CORENA CORENA BLACK DOG CORENA

dog and likeness

 

Drove to town today for lunch with friend Bob I've seen from time to time over the last thirty-plus years, though seldom to sit and have a conversation with for an hour. I'm glad he likes La Mexicana, my favorite restaurant in town, where the food is not Tex-Mex. It's cooking as done in Latin America, the cook from La Paz, Bolivia. We have another good Latin restaurant run by Cubans who came here from the Canary Islands, Las Palmas. Also a new Tex-Mex restaurant that is nice. And the one that has been here for years, Mis Arados (My Plow), known as the best restaurant in Sparta since it opened. It is family owned. The kids that were toddlers, waddling among the people at tables spreading cheer with their glowing round faces, are grown up now, worked through high school as waiters in the restaurant, and now have husbands, wives and babies. One beautiful young woman I watched grow up in there, I saw at the gas station a few weeks ago, she had a baby in the car. I said, "You have a baby." She said, "I have three." My jaw bounced off the cement between my feet like a golf ball.

curled up waiting

 

Next stop, the grocery store for donkey carrots, then the drug store where I saw Teena, who gifted me Sofia, and hardware store. From town out to Stratford, a township in the western part of the county, to deliver my friend Carole's Christmas present. We don't do that. However, I saw a book in Chris Davis's shop about Zentangles, which I knew Carole did not have and needed. I'd have bought it on sight for her in August, or any other month. I called it a Christmas present due to time of year. I drove home over the mountain on Spicer Mountain Road that connects hwy 221 with hwy 18 at Whitehead, singing, "good dog Corena," simple words dog can understand from words I speak to her. It is a slow road with curves galore, a third of it mud on a rainy day like today, though not bad, and great scenery, blue mountains in the distance, black cows in the foreground, the meadows still green on a short-sleeve day two days before Christmas. The girl at the grocery store register was one I didn't remember seeing before. I looked at her name tag. Corena. Bells rang all over the inside of my head. Why hadn't I thought of it yet?

   dog at home  

 

I'd been feeling that Rena was missing something the name needed, unable to find what it was. It was like the name Rena was too lean, needed some fat on her bones. I was thinking of calling her Black Rena driving into the parking lot, spoke it a few times to hear it and liked it. Thought of the song, Black Betty. Great name for a dog, but she's not a Betty. I think it was the way the girl at the register spelled Corena that caught my eye. She was gorgeous with black wavy hair. Lots of new spellings these days. My favorite is Mysti. I also know a Karina. Co-Rena. Rena modified. It fits and flows with Sofia. In sound, o-e-a, only the C-n and the S-f distinguish them from one another. Yet the names have very different sounds. Sofia is soft as a down cushion. Corena, too, is soft with a sense of self-assertion, like bear fur. All the way to Carole's and all the way home I sang Corrina Corrina, "I love Corrina, tell the world I do." I was out there on the highway in the rain singing to my new dog, "Corena Corena, won't you come on home, aint had no lovin since you been gone."

dog says I wish it would stop raining

so I could go outside and bark

 

I remembered Aster, and having no dog for eight years, like Corena was Aster come home after being gone so long, riding the mountain roads in her seat again. The feeling is very much like having Aster return after long absence. Wherever this dog's soul came from, she found her way to me. She has the same soulful eyes as Aster. I know it is the breed of dog, lab mix, that determines much of their behavior, personalities and thinking. It's not the same dog, but like the same dog. What more could I ask? A chance to have Aster back as a young dog. Curiously, it's like we already know each other. Today was dog's day to learn by experience another aspect of living here, riding in the car and waiting for sometimes a few hours. I keep windows open enough to let air pass through, but not for her to escape. Twice I left her in the car for an hour and twice for a half hour. I took her out for a chance to pee after the first hour but she did not. Let  her out later and she did not need to. I put her outside for bathroom before we left. After we'd been home a few hours, after my nap, I sat with her and thanked her for being a patient riding companion today, thanked her for finding me, hugged her, told her she has legs like a deer and beautiful eyes. Big yawn.

corena corena

 

 

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GUNS AND NOT GUNS

 

along brown road / air bellows

 

Made a town run today for groceries and gas, light rain, light fog on the mountain. Had lunch at my new favorite restaurant, La Mexicana, good food, good conversation with Manuel, the owner operator. I have to listen closely to his accent, yet when I listen too closely I lose it. I was looking for the best way to listen to him. I could easily understand about half what he said and had to figure out some of the other. Listen too closely, I don't hear anything, though listening casually I miss about the same. It is a zone in between where I understand him best paying attention without trying to make out everything. I got most of what he was saying. He was talking about the socialist governments in Bolivia and Venezuela. He was talking Latin American politics from the inside, and I know very little, only enough to keep up with what he was saying. What little I know came from reading. The politics of everyday life is quite different from the second-hand historical perspective interpreted from a different culture, belief system and language. There is a difference between reading about it and a gun pointed at your head.

 

along brown road

 

Every day in news is something about guns and the varieties of killing. Everybody is questioning what to do about guns, from the polar opposites to everything in between. The one thing I never see or hear by not watching television is guns solve problems. It would take Hollywood to agree to make less gun movies and tv shows, and that's not going to happen like Exxon is not going to support solar energy. Guns have obsessive entertainment value, exciting, the cheapest thrill. The philosophy of television says, if  you don't like it, kill it. It doesn't do to blame television when you consider the audience creates its own entertainment. Young guys in a new band go with what excites the crowd. Young stand-up comics learn from their audiences, learn how to give them what they want. Television gives us back to ourselves. It is a stretch of the imagination to call television art, though it figures when you look at it like everything is art. Art reflects life which reflects art which reflects life. It is a constant feedback going both ways from television to viewer to television. Television is not going to self-destruct by advising viewers to be less obsessed with guns, because the viewing audience was already obsessed with guns before television.

 

along brown road

 

The only solution I see for the gun problem is to live what I believe and allow others to live what they believe. For my part, I don't want any guns. Had two that were given to me over time, not wanting any of them. I gave them to somebody who appreciates them and is glad to have them, somebody who values guns. There came a time I wanted them out of the house, didn't even want money for them. I believe guns attract guns. They also attract thieves. I've seen the propaganda about security spread since the Nixon administration, Joe McCarthy's right hand man, until by now an awful lot of people believe they need multiple guns for security. And so many people are hoarding ammo these days the supply cannot keep up with the demand. Fear has pervaded the land so much through television that I, who am not subject to propaganda through tv, see changes in the people around me that diminish them as human beings and they go with it like it's the latest thing since a recliner. The fear by now, half a century into the propaganda of fear, has become aggressive. Found a good meme attributed to Frank Zappa, "Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex."

 

along brown road

 

I'm not with the anti-gun people and I'm not with the gun people. I see they all have a right to their points of view, all of which I believe are valid, like I have a right to mine. My point of view is to let them fight it out and I'll watch good movies, listen to good music, read good books and make a string dance for a kitten. This is how I live in the world not of it. I look at the television once a week, see appeals for me to go in debt over a new Lexus I couldn't afford a set of tires for. The pizza commercials make me never want another pizza. The Viagra and Cialis commercials make me laugh out loud every time. The first half is suggestive testosterone prowess and the second half an endless list of warnings that this product will kill you. If your erection lasts more than four hours call your doctor. I'm not interested in my doctor like that.  I don't want anything I see advertised on tv. If they advertised books by contemporary poets or picture books by contemporary artists I might take an interest. I don't need it, because I know how to find them without advertising. I divorced self from television in 1961, and, like Robert Frost said, that made all the difference. I like to see the television from time to time to keep up with what the people around me are believing, glad deep down I don't believe that mind anymore.  I've grown wary of it. 

 

along brown road

all photos by tj worthington

 

 

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HANGING AN EXHIBITION

 

circles inside circles

 

This morning I packed art objects made over the last year into the car to take to the library and hang on the walls in their exhibition / meeting room, Sherry's office space, for the month of October. Took two hours hanging them, got plenty of stair-step exercise stepping onto a wooden chair often and back down. I get them up on the walls and they look so puny in a big room. That's neither here nor there. It's hard for me to say if it looks good or not. I know them each one, individually, intimately unto conception. I know the why behind them. I need to write this out in a kind of artist's statement for anyone who is curious. First and only rule for every piece was Simple, simplest possible. When something became complex visualizing it in mind's eye, I'd stop and say, no complex---simple only. Each one is about getting the max out of the least. I decided to call the show Punk Art. Had a good time in there. Hung the pictures as low as the hanging chains allowed. I wanted them down where kids can see them easily. I've asked the people working in the library to suggest to kids who come in to go have a look.

 

the foot of somebody's bed

 

First of the month, had some cash, decided to treat self to a good meal while in town. Went to a small restaurant called La Mexicana. The spirit is the best in there since Consuelo, of Bogota, Columbia, opened it. She served Venezuelan, Mexican and Columbian cuisine for lunch. Her cooking had the quality of a chef. Her personality was vibrant, a woman who likes to dance on weekends. She's moved to Charlotte, last I heard, the restaurant has been through I think two owners between Consuelo and the people who have recently taken it over. I saw an article about the new owner in the paper a few weeks ago. He is from Spain and his wife from Bolivia, La Paz. She does the cooking. Several Mexicans came in while I was there. The food is real Mexican. The Mexican restaurant in town for years, Mis Arados, is Tex-Mex. La Mexicana is the food they eat in Mexico. I love Latin cooking. Flavor is important. I will return to this place often, already feel at home there. Good meal, good vibrations.

 

hanging line

 

Walking from the car to the house told me I was worn out from hours of physical activity, not strenuous, but motion. Emptied pockets right away, shed shoes and socks and fell down on the bed, covered up and slept a few hours. Did not want to get up. Did not want to write. Wanted to be still. Could not get back to sleep. Thought I'd watch the movie in today's mail, Love & Mercy, Brian Wilson's story of the Beach Boys. Set it in motion, sitting back with Sophia, feet up, in for a couple hours. Phone rang. It rang a long time for me taking so long to rise from my nest and get to the phone. My friend Billy Potter from forty-five to fifty years ago. I knew when I heard his voice, my friend, his uncle, John Zeigler had left the body at 103. So when he told me, it was already redundant. John was the owner of the bookstore I worked in part-time during the years at College of Charleston, the Old South College of a student body of five hundred. Now it is ten thousand, a state university, has a big art department, big music department, big science department.

 

 

eclipse

 

When I went there, the main building and the old library were it. The plaster walls were cracked and patches gone. Old, old maps hanging in some of the classrooms, plaster busts of Greek and Roman generals lying about. Tall windows. Old wooden floors, old desks. Some of the professors were present day people, several of them were from the Old South past. It was fascinating for me, a culture, the South, after growing up in a world without culture. I loved being in a culture and learning the ways of the culture. Throughout my sentence of involuntary servitude, every port the ship stopped in, the other guys went looking for the bars. I went looking for the bookstore. I became acquainted with several bookstores along our southeastern coast and the different ports in the Mediterranean. I bought paperbacks every place the ship pulled into port. I fell in love with bookstores and wanted with all my heart to work in one. I became acquainted with the Book Basement in Charleston and bought several books there, quite a lot.

four quartets: the universe

 

When I started at the College, I asked John about working there. He always kept a college student part-time. The guy working there had one more semester to go. If I could find something to get me through til then, I'll get the job. I made do and got the only job I ever wanted. I believe I learned twice as much by way of the bookstore as I did in school. It was a hyper-learning time. I was learning the ways of the Old South. The New South had yet a decade before it reached Charleston. I loved the Old South. I loved the massive live oak trees that made a forest canopy for the quadrangle. I loved the College's neo-classical architecture. While talking with Billy, I told him John taught me authentic morality. The morality I grew up in was you-better-not. John's morality had to do with practical everyday life, the morality of "To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Shakespeare. He kept a small calligraphy copy of this sentence framed on the wall in the store. I saw it every day multiple times. It was the core of John's morality and became the core of my own.

 

e f g

all ouvres by tj worthington

 

 

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