Walking on Thin Ice

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.

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.

UNINTENDEND CONSEQUENCES DOWN AMONG THE SINNERS

“I feel like I’m cheating, taking photographs. I’m just shooting what I see.”

But it’s what YOU see. It’s what YOU selected out of everything else going on at the time. It’s your eye. It’s just detail in somebody else’s existence.

You’re the editor. You’re taking one detail and saying, ‘Hey, this is worth looking at.’ It could be a photograph, it could be a painting, just about anything. But you’re the selector. Conductor.

You’re an attractive woman.

“I am? I’m gonna go take a look at myself.”

What do you see?

“I don’t know. A girl-woman.”

Well, you are a girl-woman. Don’t you see yourself that way in your mind?

“I guess so. Yeah. And you’re raising me.”

No, not raisin. You’re more in the grape area.

“Ha ha.”

Well, there’s my grape joke. Trouble is, it’s not tellable. I’ve got a chicken joke, and a knock-knock joke. I’ve gotta get a tellable grape joke…

“You have many.”

…of my own. I got three grape jokes.

“Uh huh?”

What’s purple and lies on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?

“Hm?”

Moby Grape.

What’s purple and lies in the North Atlantic Ocean?

“Huh?”

Grape Britain.

“That’s terrible.”

And what’s purple, and punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison?

“Hm?”

Statutory Grape.

“That one’s OK.”

I think my favorite bad taste joke of all time is the little boy comes walking into the kitchen, licking his fingers, saying, ‘Mom, remember that soft spot in Baby’s head?’

“Ugh.”

That goes along with my own line. Children belong — in cages, or soup cans.

“That’s terrible.”

It’s absurd.

“Anyways, I think we ought to talk more about ME, the girl-woman.”

Does that mean you’re going to grow up to be a woman-woman? If you had a sex change, you’d grow up to be a man-woman.

“What is a girl-woman?”

Don’t ask me. I don’t understand women of any age or size or genus.

My ten pounds I’ve gained have gone straight to my face. Gonna have to grow my hair long and straight down, so just this thin slice of face remains.

“Is that why they grow long hair? To look thinner?”

That, and to hide. And like Veronica Lake, to look mysterious. She hid one eye behind her falling hair, and seduced you with the other.

“I don’t know. My world is so far removed from that. World no longer seems mysterious.”

It *mystifies* me.

“I have found magic in revelation. Mystery uncovered. Horror revealed, tho, too.”

Your basic magical mystery tour.

“Well, no. Cuz there’s no more mystery.”

Ah… You’re wrong. How do you think we got together?

“I followed your clues.”

They weren’t left by me.

“Oh hoh yes they were. I saw your GO AWAY mat. I thought, ‘CHALLENGE!’ You left clues. Artwork. Poetry.”

I left a lot of clues along the wayside, then.

“That’s what art is. CLUE. It’s the CLUE to YOU.”

I dare say folk put my stuff together, they’re gonna have a hard time placing me.

“You’re a scientific primitive.”

Darned right.

Ah, your fingers are cool, but not cold.

“That’s because I warm them up in my crotch.”

Aha. Finger warmers.

When anthropologists uncovered more about Neanderthals, they were amazed to find burial rituals. Civilization. In civilizations, people have concern for others.

In the most civil civilizations, all people have an opportunity to survive and thrive. Civilization provides a means for individuals to become socially and financially mobile and it protects and honors its citizens.

I believe in social security, free education, free health care, full representation, small business rights, anti-trust laws, lawyers, free speech, freedom of religion, and the constitution.

I am far far left of the mainstream. But twenty years ago I’d probably be considered dead center. I believe in a mixed economy and social freedom. I believe in a government that serves and represents its citizens. Democracy.

In this era, most do not keep abreast of news and nuance, and intelligent discussion is not valued. I wish we didn’t keep falling for these people who claim to be for our interests while stabbing us in the back in smoky back rooms.

I think a lot of the liberal left falls victim to “strategic thinking” syndrome. They want all or nothing support for their party without any critique.

The problem with strategic thinking syndrome is that it doesn’t really advance one’s causes. If politicians can’t be held accountable, then we are not being represented, and we’ve not really achieved anything.

Strategic thinking syndrome is a dead end. It allows Democrats to fall to the easiest political path while taking psychic advantage of the left. The left is always told that Democrats are for its interests, but to just wait, that it’ll improve step by step. Well, at this rate, it’ll take a thousand years to have citizens’ interests represented. The Democrats say they have to deal with “real world” politics, meanwhile they conspire with oligarchic corporations, making the “real world” even worse.

REAL DEMONS

I would like to know why it is necessary for the see-i-a to:

- put hoods on people when they take them away
- diaper people and shackle them to the floors of planes
- keep people in solitary confinement long enough to make them crazy
- h2o-board prisoners

#3 & 4 seem like definite torture to me. #1 & 2 could be rationalized as not causing permanent damage (tho I wouldn’t be one to rationalize this).

People have died during “interrogation.” Methinks that would only happen if the interrogation crossed the line into torture.

Does power know that it is evil? What do the soldiers or agents think when they hood and shackle and diaper a person? Do they feel remorse? Do they sleep at night?

Many of these detainees are simply people who had enemies from their home countries and are pointed out because of personal vendettas. I’ve read reports that people are captured in Pakistan and put in containers and sent to secret camps for reward money from the US. Some of these prisoners die en route.

If you believe you are fighting evil and that you are good, why would you torture? Isn’t torture indicative of your own evil? How is this rationalized as a good thing? (The ‘ticking bomb’ scenario is a disingenuous explanation.)

I really want to know the inside of these guys’ minds. Do their acts of exploitation bother them? Does this even hit the radar of their consciousnesses, or are they conscious?

I don’t like to demonize, but it’s difficult for me to see the power class and its enablers (both the GOP and the DLC) as something other than demons.

It’s hard to be a person on this planet. One of the biggest problems is that the people you love are the ones who have conceptions of who you are.

One of the biggest things Smith has taught me is that I can only be me. I can try to be completely agreeable to everyone around, but it still won’t eliminate all friction.

Smith is the Anti-hero, Anti-PC. It’s odd, because normally such folk lie right rather than left.

When we shacked up, Smith told me he’s gonna say what he’s gonna say, and I might not like it. For example, he might think a girl’s purty, so he’ll say it. And if I try to control him, tell him to not say such things, he’ll start clamming up around me, and we won’t have fluid communication.

Most people filter what they say so as to not offend. But for someone who’s trying to be honest and creatively fertile with their writing, someone who’s trying to uncork expressiveness, gloves come off.

There are drawbacks to this philosophy but there’s also a remarkable freedom.

“It’s probably gonna get pretty environmentally bad. So, we probably have a couple years left on Earth. How do you want to go?”

I know how I’m gonna die. You’re gonna walk me to death. I’m just going to wear away, trying to keep up with you. I’ll keep getting smaller and smaller as I wear away. Pretty soon you’ll be looking down on me. Eventually you’ll just put wheels on the bottom of my feet and tie a string around my neck and pull me along.

“I could suck you to death.”

Maybe you are. You’re looking younger, I’m getting older, yet we’re on the same journey. You look alien, you know. You’re the bastard offspring of Spock and an errant elf.

Yes, I’d like to go painlessly, or during a climax. I’d go BOOM. Wake up on the Other Side, think I’m in the same place, feeling good.

“The tingle of the Afterlife.”

At my funeral, when you cremate me, I want a bale of marijuana burned with me. I want the smoke floated inside the church, so everybody gets stoned.

And after, at the wake, you can put little piles of my ashes on the sideboard with little straws, to snort. And before you burn me, you’re gonna remove a good section of my back skin and cure it, tan it, and you’re gonna bind my final book of poetry in it. Cripples will crawl from thousands of miles away, to kiss my poetry and be cured.

I’m under stress because of the ambiguity of my situation. Extremes of joy and dread. I don’t know exactly where next WHERE is or next WHAT. I would like a vacation away from the planet for a while. I want aliens to abduct us and transport us to a safe place.

I read a Hopi prophesy which comforted me, something about us all being in the river, and it’s a matter of keeping one’s head above water and celebrating with the others we meet on the ride. If I think about the river when I’m stressed I feel some relief.

Calmness is a way of dealing with events. Calm can be a decision rather than a symptom. I am me no matter where I be. Might as well enjoy it.

Here’s the Hopi Prophesy. I found it in the Green Panda Press 2007 Anthology. (Order the anthology here: http://www.myspace.com/verysharp.) The anthology also has some photos by me, and many many very good poems and stories and art. It’s a pleasant way to spend an evening, smoking and reading and thinking.

HOPI INDIAN PROPHESY

“You have been telling the people
that this is the Eleventh Hour.

Now you must go back and tell
the people that this is The Hour.

And there are things to be considered -

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your Truth.

Create Your community.

Be good to eachother.

And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.

It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.

They will try to hold on to the shore.

They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.

See who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.

Least of all ourselves.

For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.

Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.

All that we must do now must be in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

- The Elders

WHAT IT IS

Sometimes my container gets worried
and I have to remind it, it’s just a
container.

Hey, what would news look like
if it was news?

I get these clarities
and then I realize
they’re mirages.

Lady K