WALKING ON THIN ICE

Detail from Self Centered by S B Smith

Hello! This is a clarification about events at the Brandt Gallery this weekend….

Tonight, Friday Nov. 9 at the Brandt Gallery:

Steven B. Smith & Mother Dwarf accompany Kathy Ireland Smith’s OFFWORLD
49 new pieces! 27 Mother Dwarf, 21 S B Smiths, 1 Ken Motz portrait of S B Smith, 23 Lady Smith pieces.

Smith & Lady will be at the Brandt Gallery tonight from 6 to 10 to welcome visitors and ArtWalk walkers.

Tomorrow, Saturday Nov. 10 at the Brandt Gallery:

Russ Vidrick hosts his monthly reading from 3 to 5. Open mic.

Brandt Gallery
1028 Kenilworth Ave.
216.621.1610
www.brandtgallery.org

Gallery Hours: Noon - 6 p.m.

foto by smith

Back in Black in White Film Noir

I once thought I was the good guy, the hero in white. But in truth few of us are heroes, and black is more wearable than white. White shows the soul’s stain.

My first six months in jail I was in the tiers.

A tier is five two man cells and a shower all enclosed in bars. Each night we’d be locked in our cell, each morning let out to wander the 10 by 70 foot communal area. Our tier had Ringo. Ringo said they couldn’t get him for murder because the dude he beat to death was still alive when he walked away. He was big, black, brutal, and he did not like me. Not because I was white, but because I wouldn’t get out of his way when he walked. He walked all day in this continuous oval, a short detour each loop around me. He was working towards hurting me and said so. He scared the shit out of me - but I scared me more because I couldn’t give in. I’m not made that way. When I’m that afraid I seem to go out of my way to piss off what I’m afraid of even more - and what I was afraid of was a bigger, stronger, faster, meaner, proven fatal fighter. I did not feel good.

Then the odd backhand of salvation.

I smuggled one too many letters out of prison. Unfortunately this letter described a psycho sicko guard’s brutality. The warden called me down. Showed me the letter. Said smuggling is 18 months. Wondered if I had anything to say about my charges against the guard (who of course like everyone else in jail on both sides of the bars had a cliché name… he was Sarge, the 400 pound guard was Tiny, the undercover nark was Speed). I told the Warden what I’d said was true and I hadn’t even scratched the surface of his mean spiritedness or verbal and physical abuse of visiting wives, etc. He told Sarge to return me to my cell and for me to think about the 18 months, that we’d finish tomorrow. I go to my cage and worry. I worry about tomorrow. I worry about Sarge’s retaliation. I worry about 18 months. I worry about my wife who’s sleeping with an ex-con that’s not me. And I really worry about Ringo.

The next day the warden casually tells me I’m moving downstairs to the dorm where he’s making me head cook. No mention of the letter or Sarge or the 18 months. The one thing every prisoner wanted was a job that got you to the dorm with its one locked gate + radio, TV, eating what you wanted when you wanted where you wanted. And of all the jobs, the cockerel’s walk was cook. Switching from certain sorrow to unwarranted wealth in but a breath fucks with your mind, sends too many simultaneous threads in way too many directions, and yet instantly I flash in relief “release from Ringo.”

That for this tat for tit.

One of the dorm trustees ratted on Ringo, who in punishment was in a locked cell in a locked tier three floors up. We’re watching TV and in he walks - taller, stronger, larger than any of us. The rat was maybe Woody Allen’s size and build. Ringo walks up to him and says “you ratted me out.” Rat says no. Ringo repeats “you ratted me out.” (He really did rat Ringo and we all knew it + he’s the one who ratted my letter). Rat tries to explain but Ringo hits him hard, knocking him to the concrete floor, then stomps 5 times on his head with his work boot; each stomp Rat’s head bangs against the concrete and bounces up to meet the down coming boot which smacks his head even harder into the concrete as Ringo says (one word per stomp): “you. . shouldn’t. . have. . done. . that.” None of us moved or spoke the entire time. When he was done, Ringo looked at us to see if he had a problem, decided he didn’t, turned and left. Rat got up and started stemming the blood, his head swelled thrice its size.

That’s when I knew I was not the me I thought was me, the me I needed to be. It’s not my only lesson, but it is the one that worked. Yellow has nothing on me.

Had I said or done something, two things could have happened: 1) I’d be dead or broken. 2) The others would have rallied and we’d have stopped him. But had that second happy Hollywood scene happened, at some time at some place Ringo would have found me and hurt me. A lot. I know now I did the right thing, for me, but it did cost me my mirror mirror on the wall who’s the hero here of all view of myself.

Love the can do. Hate the do do.

Steven B. Smith 4.7.2003 on 33 years ago

this is included in my bad boy memoir titled “criminal” which we’re in the process of final edit. this and yesterday’s My First Armed Robbery will be the only excerpts blogged.

foto by smith

this got a great response at last nigtht’s reading.

My First Armed Robbery

None of us are bad. All of us are stupid.

In late 69, my crime partner to be fell in lust with my wife. He had just published one of my short stories and my first article in two of his magazines, and now wished to pubicize my wife. I and my depression were thinking of letting him. So was she and hers. I had recently been fired, was deeply in debt, indifferent, artistically frustrated, immature, and unwillingly married. I had been ignoring her because I did not want her.

One night during our cheap wine patrols, my partner to be started flirting with my future ex-wife in front of me, and she responded. I being a hippie bohemian believed in freedom of choice, but got jealous anyway and tried to compete. She bloomed beneath our dueling affections and rose in wine and smoke and slowly shed her clothes down to bra and panties. We three went to bed when the wine ran out, and they touched too much while I faked sleep.

The next night at Burger King, he talked to me of robbery while I thought of breaking his fingers so he couldn’t touch her again. His ad agency was failing, and he was about to lose his type setting machines which were going to print my future genius. I gave him theoretical advice. Simple problem solving. You can’t do this, you might try that. Burger Kings are bad, big box office movies aren’t.

Within the week he showed up with two hand guns. Big ones. For the robbery.

I had not thought our conversation serious, but went along anyway. It was something to do, and I was depressed and bored and in deep debt, reduced to writing whining Rod McKuen prosery. Since we were going to rob with guns, he figured we should fire them first. We did. Nasty gut wrenching noise. I took it back after he took out the clip, and the gun discharged, the bullet just missing my foot. Good omen.

After he left, she said he’d been here yesterday. He’d talked awhile. Took her hand and led her into the bedroom. Unbuttoned her robe and caressed her breasts. He wants more, but she doesn’t. The interest of another and their furtive touching has satisfied her as far as I know. I know she wants and loves me, that is why she tells me. I would rather be an artist.

Hippie me, I’m free of this possession package the suburbans wrap around their female property. I don’t own her. What she needs to fuel her future is her business, weighed on her karmic balance, not mine. I don’t want her, yet hate his want and her response. I know I ignore her, but she should run to more than him.

I write in my journal: “29 January, 1970 – Thursday 12:19 PM about 55 degrees heavily overcast occasional short showers. Me, I’m tired. Mainly from lack of sleep, but partially from beginning fear – fear that says we’re going to go through with it tonight. I want to, and I don’t want to.”

Since I’m a freak, I slick my long hair back, wear a white shirt with a narrow black tie and Glidden Durkee safety glasses as a disguise. As we were leaving, his wife calls. She’s crying, asking if I know where her husband is. She had been drinking and seeing the snake of truth, knowing something’s wrong, but not the gun or breasts. She talked for ninety minutes and cramped our scheduled crime spree. As I calmed her, I saw her husband’s hand on my wife’s flesh.

I chose the 7-Eleven in my boss’s neighborhood because they were all rich and bastards. We walked into the store and hesitated, not really believing we’d do it. We wandered around waiting for the customer to leave. My partner and potential wife-fucker bought a 20 cent pack of cigars, and as he paid, I tried to pull the gun out of my pocket. It got stuck on the gun sight. I finally got it out and pointed at the clerk and coolly said “Leave it open” just as he closed the cash drawer. He reopened it and handed me all the money. 64 fucking dollars.

It wasn’t enough. I didn’t know then they hid all the big bills under the drawer, but I knew there had to be more money, so I demanded his wallet. As he handed it to me I said “No, that’s yours. I can’t take this” and handed it back. Told him to lie down on the floor, and we ran out just as more customers rolled in. Scared, we cut through the alley and up the hill. It was raining and he was in front of me as I slipped and fell face down in the mud, my gun in front of me. It went off and I missed him. So far, that made two of us I’d missed.

We bought some more cheap wine and went back and flirted with my wife.

We did it one more time. We got caught.

Steven B. Smith
written in 1989 and forgotten . . . re-found 1.15.2006

This is from myspace blogger Jennifer Hates Hubris:

First Step of Redemption
Congress has taken the firsst step, they may just be on their way to redeem themselves. Moments ago the House of Representatives passed the vote on Kucinich’s bill to impeach the Dick…Cheney. It’s official, the process will go to the Judiciary Committee.

What does this mean on a global scale? Plenty! For Congress to recognize that they suspect war criminal activities have been going on within the executive branch, is HUGE. Watch as the whole world stops breathing for a moment, and takes pause to see how this will effect our international policies - it WILL happen. If this actually comes to fruition, it could also mean a little redeption for all of us in the world’s eyes.

I’m so choked up right now, I can’t write anymore. I’m a VERY proud American today, and so should all of you that took the time to call your representatives to support this measure. Good work Patriots!

peace, love…and IMPEACHMENT!!!
mmmmm….YUMMY!!!

UPDATE:
So like Cynic said, we’ve got 48 hours worth of time to hit DC hard if we want this vote today to actually amount to something! Our leadership is subverting our will, and they need to know PLENTY about how that makes us feel.

Here are a BUNCH of contact resources:

Toll Free:
1-800-828-0498
1-800-862-5530
1-800-833-6354
These are probably bogged down, and will be more difficult to get through on so…below are the regular lines. I’m also posting FAX numbers for a very good reason - use them ALL!!! Pass this on in a hurry too. 48 hours, 48 hours, 48 hours….and then, I’m hoping to see some serious shit-eating grins by the end of this week!

DC Switchboard (202) 224-3121
Just ask for whomever it is you want to talk to.

I believe this are Pelosi in DC direct (as well as C-SPAN’s below):
(202) 225-0100
Her fax: (202) 225-4188
Her email address:
AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

C-SPAN lists these numbers for her in DC:
Phone: (202) 225-4965
Fax: (202) 225-8259

Her office in San Francisco:
(415) 556-4862
Fax: (415) 861-1670

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., immediately moved to table it after Kucinich introduced it. So I think he needs a little hammering too, so give him a ring-a-ding-DING:
(202) 225-3130 or (202) 225-4131
Fax - (202) 225-4300
His email:
http://hoyer.house.gov/contact/email.asp
District office contact info:
Voice: 301-843-1577
FAX: 301-843-1331

Behind Blue Eyes posted this petition today for you to sign too:
http://www.pelosiwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=195
Thanks Lady!

I suggest telling whomever answers that we can’t afford to shelve the motion because of Dick’s increasing aggressive posturing towards Iran. If you really want a comprehensive understanding of the bill, you can have at it here:
http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm

I also highly recommend we call the reps that voted not to table it today and thank them for representing us well. That may be the very encouragement they need to keep it up, and they may be the ones that prevent it from being shelved. However, it wasn’t the Dems that did it…

Here is the roll call that passed NOT to table:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1037.xml
It was the Republicans that ended up passing this vote…we gotta LOT of calls to make, emails and faxes to send people.

Find your rep here:
http://capwiz.com/c-span/directory/congdir.tt
or here:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

TOMORROW:
Conyers, Chairman of the Judicial Committee will de making a decision on whther or not to move forward on the investigation. Contact him ASAP to let him know he MUST:
http://www.judiciary.house.gov/Contact.aspx
phone: 202-225-3951

48 HOURS TO GET IT DONE!!!
PASS IT ON NOW

Krakow, Poland (photo by Smith)

Having grown up in a relatively free albeit sheltered society, my impulse was to think that fascism could never happen here.

But fascism is more common than not, and the US sponsors it in all these other countries. Why is it so hard to believe they’d dare to do it to our own country as well?

It’s sobering to witness the systematic dismantling of our rights. Goodbye, habeas corpus! Goodbye, freedom of speech!

The latest scary thing I read was that in February 2008 the gov will require US citizens to “apply” before they are allowed any foreign travel. I don’t know if this is a rumor, or true, but it is from this article by Naomi Wolf: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/05/5018/

It’s also disconcerting hearing some of the remarks of people in public. A vendor at the West Side Market (a huge traditional food marketplace) appealed to our “patriotic” fears in trying to get us to shop his stall. He said the other row was owned by foreigners. I understand protectionist sentiment, but it feels icky in this context. And another vendor asked us how our travels went, then asked if we had trouble getting through passport control. She then said, “I wish they’d only allow Christians LIKE US into this country.” Wow. Why would she assume that Smith and I are Xtians?

collage by smith

we met our first unmet MySpace blogger friends last night - Jesus Crisis and Mrs. Jesus Crisis took us out to dinner. (why are people taking us out to dinner? this is the fourth time past few weeks.)

reality was so flummoxed by my stepping out of my hermit character - i initiated social contact myself and actually invited them over - that 40 minutes before they arrived, our electricity went out. they arrived at our little love shack out back to candles and a flashlight.

enjoyed meeting the both of them. Jesus Crisis is as gentle and kind in person as he is in his comments.

so, MySpace friends will become an actual flesh and blood friends - from MySpace cyber space to my actual space space in the space of a few electrons. we live in interesting times.

3 more MySpacer bloggers i’d like to meet - Wednesday Kennedy in Australia, and two Californians - Kim Meadows and Handsome Duke Deal.

we’ve met a Cleveland artist MySpacer in real life, but we would have met her anyway because she’s one of our main poet friend’s lady love. lovers meet lovers. JC & Mz seem to be in love too. maybe that’s why the world’s still turning cuz love do make the world go round.

MySpace says there’s 160.6 million blogs on their site, 440,000 new blogs logged from midnight to noon yesterday, and 208 million folk in my network. i figure about 30 of those folk read me each day, so i’ve garnered much much much less than .00000001% of my potential audience. only room to grow - bruu ha ha haaaa… someday they’ll ALL be mine.

i took a gander at the most popular blogs of all, and see one basic element tying them together - sex and as much naked flesh as is possible to show on a no-nudity site. so i’m going to start adding nudie pictures of myself in compromising sexual positions with various small animals and assorted road kill.

as lenny bruce said, it’s all tits and ass.

USA Today

Meat bags bound by fog and fury
Fear silence
Little horrors of swarming selves
God’s flesh
But fallen water across the log

In service so sweaty warmth
Begotten in flesh and feast
Double cause
Crowing cock cracking dawn

Let doubt die
Mangled thread, legal mixture
Here be dragons
Slave state seared by vision
Decrees of silence

foto by smith

Nov 7, 7 p.m. - Cleveland - the Smiths read at Visual Voices Bookstore. 1023 Kenilworth Ave., between W. 10th and W. 11 in Tremont, Cleveland, OH 44113. For more info, call 216.961.0084 or e-mail info@visiblevoicebooks.com. THIS IS OUR LAST SCHEDULED READING IN CLEVELAND.

Nov 9 - 6 - 10 p.m. ArtWalk - Cleveland - “OFFWORLD” featuring the art of Kathy Ireland Smith, also art of Steven B. Smith and Mother Dwarf Brandt Gallery, Tremont.

Cleveland sidewalk (photo by Lady)

HEAVEN AIN’T GOTTA BE LAST

Whatcha reading?

“An article on climate change affecting billions through wars.”

We’re in a frigging disaster movie. And the price of admittance is our lives.

“Yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if there were an Afterlife? Losing my life wouldn’t seem so terrible if I could just have some continuity of consciousness afterwards, some kind of afterlife. Eternal peace.”

But who says the afterlife is peaceful? You know, you think about it. Let’s say there is an afterlife. After all, the body loses 21 grams when it dies. Some say that’s our master program. And it returns to the Great Databank in the Sky to be recycled.

OK, so now, you got two worlds, two existences. Living people on Earth, and wherever their master program goes when they die, the Spirit World. Now, there’s a problem here. People simplistically say, ‘Earth existence bad, Spirit World good.’ But we already know this isn’t true. A lot of folks insist there’re at least Three over there. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. And it doesn’t matter. There’s either this One Existence: you’re born, you eat, you die. Or there’s more than one. And if there’s more than one, there’s probably more than just one more than one. There could be a whole elevator series of Life After Existence After Life After Existence.

Who knows. You might go from Earth to Hell to Purgatory to Heaven, and who knows what after that? Heaven ain’t gotta be last.

Now, my theory is each level on the Other Side is just a wee bit nicer. Because each one’s a test. This is all if you’re Good, of course. If you’re Bad, the Other Side’s gonna be worse. If you’re Good, the Other Side’s not quite as Bad. But even not quite as Bad still got Bad. You got flesh sharks here, you probably got Spirit Sharks there. You got slimy flesh politicians here, you have bloodsuckers there. It’s just spirit wounds rather than flesh wounds, and they’re gonna hurt just as friggin bad.

So the way I figure it, if you keep being Good, and you keep dying, you’re gonna keep being born into Bad. Until finally the Bad’s all gone, and you get Good.

At this point, you’re either so weary from getting this far just surviving the tests that you don’t give a shit, or you reach Eternal Peaceful Nirvana and you’re bored out of your gourd.

“So are you saying that Badness is interesting?”

That’s an interesting question. Yes and yes and no.

I mean, great actors always like to play the bad guy in the movies, cuz the bad guy gets to chew up more scenery and have more fun. Bad guys get the best lines. Better wardrobes. They usually get the girl for most of the movie until they have to give her back.

Bad guys have more fun. Bad guy movies and bad guy books and bad guy TV shows are more popular. So yes, it’s more fun to be the bad guy.

And humanity’s fascinated with badness to begin with. They stop and look at road kill. Slow down and sniff for blood at accidents. Will click on the most horrendous misery-bringing story.

If you saw two headlines, one said, ‘Boy Does Something Good’ or ‘Man Rips Mom’s Head Off and Stuffs Her Down Toilet’ you can guess which one’s gonna get more readers. I think people secretly yearn to be wild. And getting to watch or read about bad is their only outlet. It’s catharsis.

And bad eats up time and shows you what you’re made of. Just surviving this life, I can’t believe how much work it is. And when bad hits you, like your mother taking nine months to die, bad just builds and builds and builds. And you learn in what you do, who you are.

So bad makes time pass more quickly, just surviving.

Ultimately bad detracts you from good, and good is always deeper, richer, more rewarding. Probably better looking, too. There’s a beauty to good.

Weak ending. See, even this, the good ending is weak. Bad is more interesting.

foto by smith

the flow knows

live, dead, right, wrong, now, not now, good, bad, heaven, hell, maybe, maybe not - what with Jesus Crisis’s gentle, humorous MySpace blogs on god, gods, spirit, spirits, i’ve been thinking of good and evil. of course, that’s what i tend to ponder anyway in the daze of the CheneyBush Beast, so JC’s just my latest prod.

to go back to the beginning: Lady K kissed my adam’s apple yesterday, and i had an epiphany - the apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden was Adam’s adam’s apple - i.e., voice, language, the expression of thought. original sin is thought made vocal. good and evil parse into the world via the tongue.

in the beginning was the word, and the word created sin.

i have problems with religion saying “believe in my god, or suffer damage.” a god who creates us defective - .i.e, with original sin - and then punishes us for not working right is unworthy of respect. i always think in terms of respect, never worship. an entity requiring worship is incomplete, hence by definition unworthy. any one, it, or thing demanding to be worshipped probably has an inferiority complex, or else is simply insane. if they’re as great and powerful as they say they are, why would they need my two hoots and a holler?

my experience leads me to believe in a conscious semi-uncaring universe with interactive feedback. by this i mean a universe that will listen, but is unlikely to judge our personal needs of much importance to the flow.

there’s even scientific suggestion of such cosmic consciousness - the Bell equalities for quantum mechanical measurement experiments show paired particles know instantaneously what happens to each other no matter how great their distance of separation, be they next to each other, or at opposite ends of the galaxy.
the universe recognizes neither time nor space, knows what goes on everywhere, immediately, all at once.

it behooves us to keep this in mind.

the know flows.

foto by smith