The City Record - foto by Smith

While unsuccessfully looking through the June 9 issue of The City Record Official Publication of the Council of the City of Cleveland for something to cut out for use in a collage, I discovered what I’d construe to be a bit of flim-flam two-step soft-shoe skullduggery: every single item discussed or approved by council was handled either as an “emergency ordinance” or an “emergency resolution.’

I believe (but do not know) this is because there are different rules involved when voting on emergency measures, since by definition “emergency” implies a lack of deliberating time. I suspect emergency rules allow for faster voting, fewer words, and less transparency — but that could be just the inner political cynic that life has turned me into talking.

There seem to be a lot of emergencies — we’re talking 37 large pages with three columns per page of small print in this report of at least 150 emergency measures. Since this is a weekly report, it means we’re talking 21 emergencies every day of every week. I knew city life was fraught with peril, but really.

But City Council only meets once a week, except during the summer when they meet but once a month. That means during their once a week sessions they have to process 150 items; and during their once a month meetings they have to get through 600 to 750 items. I don’t see time for a lot of discussion or analysis or depth involved here; perhaps that is where the ‘emergencies’ arise.

Curious, I checked these emergencies out – most deal with buying stuff and paying people off and giving the rich and corporations more of our tax money, while the remainder deal with such mundane emergencies as issuing a “permit to the Lion of Judah Church to stretch a banner on Lexington Avenue between East 70th & East 66th Street for the period from June 18, 2010 to July 18, 2010, inclusive, publicizing “Focus on the Family” and other kiss the babies and support our troops politicizing.

The financial emergency ordinances have some odd language in them, like the first one they took up — “An emergency ordinance authorizing the purchase by one or more requirement contracts of Microsoft licenses for the various divisions of City government, for a period up to three years, with three one-year options to renew, the first and third of which are exercised through additional legislative authority.” Hmmmm, they have to vote later on the 1st and 3rd renewal, but not the 2nd? Why would they stipulate skipping the second year?

Do people really talk and think in words like these? If they do, maybe that’s what’s wrong with the system, we’re letting the dunderhead obsessives run our city with their thick fingers, obfuscating wordings, and hive mind.

low rates no loitering – foto by Smith

*This is a transcendental, elemental, invisible
vial. Pretend that it is the Buddha. And the
transcendental, elemental, invisible vial, is…
in you….

*THOU SHALT NOT HAVE HUMOR about religious things.
Jesus was not a comedian, nor was Buddha.

*What about the Zen Masters? What about the dancing…
woolly people? Yes? the woolly peephole?

*What are you afraid of little woman?

*Hmm?

*I am afraid they are going to lock me up. Once I
let out my poetry voices, they are going to lock me
up. My puppet poetry voices. The voices in my head.

Cuz if you like, smile, and affect a smile, and you like,
well, pretty soon you’ll start smiling, and
like, you’ll be smiling inside, and so if I let these
poetry puppet voices, like, out on my face,
then pretty soon, like, they will be permanently
like, embedded in my reality. And I will be, like,
authentically crazy. Not just like, affecting it.
But like, authentically crazy.

*Do you mean to say you have not been like, totally
forthcoming with us? Not totally authentic?

*Well, actually, that is rather hard for me to say,
as like, a human being brought into the chain of
consequence of like, this planet, and like, this
situation that I’m in, that the puppet voices, at
this point, seem like, totally natural? And *more*
authentic than like,
normall hooman bizness co-moon-i-ca-shun.

The normall’s are… on parade… and it is like,
a parade of zombies… the normalls, how they like,
say, good day; may I shake yar hand? Hello,
pleased to meetchoo… pleased to meet *yooo.* And,
what do you do for a living? And um, are you
male or female? And um, how much money do you make?
And like, where can I git in… where can I like,
pry my leetle fingers in… and like, find out
where the capitalist advantage is…

We are like, um.. watching a bunch of Jim Carrey
movies and I am coming to realize that I… am
Jim Carrey! Jim Carry is me! Jim Carry is like…
the male version of me out there somewhere. He’s
like doing all these wild and *crazy* things…

and like, I used to think that like, Steve Martin
was me. But now I really think that it’s Jim
Carrey. And I have lahk, Jim Carey inside me like
the Buddha, and the Buddha has Jim Carey way out there…

And we, are like, connected.

The thought occurs that Jim Carey is actually the
authentic me and I am just the female version of
Jim Carey trying to like, actualize the female
aspects in the material realm er whatever.

Um, in the societal realm, like, I am trying to like,
break out of the like, female aspects, like, the
female, expectations, like the coyness, and like,
um, the like, affectations of being female in
society? And I am now… officially…
NEUTAR!!!

I am like the transcendental elemental invisible vial,
like, here in the material realm of the like,
female, and I am like, trying to balance the female
with the male, and I am trying to shake them all up
in the vial, and we are all the Buddha.

Lady

seduced by flavor – foto by Smith

Laughing in a Room Alone

And now we do the parse and shuffle
in this night of greeting card
here at the shrine of the sorrowful Smith

We all rise by quark up through the atomic,
nuclear, hadronic, molecular school rule.

So then what is our expanding universe
expanding in to, exactly?
What unwhats our presence decrease?

I mean, if you can’t talk to strangers
who do strangers talk to?

I know to get to wisdom
you amp up the circuit
then take out the filters.

You can’t make everything better
but sometimes you can make some of it less bad.

Dark cloud at the end of town
I surf the curse of worse
find meaning the making machine.

Better fresh than foul
better worn than weary.

Life in the flesh lane —
keep shaking that Etch-o-Sketch, human
backside the mirror here in tarnished brain land.

2 hours of error – foto by Smith

the remains of Bitches Brew – art by Smith, foto by Stone Ranger

My longest friendship is with Stone Ranger whom I met at Loyola College in Baltimore in 1972. He has some of my oldest art pieces in his collection.

Recently he was away from his home for three months and when he returned he found moisture and black mold had attacked his back doorway and one of my assemblages. The moisture got beneath my glue and most of the assemblage came loose and fell to the floor.

Even nature’s becoming an art critic.

Bitches Brew, 1997, 18″ x 20″ x 5″ – art & fotos by Smith