November 2007
9 Dec. 1968
From Smith’s journals…
9 Dec. 1968
So few pages written, so much has happened. I got good and stoned last night… I had to. I proposed marriage to Robin yesterday… she had me backed into a corner… she broke down in tears and told me she was tired of having only a maybe in the future, that she was tired of sleeping with me, and was tired of our relationship being all me – I sat in my bedroom and thot a lot… decided I did love her as much as I’m capable, that I really couldn’t be happy with any other girl, that I didn’t want to spend my whole life alone, that it would help me financially, and that generally it was the best thing all around – still, it really got to me, the thought of being married, being tied down, of conforming, of maybe having children, being responsible for someone else, buying furniture, clothes, appliances, good god!
What about if I want to trip or smoke a little? What about my parents… I don’t feel that mom really likes Robin… what about not having a ring?… I can’t afford an engagement ring right now… and yet here I am, engaged – and I guess I’m basically pleased with it all. I’m counting heavily on marriage maturing Robin – I’m basically mature, but I still don’t feel adult – I’m 22 going on 23 and about to get married yet I don’t feel adultish. I have a vague fear that marriage is going to smother the part of me that makes me different, tht drives me to write. I wonder if Robin really wants me or just wants to get married because all her friends are getting or have gotten married… she’s only 20, she’ll be 21 4 days after the wedding which is planned for May 24th… and I’ll be 23 – what’s the rush… what is wrong with getting married when you’re 25? Why won’t women wait? If they’re not married by the time they’re 19, they think they’re old maids. I’m sposed to have Janice up tomorrow night – I don’t feel up to it. According to the wall in the men’s room in Sign of the Swan, Moby Dick is not a venereal disease… I’ll wager nothing nothing nothing I quit.
13th floor elevators
drawings by lady k - foto by smith
one of my art installation dreams was to do a 7 floor elevator. i’d collage the elevator, and each floor stop would be an art installation you could wander in and out at will, each floor symbolizing one of the 7 strings the cosmos uses to weave illusion at our level of reality, which i believe is Maya 101.
but i don’t need to do it. our life is endless installation elevator ride already. my days no longer flow one from the other. today ever changes. tomorrow will do as it wants. i deal moment to moment, with whatever the elevator opens in each non sequitured now. i live in heisenberg uncertainty principle.
soothe the body, free the mind. good food thanks given at lady’s parent’s today, plus cats, insane bird, dog, and relatives i know less and none.
on way back home saw exit sign for Lost Nation Road. then empty warehouse after empty business park FOR LEASE. lost nation road & for lease - perfect metaphors for us & u.s.
how does one go about getting a lost nation found?
foto by smith
lost connection blues
lost our mystery 24/7 wifi connection at the love shack out back. don’t know where it comes from. don’t know where it went. hope it just went away for thanksgiving and will be back sassy and full fed.
so blogging and answering and commenting and emailing and forth so may or may not be regular from here on in.
same will be true when we head south of the border in 20 days - blogs may or may not be blogged.
been thinking of cutting back anyway - this daily blogging is ego driven . . . no one has something important or worthy or even interesting to say every day. it’s more for us, so we have a text and image track of our travel and life adventures.
on the other gland, outside of being with lady, nothing brings me more pleasure than writing - all the time. i think, i ponder, i brood, i write - it’s what i am.
heading out to lady’s parents for thanksgiven dinner. i got rid of all my relatives - close family died off and i fled all the rest - so what do i do but marry a lady with relatives coming out the y’all-hole.
here’s my food poem for today - you’ve seen it before but it fits again.
Confessions of a Conservative
Let others munch spare frogslegs and things
Or their mother’s tidbits so fine.
Not me.
I prefer wee bumblebee wings
With a pipe of blueberry wine.
I’ve no desire for porcupine stew
Aunts coated in chocolate yea thick
Fried crocodile
Ala flayed caribou
Or some other chef’s table trick.
A simple table whenever I dine.
Not mine all these modern cuisines.
I’m quite satisfied with blueberry wine
And old fashioned bumblebee wings.
conformation clues
foto by smith
i’m always anxious to get away from groups of people. for years i thought this was due to my perhaps being an empath - i pick up people’s underlying non-vocalized moods (no thoughts, just mood).
but now i see it may be just that i’m too happy being my own self my own way. it appears when in groups of people, we synchronize our language patterns, brain flow, breathing and pulse rates to those we interact with. in fact, we even lie to ourselves and others about what we actually see in order to attain safe group status (this information comes via researcher Elizabeth Loftus and others - google if curious).
this appears to be the same process which causes women in close proximity to synchronize their menstrual cycles to the strongest woman’s period.
this process of conforming begins immediately with new born babies mimicking sounds and expressions of the parents - and on some basic levels never ceases.
this helps explains why i was such a maverick - my parents were free thinkers who for the most part lived on farms the first 14 years of my life. so in my social isolation, i had few humans to redirect my brain flow when i was vulnerable. my social input came instead from my early endless omnivorous voracious reading. i learned to do right from fiction and fairy tales. and later on, black&white film noir movies (where even bad guys tried to be good).
i ain’t good, but i do try. but what has trying to be good gotten me?
that’s easy - it’s gotten me a lot of good stories about not being good, and the consequences. got me lady k’s love. and it’s kept me alive, because lady’s the one who caught my throat cancer and helped me get my voice back.
anyway, back on point - been a lot of groups of people once or thrice a day for most days past 7 weeks, and i’m dazed. too much redirected brain flow pulse breathing. a lot of smith oozing out without down time to rebuild some smith in between. toss in the cold weather, and i’m starting to think about counting the days left to leaving for mexico. just did. 21. 22 days from now we will be in sun and solitude and isolation and we can begin finishing our book.
even so, socializing does have its perks. had a tasty dinner of salmon, rice pilaf, and an orange/grapefruit sauce with good conversation last night at poet/buddhist/republican/friend steve goldberg’s place. (see, we do have token republican friends). steve has my small bouncing buddha sculpture (below).
LIVIN LIVES ON OLD LIES
I says’m as I sees’m.
Seize not what sold to sum.
Hadn’t done, wouldn’t be.
Do what told be gone.
- Smith & Lady collab 7.30.07
foto by smith
SACRIFICIAL SON, LAWYER, BELIEVER, FOLLOWER, SHIT HEAD
Photo by Lady
You endure and you endure and then you die. And then after you die, you either have an answer, or you don’t.
All my life I’ve tried to work things out, study the clues. Learn shit. Pay attention. Think. Analyze. Still ain’t got no answers. And I ain’t gonna get any answers. So what the pluck’s it all about?
If we’re supposed to be learning something, nobody seems to be giving us much information.
If we’re supposed to be DOING something, nobody’s giving us many clues.
Can’t just BE, because they took that away from us with advertising. We don’t even know what be IS anymore. So you gotta select one of those roles they offer you.
“Central casting?”
More or less. Good Mom. Good Provider, Good Rat, Good God. Although in this case, Good God would be Good Got, because it’s all about getting and got. That’s our gods, Getting and Got. I worship the Big ‘G.’
It’s kinda funny, the few folk on this planet know how to live are tribal islanders or northern eskimo tribes, aborigine dream timers. The only folk who have a sense of how to live, we’re killing off. We’re drowning the islanders, destroying the fertility rates of the eskimos, and just beating the aborigines to death.
So all we got left to guide us along the path of life are CEOs, politicians, television evangelists, and PR guys. Those are our gurus. I just lucked out. None of them roles they offered me ever came close to fitting.
“What roles did they offer you?”
Sacrificial son, lawyer, believer, follower, shit head.
“Shit head?”
That’s what most roles they offer you are: shit head. Be a shit head. Get ahead.
Candy at the Lake
Photos by Lady
What?
Why?
Who?
Who?
Where?
When?
stations of the lost
foto by smith
we live on a ridge. got trains in front of us down in the industrial steelyard flats. got trains behind us down on Train Avenue. i hear their constant cries of “mooving onnn, mooving onnn.” what a sad happy moan they make.
~ ~ ~
always wanted to publish this piece, or read it aloud to an audience. never seemed to find just the right time, courage, or place. so i’ll fit it here.
Stations of the Lost - for Lenny Bruce
Labels and Generalities, behold the number of the yeast
We will all be marked swollen in the mourning
And if not promptly sold be purgatorized
Put upon day old discount shelves
In cheap stores in Republican counties in bird wormlessness.
Blame it on the brain blood barrier.
In seeking purer stones to throw I find restricting shadows
Sing Hallelujah Praise the Corpse and pass the Emasculation
All hail the Old and New Testicle, the Genitals and the Juice
(the genitals believe both the Old & New Testicle
the juice only the lonely orbitsong)
I believe in bleeding, in the ritual letting of blood
Along this anemic search of truth
For there’s more to life than foreplay & Leave It To Beaver vaginas
(praisegod and christian compassion)
If there is to be a 2nd coming Christ will have to be female
Cuz men don’t have multiple orgasms
For sex is the number of man, semen the number of God
This new drink the Miracle mixes water into wine
Cheap Republican restaurants serve it on some days
(and all day$ are $um day$ to Republican$)
Even God was a swinger - sez so in the Old Testicle:
male and female made He them both
Homosensuals have dishwater glands
No liquid women for me
Payback’s a bitch. I know. I was married to her
She had a case of syphilis and was selling it by the quart
She had big knick knacks and two nicknames
Sometimes I called her Mystery Meat
Sometimes Miss Perpetual Period
Since I met this Gypsick lady
I wake to blood on the floor, bruises on my body
I could tell when she was pissed by her face
It’d be all wet and yellow
The woman was such a neatness freak
She served sanitary napkins with every meal
I’m impervious to plain
So I’m becoming mannequin depressive
Go out at night
Look up mannequin dresses thru dressing room windows
Down gaping blousefirm fiberglass form
Only female mannequins though
I’m not weird or anything like that
No sick puppy for me
Though I do remember fondly flocking an amoebae
While lost in amoebae lust
They kept bisecting
(were they bisectuals?)
And I used to go out after a rain to pick up earthworms
Take em home
Cut em in half
Watch em regenerate
(Aunt Em Aunt Em I’m home at last)
After awhile would have enough worm parts for an orgy
Though with worms I never knew which end I was entering
(going out the enter only, going in the only out)
Dead chickens and Vaseline are my favorites though
Cuz Vaseline leaves no fingerprints when licked
I’m a vegetarian but I’ll eat meat if it’s still warm and female
For I do love naked ladies in no particular odor
My ménage à trios has got to be me,
Tinkerbelle, and the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
Tinkerbelle was my first wet dream
Still my best dream
Shiny tiny green sperm ever where
Her little orgasmic pants send green slivers up my shallows
Nipple nibble lime
She lies in wait with baited breast
To get you coming and groaning
I as artist am early warning system
Ever see any grandpop corn?
Movies emasculate them for their popcorn balls
Do emasculated popcorns become momcorns?
Did Christ do crossword while awaiting the resurrection?
Speaking of erection, what is the sound of one gland collapsing?
(what the right gland giveth the wrong gland taketh awry)
Quarter whore races?
Nun of the above?
The seven sins have such a high escape velocity
Spermworm cruising I set my sighs on sin
Wonder Woman’s thighs on my he hymn
I’ve no preconceived notions because I had them aborted
Like when my X and I fought over the kids
(marriage is after all post coital repression)
Neither wanted them so sold them to a baby oil factory
(boy, were they impressed!)
Babies belong - in cages or soup cans
It was a mistake to divorce my wife
I should have killed her for the insurance money
You choose your toxins and you takes your cancers
Earth’s certainly no constellation prize
Got mom insured but she won’t die
Doesn’t love me enough
Try to rent her sell her pimp her whore moans
Want a new leash on mom’s life with an option to bye?
She’s become awfully jumpy since I’ve taken to the shadows
I sew what I rip, have more torque than tread
I was born in the werewomb of a weremom
I watch from the trees
Open other in
Observe evolution, revolution & the simple salt solutions
Right pace, wrong prime
It’s not the present, it’s the process
A bird in hand highly messy
A bird’s bush highway home
Love the smell of the sexual well
Hold her odor in my hand
Why do women always powder their nose, never their yes?
(it’s not inferior, it’s female)
Injured myself last night having sex with a rusty strand of barbwire
My foreskin’s now five
(give me that low five gravy baby)
Barbie doll sex safe sans genitalia
Plant sex safe if you don’t mind photosynthesis
(myself I love chlorafilthy pictures
though you do have to wait for development)
Sheep suck (what’s their phone number?)
But for pure wool over your eyes religious sects are best
(are vestal virgins consecrated cunts?)
I’ll show you mime if you show me sure
Churches linger far too long in lies too old to hear
Pulpiteers pull your strings
Bonzo Bingo mind over splatter
Matter must end mend me and mine
Kill yourself today, get a head start on eternity
There’s no known room at the end
It’s all illusion anyway. Slight of gland
It’s greed’s game we play whorl with out in all men
Further sum wholly smoke
God fodder for oily blokes
Church of State sans grace
Loch Ness Jesus
Judas Escargot betrayer of Snail
Sleazy Weasel and the Towels of Unbelief
Catching sight of my deflection in the mere I deceive my existence
Persian Abortion: Stuff snake up snatch, turn mongoose loose
Population Control: Eat a fetus. Eat a fetus today
Marat Decartes’ I ache therefore I am to thine own self be cruel
Me? I’m a nipple adjuster
Call 666 for the number of man
Buy an honest politician
Rent a used cop
View an ethical lawyer
Touch a sincere televangelist
Red dust and meat the ban the bland bleat
Dead Elvis is bled for more than he’s spurt
Tao Jones average now zen = zen over zero
Beg and ye shall recede
No more nuclear testicles
Clap for syphilis
Water wisdom is wet work
Are fish psyquatic?
Try the Jonestown Punch, massa Guyana?
What do you call an honest cop? - mythological
What do you call a dead cop? - necessary
Bless the mitochondria and their ancient alien need
And the ubiquitous food lickers
So many stories to tell
What is one to do when that nameless something somewhere
hears the breeze bend to ruffle outstretched fingers of grass
and wants to follow?
That’s all flux. To each their groan
Throw another fetus on the fire
I’m off to search for tract home chippies and radioactive flesh
foto by smith
klowns, birds, lilies
our host jeff chiplis - foto by lady k
i saw rastaman on the street. he was my weed connection in the old days. he asked if i had smoke. told him i had some free stuff someone gave me, but i wasn’t buying anything because it doesn’t make sense putting out money for unessentials when you have no money coming in. he said if i ran out to come see him - he’d give me some to tide me over until we leave. so far 4 folk have passed me free smoke since we got back, from an evening’s worth up thru a quarter ounce. this amazes me. why are folk so nice to me?
then down at the coffee shop this morning the lady behind the counter said “hey don’t you have art hanging at the Brandt gallery?” warm words followed. there are some advantages to being home among friends and acquaintances. but more advantages to being gone to mexico - like more sun and less cold.
that’s our host above - he escaped from the Killer Klowns From Outer Space movie. foto taken by lady here in the love shack out back. that’s lady & her scamp in the foto below - taken by our host/friend jeffry chiplis as we were reading at his art closing. jeff is one of my guest artists on AgentOfChaos.com. chiplis scavanges discarded neon and rearranges their elements into wall and free-standing sculptures. i’ll be updating his site with new shows and fotos shortly.
lady & scamp - foto by jeff chiplis
rat dog baby
Lady K at her show - foto by smith
lust vs love - it ain’t the meat, it’s the emotion.
lady left with her mom last night for a two day resort re-bonding ritual sisterhoodsomething somewhere in ohio. last night was our first night apart since she moved in 25 months ago, this morning first morning alone.
past 23 months except for jogging, going to beauty shops, or visiting friends, we’ve been togther 24 / 7 / 365 - frequently in strange lands with stranger stress. ours is an odd relationship. but then, all relationships are odd.
i was going to go to 2 art openings last night but sat instead in solitude and silence and read and wrote. no sense seeking people when alone’s right here. so i was my own art piece and audience - performance of one for party of none.
though today i did do social work on my own. went to 6-chili sports party at Pat’s In The Flats bar, bicycled over to Peter Ball’s to jam, and pedaled in cold wind rain to monthly round robin reading. i’m doing 2 pair socks, long john bottoms, jeans, tee-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, long-sleeved pullover, 3 sweaters, long scarf, pullover watchcap and gloves to beat bicycle cold. it was however invigorating today cycling through the cold with the rain and wind in my face. like black and white film noir.
peter’s apartment’s floor to ceiling wall to wall home recording studio stuff - electronic units stacked on electronic units with an occasional mic and a lot of keyboards in between. he creates music while i voice sing chant my poems. neither of us know what the other’s doing, 1 time through stew. today we did 4 jams. they’re strange pieces, off putting. bit tom waits, bit captain beefheart, bit eraserhead, bit dark side of ted mack’s original amateur hour. i may like them. here’s the words to one we did today, a tender love ballad written for Lady K 18 months ago:
Wife
Let me be your rat dog baby
Let me lick your underside
Lace my like to you my lady
Stick my stack in overdrive
You thing my swing in ever land
You wind my wig in counter time
You slip my slide in slither land
You bounce my bump in rhythm rhyme
No rubber bumper baby bugger
Our poems and art offspring will be
No inside box no barcode rudder
We free rove range about our be
So let me be your rat dog baby
Please let me lick your underside
I’ve laced my like to you my lady
You stick my stack in overdrive
foto by smith
gloom of doom
foto by smith
surfed some esoteric, political, state of the world websites. learned no matter how smart i am, there’s a lot of folk a lot smarter. and a ton who think a tone better. plethora of poets and artists too. the cultural waters wouldn’t be much roiled were i to be disappeared by the thought police.
what then do i have to offer?
well, there’s my life story. i’ve found few functional folk with back stories as long, convoluted, and absurdist, or a present as adventurous - so i do have entertainment value in this content starved world.
then there’s lady k’s and my adventures. we show you’re never too young to live your dreams (she was 32 when we ran off to join the circuitous), nor too old (i was 59). our relationship proves old / young, tall / short, female / male, barcode / bearcode dichotomies don’t have to be obstructions in relationships, and that 90 minute reel movie love can exist in real life.
finally, since i’m too Jung to be a Freud, these blogs could fuel a decent case study of a humble ego (small h, large E) who tends to tell the truth. for further symptoms see 2,500 pages of mainly me art & poetry at AgentOfChaos.com.
the thing i have most in common with folk i respect is humor. life on this gnostic hell of an earth has become so dark and twisted and greedy and sickly insane that without humor, we’re doomed. life on earth has always been hard and unfair - now it’s just more obvious and more so. but as long as we can laugh, the bad guys don’t win. laughter is what lies between us and the doom of gloom.
laughter, and kindness.
foto by smith