WALKING ON THIN ICE

women wear falsies, while men wear false he’s.

kathy’s tag-line on her email signature: We will kill things and eat them. We will turn savage. Write our blogs in blood.

i’m doing a mug shot foto collage of Lady K, so i went thru more than 1,000 fotos i’ve taken of her these past 18 month and pulled 796 of those. today i winnowed those down to 163. i need to get down to 50 or 60.

it is exhausting going thru that many pictures of your wife - the creative decision process drains you.

plus there’s all the memories attached. in the past 18 months since we took up - she moved in… we decided to marry, sell the place and travel the world… quit our jobs to be together 24/7… her psycho ex-lover started stalking us, threatening to kidnap/kill her and kill me… discovered i had cancer… went thru removal surgery and 8 weeks cancer radiation… got married… cleaned up and sold our place… became possessionless and homeless… had 3 art shows and numerous poetry readings… put out artcrimes 21… found out my head was stuffed eyeball to brain pan with polyps… had them removed… left the u.s. and hit 6 countries so far, during which time she cut her hair from real long to page boyish mid-length to french cut punk short.

“US scientists have genetically engineered mosquitoes with eyes that glow in the dark and do not carry malaria that have a better survival rate than their wild counterparts.” - glow in the dark eye balls… i love it. gonna go mosquito hunting, collect their eyeballs and make me a teenie weeny glow in the dark bug eyeball necklace to read by. use it as my night light. can’t wait to sit out back wearing it, watching tiny flying glowing insect eyeballs flitting about me in the dark. when you squish them you’ll leave small glowing patches on your skin, or the walls. squish enough of them and you could light your room. the bugs that eat them will begin to glow as well - flies, spiders, dust mites, tom waits will all glow in the dark. it will be a pretty interesting world.

here’s proof you can go from bad-was to good-is.

these 2 fotos of me as fat smith were taken by Jim Lang in 1990 at the Writing Vision, Visual Writing art show he, i, John Byrum, John M. Bennett, and George Fitzpatrick had at the School of the Fine Arts in Willoughby, Ohio.

This was a year before i drank myself to death and had to quit drinking - i’d reached my peak weight of 260 pounds. the other foto is me today at 181 pounds - 80 pounds lighter and 17 years older.

the last 2 fotos are how my The Rise of the Novel collage looked last week, and how it looks today.

it’s never too late to try to improve.

Lewisham sidewalk, London

Last week Smith dreamt his watch hands fell off and stuck on the six. He told me the dream when he woke up.

That afternoon, we went to a store to buy locks and get keys cut. He pulled the watch out of his pocket, and we heard a clink noise. He turned the watch over in the palm of his hand. The back was missing. He looked at the front. The second hand had fallen off, was stuck at the nine.

Smith said, “I told you about this this morning. You heard it. You’re my witness.”

“I think reality is telling us something,” I said. “We’re buying locks for our bikes and for our hotel room in Morocco. We feel this need to be more secure. But as soon as we get one thing fixed, reality says, Nope. You can’t have too much of a grasp on this. And destroys your watch. I guess we’re not supposed to keep track of time.”

Last summer, I took a picture of a spatter on a sidewalk in our neighborhood in London. It looked like a tortured ghost.

A day later, Smith’s ex-girlfriend visited him in a dream. It was bad and they fought. Masumi (the girlfriend) said, “You’ll never find happiness without me. I’m the best.”

Another woman was in the dream, a sweet brown-skinned girl. Smith thinks the girl represented me. He cuddled and kissed her, but Masumi chased her away.

He came down the stairs in the morning, crying. He told me about the dream. And he was crying because his mom — Mother Dwarf — was in it as well. Her ghost manifested and then disappeared, leaving a Mother Dwarf shaped hole in the wall.

Smith found the dream so interesting that he blogged it. Later that day, Amy Sparks read his blog, and informed him about the terrible murder of Masumi. Smith thought it strange, because he never dreams about her. Their relationship was over 20 years ago. But her spirit passed through on the way out, decided to visit him.

This is some writing from a recent walk of ours:

As though reading my mind, Smith stops to touch the dirt walls which line one side of the road. “It’s soft,” he says. “Just look at that root.” He traces its path, which is open to us because of erosion in the wall.

The exposed roots make me think of mangroves.

“Follow the root down,” he says. “It goes down and into the root of another tree. That reminds me. The largest life form on this planet is one plant. All the roots are connected. People think it’s a forest, but it’s just one plant.”

“Can’t see the tree for the forest,” I say. “If you google you could use just a couple words: largest, life form, and root. We could find more information about that plant.”

There is meaning and interconnection in the universe. When we cut ourselves off from it, we can’t see it. But when we slow down and live more in harmony with nature — when we examine our dreams — we can take its pulse.

lady k set up my myspace place base for me. i’ve added 60 pics of my fotos & art, and started my blogging with one of my best poems. thanks to lady k, i’m now blogging both here and on myspace. i feel like the-artist-currently-known-as-prince releasing an album a day. i like the unedited unpremeditated collection of art and fotos - gives a decent feel for what i do. the images span 39 years - 1968-2007.

my myspace base place
my myspace blog

my plan for the first week is to blog 1 image and 1 of my best-of poems each day to build up a street cred poem base.

interesting - Steve and Ann of JOLAF.com gave me my basic AgentOfChaos layout, trained me, and turned me loose on the internet in 2002. wife Lady K designed and started our blog, trained me, and turned me loose on the blogging community in 2006… now she’s set up my basic myspace design, trained me, and turned me loose to loose more art, poetry and blog content upon the unsuspecting weary cyber world. my wife and friends have been good to me - and for me.

i’ve chosen The Trial by The Grassy Knoll to automatically play when you go to my myspace. Lady K’s chosen Yoko Ono’s Cool Chick Baby (actually The Death of Samantha) - a softer version than i’m used to.

Lady K’s herspace place base
Lady K’s herspace blog

the foto above is my myspace foto from a painting Ken Motz did of me - the foto below is lady k’s herspace foto - loveley lady, with or without dressing up, with or without make-up. she has beauty within, and without.

we’re spending the next 2.5 weeks doing as much online uploading as possible because once we’re in morocco, we lose the 24/7 wireless. stuff the cookie jar now because it’s going to be sparse later - besides, later’s for living and being, while now we’re doing.

lady k and i are living the fish flow outside the fish bowl - living our life more or less on our terms for our needs (within the basic parameters of survival).

The Delinquent magazine in England is publishing me for the 2nd time.

last year the 1st issue of The Delinquent published my true story
My First Armed Robbery (read it here on AoC)

their 2nd issue coming out soon will be publishing my true story
Back In Black In White Film Noir (read it here on AoC)

and my humorous poem
Confessions of a Conservative (read it here on AoC)

today we downloaded the 1st issue for $1.25 from lulu.com. you can get hard copies from The Delinquent.

that’s it for today’s shameless self promotion. but i gotta do it cuz letting people know i’m being published and shown and noted is the only payment i get since no one ever gives me any actual money for my creative endeavors. the artist/poet life is rich in fellowship, experience and adventure - but for most of us, there’s never any money involved outside what we constantly pay out. money flowing in is a fiction. you do get the women tho if you’re a guy, and sometimes even if you’re a gal.

answered a blog comment concerning the illusion of time and included this poem:

Ever Now

it’s never tomorrow
that’s why I’m nearly normal
nominally now

- Steve & Kathy Ireland Smith – May 11, 2006

it’s the ealy 21st century - do you know where your god is?

Steve hasn’t slept well for a couple nights. He looks a little punchy this morning.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Oh, OK, I guess. I had some bad dreams last night. No horror, but some weird examination of some aspect of something. I don’t know.”

This sounds ominous to me. Just this morning I finished a letter to a friend about dreams and portents.

“How’re you doing?” he asks. “You have a headache or anything?”

Yesterday I wrote a long letter to my best friend. I boldly proclaim at the end that I will not have any sweets or wine that day. Well, that night I ended up drinking a whole bottle, getting so drunk that the evening was terminated with my head in the toilet.

“I’m a little so-so.” I waver my hand. “My head feels kind of… crushed in.”

Steve laughs in little breathy gasps.

He’s written about my drinking on this morning’s blog. There’s a picture of a dead rabbit. The rabbit lies on its side. It looks like it’s striving for something, elbow bent and pawing the ground. Particularly poignantly, the eye is missing, leaving a big black hole.

“The picture of that rabbit is an effective illustration,” I tell him.

He says, “In the old days, the pregnancy test had something to do with a rabbit. If the rabbit died, you were pregnant. So the phrase was, the rabbit died.”

“Maybe you inseminated me last night!”

“I certainly hope not,” he retorts.

“No, maybe you inseminated me with creativity. We’ll have a baby book.”

“Oh, ok.”

got me a drunk feel real bad vomiting woman here on our 1st wedding anniversary. as much as i drank over the years, it’s so odd to be here on the sober side of this equation. her 2 glasses of wine before going out to dinner, then 3 more at dinner put her way beyond her normal parameters. then she ordered this ice cream concoction for desert. i took one bite of it and went into shock - it was mostly high-octane rum. my body and mind recoiled, could feel it moving through my head. told her how strong it was, but she smiled and said she was fine. now she’s down to the nitty gritty fine print. fortunately the restaurant was 100 paces up the hill from our front door.

folk don’t realize drinking is like everything else - you gotta get in shape to do it. i practiced nightly back in my day, built up my skills, my tolerance. now after 16 years dry, i’d make a cheap drunk - that one bite of ice cream affected me. come april 21, i begin my 17th year sober. being on this side of the equation tonight makes me glad. my heart goes out to her because i been there, done that - over and over and over again. but she’s smarter than i was - she won’t be doing this again for a good while. it’s just that tonight she looked at the age-old question from the wrong direction - if 3 glasses of alcohol make me feel this good, won’t 4 make me feel even better?

On Reading Famous Tripe

It taught me not to fame for verse
To flee the shallow for the deep
It seems the famous are the worst
To stink of callow they do creep
For William Wordsworth words worth less
The greeting card his verse should bless

- Steven B. Smith 3.19.2007

this was inspired by reading Wordsworth’s

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd -
A host of dancing daffodils:
Along the lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

- William Wordsworth, England, 1804

there’s a sweetness and a lot of truth in his poem - and the words do dance off the tongue… but it is so bloody tritely written. we visited his cottage in northern england and sat in his garden seat of inspiration. i’ve read him repeatedly since then in a desperate but futile attempt to discover why he is considered one of the greatest english poets ever. the man writes american greeting card verse very well, but as for serious poetry, he’s as good as dick cheney is honest.

here’s a foto of kathy’s penis that she mentioned in the previous blog. maybe we can incorporate it into the dick cheney dick of the year award.

“Yoo hoo… I’m waiting… I don’t hear you! I’m going to wait!”

Steve’s at the top of the stairs, listening for the washing machine.

“I’m not coming down until I’m sure,” he calls down the stairs, coyly.

“It doesn’t seem to be that much trouble to go down the stairs and check, though, does it?” I ask. “It’s just a few steps. I wonder why it seems so far away though. To me, too.”

“That’s not the point. The washing machine’s playing with me. It’s trying to trick me. Three times I’ve listened to silence and started down, and it would start up again. Last time I waited and waited and then when I got all the way down there it started up again.”

**

Steve’s standing by the window, next to the floor area I’ve protected with a garbage bag so I can do art.

I go over, looking to do something nasty. A little rubber penis sits on the garbage bag floor. We found the penis on the side of the road between Abeilhan and Servian, France. I start jumping on it.

“What is this hostility?” Steve asks.

“Don’t worry, it’s not yours. It’s my penis.”

“Freud says there’re no jokes. Ah, my little ball busting cock stomper.”

I laugh. “Ah, no. I’m a co-quette.”

Steve mock sighs and walks to his computer. He looks up the life spans of vineyards, something we’ve been curious about because of our currently living in South France.

“Aha, the average lifespan of a vine is 30 to 50 years. After that they’re replaced with vigorous, young vines.”

“Hah?” I gasp.

“What are you,” he says, coyly. “Let’s see. You’re 34? You only got a little while left.”

Steve just had his birthday. He says, “But don’t you worry. Look at me. I’m 61. I’m way too old.”

**

I look at what Steve’s doing with his laptop. “Ah, I see you have your parasite there. Does it feel good?”

“It’s keeping me warm,” he says. I sit down next to him to see what he’s working on. He’s reviewing his blog. He’s posted a new picture up of me. I’m sitting in the garden out back. I have my laptop on my lap in the picture.

“Look at my boobs there. They’re sunken.”

“Maybe I’ll start calling them your sunken treasures!”

I laugh raucously.

I pull my computer to my lap. Most days, We spend time together on the couch this way. I’ve joked that we should log on to SecondLife and explore that virtual world together. I’ve also suggested — not jokingly — that we play chess against each other on a virtual Internet chessboard, sitting next to each other with our laptops on the couch.

I read my writing from this morning over and over until I’m nauseated.

“I’m done licking myself,” I tell Steve. “I’m going to go take a bath.”

From a letter to a friend:

I love my conversations with Steve. Because I’ve been recording them lately, I notice what seems to facilitate talk.

For one thing, Steve loves being recorded. When I take my notebook out, I think it stimulates his wit.

And it seems that our most enjoyable conversations have been on walks. By getting out and about we are reminded of things. If we just sit at home we tend to read or write; we don’t talk as much. Also we can’t talk well at restaurants or cafes - too much bustle, noise from other people.

When we first started our relationship and there were still things we didn’t know about each other, we’d sit on the couch and smoke and look at his art. And Steve would tell me a story about his past. This is how the memoir project got started.

Every once and a while he has a new recollection, but I think I got most of the major stuff out.

So now our conversations seem to be a stew of talk about the environment and politics, history and what we’ve read about. We also talk a lot about the writing process, about creation. We try to figure out what we’re doing right and wrong in writing.

We talk about our goals a lot as well. Steve says he can never be satisfied, that as soon as he gets one thing he pushes himself for the next. But I’m feeling tremendously at peace. I do feel that I should be writing a lot. This free time goads me on because of the opportunity it presents.

And I do think that we are out on a financial limb. We want to figure out a way to live that makes us happy but that also allows us to have an income.

In a year Steve will be eligible for social security, and we have money for living from the sale of his condo. I’m ready to work to supplement our lives when this runs out, but Steve would like us to try to make it as writers.

I don’t see that poetry will provide an income - it’s more like breathing. But I think if we get ourselves together we might be able to produce a commercially viable prose book. We could support ourselves through writing as well as be true to ourselves.

I’m a bit of a fatalist as well, though. I think we’re starting some severe environmental and political times, and I don’t know if the human race is gonna make it. So all this planning could be moot. Still, I think that if I just discard any planning because of fear of the future, it’s like an excuse to not achieve, to not try and be the best I can be.

i killed a bug while attempting to save it. brushing my teeth, i realized one of the dark spots in the sink had legs and was moving. turned off the water and watched it struggle. should have left it to its own salvation, but i felt sorry for it and tried to get it to safety with a scrap of toilet paper. it was too small and too wet - now it’s smeared bug blob. wonder if the gods ever crush us with their good intentions.

in my dream last night, i pulled my wrist watch from my jeans pocket to check the time and saw both hands had fallen off, were lying down by the 6. my only thought in the dream was “that figures.”

dogs in croatia and the south of france get to go into most stores with their owners, but i’ve yet to see a dog buy anything. here’s the foto of the dog dropping triptych kathy mentioned in an earlier blog (with carnival confetti added).

there’s a dog two doors down that did not like us. barked each time he saw us as long as he saw us, even followed us to see us longer and bark more. i started talking soothingly to him, greeting him several times each day. he stopped barking, looked quizzically at me. still followed but with only the occasional bark. then i fed him a few bread scraps. now he wags his tail and follows in silence, but still won’t let me pet him. i’ve 3 more weeks here to win him over to petting. figure i’ve a 50-50 chance.

i wonder if one could tame dick cheney the same way… maybe toss him a few oil contract scraps and gently murmer “good bastard.” better get your rabies shots first, though, just in case he bites, or shoots you in the face.

last week we walked before sunrise 3 days in a row. trying to beat the new morning light, we left at 6:40, then 6:20, then 5:30, which finally allowed us to beat the pre-pink of dawn. something special in being away from civilization light, walking towards the roosters crowing the stars away while talking with your love.

two biggest factors here for us are sun to soak and water to drink. every day we sit on the window sill soaking in the sun, and drink 6 large glasses of water. this worries me when we get to morocco because their sun gets hotter and their water is undrinkable. in fact they tell you to keep your eyes and mouth shut while showering, don’t eat salads, boil your water and add iodine and then wash your vegetables in that - otherwise it’s liquid bowel city gritty.

we walk among vineyards of all ages - unborn, newly inseminated, young, middle-aged, old, dead and gone - even saw some brand new baby vine twigs being planted. got curious, researched life span of vineyards - grape vines are good for 30-50 years, after which they are replaced by fine young things. hmmmm, kathy’s 34 - figure she’s got maybe 16 more years on her. of course i’ll be 77 by then and won’t give a twig.

and while we’re with twig, i googled the large tree life form i mentioned in kathy’s blog - it’s the quaking aspens … they clone themselves, create entire forests, all the same tree dna, all having the same root - they’re called clonal colonies. also came across a 100 acre mushroom life form with thousand of mushroom caps all attached to the one root. some of the quaking aspen colonies are 80,000 years old - but of course we’re killing them off.

twilight zone, episode 3. told kathy this morning my dream last night where my watch hands fell off and were stuck underneath the crystal by the #6. after bicycling to pezenas, she asks me what time it is. i pull my wrist watch out of my jeans pocket just like in the dream, and the back falls off, clangs on the asphalt. i look at the time - 12:25 - and see my second hand has fallen off and is stuck under the crystal at the #9. watch still working though.

marching brass horns and fire crackers lured us outside to carnival - 3 tractors pulling trailers with costumed kids in masks through the village trailed by villagers - 1st trailer with a 15 foot wooden magpie, second tractor handing out bags of flour and eggs to throw on the marchers and watchers, third trailer with a keg of wine. kathy and i were dressed all in black of course - you should have seen the smiles of the flour throwers, children and middle aged men gleefully pelted us with flour. people doused us with wine or water from the balconies and rooftops. dancing adults pelted each other with eggs and flour and spray cans of fluorescent jism.

carnival is both farewell to flesh and the feast of fools - throwing flour is a symbol of life. it is said anyone not a fool at carnival is foolish for the rest of the year.

“Carnival can be traced back into heathenish times. It started as an event to drive out the winter and the ghosts of darkness who had begun to lose their powers as the sun started to warm up in springtime… includes processions (’parade’ would not be the right word here) where people generate lots of noise and masquerade with horrifying face masks in order to scare away the ghosts of winter and at the same time avoid their revenge.” ( - from varous internet sources )

[ those 6 fotos shot today ]

all that above was yesterday. today is march 18, 2007. kathy and i were married one year ago today by a cleveland witch. must have been a good witch, because it’s been a good marriage - no, it’s been a great marriage. i have no gift or card or poem for her for our 1st year wedding anniversary, so i’ll just give her my love and tell her our second year will be even more loving and interesting than our first. since we spent our first year going from the u.s. to england to the netherlands to poland to croatia to italy to france and in 3 weeks will be on our way to morocco, i believe she’ll believe me. no body ever told me marriage would be like this.