WALKING ON THIN ICE

film noir - foto by smith

found this bunch of cryptic notes in my pocket pad:

i try to harvest my pocket notebook often because they can unexpectedly disappear on you. our second time through barcelona, as we got on the subway, 2 pickpockets jammed me into the door in such a way that trapped me on one side of the door and my full backpack on the other. they buffetted me about a bit, pretending to read the route map above the door, and then left. as soon as i saw them walk away, i flashed “pickpocket” and felt my back pocket - my wallet-sized notebook where i write down potential poetry lines was gone. ever since, everytime i think of spain, i smile because of the poetry thieves of barcelona.

tablecloth - foto by smith

troll-like street graffiti - foto by smith

i keep thinking about the fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff (Norwegian: De tre bukkene Bruse) and what it teaches our children.

in it, a young billy goat crosses a bridge, beneath which is a troll who eats everyone that crosses. the troll comes up to eat him. the young goat talks himself out of being eaten by saying he is so small and his much bigger brother is crossing right behind him - the troll should eat him instead. the troll lets him go.

the second goat says the same thing - “o don’t eat me, eat my much bigger brother who’s right behind me.” the troll lets him go as well.

when the third and largest billy goat crosses, the troll comes up to eat him, but is outmatched and gored by the much larger opponent.

looking at this story from the billy goats’ perspective, it teaches us to lie, to turn on family members, to sacrifice them to save ourselves.

looking at it from the troll’s point of view, it teaches us not to turn down a free real meal now in lieu of a maybe better meal later on.

fairy tales are nasty creations. witches eat children, step-mothers poison their step-children or use them as house slaves, fathers sell their daughters, heroines lie and cheat and steal and have sex out of wedlock with animals (as in East of the Sun, West of the Moon).

psychologists say this fairy tale nastiness is good and essential because it prepares our young for the random undeserved pain and misery real life visits on real people.

i say we don’t need this nastiness - we get all the horror and nastiness we need just by listening to our politicians and corporations on our nightly non-news.

moral of this story? eat a politician or a corporate executive today - they taste just like chicken, because they are.

muffler dog in front of muffler shop - foto by smith

sky smith - foto by smith

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

amsterdam lady 2006 - foto by smith

lady got up this morning. had her daily cup of coffee, then was hit with a sleep attack and went back to bed. got up 11:30. had a verbotten second cup of coffee. hit the wall of sleepiness again, went back to bed. doctor says it’ll take two weeks of excessive sleep to recover from her 4 weeks of sleep deprivation. she’s two days into week two. medicine side effects also list 2-3 weeks of extreme drowsiness before the body acclimates. welcome to the sleep-o-rama.

i’m jealous of her long, deep sleeps. want some of my own.

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” - Homer (800 BC - 700 BC), The Odyssey

“Death’s brother, Sleep.” - Virgil (70 BC - 19 BC), Aeneid

“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” - Shakespeare, Macbeth Act II scene ii.

“Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.” ~Author Unknown

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.” ~Charlotte Brontë

The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more. ~Wilson Mizener

“Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.” ~Author Unknown

“Fatigue is the best pillow.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
~James Thurber, Fables for Our Times, 1940

“Sleep, sleep, sleep, how I love to sleep.” Little Willie John, Sleep, 1960.

working lady september 2008 - foto by smith

2 rings, 1 setting - 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.

sky tea - foto by smith

shadowsun - foto by smith

Handsome Duke Deal, in a comment on a blog where i discussed surgically removing my left testicle by myself, said:

Though if you are successful with your planned do-it-yourself surgery, you could consider hosting a weekly syndicated television show showing others how they too can do-it-themselves at home. You could call the show “This Old Body.” I know that I’d watch it. Sell it to PBS. Hell, they’ll buy anything.

i reply:

yes, i could repair myself on tv. maybe carve most of me away over the years. the more famous i became, the less of me there’d be.

~ ~ ~

i tried tobacco four times over 57 years.

in 1949 when i was three, i took a lit cigar out of my parent’s friend’s mouth. mom made me smoke it until i got sick. probably kept me from smoking later on.

1968 after reading Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, i soaked a cigarette in paregoric and smoked it hoping for hallucinogenic high. first couple puffs made my head spin around and rise, next couple puffs to puke.

in amsterdam 1992 i unknowingly toked on a joint mixed with tobacco somebody shared with me in a coffee bar. i near choked to death because i’d taken a deep toke.

and finally a tobacco hash mixture i had to smoke with our hosts to complete a purchase in marrakech last year.

don’t believe i’ll try again.

~ ~ ~

Lady is doing fine. creating art, writing, taking fine fotos. plotting the present, planning the future.

shadowmoon - foto by smith

murky lady - foto by smith

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

104 - foto by smith