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...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Archive for June, 2008
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
water table – foto by smithwaterworld part 1:
been out of water all day. can’t shower, wash dishes, clean up, flush toilet. have to go out and buy a couple extra 5 gallon bottles of drinking water for $1.40 each and dump it in the toilet, down the sink..
there are three kinds of water here.
1) sweet water for drinking (has to be purchased every 2-3 days).
2) dirty water used for showering, cleaning floors, washing dishes, washing clothes – this water will make you super sick if you swallow it. it can also cause infections if you get it in skin cuts or sores.
3) black water – water with the human waste not yet removed. i believe once black water is cleaned up, it becomes dirty water. i don’t know how the water gets drinkable, don’t want to know either
we couldn’t drink the tap water in poland, croatia, morocco, or mexico.
water is the world’s weakness.
waterworld part 2:
ran out of water at 6 this morning. got it back at noon. ran out of water again at 6 pm. got it back at 7. out of water again at 10 pm. no water within the apartment, so that means the apartment before us has a leak, or else there’s a leak twixt it and us. the solution is outside our apartment, outside my hands, and outside my language. but the problem is here.
is another life lesson – i now know to do the dishes right now IF we have water, to take a shower immediately once we have water. i’ve solved no water to flush because there’s a faucet down in the courtyard i can use to fill a small bucket with water to dump down the toilet. and i’ve got bowls and pans filled with water for the next run out.
life is interesting in a third world country.
per wikipedia: Third World was a reference to the Tiers État, the (Third Estate), the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution, opposed to the priests and nobles who composed the First Estate and the Second Estate. Like the third estate, wrote Sauvy, the Third World has nothing, and “wants to be something”, implying that the Third World is exploited (as was the third estate) and that its destiny is revolutionary.
bar code checkout machine – foto by smith |
Posted in Mexico | 1 Comment »
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
tire repair shop – foto by smithi destroyed a piece of another’s art last night. i put the large red clay head of Pacal we bought on the roof. it rained during the night and turned the clay sculpture into a heavy pile of red earth. i’m used to kiln-fired clay, not packed dirt. just call me art killer.
wow – i read two good books in a row. not easy to do when you’re buying used english paperback books in a foreign land.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (2001) is good – it’s a cult novel for the cool cats in town. good read, but won’t change your life. starts slow and builds slow but works well by the end.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) is absolutely great – (from wikipedia): a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and most life on earth. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Road is sparse, dark, realistic, simply but beautifully written, tugs at the heart and brought tears of hope to my eyes with its ending. the book will be with me a long time. it explores love, responsibility, what we are, what we could be, what we shouldn’t be, and what we may be.
Past Lies and Poverty
Old wonders shrink, grow tame in time
The new fear hangs on
In quiet desperation, quit of desire
Like the shadow of a crowded
Culture in which each
Declare their innocence
In straight unfocused silence
It is there
The smell of unwashed
Dishes smug in the stench of our
Unclean shame
Like a salesman’s underbreath
Fishy, stale
The deep teal, the tiled resonance
Of hungers on top of hungers
excited flower – foto by smith |
Posted in Art | 1 Comment »
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
sunshine & shadow – foto by smithour brains consist of a hundred billion neurons, with each nerve cell connected to ten thousand other brain cells. i’ve destroyed a lot of mine along the way, and likely lost my mind a couple times too, so i have a smaller brain left than most. large skull, small brain. i find this to be a good thing because my smaller brain leaves more head room for what thoughts i do have to grow, flow, play, say.
Dung or Diamond?
On my lack of fame and fortune
I keep baiting the stream
But nobody bites
As for peace and understanding
I chase the spirit
I follow the sprite
you know this brain stuff i talk about is all used-to-be stuff in my case because i don’t have one – aliens took my brain. they said they wanted it because it looked like new, and i wasn’t using it anyway so i gave it to them. it was quite a load off my mind. the few thoughts i do have now bounce around inside emptiness, operate on ricochet reflection recollection.
chair shadow shadow chair – foto by smith |
Posted in Humor | No Comments »
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Yuyutsu RD Sharma reads his poetry this week on vlog:
http://www.poetryvlog.com/
I’ve published a couple of these poems in my poetry zine, www.thecitypoetry.com.
YUYUTSU RD SHARMA
Recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Irish Literary Exchange and Sahitya Academy, National Academy of Letters, New Delhi, Sharma has published six poetry collections, most recently a picture book, The Way to Everest : A Photographic and Poetic Journey to the Foot of Everest with German photographer Andreas Stimm. He also translated Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh’s poetry into Nepali, and published the bilingual English/Nepali anthology, Kathmandu, 2006. Sharma has also translated and edited several anthologies of contemporary Nepali poetry.
His works have appeared in Chandrabhaga, Amsterdam Weekly, Exiled ink, Irish Pages, Omega, Howling Dog Press, Iton77, The Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asia Week.
Yuyutsu has read in London at the Poetry Cafe, the Gustav Stressmann Institute, the Guardian newsroom, the Royal Society of Dramatic Arts, the Gunter Grass House, the Sudasien Institute of Heidelberg University, Ruigoord (Amsterdam), GTZ, the Nehru Centre, the New Delhi Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Nepal Academy, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Indian International Centre in New Delhi and Villa Serbelloni, Italy.
More information can be found online at www.yuyutsu.de.
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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Picassoesque Graffiti in Oaxaca, photo by Lady K
Just found this site this morning. Corporate scientists are trying to capitalize on the huge deposits of frozen methane beneath the arctic:
http://www.unoilgas.com/methane-hydrates.htm
Meanwhile other scientists are worried that the arctic’s melting is going to release these into the atmosphere all at once in a big methane “burp” that will depopulate the planet. They say it’s melting faster than predicted, that some of the gases are being released, and it’s all much worse, much worse than we imagined and the time line to doomsday scenario is fast forwarded into the rapidly shrinking future: http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2004/Methane-Arctic-Warming16dec04.htm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547976,00.html
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/06/12/arctic-sea-ice-melting-faster-than-expected/
Corporate scientists work at cross purposes from whistleblowers and the common good. Specialization results in totally oblivious perspectives without needed ethical oversight or holistic evaluation. Humanity’s consumption and obliviousness is much like bottom trawling fishing. Politicians are moorless protectors.
I don’t know why I have faith enough to create in all this bad fate.
I feel different lately. More relaxed from Mexico and a renewed sense of purpose in writing. Every three days I destroy my mind with substances and then I let it build it back up again and sometimes I am paranoid I won’t come back, but lately I bounce back and I’m this different creature with thoughts aspiring to newsprint’s expanded consciousness wrapped around the web. I’m a bit uptight about our soon to come visit to the States.
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Posted in Being, Creative Writing, Environment, ladymemoir, Politics | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 20th, 2008
e=mc2 – collage & foto by smithCiao Chow Boogie
Ciao chow boogie
Go down wail gone
Sassafras the fancies
She’s my daddy-o mom
My moldy goldy oldie
My crazy maybe one
Raise sin to sensation
Peel feel from the ground
There’s no explanation
Just loose liquid sound
Undress in nude nation
Do the two-back get down
I’m cool cat copacetic
In absolute time
Sling now into never
In ever sly lie
Jig forever together
In metaphoric fire
3 Kurt Schwitters collages collaged into one – foto & collage by smith |
Posted in Poetry | No Comments »
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
IT TAKES SEVEN YEARS TO REACH THE FIRST STAGE OF MUTANTHOOD
You’re gonna be different when you go back to Cleveland
because you’ve put a lot of odd substances into your body
that you didn’t before
“Are you saying that I’m mutating?”
Well, the body replaces every cell every seven years.
In the last three years with me, you’ve put a lot
of new stuff in your body, so you’re 47 percent on
the way to mutanthood.
“It takes seven years to be a mutant?”
It takes seven years to reach the first Stage of mutanthood.
I’m 62 divided by 7 equals 8.86
Now, my first seven years on this Earth
was my original body,
so I am on my eighth regeneration, right now.
And, each one of those regenerations
has been odder and odder
I used to be a sea odder
I have fueled my mutanthood
with odd thoughts, film noir
pulp fiction,
titty books and religion…
You’re in a seven year apprenticeship
to weirdness.
you’re stuck. because if you leave
before the seven years, you don’t reach
mutanthood, but you can never go back
to what you were, so
you’re like this broken,
twisted thing.
You have to complete your mutant apprenticeship.
I am alpha mutant. You are grasshopper mutant.
After seven years is up, you will be
mutant mutant.
At which point, you can go off on your own
mutant weirdness,
or you can sign up for another seven year contract,
of mutant mysteries,
revealed.
“I’ll opt in early.”
Sounds good, but be forewarned
cuz mutanthood is lonely.
It’s a lonely life.
You’re constantly surrounded
by the less strange.
smith n lady
Posted in Conversations | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
street art – foto by smithsince our book is done (at least temporarily), lady was asked “what’s next?” her reply:
Got a whole bunch of projects. Next project is to revise the book based on feedback, and then find a publisher who’ll pay us.
Then gotta go through our thousand blogs to extract things for a couple books. I want to make cartoons and/or poems of our conversations – and maybe the travel vignettes can be woven together into a narrative. I also have a lot of poetry work to do – try and present my best face for a couple of serious manuscripts, one his, one mine.
Ongoing web work as well. I want to make my poetry magazine available in print at lulu.com, make t-shirts of Steve’s art, work more on his website (www.agentofchaos.com). I’ve done a lot of work on his site lately.
And a pipe dream of writing some kinda fiction novel.
street art – foto by smith |
Posted in Mexico | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
a swinging chick – foto by smith~ ~ ~
i have webbed toes. according to American Gods, web-toed folk are twins who killed their twin in womb. maybe i absorbed my twin. that would explain at least one of the extra voices inside my head.
~ ~ ~
i’m trying to get back into the flow today. even flow is my goal. i am after all the Son of Flow – mom was Florence (Flo) Smith, a.k.a. Mother Dwarf.
~ ~ ~
our 3-item store receipt reads like a line of poetry, or an on-the-road story: Xyloderm, Aspirina & Alcohol – a story of pain, pain and pleasure.
~ ~ ~
radio and just about all the boom boxes down here play overwrought melodramatic soap operatic screamed out songs a la Maria Carey. it’s like Meat Loaf had 4 million kids and they all became bad mexican music singers.
~ ~ ~
Lady looked at one of my fotos of her and said “I’m a strange looking woman.” i replied “may i say something? you are strange. very strange. a strange woman inside and out. i don’t need to go looking for strange cuz i got strange.”
~ ~ ~
she told me i smelled like i was rolled in old autumn leaves.
~ ~ ~
i’m operating behind enemy minds.
~ ~ ~
behind enemy minds – foto by smith |
Posted in Being | 1 Comment »
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