2 for 4th
 mexican political graffiti - foto by smith having wonderful visit so far with mucho fotos and thought notes for blogs - but many people and little timem leaves me blogless. so here’s 2 more american poems for this 4th of july. ~ ~ ~ Sold American We’re born in blood, raised in flesh Schrodinger’s cat is dead, perhaps My Little Bo Peep’s down eating her sheep So drink a drink for all that hasn’t happened ~ ~ ~ Promise Land Greyhound bound Blue bloods Competing EXIT signs  Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919 - foto by smith |
myth america
 american death - foto by smith Myth Amerika O Red White and Blueeyed Lady, I am life here seems louder, faster, busier, meaner, greedier - and the food portions humongous. went to a big box store called DEALS and saw bags of chocolate for $7 so large it’d take two men or a wheel barrel to carry them away. it’s like this place is the dark side of Monty Python. this is smith reporting from the dirty dusty odiferous crack between logic and truth backside the funhouse mirror. USA Today Meat bags bound by fog and fury In service so sweaty warmth Let doubt die  U.S.A. today - foto by smith |
the ecstasy of consumerism
Cemetery offerings in Oaxaca, photo by Lady This visit to the States has been nice for us. Weird, tho. Some prices have skyrocketed. Went to our local coffee shop and they’re selling cookies for $2.00. When we visited 7 months ago, the same cookies were $1.25 or $1.50. We settled for two teas for $3.75. Crazy! At least the tea was fantastic. It came in open ended tissue bags which were stropped to the top of the cup with a stick. My bag had delicate little purple flowers in addition to the green tea. We loaded up on THINGS yesterday in a kind of ecstasy of consumerism. We went to a dollar store and I was totally astonished by what’s available. Tho food’s expensive, THINGS are not. I think these dollar stores must be spoils of the empire. It would be too outrageous for the pillagers of the planet to outright GIVE us the loot, so they sell it to us for a token price. Anyways, we saved a bunch of money stocking up on toothbrushes, floss, aspirin, deodorant and plastic toys that we’re going to use to make collages. If we bought the stuff in Mexico we’d go broke because Mexico doesn’t have dollar stores. Then we went to Target to get cheap durable underclothes and shoes. We wandered the electronics section and I was amazed that they’re still trying to sell DVDs. I wonder if anyone buys anymore, or if they all download from the Internet. There were two aisles in Target devoted to ipod accessories. I’m looking for a microphone for my ipod so I can record street noises for collage but couldn’t find it. But I’m just amazed at how quickly technology is changing and how they get all these new products on the shelves. We wandered over to the food section in Target, and I saw more spoils of empire. Huge quantities of chocolate for sale, for cheap. I don’t know how it is possible for the lizard brains of people to NOT buy all this cheap chocolate. No wonder so many people are so very heavy here. (I’m so glad I got myself outta that bind - I used to weigh 300 pounds.) This has been an interesting experiment so far. We got a rental car, and we’re noticing how convenient it is after two years of carlessness. But the car has the feeling of being a time machine, and all this store stuff is a time machine, because this certainly ain’t sustainable. 
Candy aisle in Target, photo by lady |
back in the u.s.a.
 Mexican street art - foto by smith i’m in the undrugged aftershock fog of yesterday’s 19 hours of travel from oaxaca mexico to cleveland ohio. woke confused this morning back in chiplis’ two-room love shack out back. this is the third time he’s graciously hosted us - the 6 weeks in 2006 after we sold our place but before we left the country, the 10 weeks last fall after we mistakenly came back to the u.s., and our current 2 weeks. we flew from oaxaca to mexico city, then to the george bush airport in houston where things went wrong. the george bush international airport - gag me with a thieving lying murderous spoon. the airport stole two hours from our day. i knew george bush senior was as evil and venal as son george warcrimes bush (though not as stupid). i’d put down texas too, but my mom Mother Dwarf was born there, so it can’t be all bad - even though it murders more folk than any other state in the union. mom did leave as a child though, so maybe that’s why she turned out ok. sitting in the texas airport we were struck by how tall, fat, and loud americans are. back in the u.s.a., i marvel at being able to drink tap water, flush toilet paper down the toilet, and have actual water pressure in the shower. i find the ubiquitous air conditioning and ice water offered in restaurants disconcerting though, knowing how much energy it eats up in this dying world. went out to breakfast this morning to the all night diner we began our affair in - it was dead and gone. so much for nostalgia. driving back from breakfast. Lady said “look out - there’s a cop!” i yelled “we don’t care about any stinkin’ cops - we’re MEXICAN!” this visit will be good for me - get me away from the daily grass&hash of the past 7 months. mexico is the first place i’ve been where cost and availability are not factors. Jesus Crisis chose me and my poetry as the theme of his blog today. after all his praise, i left this as a comment - “wow. what can i say. it’s all true. you’re a good son (from one ex-con to another).” you can read it at crisisblog.crisischronicles.com  double cross - foto by smith |
night fragments
 cemetery stone pillar, trash barrel - foto by smith Night Fragment As has been said  wall - foto by smith |
1/3 moon
 tree flower fallen on sidewalk - foto by smith our spanish teacher Ella told Lady none of her other students invited her into their homes for food and talk. after each lesson, Lady shows Ella how to prepare another dish as she cooks lunch for the three of us. Ella said Lady’s more Mexican than American because Americans eat and run while Mexicans drop by unannounced to sit and chat for hours. the U.S. is task oriented, Mexico’s more family. they have to be because family and friends are all they have - they get no help and much abuse from their government. i was going to say the Mexican government is more openly, flagrantly dishonestly brutal than the U.S. government, but after 7 years of the Cheney Bush, that wouldn’t be fair. i’m fragmenting lately in my fotos, and my thoughts. life’s a collage, which we get to make anew every day using yesterday’s broken bits. there’s a one third moon hanging over the mango tree, a black silver sliver in Mexican night. i don’t play by the rules when i pull petals off a flower - instead of saying “she loves me, she loves me not,” - i say “she loves me, she loves me,” and don’t pull the petals or pick the flower. why should flower suffer my emotion?  cemetery sidewalk section - foto by smith |
WHERE WE ARE GOING
 photo by lady I believe we manifest possible realities. Every day I tell myself a mythology about two futures, one global in scope, and one more personal. In my personal future, Smith and I have great success with our books and artwork. In the other future/present, everything collapses and there is no more civil society by, oh, say 2012. My personal, successful future is negated by this other future which seems more and more real. 2012 sounds hokey. But I believe in the collective unconscious and the myth of destruction seems to be winning over the myth of hope. “Rational” people keep telling me that somehow the scientists are going to solve this environmental crisis and avert global catastrophe. I’m very skeptical of this brand of rationalism. (My own “credentials” in rationalism: I have an electrical engineering degree and have worked in the controls industry serving municipal sewer, water and power plants for ten years. Not that this sheep skin matters one iota.) The scientific gestalt–for those in environmental sciences, at any rate–is in such a state that marine biologists break down in tears at press conferences. The scientific gestalt–for those “scientists” in the petroleum industry–is that we’re going to extract every last bit of fossil fuel, no matter the consequences. We’re working on tar sands now, which when they are fully developed are estimated to only provide 10% of our fuel needs. If not the tar sands, then they’re in jubilation over the melting arctic and the possibilities of slurping melting methyl hydrate from the sea bottom, thus burning more fossil fuel, thus warming the earth more, thus melting the arctic faster, thus expanding the area of sunlight that is not reflected back into space, but absorbed by our dying oceans, absorbed by our warming planet, ultimate impact absorbed by us human feces species. Environmental scientists are worried that the arctic’s melt will cause a gigantic “burp” of methyl hydrate, which would end life on this earth as we know it. And if the burp doesn’t happen, corporate scientists are greedy to extract the stuff anyways, dump it into our atmosphere. The only benefit of using methyl hydrate as a fuel is it produces 50% less CO2 emissions than coal. But believe you me, it’s not going to be a substitute for coal. They’re going after *everything.* I remember when “rational” people were telling me, “Don’t worry, Lady, we’re going to use ethanol instead of oil. Brazil fuels their economy on sugar-based ethanol.” Never mind that Brazil uses slaves to do so because it’s such a labor intensive process it’s economically unfeasible otherwise. Never mind that we can’t grow sugar in America! Corn based ethanol? Never mind that it takes nearly as much energy in the form of fertilizer and fueling equipment to raise and process the corn as it does to use it. Ethanol is a false panacea. Beware of people telling you that science is going to figure it out, that you won’t have to change your energy consuming ways. Although I’m a fatalist, I still work on my soul. My soul urges me to divest myself of meat, of long commute, of plane rides, of energy-burning house, of car. (Still gotta stop riding planes and eating meat.) I want to invest myself in earnestness, in community, in good heart, in friendship with our home, the Earth. Lady |
give us this day our daily blog
 wall and ad frag - foto by smith been trying for 20 months to put a label on my waking life. for a long time i used “endure,” but that has erroneous negative implications. before lady came along, i had a hard time going. i thought i knew what was going on - i was wrong of course, but at least believed i could make plans, build tomorrow on today. then lady walked into my life like goldilocks on steroids in my 20th year of celibacy, my 14th year of sobriety, 3 months after mom died - and predictability went out the door, since then, there ain’t no normal. there’s been psycho stalker, bulimia, cancer, operation, job resignation, radiation, nose polyps, another operation, loss of house & possessions & neighborhood followed by expatriatization and many countries in many months - all finally ending in mexico. 50 moves in 20 months leads to loss of routine, fogs expectation, makes planning difficult if not impossible. with no planning comes freeform discontinuity. there’s no continuity from day to day. one day we walk up a mountain. next day we go to a mixtec’s house for chili rellenos lessons. day after that we plot a magic mushroom trip, or we walk down an endless mountain through thousands of rabbits, or sit in a tent under a water sky, or eat ostrich in the bummed out grayness of a polish city, or watch lizards scamper in france or croatia or mexico. there’s no connect between one day and the next. the only reliable sameness day after day is lady and me being together - but even this is not exactly “sameness” because we’re both constantly evolving due to the journey. so every day i wake to a slightly new lady and we go through unknown and unknowable steps and people and adventures until we sleep and wake to the next day’s newness. but today, standing in the afternoon’s after rain grey light looking into the lighted room where lady was working away on her laptop, it became clear to me - my waking life has become dream time. and like dreams, however odd the thing happening is, i go through it doing what i must to make it work as well as possible for as many as possible. i don’t plan, i don’t schedule, i don’t expect. i try (and i’m getting better at succeeding) to get up and go through each day accepting what comes my way best i can. now that we’re going to be living in one place for a couple years, some of this will change. i’ll find reoccurring cycles to play upon. and i do have my three daily rituals - bonding with lady, my daily blog, and my nightly toke. weird life - i’m down to counting on the uncountable.  graffiti - foto by smith |
a muse mess
 political graffiti - foto by smith number nine #9 i was musing on the muses and was amused to find there are 9. or 18. depends on your back story. one source says they are 9 water nymphs sired by Zeus, king of the gods, out of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. a second claims they’re more primeval, their father being Uranus and their mother Gaia. a third says both are true, that there are two generations of muses. this leaves 18 muses for 9 muse slots, so they’re going to have to fight it out in a game of mortal muse-ical chairs. i was looking for inspiration and thought “aha - it’s the muse’s job to inspire so look em up. see what makes em tick.” disappointingly dry stuff. 1 Calliope - chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry closest i can come for my own use are selected bits and pieces. i’ll take #5 for tragedy, the 1st half of #8 for comedy, a slice of #2 for the past, the lyric of #6, and the love of #3 (with a dash of the erotic). other than that, i can’t find much to make this muse muss interesting. looks to me like they’re laying down on the job.  graffiti - foto by smith |
OUR MASTERS ARE IMMORAL ASSHOLES. WE’RE IN A BAD TRIP.
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photo by lady OUR MASTERS ARE IMMORAL ASSHOLES “I feel like I’m looking at the past when I read business news articles.” In a way, you are, aren’t you. ‘The Way the World Was.’ “Yeah, definitely. We’re not gonna be able to sustain this.” Read the petroleum article. (End of the Petroleum Age? http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/28/9943/) They give actual figures about how we cannot sustain this. They talk about how much oil we use per day, the declining output of the major oil fields. 116 oil fields provide 50% of the world’s oil. They talk about the rate of depletion, the amount that alternative sources can add, calculate what’s gonna be needed by 2015. And we can’t do it. “Whaddaya mean?” There’s no way we can produce enough oil to keep the world happy in 2015. In fact, the largest oil field in the world, Saudi Arabia, has been using water pressure to keep up the oil pressure, which is a finite solution. Once that fails, there’s a DRAMATIC and DRASTIC DROP in output. So the point of the article is, you can’t keep the old game going, you best fund the new game, whatever that’s gonna be. Which they list as three: solar, biofuels, and hydrogen. And biofuels are not an option, not if you’re gonna feed folk. “I think it’s time for us zombies to turn on the masters.” Brains… “That’s my metaphor. The zombie movies.” I think it’s a pretty good one, don’t you? That’s the way we’re going through life. America, land of the zombies. That’s why my favorite zombie movie is Dawn of the Dead. It takes place in a mall. “I just had this thought. In the near future war, soldiers are going to realize that they’re just fighting for oil. And they’ll feel OK about taking it, survival of the homeland and all. That’ll be their rallying call, ‘Blood for Oil! (grunt) You should be thankful we’re sacrificing ourselves to preserve your way of life!’ Our masters are immoral assholes.” |
