dislocation”, “broken bone”---terrifying. She wailed whenever we so much as touched it. I took her to the emergency room and they IMMEDIATELY knew what it was. Turned her palm in and bent her arm (it was the left one) toward herself, which poped it back in. She was back to normal inside half an hour.

January 28, 2003
⇒ Name for children’s book – Clouds in Disguise
⇒ Disgust of Wind
⇒ Eliminate the harmonics that storm my thoughts while preserving those that fill out my vision of life.
⇒ There is being okay about being exhausted around your child, and other times in horror of the apprehension that you’re neglectful, that you’re a bad parent, which further enervates you, making you a worse parent, a negative feedback loop that casts you as the embodiment of joyless duty.
⇒ These famous poets coddled and pumped up to the point of irrelevancy.
⇒ Any given street at any given time is a carapace. Where are the people? Where is the life? Furtive, but there. Warm pockets of love and care carved away from view.
⇒ I’d love to be though an artist with the freedom it implies, the freeing of my instincts and emotions from the stifling tyranny of worries over survival. To be called an artist, supported as an artist, and above all thought an artist would confer that grace. Until such time, if it ever comes, have the consolation of saying, “yes, an artist, but at what cost to be so recognized today!! Timid voice—in many situations there is a cost, isn’t; there?
⇒ rangy crazy stranger who infuriates you when you walk into a diner at 6am, who smiles at you as if to say “I’ve been waiting for you!”
⇒ Ken Burns—every story the same: Trim off those interesting details that don’t hew to the tired elegiac storyline.
⇒ We clean your attic asbestos we can

February 2, 2003
⇒ short film about the specters that keep coming back up in your mind—people from memory, souls who represent various kinds of failure and threaten you. The horrible rankling of the thought that you are such a failure you take up such a role in the mind of someone else.

February 5, 2003
⇒ Last night, before I made dinner Sevi sat in my lap looking at a picture of a serene, female-looking Buddha on the cover of a brochure that arrived in the mail from the Chakrasambara Institute and said, in these exact words, “When she was a little girl, she loved her mama.”

February 6, 2003
⇒ Short doc called “Malcontents” interviewing people with chips on shoulders, bones to pick etc.

February 7, 2003
⇒ L-swear
⇒ Underwriter
Like a litigator
(A little gator)
I seek precedent
To buttress utterance
(to butter the udder)
A prior eminence
Some dude stopping up his
Piehole with a thumb til he
Blows up large
And shields me from doubt,
Recrimination.
Otherwise, I trot on air
And fear imposture.
Seeing so, won’t I can’t I stand
My own words
Or at least behind them?
Even this poem seeks shelter,
Is all elbows, a harrowing
Gaff and shame.

February 16, 2003
⇒ Bedtime story—made one up for Sevi tonight about Deedle the Grasshopper who sat on a cornstalk watching the ant store away kernels of corn. Come winter time he got snowed on and ant gave him shelter and fed him from his larder. Learned his lesson. Ok, hardly original, but some of those that are don’t bear repeating. I look at Sevi listening impassively to my stories and I worry…what kind of boring junk I am having her absorb…what does she make of it? It’s a spur to ratcheting up the level of the material. Just one story tonight, she didn’t insist on another… She grabbed the ribs of her crib and fell asleep that way for a bit before rolling over. I started singing Row your Boat, which she allowed, but I grew tired of it, so started into the old standard Old McDonald for the improvisational component.

Monday, February 17, 2003
⇒ A few nights ago Sugi wanted me to bring back pizza for dinner (once in a lifetime!). Sevi was so thrilled, she ran around saying “I’m so happy!”
⇒ We had nearly two feet of snow today, blizzard conditions. Barely any cars on the streets. Beautiful drifts arcing off marooned cars. Kids clambering over big piles, old guys grunting with shovels. Plows careening by further burying the cars. One guy trying to dig his out said “Oh the joys of car ownership.” At about 3:30 we went out in it, Sugi cross-country skied in the park and Sevi and I tested the drifts. All the while the air was full of turning whipping small snowflakes. Then we wended our way back and stomped snow clumps through the subway grating and shook snow off burdened tree limbs. Sevi seemed really to enjoy the snow, in her thoughtful way. She was able to walk where it had been plowed, and this gave her a sense of power I think. She always gets a bit quiet when out in the elements. She stuck her tongue out and let flakes sizzle.

Monday, February 24, 2003
⇒ Sevi says “mise” for mine; “yours and mise” for yours and mine.

Friday, February 28, 2003
⇒ Stood over Emily Watson on the “C” train tonight, after leaving work. Entered the train at the Chambers Street stop at about 6:15pm, after having failed to stuff a bunch of mail in the mailbox at Chambers and West Broadway for Aaron Consulting. Too paralyzed to say a thing to her. Thought and rejected every attempt at a thought of how. Tried to pretend to read the book I held, “Damascus Gate” which I still haven’t even begun. Got off at Jay Street, still disbelieving. Thought of so much I could have said, was rained on by regret and shame for not having the nerve—what am I, almost 39 yrs old? If not now, when? I just struck me much later, that at no time in the past, ever, have I come so close to someone I so truly admire who is famous. She’s got to be what I consider one of the 4 or 5 greatest living actresses. Saw her at BAM in 12th night a few weeks ago, and actually thought her Viola lackluster compared to her film work. She wore jeans, a dark jacket, her hair was blonde and had a clip at top, kind of short. Around her neck were two or three gold tablets inscribed in what looked like Hebrew letters. [Writing the next day 3/1/03] Well thank god the spell of remorse is broken. I wish I had said something, but no longer feel so harrowed by it. The thing I think which really bugged me is it revealed that I still think of myself as so “inchoate”, so unready to face all this constellation of my ambition. And yet, how much of life left is there? Why aren’t I there yet? And yet, a part of it is saying, can’t I be so prepared, so centered, that I no longer feel abject in front someone I admire. I was struck by what felt like a fucking love crush; absurdly dizzy with paralysis, wondering what to say to break through to her, how to not come across like everybody else, thinking how what she really needs is to be left alone to candidly observe us hoi polloi to enrich her craft. I felt here was this large large phenomenon before me; I was struck dumb. How can I be the Jamesian “one on whom nothing is lost” when my whole identity goes out the window before this avatar of all I desire to join with and prove to the world. Not talking proceeded from the terror of shattering an illusion, of being spoken to and disdained by the object of desire. How could one survive that? And yet the source of it is so phoney—it’s the received mass culture thing I flounder in—can’t yet put an actor in perspective of the greater scheme. It’s because this is my altar, if I have one anywhere, and I’m still failing to live up to expectations.
⇒ Revery on Self-Sufficiency
For William Wegman it was costuming coonhounds.
For Philip Glass a glass a glass a Ralph
Emerson said one need look no further
Than what was to hand and Immanuel
Kant never left Konigsberg while Saul
Bellow boasted “the emotionally alive person
Is at home anywhere.”
Tell it to Proust, forever displaced.
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t get Marcel,
Whose sentences fail to deal death.
He lived behind a shopping mall
Not writing about alcoholics in his midst.
Unlike Carver, who did and had been
And would not be a has-been like
Berryman, who nimbly fought it and.
⇒ Slick (re: the coming war)
Oil is as oil does.
Decay of the dead
Decaying the new
An ever evening gray.
Ash is just the thing
For gouts of expressed blood
Freed brilliantly to the air and now
Without purpose.
A pooling curiosity.
Feather it with ash.
The unheeding few
Slaughterers will end
In lead-lined coffins,
The better to keep them
From decomposing
Into oil.
⇒ Mirror
I got a house and some nice things
And all for very little evil.
In the glass I get real.
I have contributed more than I took.
Chrome fixtures confirm this opinion.
⇒ Standing By
“I have no more to do
With death than you,”
He pled
From his deathbed.
“Or less,” I replied
Without tact.
⇒ Mean-Spirited of Me
Exacting every last caress
From your admiring few
You rose with gall at friends so-called
Who slighted you your due.
You raged and heaved your crowing laugh
Astride the swollen lover,
Your blue face mad for what it was
You never gave another.
Had you ruled the land your way
Your people would have died.
Not likely you would miss a beat
Contriving reasons why.
How lucky music pitied you
And kindly took you in.
How better to tease out the hate
Than play accordion?

Tuesday, March 11, 2003
⇒ Sevi likes taking my whistles away from me while I’m playing and running to the other end of the house to tell mama that’s she’s done so. Lately she’s come back to me saying “I hug you,” and patting my back and hugging me while saying “That’s all right. You’ll feel better,” several times. When I say, no, I want my whistle back, she just repeats the consolations. She’s already expressing an irony on how insufficient that kind of mollification can sometimes be. It’s incredibly cute. I can’t help breaking out into a smile.
⇒ Which is realer, a greater sounding, pain or the absence of pain?
⇒ The seriousness of Sevi’s sleeping—rolls over, working hard at it, knit brow, don’t disturb.
⇒ In film biz, those terrifiers who want to intimidate you about how cutthroat and impossible it all is. And by contrast those with grace who reaffirm the ever-presence of the transcendent—those who really inspire.
⇒ Makeup artists are like morticians. Let people do their own make-up if they’re still able. If the camera perceives wrinkles and flaws, so much the better.
⇒ More and more Tilton’s woes seem to be a variation on the Book of Job.
⇒ Hard to stay focused when contemplation of failure is so “exigeante”.
⇒ Sevi started telling us stories at dinner at few nights ago.
⇒ A few days ago Sevi pretended to give milk to a stuffed animal in bed through her belly button.

March 16, 2003
⇒ The Coming War in Iraq
We hunted the snake
With board and nail.
Where it slithered in
Mud on the bank.
With shivers we hollered
And bore down with the nail
Down on its head.
And it just stopped moving.
No spasms, no rictus of evil
No baleful eyes.
Simply a thing which ceased to move.
We swung it around by that
Head and flung it far
Out into the lake.
The rings of water came ashore.
Relaxing in o’s and oh my’s.
Nothing then left to do
But ponder the thing we did
To staunch up the widening hole in the afternoon.

March 26, 2003
⇒ Sevi uses the word “reasons” to mean “minutes”. She said she’d get up on her high chair, but only for a few reasons.

April 5, 2003
⇒ Threats: You wanna go to college? Eat your peas.
⇒ Last week Sevi and I were at the Children’s Bookstore reading a Richard Scary book about various conveyances, and Sevi pointed to a pencil car and announced “This pencil car is going to Pencil-vania.” I was all over her with laughter at a “good joke” so from that time on we had her repeating it constantly…

April 23, 2003
⇒ Sevi puts “probably” in front of about every third thing she says the last few weeks. “Prolly I’ll go to the Coop. Prolly I’ll go to Granpa and Granina’s re-tend (which means “pretend”)
⇒ When I offer to ‘hudju’ Sevi goodnight, she says, “no, I’m too busy”…

April 28, 2003
⇒ At the zoo today Sevi kept referring to the wallabies as Koala-bees and wobblies.
⇒ In her bedroom after dinner Sevi turned to me, a propos of nothing I could figure, and said “Concentrate Papa!”

April 29, 2003
⇒ Went with Sevi to Coney Island today and the Aquarium. Long before we got near the walrus exhibit she was vocal about not wanting to go there. We did go anyway, and I held her. The walrus seems to be taking up the role in her psyche as the first real menace—it is very imposing when you’re there just on the other side of the glass as it rubs and squeaks powerfully against it underwater, and it’s not a stretch to imagine the window crashing and the water and tons of walrus rushing over you, crushing and drowning you—must be a genetic fear. Anyway, it does coincide with her beginning to repeat more and more the last few days “The monster’s coming to get you.” No idea where that came from—I’ve never introduced the image or the phrase. Must be from her books. We went down to the water on the beach and she was very shy of the tide. Training our attention on an orangeish oblong ladybug on a drifttwig that didn’t seem to mind the saltwater, we were surprised by a little rush of cold water around our feet. Sevi was shocked and extremely unsettled—reddened into huge crying and sobs and insisted I hudju her above the water. Even when I tried to interest her in packing cold wet sand into her blue bucket, she couldn’t be distracted, kept her eyes on the water and kept saying “the water is coming” and scrambling up on me again. She kept repeating. “Papa likes to get his feet wet, but I don’t like to get my feet wet.” Oh well, too brusque an experience this time—I should have been more attentive. We walked the middle of the beach a bit and looked out at the Wonder Wheel in the amusement park, and I explained that sometimes when people get very high on it they get a little afraid, like sometimes the water makes people afraid and sometimes the walrus. She returned to this idea talking about it over dinner.

May 7, 2003
⇒ VERBOTEN FOREVER and NEVER FORGET IT – SELF-PITY, ENVY

May 13, 2003
⇒ Sevi says “melon” and “lemon” interchangeably.
⇒ A few days ago Sevi looked at the chicken wire mesh (hexagonal) stapled across the logs of the bridge spanning the Ausable River, and said “looks like honey”

May 27, 2003
⇒ I finally figured out something that had been puzzling me with Sevi—she’d kept referring to going to the “Crunchy” and I just went with it, having no idea what she meant. Then, I think it was two nights ago as we drove back from the winery reception for Julia and Brian’s wedding in the Finger Lakes, in the red half-light in the bus, she said “are you a City Mouse or a Crunchy Mouse?” I hope that Crunchy is a keeper in our lexicon.

May 29, 2003
⇒ Sevi cups her hands and presents me with an imaginary substance called “Play”. She gives and takes it back. “I’ll take your play away,” she says, running away, giving chase.
⇒ Sevi often sings, on the way to the playground “Oh where, oh where can my silly chalks be, oh where, oh where could them be?”

June 9, 2003
⇒ Two days ago was Sevi’s day for the word “realize” She put it before everything, usually appropriately. “I just realized that I had to go to the toll-it” (toilet)
⇒ A restaurant meal appeals to those craving recognition. To be waited on, served, does a world of good to prop of the status one wishes to enjoy.
⇒ the United Status of Quo
⇒ Reading Ferdinand the Bull to Sevi tonight in the crib, she pointed to a picture of his mother the cow, and said, “those are the teats”. “Yes, that’s right, or the udder,” I said. “No,” she said, “the whole ting is called the udder.” She was right—and taught me something!
June 10, 2003
⇒ Flies sketch the air
⇒ Walking home from the “Tanic Gardens” Sevi insisted we stop and have a picnic, which we did not far from the spot of the newly restored Binnenwater project in Prospect Park. She spread out the picnic blanket (attend---meaning pretend), but when I asked if we brought any food she just shrugged amiably, arching her eyebrows and smiling as she gamely does. “What about attend food?” I asked. “No, no pretend food,” she corrected me—she’s very quick to correct herself when she feels she’s being mimicked. Then she changed her mind and decided indeed there was a pretend bowl with rice in it for me—she had to get an “atensil” for it though, and then, what do you know, some “sticky soup” to eat, and even some “Octopus jelly”, enough for everyone, and even enough to take home to Mama, which we did.

June 13, 2003
⇒ His bulk shuddered as he walked, and he walked quickly behind that dome of a belly as if struggling to keep up with it.
⇒ Sugi’s zen routine movements—mine reckless, like they’ll be my last—grace out the window.

June 14, 2003
⇒ What’s really mortifying about the fear, especially of spectating, at a roller coaster, isn’t the danger itself, but the thought of how irredeemably awful harm or death in the clutches of such a needless experiment would be.
⇒ Of diaper cream—one mother saying to another, you’re spreading it on like mayonnaise!
⇒ Her muscled thighs shook following her every surly step, saying “so there”.

June 15, 2003
⇒ War rages on like a fire until it profits too little to keep on burning. In this way of thinking, war is an equalizer, a tirer-out of aggression.

June 18, 2003
⇒ Some folks getting on in years and harrowed by the thought of life not adding up to anything suddenly realizing family is all they have, so come clambering back needily and trying to put over the idea that they’ve been out there cheerleading all along. Not so.

June 21, 2003
⇒ Mortal – latrom

June 23, 2003
⇒ Even Proust sweetened (although maybe that’s not surprising)—the Madeleine was based in reality on an incident he had with a Zwieback cracker—like melba toast. According to this guy who’s been reading Encyclopedia Brittanica in its entirety and is currently mired in the letter P, interviewed on NPR.

August 30, 2003
⇒ AMERICAN WAKE – held before Irish emigrated to America
⇒ The finger – digitus imputicus (the indecent finger) – flipping the bird dates back to Roman times, when it meant the same thing.
⇒ Wallower, wallflower

September 11, 2003
⇒ William Moses joining up with Rev. Billy and going to Burning Man. Had had enough of himself—had to lose himself somewhere. Back to the days of prancing around at night with Grotowski—finally admitting that destiny.

September 16, 2003
⇒ The mallet vs. the wallet – mallet meaning gavel I suppose
⇒ Amygdala, seat of fear in the brain – Prefrontal lobe (on left side?) seat of serenity, compassion. What is the role of cortisol? Why are Americans so fearful and quick to lash out in violence…

September 22, 2003
⇒ Prerequisite of doing
Believing you can find the pulse
And make it beat for others.
O brother how the clichés clutch.
⇒ Server not Found – Fervor not Sound

October 3, 2003
⇒ Intransigent, unrepentant
Burger-eating
Virtuous American.

October 6, 2003
⇒ The mouth sat on its own way down low in the face, ever about to smirk and saying, what am I doing here with these bozos, nose and eyes.
⇒ The slinky somewhat pancaked singer in silk had that quiet jackhammer laugh. The shoulders jittering crazily up and down with no sound whatsoever. Gabriella’s laugh. She sat by the jazz pianist finding her way into the groove, for the benefit of onlookers. Once in, her jaw unhinged, rocking, as if to say, “yes I am so intent now as to let myself be ugly. That’s the kind of artistry I dwell in…”

October 9, 2003
⇒ Whatever you find words for
Is dead in the heart.
Don’t preach.
Embody.

October 21, 2003
⇒ She touched my butt
Said the DP
I love having my butt touched.
Downy features
Yield in time to shine
And glare
Acquisition
And a neck strung like a piano
There is an aim to sex you know.

November 8, 2003
⇒ King Raw Horse – rockinghorse
⇒ From the moment we’re cast
We start to cool
Lace your fingers through my jaws
And in your morbid corner unperceived
Work them clackers.
It’s all right, I’ve imagined it all:
My lifelessness is invested with these lines.
Life can seize the last word.
And does.

November 10, 2003
⇒ Sevi’s taken lately to calling me “pop” instead of “papa”. Makes her sound like a streetwise little city kid.

December 8, 2003
⇒ Yesterday walking back from sledding in the park, Sevi started to get upset by the length of the difficult slog through the snow, whimpering “I want my mama!” over and over. So I knelt down and asked her the trouble. She said she wanted me to carry her, which I did. Then, face to face with her, I began whimpering as a joke “I want my mama!” She said “Sorry, but your mama is in Colorado.”

Late December
⇒ The One Complaint I Have
There are days when the blind person affronts me,
Her tapping stick of suffering an annoyance
Or even more irksome
Her not suffering
And orphaning the homely pity
I may or may not have contrived.
⇒ Taxidermic
My hair feels brittle and marooned
As if the least scratching would
Vandalize it, like the muzzle of an old mount
Rubbed to the upholstery
Never to regrow.
⇒ A society in which economic profit for the individual is enshrined even, for instance in the phrase “American Dream”, is a society unraveling from itself, as the ties between human beings must inexorably be severed---UNTIED STATES.
⇒ Like Gideon Brower trying to make a cute schtick of being upfront about his ambition.
⇒ “You’re a poet. So, what, you don’t apologize, say goodbye, things like that? Niceties?”
⇒ What offends Sugi is the principle of waste and inefficiency, pointedly in defiance of any consideration of scale or consequences.
⇒ EX CATHEDRA – interview someone on a topic they know nothing about. Show that interview on a monitor to someone who is expert in that field, then ask them a question entirely out of their area of expertise, show that on a monitor to the relevant expert, and so on, until ultimately you have the original person back again to view someone speaking ex cathedra and have him or her comment on it to close the loop—this would be an extended meditation on specialization and the fragmentation or unity of culture and information.
⇒ Thymos deficiency, bigtime
⇒ As when you twist a rubber band to the point where it starts jumping into knots.
⇒ Human meaning as a product of limited understanding ceding to emotional well-being. Greater intelligences may founder on the question of meaning and find life difficult to sustain as a result—madness, suicide.
⇒ It told on his face. –William Told, as opposed to Tell.