Sunday, December 6, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
MORNING AFFIRMATION
Thank you, God, for this beautiful life
And all my blessings.
I thank God for this beautiful life.
I live in peace and harmony with all living things
And all the forces of the universe.
I live in peace with the universe.
I continuously pursue the limits of my potentials
Without attachment to results.
I pursue my potentials without attachments.
And all my blessings.
I thank God for this beautiful life.
I live in peace and harmony with all living things
And all the forces of the universe.
I live in peace with the universe.
I continuously pursue the limits of my potentials
Without attachment to results.
I pursue my potentials without attachments.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
THERE IS SOME SHIT I WILL NOT EAT!
Email to the Buffalo
Saturday 09/26/09 8:00 AM Bersone:
We're in San Diego; at a best western on shelter island. Intel show
was a bloodbath and I face hard questions when I get back as to my
"numbers". Fear predominates, as usual, in all affairs human, given
our attachment to the sea of forms of which our precious egos are our
finest fabrications.
Boy, reading these Flannery O'Connor letters
brings you into a consciousness that held a rare vision of the
Catholic Church; quite an integrity in that woman -- unflinchingly
unsentimental yet profoundly devout. Interesting to see, sprinkled
throughout her letters, which range through the fifties and early
sixties (she died in 64) various writers who were in the news then:
Miller, Salinger, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Nabokov etc. She was quite
centered and lived on a chicken and peacock farm in Georgia with her
mother, bound there by her illness (lupus), although was a national
light in the literary scene with various reading trips to colleges.
Wonderful ear. We have to set aside our experiences, in a way, or
sort through them, to see what has stuck. Your novel is a process of
getting down to what was real, what mattered, what really happened.
What happened! that's the question. You can't know unless you re-
inhabit the soul of that little boy who hung by the fence waiting for
his mother in the middle of a sea of changes he couldn't understand. The compassion required for that is a bridge to all other suffering and may be the key to allowing characters to come to life.
Glad to be down here, through Wed am, by the way. I've had it tough,
brother, but I have a strange self that is more and more difficult to
conceal. My speeches to my crew are my favorite activities, and
represent my best accomplishments for the day, although what I have to do is like asking a monk, after delivering a sermon, to climb into a tank and drive it through a minefield under fire. I must say that much of my strategy lies in occupying a sublime indifference to explosions going on around me. I'm probably not the best man for the job. Many times I think, "So what?" when presented with our careening off the budget. I mean, what do you expect me to do about four guys bullshitting on the third floor when I'm busy on the dock prodding egos into a higher realm like a mother bird gently turning her eggs in the hope that they can develop in some sort of balanced way. People like to go from zero to sixty, blaming everything and everyone but themselves, and hope the problems go away. They do go away, of course, one way or another. The river carries it all down the hill. Even the sewer is a river, regrettably, more and more. Let it flow; only the flow will clear the stream.
I saw a documentary the other night where they showed about sixteen feet of some creature's stumpy footprints in the mud: they felt secure in the deduction that they were made by the first creature who came out of the sea, a fish who could breathe but not a fish, not a fish and not a reptile, a representative of a whole group of life forms before the reptile, who held sway on the earth for some time, slithering and swinging their curious heads from side to side in the strange realm of the Air into which they lurched and, to their amazement, found they could survive. This one apparently made it sixteen feet. More than most of us.
Talk to you later.
Saturday 09/26/09 9:21 AM Buffalo:
When I finally made my break from the realm of the "employed" it was in a spasm of anger. I had been "put upon" for the final time.
I'm on an airliner waiting for the final passengers to board when my cell phone rings. It's Ron Blatt, the Chief Financial Officer, to whom I, as they say, answer. I am the Warehouse Manager.
"Where are you?" bleats Blatt.
I give him a moment of silence as I consider all the options and implications. I feel a red stillness in my forehead.
"Hey, Ron, what's up?"
"Where are you? It's only three O'clock?"
Another moment of silence just to feed his angst. It's Friday and I'm on my way to see my dying mother.
"What's that? You're breaking up a little."
"Where the fuck are you? It's only three O'clock and you've got a warehouse crew here with no supervision!"
"No sweat, Ron, I put Enrique in charge."
"Enrique! He's a fucking idiot! And did you check with me first before taking off early on a Friday afternoon? Hell no, you never do. You need to get back here right now. Be in my office by 4:00 pm!"
I give him a long moment of silence which he cannot endure.
"You hear me Reddock? 4:00 PM!"
"Hey Ron, what did you say? You're breaking up." The red stillness in my forehead heats up. I see my mother sitting on the lawn swing on the front porch waiting for me to drive in. I see Blatt's red face, spittle on the lips as usual.
There comes a moment of clarity in which I say rather softly, quoting e. e. cummings, "There is some shit I will not eat!"
The lady in the seat next to me turns to look at me, judgment all over her face like thick mascara.
I think of my mother and the cancer that is growing on her bladder. I see the tall fir and pine that surround her home, and hear the soft wind high in those trees. I see her sitting on the lawn swing on the front porch, waiting. I see the warehouse crew farting around for the last couple of hours of a hard worked week. I see Blatt at his desk, furious, the spittle on his pale lips. Yes, there is some shit I will not eat. I speak into the cell phone in full voice.
"Hey, Blatt. Go fuck yourself!"
Snapping the phone shut, I turn to the lady next to me, giving her a warm smile.
One day you will hit that moment.
Glad you're here. Just let me know when you see some clear time and we'll get together. I can take you to a great beach with tide pools.
Buff
i sing of Olaf glad and big
by E. E. Cummings
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"
straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.
Saturday 09/26/09 8:00 AM Bersone:
We're in San Diego; at a best western on shelter island. Intel show
was a bloodbath and I face hard questions when I get back as to my
"numbers". Fear predominates, as usual, in all affairs human, given
our attachment to the sea of forms of which our precious egos are our
finest fabrications.
Boy, reading these Flannery O'Connor letters
brings you into a consciousness that held a rare vision of the
Catholic Church; quite an integrity in that woman -- unflinchingly
unsentimental yet profoundly devout. Interesting to see, sprinkled
throughout her letters, which range through the fifties and early
sixties (she died in 64) various writers who were in the news then:
Miller, Salinger, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Nabokov etc. She was quite
centered and lived on a chicken and peacock farm in Georgia with her
mother, bound there by her illness (lupus), although was a national
light in the literary scene with various reading trips to colleges.
Wonderful ear. We have to set aside our experiences, in a way, or
sort through them, to see what has stuck. Your novel is a process of
getting down to what was real, what mattered, what really happened.
What happened! that's the question. You can't know unless you re-
inhabit the soul of that little boy who hung by the fence waiting for
his mother in the middle of a sea of changes he couldn't understand. The compassion required for that is a bridge to all other suffering and may be the key to allowing characters to come to life.
Glad to be down here, through Wed am, by the way. I've had it tough,
brother, but I have a strange self that is more and more difficult to
conceal. My speeches to my crew are my favorite activities, and
represent my best accomplishments for the day, although what I have to do is like asking a monk, after delivering a sermon, to climb into a tank and drive it through a minefield under fire. I must say that much of my strategy lies in occupying a sublime indifference to explosions going on around me. I'm probably not the best man for the job. Many times I think, "So what?" when presented with our careening off the budget. I mean, what do you expect me to do about four guys bullshitting on the third floor when I'm busy on the dock prodding egos into a higher realm like a mother bird gently turning her eggs in the hope that they can develop in some sort of balanced way. People like to go from zero to sixty, blaming everything and everyone but themselves, and hope the problems go away. They do go away, of course, one way or another. The river carries it all down the hill. Even the sewer is a river, regrettably, more and more. Let it flow; only the flow will clear the stream.
I saw a documentary the other night where they showed about sixteen feet of some creature's stumpy footprints in the mud: they felt secure in the deduction that they were made by the first creature who came out of the sea, a fish who could breathe but not a fish, not a fish and not a reptile, a representative of a whole group of life forms before the reptile, who held sway on the earth for some time, slithering and swinging their curious heads from side to side in the strange realm of the Air into which they lurched and, to their amazement, found they could survive. This one apparently made it sixteen feet. More than most of us.
Talk to you later.
Saturday 09/26/09 9:21 AM Buffalo:
When I finally made my break from the realm of the "employed" it was in a spasm of anger. I had been "put upon" for the final time.
I'm on an airliner waiting for the final passengers to board when my cell phone rings. It's Ron Blatt, the Chief Financial Officer, to whom I, as they say, answer. I am the Warehouse Manager.
"Where are you?" bleats Blatt.
I give him a moment of silence as I consider all the options and implications. I feel a red stillness in my forehead.
"Hey, Ron, what's up?"
"Where are you? It's only three O'clock?"
Another moment of silence just to feed his angst. It's Friday and I'm on my way to see my dying mother.
"What's that? You're breaking up a little."
"Where the fuck are you? It's only three O'clock and you've got a warehouse crew here with no supervision!"
"No sweat, Ron, I put Enrique in charge."
"Enrique! He's a fucking idiot! And did you check with me first before taking off early on a Friday afternoon? Hell no, you never do. You need to get back here right now. Be in my office by 4:00 pm!"
I give him a long moment of silence which he cannot endure.
"You hear me Reddock? 4:00 PM!"
"Hey Ron, what did you say? You're breaking up." The red stillness in my forehead heats up. I see my mother sitting on the lawn swing on the front porch waiting for me to drive in. I see Blatt's red face, spittle on the lips as usual.
There comes a moment of clarity in which I say rather softly, quoting e. e. cummings, "There is some shit I will not eat!"
The lady in the seat next to me turns to look at me, judgment all over her face like thick mascara.
I think of my mother and the cancer that is growing on her bladder. I see the tall fir and pine that surround her home, and hear the soft wind high in those trees. I see her sitting on the lawn swing on the front porch, waiting. I see the warehouse crew farting around for the last couple of hours of a hard worked week. I see Blatt at his desk, furious, the spittle on his pale lips. Yes, there is some shit I will not eat. I speak into the cell phone in full voice.
"Hey, Blatt. Go fuck yourself!"
Snapping the phone shut, I turn to the lady next to me, giving her a warm smile.
One day you will hit that moment.
Glad you're here. Just let me know when you see some clear time and we'll get together. I can take you to a great beach with tide pools.
Buff
i sing of Olaf glad and big
by E. E. Cummings
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"
straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
ALBERT EINSTEIN
“Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that if he had an hour to save the world he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes solving it.”
Would you give this man an hour to save the world?
Friday, July 17, 2009
ON HAROLD NORSE
I'm Not a Man
I'm not a man, I can't earn a living, buy new things for my family.
I have acne and a small peter.
I'm not a man. I don't like football, boxing and cars.
I like to express my feeling. I even like to put an arm
around my friend's shoulder.
I'm not a man. I won't play the role assigned to me- the role created
by Madison Avenue, Playboy, Hollywood and Oliver Cromwell,
Television does not dictate my behavior.
I'm not a man. Once when I shot a squirrel I swore that I would
never kill again. I gave up meat. The sight of blood makes me sick.
I like flowers.
I'm not a man. I went to prison resisting the draft. I do not fight
when real men beat me up and call me queer. I dislike violence.
I'm not a man. I have never raped a woman. I don't hate blacks.
I do not get emotional when the flag is waved. I do not think I should
love America or leave it. I think I should laugh at it.
I'm not a man. I have never had the clap.
I'm not a man. Playboy is not my favorite magazine.
I'm not a man. I cry when I'm unhappy.
I'm not a man. I do not feel superior to women
I'm not a man. I don't wear a jockstrap.
I'm not a man. I write poetry.
I'm not a man. I meditate on peace and love.
I'm not a man. I don't want to destroy you
San Francisco, 1972
Harold Norse
July 6, 1916 - June 8, 2009
Recent note from Bersone:
Harold Norse died a few days ago. I remember attending a reading of Stanley Kunitz with him and Erika, during which Kunitz soared. After the reading people gathered at the White Horse Tavern where he was staying, modeled after an English pub, cozy with rich wood and softening plaster walls. Robert Bly was there, and I remember him saying to Kunitz, “you really knocked ‘em out!” said in a kind of contemptuous, competitive way, unfortunately typical of disenfranchised groups such as poets. I remember Kunitz, who had never overcome his feeling of being an outsider, despite his success, took no notice of Bly, but was gently and sincerely respectful of Harold, the two of them seeming to share a true communion. In such circumstances, where someone is exalted on a highly publicized reading circuit such as Kunitz was on, one can feel quite alone. It seemed to me that Kunitz felt some of that and appreciated Harold being there as perhaps the only one who felt real to him, and the respect he gently conferred on Harold showed me where Norse stood in the pantheon, a place that is so earned that it need not be shouted out, for it is earned by following a path that humbles the greatest among us, and is beyond us all. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me to see this bond between poets from such different categories, one being currently lionized by the literary establishment and the other more obscure and often associated with the Beats. For true poets, dedicated to showing the kinship between all living beings, such categories are illusory distractions that divide us unnecessarily.
For much more about Harold Norse:
Harold Norse tribute site: http://haroldnorse.com/
This is an excellent "all you want to know" site about Norse complete with many photos, comments, obits, links, and poems.
Also:
Obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/arts/music/13norse.html
Three poems: http://www.abalonemoon.com/norse.html
Obituary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/17/obituary-harold-norse
Remembrance by Jan Herman: http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2009/06/harold_norse_rip_1.html
Photo: http://www.glbtq.com/literature/norse_h,zoom.html
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Bersone on Poetry, Hart Crane and Ted Hughes
Email to the Buffalo
Sunday May 24, 2009 6:44 AM Bersone:
Buff,
The mornings are like something peeled away the scabs from the eyes, even the view of the Oakland container docks -- huge seavans stacked like a giant child's blocks beneath white cranes hanging still in the summer fog, the freeway empty. Everyone sleeping. I remember being bugged by the light on in the hall of the barracks, knowing that someone was on duty down in the office: there should be times when everybody sleeps, to give the world some relief. I suppose, though, as we age, we are heading for a state of Eyes-Wide-Open. Sleep is a condition of health and communing repose. Like looking into a soft pond -- maybe I got that from a poem, yes, I think maybe from Hart Crane "angles of repose" he said, looking at the light slanting down into a slumbrous pond. Unfortunately he jumped off the fantail of a cruise ship coming back from the tropics. Didn't want to come back. His great work was a long poem about the Brooklyn Bridge: his mistake was struggling to integrate the scientific-industrial world with that of art, a sort of poetic bau-hous, That was his mistake, that and not accepting his homosexuality. We're well past the temptation of suicide. At any rate: angles of repose. Slumbrous as a salamander still moving like a predator from the dinosaur age, beyond our time, that's for sure. When did we come up with Time? Tie your shoes, kids.
I've been reading Ted Hughes' poems, from the seventies, when I met
him; he was into farming, and wrote some vivid unflinching poems
about birthing calves, rain -- the larger events, told with passion
and objectivity.
Ruby read our correspondence; she correctly observed my tendency
toward verbosity. Well, some people have trouble even opening up
their yap. I remember Wallace Stevens, in a letter to a young woman
who was trying to turn him onto Henry Miller, that he thought Henry
was prolix, although, he conceded, perhaps he wanted to be prolix. I
think they were contemporaries, but at that point he felt too old for
the cancer books. both great writers. this world spits out many
stars, some lie in the alluvial mud like rubies until some poor
fucker feels around for them with the desperate intuition of a beggar
fumbling for his cock in a soaked sleeping bag on Market Street. God
help us. It's the spirit that makes the flower bloom, the flagrant
flame even cast off in an effort to catch the train. Things is what
they seem, in a certain light, altering everything. Dim Sum.
Sunday May 24, 2009 6:44 AM Bersone:
Buff,
The mornings are like something peeled away the scabs from the eyes, even the view of the Oakland container docks -- huge seavans stacked like a giant child's blocks beneath white cranes hanging still in the summer fog, the freeway empty. Everyone sleeping. I remember being bugged by the light on in the hall of the barracks, knowing that someone was on duty down in the office: there should be times when everybody sleeps, to give the world some relief. I suppose, though, as we age, we are heading for a state of Eyes-Wide-Open. Sleep is a condition of health and communing repose. Like looking into a soft pond -- maybe I got that from a poem, yes, I think maybe from Hart Crane "angles of repose" he said, looking at the light slanting down into a slumbrous pond. Unfortunately he jumped off the fantail of a cruise ship coming back from the tropics. Didn't want to come back. His great work was a long poem about the Brooklyn Bridge: his mistake was struggling to integrate the scientific-industrial world with that of art, a sort of poetic bau-hous, That was his mistake, that and not accepting his homosexuality. We're well past the temptation of suicide. At any rate: angles of repose. Slumbrous as a salamander still moving like a predator from the dinosaur age, beyond our time, that's for sure. When did we come up with Time? Tie your shoes, kids.
I've been reading Ted Hughes' poems, from the seventies, when I met
him; he was into farming, and wrote some vivid unflinching poems
about birthing calves, rain -- the larger events, told with passion
and objectivity.
Ruby read our correspondence; she correctly observed my tendency
toward verbosity. Well, some people have trouble even opening up
their yap. I remember Wallace Stevens, in a letter to a young woman
who was trying to turn him onto Henry Miller, that he thought Henry
was prolix, although, he conceded, perhaps he wanted to be prolix. I
think they were contemporaries, but at that point he felt too old for
the cancer books. both great writers. this world spits out many
stars, some lie in the alluvial mud like rubies until some poor
fucker feels around for them with the desperate intuition of a beggar
fumbling for his cock in a soaked sleeping bag on Market Street. God
help us. It's the spirit that makes the flower bloom, the flagrant
flame even cast off in an effort to catch the train. Things is what
they seem, in a certain light, altering everything. Dim Sum.
Friday, May 22, 2009
WORK IN PROGRESS
The following exchange is in reference to the previous posting called, “Here Comes The Sun”: http://bufflo.blogspot.com/2009/04/here-comes-sun.html
Email to the Buffalo
Wednesday 05/20/09 5:01 PM Buffalo:
I read your Easter poem in the Buffalo blog very closely today – both versions – in a very meditative mind. It has a epic resonance – a part of a huge story, a great and traditional singing, a revelation. I especially like the first version because it is fresh and raw and unpredictable. The other version at the end of the posting seems to have been filed down smooth, having lost a bit of edginess. I think my preference is because I tend toward the spontaneous, like hip-shooting in photography, modern jazz in music. The last version may be a better poem, I really don’t know, but that was my reaction today.
Buff
Thursday 05/21/09 7:30 PM Bersone:
Hey Mon,
Thanks for reading through those versions so attentively. I know you've got your own preoccupations, which I'm anxious to keep up on and talk to you about, so taking this time for poems is very generous. Of course, we have a back and forth, a rare but happy rapport that places the work first. Most people think such a focus is selfish, not acknowledging the gifts that come from creating things that enhance their lives, even little songs that are humming through many peoples' minds. The benefit I get from our correspondence is a paradox: the opportunity to share something very close, ( my observations, thoughts and feelings ) but in the context of making something -- just as you would make a deck or a planter box, so that often enough a technical comment can clarify a spiritual or moral matter, a point of inner growth. And, as you said of Steve's comments, certain difficulties the reader has frequently come at just those places where one is confused, defensive, unsure oneself, so that problems of a technical nature often reveal how we may be hiding from what is trying to come out. And we know how devious we can be with ourselves. That's the intimate struggle we're sharing: how to reveal the demon, the real deal, the song itself that takes shedding after shedding of snakeskin after snakeskin to see and hear. As Henry Miller pointed out, the artist is always working on the skin you can't see. I experienced just such a realization (that you had with Steve's comments) back in junior college when a teacher I had, David Savidge, a sardonic soul if there ever was one, but very real and very eccentric, as well as brilliant and tough-minded (he's the one who wrote at the end of one of my essays, where I had rhapsodized to my heart’s content, not knowing the difference between bullshit and saying something, "So what?" ) made critical comments, usually in favor of more clarity (sense?) that came just at those places where I was hiding, defensive, unsure, derivative. What shocks us, I think, is that someone is listening. That realization conveys a responsibility: to do the work of making what's coming through clear and full-blooded. But we don't know what we're giving birth to. Not only do we not know what it looks like or sounds like but we don't even know what species it is. We may think it's Hamlet but it's really Laurel and Hardy. I read an insightful review of Katherine Ann Porter, 1890 to 1980 I believe, who was largely responsible for the new southern writing (Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and that other woman, really great who died young of Lupus but I forget her name) a contemporary of Hemmingway, who wrote "Ship of Fools" and many good short stories, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" "Noon Wine" and so on, but who ultimately allowed her persona to triumph over the artist in her, which had the effect of putting a coating of shellac over her poor lower class rural Texas characters to the point that you couldn't feel their life blood. Lawrence's integrity avoided this. In fact, I've been reading some of his short stories, "England My England" "The Blind Man" and so on that use the landscape and environment, as in a dream, so tellingly that you're really in a mix that reveals how major social events such as World War I are really lived out in the human soul as people struggle to fall in love and live their lives. In such stories any questions of social relevance and personal exploration are part of the same quest and consequence and no one can escape.
I haven't had time to really struggle through many versions of some things I've sent you; often, in the interest of creating art, I strangle the creature to make a better poem. Eventually, I usually work through it. I do understand your comments, and Steve's preference as well, but these poems are works in progress. I am interested in a kind of sensual probing, as in that poem I sent you, Mother Wasp. The method is like Lawrence's animal poems, where he observes an animal, a snake, a tortoise, an elephant, describing it, expanding into some meaning, coming back again, deeper, until his thoughts are wedded with the creature and an illuminations is reached. This method is very primitive, depending on close sensual accuracy, and a kind of inviting the spirit of the animal into the writer so that it can give voice to some human concern. The success often depends on the level of concentration one can bring to bear on what is observed, and not drift off into mere words and solipsistic thoughts, which probably I do in the wasp poem. It's a matter of energy, I think. Because you must get outside yourself to observe, almost like on acid, and that takes energy and perhaps a kind of risk and a stifling of self-indulgence and ego.
Gene
Here we include the poem in progress referenced above:
Mother Wasp
I saw the wasp crawl under the collapsed sun umbrella
left out all winter
its folds grimy from the rain-washed debris the trees bequeathed us below
Opening the umbrella carefully for the first time this year
there the slim waisted mother worked
above her dull gray blossom of cells fanning over a goblet stem of mud
attached to the edge of the wood umbrella spokes
She saw me instantly
sending through me a reverberation of fear for my eyes
I, the giant with a magnifying glass,
eager to peer at the dangerous mother
On Mother’s Day: a maternal omen
Several days after the birth of my grandson, Tristan
A name that cannot be spoken without the echo – Isolde --
a couple whose passionate love was doomed by intense feuds
names of lovers who tried to entwine Ireland and Britanny in their arms, and,
who knows, may have sponsored the Vikings,
still intoxicated by battle,
to continue sending up their ships, studded with the sacred garnet,
through the mulch of their bodies,
to be unearthed by what came to be Englishmen
and placed in museums for our contemplation?
At any rate, this mother wasp is doomed
Her location unfortunate
How many mothers have worked at futile nest-building
In a world such as ours? What is the instinct
That strives against all odds
To fulfill its role in the wider circles of life?
When does the throbbing abdomen of the mother wasp
tending her cells
turn into Kali, the warmth of the Mother
dedicated to nurturing and ongoing
resort to her sting? Wikepedia tells us that her venom
Was adapted from an ancient virus. How ingenious! A parasite
Put to use by a parasite
But a parasite only in early larval stages.
The adults drink only nectar.
A predator mother
She is innocent, innocent as all mothers are
All evil and goodness also await in a reserve they contain
Until time releases
The urge they are prey to themselves: the duty of mothering.
In a world such as ours: nay, it not mothering that condemns us to futility
It is the lack of sharing the mothering
Beyond mere birth that we have lost, the communal effort holding forth
Like a plume of fire on a green stem wherein the mother is betrayed
And in that betrayal our little selves have been fragmented and lost. And so
Mother wasp
You have chosen your site unfortunately,
We will see where you go, since the gear of time
Moves ineluctably, and it is still early,
You may find a more secret place for your ongoing little beads of danger
That fly and sting
And keep a balance.
Gene Berson 2009
Email to the Buffalo
Wednesday 05/20/09 5:01 PM Buffalo:
I read your Easter poem in the Buffalo blog very closely today – both versions – in a very meditative mind. It has a epic resonance – a part of a huge story, a great and traditional singing, a revelation. I especially like the first version because it is fresh and raw and unpredictable. The other version at the end of the posting seems to have been filed down smooth, having lost a bit of edginess. I think my preference is because I tend toward the spontaneous, like hip-shooting in photography, modern jazz in music. The last version may be a better poem, I really don’t know, but that was my reaction today.
Buff
Thursday 05/21/09 7:30 PM Bersone:
Hey Mon,
Thanks for reading through those versions so attentively. I know you've got your own preoccupations, which I'm anxious to keep up on and talk to you about, so taking this time for poems is very generous. Of course, we have a back and forth, a rare but happy rapport that places the work first. Most people think such a focus is selfish, not acknowledging the gifts that come from creating things that enhance their lives, even little songs that are humming through many peoples' minds. The benefit I get from our correspondence is a paradox: the opportunity to share something very close, ( my observations, thoughts and feelings ) but in the context of making something -- just as you would make a deck or a planter box, so that often enough a technical comment can clarify a spiritual or moral matter, a point of inner growth. And, as you said of Steve's comments, certain difficulties the reader has frequently come at just those places where one is confused, defensive, unsure oneself, so that problems of a technical nature often reveal how we may be hiding from what is trying to come out. And we know how devious we can be with ourselves. That's the intimate struggle we're sharing: how to reveal the demon, the real deal, the song itself that takes shedding after shedding of snakeskin after snakeskin to see and hear. As Henry Miller pointed out, the artist is always working on the skin you can't see. I experienced just such a realization (that you had with Steve's comments) back in junior college when a teacher I had, David Savidge, a sardonic soul if there ever was one, but very real and very eccentric, as well as brilliant and tough-minded (he's the one who wrote at the end of one of my essays, where I had rhapsodized to my heart’s content, not knowing the difference between bullshit and saying something, "So what?" ) made critical comments, usually in favor of more clarity (sense?) that came just at those places where I was hiding, defensive, unsure, derivative. What shocks us, I think, is that someone is listening. That realization conveys a responsibility: to do the work of making what's coming through clear and full-blooded. But we don't know what we're giving birth to. Not only do we not know what it looks like or sounds like but we don't even know what species it is. We may think it's Hamlet but it's really Laurel and Hardy. I read an insightful review of Katherine Ann Porter, 1890 to 1980 I believe, who was largely responsible for the new southern writing (Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and that other woman, really great who died young of Lupus but I forget her name) a contemporary of Hemmingway, who wrote "Ship of Fools" and many good short stories, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" "Noon Wine" and so on, but who ultimately allowed her persona to triumph over the artist in her, which had the effect of putting a coating of shellac over her poor lower class rural Texas characters to the point that you couldn't feel their life blood. Lawrence's integrity avoided this. In fact, I've been reading some of his short stories, "England My England" "The Blind Man" and so on that use the landscape and environment, as in a dream, so tellingly that you're really in a mix that reveals how major social events such as World War I are really lived out in the human soul as people struggle to fall in love and live their lives. In such stories any questions of social relevance and personal exploration are part of the same quest and consequence and no one can escape.
I haven't had time to really struggle through many versions of some things I've sent you; often, in the interest of creating art, I strangle the creature to make a better poem. Eventually, I usually work through it. I do understand your comments, and Steve's preference as well, but these poems are works in progress. I am interested in a kind of sensual probing, as in that poem I sent you, Mother Wasp. The method is like Lawrence's animal poems, where he observes an animal, a snake, a tortoise, an elephant, describing it, expanding into some meaning, coming back again, deeper, until his thoughts are wedded with the creature and an illuminations is reached. This method is very primitive, depending on close sensual accuracy, and a kind of inviting the spirit of the animal into the writer so that it can give voice to some human concern. The success often depends on the level of concentration one can bring to bear on what is observed, and not drift off into mere words and solipsistic thoughts, which probably I do in the wasp poem. It's a matter of energy, I think. Because you must get outside yourself to observe, almost like on acid, and that takes energy and perhaps a kind of risk and a stifling of self-indulgence and ego.
Gene
Here we include the poem in progress referenced above:
Mother Wasp
I saw the wasp crawl under the collapsed sun umbrella
left out all winter
its folds grimy from the rain-washed debris the trees bequeathed us below
Opening the umbrella carefully for the first time this year
there the slim waisted mother worked
above her dull gray blossom of cells fanning over a goblet stem of mud
attached to the edge of the wood umbrella spokes
She saw me instantly
sending through me a reverberation of fear for my eyes
I, the giant with a magnifying glass,
eager to peer at the dangerous mother
On Mother’s Day: a maternal omen
Several days after the birth of my grandson, Tristan
A name that cannot be spoken without the echo – Isolde --
a couple whose passionate love was doomed by intense feuds
names of lovers who tried to entwine Ireland and Britanny in their arms, and,
who knows, may have sponsored the Vikings,
still intoxicated by battle,
to continue sending up their ships, studded with the sacred garnet,
through the mulch of their bodies,
to be unearthed by what came to be Englishmen
and placed in museums for our contemplation?
At any rate, this mother wasp is doomed
Her location unfortunate
How many mothers have worked at futile nest-building
In a world such as ours? What is the instinct
That strives against all odds
To fulfill its role in the wider circles of life?
When does the throbbing abdomen of the mother wasp
tending her cells
turn into Kali, the warmth of the Mother
dedicated to nurturing and ongoing
resort to her sting? Wikepedia tells us that her venom
Was adapted from an ancient virus. How ingenious! A parasite
Put to use by a parasite
But a parasite only in early larval stages.
The adults drink only nectar.
A predator mother
She is innocent, innocent as all mothers are
All evil and goodness also await in a reserve they contain
Until time releases
The urge they are prey to themselves: the duty of mothering.
In a world such as ours: nay, it not mothering that condemns us to futility
It is the lack of sharing the mothering
Beyond mere birth that we have lost, the communal effort holding forth
Like a plume of fire on a green stem wherein the mother is betrayed
And in that betrayal our little selves have been fragmented and lost. And so
Mother wasp
You have chosen your site unfortunately,
We will see where you go, since the gear of time
Moves ineluctably, and it is still early,
You may find a more secret place for your ongoing little beads of danger
That fly and sting
And keep a balance.
Gene Berson 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
HERE COMES THE SUN
Resurrection is evolution. Change is constant. Death is birth, etcetera. If we don’t live it is because we are dead, and then not dead.
Life: Music. Rhythm. Harmony. Song. Voice. Sound. Roar. Cough. Snore. Poem.
Bersone sent this note and first draft of a poem, EASTER 2009. The notes between us that followed is the correspondence below. We’ll print only the first version of the poem here, and then the last at the end. This is how things grow, and how energy engenders energy, the universal law.
Evolution. Resurrection. Happy Easter.
Email to the Buffalo
Sunday 04/12/2009 11:07 AM Bersone:
howdy doody bro -- messing around with an old Ting: shooting it off
feeling it's a hodge-podge but part of the mix. Happy Easter, Mon.
Easter, 2009
I wonder if it’s some kind of sin
to take refuge in pleasure
at this time
birdseed that sparkles
like crushed topaz
on the carport roof
is it some kind of sin
to evaluate the rusty seavan
in the Laundromat parking lot
and be so gratefully repulsed by the bloating
garbage bags tossed on top of it
(swelling so silently in the sun)
to feel that this ugliness
confirms my presence
and allows me
to enjoy the couple that lives
in their car, the hood up, the trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun
dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, sparklets sprinkled
for a second as he flicks excessive
moisture into the air
when in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely
what has happened to time
during this mutual duration
are actions now some kind of diminution
of worry or simply a suspension
of consequences or is it really
a sin to wait it out like this
marveling at my improbable birch tree
its thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup
to my lips. When will he throw out
more seeds, they think. When
will he get on his job! I am
in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Perhaps my pleasure
is some kind of sin
redeemed only by my gratitude
for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat, the Laundromat
with about eighteen
aluminum vents on the roof, quite silvery,
actually, beneath the cumulus
clouds bulging higher, there edges
so sharply defined by shadow
they’re almost solid . . . dear dear Life
accept my plea
I don’t deserve such beauty
that it expand before me so that all I do
is be stunned by wonder
when there is so much to do
to help our poor world
yet this poor rich world
so comically orientated by horror
with its little store, painted like a Mexican flag
and run by Arabs who seem to hate me
our poor rich world
with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!
And the pleasure it affords
with its mariachi music out the front door
and rap out the back
and me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!
some focused on seeds
some on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring green leaves
up onto the corrugated greet fiberglass carport roof
left over from the fifties
everything proceeds from where it is
and everything is transforming itself
like a million Christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch
buoyed by pleasureful sin
the smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare
their car for a trip to the doctor
And Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparkling
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hell’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely for pleasure
O world you don’t
forgive us our pleasure, you give
more and more pleasure and beauty on top
of the horror and ugliness
in the mix of torrents and bullets and screams the flight
of lights in our minds will continue to ignite
our hearts until we get off the dime
Yes, I ask, who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans
threw out. Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride
and I’m at the helm.
Sunday 04/12/2009 3:34 PM Buffalo:
There is much fruit in this basket, my Bro - along with the Easter eggs and candy rabbits. The deepest sin of pleasure is to be blinded to life, a crime you have yet to commit. The greatest horror of the roadside bomb it to ignore the sparrow shitting without a second thought. And that is another crime you will not burn in Hades for - nor will those who read your poems with empty mind and open heart. Today is devoted to resurrection, while every day is a new resurrection. As for me, I'll take the erection over the resurrection any day. When I die I want to stay put. I am no Sisyphus. Once up the hill is enough, then I'm heading for the next hill, then the next. Today is Easter, tomorrow is not. What's most important is this Spring sun on my back, and the little birds fucking like rabbits. They sing so sweetly when they're horny, just as we did Spring after Spring after Spring.
So let's leave this with Leon Russell: Don't get hung up over Easter.
Good poem. Keep chewing, and don't forget to breathe.
Buff
Sunday 04/12/2009 5:55 PM Bersone:
I changed shit according to your reaction, dropping most of the guilt
stuff, which wasn't in the original but came in after I was reading
T.S. Eliot's more conservatively religious work. Acknowledged as a
Great Poet, I thought I'd read him a little bit. He was great but at
the end of the cycle, Lawrence more at the beginning. Anyhow, I stuck
more to the images, I haven't reread this over too carefully and
figure there may be some discontinuity here and there, lack of
bridges or transitions but it tries to catch us doodling on the brink
as we are wont to do as our canoe heads into the rapids.
Larry's coming over for some dynamite thick lamb chops Ruby picked up
at Taylor's, a great old neighborhood Italian deli in Sacramento.
Today was warm, and we working in the garden, turning over some dirt
and we saved a big robin that lost its tail last night; we threw a
towel over it and put it in a box and called some rescue wild animal
place Ruby found in the phone book. The lady said the feathers will
grow back quickly if they're pulled out not cut. Last night we heard
Maya in a bit of a fight and we presume chased off another cat;
perhaps this cat was what got the bird and maybe Maya disturbed the
assault because I don't think the bird could have escaped. It's
wings weren't broken, nor its legs, but it totally lost its tail and
showed some skin on its back making it unable to fly. It could hop
pretty well, and work the wings, but they need the tail I guess.
Talk to you soon.
Sunday 02/12/2009 6:26 PM Buffalo:
Some great images - a thread through it all - humor and horror stacked like a BLT. I love your work.
Inspired by Steve's stories I reformed the one attached. I think you've seen this. Every day is a marvel. Good lord, what a trip this all is!!!
The Robin is an interesting story. Demise is waiting behind every moment. The birds take it in stride, and they never whine. I hope it survives. We all need a little tail to make us fly.
Here's a toast to you all for your Easter lamb: To you, my friends, on this day of resurrection. You are my inspiration!
With love...
Buff
Monday 04/13/2009 9:05 AM Bersone:
Hi Buff,
Just finished reading through the story, Assassination, which is wonderfully fluid; the first line grabs you right away and puts the mind on a track of memory and line of thought that seems to run concurrently with the story. I breezed through the gambling details a little hurriedly, I noticed, and found myself at the end meditating a bit on the close relationship between sex and death. I remember Erika telling me, who was in her mother's womb during the bombing of Berlin during World War II, that her mother told her stories of mothers, feeling that death was imminent, and having adolescent sons whom they felt were going to die also and, realizing they would die without having known a woman sexually, had sex with them as Berlin was being bombed into rubble. And in New York, during the brown-outs, sex must have gone on at an unprecedented rate because there was a bumper crop of babies nine months later. As for your story, it is continuing easily; I'm not sure how you changed it, inspired as you say by Steve's stories. That the narrative has solid ground under it may be part of it. The story within the story, the fate of the artist within the young, diffident stumble-bum carrying the vision, holds the suspense for me, how he becomes a man, essentially, for the promise is that the man he becomes will define manhood differently than the inherited convention. Looking forward to more. This thing is coming out.
thanks for your reaction to what I sent you. I'll attach a version with a few corrections. Personally, I don't know what to think of it; some of the metrics I liked but I wondered was it a bit like crocheting a doily. I did feel pretty good about yesterday, though, and Larry came over for a good dinner.
Monday 04/13/2009 1:35 PM Buffalo:
Yo Mon –
Thanks for your comments on ASSASSINATION. I am happy that it took you somewhere. Yes, real sex is like dying, dying into profound peace along with your mate of the moment. Greed is also a form of death, but in the opposite direction, thus the whole Reno bit. The winning streak described actually happened to me much like it is described, minus the absurd fantasy bit, which, of course, is rather Milleresque.
The influence that Steve had on the story was that I suddenly saw it as a complete entity in itself (this, after reading several of his stories), rather than as just a part of the larger story – the novel. I’ve done the same thing with the first chapter of the book about Maxwell dancing in his underwear in the desert, the afternoon in the sand storm at the house of Charles and Jasmine, the coyote near the lake, and sleeping under the stars. (DESERT STORM) I intend to do the same with SUICIDE BY PRAYER. I should be able to make up a collection of these things and have them printed up in a volume through the self publishing route. This is what I am encouraging Steve to do, though he is rather cool to self publishing, and I honor his understanding of the profession about which I know nothing. I hope we can produce a collection of your work – maybe under a heading like SWIMMING JOURNAL, just as an example.
I got up at 4:30 and worked at the office until noon, which I will have to do tomorrow, as well. All this pisses me off because it is just a distraction from the real work; a pint of blood for the vampires of commerce. When will I finally call an end to all this shit!
I am enjoying reading and re-reading the Easter poem. It is a journey through the universe, down main street, into the backyard, to nowhere. Quite an accomplishment, that. One of my favorite lines:
me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed
That touches something true in all of us, if we have enough guts to admit it. How can all these people see anything in it’s true form, who are so full of self-importance? Even Obama is a funny joke; and the pirates; and the Governors, and doctors, hiding behind something called Science. What a joke they are, indeed.
Listen, I hear that poet singing – or is that a dove in heat? Hardly matters. The truth is always known no matter who tells it, or what. Just listen; that’s the job.
Thank you!
Buff
(Note: If you have an interest in the two stories mentioned above, ASSASSINATION and DESERT STORM, send me an email and I’ll send them along. Buff)
Monday 04/13/2009 3:1/ PM Bersone:
I learned something once. There's a long tragic poem, written oh I don't know -- in the ten hundreds, Tristan and Isolde, and I was reading fairy tales once, maybe in Grimm's, and came across a fragment of it. The whole story had been lost to the teller of the fragment, and he told his story like a short story, thinking no doubt that that was all there was to it. When I compared it to the original, longer work, where the whole plot was laid out, the difference was that the teller of the short story embellished his fragment with more details, which gave it a richness of texture, you might say, as a compensation for the powerful narrative drive of the original where the full tragic meaning came clear in the plot and trimmed off non-essential details. The illusion in the fragment was that there was more time, more time could be taken with details. I remember one of Picasso's teachers saying of him, when he was a student, that his work was as good as the others but the difference was that he didn't waste time in surface detail, presumably shading and clothing detail and so forth. He was after the visual rhythm in the figure, inside and out, so with a deft stroke or two he caught the movement of the bones which caught the gesture of the model. Sometimes it looked abstract, because he left everything else out. He wanted both the inner and the outer, and wasn't prejudiced only toward outer appearance. Maybe this is analogous to short story vs novel. I tell you, you've always had a powerful narrative drive but, I think, writing is like using muscles, you develop more stamina the more you write, and can hold forth the illusion and flow of language longer. Writers like Dickens, for example, or Steinbeck, are powerhouses like this. But your drive is natural, and would grow exponentially to use, I imagine. Of course, we must both caution ourselves in imagining so much superstructure that the whole thing collapses before we get pen to paper. It's a dance with oneself, I suppose, and we know the Fool. But sometimes the illusion of the Fool is necessary to get things done; the pragmatic man is full of limitations.
I can't tell you how much your appreciation of my little poem means to me at this point. Yesterday was a pretty good day and the poem seemed to come off ok by sort of working on it out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes the secret may lay in not taking it too seriously. By the way, the sandstorm description, once you mentioned it, came back in a vivid flash, with him looking out the window, at the streetlight swaying in the desert wind: quite a picture of the wasteland.
Monday 04/13/2009 5:29 PM Buffalo:
What a great lesson you share with me! You really nailed it! You are an excellent teacher, in part, because you refuse to teach – you participate. You know, this is exactly how Bob teaches his drum classes and precisely why he is so popular. I can see you teaching a string of classes in creative writing, much like Bob does. As far as making a living goes, wouldn’t that be more rewarding for you than what you are doing in the City? Anyway, thank you! I love this: “We must both caution ourselves in imagining so much superstructure that the whole thing collapses before we get pen to paper. It's a dance with oneself, I suppose, and we know the Fool. But sometimes the illusion of the Fool is necessary to get things done; the pragmatic man is full of limitations.” Now that I think of it, Bob has said almost the same thing to me about the Fool. We should ask him about it the next time the three of us are together. I just picked up this from the internet: “The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world.” How apt, exactly what you meant by the Fool. But the bigger lesson is your cautioning about imagining too much superstructure. Even when I was playing with Tinker Toys I tended to make things that were much too grand to stand alone. And yes, I must go to the writing gym every day for a workout, build my writing stamina which will bring more patience, and quit wasting my precious time trying to fulfill the dreams of others, an impossible task. How, how, how can I break away from these old and defeating habits?
Thanks, amigo! You are indeed an inspiration!!!
Buff
Tuesday 04/15/2009 6:18 AM Bersone:
thanks for your appreciation. What you said about going nowhere makes
me want to continue this spirit journey so I changed the ending of
this section by going into the falls. I'm thinking of Niagra Falls,
and I figure to enter it through its sound, sort of like an entrance
into hell, a wondrous hell perhaps, at first through the harsh sounds
of the several blocks of arcades you must ply before you come to the
calm power of the falls themselves which, however much they have been
taken over by corporations that specialize in vacation attractions
such as they are, standardizing them in gross commercial terms, the
falls still stand as a major power point. I've written a little of
another section, but I won't send it on now because I'm not too sure
of it and maybe I won't get it done (superstructure problem) but will
send what I have and maybe post it. check it out when you have time
and see what you think. Hope you're feeling ok, with the meds and
all. I know about the teaching but there's not much I can do right
now. What we're doing is what we're doing and it's more than what
I'm not doing.
EASTER, 2009
Birdseed sparkles: crushed
topaz on the carport
roof & the rusting
seavan with black garbage bags swelling
so silently on top
under the sun
in the parkinglot
behind the Laundromat
the Laundromat with about
18 aluminum vents
on the roof quite
silvery, actually,
beneath the cumulus
clouds bulging higher
edged so sharply by gray
They seemed carved
I don’t think I’ll ever get over them
when I notice
the couple that lives in their car,
hood up, trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun
dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, silently
snapping a whip of waterdrops
off the end of it before leisurely
resuming combing
so that in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely
forget time, now, that’s gone
you don’t think Christ in the underworld
underwent his last temptation
in three days do you…I mean
it was an eternity at least
as long as this mix of marvels:
my improbable birch tree
it’s thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup
to my lips. When’ll he throw out
more seeds. When O when
will he get on his job! I am
in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Yes I am grateful
for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat
where everyone gathers
to watch soccer and washing machines’
round windows wet
clothes make faces in
children make faces back at
and a mix of languages annealed
by bickering into an amalgamated lingo
we’ve yet to parse: whoozit!
May we deserve such beauty
so ugly and real all we can do
is be stunned by wonder we
wonder what we can do to make doing
nothing holier than something
for nothing’s sake
to help our poor world
this rich Persian rag of a world
so comical with its horror
with its little store, painted like the Mexican flag
run by Arabs who hand me change
with a disdain so dismissive
its infuriatingly murderous
our poor rich world
with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!
Thank you for the pleasure it affords!
Mariachi music out the front door
rap out the back
me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!
some focused on seeds
some focused on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring-green leaves
shining up onto the carport roof
left over from the fifties:
everything proceeds from where it is
everything is transforming itself
like a million christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch
buoyed by our sin of pleasure in horror.
The smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare their car
for a trip to another world
and Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparking
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hells’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely
for pleasure
O world you never deny us
our pleasure you give more and more beauty on top
of ugliness so real it turns
into torrents heaving up telephone poles, sirens spiraling and the flight
of light through our minds to continue to ignite
our hearts until we get off the dime.
Yes, I ask, Who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans threw out.
Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride
and the precious ride we carry within
and I am
at the helm as I nose my canoe
into the rapids and head for the falls.
Wednesday 04/15/2009 6:53 AM Buffalo:
I like your idea and will watch with empty mind.
The rhythm of the falls,
relentless, the roar
of the water dragon, and past
his blazing eyes
the calm of mist, holding
in mid air
the chirp of the Dipper.
Within this din is heard the drip
of mist
the uncoiling fern
the voices
of those long gone.
See what you do to me? Another moment has passed.
Home today. Doing the real work on a cool and cloudy day, but look! Here comes the sun!
Ahhh
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right
Here’s a good video of this BEATLES song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUS49XSN6Zs
Life: Music. Rhythm. Harmony. Song. Voice. Sound. Roar. Cough. Snore. Poem.
Bersone sent this note and first draft of a poem, EASTER 2009. The notes between us that followed is the correspondence below. We’ll print only the first version of the poem here, and then the last at the end. This is how things grow, and how energy engenders energy, the universal law.
Evolution. Resurrection. Happy Easter.
Email to the Buffalo
Sunday 04/12/2009 11:07 AM Bersone:
howdy doody bro -- messing around with an old Ting: shooting it off
feeling it's a hodge-podge but part of the mix. Happy Easter, Mon.
Easter, 2009
I wonder if it’s some kind of sin
to take refuge in pleasure
at this time
birdseed that sparkles
like crushed topaz
on the carport roof
is it some kind of sin
to evaluate the rusty seavan
in the Laundromat parking lot
and be so gratefully repulsed by the bloating
garbage bags tossed on top of it
(swelling so silently in the sun)
to feel that this ugliness
confirms my presence
and allows me
to enjoy the couple that lives
in their car, the hood up, the trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun
dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, sparklets sprinkled
for a second as he flicks excessive
moisture into the air
when in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely
what has happened to time
during this mutual duration
are actions now some kind of diminution
of worry or simply a suspension
of consequences or is it really
a sin to wait it out like this
marveling at my improbable birch tree
its thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup
to my lips. When will he throw out
more seeds, they think. When
will he get on his job! I am
in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Perhaps my pleasure
is some kind of sin
redeemed only by my gratitude
for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat, the Laundromat
with about eighteen
aluminum vents on the roof, quite silvery,
actually, beneath the cumulus
clouds bulging higher, there edges
so sharply defined by shadow
they’re almost solid . . . dear dear Life
accept my plea
I don’t deserve such beauty
that it expand before me so that all I do
is be stunned by wonder
when there is so much to do
to help our poor world
yet this poor rich world
so comically orientated by horror
with its little store, painted like a Mexican flag
and run by Arabs who seem to hate me
our poor rich world
with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!
And the pleasure it affords
with its mariachi music out the front door
and rap out the back
and me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!
some focused on seeds
some on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring green leaves
up onto the corrugated greet fiberglass carport roof
left over from the fifties
everything proceeds from where it is
and everything is transforming itself
like a million Christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch
buoyed by pleasureful sin
the smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare
their car for a trip to the doctor
And Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparkling
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hell’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely for pleasure
O world you don’t
forgive us our pleasure, you give
more and more pleasure and beauty on top
of the horror and ugliness
in the mix of torrents and bullets and screams the flight
of lights in our minds will continue to ignite
our hearts until we get off the dime
Yes, I ask, who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans
threw out. Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride
and I’m at the helm.
Sunday 04/12/2009 3:34 PM Buffalo:
There is much fruit in this basket, my Bro - along with the Easter eggs and candy rabbits. The deepest sin of pleasure is to be blinded to life, a crime you have yet to commit. The greatest horror of the roadside bomb it to ignore the sparrow shitting without a second thought. And that is another crime you will not burn in Hades for - nor will those who read your poems with empty mind and open heart. Today is devoted to resurrection, while every day is a new resurrection. As for me, I'll take the erection over the resurrection any day. When I die I want to stay put. I am no Sisyphus. Once up the hill is enough, then I'm heading for the next hill, then the next. Today is Easter, tomorrow is not. What's most important is this Spring sun on my back, and the little birds fucking like rabbits. They sing so sweetly when they're horny, just as we did Spring after Spring after Spring.
So let's leave this with Leon Russell: Don't get hung up over Easter.
Good poem. Keep chewing, and don't forget to breathe.
Buff
Sunday 04/12/2009 5:55 PM Bersone:
I changed shit according to your reaction, dropping most of the guilt
stuff, which wasn't in the original but came in after I was reading
T.S. Eliot's more conservatively religious work. Acknowledged as a
Great Poet, I thought I'd read him a little bit. He was great but at
the end of the cycle, Lawrence more at the beginning. Anyhow, I stuck
more to the images, I haven't reread this over too carefully and
figure there may be some discontinuity here and there, lack of
bridges or transitions but it tries to catch us doodling on the brink
as we are wont to do as our canoe heads into the rapids.
Larry's coming over for some dynamite thick lamb chops Ruby picked up
at Taylor's, a great old neighborhood Italian deli in Sacramento.
Today was warm, and we working in the garden, turning over some dirt
and we saved a big robin that lost its tail last night; we threw a
towel over it and put it in a box and called some rescue wild animal
place Ruby found in the phone book. The lady said the feathers will
grow back quickly if they're pulled out not cut. Last night we heard
Maya in a bit of a fight and we presume chased off another cat;
perhaps this cat was what got the bird and maybe Maya disturbed the
assault because I don't think the bird could have escaped. It's
wings weren't broken, nor its legs, but it totally lost its tail and
showed some skin on its back making it unable to fly. It could hop
pretty well, and work the wings, but they need the tail I guess.
Talk to you soon.
Sunday 02/12/2009 6:26 PM Buffalo:
Some great images - a thread through it all - humor and horror stacked like a BLT. I love your work.
Inspired by Steve's stories I reformed the one attached. I think you've seen this. Every day is a marvel. Good lord, what a trip this all is!!!
The Robin is an interesting story. Demise is waiting behind every moment. The birds take it in stride, and they never whine. I hope it survives. We all need a little tail to make us fly.
Here's a toast to you all for your Easter lamb: To you, my friends, on this day of resurrection. You are my inspiration!
With love...
Buff
Monday 04/13/2009 9:05 AM Bersone:
Hi Buff,
Just finished reading through the story, Assassination, which is wonderfully fluid; the first line grabs you right away and puts the mind on a track of memory and line of thought that seems to run concurrently with the story. I breezed through the gambling details a little hurriedly, I noticed, and found myself at the end meditating a bit on the close relationship between sex and death. I remember Erika telling me, who was in her mother's womb during the bombing of Berlin during World War II, that her mother told her stories of mothers, feeling that death was imminent, and having adolescent sons whom they felt were going to die also and, realizing they would die without having known a woman sexually, had sex with them as Berlin was being bombed into rubble. And in New York, during the brown-outs, sex must have gone on at an unprecedented rate because there was a bumper crop of babies nine months later. As for your story, it is continuing easily; I'm not sure how you changed it, inspired as you say by Steve's stories. That the narrative has solid ground under it may be part of it. The story within the story, the fate of the artist within the young, diffident stumble-bum carrying the vision, holds the suspense for me, how he becomes a man, essentially, for the promise is that the man he becomes will define manhood differently than the inherited convention. Looking forward to more. This thing is coming out.
thanks for your reaction to what I sent you. I'll attach a version with a few corrections. Personally, I don't know what to think of it; some of the metrics I liked but I wondered was it a bit like crocheting a doily. I did feel pretty good about yesterday, though, and Larry came over for a good dinner.
Monday 04/13/2009 1:35 PM Buffalo:
Yo Mon –
Thanks for your comments on ASSASSINATION. I am happy that it took you somewhere. Yes, real sex is like dying, dying into profound peace along with your mate of the moment. Greed is also a form of death, but in the opposite direction, thus the whole Reno bit. The winning streak described actually happened to me much like it is described, minus the absurd fantasy bit, which, of course, is rather Milleresque.
The influence that Steve had on the story was that I suddenly saw it as a complete entity in itself (this, after reading several of his stories), rather than as just a part of the larger story – the novel. I’ve done the same thing with the first chapter of the book about Maxwell dancing in his underwear in the desert, the afternoon in the sand storm at the house of Charles and Jasmine, the coyote near the lake, and sleeping under the stars. (DESERT STORM) I intend to do the same with SUICIDE BY PRAYER. I should be able to make up a collection of these things and have them printed up in a volume through the self publishing route. This is what I am encouraging Steve to do, though he is rather cool to self publishing, and I honor his understanding of the profession about which I know nothing. I hope we can produce a collection of your work – maybe under a heading like SWIMMING JOURNAL, just as an example.
I got up at 4:30 and worked at the office until noon, which I will have to do tomorrow, as well. All this pisses me off because it is just a distraction from the real work; a pint of blood for the vampires of commerce. When will I finally call an end to all this shit!
I am enjoying reading and re-reading the Easter poem. It is a journey through the universe, down main street, into the backyard, to nowhere. Quite an accomplishment, that. One of my favorite lines:
me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed
That touches something true in all of us, if we have enough guts to admit it. How can all these people see anything in it’s true form, who are so full of self-importance? Even Obama is a funny joke; and the pirates; and the Governors, and doctors, hiding behind something called Science. What a joke they are, indeed.
Listen, I hear that poet singing – or is that a dove in heat? Hardly matters. The truth is always known no matter who tells it, or what. Just listen; that’s the job.
Thank you!
Buff
(Note: If you have an interest in the two stories mentioned above, ASSASSINATION and DESERT STORM, send me an email and I’ll send them along. Buff)
Monday 04/13/2009 3:1/ PM Bersone:
I learned something once. There's a long tragic poem, written oh I don't know -- in the ten hundreds, Tristan and Isolde, and I was reading fairy tales once, maybe in Grimm's, and came across a fragment of it. The whole story had been lost to the teller of the fragment, and he told his story like a short story, thinking no doubt that that was all there was to it. When I compared it to the original, longer work, where the whole plot was laid out, the difference was that the teller of the short story embellished his fragment with more details, which gave it a richness of texture, you might say, as a compensation for the powerful narrative drive of the original where the full tragic meaning came clear in the plot and trimmed off non-essential details. The illusion in the fragment was that there was more time, more time could be taken with details. I remember one of Picasso's teachers saying of him, when he was a student, that his work was as good as the others but the difference was that he didn't waste time in surface detail, presumably shading and clothing detail and so forth. He was after the visual rhythm in the figure, inside and out, so with a deft stroke or two he caught the movement of the bones which caught the gesture of the model. Sometimes it looked abstract, because he left everything else out. He wanted both the inner and the outer, and wasn't prejudiced only toward outer appearance. Maybe this is analogous to short story vs novel. I tell you, you've always had a powerful narrative drive but, I think, writing is like using muscles, you develop more stamina the more you write, and can hold forth the illusion and flow of language longer. Writers like Dickens, for example, or Steinbeck, are powerhouses like this. But your drive is natural, and would grow exponentially to use, I imagine. Of course, we must both caution ourselves in imagining so much superstructure that the whole thing collapses before we get pen to paper. It's a dance with oneself, I suppose, and we know the Fool. But sometimes the illusion of the Fool is necessary to get things done; the pragmatic man is full of limitations.
I can't tell you how much your appreciation of my little poem means to me at this point. Yesterday was a pretty good day and the poem seemed to come off ok by sort of working on it out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes the secret may lay in not taking it too seriously. By the way, the sandstorm description, once you mentioned it, came back in a vivid flash, with him looking out the window, at the streetlight swaying in the desert wind: quite a picture of the wasteland.
Monday 04/13/2009 5:29 PM Buffalo:
What a great lesson you share with me! You really nailed it! You are an excellent teacher, in part, because you refuse to teach – you participate. You know, this is exactly how Bob teaches his drum classes and precisely why he is so popular. I can see you teaching a string of classes in creative writing, much like Bob does. As far as making a living goes, wouldn’t that be more rewarding for you than what you are doing in the City? Anyway, thank you! I love this: “We must both caution ourselves in imagining so much superstructure that the whole thing collapses before we get pen to paper. It's a dance with oneself, I suppose, and we know the Fool. But sometimes the illusion of the Fool is necessary to get things done; the pragmatic man is full of limitations.” Now that I think of it, Bob has said almost the same thing to me about the Fool. We should ask him about it the next time the three of us are together. I just picked up this from the internet: “The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world.” How apt, exactly what you meant by the Fool. But the bigger lesson is your cautioning about imagining too much superstructure. Even when I was playing with Tinker Toys I tended to make things that were much too grand to stand alone. And yes, I must go to the writing gym every day for a workout, build my writing stamina which will bring more patience, and quit wasting my precious time trying to fulfill the dreams of others, an impossible task. How, how, how can I break away from these old and defeating habits?
Thanks, amigo! You are indeed an inspiration!!!
Buff
Tuesday 04/15/2009 6:18 AM Bersone:
thanks for your appreciation. What you said about going nowhere makes
me want to continue this spirit journey so I changed the ending of
this section by going into the falls. I'm thinking of Niagra Falls,
and I figure to enter it through its sound, sort of like an entrance
into hell, a wondrous hell perhaps, at first through the harsh sounds
of the several blocks of arcades you must ply before you come to the
calm power of the falls themselves which, however much they have been
taken over by corporations that specialize in vacation attractions
such as they are, standardizing them in gross commercial terms, the
falls still stand as a major power point. I've written a little of
another section, but I won't send it on now because I'm not too sure
of it and maybe I won't get it done (superstructure problem) but will
send what I have and maybe post it. check it out when you have time
and see what you think. Hope you're feeling ok, with the meds and
all. I know about the teaching but there's not much I can do right
now. What we're doing is what we're doing and it's more than what
I'm not doing.
EASTER, 2009
Birdseed sparkles: crushed
topaz on the carport
roof & the rusting
seavan with black garbage bags swelling
so silently on top
under the sun
in the parkinglot
behind the Laundromat
the Laundromat with about
18 aluminum vents
on the roof quite
silvery, actually,
beneath the cumulus
clouds bulging higher
edged so sharply by gray
They seemed carved
I don’t think I’ll ever get over them
when I notice
the couple that lives in their car,
hood up, trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun
dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, silently
snapping a whip of waterdrops
off the end of it before leisurely
resuming combing
so that in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely
forget time, now, that’s gone
you don’t think Christ in the underworld
underwent his last temptation
in three days do you…I mean
it was an eternity at least
as long as this mix of marvels:
my improbable birch tree
it’s thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup
to my lips. When’ll he throw out
more seeds. When O when
will he get on his job! I am
in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Yes I am grateful
for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat
where everyone gathers
to watch soccer and washing machines’
round windows wet
clothes make faces in
children make faces back at
and a mix of languages annealed
by bickering into an amalgamated lingo
we’ve yet to parse: whoozit!
May we deserve such beauty
so ugly and real all we can do
is be stunned by wonder we
wonder what we can do to make doing
nothing holier than something
for nothing’s sake
to help our poor world
this rich Persian rag of a world
so comical with its horror
with its little store, painted like the Mexican flag
run by Arabs who hand me change
with a disdain so dismissive
its infuriatingly murderous
our poor rich world
with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!
Thank you for the pleasure it affords!
Mariachi music out the front door
rap out the back
me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!
some focused on seeds
some focused on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring-green leaves
shining up onto the carport roof
left over from the fifties:
everything proceeds from where it is
everything is transforming itself
like a million christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch
buoyed by our sin of pleasure in horror.
The smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare their car
for a trip to another world
and Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparking
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hells’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely
for pleasure
O world you never deny us
our pleasure you give more and more beauty on top
of ugliness so real it turns
into torrents heaving up telephone poles, sirens spiraling and the flight
of light through our minds to continue to ignite
our hearts until we get off the dime.
Yes, I ask, Who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans threw out.
Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride
and the precious ride we carry within
and I am
at the helm as I nose my canoe
into the rapids and head for the falls.
Wednesday 04/15/2009 6:53 AM Buffalo:
I like your idea and will watch with empty mind.
The rhythm of the falls,
relentless, the roar
of the water dragon, and past
his blazing eyes
the calm of mist, holding
in mid air
the chirp of the Dipper.
Within this din is heard the drip
of mist
the uncoiling fern
the voices
of those long gone.
See what you do to me? Another moment has passed.
Home today. Doing the real work on a cool and cloudy day, but look! Here comes the sun!
Ahhh
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right
Here’s a good video of this BEATLES song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUS49XSN6Zs
Friday, April 10, 2009
"I CAN BREATHE"
Following is a delightful response from Bersone to the previous posting: The Old Model T.
Email to the Buffalo
04/10/09 10:34 AM: Bersone
el buffalo
I've just watched several of the leonard cohen blips that you linked
in buffloblog and enjoyed them, especially as the years come back
when the camera scans the academic audiences, revealing pretty girls
in tightly groomed hairstyles of the early sixties, the young people
seeming so well-mannered, deliberate and conscientiously thoughtful
as cohen reads his work. so many poems written before his songs which ultimately touched so many makes me realize that the development of an artist is something like a rock being thrown into a pond, the resonance of its path spreading out behind him into larger and larger circles, lapping against strangers, and further vibrations from the rock/artist's fall reverberating below the surface, leaving a wake behind him, causing still further echoes of his silent falling. there is danger in movement below the surface. for example, I saw on a documentary that salamanders, nearly blind, have special sense organs that pick up the slightest vibration of the water and, though prehistorically slow-moving as they are, are blindingly quick to catch minnows when they pick up a vibration from the living fish. to discern the vibration from a living being from the general vibrations of the universe is the artist's trick. amid all the sounds, images, metaphors swirling around us, their plenitude threatening to overwhelm us with choices, we somehow need to detect the ones that are meant for us. and how else to do that except by
diligent regard for who you are, aided my rules of craft or 'what
works'. every doubt, every blank page, every fear, every confusion,
ever tearing feeling of anxiety, every worry is not just a threat to
throw us off track but also an opportunity, an identity crisis: that
cohen seems calm in his journey is deceptive, perhaps. he is
confident of one thing: his road is wide enough for him, and the
universe large enough to receive his songs, with all their inevitable
mistakes and successes, so that all he has to do is to continue, like
the sinking rock or the bird lifting off the branch. you get the
feeling that he will continue. 'you'll be hearing from me, baby, /
long after I'm gone / I'll be speaking to you sweetly / from a window
in the tower of song.'
we sang your old model T to the tune of the red river valley as far
we were able last night. and listened to old cowboy songs, of which
larry has a unique collection. the old model T, being such a
critical memory of your father, conferring a blessing of music even,
can't be trivialized. Corny perhaps, but corn that is earned: how
that corn would disappear in an age old passion for the father, taken
seriously, is the promise. The red river valley tune is haunting,
also. Now here we are at another easter. a celebration of rebirth
and redemption. Songs to redeem us. that's what we're here to earn,
I guess.
yesterday I didn't do shit. and today I feel a bit more on track,
after checking out the LC videos. Why? a feeling of communion in an
effort to sing, the world on the brink, as ever. the cat sleeping in
the chair. the trees have finally stopped ticking. I can go out. and
I will go out because I'm up. I'm up and dressed and can go out, I
can go out and load up some wood into a wheelbarow and push it back under the carport. I can walk down to the mailbox. I can breathe. put that on the front page.
Email to the Buffalo
04/10/09 10:34 AM: Bersone
el buffalo
I've just watched several of the leonard cohen blips that you linked
in buffloblog and enjoyed them, especially as the years come back
when the camera scans the academic audiences, revealing pretty girls
in tightly groomed hairstyles of the early sixties, the young people
seeming so well-mannered, deliberate and conscientiously thoughtful
as cohen reads his work. so many poems written before his songs which ultimately touched so many makes me realize that the development of an artist is something like a rock being thrown into a pond, the resonance of its path spreading out behind him into larger and larger circles, lapping against strangers, and further vibrations from the rock/artist's fall reverberating below the surface, leaving a wake behind him, causing still further echoes of his silent falling. there is danger in movement below the surface. for example, I saw on a documentary that salamanders, nearly blind, have special sense organs that pick up the slightest vibration of the water and, though prehistorically slow-moving as they are, are blindingly quick to catch minnows when they pick up a vibration from the living fish. to discern the vibration from a living being from the general vibrations of the universe is the artist's trick. amid all the sounds, images, metaphors swirling around us, their plenitude threatening to overwhelm us with choices, we somehow need to detect the ones that are meant for us. and how else to do that except by
diligent regard for who you are, aided my rules of craft or 'what
works'. every doubt, every blank page, every fear, every confusion,
ever tearing feeling of anxiety, every worry is not just a threat to
throw us off track but also an opportunity, an identity crisis: that
cohen seems calm in his journey is deceptive, perhaps. he is
confident of one thing: his road is wide enough for him, and the
universe large enough to receive his songs, with all their inevitable
mistakes and successes, so that all he has to do is to continue, like
the sinking rock or the bird lifting off the branch. you get the
feeling that he will continue. 'you'll be hearing from me, baby, /
long after I'm gone / I'll be speaking to you sweetly / from a window
in the tower of song.'
we sang your old model T to the tune of the red river valley as far
we were able last night. and listened to old cowboy songs, of which
larry has a unique collection. the old model T, being such a
critical memory of your father, conferring a blessing of music even,
can't be trivialized. Corny perhaps, but corn that is earned: how
that corn would disappear in an age old passion for the father, taken
seriously, is the promise. The red river valley tune is haunting,
also. Now here we are at another easter. a celebration of rebirth
and redemption. Songs to redeem us. that's what we're here to earn,
I guess.
yesterday I didn't do shit. and today I feel a bit more on track,
after checking out the LC videos. Why? a feeling of communion in an
effort to sing, the world on the brink, as ever. the cat sleeping in
the chair. the trees have finally stopped ticking. I can go out. and
I will go out because I'm up. I'm up and dressed and can go out, I
can go out and load up some wood into a wheelbarow and push it back under the carport. I can walk down to the mailbox. I can breathe. put that on the front page.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
THE OLD MODEL T
Here's a song from a couple of years ago.
The only musical memory I have of my father, whom I didn't know after about age five, is a dim and distant mental daguerreotype of him singing “The Red River Valley”. "The Old Model T" is meant to be of that old western ballad style. If I ever learn to play the guitar I'll record this and become rich and famous.
Yah, sure. :)
THE OLD MODEL T
In the shadow of the valley
Sits an old Model T
Been neglected, disrespected
By the wind from the sea.
The windows are shattered
The tires gone flat
The seats torn to ribbons
Where the dandy once sat.
The black paint is peeling
From the sun in the sky
Empty bottles on the floorboard
Old whisky and rye.
There’s rust on the fenders
Where the shine used to be
The dusty road is but a memory
For the old Model T.
There’s no fox in the barnyard
There’s no hounds on the bay
There’s no horses a hunting
No more bugles to play
Where’s the fun of the chase
Where’s the prize up the tree
The fox is asleepin’
In the old Model T.
The fox is asleepin’
In the old Model T.
(Musical interlude)
There were nights to remember
Under bright shooting stars
And fights to forget
Broken hearts, jagged scars
There were mountains to climb
Golden cities to see
The open road is but a memory
For the old Model T
There’s no fox in the barnyard
There’s no hounds on the bay
There’s no horses a hunting
No more bugles to play
Where’s the fun of the chase
Where’s the prize up the tree
The fox is asleepin’
You won’t hear no weepin’
The fox is asleepin’
The old memories he’s keepin’
The fox is asleepin’
In the old Model T.
Tom Reddock 062206
Read the lyrics and hear the music of “The Red River Valley” here: http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/redriver.htm
Video of “The Red River Valley”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yen95Xs-UBk
And a rare one by Leonard Cohen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Hnky4B46A
Really, really, corny. But something sweet about it.
The only musical memory I have of my father, whom I didn't know after about age five, is a dim and distant mental daguerreotype of him singing “The Red River Valley”. "The Old Model T" is meant to be of that old western ballad style. If I ever learn to play the guitar I'll record this and become rich and famous.
Yah, sure. :)
THE OLD MODEL T
In the shadow of the valley
Sits an old Model T
Been neglected, disrespected
By the wind from the sea.
The windows are shattered
The tires gone flat
The seats torn to ribbons
Where the dandy once sat.
The black paint is peeling
From the sun in the sky
Empty bottles on the floorboard
Old whisky and rye.
There’s rust on the fenders
Where the shine used to be
The dusty road is but a memory
For the old Model T.
There’s no fox in the barnyard
There’s no hounds on the bay
There’s no horses a hunting
No more bugles to play
Where’s the fun of the chase
Where’s the prize up the tree
The fox is asleepin’
In the old Model T.
The fox is asleepin’
In the old Model T.
(Musical interlude)
There were nights to remember
Under bright shooting stars
And fights to forget
Broken hearts, jagged scars
There were mountains to climb
Golden cities to see
The open road is but a memory
For the old Model T
There’s no fox in the barnyard
There’s no hounds on the bay
There’s no horses a hunting
No more bugles to play
Where’s the fun of the chase
Where’s the prize up the tree
The fox is asleepin’
You won’t hear no weepin’
The fox is asleepin’
The old memories he’s keepin’
The fox is asleepin’
In the old Model T.
Tom Reddock 062206
Read the lyrics and hear the music of “The Red River Valley” here: http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/redriver.htm
Video of “The Red River Valley”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yen95Xs-UBk
And a rare one by Leonard Cohen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Hnky4B46A
Really, really, corny. But something sweet about it.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
THE LANGUAGE OF CROWS
by Steven Schutzman
Sons of Fathers
Fathers of sons
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Passed like secret looks
among the astronomers of dust
Debris of a nation of destiny
dumped from buckets out back
Whimsically checked off lists
A frown a smile
A smile a frown
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Sons of fathers
Fathers of sons
Who had their shoes cut open for feet
Their food examined for thoughts
Their blood checked for poems
Their children stripped of stories at the door
Crows watched from a fence
and remembered their names
as they ate
But where are those crows
and who can speak their language now?
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Sons of fathers
Fathers of sons
Of a man who walked by a river
A visionary
Who saw where roads would be built
Where he could make it rich in hotels
Where he could go mad in his own hotel
And tell the story again and again
In all the rooms
Whirlings of the interior
Skull cap for an inner sun
Birthmark you never escape
Poverty
Remind me of the name of the continent from which I fled
Remind me of the name of the continent to which I fled
Remind me of the name of the one God
Here at least that God grows weaker
like the muscles of a drowning man
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Europe a fat cigar
Five brothers smoked
Who are the ancestors of smoke?
Shadows
Who are the ancestors of shadows?
Smoke
No wonder
Lighting up prosperous after meals
We hear no singing
Only the fire sings
For the dance of smoke
And for the shadows
climbing walls to get out
________________________________________
Steve Schutzman is a survivor of San Francisco in the 60s and 70s where we met through our mutual friend, Gene Berson. He was working on a novel at the time, and published at least two poetry titles, “The History of Sleep” (1976) and “Smoke The Burning Body Makes” (1978). We experienced those socially tumultuous times meeting occasionally to share work, roam the rivers of the Sierra Nevada Foothills, or watch a 49er game. I knew him in those days as a poet, but he says he seldom writes poetry now, focusing on plays and stories. “The Language Of Crows” is a pleasant exception which we are honored to be able to post here.
One of his early plays, “The Beauty And Terror Of Being A Dog”, was performed in a small theater in North Beach, San Francisco, sometime in the 70s for which I did some sound design. I watched as a student while he worked with the actors and crew, gradually bringing together his visions and ideas, until the play literally danced under the lights. I lost contact with Steve shortly after this until a few months ago when we hooked up via email, thanks once again to Gene Berson. He is a delightful human being, witty and smart, who roams freely through the realm of his imagination, presenting his subjects from all angles at the same time so that his readers absorb his insights more through the pores than the intellect, receiving instinctively the common wonder of life that his works share.
“The Language Of Crows” was recently published in “In Posse Review” http://www.inpossereview.com/index.htm
For information about Steven Schutzman and his plays, stories, novels, and poetry you can visit his web site http://mysite.verizon.net/stevenschutzman/ . While there you should read “Tree Man”, a play in one act, and “The Bank Robbery”, a prize winning short story that will resonate in your mind for months, like the whisper of a Chinese gong.
The following paragraph was posted at: Pioneer Drama Service, Inc. http://www.pioneerdrama.com/authordetail.asp?ac=SCHUTZMANS
Steven Schutzman is a playwright and fiction writer, the author of seven published books and of numerous plays and stories in literary journals including The Pushcart Prize, TriQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Third Coast, Scene 4 and the anthology "The Art of the One Act". More than thirty different plays of his have been produced at such theatres as New Jersey Repertory, Cleveland Public, Baltimore Theatre Project and Revolution Theatre in Chicago among many others. He is also a five-time recipient of Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant Awards and a three time top tier finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Center National Playwrights Conference. His one-act "Tree Man" won first prize in the First Stage L.A. One-Act Contest/2004. You can read more about Mr. Schutzman and his work by going to his website.
Some links of interest:
http://mysite.verizon.net/stevenschutzman/ - Steve’s web site.
http://www.eclectica.org/v12n2/feature.html - 3 short plays.
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/aqr/
http://www.thirdcoastmagazine.com/ - FALL 2007
http://www.postroadmag.com/
http://home.sprynet.com/~awhit/index.htm - Issues 15, 17, 20
http://www.triquarterly.org/
http://www.webdelsol.com/pbq/issue76/?home=1&frmLeft=frontpage.htm&frmRight=rightnav.htm
http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/contents/schutzman_8_1.php - “Tonight, You’re Mine”
http://pipl.com/search/?FirstName=Steven&LastName=Schutzman&City=&State=&Country=&CategoryID=2&Interface=40 - Lots of information on this page.
http://www.abalonemoon.com/schutzman.html - Poem: “Thirty And Deep In My Shoes”
Sons of Fathers
Fathers of sons
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Passed like secret looks
among the astronomers of dust
Debris of a nation of destiny
dumped from buckets out back
Whimsically checked off lists
A frown a smile
A smile a frown
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Sons of fathers
Fathers of sons
Who had their shoes cut open for feet
Their food examined for thoughts
Their blood checked for poems
Their children stripped of stories at the door
Crows watched from a fence
and remembered their names
as they ate
But where are those crows
and who can speak their language now?
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Sons of fathers
Fathers of sons
Of a man who walked by a river
A visionary
Who saw where roads would be built
Where he could make it rich in hotels
Where he could go mad in his own hotel
And tell the story again and again
In all the rooms
Whirlings of the interior
Skull cap for an inner sun
Birthmark you never escape
Poverty
Remind me of the name of the continent from which I fled
Remind me of the name of the continent to which I fled
Remind me of the name of the one God
Here at least that God grows weaker
like the muscles of a drowning man
This is the story
of a family that won't be told
Europe a fat cigar
Five brothers smoked
Who are the ancestors of smoke?
Shadows
Who are the ancestors of shadows?
Smoke
No wonder
Lighting up prosperous after meals
We hear no singing
Only the fire sings
For the dance of smoke
And for the shadows
climbing walls to get out
________________________________________
Steve Schutzman is a survivor of San Francisco in the 60s and 70s where we met through our mutual friend, Gene Berson. He was working on a novel at the time, and published at least two poetry titles, “The History of Sleep” (1976) and “Smoke The Burning Body Makes” (1978). We experienced those socially tumultuous times meeting occasionally to share work, roam the rivers of the Sierra Nevada Foothills, or watch a 49er game. I knew him in those days as a poet, but he says he seldom writes poetry now, focusing on plays and stories. “The Language Of Crows” is a pleasant exception which we are honored to be able to post here.
One of his early plays, “The Beauty And Terror Of Being A Dog”, was performed in a small theater in North Beach, San Francisco, sometime in the 70s for which I did some sound design. I watched as a student while he worked with the actors and crew, gradually bringing together his visions and ideas, until the play literally danced under the lights. I lost contact with Steve shortly after this until a few months ago when we hooked up via email, thanks once again to Gene Berson. He is a delightful human being, witty and smart, who roams freely through the realm of his imagination, presenting his subjects from all angles at the same time so that his readers absorb his insights more through the pores than the intellect, receiving instinctively the common wonder of life that his works share.
“The Language Of Crows” was recently published in “In Posse Review” http://www.inpossereview.com/index.htm
For information about Steven Schutzman and his plays, stories, novels, and poetry you can visit his web site http://mysite.verizon.net/stevenschutzman/ . While there you should read “Tree Man”, a play in one act, and “The Bank Robbery”, a prize winning short story that will resonate in your mind for months, like the whisper of a Chinese gong.
The following paragraph was posted at: Pioneer Drama Service, Inc. http://www.pioneerdrama.com/authordetail.asp?ac=SCHUTZMANS
Steven Schutzman is a playwright and fiction writer, the author of seven published books and of numerous plays and stories in literary journals including The Pushcart Prize, TriQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Third Coast, Scene 4 and the anthology "The Art of the One Act". More than thirty different plays of his have been produced at such theatres as New Jersey Repertory, Cleveland Public, Baltimore Theatre Project and Revolution Theatre in Chicago among many others. He is also a five-time recipient of Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant Awards and a three time top tier finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Center National Playwrights Conference. His one-act "Tree Man" won first prize in the First Stage L.A. One-Act Contest/2004. You can read more about Mr. Schutzman and his work by going to his website.
Some links of interest:
http://mysite.verizon.net/stevenschutzman/ - Steve’s web site.
http://www.eclectica.org/v12n2/feature.html - 3 short plays.
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/aqr/
http://www.thirdcoastmagazine.com/ - FALL 2007
http://www.postroadmag.com/
http://home.sprynet.com/~awhit/index.htm - Issues 15, 17, 20
http://www.triquarterly.org/
http://www.webdelsol.com/pbq/issue76/?home=1&frmLeft=frontpage.htm&frmRight=rightnav.htm
http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/contents/schutzman_8_1.php - “Tonight, You’re Mine”
http://pipl.com/search/?FirstName=Steven&LastName=Schutzman&City=&State=&Country=&CategoryID=2&Interface=40 - Lots of information on this page.
http://www.abalonemoon.com/schutzman.html - Poem: “Thirty And Deep In My Shoes”
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
YOU ARE NOT DEPRESSED. YOU ARE DISTRACTED.
I ran across this posting today on a blog that I have been following for a few months. Check it out. It will make you feel good. I promise!
http://gravitando.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/you-are-not-depressed-you-are-distracted/
The blog is written by a young jewelry designer who lives in Costa Rica. I found her when I did a Google search for the writer Anais Nin and followed this link:
http://gravitando.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/winter-1931-1932-from-the-diary-of-anais-nin/
To see the whole blog, click on the blog title, AL GRAVITAR RODANDO, at the top of her page.
(To return to this page, press the BACK arrow.)
http://gravitando.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/you-are-not-depressed-you-are-distracted/
The blog is written by a young jewelry designer who lives in Costa Rica. I found her when I did a Google search for the writer Anais Nin and followed this link:
http://gravitando.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/winter-1931-1932-from-the-diary-of-anais-nin/
To see the whole blog, click on the blog title, AL GRAVITAR RODANDO, at the top of her page.
(To return to this page, press the BACK arrow.)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
GOD BLESS THE CHILD
Scene from my morning walk:
As I approached Bird Park, a small neighborhood park near my house, a small white Chevy pulled up to the curb and a full-sized lady of about 50 emerged after cranking the radio up full blast, rocking the quiet morning with some grooving R & B. She was wearing a bright orange pant suit, her hair up in style with flowers, as if she was on the way to church. There was a plot of blooming iris's of orange color with red and black spots planted along the sidewalk, really quite lovely. The lady broke into a boogaloo to the music, dancing before the flowers, arms in the air and then reaching for the flowers, large body shaking, huge smile on her quite lovely face. In her dance she was bowing to the flowers and as I approached her I could see that she was kissing them, straightening up, arms in the air again, bowing and kissing the iris's. As I got near I smiled and said Good morning. She looked at me beaming with joy and said, "You gotta be happy some time!" "I heard that!" I said. "I just had to stop and thank the flowers for being so beautiful!" I gave her a slight bow and a hands together "I honor your spirit." She said "Thank you!" and continued her dance. I moved on, beaming with joy in my soul. When I returned about ten minutes later I was hoping she was still there, but no, she had driven off. But I smiled anyway as I passed the iris's, for in my heart she was still there, still dancing, still filling the morning with joy. "God bless the child that's got her own."
Have a beautiful day!
Buff
GOD BLESS THE CHILD
Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets dont ever make the grade
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Money, youve got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When youre gone, spending ends
They dont come no more
Rich relations give
Crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But dont take too much
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
He just worry bout nothin
Cause hes got his own
Billie Holiday
You can hear her sing it here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Billie+Holiday/_/God+Bless+the+Child
(To return to this page, press the BACK arrow.)
As I approached Bird Park, a small neighborhood park near my house, a small white Chevy pulled up to the curb and a full-sized lady of about 50 emerged after cranking the radio up full blast, rocking the quiet morning with some grooving R & B. She was wearing a bright orange pant suit, her hair up in style with flowers, as if she was on the way to church. There was a plot of blooming iris's of orange color with red and black spots planted along the sidewalk, really quite lovely. The lady broke into a boogaloo to the music, dancing before the flowers, arms in the air and then reaching for the flowers, large body shaking, huge smile on her quite lovely face. In her dance she was bowing to the flowers and as I approached her I could see that she was kissing them, straightening up, arms in the air again, bowing and kissing the iris's. As I got near I smiled and said Good morning. She looked at me beaming with joy and said, "You gotta be happy some time!" "I heard that!" I said. "I just had to stop and thank the flowers for being so beautiful!" I gave her a slight bow and a hands together "I honor your spirit." She said "Thank you!" and continued her dance. I moved on, beaming with joy in my soul. When I returned about ten minutes later I was hoping she was still there, but no, she had driven off. But I smiled anyway as I passed the iris's, for in my heart she was still there, still dancing, still filling the morning with joy. "God bless the child that's got her own."
Have a beautiful day!
Buff
GOD BLESS THE CHILD
Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets dont ever make the grade
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Money, youve got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When youre gone, spending ends
They dont come no more
Rich relations give
Crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But dont take too much
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
He just worry bout nothin
Cause hes got his own
Billie Holiday
You can hear her sing it here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Billie+Holiday/_/God+Bless+the+Child
(To return to this page, press the BACK arrow.)
Friday, February 27, 2009
TULIP
Email to the Buffalo
2/27/09 6:27 AM: Bersone
It's a long draw these days, my man, stretched into a zone here, with no day off and the mind numb from superficial details and hectored by deadlines: interfered with soul: so what: well, you could say you're in space, finally, looking back, thinking maybe of a lawn you once knew as a kid, and now, a piece of the earth shot into orbit unlikely to make it back causing an odd grief, for the earth for you, a piece of her: so then an idea: you're a seed, shot out, an eye and brain: your viewpoint your achievement and duty even to attend to: that necklace of stars just junk on a bar slopped with beer and reflections and sprinkled with false laughter: the mix-up: then the cool, the buffalo in the snow, alone by the frozen lake, the plumes of his snorts pumped out, determined, asking nothing in return, his back like a mountain, rooted not rooting for nothing. Antidotes everywhere and always available. Antidotes and doseydotes and little lambee ivy: lots of frills, but the shadow-frill of a manta ray flying quietly relieves the human world.
just saying howdy. Attaching a little still life. Thinking of
cummings and monk, the iconoclastic stubborn bastards in common
Tulip
The pink is disappearing
the bloom opening
like a hand, held
down and
bending the green stem
lower
as I eat my cereal
saying here, here
I am
dying and
leaving a roomful
of pink
you can just feel
all this without a word
amidst the disarray
of the table
and the woman
who occasioned
these flowers has gone
for the time
being
suddenly very quiet
around here
2/27/09 12:34 PM: Buffalo
No matter where you are, my friend, there is the refection of the stars, the moon in orbit, hellgrammites under rocks. We carry everything with us in a knapsack on a pole over our shoulder, hoboes following the rail. Nothing is ever left behind. You might be hiring twelve rug-kickers from the union hall, or writing a poem. Nothing changes. You might be diving to the bottom of the pool beneath the waterfall, or sewing labels in tee shirts, or scratching the left side of your chest just under the collar bone where the pacemaker ticks under the skin, wired to the heart, or reliving in absolute clarity that moment in the Jazz Workshop when you stood just a few feet from Thelonias Monk as he danced to his own music with his back to you, in another world. We are everywhere at once, and always nowhere. The craft is balancing on one foot, or one arm, or one eyeball, one thought, one song. “Last call!” There is no such thing; there are a million Last Calls twisting out into the universe like DNA on a rope. You are a seed, indeed. You are the buffalo by the frozen lake, the manta ray, just as you are the High School dropout, the Father, Son and Holy Fucking Ghost, the old lady pumping gas into the Toyota. This is why we love, because we are everything, everywhere, all the time.
Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love, spare change?
Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love, have a nice day.
Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love…
“Tulip” is a love poem of the highest, clearest order! Thanks for speaking my words for me – the ones I couldn’t find.
I saw a tee shirt today that said on the back:
PEACE
LOVE
PINK
Buff
Saturday, February 7, 2009
“MEXICO UNCONQUERED” / “AS FREEDOM IS A BREAKFASTFOOD”
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A ROOSTER CROWS IN OAKLAND / ANAIS NIN / RIVER EGGS
How could one resist sharing this email received this morning, which, by the way, interrupted the stirring anxiety of a restless night and a chilly morning and mood. One can count on Bersone to be paying attention to the details of the moment - every sound a song, every word a poem. Thus, neither morning nor mood so damned chilly after all! Have a nice day.
Email to the Buffalo
01/27/2009 6:56 AM Bersone:
Buffalo,
There's a rooster across the street that crows incessantly, night and
day, as if he's lost his sense of when he's supposed to go off, in
the city as he is, or perhaps because there's never another rooster
answering him. There he goes again, six thirty in the morning just
as he did last night at eight. And that silence after he crows! An
interval of waiting. You can almost hear him listening for the
response. Of one thing we can be sure: he'll crow undeterred by a
lack of audience. It's in him and it's all he can do. One could say
that he's fulfilling himself; one could say that he's merely
proclaiming his little being, or asserting an absurd ego, or
humiliating himself by displaying for a hen that may not even be
there. It's up to us to define the rooster in Oakland. He's the
soundscape, we're the listeners. The meaning lies within us; he's
let it out. A Rooster Crows in Oakland, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
I go to the office today before a show at the Marriott tomorrow, a
show on continuing medical education, whatever that is. I'm taking
Henry with me, the Rimbaud book. I picked up the 7th diary of Anais
Nin the other day, used, a hardcover copy for ten bucks with a
wonderful picture of her and Henry laughing, he in his robe at
Pacific Palisades. This book came out around 1974, about the time
she wrote me that lovely two page letter, inviting a correspondence.
She fell ill not so long after, I think, and died in 1977. She was
born in 1903, which would make her about twenty years Henry's
junior. Her fight was to validate the unconscious, the inner self;
during the thirties and forties that was taboo. In such decades,
which required such self-sacrifice, people were taught that to take
themselves seriously, their feelings and dreams, was indulgent,
selfish. That led to the insane sterility of fifties, a decade of
people psychologically traumatized by the depression and war,
whatever spiritual needs they had answered by materialistic quests.
Then the pendulum swung into another labyrinth. We turn the past over and over, as the river jostles the stones within it as if they
were living eggs, trying to nudge a little meaning out of them,
smoothing them, shaping them. In turn, they knock gently against
each other, like children talking quietly among themselves in a
language only children understand.
Email to the Buffalo
01/27/2009 6:56 AM Bersone:
Buffalo,
There's a rooster across the street that crows incessantly, night and
day, as if he's lost his sense of when he's supposed to go off, in
the city as he is, or perhaps because there's never another rooster
answering him. There he goes again, six thirty in the morning just
as he did last night at eight. And that silence after he crows! An
interval of waiting. You can almost hear him listening for the
response. Of one thing we can be sure: he'll crow undeterred by a
lack of audience. It's in him and it's all he can do. One could say
that he's fulfilling himself; one could say that he's merely
proclaiming his little being, or asserting an absurd ego, or
humiliating himself by displaying for a hen that may not even be
there. It's up to us to define the rooster in Oakland. He's the
soundscape, we're the listeners. The meaning lies within us; he's
let it out. A Rooster Crows in Oakland, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
I go to the office today before a show at the Marriott tomorrow, a
show on continuing medical education, whatever that is. I'm taking
Henry with me, the Rimbaud book. I picked up the 7th diary of Anais
Nin the other day, used, a hardcover copy for ten bucks with a
wonderful picture of her and Henry laughing, he in his robe at
Pacific Palisades. This book came out around 1974, about the time
she wrote me that lovely two page letter, inviting a correspondence.
She fell ill not so long after, I think, and died in 1977. She was
born in 1903, which would make her about twenty years Henry's
junior. Her fight was to validate the unconscious, the inner self;
during the thirties and forties that was taboo. In such decades,
which required such self-sacrifice, people were taught that to take
themselves seriously, their feelings and dreams, was indulgent,
selfish. That led to the insane sterility of fifties, a decade of
people psychologically traumatized by the depression and war,
whatever spiritual needs they had answered by materialistic quests.
Then the pendulum swung into another labyrinth. We turn the past over and over, as the river jostles the stones within it as if they
were living eggs, trying to nudge a little meaning out of them,
smoothing them, shaping them. In turn, they knock gently against
each other, like children talking quietly among themselves in a
language only children understand.
WELCOME TO PLANET DIRT
We all live underground here on Planet Dirt.
Don’t want to show our faces.
We like to hide in holes,
Where all questions have the same answer.
Roaming the tunnels through roots and rock,
Sniffing the ass of the one in front.
This is what we like to do.
Kings of the Rodents, that’s us!
We’re #1!
April 2006
Don’t want to show our faces.
We like to hide in holes,
Where all questions have the same answer.
Roaming the tunnels through roots and rock,
Sniffing the ass of the one in front.
This is what we like to do.
Kings of the Rodents, that’s us!
We’re #1!
April 2006
Monday, January 19, 2009
A WINDOW WITH A VIOLIN
This exchange in response to the posting: "JOURNAL ENTRY 02/24/2004" –
Email to the Buffalo
01/16/2009 8:40 PM Bersone:
I must say, my friend, I sometimes don't know if the words are coming through you or have come through me. This is the great fear of our age, the age of original talent, the great individual. In America, you cannot be an artist unless you are a genius, a Picasso, a Hemmingway: this is strange when viewed through other, older
cultures, those less infatuated with the signature at the end of the rainbow. It's a financially proprietary purpose, such a signature, flying in the face of all the great enquirers, the anonymous seekers who followed their divinations to further their quest for God or the unknowable, humbly, touched, in great communion with all people, all ignorant people who would, were they stripped of pretense, would
stand stupefied before miracle after miracle. To dive to the bottom
of the river, indeed, where things are transformed. Where an image,
to paraphrase Rilke, enters, is forgotten, sinking into the blood
where it is transformed, to rise again, the literal connection to
anything cut and dead, an image become a dream, turned like a pearl
inside a living being, to become an utterance, a fairy tale. A fairy
tale is like a river stone; it has been told so many times, been
turned and soothed with so many tellings, that it has become smooth
and essential. anonymous. Carved by the river, and heartbreakingly
beautiful. I am grateful I know you, a fellow witness.
This comes at the end of a day that began when, emerging from BART
onto Market Street, still dark, the bricks wet from the guy hosing
down in front of Walgreen's, I pass a guy in a sleeping bag, a
blanket over his head, jacking off like a rabbit for that little note
or two of pleasure in an existence filled with pain. We need
pleasure and beauty so constantly, and constantly deny ourselves of
it. Even the sound of the hose spraying the bricks brings an
ecstasy. As Rilke said, you are caught, say, walking past a window
with a violin in it: that is your charge.
01/19/2009 7:20 AM Buffalo:
We have journeyed side by side for many moons. We have hunted the buffalo for food and warmth. We have fathered stars, conjured songs, witnessed birth, watered gardens of weeds, laughed in the face of fear, painted the walls with love, genuflected before the old and feeble, died and been born time after time after time. We have studied life and found that beyond the fact of life there is nothing. Live. LIVE! That is all that is asked of us. After a lifetime of compromise and social intercourse I strive now to do nothing but to write in this novel that will never be read. To dream, to sing softly to the cold and heartless universe, to swim in frigid waters. I want nothing, not even a blanket to cover my passion. Give me an ocean to walk on. Give me a zillion stars to count at night. Give me one moon and one sun. Give me a flock of chattering sparrows. Give me a quivering puppy, an afternoon, an early morning dream, an hour of loneliness, one moment, one last breath. Give me a window with a violin. Nothing more.
Like we used to say in the 60s:
Peace and Love!
Email to the Buffalo
01/16/2009 8:40 PM Bersone:
I must say, my friend, I sometimes don't know if the words are coming through you or have come through me. This is the great fear of our age, the age of original talent, the great individual. In America, you cannot be an artist unless you are a genius, a Picasso, a Hemmingway: this is strange when viewed through other, older
cultures, those less infatuated with the signature at the end of the rainbow. It's a financially proprietary purpose, such a signature, flying in the face of all the great enquirers, the anonymous seekers who followed their divinations to further their quest for God or the unknowable, humbly, touched, in great communion with all people, all ignorant people who would, were they stripped of pretense, would
stand stupefied before miracle after miracle. To dive to the bottom
of the river, indeed, where things are transformed. Where an image,
to paraphrase Rilke, enters, is forgotten, sinking into the blood
where it is transformed, to rise again, the literal connection to
anything cut and dead, an image become a dream, turned like a pearl
inside a living being, to become an utterance, a fairy tale. A fairy
tale is like a river stone; it has been told so many times, been
turned and soothed with so many tellings, that it has become smooth
and essential. anonymous. Carved by the river, and heartbreakingly
beautiful. I am grateful I know you, a fellow witness.
This comes at the end of a day that began when, emerging from BART
onto Market Street, still dark, the bricks wet from the guy hosing
down in front of Walgreen's, I pass a guy in a sleeping bag, a
blanket over his head, jacking off like a rabbit for that little note
or two of pleasure in an existence filled with pain. We need
pleasure and beauty so constantly, and constantly deny ourselves of
it. Even the sound of the hose spraying the bricks brings an
ecstasy. As Rilke said, you are caught, say, walking past a window
with a violin in it: that is your charge.
01/19/2009 7:20 AM Buffalo:
We have journeyed side by side for many moons. We have hunted the buffalo for food and warmth. We have fathered stars, conjured songs, witnessed birth, watered gardens of weeds, laughed in the face of fear, painted the walls with love, genuflected before the old and feeble, died and been born time after time after time. We have studied life and found that beyond the fact of life there is nothing. Live. LIVE! That is all that is asked of us. After a lifetime of compromise and social intercourse I strive now to do nothing but to write in this novel that will never be read. To dream, to sing softly to the cold and heartless universe, to swim in frigid waters. I want nothing, not even a blanket to cover my passion. Give me an ocean to walk on. Give me a zillion stars to count at night. Give me one moon and one sun. Give me a flock of chattering sparrows. Give me a quivering puppy, an afternoon, an early morning dream, an hour of loneliness, one moment, one last breath. Give me a window with a violin. Nothing more.
Like we used to say in the 60s:
Peace and Love!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
JOURNAL ENTRY 02/24/2004
Just rediscovered these notes from five years ago.
022404-022704
Notes and fieldwork for the next CD: The Somnambulist.
THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER
Time to move on now facing this glistening universe of possibilities. I'm at the river with the sun on my shoulders, hopping from rock to rock without a plan. It's nice if you know where you are going, as Gene would say, up stream, or down. I'm going up stream, to the falls, where the water is deepest and the cliff face seemingly impassable. Here I will climb as high as I can reach, and dive so deep that my ears will be filled with music never before heard. Here I will glide easily into the shadows of imagination where inspiration is given freely to those who refrain from seeking it. One sees when one stops looking. One hears when one stops listening. It is deceptively simple. The river bottom is the place of metamorphosis, where worms are transformed into butterflies; where dreams become music, and music becomes the dream.
If you have important questions and want to consult with the forces of the universe directly, you must go to the bottom of the river and sit quietly for a while with nothing on your mind. Bide your time as if you were waiting for a bus. Whistle a little tune if you care to. Cool your heals. When it is quiet the mist will lift and there it all is, everything you ever knew; everything you ever wanted to know and more, beyond wonder! This is the place of perfect peace where the vagueness of dream and the harshness of reality dissolve in one another’s arms like lovers, becoming a merged and new form of consciousness. This is the realm of inspiration where thought without thought begins taking a physical form. Here, the process of amalgamation is set into motion with but a flick of the mind. It is a wonder indeed, to turn the wisp of an idea into a physical object, to take something from the shadow of imagination and to bring it into the sensual world. It is a deep and fulfilling process. A transaction with God.
So now, as I hop along the river from one sun warmed rock to the next, heading steadily toward the deep pool beneath the falls where I will submerge, the only thing I know for sure is that I am a mayfly taken a wing on this sunny afternoon, drifting where the breeze will take me, and landing where I may fall. Halleluiah! Here, I am a mayfly gliding on river air, shedding my skin in the warm sun. Halleluiah! Here, we bathe together in the silence that always comes just before the moment of birth, and just before the moment of death. Halleluiah! Here, there are no bombs. Halleluiah!
Time to move on.
Halleluiah!
022404
Standing here along highway 20 in the mist of a rain storm watching the logging trucks and motor homes whiz by every few moments going either east or west, making a long sizzling sound that fades away.
The artist’s job is to shed the cloak of doubt. The universe takes over from there.
Everything worthwhile begins at the bottom of the river where the sound of one heart beating defines the silence; where hellgrammites go to sleep.
Title for a piece: Dance of the Sleeping Hellgrammites.
Title for a piece: Here, There Are No Bombs
Title for a piece: Don't bother me now. I'm dreaming.
Sleepwalkers don’t always walk alone.
I will try some collaborations.
John Deaderick and I are talking about working together on a piece. A dream piece. (Heartbeat. Sudden changes. A radio in the distance. Whispering.)
There are no limitations.
I am The Somnambulist, dreaming within the dream.
Now I have shed the cloak of doubt and walk without fear across the flaming hot coals.
I never could figure out how they did that without burning their feet. Now I know the trick is hidden in the truth of the smile, the smile that covers the heart, the smile, as Henry said, at the foot of the ladder, where the first step is also the last step.
The smile of innocence.
My mother is teaching me now about innocence.
Innocence is hidden beneath the cloak of self-consciousness (doubt) and then revealed again in death.
Innocence, though smothered, is never suffocated.
Innocence is our motivator.
Innocence is the Muse.
Listen for the sound of innocence in everything you hear.
022404-022704
Notes and fieldwork for the next CD: The Somnambulist.
THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER
Time to move on now facing this glistening universe of possibilities. I'm at the river with the sun on my shoulders, hopping from rock to rock without a plan. It's nice if you know where you are going, as Gene would say, up stream, or down. I'm going up stream, to the falls, where the water is deepest and the cliff face seemingly impassable. Here I will climb as high as I can reach, and dive so deep that my ears will be filled with music never before heard. Here I will glide easily into the shadows of imagination where inspiration is given freely to those who refrain from seeking it. One sees when one stops looking. One hears when one stops listening. It is deceptively simple. The river bottom is the place of metamorphosis, where worms are transformed into butterflies; where dreams become music, and music becomes the dream.
If you have important questions and want to consult with the forces of the universe directly, you must go to the bottom of the river and sit quietly for a while with nothing on your mind. Bide your time as if you were waiting for a bus. Whistle a little tune if you care to. Cool your heals. When it is quiet the mist will lift and there it all is, everything you ever knew; everything you ever wanted to know and more, beyond wonder! This is the place of perfect peace where the vagueness of dream and the harshness of reality dissolve in one another’s arms like lovers, becoming a merged and new form of consciousness. This is the realm of inspiration where thought without thought begins taking a physical form. Here, the process of amalgamation is set into motion with but a flick of the mind. It is a wonder indeed, to turn the wisp of an idea into a physical object, to take something from the shadow of imagination and to bring it into the sensual world. It is a deep and fulfilling process. A transaction with God.
So now, as I hop along the river from one sun warmed rock to the next, heading steadily toward the deep pool beneath the falls where I will submerge, the only thing I know for sure is that I am a mayfly taken a wing on this sunny afternoon, drifting where the breeze will take me, and landing where I may fall. Halleluiah! Here, I am a mayfly gliding on river air, shedding my skin in the warm sun. Halleluiah! Here, we bathe together in the silence that always comes just before the moment of birth, and just before the moment of death. Halleluiah! Here, there are no bombs. Halleluiah!
Time to move on.
Halleluiah!
022404
Standing here along highway 20 in the mist of a rain storm watching the logging trucks and motor homes whiz by every few moments going either east or west, making a long sizzling sound that fades away.
The artist’s job is to shed the cloak of doubt. The universe takes over from there.
Everything worthwhile begins at the bottom of the river where the sound of one heart beating defines the silence; where hellgrammites go to sleep.
Title for a piece: Dance of the Sleeping Hellgrammites.
Title for a piece: Here, There Are No Bombs
Title for a piece: Don't bother me now. I'm dreaming.
Sleepwalkers don’t always walk alone.
I will try some collaborations.
John Deaderick and I are talking about working together on a piece. A dream piece. (Heartbeat. Sudden changes. A radio in the distance. Whispering.)
There are no limitations.
I am The Somnambulist, dreaming within the dream.
Now I have shed the cloak of doubt and walk without fear across the flaming hot coals.
I never could figure out how they did that without burning their feet. Now I know the trick is hidden in the truth of the smile, the smile that covers the heart, the smile, as Henry said, at the foot of the ladder, where the first step is also the last step.
The smile of innocence.
My mother is teaching me now about innocence.
Innocence is hidden beneath the cloak of self-consciousness (doubt) and then revealed again in death.
Innocence, though smothered, is never suffocated.
Innocence is our motivator.
Innocence is the Muse.
Listen for the sound of innocence in everything you hear.
THE RIVER
There is nothing so beautiful
as the blue smoke rising from the camp fire,
my tender lady tending the coals
her back to me,
the steam from the coffee pot mingling
with the long soft smoke,
my children sitting up in their mummy bags
rubbing the sleep from their eyes.
The river runs like blood through my heart.
July 19, 1982
as the blue smoke rising from the camp fire,
my tender lady tending the coals
her back to me,
the steam from the coffee pot mingling
with the long soft smoke,
my children sitting up in their mummy bags
rubbing the sleep from their eyes.
The river runs like blood through my heart.
July 19, 1982
Friday, January 9, 2009
ON BUILDING THE JEWEL TRANCE SITE
We have been gathering together Bersone’s poetry – over forty years of work. Gene and I met in the late 60s in San Francisco. He had been studying at SF State and doing the Poetry in the School gig and was an active part of an important yet not often recognized poetry scene in the Bay Area. There were readings every week all over the City where Gene and other writers, like Steve Schutzman, read their latest work. The clubs on Broadway and in the Fillmore were alive with jazz music: Miles, Thelonias, Cannonball, Mingus. New theater was being performed in the small North Beach venues, and performers like Lord Buckley might be discovered in the least likely dives. The City was churning in its own unique way. Artists like Bersone were doing whatever they could to make a buck without selling their soul to the company store. We first met in the Operations Center of a bank, on the midnight shift. He was working all night, trying to raise a family during the day, and writing some of the best work of his life. (Schutzman has said that “Jewel Trance” should have been recognized as the “Howl” of their generation.) At one point Bersone took a job as a copy writer for an ad agency. I remember picking up a package of Thomas’s English Muffins and seeing his slogan: “You are holding the original English Muffin!” That job, however, like all the rest, didn’t last long, but the poems kept coming – the direct link to his sanity, the truth of his spirit. Some were published in poetry reviews, most were not. The years slid by, lives were lived, suffering endured, and the bliss of life honored in song. So now, in this distant future, we are gathering the fallen leaves together, even as they continue to blossom, mature and fall where they mingle with the earth to nurture generations to come. We are creating the “Jewel Trance” site as a receptacle, a gathering place for the work, and a public venue. This process is intimate and exciting. Many of the poems I had never seen, but most had fluttered by my eyes as they were dropped. To handle them now and examine them closely with the eyes of this generation is exciting and rewarding. The following correspondence will show some of this process and, perhaps, provide some insight into a few of the poems.
Email to the Buffalo
1/4/09 11:53 AM Buffalo
That "Suicide" thing is a jewel!!! (Can You Hear The Suicide Bomber Singing?) When did you write that? I vaguely remember having seen that before, is that possible? Great singing! Do you want this posted on Jewel Trance? Do you have an image or photo to go with it? It is definitely the Gene Berson Voice singing in the key of ‘Infinite Humor in Truth and Vice-Versa’ - sharp! Very funny! Very true. Great riff!
:)
1/4/09 12:24 PM Bersone
Thanks for the reaction; I wrote that last August, inspired by reading Miller's Hummingbird book; I felt at the time that I was tuning my chops and that there was a lot more to come. But we went to Canada for two weeks and that interrupted the flow so I never quite got back into it. I feel I'm still on that wavelength, however, if I get the time and whatever it takes. It's like a current, I feel. I got into rereading Henry's Rimbaud book, which I brought back with me yesterday, and feel that that's a lead back into whatever state the suicide thing came out of. Certainly with the events in the Gaza strip I'm feeling it all, but I'm getting ready to go to work tomorrow. I hope not to drink and have energy to write in the evening. I'm also interested in these sound things I did with Ruby on her bowls, her brother playing bass and me improvising out of the dictionary like I do. I recorded them on the iPod and would like to send one to you but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. One little song goes:
I work weekends, just call
finding a loan for every home is my yearning I'm talking top banana I work weekends, just call I'm clean and bright inside and out I work weekends, just call to find a home at the end of the road with privacy, just call I work weekends, just call I'm topless neat and meticulous clean and bright inside and out why rent etc
That's not giving it justice but I can't remember it off the top of my head. Suffice it to say that it goes off and the three sounds, bowls, bass and voice have moments where they come together. It then goes into a little thing about Saddle-sore Sam and Sally Salmon in her saloon, following a sort of lope-along rhythm set by the bass. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time. The path is infinite once I get off the page. Check out that Oliver Sachs interview on www.ttbook.org where he talks about the healing power of music; quite amazing, really. Music can make people with Parkinson's be able to dance and move without problems; he theorizes that music is in several parts of the brain, some of those parts older, phylogenetically speaking, and are undamaged by strokes or disease, more primitive, you might say. I remember reading about a guy being operated on for a brain tumor in the thirties, in the phylogenetically ancient part of the mid-brain, and he had to be conscious for the operation. When the surgeon touched the tumor the guy would fly out with a spurt of language, full of rhyme and in all three languages he knew, German, Greek and Latin, telling him to get out of his head.
As far as posting that suicide thing, go ahead, post it wherever you want; I sent it to Velene last summer but she never commented on it; I asked Erika about that, and she said it wasn't Velene's thing, and Erika also questioned whether or not it should be published because people were so literal minded and it might be dangerous in some way. I wouldn't want any repercussions to you but as for myself whoever would object to it can shove their reactions up their ass.
The idea of an image with it is intriguing. I hadn't thought about that. Maybe Larry would have an idea. there's plenty of images there to work with, that's for sure.
1/4/09 3:26 PM Buffalo
I'll put the Suicide riff up on Buffalo and on Jewel Trance. It's a delightful example of your voice. Let me know if you have an image or image idea. Philippine Snakes is a wonderful poem. I re-discovered it on Velene's site along with Zenny's. Such good stuff, and how nice it is to see it gathered together. The type is small to preserve the original line breaks.
I really want to hear the piece you guys did up in Eureka with Ruby and her brother. You need to get it into a common format, like wav, and then use one of those free sites where you can send large files that won't go through the email. People have sent me files that way, but I have never sent one and don't have a url for you. Maybe Larry does, or figure out how to google it. Your selection looks like Advanced Rap.
:)
1/5/09 1:15 PM Buffalo
Funny you should mention Oliver Sacks - I'm reading his book: MUSICOPHILIA Tales of Music and the Brain. I couldn't locate the interview at that site. I guess it's no longer there.
Buff
1/6/09 12:39 PM Buffalo
It would be good if we had your bio up on the Jewel Trance site. I have started one, which I have attached. None of this has to be included. I’m just encouraging you to give me what you would like to post. However, I do like this image, and the “look”. Fill in the data and anything you would like for it to say. No rush, of course.
1/7/09 6:39 AM Bersone
I sent you some photos of myself. One on the deck with Ruby enjoying a story with her, Larry and Flo; one of myself, the old romantic, after four or five marriages, contemplating the promise of Niagara Falls, or Viagra Falls as they are wont to call it now; one of me chopping wood, letting the chips fall where they may, and one of myself in a canoe on Lake Huron in my middle sixties with some strength still in my arms. The picture you selected that Wilfredo took of me, while I was on a wild reading tour throughout the city, is a fine one, and should be included, although I send these others to sprinkle in or leave out as you wish. It occurs to me that I should send you my Mexico fuck poem, circa 1968, which shows perhaps some William Burroughs influence. Some of the poems I send may not be totally accepted, such as the Etheric Knees, but I send them on because sometimes seeing them posted helps me see them outside myself in order to weigh their worth. Your reactions are extremely helpful. I'd like to include some small recent, objectivist type poems, such as Evening fog's ycummin in, about the bum retrieving a cigarette from the trash barrel, and the poem Certain Imperatives about sitting on the back porch watching a spider.
As for the bio, well, what you have's ok so far; might as well post it. It's such a major project, and of course the poems will tell the same story more or less, and a rather exciting idea, to write an autobio, but I don't have time to do it now and so what if we let what you have stand. I like that whole essay I gave you, because it connects my emotional life as I experienced it as I grew up to the growing awareness of what a wholesale desecration of the environment was going on all around me, a realization that leads, once I understood that every sacred place I loved as a child, which was every wild place, was under attack, to the paranoia I ultimately express in the white truck, i.e., if they're destroying everything I love they've probably got me in their sights too. The essay may lack my usual pop, language-wise, having been written in a rather subdued mood, for various reasons.
1/7/09 10:15 AM Buffalo
Good photos. I'll weave them in. I'm going to put the bio up as it is. Instead of posting it at the top, I will put a photo of you and a link to the post, but put bio at the end. Yes, the "Evening fog's ycummin in" is a good one. I have a printed copy but please send me a text version so I don't have to re-type it. The Mexico fuck poem is essential. In fact, most of the poems from those years have a special quality to them, an energy that is special. It was an era, it was a life, a time, and it has its own voice. There are, however, some poems in the HONEYDEW book from those years that don't reach me. "Wind Song" is one of them - seems to be about getting a BJ - which is fine in itself, but it seems to be behind a curtain - shielded behind a glaze of what might be "feminism". Erika may have had something to do with that. But everything is real. Of course, I'll put all of those up if you choose. It's interesting looking at your work in this way - collected in a group. You can almost see the seams between our various lives. You are a poet! And a damn good one!
:)
1/7/09 6:34 PM Bersone
I'll have to find the Mexico poem and retype it in, maybe this week maybe this weekend. I'm going to try to find a photo of a pig race Larry took at the Grass Valley fair and send it to you. I wrote this poem to go with that picture. The wind song I always felt was a true poem and, although I haven't read it in a long time, think two things: one, that period was my feminist period and what you say is probably true. also it is too tight, perhaps, and maybe the mythological status feels contrived. I'm thinking of putting it up, though, because it's part of what I went through, craft wise, to get my voice out. Out loud. That's what it's all about. How we sound. And, if you look at the pictures I showed you of myself as a soldier, you can understand the long journey to reach the vocal chords. The intestinal groans and squawks of Charlie Parker and Coltrane show that any part of the body can sing, but it takes a lot of work to reveal the music. Maybe a saxophone can sound like the adrenal gland crushed by interrogation under a bright light, and maybe we're part of an effort to let the whole man speak, but Wind Song might be wrapped up in an Ace bandage I thought was form. Still, I feel it was genuine. The high school dropout poem similar tightness, or effort to master conventional forms. In that one I tried to catch the sound of the street car wheels within the words. there's a story behind that poem, about the writing of it.
1/8/09 8:04 AM Buffalo
When are you going to tell the story behind the writing of the high school dropout poem?
Here’s my hit on Shards of Song: following the analogy of the multi-course meal, I don’t think we are at the desert course yet, or the cheese and coffee course. Another take is that perhaps the poem is just fine, but the subject is so large that it cannot be sung in one poem. The societal tamping down of free spirits, imagination, freedom of song, is one of the deepest bruises we all must nurture, heal, accommodate. And the human response to that tyranny is the source for Man’s greatest songs. I’d like to see you take a freer voice of images and just sing it through, balls out, unrestricted. Its energy is the guide that will lead the way. See what happens.
1/8/09 7:15 PM Bersone
I think your take on Shards is correct; it's not bad, and maybe just came up as a reminder to a consistent theme living inside me and others. Your reaction raises a profound question: can you pull off a reasonably decent artifact, with a true theme, but fail because it hasn't flown completely on your own voice. Henry realized, at one point, that his fate depended on what happened to "Tropic of Cancer". All stops had been pulled out. He had laid it out, and not been afraid to show the bones on the way. Lawrence had this integrity, also. At any point, he may have veered off and written quite saleable books, but he drove deeper, and earned the enduring appreciation of at least four generations of future lovers. This type of advice, or reaction, was a constant in my living with Erika, who rarely accepted anything but the whole hog. Unfortunately, we lacked proper career planning. Which, of course, we had chosen to fly in the face of. We'll leave the shards until I can open it up and give it more of the real thing.
I haven't found a copy of Mexico Letter yet, and may not have it with me. I will enclose a poem I published with Velene, which I like and feel is the real deal. Also, I'll copy out a first version, or almost a first version of the gold fish thing so you can see a little how my process works. Also, maybe something I wrote about the time I wrote the poem to my daughter, the torn roots poem.
1/9/09 6:50 AM Bersone
This is the version I meant to send you (Gold Fish). I'm beginning to wonder if I should back away from this approach because I'm getting confused. But I need this back and forth shit, I just don't want to take advantage of you and your time. Certain poems I feel are done and then there are all these others, in various versions. I long really to do something new, some different kind of writing, but I don't have the time. I've got to resolve this housing situation so I don't have to work so much. I was asked recently to go on a kayak trip to Vietnam, which I could have done had I not bogged myself down with these mortgages. I have to set my life strategically, on a financial level. And I'm close, except for these payments. I could have kept a journal of the kayak trip, interviewed people -- that kind of thing. I'd like to move around more, and take the pulse of various parts of the world. I turned down work this weekend and I guess I'll go back up there for a couple of days. I'll send you the Mexico letter poem from there. What a weird process. I said ok to a reading offer in Sacramento through a client of Ruby's who owns some kind of store that sells spiritual garb, with a friend of hers, Susan, who's a poet and wants to read with me. Reading will help me sort out versions, I can hear the air pockets and so on, and I want to get more into the sort of things I did with ruby and her brother. I've been re-reading robert burns, who spent the last twenty years of his life working on songs (he wrote 600 of them). His poems are jewels -- narrative, lyric, detailed, and his focus was on creating a literature in the scotch dialect, an effort that has continued through the work of Macdiarmid, a great writer of my grandfather's generation. Both men are GIANTS, which you need. You play better tennis against players better than yourself. I know how to make a reasonably decent poem, like this goldfish thing, but that isn't what we're after. We want something from the edge of ourselves. Reading Henry's book on rimbaud, it's scary what's required. But even there you can't fall into a conventional martyrdom. To make out your own path, like water trickling down a dry hillside: the course isn't visible until the water traces it, unhesitatingly, twisting, relentless, fearless, just falling, stopping at obstacles, spilling over, letting nothing stop it. But looking at the dry hillside you don't know the path. Anyway, we know all this. But these are exciting times, like during Watergate: the masks are slipping off, you can look at a banker and almost see where you could reach over and hitch it back up over the ear. the disguises and disappearing, with some surprising faces underneath. I feel an uncanny ability inside myself, as if I'm an antenna, especially if I move quickly in response to my instincts; it's a delicate state, I grant you, but I trust my perceptions in that state. I have to pull back from it in daily life -- nobody knows what to do with it. they don't know who you are. The thing is, you are nobody; you're not distracted by being somebody. But you're awake, and you don't fall for the illusions. You don't have a stake in the illusions, especially those others want you to verify to confirm their ridiculous self-importance.
1/9/09 1:17 PM Buffalo
Sunny afternoon after a chilly morning. Went to the office only once this week, but I’ll go in tomorrow. The time of day, an ice sculpture melting to the sound of its own drip. Time to think. Time to fuck around. Listen to music. No pay-back accounting system.
Got the Gold Fish. I’LL get it up this afternoon. Don’t worry about my time. You’re taking very good care of it. The job we have is always the job we give to ourselves. I think I may hang a shingle out my door: TOM RHETORIC – JACK OF ALL TRADES and change my middle name to JACK. Thus the lyric:
Tom Jack Rhetoric
Man of all trades,
Hammer, pen, or string bass,
He pays you back in spades.
Inquire within.
It’s good to be restless, in your spirit and your poetry, want to wander. It means you don’t completely accept the skin you are wearing, and are willing to stretch out a bit. The river never stops flowing. All that water is going to go somewhere! When are you doing the reading in Sacragheto? I’d really like to have a recording of that. I’m looking for material for my Somnambulist project. Does that recorder that Ruby has make wav files that can be moved to a computer? And I really do hope to hear that piece you did with her and her brother.
The more we can figure out how to thrive on our own juices the better off we are going to be. There is no such thing as “success” in the creative realm – because it never stops – you’re never “there”. It’s like breathing in and out – we don’t ask ourselves if we are good at it, we just fucking do it – in and out – in and out. We make poems, sing songs, tell stories, dance, paint because that’s what we do. Ain’t nothing else to it. In the mean time we try to figure out how to make a living and stay out of jail. Your analogy of the water trickling down the dry hillside is a good one. The force is inevitable. We don’t even need to navigate the course, just learn to float. The river will take us home! I used to say: The Future is Perfect. I’m changing that now to: The Future is Inevitable. Ever float down the Sacramento River in an inner-tube and a six pack? Easy as that! And these masks, disguises, personas: what is all that about? Who do we think we’re kidding? Where did that shit come from? “I feel an uncanny ability inside myself, as if I'm an antenna, especially if I move quickly in response to my instincts.” I heard that! That exact uncanny ability thrives in all of us and can be nurtured and developed. What are we teaching in our schools? What did we ever learn in school other than the fact that most adults are idiots? It is our responsibility, yours, mine, Steve’s, and anyone else who has come in contact with his own uncanny ability, to sit around doing nothing as best we can. In this way the very concepts of rich and poor, good and evil, etc., will be eradicated simply by virtue of being ignored. We solve everything in one step: no judgment, everyone eats.
It’s like the Kafka poem Steve sent:
You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
Why is it that even I, who know this to be true, cannot live by this seemingly simple teaching? Why is it that I feel as though I MUST be making money with every move I make? Is this just a hang-over from the last financial depression? Whatever. No whining. Buck up. The work must be done.
We must learn to do nothing, and to do it well!
Buff
Email to the Buffalo
1/4/09 11:53 AM Buffalo
That "Suicide" thing is a jewel!!! (Can You Hear The Suicide Bomber Singing?) When did you write that? I vaguely remember having seen that before, is that possible? Great singing! Do you want this posted on Jewel Trance? Do you have an image or photo to go with it? It is definitely the Gene Berson Voice singing in the key of ‘Infinite Humor in Truth and Vice-Versa’ - sharp! Very funny! Very true. Great riff!
:)
1/4/09 12:24 PM Bersone
Thanks for the reaction; I wrote that last August, inspired by reading Miller's Hummingbird book; I felt at the time that I was tuning my chops and that there was a lot more to come. But we went to Canada for two weeks and that interrupted the flow so I never quite got back into it. I feel I'm still on that wavelength, however, if I get the time and whatever it takes. It's like a current, I feel. I got into rereading Henry's Rimbaud book, which I brought back with me yesterday, and feel that that's a lead back into whatever state the suicide thing came out of. Certainly with the events in the Gaza strip I'm feeling it all, but I'm getting ready to go to work tomorrow. I hope not to drink and have energy to write in the evening. I'm also interested in these sound things I did with Ruby on her bowls, her brother playing bass and me improvising out of the dictionary like I do. I recorded them on the iPod and would like to send one to you but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. One little song goes:
I work weekends, just call
finding a loan for every home is my yearning I'm talking top banana I work weekends, just call I'm clean and bright inside and out I work weekends, just call to find a home at the end of the road with privacy, just call I work weekends, just call I'm topless neat and meticulous clean and bright inside and out why rent etc
That's not giving it justice but I can't remember it off the top of my head. Suffice it to say that it goes off and the three sounds, bowls, bass and voice have moments where they come together. It then goes into a little thing about Saddle-sore Sam and Sally Salmon in her saloon, following a sort of lope-along rhythm set by the bass. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time. The path is infinite once I get off the page. Check out that Oliver Sachs interview on www.ttbook.org where he talks about the healing power of music; quite amazing, really. Music can make people with Parkinson's be able to dance and move without problems; he theorizes that music is in several parts of the brain, some of those parts older, phylogenetically speaking, and are undamaged by strokes or disease, more primitive, you might say. I remember reading about a guy being operated on for a brain tumor in the thirties, in the phylogenetically ancient part of the mid-brain, and he had to be conscious for the operation. When the surgeon touched the tumor the guy would fly out with a spurt of language, full of rhyme and in all three languages he knew, German, Greek and Latin, telling him to get out of his head.
As far as posting that suicide thing, go ahead, post it wherever you want; I sent it to Velene last summer but she never commented on it; I asked Erika about that, and she said it wasn't Velene's thing, and Erika also questioned whether or not it should be published because people were so literal minded and it might be dangerous in some way. I wouldn't want any repercussions to you but as for myself whoever would object to it can shove their reactions up their ass.
The idea of an image with it is intriguing. I hadn't thought about that. Maybe Larry would have an idea. there's plenty of images there to work with, that's for sure.
1/4/09 3:26 PM Buffalo
I'll put the Suicide riff up on Buffalo and on Jewel Trance. It's a delightful example of your voice. Let me know if you have an image or image idea. Philippine Snakes is a wonderful poem. I re-discovered it on Velene's site along with Zenny's. Such good stuff, and how nice it is to see it gathered together. The type is small to preserve the original line breaks.
I really want to hear the piece you guys did up in Eureka with Ruby and her brother. You need to get it into a common format, like wav, and then use one of those free sites where you can send large files that won't go through the email. People have sent me files that way, but I have never sent one and don't have a url for you. Maybe Larry does, or figure out how to google it. Your selection looks like Advanced Rap.
:)
1/5/09 1:15 PM Buffalo
Funny you should mention Oliver Sacks - I'm reading his book: MUSICOPHILIA Tales of Music and the Brain. I couldn't locate the interview at that site. I guess it's no longer there.
Buff
1/6/09 12:39 PM Buffalo
It would be good if we had your bio up on the Jewel Trance site. I have started one, which I have attached. None of this has to be included. I’m just encouraging you to give me what you would like to post. However, I do like this image, and the “look”. Fill in the data and anything you would like for it to say. No rush, of course.
1/7/09 6:39 AM Bersone
I sent you some photos of myself. One on the deck with Ruby enjoying a story with her, Larry and Flo; one of myself, the old romantic, after four or five marriages, contemplating the promise of Niagara Falls, or Viagra Falls as they are wont to call it now; one of me chopping wood, letting the chips fall where they may, and one of myself in a canoe on Lake Huron in my middle sixties with some strength still in my arms. The picture you selected that Wilfredo took of me, while I was on a wild reading tour throughout the city, is a fine one, and should be included, although I send these others to sprinkle in or leave out as you wish. It occurs to me that I should send you my Mexico fuck poem, circa 1968, which shows perhaps some William Burroughs influence. Some of the poems I send may not be totally accepted, such as the Etheric Knees, but I send them on because sometimes seeing them posted helps me see them outside myself in order to weigh their worth. Your reactions are extremely helpful. I'd like to include some small recent, objectivist type poems, such as Evening fog's ycummin in, about the bum retrieving a cigarette from the trash barrel, and the poem Certain Imperatives about sitting on the back porch watching a spider.
As for the bio, well, what you have's ok so far; might as well post it. It's such a major project, and of course the poems will tell the same story more or less, and a rather exciting idea, to write an autobio, but I don't have time to do it now and so what if we let what you have stand. I like that whole essay I gave you, because it connects my emotional life as I experienced it as I grew up to the growing awareness of what a wholesale desecration of the environment was going on all around me, a realization that leads, once I understood that every sacred place I loved as a child, which was every wild place, was under attack, to the paranoia I ultimately express in the white truck, i.e., if they're destroying everything I love they've probably got me in their sights too. The essay may lack my usual pop, language-wise, having been written in a rather subdued mood, for various reasons.
1/7/09 10:15 AM Buffalo
Good photos. I'll weave them in. I'm going to put the bio up as it is. Instead of posting it at the top, I will put a photo of you and a link to the post, but put bio at the end. Yes, the "Evening fog's ycummin in" is a good one. I have a printed copy but please send me a text version so I don't have to re-type it. The Mexico fuck poem is essential. In fact, most of the poems from those years have a special quality to them, an energy that is special. It was an era, it was a life, a time, and it has its own voice. There are, however, some poems in the HONEYDEW book from those years that don't reach me. "Wind Song" is one of them - seems to be about getting a BJ - which is fine in itself, but it seems to be behind a curtain - shielded behind a glaze of what might be "feminism". Erika may have had something to do with that. But everything is real. Of course, I'll put all of those up if you choose. It's interesting looking at your work in this way - collected in a group. You can almost see the seams between our various lives. You are a poet! And a damn good one!
:)
1/7/09 6:34 PM Bersone
I'll have to find the Mexico poem and retype it in, maybe this week maybe this weekend. I'm going to try to find a photo of a pig race Larry took at the Grass Valley fair and send it to you. I wrote this poem to go with that picture. The wind song I always felt was a true poem and, although I haven't read it in a long time, think two things: one, that period was my feminist period and what you say is probably true. also it is too tight, perhaps, and maybe the mythological status feels contrived. I'm thinking of putting it up, though, because it's part of what I went through, craft wise, to get my voice out. Out loud. That's what it's all about. How we sound. And, if you look at the pictures I showed you of myself as a soldier, you can understand the long journey to reach the vocal chords. The intestinal groans and squawks of Charlie Parker and Coltrane show that any part of the body can sing, but it takes a lot of work to reveal the music. Maybe a saxophone can sound like the adrenal gland crushed by interrogation under a bright light, and maybe we're part of an effort to let the whole man speak, but Wind Song might be wrapped up in an Ace bandage I thought was form. Still, I feel it was genuine. The high school dropout poem similar tightness, or effort to master conventional forms. In that one I tried to catch the sound of the street car wheels within the words. there's a story behind that poem, about the writing of it.
1/8/09 8:04 AM Buffalo
When are you going to tell the story behind the writing of the high school dropout poem?
Here’s my hit on Shards of Song: following the analogy of the multi-course meal, I don’t think we are at the desert course yet, or the cheese and coffee course. Another take is that perhaps the poem is just fine, but the subject is so large that it cannot be sung in one poem. The societal tamping down of free spirits, imagination, freedom of song, is one of the deepest bruises we all must nurture, heal, accommodate. And the human response to that tyranny is the source for Man’s greatest songs. I’d like to see you take a freer voice of images and just sing it through, balls out, unrestricted. Its energy is the guide that will lead the way. See what happens.
1/8/09 7:15 PM Bersone
I think your take on Shards is correct; it's not bad, and maybe just came up as a reminder to a consistent theme living inside me and others. Your reaction raises a profound question: can you pull off a reasonably decent artifact, with a true theme, but fail because it hasn't flown completely on your own voice. Henry realized, at one point, that his fate depended on what happened to "Tropic of Cancer". All stops had been pulled out. He had laid it out, and not been afraid to show the bones on the way. Lawrence had this integrity, also. At any point, he may have veered off and written quite saleable books, but he drove deeper, and earned the enduring appreciation of at least four generations of future lovers. This type of advice, or reaction, was a constant in my living with Erika, who rarely accepted anything but the whole hog. Unfortunately, we lacked proper career planning. Which, of course, we had chosen to fly in the face of. We'll leave the shards until I can open it up and give it more of the real thing.
I haven't found a copy of Mexico Letter yet, and may not have it with me. I will enclose a poem I published with Velene, which I like and feel is the real deal. Also, I'll copy out a first version, or almost a first version of the gold fish thing so you can see a little how my process works. Also, maybe something I wrote about the time I wrote the poem to my daughter, the torn roots poem.
1/9/09 6:50 AM Bersone
This is the version I meant to send you (Gold Fish). I'm beginning to wonder if I should back away from this approach because I'm getting confused. But I need this back and forth shit, I just don't want to take advantage of you and your time. Certain poems I feel are done and then there are all these others, in various versions. I long really to do something new, some different kind of writing, but I don't have the time. I've got to resolve this housing situation so I don't have to work so much. I was asked recently to go on a kayak trip to Vietnam, which I could have done had I not bogged myself down with these mortgages. I have to set my life strategically, on a financial level. And I'm close, except for these payments. I could have kept a journal of the kayak trip, interviewed people -- that kind of thing. I'd like to move around more, and take the pulse of various parts of the world. I turned down work this weekend and I guess I'll go back up there for a couple of days. I'll send you the Mexico letter poem from there. What a weird process. I said ok to a reading offer in Sacramento through a client of Ruby's who owns some kind of store that sells spiritual garb, with a friend of hers, Susan, who's a poet and wants to read with me. Reading will help me sort out versions, I can hear the air pockets and so on, and I want to get more into the sort of things I did with ruby and her brother. I've been re-reading robert burns, who spent the last twenty years of his life working on songs (he wrote 600 of them). His poems are jewels -- narrative, lyric, detailed, and his focus was on creating a literature in the scotch dialect, an effort that has continued through the work of Macdiarmid, a great writer of my grandfather's generation. Both men are GIANTS, which you need. You play better tennis against players better than yourself. I know how to make a reasonably decent poem, like this goldfish thing, but that isn't what we're after. We want something from the edge of ourselves. Reading Henry's book on rimbaud, it's scary what's required. But even there you can't fall into a conventional martyrdom. To make out your own path, like water trickling down a dry hillside: the course isn't visible until the water traces it, unhesitatingly, twisting, relentless, fearless, just falling, stopping at obstacles, spilling over, letting nothing stop it. But looking at the dry hillside you don't know the path. Anyway, we know all this. But these are exciting times, like during Watergate: the masks are slipping off, you can look at a banker and almost see where you could reach over and hitch it back up over the ear. the disguises and disappearing, with some surprising faces underneath. I feel an uncanny ability inside myself, as if I'm an antenna, especially if I move quickly in response to my instincts; it's a delicate state, I grant you, but I trust my perceptions in that state. I have to pull back from it in daily life -- nobody knows what to do with it. they don't know who you are. The thing is, you are nobody; you're not distracted by being somebody. But you're awake, and you don't fall for the illusions. You don't have a stake in the illusions, especially those others want you to verify to confirm their ridiculous self-importance.
1/9/09 1:17 PM Buffalo
Sunny afternoon after a chilly morning. Went to the office only once this week, but I’ll go in tomorrow. The time of day, an ice sculpture melting to the sound of its own drip. Time to think. Time to fuck around. Listen to music. No pay-back accounting system.
Got the Gold Fish. I’LL get it up this afternoon. Don’t worry about my time. You’re taking very good care of it. The job we have is always the job we give to ourselves. I think I may hang a shingle out my door: TOM RHETORIC – JACK OF ALL TRADES and change my middle name to JACK. Thus the lyric:
Tom Jack Rhetoric
Man of all trades,
Hammer, pen, or string bass,
He pays you back in spades.
Inquire within.
It’s good to be restless, in your spirit and your poetry, want to wander. It means you don’t completely accept the skin you are wearing, and are willing to stretch out a bit. The river never stops flowing. All that water is going to go somewhere! When are you doing the reading in Sacragheto? I’d really like to have a recording of that. I’m looking for material for my Somnambulist project. Does that recorder that Ruby has make wav files that can be moved to a computer? And I really do hope to hear that piece you did with her and her brother.
The more we can figure out how to thrive on our own juices the better off we are going to be. There is no such thing as “success” in the creative realm – because it never stops – you’re never “there”. It’s like breathing in and out – we don’t ask ourselves if we are good at it, we just fucking do it – in and out – in and out. We make poems, sing songs, tell stories, dance, paint because that’s what we do. Ain’t nothing else to it. In the mean time we try to figure out how to make a living and stay out of jail. Your analogy of the water trickling down the dry hillside is a good one. The force is inevitable. We don’t even need to navigate the course, just learn to float. The river will take us home! I used to say: The Future is Perfect. I’m changing that now to: The Future is Inevitable. Ever float down the Sacramento River in an inner-tube and a six pack? Easy as that! And these masks, disguises, personas: what is all that about? Who do we think we’re kidding? Where did that shit come from? “I feel an uncanny ability inside myself, as if I'm an antenna, especially if I move quickly in response to my instincts.” I heard that! That exact uncanny ability thrives in all of us and can be nurtured and developed. What are we teaching in our schools? What did we ever learn in school other than the fact that most adults are idiots? It is our responsibility, yours, mine, Steve’s, and anyone else who has come in contact with his own uncanny ability, to sit around doing nothing as best we can. In this way the very concepts of rich and poor, good and evil, etc., will be eradicated simply by virtue of being ignored. We solve everything in one step: no judgment, everyone eats.
It’s like the Kafka poem Steve sent:
You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
Why is it that even I, who know this to be true, cannot live by this seemingly simple teaching? Why is it that I feel as though I MUST be making money with every move I make? Is this just a hang-over from the last financial depression? Whatever. No whining. Buck up. The work must be done.
We must learn to do nothing, and to do it well!
Buff
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