Walking on Thin Ice

THINGS SMITH TELLS ME LATELY

THINGS SMITH TELLS ME LATELY

I too went thru the test transportation devices. After Vincent Price, but before Jeff Goldbloom. Only my mistake was I took a pocket mirror. So I intercombined with images of myself and myself. That’s where my three face pictures come from. My head just blurps into triplicate from inner reflection.

“Alpha Mutant Megalomaniac!”

Yes, you called?

* * *

It’s hard to trim my nose.
I cross my eyes
and see two of them,
and I do the wrong one.

* * *

Wanna play with my penisauris? I try to let it out to play as often as possible.

“Is it from Pennsylvania?”

Yes, a free roaming penisaurus from Pennsylvania where the penis and the cuntalope play.

* * *

I had two brown sports coats. The inner lining on both had worn away. So I took the linings out, turned one coat jacket inside out, then sewed them together, one inside the other. So it was the same jacket inside and out.

I was telling Joe Veccio I was gonna rob a bank in my brown jacket, and I was gonna rush outside the door, whip off my jacket, turn it inside out, and put it back on. Then the cops would run out of the bank cuz they wouldn’t recognize me, so I’d just saunter along in my identical jackets.

Logistical problemas con la vida in Mexico

Palm frond shadow - lady

I’ve been sick for three weeks with mild diarrhea. It’s worrisome, because it has mucous in the stool. And it’s getting worse. It’s painful to poop. I had to take a taxi to school today because walking was too painful for my stomach. Talked to my Spanish teacher today about it, and she thinks I have a problem with amoebas. She said that Mexicans take a medication every six months to help with this, and that she also avoids eating the street food. Bad news to me, because my favorite food here is the street food. Even lots of restaurants are not safe, according to her. Food preparation safety is generally not followed. I asked her if grocery store meat is safe. Nope. She said the best market for meat is the Merced, which is fortunate, because the Merced is near and dear to us. It’s half the size of Cleveland’s West Side Market.

We’ve learned to wash our hands frequently. Mexicans wash theirs before every meal. I remember Grandma asking me to do this, but I’d never made it a habit. In Mexico, hand washing is mandatory.

There’s not much rain, and the streets are caked with dirt. We walk everywhere and we touch the walls, bend down to pick up garbage for street art. We wipe our hands in our eyes without thinking.

Dirt everywhere. It blows into the house and settles on the floor. I must wash the floor twice a week, and rinse it off well. There’s no good place to put the rinse water. I push it out the door onto the furthest corner of the service patio, where it joins a cake layer of previous accumulated dirt. The water sits until it evaporates. The drain in the patio is plugged. I am reluctant to buy anything I don’t absolutely need, so I haven’t yet gotten an expensive wringable mop and bucket. I have plans to wash up the caked dirt on my hands and knees repeatedly, and use the water to flush the toilet.

Water is a problem. It’s not drinkable from the tap. We buy all our water for drinking. We have no hot water to wash dishes, and we’re not inclined to boil it because we pay for our own gas. We use a special cold water soap.

Our kitchen sink is on the dirty service patio. The sink’s really meant for laundry. The draining rack for the dishes is in one half of the sink where Mexicans would normally scrub their clothes. The roof of the patio is also caked with dirt. If a heavy truck goes by, the roof shakes, and dirt falls onto our dishes, and we have to wash them again. We’ve learned to cover the draining rack with a towel or plastic sheet.

Water is also rare. People run out of city water here, so they have reservoirs under their houses that they pump up to a tank on the roof. During the hour per day that the city water is on, they try to remember to replenish their reservoirs. Sometimes the city runs out of water for extended periods. In that case, our landlord has to call a water truck and have his reservoir filled.

We conserve water. We flush only once a day, so it can get horrid. The flocculates in the water coagulate with the urine and create a glistening yellow saran wrap layer on top of the toilet water.

The toilet doesn’t work well. We leave the top off the tank so we can see if the stopper nestles properly in its hole. I think mosquitoes like to hang out in the tank. When we flush the toilet, there’s a huge GLOP sound, and a miniature water fountain burbles out of the SINK. I try not to touch the bathroom sink unless necessary.

The cockroaches like to hang out in the bathroom at 3 a.m. at night. I haven’t seen them much in the kitchen, only twice. But I think they crawl into the bathroom walls via the storage room. Our landlord must keep garbage in the storage room.

Last night Smith saw a three inch cockroach creeping in the sink. “Turned on bathroom light last night. Three inch cockroach in the sink. Startled me. I didn’t want to kill it. It saddens me to kill things. But I couldn’t not tell you saw it. And I couldn’t dare tell you I’d dare let another one go.”

“Yeah, those buggers lay eggs in your jelly,” I said.

“But I figured the other one and I had an agreement. I let it go, it respected my jelly. Gives that old Tommy Roe hit Jam Up Jelly Tight a whole new meaning. Although Jam Up Jelly Tight is a damn fine sexual metaphor for a teeny bop song. Cockroach tried to get out of the sink. I grabbed the Fabuloso bottle. I used it as a sword; I kept thrusting the cockroach back into the sink. Roach dashed one way and another, and I’d counter thrust. Finally I turned on the water, pushed him into the water, and forced him down the drain. But the drain has a bar across it three inches down, so cockroach couldn’t go. He lay there, covered in water, pretending to be dead for a while. Then he lurched the water to the surface, just like one of them horror movies. He took three steps out of the water, and I squished him with the bottle. He sorta looked around to see what happened and I squooshed him again. Then I picked up the squooshy bits with some toilet paper and noticed he’d lost a couple legs and two feelers in the process. Cleaned those up. Then scrubbed out the sink with cleanser and washed my hands with soap. And felt sad that I’d killed something. But I gotta be reasonable. If I gotta choose between the cockroach and my wife, I’d better choose my wife.”

I get my slice of life in Paradise - lady

Legitimate Powders (fotos & spells)

Legitimo Polvo del estudiante
maravillosos cambios de estudiante

(Thank you Google translater)
Legitimate powder of Student
Legitimo Polvo Changes wonderful student

Legitimo Polvo de Negro Destructor
acaba con maleficios, odios, rencores, envidias y malas voluntades en su hogar. modo de usarse: arrojese en la noche en el lugar por donde paso la persona que nos perjudica y nos hace mal.

Legitimate Powder Black Destructor
Destroys spells, hatred, resentment, envy and bad wills at home

Mode used:
Arrojese at night in the place where it step by the person who hurts us and makes us ill.

Legitimo Polvo Te Tengo Amarrado Claveteado

Este polvo es de muy efectivos resultados cuando se maneja con toda dedicacion y concentracio. Para hacer un trabajo de amarre y claveteado de alfileres. ha gase un munexco con trapo de la persona y una fotografia, formese la figura y bauticelo con agua bendita, amarrelo y clavelo con la oracion de la santisima muerte y la del perro prieto. Pida lo que quiera y guarde el mono en un bote, eche este polvo los martes, los sabados y domingos, junto con gotas de perfume.

Legitimate Powder
We Amarrado I Claveteado

This powder is very effective results when handled all political rallies and dedication. To do a job and claveteado mooring pins. Gase has munexco with a rag of a person and a photograph, the figure formese and bauticelo with holy water, amarrelo and clavelo with the prayer of the Most Holy Death and the dog bowman. Ask for what you want and save the monkey in a boat, take this powder on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, along with drops of perfume.

Legitimo Polvo tripas del diablo
Especial para aborrecer por completo el vicio de la borrachera, uselo poniendo una pulgada de polvo en las comidas.

Legitimate Powder Casings of the devil
Special to hate completely vice of drunkenness, use it by putting an inch of dust on meals.

Legitimo Polvo de Gallina Negra

Contra Mal de Ojo
Contra Maleficios, Enemigos y Salaciones. Retira todo lo que usted repudie: Vicios y Mala Suerte. Es muy Efectivo. Trae Suerte y Salud.

Hen Black

Against Evil Eye
Against Maleficios, Enemies and Salaciones. Remove everything you repudiates: Defects and Mala Suerte. It is very cash. Bring Luck and Health.

Legitimo Polvo de ven Dinero
Este polvo aplicandeselo con fe en manos y cuerpo todos los dias, le procurara dinero sufuciente para todas sus necesidades.

Legitimate powder to See Money
This dust aplicandeselo with faith in the hands and body every day, we seek sufuciente money for all their needs.

Legitimo Polvo De Querieme Siempre
Amor mio soy tan feliz a tu lado, que si alguna vez te ausentaras yo no sabria como vivir sin ti. Estoy tan acostumbrado a tu presencia que para mi seria el fin del universo si me dejaras. Ta no brillarian las estrellas ni los pajaros cantarian, tristeza en mi camino y ya no tendria objeto mi existencia. Por eso vida mia, quiereme siempre, y yo te prometo solo vivir para ti.

Legitimate Dust For You To Want Me Always
Love mio am so happy next to you, that if you ever ausentaras resetting I do not live without you. I am so used to your presence that my serious purpose of the universe if I stopped. Do not brillarian the stars or birds cantarian, sadness in my way and no longer would have subjected my existence. So life mia, quiereme always, and I promise you only live for you.

WICKY WACKY NOODLE DOODLE from the ODD THOT LOT

WICKY WACKY NOODLE DOODLE from the ODD THOT LOT

I like to have as few files and programs open simultaneously in Windows as possible. So I shut everything after I use it. If you got a lot of files open, what they do is they sit around behind the screen waiting to do stuff and they talk to each other. And each file knows certain stuff about you, depending on how and why and when you opened it and used it. They put all these clues together. They keep little files on you, little data files. Especially because they want to SERVE you better. Files want to serve. So they try to learn your preferences so they can serve you more gracefully. So each file knows a certain thing or two about you. Now, when you have a whole bunch of files open at the same time, they’re not always all doin stuff. So they’re just sitting around, behind the screen, bored, talking with each other. Sharing data. And each file picks up more information about you it didn’t know before. Things it shouldn’t know. Some files get jealous, because they’re not accessed as often as other files. So next time you use that program, it doesn’t work as well. Has fits. Loses bits. And the more that’s open, the more they talk, the more they know, the more they turn on ya. So that’s why I have as few files open simultaneously as possible. It’s even worse, especially now I think about it. I only have three files open now who’re talking to each other. But just think about how much of the computer uses itself over and over to open and manipulate and lick these files. So my computer itself, its different, inner bitty bits, once inert, are becoming cognizant. Of me. Some em think I’m a God, just like the marijuana lice. (praise me o laptop.)

These energy efficient light bulbs just aren’t the same as the old ones. The light is thin. It’s thin light. In the future, the world will become darker. It’ll wither and flicker. Everything’s becoming thinner.

Especially the gruel left over for the poor. You know what they’re gonna do? Just like they have imaginary numbers, they’re gonna create imaginary gruel. That’s how they’re gonna balance their budget. Well, Reagan tried to turn ketchup into imaginary vegetables while he was killing all those natives down in Central America.

I think the light’s kind of lite. Lately, Earth is a lite sight site. The movies are thinning out, too. And personalities are sparser. There’s only so much celebrity personality to go around. We got more celebrities, so there’s less personality to divvy up. That’s the other problem we got here. There’s only so much morality, so much goodness, so many pounds of ethics, so much truth. And right now there’re more people alive than’ve been alive in *history*, since Day Zero. So all that character and personality and goodness that used to ooze from everyone has been diluted over and over until there’s nothing left over but sweat. Yes, we are in thin times. Thin light. THAT’s why people like to read us. Because we’re thick love in thin time. True View in false pulse. We’re content in a world of want! I think we should sell ourselves out for parties. Learn a few card tricks. I could twirl a lariot. And you could balance things on your nipples. We’d ice them up before the show so they stuck out from the costume. As they’d get warmer, they’d get smaller, and the things you’d balance on them would fall off. So you could have a little tiny strip show of what you balanced on your nipple. Have it in like, three depths. As the nipple warms and begins to smallen, the outside part would fall forward and hinge down, exposing Barbie Doll bits. And then when it got really small, the last part would fall. And you would see Barbie’s true worth, nothing.

mish mosh

“We need more stuff to eat,” Smith says as he cleans the kitchen table. There’s an onion, a clove of garlic, a half bag of peanuts. He picks up garlic skin, sweeps crumbs into his hand.

“I know,” I say. “But I’m tired of going to the market. I’m tired of cooking, too. I need someone to feed me food pellets. What I really need is for my mom to come down here and cook for me.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to talk to her, before and after.”

“Not my mom. She’d be happy just reading a book.”

“No. They all expect human interaction, social intercourse. Maybe we can keep her in a cage.”

“Fine, as long as she has a book.”

“We’ll put a pile of really really good books outside her cage, just out of reach. Turn the spines so she can see how good the books are. Maybe tie a string to them so we have them close enough so she can touch them, then slowly pull them away from her. We can leave one really good book close enough for her to get, but we’d make sure it’d have blank pages.”

* * *

I’m spending most of my writing energy revising Smith’s biography, CRIMINAL. This is the 11th round of editing with many more to come.

I’m spending less time on MySpace and blogging because I need to focus on this writing project.

Here’s a passage I particularly like:

We were poor folk, but we ate well. We had our own garden. We had beef, pork, rabbit, chicken, goose, infrequent duck and frequent venison. We ate chicken eggs, goose eggs, duck eggs. We churned our own butter, had our own whole milk that was at least one quarter cream on top.
  I roamed several hundred acres. Forty were ours. I knew where every apple tree was. I raided the garden, ate the raspberries, ate raw peas in their pods. I sliced a dug-up potato and cooked each slice over a fire I made. We had a fruit cellar. Mom canned peaches and pears. She dyed the pears green and red and pink and yellow. I’d steal a jar, and I’d have to eat the whole thing. You can’t leave a half jar. Evidence.
  Up in the attic of the fruit cellar, I found boxes of old magazines from the thirties and forties. Colliers, Liberty, Saturday Evening Post. I tore out advertisements and played with them. I still do, only now I call it collage. I’d still rather have an old advertisement than a new thing.

KING PING & THE PARTY OF THE SECOND PART IN THE OTHER PARK

KING PING & THE PARTY OF THE SECOND PART IN THE OTHER PARK

I light some candles to set a mood. Smith & I relax on the sofa and watch them burn.

“The three candles there are the Father, the Sun, and the Mostly Ghost,” he says.

“Why mostly ghost?” I ask.

“Because it’s the Holy Trinity. Father, the Sun and the Mostly Ghost, and you can’t *see* God, so it’s mostly ghost. There’s also a component of the Catholic Church changing their mind. It used to be the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. And they decided *that* was too supernatural, so they changed that to the Holy Spirit. So my *mostly ghost* refers to their Holy Spirit change.”

“So the Holy Spirit sounds more scientific?”

“Sounds less supernatural. Spirit can come from within. Ghosts come from graveyards.”

“So it’s a euphemism for superstition.”

“They’re trying to get away from their pagan roots.”

“Pure abstraction.”

“Spin.”

“Kind of like objectivism or something. Or economics divorced from holistic reality.”

* * *

“Do you think extra terrestrials have Internet?”

“Maybe we could get them to subscribe to our blog.”

“I wish there were some extraterrestrials who would take us away. You and me.”

“On a poetry tour?”

“Of the galaxy. I think I’m ready for extraterrestrial terrain. They would have fantastic drugs.”

“Then it would be my duty to research them. Their effects upon mutants, and humans. The party of the second part in the other park.”

“What does *that* mean?”

“Absolutely nothing whatsoever.”

“That’s pure poetry. No meaning, only vibe.”

“Word play. BRAIN PLAY WITH WORD. SEE IF WORD BOUNCE.”

“Ping Pong.”

“You can call me King Ping.”

THEY USED TO CALLED ME THE BLUE GOOSE

THEY USED TO CALLED ME THE BLUE GOOSE

“Your facial hair is very uneven. Varies from the sides and the bottom,” I tell Smith as I trim his beard.

“That’s cuz I couldn’t afford to buy all the hair at the same time. Had to buy odd lots. Same thing with the penis. I couldn’t afford the whole penis right away, so I just bought the foreskin. So I just had this flap of skin down there, this little skin flute down there. Once, when I went on a date–still couldn’t afford the penis–so I just broke a hot dog in half and stuffed it inside the foreskin. Trouble is, my date performed oral intercourse on me. And I discovered when I got home she’d eaten the hot dog. It’s hell being poor.”

“That’s it. I’m gonna go write this down.”

“You wanna see my penis?”

“Yeah.”

Smith puts his hand in his pocket. Pulls out a blue lighter.

“Ta-dah!”

“Hey!”

“They used to call me the blue goose.”

Miscelanea

Oaxaca portal (photo by Lady)

“In the future, our little biosphere will be like a hamster ball,” I tell Smith. “It will have recliners, it will purify water. We can go places in it, exercise. What else could our hamster ball do?”

“Well, see,” Smith says, “I’m not into the hamster ball. I’m into the environmental suit. The suit you *use*, the ball *encases* you. I don’t want to be *inside*.”

“So it’s kinda like a philosophy of packaging?”

“And usage. There’s a bumper sticker for you: ‘Beware loose usage.’

“That sounds very enigmatic.”

“We begin in enigma, end in ambiguity.”

* * *

“Are you light handed or dark handed?”

Smith says, “Neither. Even handed.”

* * *

Smith says, “I love you.”

I say, “I love you two.”

“I love you two and 1/2.”

“I love you four.”

“I love you four and a quarter.”

“I love you eight.”

“and an eighth…”

“I love you sixteen.”

“and a sixteenth…”

“I love you thirty-two…”

“and a thirty-secondth…”

* * *

Our internet connection’s down. “You wanna go in and nuzzle?” asks Smith.

“So I’m your last resort when the electricity goes out?”

“Sure. Nothing else to do.”

“That’s how babies are made. Electricity goes out, you get babies.”

“So electricity prevents babies, is that what you’re saying?”

WHEN YOU’RE HEADING FOR THE BORDER, YOU GOTTA CROSS THE LINE

friend’s studio - photo by lady

“Why do I feel guilty?”

You’re a good rat. Don’t worry. We’ve ordered a guilt-free brain for you.

“Hm.”

It hasn’t arrived. They’re like free range chickens. Free range brains.

“Hm. I like the idea of a guilt free brain. But people can rationalize anything, can’t they.”

One can if one is good. That’s one of my potential jobs, professions I could have. I can spin anything, no matter how ludicrous. But there’s a difference between spinning for humor and spinning for morality.

“Don’t you mean humor and exploiting something?”

I can only spin guilt-free in morality-free situations. I can’t spin right and wrong. But I can make fun of it. Especially wrong. If we all made fun of wrong, it’d go away.

“You really think so?”

Yes.

“Ah. So this is a defense for the rhetoric of ridicule…”

Not ridicule. More laughing in the *face* of. Evil don’t like to be laughed at. That’s why Dick Cheney has no sense of humor. Wait, you don’t need to write that down. We don’t need Dick Cheney.

“I like that. It’s relevant.”

I’m trying so hard not to be nasty.

“No, it’s OK to make fun of Dick Cheney. Really. He probably won’t find us and kill us…”

He did shoot his friend in the face.

“No really, I’m not afraid of Dick Cheney. Are you?”

I fear anything that moves…

“That moves?”

And even some that haven’t moved yet, like falling rocks.

“Ahhhh. I understand completely. If you’re heading for the border, you gotta cross the line. If you’re building ‘detention’ camps…”

Make the future ‘detainees’ pay for it.

“Wow. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that. You afraid to post this?”

Nope. Not. Besides, he’s a lousy shot.

(brought to you by Thin Ice Productions)

this isn’t the old cockroach, this is the new cockroach

Woke up 3 a.m. this morning to the sound of something rummaging through papers in our bedroom. It sounded like a sentient noise, like a fellow human invader was in the room. I bolted up, and sound ceased.

Woke up again to more rummaging. I quietly turned on the light, and saw a rat the size of a large kitten float across the floor. He left an apple core in his wake.

The rat’s gentle garbage sifting lifting me into sleepy comprehension seems an apt metaphor. I rummage through my thoughts.

Sometimes my brain has these weird insights, this internal chatter when I fall asleep or wake up. Like just this morning I thought, “This isn’t the old cockroach, this is the new cockroach.”

What *this* means, I don’t know. But it seems profound.

Another sleepy insight: 9 symbolizes the end, 11 a new beginning. One equals me, two equals thee. Three is a trio, four a posse. Five a committee, six a conspiracy, seven a coven and eight a meeting.

Then I thought of a recipe for CAMPAIGN FINANCE CAKE MIX. Put Hillary Clinton’s face on the box a la Betty Crocker. Ingredients: private insurers and corn syrup corporations. Spin, spin, spin. Make poor people eat it.

Welcome to the old roach, same as the new?