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i was flunking 2nd grade late 1953 before we moved from spokane washington to a 40 acre farm 20 miles east in an area called paradise prairie. mother dwarf said i hated my teacher – ms stall – so much that each night i’d do my homework, take it to school, wait for ms stall to come down the row to collect it, and then eat it in front of her. each morning she’d walk towards me, knowing what i was going to do… each morning i’d stare her in the eye, put my homework in my mouth, chew it up, and swallow it. ms stall came to hate me as much as i hated her. this is odd because ever since, i’ve been the teacher’s pet. mom could never understand why i did my homework in the first place if i knew i was going to destroy it, but it’s obvious – it’s not a valid protest if the homework isn’t real… you have to do the work before you can destroy it. even 8 years old i knew that. once we moved to the country, i immediately began getting good grades, and 3 years later skipped the 6th grade. it was a white wooden 2-room country school house with grades 1 thru 4 in one room, grades 5 thru 8 in the other, so i’d listen to my 5th grade lessons, then the 6th, 7th, 8th. 1956-57 was a good year for learning. of course the 7th thru 12th grades were hell for me because i was the tallest but youngest kid in each class from then on. i got my drivers license later than everyone else, my car later, laid later – i was 17 when i lost my virginity.
as a 14 yr old sophomore, my english teacher became worried how seriously i was taking ayn rand and informed me i could no longer write my paper on “atlas shrugged” – said i’d get an f if i did. ayn rand is all about principle – so i had no choice but to write my paper on her. i did. got an f for the quarter… all the rest of my grades were a‘s, so it really didn’t matter. looked rather cool actually.
just so you don’t think good of me, the first thing i did when we moved back to spokane from the country in the summer of 1960 was fall in with an older bad boy who taught me how to steal from the glove box of unlocked cars (out west we called it the jockey box)… within weeks of stealing from cars, 14 year old me taught him how to steal the entire car – stole 12 more before we got caught. i was getting straight a‘s, was loved by and loved my parents, so the judge decided it was my partner’s fault, gave me probation, and made him join the army.
and to continue my confessions of evil, 9 yr old me let my 5 yr old sister take the rap for my crime. mom baked cookies for a picnic and i stole a couple. mom stood us before the fridge n demanded to know which one of us it was, said we weren’t going on the picnic until the guilty one confessed. i kept silent, stone-faced feigned innocence – knowing she couldn’t prove nuthin’ – while my sister fidgeted in actual innocence. mom took her fidgeting for guilt, told me to go, and browbeat sis until she confessed. makes one wonder how i dare make moral judgments now. i always wanted to be good. always felt bad about not being good. always tried hard to get good. still trying – tho now i feel no guilt because i know my only crime is being imperfect human – and now i no longer lie, cheat, steal, and always give more than i get.
i think all this arises from kathy’s philosophy lesson this morning on schopenhauer… he says we’re all endless bundles of need, never ending desire. we always want… want more… need more – and if we ever actually satisfy a need want desire and become temporarily sated, we get bored. dark vision – but there’s solid truth there. my wants are basic, simple… i want not to hurt others, i want to make kathy happy and be worthy of her, i want to spread light and not darkness, i want inner peace. the first three i have an actual chance of doing. the inner peace is impossible while i live. i do have other desires, like wishing people would be fair with one another and treat each other with honor, but those lie outside my control, what i myself can do, so ain’t my responsibility.
i do have less rage and more peace within than ever before. this is thanks to my stopping drinking 15 years ago, going to europe for the first time 14 years ago, having my creative words and images recognized and lauded by friends press fellow poets artists, taking care of my mother for 16 years and standing by her thru her 9 month hell of dying, and having kathy come into my life. as much as i scare folk now, i’m mister serene compared to the rage i was.
i do have one more desire – for george w(arcrimes) bush to get his ass kicked in today’s midterm elections, but since we’re 6 hours earlier here, i’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what the american voters and diebold electronic voting machines have left under my tree.
8.11.2006 – appears most the u.s. voting went my way. the republican g.(overnment) o.(ver) p.(eople) lost the house and looks like the senate as well, which makes bush a dead duck president. and hallelujah – ohio’s ken blackwell lost… perhaps now the democrats are in power, they’ll subpoena blackwell to testify about his 2004 election crimes. my favorite moment was blackwell – who is black, at least on the outside – campaigning with a white power racist. how sweet their lust for power is for we watchers who still cherish irony.
weirdly unpleasant to watch tv – most cnn female talking heads look like they’ve had cheek bone augmentation… they all resemble chipmunks with nut cheeks. their male opposites look fairly well plasticized as well. how can they expect me to take seriously what they say when their own face is a lie? what a weird twirled world tv be.
croatian law is to register with the police within 24 hours of arrival. we tried once at 34 hours, again at 82 hours, finally succeeded today at 106 hours. even when i try to obey the law i’m outlaw. natalija and sabina’s mom took us down today and vouched for us, then she and sabina took us for a walk around the most gorgeous harbor i’ve seen. we picked small strange spiked berry-fruits from trees and ate them, and let a preying mantis crawl over our hands. i called a cat from under a bush and it actually came, let me pet it… strange cats never come when called. all this in a t-shirt in the november mediterranean sun. after we came home, kathy and i walked down to the sea and watched crabs scuttle about tide pools filled with moving snails and writhing plants – and then harvested assorted found objects for assemblage. this is a good strange exotic film we live -each tomorrow newly unscripted.
9.11.2006 – off to town to blog today the norms the forms the cunning of reason the rant the roll so over the will and thru the woulds to cyber’s house we go. o my grand maw what a big weak you have. being free doesn’t solve anything – just makes all your problems your own, makes you set your own schedule, makes you set your own scope outside others needs. as charles bukowski said in a 1990 letter to ben gulyas which we published in both artcrimes #15 and #21 – “being a writer gets you large spaces of time and if you don’t know how to handle large spaces of time you are in trouble. i can handle it. what i can’t handle is other people trying to handle my time. and mostly what i can’t handle is other people even if they are not trying to handle my time. handle, handle, handle. the fire is missing from the pot. laughter has wooden teeth.”
so now our task really begins. we’re thru the kindergarten of leaving home and wandering open mouthed thru the new sights of the new sites. wonderment has settled in. time to produce, to learn, to write, to create, to learn the blues harp, to learn the tin penny whistle, to learn touch typing, to learn a healthier exercized body, to wander where the hills meet the sea and see what we may be. harder to do and be when do and be be due you. it helps that we must bus 30 minutes to the city for internet, it helps that the tv here is in german and croatian except for the single cnn news channel which is impossible to watch for long, it helps that we have no movies to watch, it helps that we have limited music to play, it helps that i know no one here, it helps that i do not know the language… so now we’re settled in and on our own – it’s time to see what i’m made of on my own. ooooooo, scary movie.
