...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 )
You are currently browsing the archives for the Creative Writing category.
Ponytails were killing us. My most excellent friend & I are solving the problems of the universe. The most excellent show maybe ever–”Red Dwarf…”
On Friday, the Red Dwarf ran into the Squid of Despair, a giant squid. The cast and crew discovered that everything is a giant, mass hallucination, that we’ve all been playing parts for four years in a GIANT VIRTUAL VIDEO GAME.
SO, now they find out who they REALLY are–and THAT’s the DESPAIR–the despair was that they found out who they really were…
AND, right when they were about to KILL themselves, all cast members lined up, four in a row with one bullet–the ship’s computer finally got to a high enough FREQUENCY where they could HEAR and save them.
Oy.
So.
Friends, we suggest that we buy each other’s organically grown sustainable smoothie very expensive cakes and artisanal food, get frequent behive hairdos, sans hair dye, at the beauty salons where the hairdressers are paid magnificently and enjoy their work. Exercise classes and spas. Sustainable capitalism–it’s a plan.
- -
I suggest free education for everyone, or paid education, whatever works. And a career of anyone’s choice. Some people have to go to school longer for their careers. Those people should be paid a wee bit more. OK, incentive. But not ridiculous incentive. I’m thinking: sliding scale speeding tickets, like the ones they have in Sweden. Getting rid of tax loopholes and offshore accounts. Staying local. Stopping all this weird international shipping except for cruise ships to one anothers continents. In the basements of the cruise ships, we could carry very expensive, fine cheese and the spices and coffee of the world. Gigantic, energy efficient cruise ships. Free energy? What was that thing Tesla was talking about? Hope it works. I would like to beam myself to the North and South pole if possible, and Japan. Coffee crops as well. I really like coffee from fair wage growers whose wages must grow more excellent.
Keeping the inheritance ‘stuff’ within reason, but making sure these rich people work doing art/music/artisanal food or whatever tickles their fancy and stimulates the economy in a sustainable way.
- -
Primed the pump last night and bought some local, organic food. Sharpened our old knives for only $12. Hope he charges more next time. Hope the family business has more business coming in–we are an overtly ethical business. Hope our book projects take off. I know all this will happen. I just, know… it.
Precedent kathy’s economic stimulus package – a prescription for today & possibly the future (albeit with tweaking and optimization):
1. If you happen to be near a flower shop, I hear the bees are expecting food next year and so buy a flower, think of a bee, and if you are wealthy, buy flowers for your entire house. I hear they are going to flower forever and ever.
2. I hear the bees have been heard of as ‘unhealthy’ in an outdated narrative, but I’ve recently heard an update on this information: there are some 15 or so new species of bees. I hope they are very good, sturdy, happy little pollinators and that they somehow magically know how to find their ways back to the hives. I anticipate that we shall eat fruit, good fruit, from now until the foreseeable future. I COMMAND IT SO. And the fruit will be wildly and widely available for maws of mass consumption, and will be very healthy and beneficial for the maws of mass consumption.
So, I command you to start eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day (if you have the money for it and if it is available in your region. I hear most regions do have enough food. I would like to assume so. If not, I COMMAND IT SO.)
Of the grocery stores, et cetera: I really don’t understand how a couple of red peppers can really equal the life of a chicken. How can this situation be changed so that healthy food is subsidized? GOVERNMENT: I COMMAND YOU TO START SUBSIDIZING HEALTHY FOOD FOR PEOPLE.
3. Cellphones used to have a ‘bad’ reputation. I hear that they are now in collaboration with our needs, and nature’s needs. Thank you, cellphones! We love you!
4. I hear more and more Republicans are finding that they really were right, after all, that they are decent human beings who put their mouths where their money is in terms of helping the poor with churches, in stimulating the economy ethically so that people can buy more locally-made, hand-made goods – this is my vision for the near future. This is my economic stimulus plan.
5. The rich people will dine on the most succulent, juicy, well-marbled grass-fed beef, served to them by wonderfully paid and happy craftspeople who work with food.
6. McDonald’s and its ilk will start serving healthy, inexpensive, wonderfully-tasting food, and will pay its workers very well, a living wage that will meet and exceed its collaborators expectations, 32 hours per week with full benefits and pension plans in reparation for the history of the business’s exploitation of its workers and environment. In turn, the workers will become very faithful advocates of McDonald’s (and its ilk). And their high wages and high health will help stimulate the local economies.
So, on some days, a person of moderate wealth might find that he/she would like to eat at McDonald’s or its ilk, and other days, at an expensive smoothie bar or expensive restaurant or vegetarian restaurant (I hear they are becoming quite popular.)
7. Artists: Did you know that anyone can become an artist? Sure, some of us are misunderstood, but–get this–in a civilized society with lots of cash flow, the rich people buy lots of art. They buy personalized items for lots of money, and so do we. We are rich people! Did you know that? All of us are rich.
We might not have the actual cash money in our bank accounts right this second–but I hear it’s coming! Has to do with that hand-crafted, ethically-produced stimulation thing. Yowzers.
8. Poets: Why are you giving away God’s words for free? You are so good. Buy each others books. I command thee. I command more people to start appreciating poetry–people who might not necessarily write poetry, but suddenly find that, wow, what a goldmine of nuance and love and reverence for life there is in those darned poets! BORDERS BOOK STORE: I command you to buy books from local poets in consultation with the people who know best–like Suzanne from Macs.
INDEPENDENT BOOK STORES: You are lovers of hand-crafted zines, recycled and reowned books, fine coffee environments, tee, pastries, plants, atmosphere, music, fine wine, et cetera. IN MY ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN FOR YOU, YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT LOSING BUSINESS, ONLY GAINING IT!
9. Back to the bees. I hear monoculture crops weren’t such a good idea. I’m glad they’re realizing now that they need to employ beekeepers for the local areas, and that most of the year (maybe?) the bees need to eat organic, varied, wonderful, varieties of food. Perhaps a patch of this food with a local beekeeper could be employed in every area that needs one? And that the use of pesticides is suddenly found to not be necessary, or that somehow, it is in coordination with the health needs of pollinating insects? Seems like local beekeepers would be a good jobs program to me.
- – -
I imagine that this plan will require some tweaking, but it sounds like a good start and good vision to me. What do you all think?
Maybe Heaven is supposed to be this Planet. This is the butterfly that’s going to carry me home, and this is the trash I’m going to pick up later, I hope.
i don’t like doing dishes, making the bed, picking up laundry, food shopping, or shaving my head, but i feel good doing them because they’re concrete actions that result in results. put time and thought in, get something tangible out.
the rest of my day is ambiguous. outside of household chores and interacting with lady, i’m my own boss 24/7/365, and it’s hard to assign myself enough creative, intelligent work to do to keep my mind busy, so i become unfocused, a wee bit down. i need projects like a dead man needs a coffin – more actually, because dead men don’t need nothin.
i’m starting a new painting, but that’ll keep my fancy tickled but 2-3 days – a week if things go badly.
lady has her cyber network of friends and blogs that keep her company. i find the internet little more than tv for one, and it bores me unless i’m researching fact or fiction. to me, tv is the new tb.
my core being is clown and writer. i don’t feel funny lately, so gotta go with writing. have a couple makeshift projects to jumpstart my lazy bones – rewrite my 1st three Smokey Grey short stories (they’re cool, but crude in first write), write a couple poems, and finally after 31 years start my novel where i steal my own soul.
of course i could just smoke the day away, but that could be dangerous as well as debilitating because we’ve temporarily lost our supply due to rain. there’s so much rain in the mountains lately the crops aren’t maturing on schedule and what little has matured is impossible to harvest and dry due to wet. they’ve never seen this much precipitation down here – global warming is messing with my high.
my basic problem is at heart i’m lazy, world weary. i want to get through the day with neither thought nor action – have entertaining input without any output required. unfortunately my mind demands output, and demands input on said output.
i ain’t no sheep, so don’t belong in the sheep pen, but am a weary, wayward wolf.
fat factory, circus, & commission for the defense of human rights – foto by smith
i’ve been blogging daily for 27 months – minus 3 months in croatia when we had to bus a half hour to town to blog three times a week, and minus a few weeks in northern england camping when we had to walk an hour through the mountains to blog three times a week. that’s 725 blogs, most with 2 fotos. lot of words. lot of fotos. lot of adventure.
before lady, i lived 21 years in the same studio in tremont, 20 of those years voluntarily celibate. then lady moved into my life and we lived in 10 countries in 20 months, moving 49 times in the process. now past 9 months we’ve slowed down, lived at 3 addresses in one city – the past 6 months same place. before this, the most we got to stay any one place along the way was three months. the least, one night.
i’ve been reading through our 1,200 blogs, looking for good words to steal for another book. i find about three fourths of it is less than enchanting, but the remaining quarter makes it worth the trouble.
the one thing blogging everyday has done is improved my writing. i can write faster, better, clearer.
but i’m running out of things to say and think. feel i’m becoming dull, losing my edge and sense of humor. so this is just a warning. i may disappear, may write less frequently. maybe less would be more. no one’s life or mind is worth daily excrescence. i’ve been cheating a lot lately anyway posting old poems and foto blogs instead of my actual thoughts which have become dark and heavy – these past 5 weeks with the hernia operation and the bipolar episodes have drained my reservoir of light and endurance.
i need to reawaken myself, and am unsure as to how to go about it.
actually i do know – i need some sleep, and i need to find a new writing project. i could do another art assemblage, but that’s just a couple days. i need a long term writing commitment. i am happiest when i write. that is the essence of what i am.
who knows what IS is down here south of the border. the garbage truck comes on thursdays and sundays. the truck stops and clangs a bell every couple blocks, and we all stream out our doors with bundles of trash to toss in. there are no trash cans on the sidewalks which they empty. if you want your trash taken away, you walk it out when they clang. sometimes the truck comes wednesdays instead of thursdays, but today is tuesday, and it’s here. in mexico, just because something happens one way one day doesn’t mean it’ll follow that line next time.
today is lady’s and my 3rd anniversary. 3 years together, 2.5 years married, two years traveling, living outside the u.s.a.
these three years have been a magic fairy tale. and like all fairy tales, just when you think it’s heading for happy ever after, the dark demon reality of trolls under the bridge and witches in the gingerbread house rears it’s ugly head in the form of my wife’s bipolar manic sidestep into an alternative reality this past month.
it’s scary going from being the co-star in your wife’s movie to being a minor figment in a major fragmented reality only she can see and interact with. love and relationships succeed because both people try daily to make it work. when one stops, the burden on the other to supply both sides of the love and caring becomes complicated.
doc says it’ll take her two weeks of sleeping a lot to make up for her month of sleep deprivation. yesterday was lonely because she slept most of the day. but it was an easy loneliness because i knew she was healing her fractures.
lady’s breakdown was helped along by a myspace poet who lead her on, lied to her. in her vulnerability, he convinced her my Like Candy On Ice Cream poem meant i no longer loved lady, instead loved a cleveland poet. it bothered her so much that in the middle of our love making, she asked me if i loved poet x instead of her. i think he’s trying to get into her pants. no honor. actually there are several writers of both sexes flirting with lady behind my back. scum is as scum does.
lady’s torn about taking the antipsychotic medicine. on the good foot, it calms her anxious frantic 24 hour a day mania and lets her talk and sleep and eat and participate in household chores with me. on the bad foot, it dulls her, takes away the voices she was hearing which made her life more special – although her life has been upper stratospheric special these past 3 years of adventure, creating, and living around the globe. but i guess sometimes even special wants to feel more special.
lady’s as special as they come.
the poem in question was written as a poetry assignment. i took a challenge to use “like candy on ice cream” and just started playing with the puns. took 10 minutes. it’s pure stream of consciousness, all about the world and the end of times, nothing about lady and i. certainly nothing concerning the mediocre poet asshole who lied to lady.
Like Candy on Ice Cream
Like Candide’s best of all possible worlds
I lick my like from lit of wit
and why the worry ways of ruling rats
Like Wallace Steven’s Emperor of Ice Cream
I take in tacky death
of horny heels and hopeful hellos
Like Candy on ice cream
her nipples pearled pert
we hump in happy horizontal
Like the constant lice of American dream
scum encrusted, yellowed
I yearn for debugging powder, ponder
Like good on bad and bad on worse
I burn for light and love
in lieu of this miss called is
