on the packed bus to pula, i close my eyes, ride blind behind fogged windows thru november rain grey croatian day on this earth covered rock rising from the sea, letting the rhythmic babel of unknown tongues massage my mind. we’ve come miles, and more – and more to come. winter today is grey and wet with wind.
in the coffee shop staring at the pastries, kathy wonders why she loves sweets so much when she knows they are bad for her. i tell her god made humans right after creating the bumblebee and forgot to take out the sweet receptor desires.
one of my old slogans addressed both the over-population problem and the world’s food shortage: eat a fetus, eat a fetus today. i had a t-shirt made with that in 1981… stopped wearing it because it caused too much animosity and threatened violence. started wearing my mickey mouse t-shirt instead cuz that made flux smile. learn and live. folk are amazed i’m still here after 60 years… some thot i’d drink or drug myself to death, while others were convinced someone would beat me to death. yet here i am, healthier and happier than ever. who says god doesn’t have a sense of humor.
sometimes first meetings don’t take. first time i met justine, i lasted 93 pages. it was a too ornately written, too slow, too look-how-smart-and-educated-and-multi-languaged-i-am sort of book. last week i picked it up again because it was either that or start writing myself. within pages it took off. now i’m on volume 2 of lawrence durrell’s alexandrian quartet. durrell’s clever – book 2 is the same story as book 1, only retold from new perspective. i suspect book 3 will re-tell the first 2. i know book 4 is the sequel to 1-3.
we share tasks, wife n i. she cooks, chooses the food to buy, puts up with my cantankerousness. i wash the dishes, do the laundry. i like being fed, she dislikes doing dishes. i figure it’s a fair trade.
back from biking to the beach. looking about the beach at the bits of sea worn wood, i suddenly saw an assemblage wanting to be made… first time since cleveland i’ve wanted to make art. brought a big bag of bits back. kathy’s started 5 art pieces in the 3 weeks we’ve been here. i start my 1st two today – one torn words, one worn wood… the first along the lines of the pieces i started with 41 years ago, the second unlike any i’ve done – probably title them alpha and omega.
kathy’s sentimental for family cuz today’s thanksgiving. i left home at 17 to get away from all that. the 15 years mom lived with me, we never celebrated holidays or birthdays – i’d frequently buy her a present whenever i felt like it, not when society told me too… and we’d roast a turkey 5-6 times a year cuz it’s good cheap plentiful meat. i suspect my anti-social ways are a bit hard on kathy. she likes to invite people over for dinner and conversation, whereas i’d rather put them in the freezer and eat them later. anyway, we went up the the butcher shop this morning and bought a chicken to roast… we’ll pretend it’s a mutant midget turkey.Â
we saw some warner bros cartoons dubbed in croatian – they don’t get the voices even close to right… bugs don’t sound like bugs. bugs bunny’s the cartoon character i’m the most similar to – even tho i used to kill and skin his relatives. kathy uses some american tv sitcoms with croatian subtitles to help her learn croation. there’s family matters, an amazingly bad brainless black show full of racist stereotypes with a main character called urkle… then there’s full house, a bad show filled with equally brainless white folk… and finally there’s the fresh prince of bel-air – which is actually funny in parts.
military jets are mock bombing the beach – they swoop down, there’s some white puff smoke flashes from their underbellies, and a brap-brap-brap of firecracker explosions as they swoop up and around to do it again. what a waste of blue sky and serene sea.
