AD.

 foto by smith

i entered navy boot camp in 1963 a 6 foot 3 inch 165 pound 17 year old kid… left 3 months later weighing 185.  by 1991 i was drinking 5 gallons of cheap white wine a week, and had ballooned to 260 pounds.  i looked like a greedy chipmunk who carried all his acorns in his cheeks, my eyes hidden in fat folds of facial flesh. i stopped drinking april 21 1991, and dropped back down to 185 over the next few years.  when kathy moved in and started feeding me actual food in 2005, i went down to 170 – which is a wee bit light.  once we left the states and i started serious candy and cookies, i went to 190.  today i’m 185 – back where i was 44 years ago. of course my 1963 flesh was much more attractively dispersed.  next few months of healthy eating should see me at 175.  dark clouds carry light linings.  it’s all how you look at things. i’m grateful because this gives me a chance to live up to my better self, and i still get two cups of coffee a day.  plus i found out spain’s new marijuana laws are as liberal as holland’s, so there’s hope for life after life after all.

foto by smith

my weight loss is nothing compared to my mother’s – or kathy’s.  mother dwarf went from 320 to 210 in two years of dieting, then dropped to 165 in 9 months of hell bouncing between emergency rooms and rehabilitation homes before she died. kathy cut her weight in half from sheer will, running, and dieting. i’m in awe of both of them. kathy’s writing a book about her weight loss – working title is Fat Girl.

we’re headed to a french village not far from beziers.  got this note from cleveland poet dan smith: “hi – i looked up Beziers & find that you will be watched by the river Orb & it is in Languedoc which i believe was home to the Black Madonna & the Knights Templar & things along the lines of the Da Vinci Code. it was home to the Cathars who were virtually exterminated along with many true Catholics.  ” kill them all , let God sort them out .”  also known for great wine since Roman times.  best regards, dan smith”

   The Tesseract

   Larger within than without
   We test our act
   As tesseracts
   Tightrope walk
   The lesser tracks
   Proselytize
   And pressure facts
   Lick our lies
   As preachers shout
   And panthers stalk
   The lesser that
   In sum of arts
   Explode in parts
   Much greater than the count

a tesseract is a vessel larger on the inside than it is on the outside, so that makes us all tesseracts.

now something much smaller within than without – folk keep trying to tell me how great paul mccartney is.  gag me with a spittoon.  the two most obnoxious soporific elevator muzak songs ever written are mccartney’s “yesterday” and “michelle.” i like what john lennon said to mccartney on lennon’s first solo album (lyrics appear to be in shakespearian iambic pentameter – who’da thunk it?):

Those freaks was right when they said you was dead, the one mistake you made was in your head… You live with straights who tell you you was king, jump when your momma tell you anything… A pretty face may last a year or two but pretty soon they’ll see what you can do… The sound you make is muzak to my ears… How do you sleep? How do you sleep at night?” – excerpted lyrics by john lennon

for mind and talent, the 3 singer/songwriters i admire most are bob dylan, john lennon, leonard cohen. for pure singing talent alone, elvis presley. for jazz genius, miles davis and charles mingus. country music would be willie nelson and hank williams. the two bands i enjoy most are the rolling stones and meat beat manifesto. if this were one of those phony games where i could name one name only, it’d be bob dylan. my favorite person and woman is my wife kathy. and for best combination of artist / poet / writer / publisher / life, i pick me.

foto by smith

ate a can of sardines this morning  – forgot about the salt in the brine and got the metallic taste in my mouth with the high blood pressure singing in my head.  had our hosts over for lunch today.  ate forbidden foods with a third cup of coffee and some of the excellent chocolates they brought – and again the metallic tongue taste and high blood pressure head song.  guess this straight and narrow path i’m to walk really means straight and narrow.  i’ve never been straight, or narrow. i am my own lab rat. oog goog a choob.

got so hungry for red meat i bought some girl scout cookies – but there was no girl scout meat in any of them.  it’s a scam – girl scout cookies are not made from girl scouts. what a rotten, lying world this is.

and speaking of rotten lying:
The Senate’s foreign relations committee politely rebuked Bush’s plans to send more troops to Iraq. A similar non-binding resolution from the full Democratic-controlled Congress is expected next week. But real power behind Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, immediately sneered back, “it won’t stop us.” His contemptuous retort illustrates the neo-totalitarian impulses that continue to grip the Republican party’s far right. Cheney and a cabal of pro-war neoconservatives are the prime exponents of imperial presidency. They dismiss Congress and the courts as “little jabber houses.” – January 28, 2007 by the Toronto Sun

 cnn foto manipulated by smith

cnn foto manipulated by smith

cnn foto manipulated by smith

cnn foto manipulated by smith

collag / foto by smith

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