i wonder when the dog days are? last night our 2 dog friends came over - big black boy thumper and little brown girl bambi. we sat and talked and played, then kathy gave them a pan of water. they lapped and lapped with their little doggie tongues, drooling their little doggie saliva back into the pan. this morning kathy wrote a sentimental poem about them, while i tossed their dog water and put the pan on the stove to be washed. kathy makes soup for lunch - and of course she uses the unwashed unrinsed dog pan. never had dog water soup before. didn’t taste too bad, tho i do wonder how many canine genitals and anal orifices their two tongues have licked lately. bow wow wow. leftovers anyone?
at least 6 days a week, the church a 10 minute walk up the hill rings their bell 120 times at 6 a.m., noon, 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. - i figure it’s to tell you good morning, eat lunch, quit work, good night. personally, i find 120 chimes to be a wee bit excessive… must be some catholic symbolism involved because rational people don’t arbitrarily decide to bang a bell 120 times 4 times a day 6 days a week (that’s at least 2,880 chimes… i say at least cuz they also ring at various other times on weekends and religious holidays, so it’s closer to 3,333 rings per week - brings to mind t-rex’s “bang a gong” or chuck barris’ “gong show“.
kathy’s got another nice assemblage… that makes 3 good ones past two weeks - i’m starting to take fotos as she goes along cuz every time i tell her i like one, she rips a bunch of stuff off… good thing she doesn’t have kids cuz they’d be missing eyes, fingers, limbs, portions of their psyche (she’s already greatly altered this one in the foto). the word/flag foto is my alpha collage in process… it grows daily, like some state/religion fungus.
saw the new james bond movie - this is the second version of casino royale - 1st version was a 1967 comedy with woody allen, peter sellers and a host of others all playing bond. this new bond is right up there with the first 3 sean connery bonds. feels good to get rid of the gadgets and lady killing suaveness and get back to getting his hands dirty and some actual character development. i don’t know why they refer to daniel craig as the first blonde bond because roger moore - the worst bond ever in the most bland bond films ever - was blonde-ish (have all the bonds in our vhs collection and watched them in order over a three week period, so i feel qualified to judge - plus i used to be a movie reviewer for a weekly baltimore newspaper back in the early 1970s, so i’m a professional). dr no - the first bond movie - was 44 years ago - 1962. that’s got to be the record for film franchise longevity… something like 22 films (the official franchise count leaves out the last connery bond - 1983’s never say never again - cuz it was made for a different studio under a different producer to satisfy some lawsuit). the best bonds are (in descending order) sean connery, daniel craig, george lazenby, pierce brosnan, timothy dalton and roger moore.
cnn is using a spiritual pop hit from the 1950s to advertise their new tv/mobile fone download service - the song is “he’s got the whole world in his hands.” so, cnn must see themselves as god now, do they? seems to me if they’re so god-like, they could start including some actual detail in their shallow surface news coverage. i find this almost as tasteless as nike’s using john lennon’s song “revolution” to sell their shoes a few years ago. tho the most tasteless was a pre-movie ad where yoko ono played john lennon’s “imagine” over scenes of starving kids just before xmas a few years ago - then came on screne and said each time you use this credit card, they’ll give a few pennies of food to these starving kids, so the more you buy for christmas, the more they eat. i’m a yoko ono fan - love her music - but that was truly disgusting, it’s bad enough when nike and cnn co-opt the counter-culture and the spirit, but when underground heroines do the master’s bidding, it leaves an unclean film on my psyche.
i’ve also noticed cnn has their token fat woman, token old woman, and token ugly woman talking heads, and a whole bunch of older ugly men… but most everybody else is scalpel perfect and politically correctly sampled from around the world for color and nationality. i’m so glad i’m a tall white older male in this sexist, racist, bigoted world.
a scare last night. kathy’s lying on my chest listening to my heart when she says it’s irregular, skips a beat. i take my pulse… 5 beats and a pause, over and over. i joke about being in screen-saver mode to make my heart last longer, then tell her she’s found me out… i’m an alien - but it shook me. turns out i’d stopped drinking water 3 days ago and more than doubled my coffee intake. i’ve read each cup of caffeine removes one cup of water from your system. my body was not happy. drank a bunch of water and returned to my normal 60 beats per minute. it’s psychologically hard to drink water when it’s not safe to drink ground water so you have to buy bottled and carry it down the hill. so, it’s less coffee, more water. reality’s already removed marijuana from my life (i’m now past 5 weeks straight - the longest period since 1970), and now it’s cutting down my coffee intake. guess i’ve made too many jokes at the reality god’s expense, and now she’s getting back at me.
i have a croatian poem handed out at the reading last week. looking at it, i see it’s easy to rhyme in croatian because it is one of those languages where the words change endings depending on the case, gender, tense. i badly translated the poem literally word by word, wrote down all the multiple meanings… like koji = who what where that, and put = trajectory way thoroughfare path etc (according to my unreliable online dictionary) - if i didn’t find a match, i took something that looked close or else dropped the word. then i wrote a new poem from all the very loosely translated possibilities. i always say, if you can’t write, steal. somehow i turned his 15 line poem into 18 lines - but that’s not my fault… i’m a poet, not a mathematician.
Stolen Vessel
What weather gales blast the hunt for heart’s prey
As the sea bellows inside from yea to nay
From sail to fail
I shouldn’t know the sea billows
To yea if yes beyond measures dimension
To nay if ought administered yields to take us
I shouldn’t show trend or tread direction
When we ourselves calculate what hearts yearn
When we ourselves broker free hurt years
The road from now beyond anyhow in any weather
Whethers time turning period spells
Bends heart serene
I shouldn’t know within this monster buoy
That which beyond anyhow avails gain beneath skin
Wears eternal wave like blessing
I shouldn’t know living lies swift nimble spry
That which skids the sea slick floor beneath pursuit
Because relevant import barely floats to sail, navigate
(inspired by my purposely bad translation of
Jaksa Fiamengo’s poem Koji vjetar lovit)
Koji vjetar lovit
More sam. da nisam ne bih bio brod i
Ne bih znao koli vjetar valja lovit
Da u naše mjere prodre blag i snovit,
Da nam napne jedra i pušta nas vodi;
Ne bih znao pravac kojim valja plovit
Kad se izračuna sve što srcu godi
Kad se stegnu škote, kad se oslobodi
Put u svako vrijeme, vedar i plahovit.
Ne bih znao naći neman dobrog plova
Što u našu korist pod nebeskim krovom
Za dobro nas vrijeme nalik moru skova;
Nošen vječnim valom kao blagoslovom,
Ne bih znao život, žustar i silovit
Što kliza i s morem izmiče pod provom;
Jer vazno je samo plovit, plovit, plovit…
- poem by Croatian poet Jaksa Fiamengo
from his book Ljestve Jakoljeve
(which i believe translates as Jacob’s Ladder)
