A DUNNO-WHAT KINDA DAY

It has been a dunno-what kinda day. Woke up feeling ready to go. Had the day scheduled to go to town for pills, gas and groceries. I know in advance a trip to town means I'll be so exhausted by the time it's all over, I can only take a nap. Today, the nap didn't happen right away. Had the radio going on an afternoon talk show, like Fresh Air, hearing it without paying attention. Up after an hour, then back down for another hour. Woke from that nap feeling at home again. Put on a movie, watched for half an hour and turned it off. Good film, but mind not willing to pay attention. Found a watermelon at the grocery store. I passed by the display thinking I have not painted a watermelon in a long time. I miss painting watermelons. I walked through the whole store thinking I'd like to make a one-day watermelon painting tomorrow. I've been so distracted for so long, I've not made anything to call art. I want to get back into the groove. Found a canvas already stretched, ready to go, one I stretched some years ago. I stopped painting before getting to it. The melon is in the refrigerator and the canvas is ready.

I've put on some Philip Glass music, four pieces, him playing electric organ. The one playing now, Contrary Motion, is solo. The others have accompaniment of piano and soprano sax. They were composed and recorded in the period of time I'm in his memoirs now, early 1970s. He practiced yoga and meditated regularly. He and wife went overland to India, rode trains across India to the Himalayan city, Darjeeling, and into northern India. He was overtaken by a serious interest in Tibetan Buddhism. It could be my suggestible imagination, I feel like I hear Tibetan music in his compositions, a lengthy repetition with variations moving around inside the patterns set up by the repetitions. It is meditative. I follow the sound in mind's eye, recalling the bouncing ball. His repetitions are relaxing as a good massage, like Tibetan chants. I'm vowing to self to play more Glass in the future. I have probably a dozen CDs of his music, all of which I love. It's a bit odd first time hearing it, but it took hold of me right away. I have his Dracula album. It is made as a soundtrack to the original Dracula movie with Bella Lugosi. I might order Dracula from netflix and play the Glass music with it. Good plan. I don't really want to watch the movie, but have a feeling Glass's soundtrack will make it new. 

I saw a clip today of news comic Jon Stewart losing a degree of my regard. Not that it matters to him. Or me. He made some unnecessary repeat swipes at Rebecca Dolezal, the wannabe. I recalled his sentimental show of embracing Kaitlyn Bruce Jenner in his proud of self way for being so piously PC, the champion of tolerance. Then a white woman wanted to be a black woman. He played the white racist role. What white woman in her right mind would want to be a nigger bitch? He can't get over his own dismay that a white chick would want to be black. He can handle a guy wanting to be a chick, sooo liberal, but not a chick wanting to be black. Methinks he might protesteth too much. It makes me never want to identify self liberal again. It strikes me hypocritical from a man quick to point the finger at hypocrisy. Reminds me of the saying that three fingers point back at self when pointing the finger at someone else. He's a bit off on the civil war too. He fails to notice it was a Northern invasion. In the South, it's called the War of Yankee Aggression. The North invaded the South. You don't see historical accounts of any Yankee cities burned to the ground by Southern troops. He's rewriting history too. He's still funny. Stewart has become a disappointment to me in his smug liberalism. He's a show liberal, a very well paid celebrity television comedian. Again, I remind self, the medium, itself, is the message.  

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JACK AND JENNY'S BIG ADVENTURE

This morning I went out the door with five carrots to see the donkeys. Both hearing my footsteps in the house went to braying as soon as I crawled out of the bed. Jenny's efforts sound like a dog barking. She's closer to a bray than she ever has been. Jack brays, Jenny barks. I broke the carrots into three pieces each. Jenny always wants a new one before the one she's chewing is done. Jack would rather finish the one he's chewing before he takes the next one. Carrot time over, I unfastened the gate, leaving it closed, turned to pick up an armload of hay and saw Jenny walk by with Jack close behind. I put the hay down and followed them. Hollering at them would only make them nervous and I couldn't do anything with them nervous. They walked all around the house, exploring the zone they see every day. I followed, calling their names to keep them aware I was nearby. I could see they were already spooked from unfamiliar territory, and didn't want to make it worse. I spoke their names to help keep them calm. They walked into the road. The time Jack was out by himself, he would not step onto the road's surface. I turned a little bit nervous with them in the road. I wasn't afraid of a car coming along, but hesitated within wondering what's next. If they decided to follow the road, I was in trouble. I watched them, calling their names, thinking this may take awhile. They walked to where I park the car and left the road toward the gate to the meadow they won't cross the creek to go into. I went to the gate and opened it and they went back to the road. I walked out into the meadow and they followed. Their spirits perked up in the expanse of meadow. I went back to the gate, closed and latched it while they watched. They took off running. They ran and ran from one end to the other and back. This was the meadow Jack lived in before Jenny came into his life. Wondering if he remembered it, I saw him go around to his favorite places in the rhododendron grove. He went to them like he was showing them to Jenny, like he was saying to her, "Here's a good place. Over here is another good place." He took her around to the places he would go to rest and hide in dark shadows.

Jack would take off running, Jenny beside, in front or behind him, galloping, heads up on full alert, the hair of their cropped manes sticking straight up, ears up, running around in a big oval. Jack kicked his back feet in the air a few times. They went to the corners, walked along the fence, explored the meadow together in detail. Jack going to his favorite places first told me he remembered his two months living there. I returned to the house, leaving them to their new territory. How to get them to cross the creek they will not cross was the next question. Thought I'd let them investigate their new space. I went back out later, after they'd calmed down. They were rubbing their necks on a tree's bark. I went into the meadow and walked to a place I thought they might be able to cross the creek easily. I stepped across and they watched. I walked out into the meadow toward the hay I'd put down earlier. They watched. I called to them. They watched. Soon they were bored, turned and walked back to a place they'd found to their liking. I came back to the house and had a nap. Upon waking, I saw them out the window standing among the rhododendron near the place Jack made his first dust circle. I went into the meadow looking for the best place for them to cross easily. The place that looked the best was the worst. Long grass had grown and fell across the creek, looking like a good place to take a step. In other places the creek was narrow, the bank was too steep. Jack stood at the edge of the bank, considered it and backed away. The bank looking from where I stood gave the appearance of a gentle grade. Later I looked at it from where Jack stood and it looks straight down. I found no good place to recommend. They followed me up and down the creek, trying to figure out what I was doing. I told Jack, You're gonna have to figure it out for yourself. I don't know what your problem is, why you can't step across a narrow strip of water. I see it is a problem for you, but I don't know the alternative.

I returned to the house, and the donkeys to the place they like. I checked facebook, read a few articles, one by Noam Chomsky, saw a reliably funny Jon Stewart clip and one by David Pakman. I've grown weary of Pakman feigning surprise over the obvious. Too much like network tv in that regard. Bill Maher has come to bore me with his fundamentalist atheist talk. It appears he and the other tv atheist fundamentalists are going into competition with the so-called Christian fundamentalists, the American taliban. I want to tell him he is setting his sites awfully low. I find none of his criticism of the pope valid. He sounds too much like a pseudo-intellectual in a suit playing hipper-than-thou games with easy targets. His film, Religulous, bored me out of my mind, him talking in a smug tone of voice like a sassy nine year old about subjects he way too obviously knew nothing about. He talked down to everybody he interviewed, some of them I knew on sight had a hell of a lot more on the ball than he did. I'm with him on much of what he thinks, objecting to his disrespect for the people he talks down to like a prosecutor. All I felt his boring talk with the people he interviewed did was show them what an arrogant American looks like up close. His uninformed generalizations about Islam have bored me to the limit. He doesn't make me laugh anymore. Today I skipped over him. I like Louis Black sometimes, but his high blood-pressure rant grows wearisome too. Grew weary of Rachel Maddow's edge-of-her-seat hysteria. The subjects she covers are, indeed, to be hysterical about. But I don't want to go there. Every day something comes forward to be hysterical about. Somehow we stumble our way through everyday life where none of the frantic events of the moment matter at all. 

What does it matter that on the far side of the globe a family and guests at a wedding party are blown to stinking chunks of meat, collateral damage from a drone strike? They got him. It matters, but it's not mine. It's theirs. This is what I have to tell myself. It's theirs, not mine. What does it matter when a dozen people get blown up someplace else while I roll a ball back and forth across the floor with a two year old? Those people have kids they rolled a ball with too. How do we live in this world with new Xtreme atrocities every day in our heads? I'm in process of letting go of attention to the falsehoods told on any news station. The news amounts to no more than distraction. The pipeline. I can't stop it. Fracking. I can't stop it. If I were to try to organize a large enough mass of people to make a difference politically, we would be infiltrated by the FBI, set up and arrested on terrorist charges. I like staying at home where the donkeys roam and the clouds crawl over the mountains. I went out an hour before dark to take the donkeys some of the grain they especially like. I did not want to force them across the creek or entice them. I wanted them to cross it with full attention, not distracted by something to eat. I'm in no hurry. They have found a V corner where one fence meets another at an angle. Christmas tree growers made a big pile of dead trees the other side of the fence in the corner. It makes a shelter for the donkeys. Trees overhead, rhododendron and the brush pile make a windbreak for them. If they want to stay on that side of the creek awhile, I'm ok with it. They really don't want to stay. By evening they were restless wanting back to their meadow. I put the grain down for them, walked between them without touching either one. It makes them uneasy to have me, or the other, close while eating, especially sweet grain. Neither one of them showed any reflex. I want them to experience me nearby while they eat, to show them I am not wanting to take it. I don't give it to them to turn around and take it. I don't eat donkey food. Too much fiber. I took it for another measure of the trust between us. I could walk them back the way they went. They would follow me to the gate and walk through. It wouldn't even require carrots. Now I know how to move them from one meadow to the other. If they don't want to cross the creek, they don't want to cross the creek is all I know to make of it.          

leaf prints in the road

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HANDS OFF IN TEXAS

All of a sudden, half the population of Texas is criminalized, the male half. Masturbation has raised its ante from sin to crime. Two years in prison for it. What's a cowboy gonna do? Gives new meaning to "The eyes of Texas are upon you." Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Texans are also Americans (sorta), so I suppose the new law will be observed the way we Americans observe the law, don't get caught. Better not be suspected of it either. Like WC Fields might say, Where there's smoke there's fire, boys. Boy Scouts is now a criminal organization in Texas. Will it be the scoutmaster's duty to listen at the tents on field trips in the night? Will boys rat on each other or make it up about somebody? "He beat off. I heard him do it." Will Texas make concentration camps for teenage boys with dormitory lights turned on all night? No, it won't do any of that. When a population becomes criminalized, they turn into a unit unto themselves with a code where nobody rats on anybody. The boys and men of Texas will soon have the criminal code among themselves where rats die. It kinda puts preachers, prosecutors and judges in a position of hypocrisy too, as well as the entire state legislature, given a few intelligent exceptions, women. Them too. The state of Texas is officially a prison. Everybody in the state is a criminal. Australia started as a criminal colony and Texas has evolved (the E word in Texas) into a criminal colony.

The Dixie Chicks come to mind saying at a show in London they were ashamed of being from the same state W Bush was from. The Bush administration of epic scoundrels shut them off the corporate media. Their cds sold all the more and their concerts sold out. I also can see that half the population of Texas is embarrassed by the republican chicanery going on there in full control. Police state is not about majority control, but controlling the majority. Wendy Davis, the woman who kept the filibuster going vs Rick Perry, is now elevated to a degree of respect. She's being pointed at as potential candidate for governor. Obama won his presidency because he was the only democrat who voted against going into Iraq. That elevated him to president. Hilary voting for the invasion was a bleep in her campaign. She let down a great portion of her fan base when she went along with the Bush Junta. She lost my attention altogether. She did it for political expediency and it bit her in the ass. The republicans would likely be more vicious to Hilary than they are to Obama. And Dufus Sarah Palin is back. Now she's quitting the republican party cause it aint dumb enough to her satisfaction. Alaska must not have been dumb enough either. Nor Faux news. She represents us to the rest of the world. They look on and laugh. We non-parrots in America look on and weep. Weep because our country we grew up singing Tis Of Thee over, and want to believe in, has gone to shit before our eyes. We know how and we know why. We know we didn't do it. We know there's nothing we can do about it. Obama has shown us for sure by now that he is not on the side of We The People. The black people have known he was not with them from soon after he started.

That's it for the review of the news as comedy. Maybe I'm paying too much attention to Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. More than likely not enough. They keep me laughing better than any sitcom. They are slap-stick. How else can a day's news be looked at over the last thirty-three years? We don't need Faux news to make it even more ridiculous unto overkill. A few times I've set out to look at a Faux news clip for humor and turn it off every time before the first minute is up. The steady stream of arrogance turns me off right away and the bullshit finishes me off. Can't even listen to their voices. An entire tv network that is openly racist on the one hand, and on the other, a business woman who said nigger 27 years ago is crucified without any regard for freedom of speech, innocent until proven guilty, etc. The most racist nation on earth convicting by way of scandal a Southern woman for saying nigger. What else can we call this but comedy? The comedy of stupid, like Jackass the movie. An openly racist supreme court, no problem. I use the nigger word here in defiance of bullshit correctness, parrotry to television. I'm sympathetic with the black cause and I know they don't give a rat's ass. They call me a white emeffer and the C-word, cracker. Nobody comes down on them. Reverse racism is ok. None of that matters at all. I use the word because I'm told not to for reasons I see are bullshit. I use it knowing it is a key word for instant scanning of online documents, like bomb.

The movie Brazil is the image in my mind for police state. It's not about the country Brazil. It happens in the UK. In the beginning, a man and woman in recliners in their flat watching the telly. A chainsaw cuts a circle in the ceiling, a swat team drops down, binds the man and hauls him out. Whoops. Wrong address. Oh well. Let's get on with it. I must see it again soon. As far as I can see, everything we're told by government and media is false, so predictably that when they tell us something straight up we take it for a smoke screen. All through my lifetime the American people have been called sheep in cartoons and editorials. I used to see the sheep grazing in meadows. Now I see the sheep at the stockyards herded and lined up for their last breath, praising and thanking Jesus for keeping Texas free from masturbation. Masturbation amounts to pre-emptive abortion there. If they can't stop abortions, they'll stop them before they start, forbidding men to spill their seed on the ground or into the toilet, whichever. Abortion of the sperm cell. Too ludicrous to even mention, really. The absurdity is that it's a nineteenth century law in 2013. 2001 is in the past and we're drifting into super-imposed poverty throughout the once prosperous land since the Bank took our resources and control. Our powerlessness is expressed through vampire and zombie movies like in the 1950s during the Eisenhower recessions. At least in this time we're able to see the comedy too, somewhat.

 

 

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